Transterrestrial Musings

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How does the fact that four people on the lunar surface can do more things than two derive from "politics?" It seems to me that if one is haggling over price, then sending one would be even cheaper.

Of course, cheapest of all is to not go back to the Moon at all and just wait for the Chinese or the Indians to do it while yerning for the "commercial solution" that never seems to come.

Posted by Mark R. Whittington at November 30, 2006 05:59 AM

Mark, apparently you don't even understand the reference of my post title.

Posted by Rand Simberg at November 30, 2006 06:04 AM

Rand, yes I do, actually. U chose to ignore a cheap and somewhat vulgar shot.

Posted by Mark R Whittington at November 30, 2006 06:05 AM

That should read, of course, "I" chose to ignore...

Posted by Mark R Whittington at November 30, 2006 06:07 AM

Regardless, with all your blathering about "commercial" and "Chinese and Indians," you seem to completely miss the point.

Posted by Rand Simberg at November 30, 2006 06:09 AM

OK, but if we want to do more than Apollo was capable of doing, don't we need more than two people for more than a few days? If they're going to put any infrastructure on the moon, and if experience with ISS is any guide at all, two people might be occupied full time just keeping it running, with no time left over for exploration, science, or additional construction. Finally, if this becomes even more like Apollo than it already appears to be, I think it becomes a target for cancellation by Congress.

Posted by lmg at November 30, 2006 06:09 AM

OK, but if we want to do more than Apollo was capable of doing, don't we need more than two people for more than a few days?

Of course we do--we need many more, for much longer. But we don't need to put them all up on a single initial mission.

Posted by Rand Simberg at November 30, 2006 06:12 AM

Img is quite right. What Jon and Rand are proposing is killing return to the Moon by making it the "incredably shrinking Moon mission", which I suspect may be the hidden agenda here. And let's not even mention the obvious absurdity of launching up to twelve EELVs for each lunar mission, which Jon actually tried to suggest is a viable option.

Posted by Mark R. Whittington at November 30, 2006 06:24 AM

What Jon and Rand are proposing is killing return to the Moon by making it the "incredably shrinking Moon mission", which I suspect may be the hidden agenda here.

Yes, that's right, Mark. That's our hidden agenda. Just like I'm being paid by the Republicans...

[rolling eyes]

Better tighten up the chinstrap on that tinfoil hat--it's cutting off the blood supply to the brain.

And if that's an unreasonable EELV flight rate, Mark, why were the production facilities sized for up to twenty vehicles per year?

Posted by Rand Simberg at November 30, 2006 06:42 AM

"Yes, that's right, Mark. That's our hidden agenda. Just like I'm being paid by the Republicans..."

So now you're in favor of NASA's return to the Moon. How curious. Were you for the plan after opposing it or before?

"And if that's an unreasonable EELV flight rate, Mark, why were the production facilities sized for up to twenty vehicles per year?"

12 EELV flights per lunar mission times two lunar missions per year equal 24 flights, on top of commercial and military flights. Thanks for making my point.

Posted by Mark R. Whittington at November 30, 2006 07:04 AM

So now you're in favor of NASA's return to the Moon. How curious. Were you for the plan after opposing it or before?

I've never been opposed to NASA's return to the moon. I've objected to their specific, probably unaffordable and unsustainable means by which they plan to do so.

But far be it from me to let your reading miscomprehension slow you down.

And I'm not sure what you misread of Jon's, but it's certainly possible to do a lunar mission with many fewer EELV flights than a dozen. Not to mention that other launch vehicles will be available for propellant delivery, which is the bulk of the lift requirement. And of course, if the need arose, the launch and production facilities could be expanded for much less than the development cost of the ARES vehicles. The planned pad turnaround for EELV is seven days, which means fifty flights per year per pad.

But again, let not reality intrude.

Posted by Rand Simberg at November 30, 2006 07:11 AM

I've never been opposed to NASA's return to the moon. I've objected to their specific, probably unaffordable and unsustainable means by which they plan to do so."

"Probably" an interesting qualifier. I thought ESAS was certainly "unaffordable and unsustainable." At least that's what I've been hearing from the Internet Rocketeer Club, though without any evidence to back up that statement. I guess there is now just a whisper of doubt here.

