Personally, it would amuse me no end if the lander could be derived from either Masten’s or Armadillo’s designs. Could anyone tell me whether a “bare bones” 2-3 person lander, using stored LOX/LNG, could be feasibly built under, say, 10,000 pounds fully fueled, (4500 kg or so) for launch on an existing medium booster (or Falcon IX?) on a WSB trajectory to the Moon?

Just wondering,

Tony Harris

Heat engines made from local materials are an alternative to solar cells.

I liked your posting; I would suggest a few changes. I think one of the pre-positioned resources should be an escape rocket, sufficient to get back to the ISS. Yeah, it costs a “bit” more, but I think the political fallout for a one-way mission might be too much. As to volunteers, sure, let Mickey do it, but that volunteer will have to be a well trained individual. The random billionaire might very well pay his own way all the way, which would further the enabling technology at the expense of, say, lunar prospecting. That would be ok, I’d say, as long as the technology were in the public domain. By “enabling technology”, I mean every piece of hardware and software for the mission; the lander, the hab, the EDS, etc. Since our patent system is broken, I’d include the trajectory as well.

At the same time, a “grass roots” effort would be good too, but it would require significant seed money to get the corporate structure and facilities going. $500M is just not going to do it. Corporate sponsors would be good to have.

The suggestion about using existing rocket engines and so forth is also good. Use “trailing edge” technology. I like the idea that a Delta 4H has the oomph to do the job.

About surviving the lunar night: Certainly one of the pre-positioned elements would have to be a reactor. Even if you were stationed at one of the poles, you’d still need power 24/7. An orbiting solar power sat would be a more “leading edge” technology, I think. In any case, its development, construction, launching and operation would add substantial costs, arguing firmly against the $500M supposition.

About ISRU. I don’t think that it could happen in this mission, at least not at first. for starters, we don’t have any workable ISRU factories small enough to launch, so this technology would have to be developed outside of the budget for the proposed mission. It’s true that a couple of well trained technicians could troubleshoot certain problems with a lunar ISRU plant, but they would be limited in their tool selection. It points to the fact that it’s not a problem about the number of volunteers for the mission, it’s a problem about the capabilities and training of those volunteers.

I think the two ISRU projects are propellant and solar cell production. Which should be first? The benefit by staying is that you don’t have to do everything in two weeks. With such a long stay supposed, it starts, I think, the argument for sending two more crew members and another hab, say, six months into the mission. Which suggests eventual crew rotation, to me. Nobody can stay there for ten years.

There’s also the mission of getting the water ice from the shadowed craters at the poles.

Finding the “abnormal concentrations” of minerals suggests prospecting on a global (would that be lubal?) basis. Whether this prospecting is done robotically or not, it would also add to the costs of the mission. Could it be that you decide to work with what you have at the selected site, or should there be more study on that site? In all cases, the amounts needed for “proof of concept” of the ISRU techniques is small, but, other than unfiltered regolith, how easy are they to acquire? An excavating rover needs to be included in the mass estimates.

Anyhow, the first landing would start a land rush.

I personally would like to see us do the things necessary to start off a land rush in space. I’ve written about it in various places, but it’s the sort of thing that would attract the quirky billionaire and corporations as well as governments. If there were a profit to an adventure like you’ve proposed, then it would happen; with the realities of space travel, I’m afraid the only profit is either geopolitical in nature or the long term value of holding huge chunks of the Moon, Phobos, and asteroids.

“I tell you hold a wake for us, though we are not dead . We will never come back from where we’re going. We are dead to you.” T. Atkins in Urban Highest Adventure – Ed Buchan (In story sales).

He refers to the Irish practice of holding a wake for the people leaving for America in the 1800′s, so few of them ever returned (less than 10% ever visited back). This was NOT the situation elsewhere, more than 40% of most OTHER european immigrants to America (both the US & Canada) retruned years later to visit what was left of the family.

On the comment that “No Congress or NASA” would ever do something like this – I agree.

The moon will not be colonized;

It Will Be Stolen.

Fait Lux.

Place four poles around a given area and hang a tool head from them with cables and it might be possible to landscape a sizable lunar base – perhaps including sintered/buried habitats and regolith processing. The moving machinery is mostly above the abrasive regolith and may require little maintenance. Power to the tooling head can also be hard wired (no mobile power source required), and the system might be relatively easily automated/teleoperated.

The obvious way to do night energy storage on the moon is to use solar concentrators to heat up regolith – thermal energy storage. Perhaps in old propellant tanks extracting volatiles in the process. Cooling radiators are actually a hard part – another good use for old propellant tanks.

Still need a sustainable way of delivering stuff to the lunar surface at flight rates which may well favor reusability. Short prototyping cycle times are imperative to some developments (when failure is not an option success becomes very expensive…) and this will be limited to the time between deliveries. Prototyping onsite would not generally seem to be an option in the short term.

First Landing at a mid-latitude site, near 0 degrees longitude, just before local sunset may be desirable from a radiation-protection standpoint. You’re out of the Earth’s magnetotail, with the mass of a small planet between you & the Sun, for a good two weeks, which appears to provide the minimum likelihood of being cooked by a relativistic proton storm while you assemble & bury your semi-permanent habitat. The directional dispersion of solar protons is high enough that simply hiding behind a crater rim at a polar site is unlikely to do you much good.

The problem with this approach is that we don’t have experience working in the environment of a lunar night (which rapidly gets to near deep space temperatures). That’s a difficult thermal environment to work in. I’m not sure what the record for working in darkness in space is, but it’s probably on the order of 30 minutes (with the Earth, another heat source nearby). You propose to extend that to two weeks. I think it can be done, but it’s a big hurdle.

IMHO, it’s much more likely that all near future human activities will occur in lunar day despite the radiation risks.

I want a manned Moon base but it is 10 to 20 years away, where as a robotic outpost could be 3 to 4 years away. No need to waste 17 years.

Without tested ISRU the manned Moon base will have to be 100% supported from Earth, that will require many tons of supplies. To obtain the repair and enhancement facility of a human the base will need living quarters, a work shop, a full set of tools, life support equipment, food, air, water, human waste processing and astronauts. Where the prototype ISRU machines are the payload that is a very poor payload to structure ratio.

With humans 1 tonne will not get you very far but with robotics 1 metric ton on the surface will give you a central controller and 9 off 100 kg ISRU machines.

A second landing a few years later will give you better machines and a start on building the Moon base. The actual life support ISRU machines can be a third much larger landing.

The machines can be tested and improved on Earth. This can go on in parallel with development of the large launch vehicles and landers.