Golden Spike announce Phase A for commercial lunar landing missions

[Danderman]

I agree... This whole plan depends on an effective lander, all other parts are nearly available. Make a great lander (ideally with a way to efficiently refuel it), and this plan is workable.

Actually, Rocketman is spot on. Identifying what paying customers want is the critical link.

Yep.

The rest of the technobabble here is not related to the future of Golden Spike.

No bucks, no Buck Rogers.

Actually, I would say identifying a price point that customers can afford to pay is more important. There is no point in promising the entire Moon if people can't afford to pay for it.

$1.5B per bare bones mission is pushing the limit of affordability as it is.

Marketing is very important for any company. If Golden Spike is good at it, they have a chance to get the necessary funding. If they are no good at marketing, they are dead in the water.

Either way, random guesses here about their potential customer requirements are not useful.

What would be interesting is information about who at Golden Spike is handling marketing.

[mmeijeri]

Note that they have been talking about circumlunar missions too. One the one hand those should be cheaper and therefore easier to sell, but on the other hand they would be less exciting, which would make it harder. Selling a couple of circumlunar missions would make it a lot easier for them to fund their ultimate plans incrementally. And a commercial operation pretty much has to do things incrementally.

[LucR]

What would be interesting is information about who at Golden Spike is handling marketing.

Mr. Zak Williams – director of marketing, Moon Express

[JohnFornaro]

The geinus of Stern is that he is not going to be lulled into the same mistakes that NASA has been making over the past 5 decades.  He is not about to allow his project to die a slow lingering death from requirements creep, and he is not going to try to get funded on the basis of unreasonable low-ball cost estimates.

This sounds good and reasonable, but you're still guessing about those things as they pertain to his genius.  The showstopper appears to be financing, and Mr. Stern will be obligated to put on a sophisticated dog and pony show in order to secure financing from his expected investors.

He will be governed by physics and a host of other technical difficulties as well.  Requirements creep is like clogged arteries; over time, it will kill your project.  What I'm saying is, that you're generally right about your summary, especially the part about not knowing in advance of his chances for success.

Your hunch about his cost and schedule is as good as, or as bad as, anybody elses.

What I'm actually interested in is a fully reusable crew.  Disposable landers?  No problem.  Disposable crew?  Big problem.

I'd say plus one, but I know better.

[Warren Platts]

There's no need to make the architecture dependent on FH ...

Except for the following facts: (a) FH minimizes the total number of launches required; and (b) FH has the cheapest per kilogram launch prices in town...

There are guys with nothing but a GED and CDL that [transfer LH2] every day.

What do those TLAs mean?
[/quote]

GED = General Education Diploma--equivalent to a high school diploma for high school dropouts in the USA

(EDIT: @ swampcat: I think you're probably right!)

CDL = Commercial Driver's License

I'm talking about truck drivers IOW. Of course, they also need a HazMat certification....

[Warren Platts]

The proposed missions have been criticized as being "bare bones" "flag and footprint" missions.  I thought it would be interesting to do a direct comparison with the Apollo missions:

Mission / time on lunar surface (# of EVAs) lunar surface EVA time / mass of lunar samples returned / lunar science package deployed / extra vehicle

Apollo 11 / 21:36 (1 EVA) 2:35 / 21.5kg / EASEP
Apollo 12 / 31:31 (2 EVA) 7:45 / 34.3kg / ALSEP
Apollo 14 / 33:30 (2 EVA) 9:22 / 42.3kg / ALSEP
Apollo 15 / 66:55 (3 EVA) 18:34 / 77.3kg / ALSEP / Lunar Rover
Apollo 16 / 71:02 (3 EVA) 20.14 / 95.7kg / ALSEP / Lunar Rover
Apollo 17 / 74:59 (3 EVA) 22:04 / 110.5kg / ALSEP / Lunar Rover

Early GS / >36:00 (2 EVA) ??:?? / ~50kg / GoLDSEP

Looking at this, and considering that GoLDSEP will surely be more advanced than ALSEP was, I would put the early Golden Spike lunar surface missions as more capable than Apollo 11 to 14, but less capable than Apollo 15 to 17.

Good point. These will be Lunar sample return planetary science missions--not flags 'n' footprints missions....

EDIT:
Speaking of which, have they started bending metal on that sample return mission to the deepest part of the Aitkin Basin that is supposed to grab a sample of Lunar mantle that the Decadal Survey/SMD was interested in?

It might be cheaper or deliver better scientific results if the SMD were to finance an HSF mission instead....

[mmeijeri]

Except for the following facts: (a) FH minimizes the total number of launches required; and (b) FH has the cheapest per kilogram launch prices in town...

