It isn’t crazy, I just don’t have enough detail to know if it would work. Maybe I should put it up as a main post to see if other people have thoughts.

If you could do a Soyuz for the crew capsule, then that leaves only the lander (and the lunar mission kit for the Centaur) that would need work…

~Jon

~Jon

The Soyuz capsule is 6,000 lbs, and was already tested for a manned flight around the Moon in the 1960’s. You can probably buy a Soyuz capsule from the Russians for $10 million and elimiante your largest development cost.

Well, that depends on what your goals are. What would you do if you were in charge of NASA and wanted to maintain space as your own personal fiefdom?

~Jon

Yeah. It’s never good when one gets one’s hackles up. You had a good idea, and I’m glad I wasn’t too pigheaded to see it.

My intentions have always been constructive and I think you do solid and imaginative work. Sometimes it’s hard to provide the right tone with the printed word and I tried with my crappy writing skills to critique your proposal and avoid personal offense.

Oh, I can empathize with the difficulty of trying to convey things without being offensive.

Keep the comments coming though. You’ve also got good ideas.

~Jon

Thanx for the updated spreadsheet, very interesting, you even managed to squeeze in a rover!

And you are absolutely correct about the oversized Orion capsule crew module. Looking over the other 4 man architectures proposed by the various aerospace companies makes it obvious just how elephantine the NASA 5.5m (now 5m) diameter capsule is for the job.

And apology accepted. With all the trolls about it’s all too easy to become hypervigilant about unfair attacks. And it’s natural to charge to the defense of the children of your mind. My intentions have always been constructive and I think you do solid and imaginative work. Sometimes it’s hard to provide the right tone with the printed word and I tried with my crappy writing skills to critique your proposal and avoid personal offense.

We also showed the approach we detailed in the AIAA paper

Here;

http://www.teamvisioninc.com/services-consulting-space-exploration-optimization.htm

The first all EELV approach was rejected because it would basically shut down major portions of NASA as we know it. When I suggested the China/Russia could pull this off in the near future using this approach they arrogantly discounted their ability to do this. I still think a Chinese/Russian Apollo 8 for 2008 is in work.

The second approach (i.e. AIAA paper) was rejected because we used ELV’s for the CEV testing and ISS mission and later EML1 missions. As such the expense of the shaft was avoided and applied to transforming the SSTS to a HLV much sooner, i.e. Ross’s Direct approach which he has done a great job of detailing.

Here;

http://www.directlauncher.com/

We are working on a new AIAA paper which will combine some of the best feedback we have received for the next Space 2007 conference. If only NASA could be this open to constructive criticism and alternate approaches as many in these forums are.

I thought the last century firmly established how dictatorial and insular organizational systems were not as effective as the opposite.

P.S. Jon double check your TLI numbers the lunar DV looks high for a 3 day transit.

Good work.

I think that the whole point of your analysis is that a lot of time and money can be saved if a 2-man lunar architecture is utilized, and if existing technologies are utilized.

You should drop development of that 5,000 lb capsule, and use an existing reentry capsule that weighs 6,000 lb to 10,000 lb, if lowering development costs and timeline are your goals. You should also drop the Earth Orbit Rendezvous (EOR) portion of your architecture, and just do one launch on a 35 ton to 45 ton to LEO capable launch vehicle if lowering costs and complexity is your goal. Lockheed Martin, Arianespace, Boeing, and SpaceX have all said that they will offer a 35 ton to 45 ton LEO capability on their existing launch vehicles by 2010 as soon as a customer pays for that mission. The only development costs and risk within your architecture should be the creation of an RL10-based single stage lunar lander that can handle Lunar Orbit Insertion, Lunar Descent, and Lunar Ascent. I think total development costs would drop to $100 Million and the cost per moon mission could eventually drop to as low as $100 Million per mission if you dropped the development of that 5,000 lb capsule and the requirement to launch on 2 vehicles with an EOR. The Europeans, the Russians, the Chinese, the Indians, the Japanese, and American Commercial companies like SpaceX/Bigelow/Armadillo would copy your architecture if you made these changes.

The existing Soyuz capsule weighs 6,000 lbs and was designed (and successfully tested once in the late 1960’s) to return 2 cosmonauts from the moon safely. The Chinese Shenzou capsule, the new Indian manned capsule, the SpaceX Dragon capsule, and the new Soyuz-K capsule for the European/Japanese ACTS manned spacecraft should all weigh between 6,000 lbs and 10,000 lbs for the reentry capsule portion. The most important thing is that these reentry capsules will all be developed with other people’s money, so you do not have to include them within your own development costs.

