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LRO development
lyford
post Apr 8 2006, 10:04 PM
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QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Apr 8 2006, 02:09 PM) *
HOWEVER; I'm also hearing fuzzy rumors that the current RLEP-2 project is in serious trouble -- which I'll hold off on until I have some details.
laugh.gif Is posting that you are hearing a rumor the program is in trouble "holding off on it?" laugh.gif


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Guest_BruceMoomaw_*
post Apr 8 2006, 10:56 PM
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No, it's just "holding off" on saying so flat-out until I have more confirmation and more details. I already got burned once yesterday, after all (although in that case, it was the result of concluding, logically I think, that when Ames called their proposal a "satellite", they meant a lunar orbiter and not a lunar impactor. Turns out they weren't that logical, and they REALLY needed a cutesy acronym like "CROSS"...)

In response to Bob Shaw: I DO have solid confirmation now that Cowing's right in saying that the rejected Goddard proposal -- with which Raytheon was associated -- was a hopper-lander, not an impactor. But it did use some of Raytheon's EKV technology. (I believe there's actually been something on the Web recently about this concept, if I can find it again; it wasn't called "Lunar Explorer" then.)
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Bob Shaw
post Apr 8 2006, 11:21 PM
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Bruce:

I suppose that the EKV technology, although intended to say 'helloCRUNCH' to incoming MIRVs was actually quite transferable to a Lunar hopper; it'd be nice to think that the legacy of DC-X may yet play a role, with the shade of Pete Conrad at the helm... ...it'd help with the precision landing requirement!

Bob Shaw


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Guest_BruceMoomaw_*
post Apr 9 2006, 10:41 PM
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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?
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Bob Shaw
post Apr 9 2006, 11:19 PM
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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


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RNeuhaus
post Apr 10 2006, 12:15 AM
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Many more presentations:

http://www.digitalspace.com/presentations/...ssr-2005/rlep2/

Rodolfo
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Guest_BruceMoomaw_*
post Apr 10 2006, 12:25 AM
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QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ Apr 9 2006, 11:19 PM) *
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


I was just telling my pal:

"I can think of a way to make it even more cost-effective. It really makes more sense to use a separate Earth-orbiting satellite with artificial gravity to study the effects of prolonged 1/6 G and lunar-level radiation (which can be simulated) on Earth organisms -- especially since you can spin such a satellite at different rates to determine what level of G-force really IS necessary to keep Earth critters healthy.

"But if you remove that from the experiments on RLEP-2, then, instead of having to have two separate soft-landers, you can just make the mission out of a comsat injected into polar lunar orbit, plus the Hopper itself -- which would land on the sunlit rim (making photographic and scanning-lidar maps of the landing site), then hippity-hop down into the shadowed part of the crater (using the same scanning lidar to make safe landings), using (as I presume is already the plan) a neutron spectrometer and/or ground-penetrating radar to locate possible ice layers, and then drilling them up and running them through the RESTORE package [which has already been officially selected for RLEP-2, and which would analyze both the ice and -- to some extent -- the rock in the samples, and then actually try to process the ice to generate hydrogen and oxygen: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/leag2005/.../01_sanders.pdf , pg. 19-21]."

Even in its current form, though, the Goddard/APL design is far preferable to Marshall's selected design. That, admittedly, is somewhat like saying that chicken pox is preferable to gonorrhea.
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The Messenger
post Apr 10 2006, 03:33 AM
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QUOTE (RNeuhaus @ Apr 9 2006, 06:15 PM) *

One of the charts seems to indicate a mid-2008 launch date for RLEP-2. Is that anywhere near feasible?
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Guest_BruceMoomaw_*
post Apr 10 2006, 03:51 AM
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Actually, it's LRO (and its piggyback) that will be launched in October 2008. RLEP-2 -- even before its latest trouble -- wasn't set till 2011.
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Guest_BruceMoomaw_*
post Apr 11 2006, 04:10 AM
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One thing that I strangely haven't seen mentioned as a planned object of study for the RLEP-2 lander, which would nevertheless seem to be extremely urgent -- not only for manned landers, but for unmanned ones -- is the dust problem, which seems to be right up there with radiation as the most devilish aspect of lunar exploration. The dust that's already known to be electrostatically levitated 10 km or more above the lunar surface is even being suggested as a serious problem for lunar-based astronomical observations!

