MMM Classics Year 10: MMM #s 91-100 - Moon Society

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such an orbiting cryogenic fuel depot, using spent Shuttle External Tanks, could be set up phase by phase. Most of the liquid Hydrogen and liquid Oxygen needed would be “scavenged” from residual amounts left in other ETs reaching orbit. There are two logical orbital locations in either case (tankers used serially, permanent filling stations): in the International Space Station yards, and in low equatorial orbit. The latter would be far more useful, being more reachable, with less fuel, from most locations, and at maximum window frequency. An equatorial filing station alone makes sense for payloads bound for geosynchronous Clarke orbit or beyond, for the Moon, Mars, or elsewhere in the ecliptic-hugging Solar System. Building a refueling station in Alpha Town for vehicles and payloads intended for deep space would be a lot like putting a gateway for Europe-bound Americans in Patagonia. Kick Motor “Tugs for Hire” - Orbitug Inc. The idea of an orbital transfer tug, manned or not, has been investigated for incorporation into Space Station operations. But as we have just seen, given the Station’s intended high inclination (51°) orbit, such a tug would be much more useful in low equatorial orbit. While the former might be agency operated, heaven forbid, the later is a prime entrepreneurial commercial opportunity. Tugs could be launch company owned and operated (Lockheed Martin, McDonnell Douglas, Boeing North American, Arianespace, Energiya, etc.), or time-share pool operated, or perhaps leased by independent operators. Of the major contractors, Arianespace, able to launch from a 6°N site in French Guiana, has a big advantage. Legislation to insure the commercial option may no longer be needed but was proposed more than a decade ago in the “Space Cabotage Act.” Cabotage means the “coastal” trade in cargo, after John Cabot, the British explorer of the North American Coast (c. 1497). “Coastal’ is appropriate as Earth’s true “space coast” is not Brevard County, Florida but LEO to GEO orbitspace. Tug fees would of course reflect weight and delta v required for the orbital transfer. But they would also reflect whether the payload to be boosted was delivered to the tug home base (filing station) or whether the tug had to go fetch it in some other orbit first. Tug return to base fuel expenditures would also have to be paid by the shipper. Now if these fees in total are appreciably lower than the alternative cost of bringing along a one-use throwaway pre-fueled kick motor, we have a viable entrepreneurial space business opportunity. Tug services would be “by appointment” and reservation only, at least until traffic grew large enough to attract speculative operators, able to “earn a living” through payloads of opportunity. Nor does the opportunity exist just for traditional chemical rockets. Tether operated momentum boosters, possibly solar powered, could easily carve out a number of high traffic niches Manned tugs would be useful for carrying replacement parts to already orbiting satellites needing repair. If this service can be profitably provided in a timely fashion at less cost to the satellite owner than the procurement and launching of a replacement satellite, we have another prime commercial opportunity. Such a manned tug would be a natural comple- ment to a commercially owned and operated station or industrial park facility in equatorial orbit, serving as home “port”. Refueling prices could come down once made on Luna fuels are available in quantity and quality. We are talking about lunar liquid oxygen, silane (SiH4, a methane analog and hydrogen “extender”), and possibly powdered aluminum or liquid hydrogen aluminum slurry fuels. Each of these “enhanced CATS” scenarios wait on a steady growth in traffic to become economically viable. For low Earth orbit is only “halfway to anywhere in the Solar System” [Robert A. Heinlein]. Orbital Filing Stations and Tugs for Hire may be where we will find our CATS price-reducing solutions in this theater of operations. Earth to Moon & Earth/Moon to Mars by Peter Kokh Propulsion Questions LANTR: (Liquid oxygen [LOX] Augmented Nuclear Thermal Rocket) — In Moon Miners’ Review #18, JAN ‘96, Editor Mark Kaehny reprinted an article by Dr. Stan Borowski of NASA-Lewis, about a very promising new propulsion concept which could cut Earth-Moon transit time down to a day, and delivery more cargo to boot. If total transit time is drastically cut, then the mass of shipboard facilities needed to keep passengers amused and content should be less. Less ship mass per capita [per fare] means less fuel needed per fare, or cheaper passage. NIMF: (Nuclear rocket using Indigenous Martian Fuel) In Moon Miners’ Manifesto # 30 NOV ‘89, we reported on Dr. Robert Zubrin’s concept for manufacturing both getaround Mars exploration fuel and return-home fuel from Mars’ atmosphere, instead of bringing it along from Earth. This scenario would cut drastically the size and mass of a ship or expedition needed to put a given crew and amount of equipment on Mars. AEROBRAKE: a ship configuration that can present a large cross-section to the atmosphere upon entry or grazing, allowing it to dump momentum without firing retrorockets. Ships returning to Earth or Earth orbit from the Moon or Mars, and ships headed for Mars or Mars orbit can benefit from aerobraking. But this is an economic plus only if any extra mass needed to provide an aerobraking profile is less than the mass of fuel that would be burned in firing retrorockets. Thus it is a nice idea that presents design challenges. Dividing & Conquering “Delta-V”: Shuttle-Ferry-Shuttle Rendezvous At first blush, Moon Direct and Mars Direct - the idea of transferless passage from one planetary surface all the way to another - is as mentally comfortable to those of us breast-fed Moon Miners’ Manifesto Classics - Year 10 - Republished January 2006 - Page 86
