LRO development Options

[jamescanvin]

Just read this interesting article about LRO

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/28apr_lro.htm

"This is the first in a string of missions," says Gordon Chin, project scientist for LRO at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "More robots will follow, about one per year, leading up to manned flight" no later than 2020."

One per Year? Is this just wishful thinking or have any tentitve plans been mentioned for follow up missions after LRO? If the next one is going to be 2009/10 then I guess some desisions about it will have to be made fairly soon.

James

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

Cowing now confirms that RLEP-2 is in very serious trouble, precisely because the mission has been allowed to metastasize to grotesque proportions.
http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2006/04/...changes_at.html :

"Mark Borkowski, director of NASA's Robotic Lunar Exploration Program (RLEP), apparently left NASA HQ last week. More personnel changes in RLEP lie ahead including the possible departure of Borkowski's Deputy John Baker. Meanwhile, reliable sources report that RLEP2 costs have continued to rise from the target range of $400 to $750 million to well over a $1 billion ($1.2 billion or more). Some talk of outright cancellation has been heard."

My Inside Source has not only been repeating that story for months, but naming the person he says was always at the heart of the mistake --who, according to him, is not even honestly mistaken, but involved in a deliberate flim-flam to bolster his personal career, and using his personal ties to Griffin to further that effort. Not wanting to lay myself open to a libel suit quite yet, I'll withhold the name for now -- but my Source says that he was actually trying to persuade Griffin to raise RLEP-2 to such gargantuan dimensions that the mission would, by itself, cost $4 billion.


My Source also says that the alternative plan for RLEP-2 has involved a somewhat more involved version of Goddard/Raytheon's little "Lunar Explorer" hopper unsuccessfully proposed as the piggyback craft for LRO -- and, indeed, judging from the alternative "point design" lander described in Borkowski's earlier slides on RLEP-2 ( http://www.digitalspace.com/presentations/...p2/DSC09739.JPG ), this seems to be true. If they fly RLEP-2 at all now, this is the more probable mission design. Given the extent to which Bush's lunar program is already being screwed up, though, who knows whether it will fly at all?

[Bob Shaw]

Bruce:

The mission design as shown in the slide at the URL below strikes me as being among the most perverse possible. Two landers is just strange, strange, strange! All the economies of scale work *against* this concept, which requires multiple unique duplicates of functionally identical technologies.

http://www.digitalspace.com/presentations/...p2/DSC09739.JPG

Bob Shaw