Those are not facts since FH and its low prices are not a given. There's no good reason to make the architecture dependent on any specific launch vehicle and there are good reasons to make it launch-vehicle agnostic. All you need to do is to make sure that you can take advantage of any launch vehicle that's available. And that's something you can do if you use propellant transfer.

[mmeijeri]

GED = General Education Diploma--equivalent to a high school diploma for high school dropouts in the USA

CDL = Commercial Driver's License

I'm talking about truck drivers IOW. Of course, they also need a HazMat certification....

Cute, but you know I meant orbital propellant transfer, for which my statement is true.

[swampcat]

What do those TLAs mean?

GED = "General Educational Development"

High school equivalency exam.

CDL = "Commercial Drivers License"

Edit: as usual, someone beat me to it 

[oldAtlas_Eguy]

Except for the following facts: (a) FH minimizes the total number of launches required; and (b) FH has the cheapest per kilogram launch prices in town...

Those are not facts since FH and its low prices are not a given. There's no good reason to make the architecture dependent on any specific launch vehicle and there are good reasons to make it launch-vehicle agnostic. All you need to do is to make sure that you can take advantage of any launch vehicle that's available. And that's something you can do if you use propellant transfer.

The Air Force just purchased a FH flight for a price of $165M which includes about $40M in additional services. So someone is pretty cofident of what the FH price will be even though it has not flown yet.

[mmeijeri]

That's still not a good reason to make yourself dependent on a single launch vehicle, especially since there is absolutely no need to do so and very good reasons not to.

[oldAtlas_Eguy]

That's still not a good reason to make yourself dependent on a single launch vehicle, especially since there is absolutely no need to do so and very good reasons not to.

I doubt that they will have made enough progress to be able to lock their design to a LV by this time next year. The eve of the FH demo launch.

Also they are dependent on most likely the winner of the next round of the Commercial Crew Program which will not be anounced until 3Q2014. Who the possible BEO CCV will be will drive design requirements of the EDS. This would put the PDR at about that time frame which is where all the requirements become locked in in-order to do detail designs.

[mmeijeri]

Are you saying you would prefer to lock in a specific launch vehicle? I'm not talking about locking it in right now, but about doing it at all. Why would you want to be dependent on a single supplier if you could help it?

[oldAtlas_Eguy]

Are you saying you would prefer to lock in a specific launch vehicle? I'm not talking about locking it in right now, but about doing it at all. Why would you want to be dependent on a single supplier if you could help it?

Being dependent on a single provider for a critical piece of the total system that puts people on the surface for a temporary stay is not a problem. This is not like the ISS where it is supposed to be manned 24/7 and actually need multiple methods of resupply and access.

Later when a base is established you will need those redundant providers but not initially.

[mmeijeri]

It's not necessarily a problem, but why would you do it if you didn't have to? And you don't have to.

[Warren Platts]

If you want to go with your Hypergolic Evolved Lunar Lander, then you must go with FH.

Unless of course you would prefer waiting for SLS....

[oldAtlas_Eguy]

It will double costs associated with LV.  Integration, adapters, specific LV EDS, CCV upgrades for BEO so we are talking a total increse in costs as much as $2B.

[mmeijeri]

If you want to go with your Hypergolic Evolved Lunar Lander, then you must go with FH.

Unless of course you would prefer waiting for SLS....

What nonsense. EELVs would do. Insisting on launching the lander fully fueled is stupid. Insisting on putting it through TLI fully fueled is stupid. If you have the option to offload the propellant, you also have the option not to offload it if FH turns out to be cheaper. If you insist on launching it fully fueled and putting it through TLI fully fueled, then you're screwed if FH fails to materialise, is stood down for a year, or is much more expensive than expected.

The whole attraction of hypergolics is that it offers propellant transfer and storage now, and the ability to do exploration with existing launch vehicles and existing technology.

[Warren Platts]

Mission creep. Too expensive. Not an option....

[mmeijeri]

It will double costs associated with LV.  Integration, adapters, specific LV EDS, CCV upgrades for BEO so we are talking a total increse in costs as much as $2B.

No doubt it would increase some costs, but since we're talking about launching a lot of mass, there is room for amortising that cost.

But I disagree they need to depend on a launch-vehicle specific EDS. I think Simon made a very good suggestion to develop an EDS that can be launched on several launch vehicles, just as many satellites do.

In fact, you might not even need a dedicated EDS at all, you could contract for transport from LEO to L1/L2 or LLO instead. An EELV could use a modified Centaur or DCSS, while FH could use a similarly modified Falcon upper stage. You would then need to specify a docking standard, and fortunately there already several to choose from.