Time for a new launch site

[William Barton]

A couple of points:

The cost of a thousand moon launches using the modern equivalent of a Saturn V wouldn't be a whole lot more than a trillion dollars. That's about enough to buy up a couple of city blocks on Manhattan, at most. And in case there's anyone here who hasn't noticed, we're spending that much this year to buy up... I dunno. What *are* we buying with the bailout?

In "The Mars Project,* Von Braun proposed a 900-launch flight rate of his orbital ferry in well under a year to assemble the Mars fleet. The ferry was an RLV of sorts, approximately 4 times the size of Saturn V.

[rklaehn]

As long as we are using expendable launchers, the existing launch sites are more than sufficient. There is a lot of space at the cape that is not currently being used.

But once we have reusable orbital vehicles it might be useful to look for new launch sites. This is not as far off as it sounds. Something like a second generation XCOR Lynx with an expendable upper stage would have significantly higher payload from a high altitude equatorial location than from mojave.

One interesting possibility would be ecuador. It is at the equator and at very high elevation (the capital quito is at at almost 3000m elevation, and there are various very high mountains in the vicinity).

Since quito is a city with over a million people, there is decent infrastructure such as LOX plants.

The downside is that you would have to launch over (extremely sparsely populated) land. But airplanes launch over cities all the time with more than 100t of kerosene on board. And with a truly reusable vehicle you could demonstrate the required reliability.

[William Barton]

In order for the "R" part of RLV to be true, they have to be reliable enough you have a reasonable expectation of getting them back every time. So the main issue with an RLV launch would be noise abatement issues. If you had something like one of the larger Kistler proposals that actually worked, there's be no real reason not to have the launch complex on Long Island, if proximity to NYC happened to close your business case.

[pm1823]

OK, then, forget Yemen and Oman for now.  Brazil sounds good.  Seems like the problem with Austrailia is that there are too many inhabited islands along the flight path.

I'm thinking about coastline in Kenia for Zenit and other Ukrainian LVs. Direct transport from Dnepropetrovsk by water. Poor state, so cheap local workforce can be used during construction.

It can be even Equator Launch in Somali, you just need decommissioned destroyer to control sea and territory.

[JohnFornaro]

Time for a new launch site….
The first suggestion, that we have a launch site in Antarctica may be necessary for this 100K lunar population.  We’d have to launch up a number of payloads of pure ice.  Might as well figure out how to operate in the cold if we ever expect to launch rockets off of Titan or other chilly places.  In the time frame from 1969 to 2009, this step would have been taken in, say, 2001?

The comment about the cost of land being “utterly irrelevant” is not helpful in the least. Cost of land is a factor.  Manhattan is unrealistic, but the eastern tip of Long Island may make the business case for some parties.  Maybe a Dubai type island is built 20 miles off of L.I., with a tunnel train for passengers?

William Barton points out that Von Braun suggested 900 launches in about a year.  So we start with what, 5 launches in 1969, 25 in 1970, 50 in 1971.  By 1972, the Recife site comes on line, with immediate facilities for 50 launches a year, expandable up to 200 launches a year by 1980.  Madagascar, Somalia, and Yemen come on line in 1976, 1980, and 1984.  Sri Lanka has too many typhoons.  Russian, European, Chinese and Indian launches continue apace.  By 1988, there are 1000 launches a year, world-wide.  From a mining standpoint, the first asteroid is nudged into NEO and large chunks are broken off, and guided into “long spirals” into the Sahara, where they can crash at relatively safe speeds of 500 MPH.  (or does this kick up too much dust?)  At any rate, a band of equatorial contrails can be detected in the stratosphere by weather satellites by 1992.  Business begins booming by 1988, and UN regulations end up being strictly enforced, and the safety rate is reasonable enough that Lloyds offers space insurance. 

By 1992 the Shuttle is replaced by some Hypersoar variant.  The ISS is set up as the beginning of a static ring station, and 500 second generation atomic powered Moon tugs/ferries are in operation.  The meteorologists and environmental scientists determine that reforestation of the Amazon and irrigation of various deserts will provide sufficient buffer against so many launches.  Huge nuclear powered pipelines run from the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers to the American Southwest providing irrigation to massive artificial lakes, because the pumps only work during flood times.  Similar projects feed the Mongolian deserts.  It is determined that 2000 launches a year is a safe rate.  Industry concentrates on boosting chemical rocket efficiency, and vehicle safety thru incremental design improvements.

By 2002, the static ring is complete and the lunar colony is fully utilizing in situ resources.  Ice is still valuable, and several smaller comets are being maneuvered into lunar orbits for mining purposes.  they have been nudged away from the Sun in such a fashion that the Sun’s gravity slows them down.  Nuclear reactors pepper the far side of the Moon with little radiation shielding and are tended by robots.  Earth launches slow down and are comprised mostly of passengers, rather than factory materials.

The Moon’s population reaches 100,001 on… March 9, 2009!  John Shoots! John Scores!  I gotta go.

[Capt. Nemo]

How about the Southeastern part of Newfoundland? It's about the same latitude as Kazahkstan and could be used for the ISS support launches, freeing up the Cape for Constellation program. (CxP? ConsPro? :-P )

All we need now is a big honkin' rocket....... like the Griffin V! :-D

[edkyle99]

If the U.S. needed a new launch site, it would make sense (to me) to consider near-equatorial sites to reduce delta-v requirements for GTO missions.  The U.S. administers several small uninhabited near-equatorial territories in the Pacific.  These include Jarvis Island, Palmyra Atoll, and Howland and Baker Islands.  Palmyra used to have a small Naval base with a runway, etc.

 - Ed Kyle

[JohnFornaro]

Seems like there's dozens of additional launch sites available, but not hundreds.  Some could be as close to business as Long Island.  The island locations seem a bit small and are rather distant.  The land based locations seem to be more feasible.  So....

How many sites with how many launches per site per year, do we need to get 100K people on the lunar surface after forty years?