Deep Space Cruiser - off the shelf for the near term

[Retired_for_now]

Mr. Obama has made his first "space speech." While it didn't match JFK's moon challenge, it did set a goal to get humans beyond low-Earth orbit within "his lifetime."

History is the problem. We went to the Moon because it was a "wartime" operation. Lot's of money, deadly serious international competition, and something to rally around. The attempt to "return to the Moon" seemed to be an attempt draw on that model - except it had none of those driving factors.

So, what do we need to get beyond LEO? First, we need money. The US and European taxpayers seem to be tapped out with current space programs (satellites, probes, ISS) and don't want to give up a bigger piece of the pie. But, history again, as Reagan said: sometimes you don't need a bigger slice, you need a bigger pie.

There are lots of people in China, India, Korea, Brazil, etc. who support their own national space programs. If we bring all those resources together - initially focused on the ISS - we should have the money to boldy go. With a robust ISS, we can start to use it as a station - not a destination - and assemble our interplanetary space craft.

Let's see what we can make using systems that are already in use - or will be shortly.

Yogi

[Retired_for_now]

You’ll need a lander. It’s not a stock item but we do have experience with controlled soft landings on the Moon and Mars. The Mars Society [The Mars Society ] has done some work on this as has NASA [NASA - Home ] for the “baseline Mars mission.”



The lander is modelled (very simply) on the Mars Society proposals. The Martian atmosphere makes the job easier since we can use an aeroshell/heat shield to slow down as well as a parachute for part of the descent. Landing on an asteroid is even easier since we don’t need to climb up and down the gravity well – but we do have to figure out how to anchor things to stay put without a lot of gravity.




So, we'll need to actually build this one from one of the designs. This is a good place for a US led (lot's of lander experience) international program. The time needed may put this on the critical path.

Yogi

[Wyvern]

This looks like a cool project, Yogi!

Didn't President Obama cancel the Constellation program, though? Which pretty much kills sending Americans back into space, even LEO, in "his lifetime".

Wyvern

[paulhbell]

I know I'm not American and I don't pay tax's in your country, but read on anyway.

Constellation wasn't going anywhere anyway, underfunded and underpowered Ares1 for a start. So it wasn't really 'cut' by Obama, former administrations underfunding NASA hasn't helped. Obama just happened to be around when the program wasn't really going anywhere and it was his job to get the message across.

The new budget isn't going to stop Americans going into space, they just won't be using NASA rockets, for a good while.

I follow the space program a lot and I must say that I think the new budget, from my outside point of view, is going to be bad for you guys. For one thing, NASA's really getting it together with the shuttles, 2 already launched this year and only 4 months gone. With another next month, that'll be 3 launches in less than 5 months. Even the NASA guys at the post mission meeting yesterday said that they were just getting into there stride, as the program is ending. Really strange to me, to stop a program when it's finally running smooth.

I hope your congress fights every way they can to save all the jobs that are also going to be lost. Good luck to all the guys at NASA and USA.

[legion]

They should invest in a new (and hopefully CHEAPER to run) Space Shuttle. But there is a real trouble brewing up there with every satellite launch. When a satellite reaches its intended lifespan, is there a command or option programmed to make it return to earth. As each piece of rubble up there can shred another satellite, creating more rubble with each collision.
No matter how good we become with launching, if we can't fly past this layer of scrap, we won't be able to leave the planet at all!

[Retired_for_now]

Good points, all.

Wyvern - Obama cancelled the "return to the Moon." Ares I and Orion remain in progress, though now in competition with commercial alternatives (commercial is a good thing - it always works better if someone is making money rather than just spending my taxes). I'd call Orbital Sciences and SpaceX the front runners. So the US is back in the LEO business by 2013/14. My central point (which will develop) is that Soyuz and Shen-Zhou are still in business - so the big "we" still have access (at $35,000,000 per seat for Soyuz; which we could drive down with competition if we had the wit to approach the Chinese as full ISS partners ...)

Paul - you hit the problems with Constellation right on the nose. The concept greatly exceeded available funding which would have caused a host of problems. I'd disagree a bit on the Shuttle, NASA has had many years to get things running smoothly.

Legion - concur on the need for cheap access. I'd not restrict it to a new "shuttle." Note - the X-37B goes up very shortly (military, unmanned at this point, mini-shuttle). The hardware cost for rockets is actually not that much if you're building them in quantity and to a standard (see Soyuz, again). Big bucks go to launch infrastructure and mission unique engineering - so anything you do in small numbers is going to be expensive.

Yogi

[Retired_for_now]

You’ll need somewhere to live. We know how to build habitat modules for the international space station (ISS). In addition, Bigelow Aerospace is developing an inflatable habitat that provides a large volume in an easy-to-launch package. So, the lander docks to an ISS node module (with an attached observation cupola and science instrument mast). The node provides 2600 cubic feet of space and two open docking positions (count the escape pods, anyone??).




The node, in turn, connects to a Bigelow habitat. The BA-330 will have 330 cubic meters of volume (12,000 cu ft) - that's roughly equivalent to the space in a 1500 square foot house. Bigelow plans to have this on orbit in 2014/15 so we're on track for our departure slot to Mars. Bigelow has already successfully put up two smaller prototype modules.



An airlock is standard on both ends of the BA-330. We'd only need the one at the aft end of the habitat stack, inside the spine structure, for EVAs. Kind of like crawling out of the Skylab, but functional. One problem here is the need to shield against radiation once we leave the protection of the Earth's magnetosphere (no protection in Mars orbit, either). We'll mitigate the problem somewhat by making a "relatively" fast trip.



We're doing this at 1:144 for a change - something of a rarity for me but in keeping with the theme of using/reusing standard equipment.

Yogi

[Retired_for_now]

With a place for people, we now need a place for stuff.
You’ll need a place to put the fuel. Some kind of structure to tie together the habitation, fuel, and propulsion sections is needed. We’ve already put together a 330 foot/100 meter truss for the ISS, so a couple of truss segments (two ISS S0 trusses) should work here.



It also gives us a place to mount the com antennae (a couple of parabolic dishes because I like the look - everything's going to flat plate phased array antennae these days but it just doesn't say "space probe").

We’ve been building fuel tanks for rockets for decades. A couple of upper stages from the European Ariane V rocket

or several Centaur upper stages from the US Atlas launcher

should provide plenty of hydrogen reaction mass and oxygen for consumption. We'll also need some smaller tanks for consumable oxygen, inert nitrogen, and maybe some coolant for the life support equipment.



Confession - I modelled the small tanks with conics and caps on the ends for a more rounded look but went with flat caps rather than glue up that many little sets of parts.


Yogi

[mchale]

i was thinking how about deuterium for fuel they use the in conjuction with warpdrive in star trek and deuterium is real

[mchale]

sorry wrong thread got confuesed with other tread near -term deep space ships is were i ment to post this