14 thoughts on “Time To Move Beyond Earth Orbit”

  1. They acknowledge their work isn’t new, and fail to speak out against SLS. Merely doing SLS + MPCV and then doing essentially a variant of OASIS takes away much of the benefit to commercial development of space of the OASIS architecture. This is the sort of thing that lends legitimacy to SLS + MPCV, which is of course why a similar plan from Boeing has been embraced enthusiastically over at nasaspaceflight.com.

    The article explains how we could do this soon, but we could do it even sooner if we get rid of SLS + MPCV. The reuse of ISS components is also a double-edged sword as it would tend to preserve a monopolistic structure.

    1. They acknowledge their work isn’t new, and fail to speak out against SLS.

      Thronson et al. seem to take SLS as a given. In this respect, their work reminds me of the Spudis & Lavoie proposal, which baselines a 70-metric-ton LV even though it’s not required or even obviously helpful. Thronson, like Lavoie, works at NASA. I wonder whether not speaking out against SLS is as close as NASA employees can come to speaking out against it without jeopardizing their jobs.

      There were a couple of similar performances a the Senate’s SLS hearing in May. Princeton Prof. Chyba mentioned SLS in his opening statement only to say that the challenge was to prevent it from killing commercial LEO ops. He had more positive things to say about SLS only when specifically asked by Sen. Nelson.

      I think what were seeing here is that you don’t criticize SLS if you value salaries or research grants coming from the federal government.

      1. I’m not saying Thronson is a bad guy. His name sounds familiar, I think he was involved with the original OASIS work, perhaps even in a very senior capacity.

        1. I don’t mean to suggest he’s a bad guy either. I’m just saying it may be that anybody who’s receiving money from NASA either as salary or as research grants can’t say anything explicitly negative about SLS without threatening that cash flow.

  2. You can be sure the study didn’t bother thinking about where else it might make sense to put a deep space platform.. just off the top of my head, GEO GEO GEO GEO GEO GEO GEO echoes loudly. But hey, that might actually be useful.

    1. I like the idea of a GEO platform. It’s a bit of a detour, but it has the advantages of a high energy orbit combined with rapid transit.

      1. But wouldn’t the view get kind of boring?

        The two big changes I see are the need for real radiation shielding (instead of depending on the Van Allen belts) and some level of rotational gravity. A little gravity would allow the station to grow conventional plants and perhaps animals, allow nearly normal toilets and water storage, allow the consumption of normal food that stays on plates, allow normal food preparation in pots and pans, allow machining operations where chip formation is inevitable, and allow systems to use natural convection for cooling.

        1. Great.. but seeing as they can’t even build a capsule for less than $5B, I think you’re asking a whee bit too much from them. The idea of dragging an ISS module out to a higher orbit seems like something they might be able to pull off for $20B or so.

        2. Very true.

          With a good launcher they could put an ISS module into a high orbit by accident.

          One hitch to the plan is that the Soyuz and Progress vehicles can’t currently go much higher than the ISS, so either the Russians will have to come up with a new booster for them, or we’ll have to rely on the vehicles we’re currently still developing. Of course, perhaps that’s not a bug but a feature.

        3. But wouldn’t the view get kind of boring?

          I don’t know, but I was thinking of use as a staging point as an alternative to or more likely an addition to Lagrange points.

  3. Speaking of making Soyuz go higher, I thought Space Adventures was supposed to announce the names of the two moon-loopers before the end of the year?

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