Space Transportation - mmmt_transportation.pdf - Moon Society

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NASA is charged by the government (with our acquiescence) with short range goals and thus does not look past the objectives of the mission at hand, or missions in the planning stages. “Obstacles” are seen as things to be avoided, not as “challenges” to be embraced. But many of us have learned one of life’s most valuable lessons: every “obstacle” is a golden opportunity in disguise. It’s a “right stuff” mind-set for successful living. Yes, the ET’s orbit, as delivered, would not be stable - we need to experiment ASAP with the rotating tether simultaneous boost of the ET into higher storage/parking orbits and fuel-saving de-orbit of the shuttle orbiter. Yes, the ET is “wet”: the remaining cryogenic fuels are a source of water and electrical power (both via fuel cell) and can be used as station-keeping fuel and for orbital maintenance. Yes, it would take too many man-hours to retrofit the ET as a Lab. But where the ET’s spaciousness is needed is not in the labs/work environments but in the habitat/off-hours environment for which far simpler and lower tech outfitting is required. It is not enough for the newly formed External Tank Company (ETCO) to ask to take delivery in orbit of spent ET’s for commercial marketing. As a precondition, ETCO should be required to buy an unused ET, for use in groundbased practice in retrofitting. ETCO could also save itself time and trouble in orbital retrofitting by developing such thins as a non-degassing SOFI (spray on foam insulation) which NASA would then be required to use. Along with the ET + Habitat payload, a Shuttle II could be designed in modular fashion with engines and reduced wings/tail in rear, cabin in front, and a larger lab module being the entire midsection (not just within a hold, and conveniently pre-attached to the ET/Habitat-to-be, passageways and all.) The lab module would have a spinal cord which plugs into both the engine/wings module and the cabin module through male/female connection so that both ends, after release of the habitat/lab complex can reconfigure and deorbit together. in the current STS configuration, only the contents of the Shuttle Payload Bay are “payload” - a very small percentage of the original Launch Vehicle assembly. The intact cargo carrier orbiter returns to Earth and the External Tank is scuttled just before it would have entered orbit. The package “delivered” to space is just a small fraction of what it could be. In the radically reinvented space transportation system, the return “orbiter-tug” is much smaller than today’s shuttle (smaller wings & tail and no payload bay. All these weight savings are reinvested in a larger payload structure that remains attached to the External Tank which is taken all the way to orbit, for minimal extra fuel. The smaller return vehicle (less entire mid-section + payload) needs smaller wings and tail. Weight savings here can be reinvested with the ET in the form of a micrometeorite shield. The major weight savings formerly invested in payload bay hold and doors can be reinvested in an Aft Cargo Compartment (long studied and planned for) for the ET to carry retrofitting supplies, and/or in pre-filling the empty volume of the ET’s InterTank with the habitat’s life support system, and/or a more massive lab module. Why cry in our beer when by tossing out the baggage of a totally inappropriate mindset we can thus vastly improve payload to fuel ratio by a couple of hundred percent? MMM MMM #9 - October 1987 ESSAYS IN ‘M’ By Peter Kokh M is for Medium range Missiles, the so-called “intermediates” whose days seem to be numbered. Let’s throw out the warheads [read “bathwater“] but not the missiles themselves [read “baby” ]. Instead, Let’s begin a letter writing campaign to convince the powers-that-be to invest the costs of missilescrapping in a feasibility study to find ways of ganging these rockets-about-to-be-orphaned in stages or clusters in such a way as to provide enough thrust to boost some of our growing payload backlog into orbit, with preference given to planetary and Earth-science missions, continually being bullied to the back of the queue. This won’t hurt budding entrepreneurs and commercial launchers. There’s enough of a workload for everybody. MMM 4
MMM #10 - November 1987 ESSAYS IN “M” Focus on Farside By Peter Kokh M is for Means of Transportation to and from a Farside Astronomy site. Powered portions of rocket (suborbital or not) landings and ascents to and from the lunar surface, ought not to be allowed in line-of-sight from a Farside Radio Astronomy installation in order to avoid interference. Instead “Farport” ought to be located at the end of a surface road from the radio telescope facility at least ten or more degrees away and around the Moon’s curvature [c. 200+ mi or 300+ km]. It might be best to locate Farport inside the farside zone which is within line-of-sight of the L4 and L5 Lagrange points at all times, say within 35° of the central Farside meridian. Then communications too would be routed via-surface cable to Farport before being relayed to/from the S.E.T.I. telescope facility. MMM #30 - November 1989 Nuclear rocket using Indigenous Martian Fuel An Enabling Technology for Manned Mars