~Jon

Actually, this LO2 launch then mission approach is ideal for the partnering of small, reusable rockets (and assume low cost at high launch rates) and larger EELV class rockets. LO2 is relatively dense, ~70 lb/ft3, and thus fits very well within the tight confines of most reusable rocket designs. The EELV’s can readily launch the in-space/lander stage with the large LH2 and payload volumes.

While the market can start with EELV’s to allow near term missions and market development. The obvious intent is that a large market for propellant (namely LO2) will foster the robust development of new low cost rockets. These may be reduced cost Atlas’s, or maybe Falcons. Maybe the promise/vision of reusable rockets could finally be realized!

The competition and continuous improvement enabled by propellant depots is what will open space for sustainable exploration, colinization and expansion of human kind.

Masten Space Systems (MSS) could build the before-mentioned 14 – 20 ton lunar lander using ULA and P&W’s exisitng components, labor, and facilities if given $300 Million over 3 years. MSS would be the lead contractor, and could hire as many oversight engineers as the budget would allow to manage ULA and P&W.

ULA and P&W could not do this themselves, because their corporate structure is designed to spend as much money within overhead as possible.

The RL10 CECE engine can be tested with Liquid Methane, and XCOR could probably build a 10,000-lb thrust liquid methane engine and flight weight liquid methane and LOX tanks for you in Mojave. Scaled Composites or SpaceX could probably build the flight-weight structure for you if you paid them enough money (on a fixed price basis).

The point is that whatever amount of money or resources MSS needs to build this 14 – 20 ton lunar lander to launch on a single EELV Heavy would be much less than the $100 Billion program that NASA is executing to go to the moon. Another point is that this capability already exists within industry, so this can all be done without NASA if some entity, like DARPA, decided to go around NASA to do this.

If the investors who lost $6 Billion on the Iridium bankruptcy in 1999 invested that $6 Billion in sending men to the moon in 2009, then they probably would have enough money to do this without involving NASA or others.

~Jon

The LOX tank/disposable depot would weigh about 1mT dry and hold about 20mT of LOX. For comparison, the Centaur tanks themselves weigh about 12kg per m^3 (or about 10kg/mT LOX). That means that the tanks would be about 200kg of that, and the rest would be for a docking mechanism, sunshield, and other goodies.

~Jon

Lots of reasons. The big companies are publicly traded. Which makes it legally hard for them to take large entrepreneurial risks. If they take a big risk, and lose a lot of money on it, they could probably get sued by their shareholders (at best they would probably “only” get fired). There are smaller companies that are more able to take risks, but they for the most part don’t have the money to do so. And it’s hard to raise money for doing a “Lockheed” sized project where you’re just a Masten Space Systems or an Armadillo. And it’s hard for someone at NASA to do a project like this because it doesn’t provide the port that congresscritters want.

Another big problem is that if it’s done privately, you have to have a way of making your money back (or someone with a *ton* of money burning a hole in their philantrocapitalistic pockets). I really believe there are markets there along the way, but they will take time to develop.

The reality is that we’ve backed ourselves into a pretty stagnant corner in this industry, and there are no easy/quick ways out. All of the actors have constraints that really hinder them getting stuff done effectively. Big industry has its hands tied by being publicly funded, small industry has it’s hands tied by being privately funded, and government has its hands tied by being Congressionally funded. There are probably ways out of this morass, but 40 years of bad policy and bad decisionmaking aren’t going to be undone in a heartbeat.

~Jon

I’m not sure if I spelled it out in the post, but for my calculations, I was including about 2.5mT on the lander for their horizontal lander kit, which uses hypergols and small landing engines for the final approach and landing. The stretched Centaur can actually bring almost 8mT to just above the lunar surface. If you go with a crasher stage and have your payload carry its own landing hardware, you can probably land quite a bit more than the ~8000lb I was mentioning in the post.

~Jon

~Jon

Yeah, going with a WBC/ACSE/CUS (or whatever the current acronym is) upper stage definitely would help performance a lot. Not just for the launch to LEO portion, but more particularly for all of the in-space segments. That said, I wanted to look at what we could do with existing pieces first. That way NASA can’t claim that you’re comparing paper rockets to their paper rockets.

Masten Systems could probably build a 14 – 20 ton lunar lander that could launch on a single EELV Heavy to land 4 to 6 tons on the luanr surface within 3 years using components and labor already available at ULA and P&W production facilities near Masten Systems in Southern California.

While I hope that MSS eventually does do lunar landers and other such things, those are still a fair ways off in the future. We’ve just barely started flying our first vehicle. I think that’s awesome, but let’s keep expectations reasonable. Gotta remember, we’ve barely added our fifth full time engineer last month. Designing a large lunar lander that can’t really be tested out easily on earth, that is going to ride on a multi-hundred million dollar launch vehicle is something for when we have more experience under our belt, a bigger staff, and more resources.

I hope to be there some day, and I hope to throw water on your enthusiasm, but that’s how I see it. Sorry.

~Jon