"And I'm not sure what you misread of Jon's..."

I can only go by what Jon has said. He seems to think that launching 12 EELVs to do a lunar mission over several months is "sustainable" and "affordable." Like many others with their own pet alternatives, I think he tends to hand wave away the expense (in added infrastructure mainly) and risk involved.

Of course Jon has moved on to yet another alternative which seems to suggest that if EELV can't meet the requirements, just downsize the requirements. I call it the "Increadably Shrinking Lunar Mission."

Posted by Mark R. Whittington at November 30, 2006 07:21 AM

Unlike you, I'm humble enough to know that I know nothing with complete certainty, Mark. I think that the probability of it being unaffordable and unsustainable is sufficiently high that it's a major policy blunder, as were Shuttle and Station.

Posted by Rand Simberg at November 30, 2006 07:29 AM

Never mind Rand. You know they're going to invest themselves in the Cattlecar Galaxitive approach until the price spirals up and reaches the point where the whole thing gets cancelled, and then all these "orbital assembly impossible, HLV uber alles!" guys are going to blame the critics for the failure of their designed-to-be-as-expensive-as-possible architecture; or the lack of "visionaries in Congress." Or the Iraq War, or Welfare, or Medicaid...

Of course they'd rather see the whole thing cancelled than actually run the EELV assembly line at an economic rate and go to the moon with _that_. Or blame all the shuttle's problems on the "fact" that it's wrong and impossible to really build a reusable launch vehicle.

BUT never that their two-a-year off the assembly line a year expendable vehicles, shock of shocks, turns out to be too expensive.

Posted by Phil Fraering at November 30, 2006 08:19 AM

Mark, lmg, et al,
There seem to be a couple of strawmen cluttering this debate:
1-Four people on the lunar surface are only more productive than two people in *some* cases. Four people on the ground for 7 days *is* more productive than two people on the ground for 3 days. But that isn't what I was suggesting at all (you could always you know, try reading what I actually wrote...geez). I was suggesting co-landing a Sundancer module (you know, where the whole lunar surface RENDEZVOUS part was talking about), and then having two people on the surface for as long as one to two months. While two people may be more or less affective than four for a given number of man-hours on the ground, when you can throw nearly two-four times as much boots-on-the-ground time at the problem, are you still willing to claim that 4 is better than 2?

2-For these light scout missions you don't need 12 launches each. That was a different mission I suggested. You could do a light scout outpost mission for something like 4-5 launches depending on how you mixed things up. But hey, once again, don't let your reading miscomprehension get in the way.

3-Re: the incredible shrinking lunar mission garbage...I didn't put up all of my idea (mostly due to time constraints), but I have a way with dealing with that...though if you offered cheaper, more capable lunar missions, sooner, and more frequently, I'm sure you could find a way to sell them as better. I don't think everyone suffers from your *there must be 4 because those NASA guys said so* fetish.

~Jon

Posted by Jonathan Goff at November 30, 2006 08:43 AM

Oh, and you (and apparently Jon, if you quoted him accurately) are wrong:

Again, as Jon points out, the entire architecture, and justification for an expensive (in both development and operations) heavy lifter is based on an arbitrary requirement--four crew for seven days.

Actually, it's four crew, seven days, with one Ares 1 and one Ares V launch.

How many could you sustain for how long, given 21 Delta IV core stages?

Posted by Phil Fraering at November 30, 2006 08:43 AM

I also have to note the curious mentality that looks at a crew of four people staying on the Moon for a week and cry out that it's Battlestar Galactica.

The Battlestar I watch most Friday nights has considerably more than a crew of four.

Posted by Mark R Whittington at November 30, 2006 09:39 AM

Mark,
It's called being metaphorical. My point was that 4 people for 7 days requires a whole bunch more time and money to field than 2 men for much more than 14 days, because it's too big.

~Jon

Posted by Jonathan Goff at November 30, 2006 09:45 AM

Mark needs to break out the old "Dick and Jane Go to the Moon" reader. He obviously hasn't closely read Jon's posts, otherwise he would have been able to catch his knee jerk reaction that he is so fond of accusing others of having.