Missions with Global Access in a Single Launch [Body of Paper Condensed by MMM Editor] Robert M. Zubrin, Martin Marietta, Astronautics, Denver, CO ABSTRACT: This paper presents a preliminary examination of a novel concept for a Mars descent, ascent, and exploratory vehicle. Propulsion is provided by utilizing a nuclear thermal reactor to heat a propellant gas indigenous to Mars to form a high thrust rocket exhaust. Candidate propellants whose performance, materials, compatability, and ease of acquisition are examined include carbon dioxide, water, methane, nitrogen, carbon monoxide, and argon. Ballistic and winged supersonic vehicle configurations are discussed. It is shown that the use of this method of propulsion potentially offers high payoff to a manned Mars mission both by sharply reducing the initial mission mass required in low Earth orbit, and by providing Mars explorers with greatly enhanced mobility in traveling about the planet through the use of a vehicle that can refuel itself each time it lands. utilizing the nuclear landing craft in combination with a hydrogen fueled nuclear thermal interplanetary vehicle and a heavy lift booster, it is possible to achieve a manned Mars mission in one launch. INTRODUCTION: Interplanetary travel and colonization can be greatly facilitated if indigenous propellants can be used in place of those transported from Earth. Nuclear thermal rockets, which use a solid core fission reactor to heat a gaseous propellant, and which were successfully developed= during the 1960s under the ROVER/NERVA programs as hydrogen fueled interplanetary transfer vehicles, offer significant promise in this regard, since, in principle, any gas at all can be made to perform to some extent. In this paper we present a preliminary examination of the potential implementation of such a concept in the context of manned Mars missions. The vehicle in question we term a NIMF: Nuclear rocket using Indigenous Martian Fuel. Candidate Martian Propellants The atmosphere of Mars consists of 95.0% carbon dioxide [CO2], 2.7% nitrogen [N].1.6% argon [A], all of which are candidate fuels for NIMF.Water could also be used after harvesting ice or permafrost. Carbon monoxide [CO] and methane [CH4] can be produced from the above atmospheric gases by processing. Table 1: Ideal Specific Impulse of Martian Propellants Temp °K CO2 H2O CH4 CO/N2 A ** 2800 283 370 606 253 165 3000 310 393 625 264 172 * 3200 337 418 644 274 178 3500 381 458 671 289 187 5
Page 2 and 3: INDEX MMM THEMES: Transportation AR
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Page 8 and 9: MMM #33 - March 1990 An Easily Lost
Page 10 and 11: Forward [snip] I. THE VISITING “A
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Page 14 and 15: to date, J. M. Snead, an SSI Senior
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Page 24 and 25: L1 also appears to offer more advan
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Page 28 and 29: By Peter Kokh By “stuffs” we me
Page 30 and 31: Mountains without the Right Stuff E
Page 32 and 33: Bogota and Nairobi Interplanetary A
Page 34 and 35: Kick Motor “Tugs for Hire” - Or
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Page 38 and 39: MMM #101 - December 1996 Our 10th A
Page 40 and 41: A recent article (Breck, Henderson,
Page 42 and 43: Magsail Mars Missions (SEI & Staffo
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Page 46 and 47: “More to Mars” is our best chan
Page 48 and 49: MMM #121 - December 1998 No air = N
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MMM #128 - September 1999 A Reusabl
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• Thermal Protection System -- Th
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While eventually, NASA would test t
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A Plan in its Infancy NASA’s Expl
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The whole point of having a pair of
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MMM #164 - April 2004 The Interluna
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All these ideas need extensive test
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MMM #198 - September 2006 Technolog
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what personnel on the Moon will be
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adopt a “we are poor” posture,
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Meanwhile, the original second stag
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http://link.brightcove.com/services
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MMM #232 - February 2010 An L1 Spac
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Dave Dietzler and Peter Kokh have b
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MMM #238 - September 2010 “In thi
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wasting fuel. Second, by reusing as
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Above: The Orion craft left, with a
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Additional Science Goals on Farside
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creation of construction shacks and
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The MMM Editor boarding the Moonshi
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