Return To The Moon, Everything Old is New again Options

[RedSky]

Here, supposedly, is a sneek peak at the upcoming... not yet released... report on the CEV/ Return to the Moon architecture:

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/media/graph...07/18731963.jpg

Here's the full article:
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/custom...=orl-home-promo

Look familiar? Basically an Apollo CSM (=CEV), a beefed up LM (4-man... but I'm sure due to budget and weight... will be cut back to 3 or 2 person).

Instead of one launch on a Saturn V equivalent, there is a crew launch CEV on a single SRB "stick" configuration, and the S4B-LM piece on the shuttle-derived vertical in-line cargo launcher... Seen here, for those who haven't run across this site yet:

http://www.safesimplesoon.com/media-images.htm

[MahFL]

That graphic has an error on it, pic #6 shows the Lunar Lander and the Ascent modules docking around the Moon with the CEV. I wonder if it will ever happen though ?

[remcook]

do I see solid rocket boosters?

edit- I see, not for manned purposes...

[djellison]

No - you do - the design for the CEV launcher is basically a shuttle SRB with a liquid upperstage. Arguably the most silly idea for some time - the thrust and thus acceleration profile will be astonishing.

Doug

[dvandorn]

You can vary the nozzle and the burn cavity in a solid to change the thrust and the burn duration -- so, in theory, you *could* design the SRB to have a lower initial thrust-to-weight ratio. Of course, you'd be reducing the motor's ISP, too.

What the heck is wrong with using a Delta IV or an Atlas V for the CEV, anyway???

-the other Doug

[djellison]

What the heck is wrong with using a Delta IV or an Atlas V for the CEV, anyway???

It doesnt keep the shuttle contractors happy

Doug

[dvandorn]

I would think the heavy-life unmanned Shuttle variants (remarkably like the old Shuttle-C variant designs) would keep the Shuttle contractors happy. And it'll keep the guys and gals who will fly the CEV a lot happier if they don't have to deal with a 50-G liftoff crunch.

That SRB launcher will likely take off like a model rocket -- SWOOOOOSH and it's suddenly ten miles up!

-the other Doug

[RedSky]

Yeah, it seems ATK (formerly Morton-Thiokol) the makers of the SRB's are really pulling out all the PR stops with that web site and SRB/CEV launch amimations I've already started seeing on the cable news channels as the "next step".

Well, the in-cabin launch video views should look like those late 1950's films of the guys in the centerfuge at 15G with their cheeks and lips pulled back behind their ears
Lucky it'll only last 2 minutes or so, I guess... oh, maybe 2 1/2 minutes with a 5-segment SRB...

[deglr6328]

Wow what an original and imaginative solution. NOT. sigh.... whatever. Wake me up when China does something new and interesting and gets there in 10 years before we even get the vehicles built. What's even interesting on the Moon anyway? Its just a big cratered dustball. no chance of life, no sign of past water, no atmosphere, no tectonics or complex geology, no nothing. So far as I can see the only reason to go there anymore at all is to do science we can't do here (quiet radio observation, diffraction limited visible telescopes and such), and I don't see any current emphasis on these real science projects which could be done there. I guess it's just not sexycool enough for the current administration when compared with the "use the Moon as a jumping off point to Mars" nonsense.

[Bob Shaw]

Here, supposedly, is a sneek peak at the upcoming...  not yet released... report on the CEV/ Return to the Moon architecture:

Y'know, if they only put some wings on that 'SafeSimpleSoon' heavy-lift variant's upper stage, they could fly it back to the launch site and reuse the expensive parts, like the engines. I bet the running costs would be so low that it'd be possible to fly tourist flights!

(ducks and runs)

[djellison]

I think they should be developing LFFB's ( an old Shuttle design derivative, replacing the SRB's with liquid fueled boosters that had short stub wings like a massive scaled up tomahawk - and flew back to KSC to land afer launch )

then- an LFFB derrived CEV LV would make a lot of sense

Doug

[Phil Stooke]

"What's even interesting on the Moon anyway? Its just a big cratered dustball. no chance of life, no sign of past water, no atmosphere, no tectonics or complex geology, no nothing."

Thus sprach deglr6328.

