Space Transportation - mmmt_transportation.pdf - Moon Society

wasting fuel. Second, by reusing as is, you do not benefit from the economy of mass production. We don’t need ten
reusable rockets that get used a hudnred times. We need a thousand rockets that get used only once, as a rocket, but
then are put to permanent use taken apart and transformed into something needed on the frontier. Old timers will
remember the World War Liberty ships, which we turned out cheap by the hundreds. Mass production and total reuse
of materials at a destination – that’s economy on steroids, if you will!
Yes things should be reused, but as materials, not as originally assembly components. We have to get into this
new way of thinking avout things and their utility. Look at a lander’s legs and pads, and see a mobile crane! We may
have to tweak original designs to get the most reuse potential out of them. And this redesign may cost some, but the
rewards for reusability will pay off handsomely. Let’s sponsor and run contests annually for the most innovative reuse
of all these things used only once in transit. Let the young people clear the cobwebs in our older brains! We will fail if
we do not pass the torch!
Summing up “Space Transportation 2.0”
# Every item that leaves Earth surface should be designed for reusability of its constituent parts or materials.
# Components should be designed to serve some new function or purpose at the way station at which their original
function has been achieved
# Power is less important than economy and reusability
# Nothing that can be used at a way station should be sent back down the line Earthwards. It is better in the long haul
to keep sending up new rockets and rocket components that can be put to new use up the line, than to return them
back down the line – false economy
# Complete Hardware Utilization Mission Architectures = “CHUMA” (thanks to Dave Dietzler for this acronym)
# Everything in the sacred traditional way of doing things should be reexamined in light of this new paradigm.
# The goal is not to return to the Moon.
# The goal is not to return to the Moon to stay.
# The goal is to return to the Moon and keep growing a lunar frontier civilization which in turn will feed Earth’s
needs in GEO and elsewhere and help us all rejuvenate and preserve the Eden that Earth once was. We are
going to have to travel a lot of light years to find another like it.
If this seems absurd, check out this report:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,529059,00.html
We have to quit saying “we can’t” when we haven’t really tried. To the Moon, to stay! PK
MMM #241 - December 2010
Lockheed-Martin Proposes
Tele-Robotic Exploration of the Moon’s Farside
From the L2 “Perch” using its Orion Crew Capsule
By David A. Dunlop and Peter Kokh
Proposal to Send Astronauts to Moon's Far Side
By Leonard David: 23 November 2010
http://www.space.com/news/moon-far-side-astronaut-mission-101123.html
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