Moonlab (1974-81)

The Kiat

The Kiat

Another one of those ideas that pops into my head while working.

Suppose NASA had an even bigger budget in the 1960s and poured it into the moon program. They go as far as to have long-term lunar equipment designed and built duing the 1960s. By the time Apollo is finished, Moonlab (instead of Skylab) is ready to launch.

I've envisioned one-way landers for habitats at first (big enough to take up the room of the third stage of the Saturn V), followed by inflatable habitats that are buried under regolith. Of course they need a moondozer to help with the digging. The plan is to have crews spend six-month tours of duties at Moonlab, with at least one geologist out of the crew of three.

To get from the surface to orbit, some sort of lunar taxi would be needed. It'd have to be able to be refueled in orbit and on the ground. I think the Apollo capsules would do just fine for going back and forth from Earth.

All the while this is happening, lobbiests and the Air Force are pushing for a "reusable" (yeah, right) shuttle to be developed. I figure once somebody like Reagan gets into office, he'll press for that, and moonlab would have to be decomissioned to pay for it. Let's face it, an outpost on the moon is going to be expensive.

I'll write up some mission timeline at a later date.
 
Michel Van

Michel Van

This only work if Soviet reach the Moon with Cosmonaut.

Here the Apollo program is push on, also Skylab
Because they need Orbital station for Zero G science and beat the Soviet with bigger Space station.

McD made study to use S-IVB stage as Cargo lander to lunar Surface.
and Grumman had look into it use the LM with more 2 Astronauts
Lockheed wanted to land 6 astronauts in Apollo CM direct on Moon and solve allot of Problems with Lunar Orbit rendezvous.
Here the CSM had to stay up to 90 days in lunar orbit with one Astronaut on board.
Rockwell proposed a Lunar orbital station and McD even a Skylab in Lunar orbit.
 

Gunnarnz

ryackov said:
The moon program wasn't cheap, period.
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No, it wasn't. Wikipedia reports the cost at $109 billion in 2010 dollars. On the other hand the 10 ships of the CVN-78 class of aircraft carriers are going to be $9 billion each (not including $5 billion of research and development and whatever figure is appropriate for air group, manning, or anything else).

So the money is certainly available without bankrupting the US, if you can persuade them that they need a couple fewer SSNs, SSBNs, CVNs, etc.
 
Michel Van

Michel Van

ryackov said:
The United States goes into bankruptcy?
The moon program wasn't cheap, period.
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no, it was not cheap. $109 billion in 2010.
but Moonlab would be cheaper ! around $50 billion in 2010.
Why ?
the biggest cost in Apollo Program was research and development on Hardware (Saturn V, CSM, LM, Rocket engine, Life-support etc.)
and additional test program like Gemini program

Moonlab has little R&D on Station, rover and other Hardware, while Saturn V can be cheaply built if 4 unit/year for 40 Saturn V in total.

By the way
The Vietnam War total cost were $545 billion in 2010.
 
The Kiat

The Kiat

I'm not interested in where the funding comes from and who loses out in order to make the program work. That isn't so important in the AH itself.

Besides, if you take all the advances from the Apollo program and figure out how much it stimulated the economy, the it's not a bad trade. The electronics industry alone probably generated enough tax revenue from corporate and income taxes to pay for Apollo at least once over.
 

e of pi

A reasonable starting point for what your Moonlab might look like would be to look at the Apollo Applications studies into lunar bases. They wanted to start with AES (Apollo Extension System), which was basically just a second LM modified as a surface shelter with the ascent propellants replaced by enhanced supply storage (LM Shelter) to join the crew's actual vehicle for coming down and returning to orbit (LM Taxi). That could support two crew on the surface for 14 to 30 days. The next step up from AES was ALSS, the Apollo Logistics Support System. This would remove the ascent stage entirely from the cargo lander, turning it into the LM Truck, which could be used to deliver a specially-designed shelter and/or a larger pressurized Mobile Laboratory (MOLAB). LM Taxi would be used to deliver all three crew to the surface. Depending on whether they go with two launch (MOLAB or Shelter plus crew) or three launch (MOLAB and Shelter and crew), it could get into the realm of 3 crew on the surface for up to 30 days. The "big base" option was LESA, the Lunar Exploration System. This would involve the creation of a new lander, which would completely fill a Saturn V launch by itself. LESA's lander could land a shelter plus a MOLAB in one launch, which would then be joined by a crew of three launched on a second Saturn V. This could support that crew for 90 days on the surface. Bases could then be built up by successive launches, allowing expansion to 6, 9, or even 18 crew.

Reuse of the LM Taxi was not considered, so I'd suggest deleting that from your plans. It might be part of a Gen III lander (defining the Apollo LM as Gen I and LESA as Gen II), maybe, but they were more interested in reusing surface hardware than the transport infrastructure. You're going to be building a lot of Saturn Vs, so your cost per flight will actually be cheaper than you might think. Honestly, I can't see Shuttle catching on much here--it (and a large Earth-orbiting station) is a competitor to Moonlab. If NASA has Moonlab and ongoing production of Saturn V and other Apollo hardware, then Shuttle is the luxury, not Moonlab. Even a station is more critical as a supply point than as an end goal. Instead, I'd expect to see Moonlab curtailed (not shut down, but perhaps switched to man-tending instead of continuous occupation--so 90 or 180 days of occupation per year, not 365) as a station is built up using Skylab-class modules, served by Apollo and used as a staging point.
 

