Ice on the Moon

Some people are getting “exercised.” Actually, not GCR broadly, but the heavy nuclei component. And it is the world’s recognized authority on space radiation, Dr. Eugene Parker, the guy they named the space probe after, that has concerns. And others. NASA is not concerned about people who go on a couple missions and don’t go anymore. So, as usual, my comments are being mischaracterized and mocked by fanboys and naysayers. Endless strings of NewSpace dogma defense are posted whenever I challenge those tenets; trivializing radiation being one of Musk’s favorites. Enjoy!

Well….could be you are wrong. Since we do oil wells miles underwater with ROV’s that might be a clue it will work. We will see. Maybe a little too much sci-fi, but all the fairy tales here have to do with a certain “entrepreneur” and I am not a fan.

Not going to be anybody working outside on the Moon. Only initially when necessary and as soon as it is not, no astronaut is going to add to his (and especially her) lifetime dose and hasten the end of their career in space bunny-hopping. As a robot, to haul regolith or ice, I am all for it.

That does not change a single thing I said. I think you tried to do what your NewSpace hero likes to do and I stated that. And you replied with more comments inferring it is…trivial. It is not.

(CNN) When the next astronaut to reach the moon walks on the lunar surface in 2024, she’ll face radiation levels 200 times higher than on Earth.
While Apollo mission astronauts carried dosimeters to the moon to measure radiation, the data was never reported. The first systematically documented measurements of radiation on the moon were undertaken in January 2019 when China’s Chang’e 4 robotic spacecraft mission landed on the far side of the Moon, according to a new study in the journal Science Advances.
Astronauts on moon missions would experience an average daily radiation dose equivalent to 1,369 microsieverts per day — about 2.6 times higher than the International Space Station crew’s daily dose, the study said.”

“(NBC) Depending on when you fly a space mission, a female will fly only 45 to 50 percent of the missions that a male can fly,” Peggy Whitson, the former chief of NASA’s Astronaut Corps, said. “That’s a pretty confining limit in terms of opportunity. I know that they are scaling the risk to be the same, but the opportunities end up causing gender discrimination based on just the total number of options available for females to fly. (That’s) my perspective.” [Radiation Threat for Mars-Bound Astronauts (Video)]
NASA follows radiation exposure recommendations established by the National Council of Radiation Protection and Measurements. The exposure limits for women are about 20 percent lower compared to men “largely due to additional cancer risk for woman from breast, ovarian and uterine cancers,-“

Really Richard…”Calm down”? Your fanboy tactic to make me seem “exercised”?

You just keep posting the same dogma- inferring that radiation is trivial. And mocking me.
Exactly like I said the Fanboys do. NASA does know what it is doing- sending people into space for a certain amount of time and then it is over for them. But you want to portray that as something different. What you wrote is so disingenuous. Thanks for proving me right and self-identifying as a “one note Prophet of Musk.”

Nothing can stop the heavy nuclei component of GCR except mass and distance. I have read a lot more than what Parker has to say, he is just the most famous speaker of truth I can cite to make Musk look like a fool on this issue. Which he, and his fanboys, certainly are. If the lifetime dose is a universal 600 mSv, nobody is going to Mars. Not without that massive shield Parker describes; “The Parker Minimum.”

That is about 500 tons of water for a very small capsule and for any practical crew compartment for long duration missions it will be in the neighborhood of a thousand. For a small crew.

“To protect astronauts from cancer-causing radiation in space, NASA should proceed with proposals to set a universal career-long radiation dose limit of ~600 millisieverts (mSv), says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.”

Lunar polar ice deposits are a long way from the most likely lava tube sites for ready made habitats. It might be most practical to transport water from the deposits to the lava tube bases over land and this would, by way of a water carrier, provide massive radiation shielding for any scientists who wanted access to the lunar surface. In fact, if properly designed, such a vehicle could have a kind of “moon pool” in the underside and the whole vehicle lower itself on it’s chassis over any interesting features the scientists wanted to inspect closely. The vehicle could lower itself over an area the size of a large living room and the scientists could open an airlock hatch and descend to the surface, into “the living room”, for study without getting dosed. A little leakage through the edges, but far better than out in the open. It would still be in a vacuum, but they could take their time.

