Jeff Foust has the latest on the Gateway debate. To me it’s insane to even think about launching a lander wet, but if they admit they could do it dry, it takes away a lot of the justification for SLS.
11 thoughts on “Gate-Why”
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Jeff Foust has the latest on the Gateway debate. To me it’s insane to even think about launching a lander wet, but if they admit they could do it dry, it takes away a lot of the justification for SLS.
Comments are closed.
I love that Griffin thinks he is good at “space system engineering.”
He is good at government fundraising but I think that is about it.
Looks like something to give SLS a purpose.
I guess I missed the announcement about quintupling the NASA budget, guarantied for the next 3 administrations.
If I was sitting in one of the lunar gateway meetings, I’d be so tempted to say something like “Laid on its side, the SLS would be 27 feet high and 365 feet long, and quite difficult for Central Americans to climb over, although Trump could built a thousand miles of concrete wall for a fraction of the cost of the the SLS.”
At the risk of sounding stupid, what’s wrong with a modified von Braun plan? Launch to LEO station, build a trans-lunar transport & lander there, then launch them separately to the moon. If necessary execute some “disposable” missions where the landers can be used as a basis to build a base where we can create fuel for return to earth. After that we build an orbiting lunar station and aim towards specialized vehicles; surface to LEO, trans-lunar, and lunar lander/return to orbit.
It is a good plan in a general sense. But, there are different ways to achieve each of the goals you mention.
For instance, the LEO station. ISS is probably not a good location for this sort of activity. There are different ways to accomplish the idea though. One way is to use the SLS to launch an entire LEO station on a single launch, with all station parts manufactured in all the right congressional districts, perhaps as part of an international effort involving the Russians and ESA, and forcing a redesign of the SLS. Another way is for Bigelow to launch a BA330 on a Falcon Heavy. The overall idea is fine, getting it done is a different matter.
What purpose does the orbiting lunar station serve? For example, if it’s a point at which people transfer between Earth-Moon shuttles and lunar landers, why couldn’t they just transfer from one vehicle to another without a station?
You can imagine purposes that a orbiting lunar station might serve. Particularly if propellant is being produced on the moon, it might make good sense to have a propellant depot in lunar orbit. But that still doesn’t mean there’s any good reason to have a habitable station there.
You might imagine a lunar orbital station being used as a repair base for reusable lunar landers. But, again, does that entail keeping a crew in lunar orbit? Probably not, unless there is a large fleet of landers being maintained. And since the landers are probably going to a base on the lunar surface, why wouldn’t the surface base be the best place for repairs?
A station in lunar orbit might have some value, but it needs to be demonstrated that it’s worth the cost. I find it hard to imagine that it’s a net benefit for reaching the lunar surface unless there are large numbers of people shuttling between Earth and Moon. Bearing in mind that sending just one crew a year to LOP-G for a few weeks’ occupation will probably cost over $3 billion annually (that’s just one SLS launch plus one Orion — never mind development costs), I can’t see how LOP-G, in particular, helps in getting someone to the lunar surface.
“What purpose does the orbiting lunar station serve? ”
At this point, WE DON’T KNOW. After some Apollo-style missions we can start to work out what would be helpful but right now we would just be making a big useless piece of junk which may or may not be adaptable to what we eventually find out we do need.
When Bridenstine was a representative he had a blog post on the value of the moon. Sadly it was taken down when he left that office to become NASA admin.
Bridenstine seems to be placing his bets on Spudis’ optimistic estimates of plentiful water and other volatile ices in the lunar cold traps.
Before we invest too much money we should check out the cold traps to see if they are worth investment of time and effort.
Like the Chinese we need to send a communications relay sat in a halo orbit about EML2 or some other orbit that enjoys line of sight with the cold traps. And then we need to send prospector rovers to the cold traps.
If there are indeed rich ice deposits, we should proceed. If not, don’t flush money down the toilet.
Preliminary prospecting was even advocated in Spudis and Lavoise’s proposed lunar architecture.
I think building a lunar gateway at this point is putting the cart before the horse.
Yes, there are a lot of robotic precursor missions which could be done with cheaper vehicles before an actual manned mission. But I think most important of all is to come up with actual reasons to be there. Even if it is something as simple as a lunar telescope.