I'm sorry, I can't let that go unanswered. The Moon is not uninteresting. It is more complex than the above suggests, with at least 2, maybe 3, billion years of volcanism, with tectonics relating to basin fill compensation, and the best place we will ever be able to get to easily, to study impact processes at all scales. Its geologic history is poorly understood because we never sampled the oldest rocks, the oldest or youngest volcanics, or many of the unique features (Reiner gamma, the D-caldera and the SW Orientale plume deposit being but three).

Plus of course the possibliity of polar volatiles and all they would reveal about solar system history... and ... well, there's lots more. The Moon is very different from Earth, that's obvious, and we want to understand it as well as possible so it can serve as the key to understanding Mercury, early Mars, etc. The Earth and the Moon are the twin foundations of modern planetary science.

Astronomy from the Moon is actually far less enticing than it used to be. Farside radio astronomy is still a reasonable thing to suggest, but the main argument for optical astronomy used to be stability... the solid Moon was more stable than an orbiting scope. But we are now so good at holding things steady - as the Hubble deep fields show - that it's not much of an issue. Even interferometry is probably doable in space as much as on the Moon. And I might point out that even the farside isn't as radio quiet as it used to be, with deep space probes like Cassini and MER broadcasting from beyond... though presumably not a big problem, at least they are out there.

I want to go back to the Moon because it's inherently interesting in its own right. And I personally think Mars is going to be much more difficult than it's given credit for. We need things to do before Mars even becomes possible, or we'll all croak before anything happens. At least a decade of routine lunar operations would be the best preparation for Mars.

I am now going on vacation. Please don't let anything happen for two weeks. 'Kay?

Phil

[deglr6328]

Oh alright, I'll grant that the Moon may have some more interesting secrets to give up but they just don't seem as captivating to me (a non-geologist) as do so many other places in the Solar System. Anyway, what is "basin fill compensation"? I thought tectonics on the Moon were considered impossible because it was thought to have a solid core....

[RedSky]

Excellent overview of all this "new vision" thing just out on Keith Cowing's SpaceRef.com:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1055

And get a load of this stable of potential STS-derived launchers:
http://images.spaceref.com/news/2005/cev.33.l.jpg

Well, it looks like that futuristic icon from the past of a space plane is gone for good.
Too bad.... I always was inspired by this design, and used to have to model of it:
http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/vonn1956.htm

Hmmmm.... maybe we should just outsource / contract the whole CEV thing and fund development of Russia's proposed Kliper and put it on top of an STS-derived launcher! It comes in several versions, one with wings, seats six, and can stay on orbit (i.e., docked to the ISS) for a year. It, at least, seems to be more forward-looking than going back to an updated/enlarged Apollo CSM.

[dvandorn]

Oh alright, I'll grant that the Moon may have some more interesting secrets to give up but they just don't seem as captivating to me (a non-geologist) as do so many other places in the Solar System.  Anyway, what is "basin fill compensation"? I thought tectonics on the Moon were considered impossible because it was thought to have a solid core....

First off, the latest thinking is that the Moon actually still has a molten core -- either that, or it has a molten near-core mantle that allows the core to move within the Moon. Because orbital studies seem to show that the Moon's core rotates in a slightly different plane than the rest of the Moon does. So, either the core is still molten, or the core can move through a molten "sheath" relative to the rest of the Moon.

One of the more fascinating models of lunar composition right now says that the core is molten nickel-iron, surrounded by a solid layer of primitive chondritic material, covered with a now-solid mantle that only completely congealed about a billion years ago, and topped off with the battered and brecciated megaregolith of feldspathic highlands and basaltic maria.

As for basin fill compensation -- the Moon displays tectonic activity where basaltic lava flows have filled basins. The lava fill is actually heavier than the feldspathic rock of the crust onto which it was extruded, so after lava filled a basin, the rocks holding up the basin would sink under the weight. The whole thing reached an isostatic equilibrium after several hundred million years, but in the meantime great cracks (called graben) appeared where the centers of the circular maria sank and pulled themselves away from the fringes. Wrinkle ridges also appeared, as congealed lava surfaces piled into each other in rings around the heavier centers of the circular maria.

The graben and the wrinkle ridges are both genuine tectonic features. There are also some collapse features at antipodes to large basins that may represent tectonic actibity triggered by basin-forming impacts.

-the other Doug