“What we can predict”?

Not we.

I predict deriving water from lunar ice and constructing habitats will NOT be done by people in spacesuits on the surface. No way, or at least very very little.

It has to be done with equipment remotely operated. Astronauts in spacesuits have extreme difficulty doing simple repair jobs on the ISS in spacesuits. The kind of manual labor you are talking about is not going to happen and not just because of radiation limits.

As I keep stating, underwater operations with ROV’s are the model to reference. “We” used to use saturation divers but they go down now only for very special and difficult problems.

“An instrument aboard the Curiosity Mars rover during its 253-day deep-space cruise revealed that the radiation dose received by an astronaut on even the shortest Earth-Mars round trip would be about 0.66 sievert. This amount is like receiving a whole-body CT scan every five or six days.

A dose of 1 sievert is associated with a 5.5 percent increase in the risk of fatal cancers. The normal daily radiation dose received by the average person living on Earth is 10 microsieverts (0.00001 sievert).”

Lifetime dose is soon going to become a universal 600 mSv for astronauts.
No shiny starships to Muskopolis.

No…you say that is what “he thinks” but far from “expressly.” He did not say that at all. He is applying that inference to conventional spacecraft as presently constructed. NOT nuclear propelled space-ships with massive shielding.

You just twist everything, everything, so it ONLY applies to the NewSpace view of exploration.

NewSpace is a deception. What Elon and many others are pushing is all hype and the numbers- not the dollar numbers, which fanboys always scream about, but the numbers having to do with real physiological requirements- do not support NewSpace tenets. One of which is that radiation is a trivial problem. It is THE problem.

Not realistic for NewSpace fans, but completely realistic for those not hyping the fantasy of a cult leader.

For you, it seems the only “remotely realistic prospect” is what Elon Musk tells you.

Your “endgame” is to promote the NewSpace ideology that it can all be done on the cheap. Transparent.

“-the radiation dose received by an astronaut on even the shortest Earth-Mars round trip would be about 0.66 sievert.
A dose of 1 sievert is associated with a 5.5 percent increase in the risk of fatal cancers. The normal daily radiation dose on Earth is 10 microsieverts (0.00001 sievert).”

Lifetime dose is soon going to become a universal 600 mSv for astronauts.

The minimum amount of the shielding he is describing in water is 500 tons.

“By comparison, the space shuttle can carry a maximum payload of about 30 tons. Water is commonly proposed because astronauts would need it anyway and because it is rich in hydrogen. Heavier elements make less effective shields because the extra protons and neutrons in their nuclei fall in one another’s shadows, limiting their ability to interact with an incoming cosmic ray. To increase the hydrogen content, engineers could use ethylene (C2H4), which has the further advantage that it can be poly merized to polyethylene, a solid, thereby avoiding the necessity for a tank to contain it. Even so, the required mass would be at least 400 tons—still not feasible.“

I acknowledge you are a trying to mislead and misinform and being profoundly dishonest. Disgusting fanboy deception tactic to spin my comments like that. Really disgusting.
You have no honor.

I think it is interesting that the most important piece of hardware that enables NPP is in production right now: The Launch Abort System on the SLS. Any well designed capsule/tower combination makes getting the “pulse unit” primary components into space safely fairly straightforward.

You see to transport the fissile “pits” into space you have to do it with extreme insurance that the HEU or Plutonium does not get blown into a cloud of radioactive debris in the event of a launch anomaly. A capsule/escape tower is about the most foolproof arrangement ever devised for that very purpose. If the pits are appropriately packaged large numbers can be carried and even if the capsule is seriously damaged to the point where humans might not survive, the pits would easily come through it.

In regards to “something much better”, the concept most likely to be what everyone would expect in a nuclear propulsion system has had much theoretical work done on it. Fission Fragment Propulsion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
Enjoy!
Too bad it would require a whole brand new nuclear industry to produce the required Am 242 in usable amounts. I would guess something in the neighborhood of a trillion dollars to make that happen.

The most impractical concept is Zubrin’s nuclear salt water rocket. Very bad idea. Exactly what you would expect from someone who thinks Mars is someplace we should live.

