A lunar base instead of the space station, 1984

As title said. An option seriously considered late 1983 was a lunar base instead of a space station.
http://www.nytimes.com/1984/12/04/science/scientists-chart-a-return-to-moon-for-new-exploits.html

Reagan science advisor George Keyworth disliked the space station concept.
Comparative studies were done between the two options
http://www.wired.com/2012/06/lunar-base-or-space-station-1983/

In the end the space station was picked up but the lunar base got a large symposium late 1984 (the summary can be found here) http://www.lpi.usra.edu/publications/books/lunar_bases/

The plan was to use the shuttle and Orbital Transfer Vehicle as a fully reusable system between Earth surface and lunar orbit, and build the lunar base from that.
The shuttle could have carried the OTV into the Aft Cargo Carrier. Propellants could be pumped from the External Tank into the OTV, an intriguing concept.

No taker ? Where are AH.com space geeks when you need them ?

If it is going to be a real worthwhile effort, all of it is needed.

I have an article somewhere on this problem (where? oh here?).

In essence, the problem is up and down to earth. That is where the energy is going to be spent.

Although a bit cumbersome, the idea is to have a space station in low-earth orbit. That is really the first stop. Next stop is a lunar station.

Transfers between two space stations are simple things.

from lunar station to lunar base: space elevator. Due to gravity (or lack thereof), the space elevator is feasible in that environment.

Lunar water can be shuttled back to earth station at very low cost (as in energy cost).

Same concept can work for Mars.

... and for the real space people -> terraforming of mars -> mars is habitable within 300 years. (same time frame from Mayflower to now, sort of).

Ivan

I'll take it

Once you read the plans as Portree lays them out, and then look at the cost estimates, you realize why a lunar base as proposed in 1984 did not have a Hope. In. Hell. of ever becoming reality.

The most telling sentence in Portree's entire piece: "This was an underestimation calculated to make the station more politically palatable." Uh, yeah. You could say that. When you're estimating that a LEO Space Station will cost only $1.9 billion, and shuttle flights only $110 million apiece...someone at NASA is lowballing in ways that don't even pass the smell test - which Congress, of course, quickly recognized.

Part of the problem is that any lunar base was going to have to make use of the Shuttle to do it. Everything was going to have be in 22,000kg chunks, every one trucked up to LEO by STS, along with EDS boosters to get any of it out of low earth orbit (something that would have been unlikely after the Challenger disaster, which resulted in a policy of barring transport of the Centaur-G booster by the shuttle). And it was going to need A LOT of those shuttle flights. (89 flights!!!)

But the real problem is that NASA and its SAI team were still deeply intoxicated by the Apollo mindset - but just vaguely aware enough that the Apollo funding environment didn't exist that they felt compelled to radically underestimate the costs involved - rather than, I don't know, try to come up with an architecture and procurement that might actually fit the budget they could get.

Instead, they came up with an architecture that was going to require a lunar base AND a LEO space station. In short, it wasn't a choice encapsulated by the formula "A lunar base instead of the space station." It was a choice between 1) a lunar base with LEO space station as staging area, or 2) a LEO space station only. Neither of which, as designed, were remotely affordable on any likely NASA budget.

As lunar return fantasies go, I'll stick with Eyes Turned Skywards, which is at least somewhat plausible...

Just the same, nice catch, Archibald. I had missed that Portree piece.

Part of the problem is that any lunar base was going to have to make use of the Shuttle to do it. Everything was going to have be in 22,000kg chunks, every one trucked up to LEO by STS, along with EDS boosters to get any of it out of low earth orbit (something that would have been unlikely after the Challenger disaster, which resulted in a policy of barring transport of the Centaur-G booster by STS). And it was going to need A LOT of those shuttle flights. (89 flights!!!)

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The OTV in the Aft Cargo Carrier makes the Shuttle-Centaur unnecessary. It is much less dangerous. Diameter jumps from 4.5 m to 8.4 m, the diameter of the external tank.
I agree it is still a flawed, horribly expensive system.
Which in turn reminds me that NASA manned spaceflight future was doomed from January 5, 1972 - and still is, incidentally.

