billdavis6959
Lunar Aspirations
A fair amount of money is being spent here and plans seem to be taking shape to accomplish the goal of a manned ( ?) or a male/female landing on the moon by 2024.
This architecture is just a painfully slow and expensive way to get there. The primary problem is the use of SLS as the launch vehicle. It could be upwards of a billion dollars per launch vs 100 million or so using commercial launch vehicles. Not only that, but the limited capability of the rocket prevents it from going directly to the lunar surface and instead a complex and costly re-fueling is required at the so called "Gateway" lunar orbiting station. I do not expect this to be done by 2024. At the launch rate of one per year on the SLS there will be no test flights, just straight up operational missions. The first time the lander flies it will try to land with not even a test flight in earth orbit.
This is just not realistic and probably dangerous as well.
I am not sure if the best course is to delay until something more rational is decided on or just to cancel the entire thing.
Let us assume we do get a tiny Gateway going in lunar orbit.
The only practical use might be to operate rovers to explore the lunar surface since from earth the latency time is several seconds. (Since they will probably be at the South Pole the rovers will be in place to witness StarShip making it's first landing). Meanwhile, re-supply from earth is going to be a problem. Initially, I think you would limit missions to periods where you bring all the consumables with you and take out the trash before you head home. That means a spacewalk where you kick a bag of trash etc away from the gateway.
I think the orbit around the moon is kind of weird. It won't be that close to the moon and instead be rather high. I will research on that. It is a "Halo" orbit I think.
My primary concern is the astronauts' exposure to cosmic radiation. No one has been exposed to that on missions of 30 days or more. The ISS is protected by the Van Allen belts around the earth. The shielding on the Gateway will be minimal, and they will have to contend with outbursts from the Sun as well as cosmic rays. You would basically be screwed in that event. No way to return to earth quickly enough to avoid a solar blast. If you were on the lunar surface you build a shelter for radiation protection as one of the first tasks. We have kind of forgotten all this since Apollo but I recall it being a major issue then.
About the Artemis lander. Not a lot of official talk about this yet that I can find. It seems to be a 3 stage non-reusable vehicle.
It has a "transfer" stage for the initial part of the descent to the lunar surface. At some point during the descent it is dropped away and the lander stage takes over to continue to the surface. The ascent stage on top of the lander will return the astronauts to the Gateway at the end of the mission and I think I read somewhere that there is no ability to carry anything other than the astronauts themselves.
Lunar Aspirations
A fair amount of money is being spent here and plans seem to be taking shape to accomplish the goal of a manned ( ?) or a male/female landing on the moon by 2024.
This architecture is just a painfully slow and expensive way to get there. The primary problem is the use of SLS as the launch vehicle. It could be upwards of a billion dollars per launch vs 100 million or so using commercial launch vehicles. Not only that, but the limited capability of the rocket prevents it from going directly to the lunar surface and instead a complex and costly re-fueling is required at the so called "Gateway" lunar orbiting station. I do not expect this to be done by 2024. At the launch rate of one per year on the SLS there will be no test flights, just straight up operational missions. The first time the lander flies it will try to land with not even a test flight in earth orbit.
This is just not realistic and probably dangerous as well.
I am not sure if the best course is to delay until something more rational is decided on or just to cancel the entire thing.
Let us assume we do get a tiny Gateway going in lunar orbit.
The only practical use might be to operate rovers to explore the lunar surface since from earth the latency time is several seconds. (Since they will probably be at the South Pole the rovers will be in place to witness StarShip making it's first landing). Meanwhile, re-supply from earth is going to be a problem. Initially, I think you would limit missions to periods where you bring all the consumables with you and take out the trash before you head home. That means a spacewalk where you kick a bag of trash etc away from the gateway.
I think the orbit around the moon is kind of weird. It won't be that close to the moon and instead be rather high. I will research on that. It is a "Halo" orbit I think.
My primary concern is the astronauts' exposure to cosmic radiation. No one has been exposed to that on missions of 30 days or more. The ISS is protected by the Van Allen belts around the earth. The shielding on the Gateway will be minimal, and they will have to contend with outbursts from the Sun as well as cosmic rays. You would basically be screwed in that event. No way to return to earth quickly enough to avoid a solar blast. If you were on the lunar surface you build a shelter for radiation protection as one of the first tasks. We have kind of forgotten all this since Apollo but I recall it being a major issue then.
About the Artemis lander. Not a lot of official talk about this yet that I can find. It seems to be a 3 stage non-reusable vehicle.
It has a "transfer" stage for the initial part of the descent to the lunar surface. At some point during the descent it is dropped away and the lander stage takes over to continue to the surface. The ascent stage on top of the lander will return the astronauts to the Gateway at the end of the mission and I think I read somewhere that there is no ability to carry anything other than the astronauts themselves.