Lockheed Martin has a good paper on their web site of a single stage lunar lander that handles lunar insertion burn of the entire stack, including the 20 ton CEV, descent to the lunar surface with 4 astronauts, and ascent back to the CEV, all on one RL10 CECE engine. This lander would weigh in at about 40 tons using this one RL10 engine. If you resize this LM lunar lander for a 10-ton SpaceX Dragon or 10-ton Russian/European/Japanese Soyuz-K space vehicle, then you would get a 20-ton lunar lander that looks a lot like your lunar lander concept. Carmak and Armadillo Aerospace could probably purchase an RL10 from Pratt&Whitney for $5 million and they could use their existing software and avionics to build a mock-up of this RL10-based lunar lander for demo at the next X-prize cup within 11 months.

If you search the Internet, you will see that the Ariane V is supposed to be upgraded to a 36 ton capability with a new restartable LH2 upper stage engine (this might be approved at the ESA ministers conference in December 2006), and that Lockheed, Boeing, and SpaceX all claim that they can easily do 40 tons to 50 tons to LEO with upgrades to the number of RL10 engines used on upper stage of the heavy versions of their rockets. Elon Musk has been quoted many times in saying that when he finds a customer that he will do a 100,000 lb to LEO version of his Falcon IX parallel stage vehicle that uses RL10’s on the upper-stage.

Your architecture should involve a 10-ton manned space vehicle, the 20 ton lunar lander that I discussed above, a larger RL10-based upper stage (or the new European restartable LH2 upperstage for Ariane V flights), and an evolved heavy lift launch vehicle with around 40 ton capability to LEO. This 40-ton to LEO vehicle will lift the 10-ton space vehicle, the 20-ton lunar lander, and extra propellant on this larger upper stage (some like to call this the simple upper stage the “earth departure stage” but it really is just a standard upper stage with a higher propellant loading and a restart capability for the RL10 that could be a month into the future instead of the usual maximum time between first and last restart of 8 hours).

You only have to do an analysis now of the delta-V requirements and propellant loadings to make this work. I do not know if you want to put more propellant in the upper stage or in the lunar lander to make all of the burns that you need.

All of the development work with the above architecture surrounds the “what ifs” of what could be done with an RL10 engine. SpaceX, Bigelow, and Armadillo Aerospace are already investigating the “what ifs” surrounding RL10 upper stages and RL10 lunar lander designs so I would say that you could sell your analysis of this architecture to them.

If Armadillo built an earth-bound mock-up of this lunar lander that used the RL10 engine, then they could probably start selling the lunar-lander version of this mock-up to any company or country that is interested in manned moon landings.

Remember that Space Adventures is looking for $200 million to send 2 people around the moon, so there is a potential commercial market for this. If SpaceX could conduct a mission to the Moon using their $78 million Falcon IX heavy, their Dragon space vehicle, and RL10 upper stage, and this lunar lander, then they could probably profit on a $200 million price from Space Adventures. Bigelow could probably profit if their Sundancer module was used within the same architecture for later commercial time shares of “lunar condos” given to foreign nations at $100 million per astronaut.

I think this all works if you just focus on what can be done with an RL10, drop the development of your 5,000 lb reentry capsule, and drop the EOR portion of your architecture using 2 separate launch vehicles. If you do these things you probably should be able to find a paying customer for your work. Great work.

As for your point that LEO spacecraft don’t carrey enough consumables for a long duration trip…I’m getting about 540lb of consumables for a 2 people over the course of 8 days. Most of that is sanitary water, which might be reduceable. 540lb is a lot, but a good chunk of that would be needed for a short-stay LEO vehicle. The Dragon capsule for instance was sized for 30 man-days, which comes out to about 4.3 days per person. Adding another 4 days per person would add about 125lb per person….not that much really.

Cooling water and power have both been drastically reduced by modern electronics, and at with a LOX/LH2 stage on the ground with you, you might be able to use the boiloff LH2 to cool the electronics.

——————

As for the idea of using a much lighter structure for the landing cabin…that’s not necessarily a bad idea at all…Let me look into that. If say we could cut it down to say 1600lb, that would drastically reduce the propellant needed for the manned lander substantially….

Would a 8400lb 2-man capsule with a 1600lb Lander cabin sound better? I’m getting the numbers to work. Check out the new spreadsheet at:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pD9i_cIb_0jC2LlfgSOQJAQ

Anyhow, thanks for the suggestion, I think it has some real merit. Sorry for being a bit on the confrontational side.

~Jon