Archibald said:

The OTV in the Aft Cargo Carrier makes the Shuttle-Centaur unnecessary. It is much less dangerous. Diameter jumps from 4.5 m to 8.4 m, the diameter of the external tank.

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But you still have a problematic risk matrix, because it's still going up with STS in *some* form - and so are the fuel tanks for it. It might be a somewhat different risk matrix than with Centaur-G, but it would still be one almost certain to be deemed unacceptable after Challenger was destroyed.

In any event...this is, indeed, the least of the 1984 plan's problems.

Archibald said:

The OTV in the Aft Cargo Carrier makes the Shuttle-Centaur unnecessary. It is much less dangerous. Diameter jumps from 4.5 m to 8.4 m, the diameter of the external tank.
I agree it is still a flawed, horribly expensive system.
Which in turn reminds me that NASA manned spaceflight future was doomed from January 5, 1972 - and still is, incidentally.

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Why are we always looking for fuel in lieu of forces. Don't we know the mathematical of "centripete" , "centrifuge", acceleration, attraction, those kind of forces.
It's the application of the gyroscope forces, by successive jumps with an internal capsule isolated from any pressure or so little that it's content stay stable. Couple of jumps, here and there, time restricted to a minimum and soon bigger models for bigger loads. The speed, time and distance are the cures to cosmic exlploration.

Gerard said:

Why are we always looking for fuel in lieu of forces. Don't we know the mathematical of "centripete" , "centrifuge", acceleration, attraction, those kind of forces.
It's the application of the gyroscope forces, by successive jumps with an internal capsule isolated from any pressure or so little that it's content stay stable. Couple of jumps, here and there, time restricted to a minimum and soon bigger models for bigger loads. The speed, time and distance are the cures to cosmic exlploration.

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I'm having trouble working out what you mean. Could you explain again, please?

AmericanAdam said:

it could lead to moon mining

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This. Why ask Congress for funding when you could just ask some private companies to invest and potentially set up moon mining bases and make billions of dollars from resources? Also, if moon bases are set up, if only as corporate establishments, it makes the cost of landing there much less. Materials going back to earth would increase investments, and inevitably stations owned and operated by the government would pop up to build ship parts or something for future exploration.

AmericanAdam said:

This does sound like an interesting timeline, it could lead to moon mining and humans permanently living there. It could also lead to a docking point for further space exploration

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Fair point, but - ease off the point size there, kemosabe.

TC9078 said:

This. Why ask Congress for funding when you could just ask some private companies to invest and potentially set up moon mining bases and make billions of dollars from resources? Also, if moon bases are set up, if only as corporate establishments, it makes the cost of landing there much less. Materials going back to earth would increase investments, and inevitably stations owned and operated by the government would pop up to build ship parts or something for future exploration.

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Because private companies will ask inconvenient questions like "where is the market for these Lunar resources?" or "what is the profit/loss ratio?" or "how much health compensation would we have to pay out if our workers got caught in a solar flare?"

The Aft Cargo Carrier sounds quite interesting: WI it were funded and actually flew on schedule (so the first one is part of a launch in 1986)?

fasquardon

AmericanAdam said:

This does sound like an interesting timeline, it could lead to moon mining and humans permanently living there. It could also lead to a docking point for further space exploration

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Nonsense. The delta-vee to soft-land is absurd. For that, you can more easily capture almost any near-earth asteroid & park it in L4/L5 for mining.

Delta-vee rules...

As already stated a lunar base architecture based on the current Space Shuttle architecture just wasn't feasible. You would need some type of STS that was more re-usable than the Space Shuttle in real life that seriously lowered the cost to orbit.

Brovane: your TL (as per your signature) might do it better (although it would need a lot of Saturn V, which was uneconomical)
You could mine LOX from the lunar crust, and LH2 from the lunar polar cold traps. Then use the LESA cargo lander as tanker to stockpile propellants at EML-1 or EML-2. Then use that propellant to refuel spent S-IVB stages. Then send the S-IVB toward Mars with some big payload, and start colonization of that planet.
The proper course for lunar exploration

Indeed the Aft Cargo Carrier makes the shuttle a little more interesting. It remains a flawed vehicle, unfortunately.

