Space Forum / Astronomy / June 2006

Hard to believe, but warswine is even less lucid that usual.  Put down
the bottle, warswine.

Yeah, WartHole just can't vomit that much all the time!  Be thankful!

Saul Levy

Its first mission can be to bomb the coffee boy clubhouse with
Limburger!

Double-A

Proof it... I know you chatted already with Jay Windley... the second
funniest man ... To glorify killing is to do the Devil's work. And evil
begets more evil.

One point wrong, they DID know about the VA Belts as far back as the late
50's early 60's as they where found with Vanguard 1 went into orbit.

No, Starman, you are infinitely smarter than the WartHole!

Saul Levy

Ha Ha ha (they couldn't see the stars due to the fact that oxygen and
water vapor created a haze around the spacecraft) say's answer.com ...
any comments on this? where are the stars? well behind the Vapor...
HAH.

Another space news website has published a leaked NASA study called
"LRA-0" which is spreading despair and gloom through the space
community. Many people are surprised that the architecture for
returning men to the Moon laid out in the famous ESAS report is
declared to be totally unworkable in this new document.

But no one should be surprised. I pointed this out four months ago, and
anyone who has followed the announced and rumored changes to the ESAS
plan since its appearance could see that it was in serious trouble.

The 723-page ESAS report went to elaborate lengths to justify its
particular choices of spacecraft, boosters, engines, and fuels. Many of
these justifications were obviously phony. (My favorite was a long
table of expensive modifications that would supposedly be needed to
"man-rate" the Delta-4H or Atlas-5H.)

It was clear to many astute observers that the ESAS program was a
political one. It was designed to mollify Congress by keeping almost
every worker in the dying Space Shuttle program in his present job,
performing the same task in the same factory in the same politician's
district.

Little attention was given to financial or technical feasibility. Cost
and schedule estimates by Shuttle contractors were accepted without any
attempt to check them (even though those contractor estimates have
proven wildly optimistic in the past).

So it was inevitable that once Congress was on board many of those
politically optimum choices would be changed. NASA has adopted or
studied numerous options that were "considered" and rejected by ESAS.

The LRA-0 presentation provides a compressed summary of these changes
and the reasons why they are under consideration. The problems that
have appeared with the ESAS plan are basically the same ones I
identified four months ago:

The CEV and LSAM are too large and consequently too heavy.
The CEV, LSAM, and EDS use cryogenic propellants that are not
space-storable.
The old Shuttle hardware is unsuited for its new roles and must be
extensively redesigned.
The 1.5-launch concept and 6-month lunar stay time place severe demands
on the hardware.
Weight and performance margins in the ESAS study were inadequate.

Unfortunatly, every change intended to solve one of these problems has
made at least one of the others worse.

The use of LCH4 in the CEV and LSAM ascent stage had to be dropped
because of the 6-month space storage requirement for these modules.
Methane is significantly harder to keep liquid than LOX, and over 180
days on or near the Moon much of it would boil off due to heating of
the tanks by sunlight.

So NASA was forced to adopt traditional storable NTO/MMH propellants.
These have lower ISP than LO2/LCH4 and exacerbate the weight problem.
The reduction of the CEV's diameter from 5.5m to 5.0m was intended to
compensate for this weight increase - but apparently has not.

The air-start SSME planned for Stage 2 of the CLV presented serious
technical challenges, so it was replaced by the old J-2. To make up the
lost performance and/or increased CEV weight, Stage 1 was changed from
the existing 4-segment SRB to a new 5-segment SRB. This increased the
projected development cost from ~$1B to ~$3B.

Mike Griffin is reportedly dissatisfied with the high refurbishment
costs of the SRBs and is considering making the new version expendable
to reduce operating costs - the same reason given 35 years ago for
making them refurbishable!

The vast expense involved in dropping 5 SSMEs to the sea bottom on each
mission has led to consideration of using the cheaper RS-68 in the CaLV
core stage. This change would reduce operating costs, but increase the
weight and reduce the ISP.

