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-   -   STUDY SUMMARY: First Lunar Outpost Part 2 (http://www.oldrocketforum.com/showthread.php?t=16484)

luke strawwalker 02-17-2017 10:35 AM

STUDY SUMMARY: First Lunar Outpost Part 2
 
1 Attachment(s)
Here's an interesting study in several parts (which I'll be covering over the next little while) about the "FLO" project under President Bush I's "Space Exploration Initiative" (SEI) from the early 90's... SEI was the ORIGINAL "Moon, Mars, and Beyond" program, announced by then-President George HW Bush on the steps of the Smithsonian on the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 in 1989. It was the most rousing and first REAL direction that NASA had gotten since the original "Moon Race" speech and announcement by John F. Kennedy back in 1961... There, with the Apollo 11 crew of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins, he announced an ambitious space program to return humans to the Moon, Mars, and Beyond, by the year 2000. Unfortunately, history would see it come to nothing, mostly because of Bush's buddy he appointed as NASA Administrator at the time, a dyed-in-the-wool "shuttle hugger" and former shuttle astronaut Richard "Dick" Truly, basically did NOTHING to encourage the program and did as much as possible to allow the forces aligned against it to torpedo it... despite repeated attempts by Bush to get him to "pare it down to something acceptable" every time it came back more bloated and expensive, and pretty soon all the hogs lined up at the trough and "everything including the kitchen sink" was slated to be part of the proposal and required funding grants and programs... Eventually the entire effort ballooned into a gigantic proposal with the then-enormous price tag of $450 BILLION dollars, which was derisively laughed out of the halls of Congress and stuck with the moniker "Battlestar Galactica" after NASA's all-inclusive "all that and a bag of chips" Cadillac proposals for performing the program. With shuttle safe from being sidelined, (though it WAS originally envisioned to play a supporting role in SEI, it was clear the shuttle's limitations would place it on the back burner), business went on 'as usual' at NASA, with the shuttle gomming around in Earth orbit doing make-work chores and "experiments" while NASA continued making an absolute HASH of Reagan's "Space Station Freedom" proposal which had been designed and re-designed at least three times by that point, spending millions of dollars and producing NOTHING up to that point... (for a detailed read on the subject, read the book "ISS-capades: the Crippling of America's Space Program" by Donald Beattie-- it's well worth the time and effort to read, even if it is a bit dry at times, it IS a fascinating insider's view of the political and programmatic machinations that routinely go on within NASA, which explains why NASA has operated at a snail's pace for the last 40-odd years from the shuttle era on).

ANYWAY, this is part of a series of presentations given on the "First Lunar Outpost" part of the plan, which was intended to return humans to the Moon, "this time to stay". There's plans for gigantic new super-boosters, either based on Saturn V or the NLS, a new series of boosters which were developed in the wake of the shuttle Challenger disaster, when it was uncertain if the shuttle program would (or should in some quarters) continue.... and having witnessed the limitations and weaknesses of relying on the shuttle alone in the wake of Challenger, suddenly expendable boosters had been given a new lease on life and proposals came floating out of the woodwork. The plans for FLO also include single-launch architecture, with an unmanned launch of a massive mega-lander capable of autonomously landing on the surface of the Moon, equipped with a Space Station Freedom-derived habitation module atop it, which would later be inhabited by a crew for 45 days, launched later on another mega-lander with the ascent and Earth return vehicle built in-- sort of a gigantic version of the original Von Braun Apollo lunar lander (where the entire Apollo CSM landed on the moon with a landing/ascent stage equipped with legs). The crew would then EVA over to the hab and work on the moon for 45 days, setting up a telescope farm 10 km away from the "base camp", operating robotic rovers both manned and unmanned, perform various geophysical and geological experiments like drilling cores and setting up in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) experiments to liberate lunar oxygen from the regolith, for breathing or rocket fuel, and reacting it with hydrogen from Earth to produce water, and to experiment with making lunar building materials like bricks or blocks from sintered lunar soil. Once the 45 day surface stay had elapsed, the crew would put the hab into unmanned mode, pack up, return to the manned lander, and take off using the return stage to propel them directly back to Earth from the lunar surface, to reenter and land on land so that the crew module could potentially be reused (which is very difficult for modules dunked into the salty corrosive ocean water).

