14 thoughts on “LOP-G”

  1. “we should stop wasting taxpayer money on human spaceflight”

    And get out of the way of SpaceX.

  2. I think we can kick that can down the road, and focus now, on robotic lunar exploration.
    I think we should develop depot for LOX in LEO, but I put robotic exploration ahead of it as priority. And put LOX depot, ahead of LOP-G as priority.
    Though big fan of using high orbit, earth/moon L-1/2 or whatever. Also think nice if could design space station to have long lifetime.

    But think important to determine if minable water on moon, as quickly as possible.

    1. The Power and Propulsion Element (PPE) would give it the capability to move to whatever orbit is deemed ideal at the time.

      This part is key.

      SLS is only needed for constructing the LOP-G because the plan calls for using Orion as propulsion for some of the infrastructure and the op-ed states that the orbit was chosen due to limitations of the SLS/Orion system. SLS will eventually collapse under its own wieght and when it does, LOP-G could be moved to a lagrange point.

  3. Robots first? Yeah, naw. Get boots on there first then think about our robot helpers.

    There “should” be water in Shackleton crater, just set your solar collectors on Malapert Mountain.

  5. I think we should build a space station, and fuel depot in L-1. Also build a dry dock in L-1. After that start building solar sails. Use solar sails for going to Mars, and near Earth asteroids.

    He Rand, I noticed that your site looks different. Is this the new look?

      1. The solar sails are made out of a very thin aluminum. They are pushed by sun light, and are slow at first. But they can get to a fast speed. No fuel required. They can’t land on planets, or moons, and if we send one out to Mars, it won’t stop. It will instead release a shuttle craft. And at the same time pick up a shuttle craft. Or it could release, and pick up a payload. It be built on Earth, or the Moon. Need to build them at L-1.

  6. I think it is possible that it you send a robot to lunar polar surface, you will not find minable water.
    It might be a 50% chance, though maybe there is 95% chance you find minable water.
    If you don’t find minable water, one could possibly learn more, as compared to finding minable water.
    If find minable water it might confirm false ideas, and not finding minable water, might then lead to finding minable water in lunar polar region with another robotic landing.

  7. I’d rather someone build a Lofstrom Launch Loop. With that in operation, many more possibilities open up.

  9. There are almost always alternative choices to any plan.

    This is why there are so many critics, there are always more than one way to do something, even if you can get everyone to agree on what that something is.

    Unless a crewed lander is preceded by robotic landers carrying and deploying machinery to make fuel from lunar resources, landers are not going to be initially refuellable on the lunar surface

    Since a COTS approach is being taken, it is up to the companies to exercise some forethought here. Something may not be initially reusable but various stages and landers could be built with the expectation that someone could service them. Jon Goff is working on solutions for things like this and so are Orbital ATK and a few other companies. It is just deferring reusabilty or having these other assets follow along on the same or other launches.

    With the COTS approach to prospecting many different sites, the opportunity exists to build up the infrastructure (refueling, landers, orbiters, ect) that can support more than one of these prospecting missions and also crewed missions once site selection has been narrowed down. It also looks like these missions are bypassing LOP-G, so it isn’t critical to the success of prospecting the Moon or building a outpost/base/station/settlement/ect.

  10. Call me crazy but I’d like to see at least one milliliter of lunar water before building expensive spacecraft and stations that that would be even more expensive without it.

  11. If we see a milliliter of lunar water, there is no good reason to have governments mining in space or on Earth surface.

    What lower cost of government exploration of Mars, is commercial launch market on Earth, and market of rocket fuel in space.
    If there is a market of rocket fuel in space, lunar rocket fuel will be sold at the market value.
    A main factor of price of rocket fuel in space is size of market and competition.
    And NASA Mars exploration will have little impact on this.
    Instead it NASA explores moon and there is minable lunar, winning lunar water requires a great demand for
    rocket fuel (and NASA can not provide this demand) but commercial lunar water mining and making rocket will create demand (they can not survive unless they create demand). So they will create demand just like all businesses do (or go bankrupt as all businesses can do).
    If commercial lunar water mining happens soon after lunar exploration, this should lower earth launch costs and therefore result in lower Mars exploration cost, but such lower do come fast enough to make much difference, but when consider that Mars exploration could require decades, in the latter part of the decades, could effect costs by a measurable amount.
    The main thing commercial lunar mining does is make mars settlements cheaper or possible.
    A major effect of it on NASA Mars exploration is it allows the political support for long term
    Mars exploration, so you don’t get just flags and footprints.

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