Author Topic: Space Entrepreneurs Announce First Manned Moon Mission In 40 Years  (Read 19981 times)

Offline cjameshuff

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Re: Space Entrepreneurs Announce First Manned Moon Mission In 40 Years
« Reply #15 on: October 13, 2013, 12:05:20 PM »
More complicated certainly, but that atmosphere has some use. It doesn't take much; most of the dramatic slow down of re-entry on Earth takes place quite high in the atmosphere.

Terminal velocity is still quite high, though. You need rockets for the last stage in addition to reentry shielding, and you need to start and control them in a high-speed airstream, which is something not a lot of work has been done on (though SpaceX did something similar during their latest Falcon 9 launch when the re-lit the first stage to do a braking burn). In addition, the atmosphere of Mars is highly variable and complex, making it hard to predict how much it'll slow you down and where you'll end up.

Offline cjameshuff

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Re: Space Entrepreneurs Announce First Manned Moon Mission In 40 Years
« Reply #16 on: October 13, 2013, 12:49:10 PM »
I agree with the comments about the engineering difficulties presented by moondust, but what I don't understand it why they would want to do it that way. With the Moon only having 1/6th G, they ought to be able to land a pretty big Hab in one piece, or at least in the form of a couple of large modules. If NASA can land the 900KG MSL on Mars, with all its attendant difficulties as regards re-entry, then landing a big Hab on the airless moon should not present as much of a problem.

Er...the advantages of using lunar materials rather than shipping enormous amounts of mass from Earth seem pretty clear to me. Even just a simple shell to replace the outer thermal and micrometeoroid protective layers of an inflatable module could save a lot of mass. Even better if you can use a spray-coated lining instead of an inflatable one.

"3D printing" is a relatively simple and flexible approach to robotic construction. It'd involve relatively small, lightweight machines that can be used to build a wide variety of structures, as opposed to specialized machines for manipulating large prefab modules imported from Earth. I don't know how genuine they are, but the described techniques are reasonable ones. The main thing that sticks out as unrealistic to me is the 1 week timeframe for construction...that's not much time to move and fuse/bind the amount of regolith needed.

And the dust is a nuisance that machines can be engineered to deal with, not an insurmountable obstacle.

Offline raven

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Re: Space Entrepreneurs Announce First Manned Moon Mission In 40 Years
« Reply #17 on: October 13, 2013, 03:48:54 PM »
It's still quite tricky. It's abrasive, very fine, and sticks to things like nobodies business.
Still, I wish them the best.
I wonder if they will be using something like this.

Offline mako88sb

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Re: Space Entrepreneurs Announce First Manned Moon Mission In 40 Years
« Reply #18 on: October 13, 2013, 03:59:26 PM »
It's still quite tricky. It's abrasive, very fine, and sticks to things like nobodies business.
Still, I wish them the best.
I wonder if they will be using something like this.

Here's a video of their planned mission. The habitat is about halfway:


Offline raven

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Re: Space Entrepreneurs Announce First Manned Moon Mission In 40 Years
« Reply #19 on: October 13, 2013, 06:08:52 PM »
Oh, cool, thanks for sharing that, though it's rather scarce on technical details.