Refuel on the Moon. Autos don’t refuel at 60 miles an hour. They stop and “land” at the gas station. Planes don’t refuel in the air except to prepare for war. They do it in airports. Boats do not refuel at sea, again, unless it is a warship. The take on their fuel in port.

You are the one that is stuck; mired in NewSpace dogma. Do you remember where the whole “depot miracle” began? It was with the falcon 9. The fanboys wanted the small cheap rocket to replace everything- and wrote libraries about how depots were going to do this. And they demonized SHLV’s. Until their cult leader started talking about falcon heavy, which was not really “heavy” but managed to redefine the term to less capability. I remember. You don’t.

Depots are not necessary. Not to go to the Moon. And going anywhere else requires nuclear energy. Not going to Mars without that. And by the time we have real spaceships we probably will pass on human missions to Mars and start with Ceres.

Very few technologies have been studied so long and so well. Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars directed energy weapon programs spent vast sums on shaping nuclear explosions. It is still all classified and directly relates to concentrating and projecting clouds of plasma. What do you want to do with that? They spent nobody knows how much money trying to knock down ICBM warheads and could not make that work- but they certainly know how to make a bomb do what they want. I know what I want that technology to do. There is enough bomb-grade material in storage around the world, not in bombs, just a security problem in storage, for about 200 missions to the outer solar system. The ocean moons of the gas and ice giants. And you can go with a small ship or an immense ship in the hundreds of thousands of tons- by adding a couple teaspoons of tritium to the pulse units. The reason NOT to go is that we cannot build ships anywhere near large enough to take advantage of that energy and it is a waste of fissile material. But there is always breeder reactors on the Moon as an option when we need more. The best reason of all; such spaceships, loaded with a couple thousand such devices each, can deflect any comet/asteroid impact threat to Earth. It is almost as if this propulsion system was designed to do that- instead of pushing a plate they are pushing ice or rock. This is of course not a NewSpace arena. Only governments are going to do this. Nobody is going to hand over nuclear devices to “entrepreneurs.” Likely why such derision and scorn is heaped upon the concept; Elon can’t do it.

If only it made sense to do this but it does not. Not on a scale that comes close to supporting human space flight. Super Heavy Lift Vehicles don’t need this. Unless it is like Starship, which is just a glorified Shuttle external tank and cargo bay with some engines and fins.

If I had to guess I would say it will be one of two ways: either in a small crater that has had a structure covered over with regolith, or in a lava tube. In space…far more difficult to store. Show me some cryo-coolers.

Nobody is going “deeper” in the solar system with chemical propulsion. You already downvoted my comment on that so I expect you are just trying to set me up for some mocking and naysaying.

A large pressurized facility shielded from radiation with some gravity. That is where you have a propellent farm. Also need that to maintain any kind of reusable lander. You could have a hangar bay on a space station also but under the lunar surface is way easier in every way.

Actually, in my opinion, it would be best to start with a big empty stage with a crew compartment in the center and fill it with water brought up from the Moon by robot landers. That way you have people in a place with no secondary radiation from heavy nuclei and completely protected against the worst possible solar event. And the things you can do with a couple thousand tons of water are a very long list. THEN…when you have another one you connect two of them together with a kilometer long tether system and spin them for one gravity. And have a mast sticking out from the center of that system for docking. A “true” space station. Reel in the tether system and bring the two of them together and dock a nuclear propulsion system of some kind and you have a “true” spaceship. Or you could possibly just let the two keep rotating and use some kind of low-thrust electrical propulsion system. I am not a fan of those though.

The third stage of Apollo lit off and sent the capsule/service module/lander on it’s way to the Moon without refueling. The service module lit off and placed the capsule/lander in lunar orbit without refueling. The lander landed and returned to lunar orbit without refueling. The service module lit off again and sent the capsule back to Earth without refueling.

The third stage of Apollo lit off and sent the capsule/service module/lander on it’s way to the Moon without refueling. The service module lit off and placed the capsule/lander in lunar orbit without refueling. The lander landed and returned to lunar orbit without refueling. The service module lit off again and sent the capsule back to Earth without refueling.