Anyway, there's a lot of interesting artwork as well, showing various IR/UV telescopes, radio telescopes, visible light telescopes, and solar telescopes to be erected in the "telescope farm" located about 10 km away from the "base camp"... future missions would return to the site and build upon earlier work done there by earlier missions. A second "base camp" was to be established in the future, with pressurized rovers and other items being sent as time passed to increase the capabilities of the base camps and the crews manning them, leading to a permanent rotating presence on the Moon at some undefined point. All this was to be the training ground to lead up to an eventual Mars mission some time early in the 21st century (probably by 2010 at the latest LOL:)

Anyway, it's fascinating stuff and the super booster will bring a smile to the face of Saturn lovers everywhere... the 220 inch twin-F-1A boosters flanking a resurrected Saturn V (with five F-1's of it's own) for a total of NINE F-1A's firing at liftoff for a total of 16.2 million pounds of thrust-- MORE THAN DOUBLE the Apollo Saturn V's! A 6 J-2S equipped second stage, and an Earth Departure Stage of 33 feet in diameter powered by a single J-2S, to replace the old 22 foot diameter S-IVB stage... The NLS version was only slightly less impressive, using FOUR boosters with two F-1A engines each, plus a core stage equipped with four STME's (disposable SSME's, basically-- more or less an SLS core as we'd know it today), for a total of 16.6 million pounds of thrust at liftoff... lofting a projected single SSME powered EDS stage (yeah right-- we now know airstart SSME's require a complete redesign, hence the J-2X program for Ares I-- but J-2X is too heavy and low performance to be a good EDS engine, so it'd probably be either a single STME (if they could be designed to airstart, and given their similarity to SSME's, probably not) or a pair of J-2S engines (there was no J-2X at the time). Either would make an AWESOME model rocket version!

Later! OL J R

luke strawwalker 02-17-2017 10:42 AM

10 Attachment(s)
1. Artwork of the unmanned hab lander (SSF module on top of the lander descent stage).

2. Manned lander, having landed nearby, crew transfers provisions and equipment to the hab.

3. one of the telescopes on the telescope farm.

4. crew awaits the rescue helicopter after landing in the southwestern desert (presumably) after
returning from the Moon.

5. lunar surface ops-- emplacing experiments, laying cables to the telescope farm, etc. with rover.

6. another telescope at the telescope farm.

7. a solar telescope for studying the sun at the telescope farm...

8. ISRU experiments-- using lunar soil to produce oxygen, combined with hydrogen from Earth to
make water, and experiment with making bricks or blocks from sintered lunar soil.

9. ISRU brick making experiment...

10. The manned lander, atop its 33 foot diameter upper stage, inside its protective payload
fairing. Unlike the Apollo which used Lunar Orbit Rendezvous, and left the CSM in orbit for
the return to Earth, the FLO would land the CSM on top of an oversize descent and landing
stage, and the return to Earth would be directly from the lunar surface to TEI.

luke strawwalker 02-17-2017 11:08 AM

10 Attachment(s)
1. Arrangement of the crew in the 5% upscaled Apollo-shaped Earth return capsule... crew of 4.

2. The ERV blasts off from the Moon...

3. the manned lunar lander

4. the unmanned lander/hab where the crew will stay for their 45 day mission on the surface

5. the manned lander on the surface, equipped with ladders and stairs for disembarkation/return

6. surface stay mission timeline...

7. lunar hab/lander stowed configuration...

8. lunar hab/lander config deployed on the lunar surface...

9. reference launch vehicles-- one Saturn derived (resurrected Saturn V) and one NLS derived
(use shuttle technology). INTERESTINGLY BOTH planned to dump the SRB's and go with F-1A
powered kerosene boosters... Something that SLS SHOULD have done.

10. lunar mission profile...

luke strawwalker 02-17-2017 11:13 AM

4 Attachment(s)
1. lunar mission profile...

2. Saturn V derived HLLV booster...

3. NLS derived HLLV booster...

4. FLO mission performance...

Well, that's it for this one...

Later! OL J R :)


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