Posted by Orville at November 30, 2006 10:20 AM

"and then having two people on the surface for as long as one to two months."

Doesn't this raise safety issues? Crew fatigue issues? Another NASA assumption is 2 two-man teams, with one on EVA and the other in the spacecraft doing maintenance, resting, etc. If all you have is a single team, there's nobody to come to their assistance. They tire out faster. They also spend a high proportion of their time doing maintenance and logistics.

There's a reason why nothing other than maintenance gets accomplished on ISS with a crew of two.

Posted by Brad Kurrin at November 30, 2006 10:20 AM

My recollection is that Dr. Stanley pointed out that President Bush very much liked the four astronaut idea because it was more than Apollo.

Those comments are now frozen, and therefore it strikes as unfair to "blame" Griffin for the 4 astronaut idea.

It also seems to me that a 2 astronaut mission would be far more feasible for a private investor looking to "show up" NASA by getting there first -- perhaps funded by selling media rights associated with beating NASA back to the Moon.

Maybe Jon should do a cost estimate for an off the shelf 2 crew mission using EELVs (or Proton?) and then evaluate whether it can be paid for with media and marketing dollars.

Posted by Bill White at November 30, 2006 10:25 AM

Just to throw my hat into all of this: a year ago, looking at EELV-based lunar missions, we came up with an approach that could support 4 astronauts for 450 days on the lunar surface, and would require 10 EELVs in the Delta IV Heavy class to undertake. The trick, of course, is forward-deploying your long-duration hab before launching your crew out. You can move a lot of mass to the moon if you're willing to take a 3-month WSB trajectory... then fire the crew off on a 3 day outbound trip once you know their home is down and operating properly. No propellant transfer (as much as I think we gotta learn how to do that...), high leverage, and--oh yes--no HLLV development necessary. Maybe instead we'd be able to throw a bit more money at the things we REALLY handwave away (i.e. radiation issues...)

Posted by Grant Bonin at November 30, 2006 10:53 AM

Oh, and about that competition from the Chinese and the Russians...

It's occured to me that the reason the Russians had such a robust space program, to the point where its component pieces are dominating the commercial space launch sector worldwide, fifteen years after "the fall of the soviet union," is that although they dabbled in building heavy-lift launch vehicles, they never built their space program around them. They built it around R-7's, Zenits, and the occasional Proton.

WHen the Chinese land their first man on Mars they'll probably be using similarly sized boosters to Proton. And launching comsats with it too.

Posted by Phil Fraering at November 30, 2006 11:07 AM

Why not use a spacecraft powered by oxygen and aluminum, while the ISP might be lower than a hydrogen oxygen spacecraft.

First build a spacestation in L1, then you use an inflatable spacecraft to travel from LEO to L1. The spacecraft should have an inner wall and an outer, in between the inner wall and outer you fill that area with dirt and rocks from the Moon.

Posted by Robert at November 30, 2006 11:35 AM

Jon - I know it's a metaphor. It's a very bad one, though.

Posted by Mark R. Whittington at November 30, 2006 11:43 AM

Jon, by the way, have you actually run the numbers of what it would cost to dispatch two astronauts with coinsumbables for two weeks as opposed to four astronauts with just one week worth of consumables? I don't see where the savings are.

Posted by Mark R. Whittington at November 30, 2006 11:47 AM

...have you actually run the numbers of what it would cost to dispatch two astronauts with coinsumbables for two weeks as opposed to four astronauts with just one week worth of consumables?

I'm sure he has.

I don't see where the savings are.

That's because, as you often admit yourself, you're not an engineer.

Two instead of four means a smaller capsule, a smaller lander, a smaller EDS, a smaller...everything. There's a lot of leverage in reducing the size of landed mass on the moon, and consumables are a trivial part of it compared to the size of the life support and entry systems needed to support four crew instead of two.

But in addition, there's nothing to prevent us from sending four--just do it in two parallel missions. In addition to getting more reliability via a "flotilla," the extra operational costs, if any, are more than compensated by the savings from not having to develop unnecessarily large new launch systems.

