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MMM #33 - March 1990 An Easily Lost Chance to Jump Start L5 By Peter Kokh The headline reads, “NASA to Build Construction Camp Modules for L5.” It’s too early for an April Fool’s Day prank. No, this is for real. While indeed no such announcement has yet been made, and none is forthcoming, the “truth” is what we DARE to make of it. NASA has released preliminary sketches that show current thinking about the configuration of a “Partially reusable” Lunar Transfer Vehicle or “LTV” and a fully reusable Lunar Excursion Module or LEV to dock with it via Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (as with Apollo.) In the reference design, the LTV/LEV combo could deliver 27 metric tons of cargo when automated, and 15 tons of cargo plus a crew of 4 when piloted. The Lander or Lunar Excursion Vehicle would bear a strong resemblance to the Apollo LEM. It would carry twice the crew, 4 persons, and substantially more cargo, 15 tons to less than 1 on Apollo, and could stay on the surface for as long as a month instead of just over three days. Docking would again be nose to nose as with Apollo. These greatly increased capacities are exiting. But the real sleeper is in the LTV ferry. The Lunar Transfer Vehicle would feature a fully reusable core: engines, hold, crew/control cabin, and aerobrake shield. The aerobrake will allow for return to Low Earth Orbit on virtually empty tanks; and without it, realizing a permanent return to the Moon would be very difficult. Aerobrake technology is due for a 1992 Shuttle launch test using a scale model reentry probe. One more element is needed to complete this configuration. the four expendable fuel tanks! You reaction to this will depend on whether your intellectual habits set you to be jolted upright, alarm bells ringing, at such apparent stupidity, or whether for you such irrelevantly silly concerns re lost in the beatific vision of a unique golden opportunity. Scratching a Piloted fly-back booster for a throwaway External Tank When Congressional budget cuts forced NASA to redesign the Shuttle to use reusable solid rocket boosters and an expendable External Tank, instead of a giant piloted fly-back booster, we all lamented. HOW LONG DID IT TAKE (?) before a daring few suggested ways in which tje External Tank (which reaches 98% of the momentum it would need to go into orbit) could be easily boosted into orbit and given new life in a variety of uses? At any rate, we were too busy enjoying the luxury of our anger to foresee any of the opportunities this “substitute” External Tank offered in time to pre-design and lobby for the few small changes that could have made such reuse much easier! Among these design modifications might have been a tank inspection hatch that would be easy to open in orbit (it now has 96 unnecessary bolts!) It is too late to make these changes now, even for ETs yet to be built, because of the long, tedious, and expensive requalification process the ET would have to undergo to satisfy the NASA need for ritual pre-absolution. 8
Another chance, for just “pennies” The four smaller expendable external tanks envisioned for the LTV ferry would be 4.4m (14 ft) wide and some 7m (23ft) long. Each would consist of a longer liquid hydrogen tank, a short liquid oxygen tank, and an intertank connector -on the familiar pattern of the shuttle External Tank. So? So after the translunar injection burn out of low Earth orbit, they could be released, with residual fuel, sharing the momentum of the Moon-bound LTV. Where they will end up, orbiting the Sun or eventually burning up in our atmosphre on the return leg of some very geocentric orbit, will depend upon the exact trajectory of the LTV. For the price of a very small kick motor and whatever fuel/cargo penalty its inclination would entail, these tanks could easily be given whatever minimal extra momentum or course correction they needed to park them in either a stable High Earth Orbit or even in the stable L4 or L5 Lunar Lagrangian co-orbital fields. For the price of an inspection hatch and an intertank connector designed with forethought they would be ready, when we are, to be turned into habitat and workplace modules for some Space Construction Shack #1. The bill for this modest redesign modifications that will make such a happy outcome possible should be borne by an Enterprise Consortium put together to make use of this potential bonanza. Well and good, but there will be no point in making this effort if NASA is not first persuaded, in a timely fashion, to allow those modifications in the first plade. That’s where we come in. Positive Constructive Criticism If the skeptics are right (“the only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history”) we will let this Platinum Opportunity go by. Many of us are too in awe of NASA to dream of positive constructive criticism. The rest of us must get off our butts (already broad enough, beam to beam, to reach the nearest asteroid) and organize this campaign with all due urgency. If we wait too long, the opportunity to have an input in the designof the LTV-ET will have passed. By exerting a minimum of leverage, we have a chance to leapfrog the Buildup of the Lunar Outpost and get something started in Free Space itself. Space Colony enthusiasts, when is the last time you heard anything so promising? Here’s what we need to do: (1) Call an ad-hoc meeting on this effort at the upcoming 9th International Space Development Conference, Memorial Day Weekend, in Anaheim, California. (Sorry, I can’t be there. ((written before some anonymous donor sent me a return airplane ticket! Bless her soul!) The purpose will be to organize a workshop to include experts on the (Martin Marietta) External Tank and on its “second-life” possibilities (Tom Rogers, Alex Gimarc, and others), and those who’ve done past work on “Modular” Space habitat design concepts. Cosponsored by Space Studies Institute and the National Space Society, and interested representatives of industry and commerce, the workshop’s goal would be to sketch out a set of reuse-friendly design specifications for the proposed LTV-ET. (2) Draw up legislation (Space transportation Act II?) that would (a) mandate that NASA Incorporate, in an economic way, key reuse-friendly features in its design of the new tank, and (b) set up the terms of sale or turn-key of the used tanks to private enterprise. (3) Disseminate the design concept and the language of the bill to all concerned: NASA, key Congrssional Committees, the National Space Council, and the various space advocacy groups (4) Set up an advisory network, like that now pushing HR 2674, to recurit cosponsors for the bill in both houses of Congress. (5) Form a corporation with the talent and resources to actually desing and build the first Space Habitat o Construction Shack form the tank modules supplied by Lunar Operations in the frst decades of the next century (2001 forward). We must act now, before some less than suitable NASA design becomes set in concrete! - PK MMM #48 - September 1991 LOWERING THE THRESHOLD TO LUNAR OCCUPANCY [Hostels] [A paper presented at the International Space Development Conference in San Antonio, Texas, May 26, 1991 - here serialized in three parts for MMM] Online: http://www.moonsociety.org/publications/mmm_papers/hostel_paper1.htm http://www.moonsociety.org/pubications/mmm_papers/hostel_paper2.htm An Alternate Concept for both First Beachheads and Secondary Outposts Peter Kokh, Douglas Armstrong, Mark R. Kaehny, and Joseph Suszynski - Lunar Reclamation Society 9
Page 2 and 3: INDEX MMM THEMES: Transportation AR
Page 4 and 5: NASA is charged by the government (
Page 6 and 7: NB.** 2800 °K = safe operating tem
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
Page 16 and 17: As every gram of pest potentially t
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Page 22 and 23: MMM #94 - April 1996 Lagrange P i t
Page 24 and 25: L1 also appears to offer more advan
Page 26 and 27: [Note: a space suit is a form of ve
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
Page 36 and 37: 25% calcium alloy is be easier to k
Page 38 and 39: MMM #101 - December 1996 Our 10th A
Page 40 and 41: A recent article (Breck, Henderson,
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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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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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