NASA's Mars plan may include year long mission to the Moon

[FourWheelDrift]

http://www.space.com/36781-nasa-yearlong-crew-moon...

Moonbase Alpha ? Just don't use the moon for nuclear waste dumping

[MartG]

I guess it would be done in lunar orbit as it would be outside the van Allen belts so in a similar radiation environment to a Mars mission

[Globs]

"Phase 1 is scheduled to be carried out between 2018 and 2026, and would include four crewed flights to cislunar space"

They are optimistic, since the Shuttle NASA hasn't put a man into orbit, the highest anyone in NASA has gone is in the Vomit Comet or with Soyuz. Orion is now 17 years old and still can't put a man into orbit.

My prediction: Never going to happen. This is a Mars fluff piece to get more funding for Orion, which sadly appears to be just a simple competitor to Soyuz - so in my view a complete waste of time and money.

Has anyone got a NASA webpage detailing the power and propulsion bus, crew habitat, and/or logistics module?

My remaining hopes of manned space flights rest with SpaceX as NASA is clearly incompetent to a degree I'd not previously thought possible.
For unmanned there is also Google: http://lunar.xprize.org/ which should be this year but I'm not holding my breath, the prize money is way too low IMO.

[Simpo Two]

I fear man's further exploration into space will be conducted by 3D computer graphics and PR releases.

[Eric Mc]

Globs said:

"
For unmanned there is also Google: http://lunar.xprize.org/ which should be this year but I'm not holding my breath, the prize money is way too low IMO.

The prize money is not the point - as it wasn't for the Ansari X Prize. Look on these prizes as seed moneys and incentives. They help oil the enterprise and encourage the effort. They don't really fund it in any meaningful way.

100 years ago it worked in aviation and it may (although the case is not proven yet) work for space too.

[FourWheelDrift]

NASA has already launched a free to play Steam based game called ominously Moonbase Alpha - http://store.steampowered.com/app/39000/Moonbase_A... single, or multiplayer.

Ps. Had no idea this existed when I mentioned it in reference to Space 1999 in my opening post. Weird though, maybe NASA are Gerry Anderson fans. Exploring the deep oceans will be project Stingray?

[Eric Mc]

I wouldn't be surprised if some of the people who work as mission planners etc at NASA were fans of Gerry Anderson programmes in their younger days.

[Simpo Two]

FourWheelDrift said:

NASA has already launched a free to play Steam based game...

QED!

[Simpo Two]

ash73 said:

p.s. if they're spending 12 months in lunar orbit, surely they'll do some surface landings too?

That would involve a whole lot of extra complexity, gravity well etc. A completely different mission.

[Eric Mc]

And a dedicated lander - which they haven't designed yet and have no funds allocated to them to design. There was a lander envisaged as part of the Constellation programme but they'd hardly got started on that when the programme was cancelled.

[MartG]

Simpo Two said:

ash73 said:

p.s. if they're spending 12 months in lunar orbit, surely they'll do some surface landings too?

That would involve a whole lot of extra complexity, gravity well etc. A completely different mission.

Not to mention the cost of developing a lander

[Eric Mc]

Simple answer - yes there is one flightworthy Lunar Module in existence (LM 9 - Kennedy Space Center) but there's no way they could really get it restored to usable condition.

It's an "H" series craft which means it could only stay on the moon for 48 hours (unlike the J series craft used on Apollos 15 to 17).

Also, Lunar Modules were designed to use pure oxygen atmospheres. All current and future manned spacecraft use air mixtures rather than pure oxygen. It would be quite a job to adapt an old Lunar Module to be compatible with any modern manned spacecraft.

Lunar Modules were one mission craft. They could only be repressurised a maximum of five times before the structure would fail due to metal fatigue.You couldn't do any more with an H series Lunar Module today than you could back in 1969/70.

You would be much better designing a modern, multi use lander.

[Eric Mc]

In other words, they would need to design a whole class of lander - much more robust and long lifed than the extremely fragile "one shot" Apollo Lunar Module. This is the one envisaged for Constellation -

[Globs]

Eric Mc said:

In other words, they would need to design a whole class of lander - much more robust and long lifed than the extremely fragile "one shot" Apollo Lunar Module.

They are planning to land on Mars, a Mars lander should be simple to use for a Lunar landing as the gravity is rather less.
The chances of them landing on Mars without testing the lander on the (rather nearer) moon are logically very slim.

Has anyone got a NASA link to the proposed Mars Lander? I couldn't find one

[FourWheelDrift]

I haven't but it's going to have be something pretty large if their latest concept for a Mars rover is anything to go by.

http://www.space.com/36872-futuristic-mars-rover-n...

Or is that the new Audi Q7?

Edited by FourWheelDrift on Thursday 18th May 20:15

[MartG]

Globs said:

They are planning to land on Mars, a Mars lander should be simple to use for a Lunar landing as the gravity is rather less.
The chances of them landing on Mars without testing the lander on the (rather nearer) moon are logically very slim.

Has anyone got a NASA link to the proposed Mars Lander? I couldn't find one

You're missing the fact that Mars has an atmosphere, so a Mars lander will use aerobraking during its descent. A Moon lander has to rely on its engine(s) for all decelleration during landing, but does not need to be aerodynamic

[Eric Mc]

Yes, very different requirementt. Mars is actually harder as you have to use a combination of systems to slow you down - aeroshell/heat shield, parachutes and braking rockets and/or inflation bags.

The moon is more straightforward - braking rockets are your only option - although you might want to use a bouncy landing system for the final drop, as the Russians did with some of their early soft landers..

[Toaster]

Globs said:

Has anyone got a NASA link to the proposed Mars Lander? I couldn't find one

"Abstract:
Landing humans on Mars will require entry, descent, and landing capability beyond the current state of the art. Nearly twenty times more delivered payload and an order of magnitude improvement in precision landing capability will be necessary. To better assess entry, descent, and landing technology options and sensitivities to future human mission design variations, a series of design studies has been initiated. This paper describes the results of the first design study in the series of studies to be completed in 2016 and includes system and subsystem design details including mass and power estimates for a lander design using the Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (HIAD) entry technology. Future design activities in this series will focus on other entry technology options"

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7500778/

[Sylvaforever]

Or they could just hire SpaceX...

[Einion Yrth]

Sylvaforever said:

Or they could just hire SpaceX...

I'm a fan of SpaceX, but you can't just lob untested tech out there and seriously expect it to work, even less if it's manned. Given the propulsion technologies we have, suitable Mars launch windows come around about every 24 months. Elon is a clever bloke, but, to date, that particular problem eludes him in terms of a solution.