Propellent transfer was never anything but an undesirable way to get to the Moon because of a lack of a SHLV.
If you have a SHLV, you do not need, or want, to use propellent transfer.

SpaceX managed to make multiple SHLV launches necessary to do what only requires one.
And the gullible fanboys cheer!

No humans have ever flown past Luna and without nuclear energy likely ever will.

Well…the rocket equation and the gravity well we seek to escape makes the bic/zippo question quite hard to answer doesn’t it? That is what this is all about…how to do that.

I would like to think in a less neoliberal society with a common goal, like solving climate change for example, the most logical path would become clear. It seems like we could perfect our launch vehicle technology step by step. Sacrificing less and less on the altar of the rocket equation till we have something…”sustainable.”

We sustained the Shuttle at a billion dollars a mission for thirty years; about the same as the Saturn V, but trying to go cheap and making it “pay for itself” only trapped us in LEO and killed astronauts. We should have stuck with the Saturn V and the Moon and started with reusing the F-1’s and escape tower and parts of the capsule to start with, and year by year modifying the stages so more and more was brought back and reused. What would we have now?

We might still end up doing something similar…better late than never.

Get some people like climate change activists behind it and popularize it as a way to actually get nuclear weapons OFF the Earth and months away in deep space. We get another rock like Chelyabinsk that does some damage it might change everything. But one must be very careful wishing for something like that. I like nuclear reactors on the Moon and on Earth as long as necessary to make fissile material but not for commercial power. Anything for-profit inevitably degrades till corrected due to corruption and greed and that kind of roller coaster is unacceptable with nuclear energy. Just my opinion.

Not impossible that it could fly. Keep an open mind Vlad.

“-that it would end up costing far more than it would produce. They simply say that they would still favor it, only as a way to ensure the survival of the species.”

Not that much more. And NOT if the components were manufactured on the Moon. You keep spinning this.

“Paying it’s way” compared to what? That is the catch 22 in your little drama, isn’t it Richard? Maybe coal would be cheaper but “cheaper” is not what this is about. You want it to be though. Your contrarian nagging is recreation I guess. You keep making stuff up: Human beings being present are not deleterious if you want to discourage those telecomm platforms from being attacked and want to keep them repaired. You WANT people on nuclear armed spaceships. And I did not say anything about human crewed Space Solar Power platforms.

Incessantly making stuff up to try and discredit anything I post here.
From the paper you cite:

“Our analysis suggests that after the initial investments in lunar mining and space manufacturing and transportation, that the profit margin for producing space solar power is very high (even when selling power below fossil fuel prices). We have investigated the financial scaling of ground launched versus space derived space solar power satellites. We find that for the carbon mitigation case even modernized ground launched space solar power satellites are not financially viable. For space derived solar power satellites, however, the increased demand makes them break even substantially sooner and yield much higher profit.”

And your sad attempt to discredit O’Neill:

“I have to say that this reinforces a suspicion I have long had about O’Neill: He likely understood that space based solar power was not economically viable, but he latched onto it as a way to bootstrap his space colonization scheme,-“

Elon thinks Space Solar is “stupid” because he cannot make it happen. It takes resources only the government can provide. He wants more money and the best he can do is pander to rural video gamers. There you go…Voodoo doctor. That depends on “out of touch with reality” physicists and engineers to make his Mars fantasy come true. One man’s vision is an economist’s fantasy. I guess. Or vice versa.

We will see nothing emerge organically by leveraging technology to serve the economy. We will see people get rich and those billionaires indulge in Mars fantasies and things like strip mining Earth orbit.

Elon is not a physicist or an economist…he is an “entrepreneur.” He has paper on the wall that claims he has some knowledge of those subjects. Good for him but bad for us. Again, the best he has come up with is pandering to rural video gamers to pay for his Mars fantasy. If he is so intelligent, he must understand why O’Neill’s people ruled out Mars as a second home for humankind.

Which means it is all just good fun for him and the only thing that MUST work to keep the cake and ice cream coming is Starlink. Filling LEO with tens of thousands of pieces of space junk.