Archibald

Banned
For every Apollo mission to the Moon there was a S-IVB that was abandonned - or it was send into heliocentric orbit, or it was crashed on the Moon.
Interestingly, Skylab was build from a S-IVB (although it was a dry and not a wet workshop.)

If the wet workshop ever works, then every Apollo mission can result in a Moonlab. Heck, one could even cluster the wet workshops and that would result in a kind of "big Mir" in lunar orbit.

In the long term however libration points are superior to low lunar orbit.
 

Michael B

The Kiat said:
I'm not interested in where the funding comes from and who loses out in order to make the program work. That isn't so important in the AH itself..
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It is if the money is not available. If the funding is not important then you might as well propose an AH with the North Koreans putting the first man on the moon.
 

Dathi THorfinnsson

Archibald said:
For every Apollo mission to the Moon there was a S-IVB that was abandonned - or it was send into heliocentric orbit, or it was crashed on the Moon.
Interestingly, Skylab was build from a S-IVB (although it was a dry and not a wet workshop.)

If the wet workshop ever works, then every Apollo mission can result in a Moonlab. Heck, one could even cluster the wet workshops and that would result in a kind of "big Mir" in lunar orbit.

In the long term however libration points are superior to low lunar orbit.
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But wet labs have much smaller payloads, iirc, that regular saturn flights. Firstly, you have the decreased volume of oxygen, i assume were talking oxygen tank?, and second you have the mass of the lab added to the dry mass of the third stage. Putting a lab in a cryogenic tank also means special care has to be taken, as the whole lab has to withstand the temperature transitions. Which probably increases the mass.
 

MattII

Michael B said:
It is if the money is not available. If the funding is not important then you might as well propose an AH with the North Koreans putting the first man on the moon.
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Oh the money's available, it just got spent on an incredibly wasteful and ultimately unsuccessful was in SEA.

You do need a surviving and successful Soviet lunar program though, that is an absolute must.
 
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e of pi

Dathi THorfinnsson said:
But wet labs have much smaller payloads, iirc, that regular saturn flights. Firstly, you have the decreased volume of oxygen, i assume were talking oxygen tank?, and second you have the mass of the lab added to the dry mass of the third stage. Putting a lab in a cryogenic tank also means special care has to be taken, as the whole lab has to withstand the temperature transitions. Which probably increases the mass.
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The wet lab concept is that the tank is converted on-site. It flies full of propellants, just like a normal tank, and you fly the conversion equipment in a separate volume. IT's extremely labor-intensive to actually install all that into the lab volume once the tank is depleted, which is why Skylab went to a "dry lab," a tank converted on the ground and flown as pure payload.
 

Dathi THorfinnsson

e of pi said:
The wet lab concept is that the tank is converted on-site. It flies full of propellants, just like a normal tank, and you fly the conversion equipment in a separate volume. IT's extremely labor-intensive to actually install all that into the lab volume once the tank is depleted, which is why Skylab went to a "dry lab," a tank converted on the ground and flown as pure payload.
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Ummm... no, im pretty sure you are wrong here. What youre describing sounds like the sii wet/dry lab, not the various wetlabs proposed. I distinctly remember temperature range as a problem in stories at the time, and what little i can find online with a quick google supports my ancient memories.

PS, yes, im THAT old.
 

Carl Schwamberger

Read, a few years ago, the latter canceled Lunar landings had several test sites for Lunar water as their goal. Anyone know if this is correct?

Assuming substantial quantities of water are indicated by the tests, then perhaps a temporary, 90 day or 180 occupation of a surface lab would be the next step. A base for researching water availability, and any other usefull resources on or near the surface. I'd expect at least a light weight drill for subsurface samples would be part of the kit.
 
The Kiat

The Kiat

Michael B said:
It is if the money is not available. If the funding is not important then you might as well propose an AH with the North Koreans putting the first man on the moon.
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You could probably write a fifty page essay on where the money came from by altering all sorts of things. Only problem there is that it'd be increadibly boring. It's also something I'm not going into great detail about, because scaling back Vietnam or LBJ's welfare plans has nothing to do directly with any moon program.
 
The Kiat

The Kiat

MattII said:
You do need a surviving and successful Soviet lunar program though, that is an absolute must.
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I already had the idea of a Soviet probe collecting a few grams of regolith and returning to Earth a few hours ahead of Apollo XI planned into it. I also thought about having a Soviet lander visit Moonlab, instead of the Apollo-Soyuz mission, but that would be after the inflatable thing was established.
 
Cook

Cook

Banned
This may be of interest:

Dyson then speculated on how some hypothetical NASA with an active interest in science might have structured the Apollo project within the same time and cost boundaries to produce good science as well as good entertainment. The main thing that was lacking in Apollo for good science was time. The 6 Apollo landings each placed 2 astronauts on the lunar surface for up to 3 days with about 2 tons of supplies and equipment for life support and exploration. For all of Apollo there were a total of about 50 man-days of lunar exploration using a total of 12 tons of equipment. That's about 4 man-days of exploration per ton of equipment.
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That's very inefficient. Von Braun envisioned 130 man-days of exploration of Mars per ton of equipment. Dyson suggested that 40 man-days/ton might be a more realistic compromise. If half Apollo's lunar landings had been done by unmanned freight carriers, each of these could have deposited at least 18 tons fo additional supplies on the lunar surface. That would have provided a team of six astronauts with 60 tons of supplies and equipment, sufficient for a 400 day mission of lunar exploration. That comes to 2400 man-days of exploration instead of the 50 man-days of Apollo.
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http://www.npl.washington.edu/av/altvw30.html


 
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