Posted by Rand Simberg at November 30, 2006 12:13 PM

Bill,
Maybe Jon should do a cost estimate for an off the shelf 2 crew mission using EELVs (or Proton?) and then evaluate whether it can be paid for with media and marketing dollars.

Short answer (for an 1xAtlasV-401, 2xProton mission) is that I think you could do it for a marginal cost of about $300M with reserves, and maybe on the order of $200M for the development costs. About $200M of that is launch costs. You might be able to do better, but those were fairly conservative.

Problem is that that is a lot of money. Sure it's cheaper than NASA, but that's still a lot of private money that has to be raised. Could you do it with a big media event? Maybe, but I think your odds would go up a lot if you could drop the price down or find intermediate markets.

I'm not sure you're going to get takers for instance for any sort of tourism project until your prices are sub $20-30M per seat. That requires a lot more work. If LM fields their WBC, and if someone fields a low-cost RLV...things look a lot closer to realistic. Whether that all can happen before NASA lands a person on the moon is a valid question, but it's not crazy/impossible.

~Jon

Posted by Jonathan Goff at November 30, 2006 04:46 PM

Rand,
You nailed it in one. By going with a smaller architecture, you can get away with using existing commercial boosters, which saves enormous amounts of money, and makes the marginal cost per mission go way down, even when you factor in the fact that you're going to get less work done per day with two people than four.

~Jon

Posted by Jonathan Goff at November 30, 2006 04:49 PM

"...looking at EELV-based lunar missions, ...You can move a lot of mass to the moon if you're willing to take a 3-month WSB trajectory... then fire the crew off on a 3 day outbound trip once you know their home is down and operating properly."

Very interesting. Can you post a link to the plan which is in greater detail?

Posted by Brad at November 30, 2006 07:34 PM

Jon writes:

If it were an Apollo style mission -- land and collect some rocks and fly home -- then perhaps raising media money would be difficult.

But what if it were combined with the lunar hostel idea mentioned at Selenian Boondocks? Pre-position a two crew pressurized rover and have the two 13th and 14th people on the Moon take a little road trip cross country before coming back.

Years ago at the NewMars website I proposed that pressurized rovers should look like terrestrial SUVs or pick-up trucks.

What might Ford Motor pay for video of a live lunar road trip using what "looks like" an F-350 pickup truck? A few years ago, Ford paid over $100 million in marketing to roll out a new truck line.

Gatorade and Nike should get you at least $50 million and so on . . .

Posted by Bill White at November 30, 2006 08:26 PM

Hey Jon, here is some homework.

Could Masten design and build a lunar cargo lander that could safely pre-position a 4,000 kg lunar rover on the Moon after a three month journey along a WSB trajectory?

What might Dodge pay you to leave one within a few hundred meters of where NASA intends their lunar return? Or maybe a Bigelow build habitat with a Red Roof Inn logo?

Do we find such funding sources offensive or intriguing?

Posted by Bill White at November 30, 2006 08:30 PM

such funding sources have been proposed years ago.
http://www.permanent.com/m-1stmis.htm
I think it would take an incredible genius (or incredible con-man) to pull such a project together as of now. But with giggle factor diminishing day by day it might become doable in not too distant future.

Posted by kert at November 30, 2006 11:31 PM

Posted by kert at November 30, 2006 11:32 PM

Brad,
Interestingly enough, even though I had forgotten Grant's WSB idea, I stumbled across the idea again tonight while doing up some numbers for my 2-man architecture. I posted a new blog post with a link to the spreadsheet. But basically, if you use WSB trajectories to send cargo and habitat missions, with 3-day Hohmann trajectories for the people, you can do a 2-man architecture using existing boosters using no more than 2-launches per sortie. The numbers were quite surprising, but check them out yourself. I included a lot of notes. The spreadsheet is at:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pD9i_cIb_0jC2LlfgSOQJAQ
and the article is at:
http://www.selenianboondocks.com/2006/12/2-man-eelv-based-mission-numbers.html

~Jon

Posted by Jonathan Goff at December 1, 2006 01:22 AM

Bill,
To answer your questions...I'm still dubious that we could do a manned lunar landing stunt and make a profit on it. Maybe, just maybe we could leverage several steps along the way, but...way too high risk at the moment. There are intermediate steps that must be taken first.