on science fiction as an old slipper to tired feet. But what costs is fuel spent on changing momentum, accelerating and decelerating. We need to look at the structure of a passage from one planet to another. A few minutes of acceleration - days to months of cruising - a few minutes of deceleration. From the point of view of fuel expenditures, it would be ideal for an accelerating or decelerating ship to be as lean and pared down in per capita mass as possible. From the point of view of passenger comfort, it would be ideal if the long-cruising vehicle be as spacious and full-featured as possible, implying more, not less mass per capita. Contradictory indications, it would seem. Bear in mind that deceleration and acceleration periods are an extremely brief fraction of total time of passage. Passengers don’t mind having nothing more than a seat to sit tight in for short periods. Bear also in mind, that a circuitcruising ship that does not stop, but only makes once or twice a loop course corrections, need spend very little fuel on anything but emergency power generation. The elegant answer then, is not Moon direct or Mars direct, but lean Earth surface to cruise ship rendezvous shuttle. comfortable circuit cruise ship s for near-Earth to near-Moon or near-Mars passage, and lean shuttles between Lunar or Martian surface and cruise ship rendezvous. Note that all the delta V needed to go from Earth to Moon or Earth-Moon to Mars is spent on either end by briefly occupied spartan crowded shuttles. In contrast, the relatively luxurious, creature comfort bestowed cruise ships on which 99% of the passage time is spent, use hardly any fuel. The burden of rendezvous by logic falls on the lighter vehicle. The mountain doesn’t come to Mohammed. Rather, Mohammed goes to the mountain. The more massive vehicle has “the right of momentum”, yes, akin to “the right of way”. If the ferry has to brake into Earth or Mars orbit, making discontinuous interrupted trips to and fro, all such benefits are lost, and to be affordable, it would have to be as spartan as possible, just like a shuttle. Another way such a scenario makes sense is that the cruise ships on which travelers spend by far the most time, can afford to be amply shielded from cosmic radiation and solar flares, whereas the darting shuttles needn’t be. Now we can hardly run our first expedition to Mars in such a manner. But the benefits are so clearly apparent, that this is mission profile we need to aim at if we are going to sustain any amount of traffic - regularly scheduled expeditions to a sequence of immigration waves to tourism. Relevant Readings From MMM Back Issues MMM # 21 DEC ‘88 “Lunar Overflight Tours” MMR # 12 JAN ‘93, pp 2-8 “The Frontier Builder: An Earth- Moon Hotel Cruise Ship”. Definition & Design Exercise, Doug Armstrong and Peter Kokh MMM # 80 NOV ‘94 “Stretching Out”, P. Kokh Relevant Readings From Other Sources Ad Astra July/Aug ‘96, pp. 24-27. “Recycling Our Space Program: No Deposit ... No Return”, (Earth-Mars Cycling Ship scheme) Buzz Aldrin and Leonard David To/From the Lunar Surface by Peter Kokh How do we cut expenses for landing on the lunar surface? Use as low-mass a landing vehicle as possible to bring down the equipment, supplies, people, etc. Leave unneeded mass in orbit. See last article. In addition, we can pursue these strategies. Fuels and Oxidizer from Moondust • Liquid Oxygen for fuel oxidizer is the most obvious opportunity to save. There are many ways LOX can be processed from the lunar regolith soil. “LOX” can even be used to refuel Moonbound vessels in low Earth orbit. • Less potent but quite adequate, powdered metals (alone or in a liquid hydrogen slurry) can be used in place of hydrogen. Abundant lunar aluminum, iron, calcium, and magnesium will do well. Aluminum oxygen combination is the most potent but it will take a lot of equipment and energy to produce the aluminum powder. (A 75% aluminum, 25% calcium alloy is be easier to keep powdered). Pure iron powder is everywhere, especially on the mares, and can be produced easily by passing over the soil with a magnet. The exhaust is rust powder which will fall harmlessly back to the surface without degrading the lunar vacuum. Densifying Hydrogen Extenders Hydrogen may make the ideal fuel, but on the dry Moon, even if there is some polar water ice, hydrogen will be a precious commodity and using it - at least in unextended form - will constitute an obscene waste of an invaluable and limited and expensive resource. Two ways to use it as a fuel extender are as a slurry medium for powdered metal fuels (above) and in chemical combination with other elements. One of the hydrocarbon analogs of Moon-abundant silicon will do such as Silane, SiH4, the silicon analog of methane, CH4. According to Dr. Robert Zubrin, Silane can be produced in a Sabatier Reactor (the nuclear thermal powered device he successfully demonstrated for the production of methane fuel from Mars’ atmosphere). Economic pressures (impatience for short term advantage and profit at the expense of long term sanity) to use precious lunar hydrogen reserves directly will abound and there are many “damn the future” space advocates ready to do just that - some of them prestigiously placed. By treaty or lunar charter, it is in the interest of future Lunans and their civilization to restrict such use with adequate safeguards and stiff penalties. Landing without Retrorockets Mars fans are quick to point out that thanks to its atmosphere, it will be cheaper to land people and cargo on Mars than on the Moon. But there are a few tricks other than aerobraking that can be used on the Moon in similar fashion. • Krafft Ehricke described a “Lunar Slide Lander” that would dump horizontal momentum into a prepared regolith runway in Lunar Industrialization and Settlement - Birth of Polyglobal civiliza-tion” in “Lunar Bases and Space Activities Moon Miners’ Manifesto Classics - Year 10 - Republished January 2006 - Page 87
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MMM Classics The First Ten Years Th
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more reason than now for an alterna
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private quarters for more crew, mor
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Sooner or later someone will die on
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KEY: A. Lander core with power and
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Moon Guns & Other Mysteries by Greg
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Frontier Musings [cf. MMM # 91 DEC
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Good Reading on Mars Astronomy Maga
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Nor do we have to wait until we are
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fly such instruments first in low E
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drilling holes for heat conducting
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Starting your backyard/armchair tou
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MMM Classics Year 10: MMM #s 91-100 - Moon Society

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