The CaLV core cannot be lengthened to restore performance because the
total stack height is already near the VAB door clearance. If it is
made thicker it can no longer be produced with the old Shuttle ET
tooling in New Orleans.

The EOR mission architecture leaves the LSAM and EDS in Earth orbit
waiting for the CEV to launch. In January, the loiter time requirement
for both these modules was increased from 25 days to 95 days. Both EDS
and the LSAM descent stage use LH2 fuel, which is even harder to store
in space than methane.

Extra fuel might be included to allow for boiloff. But if by some
miracle the CEV's countdown goes perfectly and it actually does launch
on schedule, these stages will have too much LH2 and the surplus must
either be carried to the moon or dumped by a "Thermodynamic Vent
System" before the TLI burn (with complications to the navigation).

The LRA-0 report assumes the use of as many as 140 layers of aluminized
Mylar on the LH2 tanks. Each of these layers would have to be installed
and inspected separately, by highly paid technicians. And these tanks
are not small.

The cost of using this superinsulation would be huge. (The presentation
doesn't consider a third option of including a small reliquification
plant, probably because the power and weight demands are excessive).

It is no exaggeration to say that the original ESAS plan now lies in
ruins. There is virtually nothing left of the original claims of low
development cost and high inheritance from Shuttle.

The authors of LRA-0 propose two main options for salvaging the program
which both have the smell of desperation about them. One of them
completely undercuts the supposed justifications for the program.

The L2-rendevous scenario is unattractive from a safety standpoint. The
crew transfers to the LSAM soon after TLI and rides out to the Moon in
the lander, while the unmanned CEV goes further out to L2.

The astronauts are a long way away from their only ride home if
anything goes wrong. Furthermore, the return flight Moon-lunar
orbit-L2-Earth lasts an extra 6 days which considerably increases the
risk of the crew being fried by a solar flare.

The "Wal-Mart Lander" option is even more unacceptable. This vehicle is
massively scaled down from the original LSAM. It has no airlock,
carries only two astronauts instead of four and 500kg of science gear
instead of 2300kg. Even worse, it is limited to landing near the lunar
equator. It cannot explore the possible polar ice deposits.

This change would be a poison pill for the program, because then it
really would be little different from Apollo. Critics who have derided
the LSAS plan as "Apollo Redo" or "Back to the Future" would be
vindicated. Political support would vanish overnight. What would be the
point of repeating a project we already did 50 years before?

It seems that only major changes in the ESAS architecture can save this
program. Here is what we should look for in a possible "VSE Get-Well
Program":

Abandon the CLV entirely and use one of the EELVs for CEV orbital test
flights
Drop the 1.5-launch scenario and go to a 2xCaLV plan (like von Braun's
original EOR plan for Apollo 1.0) to simplify launch operations.
Launch the CEV and LSAM on one booster, the EDS on another. Tweak the
mission profile to equalize the masses of the two loads. This reduces
the LH2 boiloff problem on the LSAM to a manageable level.
Cut back the payload of the CaLV enough to allow the use of the current
4-segment SRBs and RS-68 core engines.
Reduce the 95-day LEO loiter time for the EDS stage to a more
reasonable number.

In this plan development costs are reduced, commonality with Shuttle is
increased, but operations costs are likely to be as high or even higher
than in the ESAS plan. But there really isn't any way around this.

The LRA-0 report just makes official what I've been telling you all
along: There's no free lunch in space. There isn't any magic technology
or management trick that will make it possible to fly double-Apollo
missions on a half-Apollo budget. As long as we use throw-away vehicles
powered by rocket engines, space travel will be extremely expensive. If
we aren't willing to pay for a real space program, we should get out of
the game and stop wasting our money... space news

It's been 40 years since US first set foot on the moon. 40 yrs of
advanced technology and space exploration - (unmanned) - so what
happened? (really) There never was a manned moon flight - and this will
become more glaringly apparent as the YEARS go by... 40 yrs and
counting...

He belives everything seen on FOX? HAHAHA.