As for if we could design a lunar lander right now? Honestly not yet. But after we've flown some suborbital RLVs? I think we have a much better chance at that point. There are still lots of subtle issues with a lunar lander that we won't have to deal with for XA-1.0, but if we make it that far, we'll be in a much better position to develop lunar landers in the future.

I'm not arrogant enough to think we could do that ourselves right now. A year or two from now we might know enough to be able to hammer out a low-performance manned lander, but at the moment it's way premature.

~Jon

Posted by Jonathan Goff at December 1, 2006 01:42 AM

Thanx Jon.

"...you can do a 2-man architecture using existing boosters using no more than 2-launches per sortie. "

Very impressive. Looks like the concept of separating crew and cargo works even better for deep space missions than it does for LEO missions!

Posted by Brad at December 1, 2006 01:47 AM

kert

such funding sources have been proposed years ago. http://www.permanent.com/m-1stmis.htm
I think it would take an incredible genius (or incredible con-man) to pull such a project together as of now. But with giggle factor diminishing day by day it might become doable in not too distant future.

Of course!

But the difference between now and several years ago is the increase in the market value of media and marketing. Ten years ago, people spent far less on marketing and brand value enhancement than today.

As launcher prices continue to fall and the amount of money spent on media, marketing and brand enhancement continues to rise at some point a tyooon who is half genuis and half snake-oil salesman will link the two together.

Posted by Bill White at December 1, 2006 08:01 AM

Perhaps we need a man who can sell the moon.

Posted by Mike Puckett at December 1, 2006 08:56 AM

I like both scenarios. The 4-man crew with heavy lift (the NASA trail blazer component) quickly establishes a stout lunar base with a few low flight rate non-cost-effective exploration missions. Once the initial base is established smaller commercial landers with 2-man crews visit the base frequently (low-cost high flight -rate) delivering supplies and equipment. This could include additional Bigelow type inflatable structures to expand the size and manning of the base over time.

After a few years NASA moves onto towards Mars turning the lunar base over to commercial management. As will happen with ISS

The same scenario repeats again on Mars. NASA doesn’t have to show a ROI NASA is doing Lewis and Clark trail blazing. So heavy lift is funded by the government and paid for with tax funds. Heavy lift accelerates the exploration process and provides stout structures with large internal volume. Once a Mars base is established heavy lift could be used to launch Mars “Cyclers”. The commercial space companies would then transport crew and supplies to and from the Mars cyclers.

However while not low cost heavy lift should be done in a logical manner utilizing components from smaller boosters as much as possible. This would reduce the cost but due to low flight rates heavy lift would not be intended to be low cost.

Posted by Doug Gard at December 1, 2006 10:14 AM

Do we find such funding sources offensive or intriguing?

I think they'd be more intriguing during the dotcom days. If we launched in 1999 we could have had the Amazon lunar habitat, the pets.com ISRU LOX plant, and the Webvan pressurised rover. In todays fickle world of positive price to earnings ratios, I just don't see it happening.

I could be wrong though, Google however has shown atleast some interest.

Posted by Adrasteia at December 1, 2006 11:20 AM

Mike Puckett: Perhaps we need a man who can sell the moon.

Just have NASA covertly fund Paul Allen to build a lunar lander. Before you know it, Larry Ellison will have built a bigger one.

Posted by Adrasteia at December 1, 2006 11:24 AM

"Perhaps we need a man who can sell the moon."

Okay I will.

Just need an army of analog robot crawlers that can survive a smack down on the surface. Then, they can spend a while scurrying about, scoop up lunar regolith into a billboard message. It will need to be large enough to be seen by a simple telescope one could find at Walmart. It could read, 'Eat at Joes' or 'Trojan Condoms' for all I care because the soil that is cleared away by the crawlers will make a nice flat and hard landing pad for an outpost. "When you need a nice hard outpost, you can count on Trojan brand."

When those ancient aliens come back by to see what we've done I'd imagine they'll sigh while rubbing their space foreheads.

Posted by Josh Reiter at December 3, 2006 12:30 AM

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