I wonder if the OTV could have worked, or if it would have been a failure like the shuttle. It is difficult to find valuable information about it. Astronautix still has the most detailed summary about it.
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/otv.htm

Here's an interesting plan that tried to make the shuttle useful for lunar exploration.
http://www.wired.com/2014/08/a-1996-plan-to-use-nasas-oldest-orbiter-to-make-money-on-the-moon/

The delta-vee to soft-land is absurd.

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Spot on. To go from Earth surface to lunar surface that plan needed a) a shuttle b) the OTV and c) a lunar lander.

Archibald said:

Brovane: your TL (as per your signature) might do it better (although it would need a lot of Saturn V, which was uneconomical)
You could mine LOX from the lunar crust, and LH2 from the lunar polar cold traps. Then use the LESA cargo lander as tanker to stockpile propellants at EML-1 or EML-2. Then use that propellant to refuel spent S-IVB stages. Then send the S-IVB toward Mars with some big payload, and start colonization of that planet.
The proper course for lunar exploration

Indeed the Aft Cargo Carrier makes the shuttle a little more interesting. It remains a flawed vehicle, unfortunately.

I wonder if the OTV could have worked, or if it would have been a failure like the shuttle. It is difficult to find valuable information about it. Astronautix still has the most detailed summary about it.
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/otv.htm

Here's an interesting plan that tried to make the shuttle useful for lunar exploration.
http://www.wired.com/2014/08/a-1996-plan-to-use-nasas-oldest-orbiter-to-make-money-on-the-moon/

Spot on. To go from Earth surface to lunar surface that plan needed a) a shuttle b) the OTV and c) a lunar lander.

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Any expendable launch vehicle system is going to be "expensive". Of course expensive is a relative term. The trick is how much resources, time and money do you invest in creating a re-usable system. From what I can see based on current technology probably some type of full re-usable TSTO launch vehicle with Earth and EML-2 propellant depots would be the best combination.

The OTV reminds me of the tug in "Eyes" that is used to place loads into GSO . However the one in "Eyes" doesn't use areo-braking.

All this talk about tech is interesting, but leaves aside the big question -- why in God's name would anyone want a lunar base. It would cost trillions, trillions that could be spent on infrastructure or even an extra war or two.

Sure, lunar bases and rockets are cool. Really cool. But they're not, in my mind, worth spending trillions on.

Emote Control said:

All this talk about tech is interesting, but leaves aside the big question -- why in God's name would anyone want a lunar base. It would cost trillions, trillions that could be spent on infrastructure or even an extra war or two.

Sure, lunar bases and rockets are cool. Really cool. But they're not, in my mind, worth spending trillions on.

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That's like asking what is the point of exploring space when everything and anything you want you have on Earth?

Simply put, while it is trillions of dollars, it's better to invest it for the possibility of utilizing those resources to better secure the future of life on Earth, especially since the resources on Earth are still finite.

Noblesse Oblige said:

That's like asking what is the point of exploring space when everything and anything you want you have on Earth?

Simply put, while it is trillions of dollars, it's better to invest it for the possibility of utilizing those resources to better secure the future of life on Earth, especially since the resources on Earth are still finite.

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Unless it is something that is rare on Earth and common on the Moon. The only thing that I can think of is He3 and there is no market on Earth for it in 1984.

Noblesse Oblige said:

That's like asking what is the point of exploring space when everything and anything you want you have on Earth?

Simply put, while it is trillions of dollars, it's better to invest it for the possibility of utilizing those resources to better secure the future of life on Earth, especially since the resources on Earth are still finite.

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No. Christ no.

We are centuries away from getting anything economically worthwhile from space in terms of resources and quite probably will never be able to sustain a large population of humans in space.


People need to realise that as cool as space is they are lying through their teeth and to themselves if they think it can make a meaningful difference to the Earth's problems this century.