Re: Back to the Moon

w.d.greene wrote: 
"Josh Hill" wrote:

"w.d.greene" wrote:


For those m.w. folks who are fans of NASA:

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=17836

Finally today was the official roll out of the plan.  You probably already
heard about this on the news, but if not, here you go.

Bits and pieces have been floating around in the press prior to today, but
it's good to be able to openly point to something and say, "See, I'm working
on that thing right there."

First flight of the Crew Launch Vehicle should be in 2012.  First lunar
mission should be in 2018.


OK, here's a question for you:

"NASA's Crew Exploration Vehicle is expected to cost $5.5 billion to
develop, according to government and industry sources, and the Crew
Launch Vehicle another $4.5 billion. The heavy-lift launcher, which
would be capable of lofting 125 metric tons of payload, is expected to
cost more than $5 billion but less than $10 billion to develop,
according to these sources."

I can see the need for a new CEV, but I thought the idea of reusing
shuttle components was to reduce the cost of developing a new vehicle.
Why wouldn't it be cheaper to retrofit existing designs, e.g., use the
Delta IV heavy to launch the CEV and an upgraded Saturn 5 as the heavy
lift vehicle?


Good question. The option of pursuing upgraded, heavy-lift versions either the Delta IV and the Altas V was in the trade space. Launch solutions for these options were drawn up and dutifully considered. I believe that the reason that these were not chosen was because they could not provide a clear pathway towards missions beyond short-term lunar sorties. In other words, they'd be difficult to evolve into something that could be used for the construction of a lunar base or for the pursuit of a Mars mission. The idea here is to put into motion an evolveable architecture for the next thirty or forty years of space exploration. That is why the center piece for the lunar missions is a monster heavy-lift vehicle on par with the Saturn V.

Other issues also exist with the notion of using Delta IV or Atlas V as a crew launcher. First of all, neither is human rated. The process of bringing these vehicles up to modern human-rated standards would be nearly tantamount to redesigning these vehicles from the ground up. Sure, it's possible and it's something that's been examined extensively over the last couple of years. Basically it's been examined enough to understand that it isn't a cheap alternative. On the other hand, all of the legacy Shuttle hardware is indeed designed to be and certified as human rated.

The option of resurrecting the Saturn V is not really a viable option. Quite simply, the piece parts and the infrastructure just don't exist anymore. It would be more difficult, in my opinion, to attempt to recreate the Saturn V than to build its Shuttle-derived equivalent, which is essentially what we plan to do.

Note that I'm not saying that what's been revealed is not the only plausible choice. There were other options on the table that I thought to be have some advantages over the final choice. But this is what we have and, if given the resources and the time, I'm confident that we'll successfully pull it off. 

Why not try to do it cooperatively with the Russians and their Energia?

Pastorio
.

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