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2005/pdf/2277.pdf

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2005/pdf/1899.pdf

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2005/pdf/1343.pdf

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2006/pdf/2217.pdf

...and there are already some proposals for ways to try to deal with it:

http://www.agu.org/cgi-bin/SFgate/SFgate?&...t;P41A-01"

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2005/pdf/1812.pdf

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2005/pdf/1422.pdf

Would it not be wise to have RLEP-2 study both the extent of the problem and test such possible alleviation techniques?
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PhilHorzempa
post May 10 2006, 04:53 AM
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Isn't it about time that RLEP-2 receive a proper name? After all, RLEP-1 has
been known as the LRO for quite some time now.

My suggestion is Surveyor 8.

Is there any more news concerning the progress of RLEP-2? According to the
following link, the Phase A Kickoff should have occurred in March. Did I miss that
or is RLEP-2 in stealth mode now? Also, it seems that an SDR, a Systems
Requirment Review is scheduled for August.

http://spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=18895


Also, in the above article, it appears that JHU/APL will be designing the
RLEP-2 Lunar Lander. Can anyone confirm that NASA has approved
JHU/APL's role in RLEP-2?


Another Phil
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Guest_BruceMoomaw_*
post May 10 2006, 08:49 AM
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I've got some genuinely reliable and wholly unambiguous inside info on this (not like the somewhat ambiguous stuff on which I recently made a disastrously mistaken interpretation where the LCROSS lunar impactor mission was concerned). But I'm not yet free to talk about the details. Suffice it to say that RLEP-2 is getting scaled WAY, WAY back to a rationally-sized spacecraft (without any major science downsizing), and that there is also some reconsideration of its science goals besides its hunt for polar ice -- with increased emphasis on lunar dust problems being, as I had hoped, a new high-ranked goal.
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Jim from NSF.com
post May 11 2006, 02:46 PM
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QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ May 10 2006, 04:49 AM) *
I've got some genuinely reliable and wholly unambiguous inside info on this (not like the somewhat ambiguous stuff on which I recently made a disastrously mistaken interpretation where the LCROSS lunar impactor mission was concerned). But I'm not yet free to talk about the details. Suffice it to say that RLEP-2 is getting scaled WAY, WAY back to a rationally-sized spacecraft (without any major science downsizing), and that there is also some reconsideration of its science goals besides its hunt for polar ice -- with increased emphasis on lunar dust problems being, as I had hoped, a new high-ranked goal.


I heard it was going to be Delta II class. But I think it will have the same problem as LRO did flying on a spinning 3rd stage
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Guest_BruceMoomaw_*
post May 11 2006, 08:51 PM
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QUOTE (Jim from NSF.com @ May 11 2006, 02:46 PM) *
I heard it was going to be Delta II class. But I think it will have the same problem as LRO did flying on a spinning 3rd stage


I haven't heard anything about returning it to a Delta 2 launch -- but I can safely say that it will be MUCH smaller than that gargantuan thing they were talking about previously. Interesting possibility: if -- as I presume -- they launch it on an EELV, will there be enough extra payload capacity to carry two of these landers on the same booster?
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Jim from NSF.com
post May 12 2006, 12:15 AM
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QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ May 11 2006, 04:51 PM) *
I haven't heard anything about returning it to a Delta 2 launch -- but I can safely say that it will be MUCH smaller than that gargantuan thing they were talking about previously. Interesting possibility: if -- as I presume -- they launch it on an EELV, will there be enough extra payload capacity to carry two of these landers on the same booster?



Depends on $. How many solids will it take? Two LRO's could not fly on a standard Medium EELV. It would have to be one of the Intermediate versions
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