It is the state that funded the basic research enabling almost everything you are talking about. “Entrepreneurs” are essentially the gamblers that take it and run with it. They are not “unsung heroes”, they are simply looking to cash in on what other people did and paid for. The people who paid the taxes that paid for the basic research often just get to pay for it again, and again, and again. A 91 percent tax rate on top earnings, as in FDR’s New Deal, modifies that into something far better; what made America great.

You are playing the Ayn Rand game and dividing the human race into wealth creators and looters. It is all a bait and switch game. In reality the consumer “creates” the wealth and the “entrepreneurs” who charge whatever people are willing or actually manipulated or forced to pay are the “looters.”
https://www.aei.org/economi…

“I see before us two basic choices. There can be more wars, more restrictions on individual freedom, as we battle in what has to be a zero-sum game over the resources of our planet, or a new flowering opportunity with wealth for all humanity and the arts as we open a new frontier in space with more than a thousand times the land area and the resources of planet Earth.”

Thus spoke the true prophet of space colonization and sadly we now follow a false one. O’Neill envisioned miles-in-diameter artificial hollow spinning moons with humans living on the inner surface. These cities in space would be mass produced eventually in the tens of thousands and even hundreds of thousands. In zero gravity, with solar energy, and the resources of the Moon and asteroid belt, these constructs are actually not a possibility but a certainty once momentum offworld is established. Ultimately Earth becomes a sparsely inhabited adventure tourist destination while uncounted billions thrive in space colonies. With many of these habitats accelerated out of the solar system at a percentage of the speed of light to other stars. World ships.

Unfortunately, O’Neill’s vision depended on state sponsorship of an immense Space Solar Power public works energy project. The Reagan Revolution was the antithesis of any such collective government effort. The present project of a certain wealthy individual to make humankind a “multi-planet species” is also antithetical to O’Neill as Mars was quickly ruled out and considered a dead end early on.

And here we are.

Yeah…Hoover Dam, the Panama Canal…failures like that. The New Deal building highways, bridges, hospitals, colleges. All that is an “outdated model.” While wealth inequality is far beyond anything ever seen in history. All of human history. What you “believe in” is raising the temperature of the planet and may well burn civilization to the ground. That ideology is long past due to be “outdated.”

The basic problem is that those who have everything want the 99 percent that make up the rest of the population to believe that “technology” is more important than “resources.”
Code for money is more important than people. The fundamental resources of a safe place to sleep, clean water, food, medicine….they are what technology is meant to guarantee.

The charity of billionaires will take care of all the unfortunates….riiiiight.

Like trickle-down economics, that is another piece of worn-out propaganda. Those not living in the right-wing echo chamber know what game that is.

“In terms of protection from thievery, money is more important than people who are trying to steal it-“

“Thievery” being taxes of course. And the people stealing it are the poor.

This is the view of the one percent. Not the ninety-nine.
It is very convenient to call the governments that collect taxes corrupt and the problem. Less government means essentially no regulation or taxes and the rich get to do what they want- which is not pay taxes or clean up their messes.

That is the free market scam. And it is wrecking the planet. The best example of this is the Koch brothers- who paid millions over the years, a tiny investment to them, to convince the world that climate change is a hoax.
See how that works?

“-liberty and capitalism are the same thing.”

No hope for you. Have a good day.

Go on Fox News when they are discussing “Freedom” and you can almost always substitute the word “Greed” and the conversation makes perfect sense. Those conversations are most often demonizing taxes or a social program.

Non-Greed based economic systems, like those found in the Nordic Model https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…

– are not neo-feudal. In fact, they score higher than the U.S. in almost every measure of quality of life.

Again….Have a good day.

“It also directs $110 million of that funding to nuclear thermal propulsion development, which was not included in the administration’s proposal.”

NTR’s, at great expense, using a reaction one million times more powerful than chemicals, approximately double the Isp. It is an incredible waste. Nuclear Pulse is the only practical system for a long time to come.

LEO, like Mars, is a dead end in terms of Human Space Flight. All resources should be directed at the Moon. The problem is that any unshielded human crewed platform like the Gateway is the equivalent of a boy scout canoe in the North Atlantic when outside of LEO. To establish a permanent human presence, I would guess the best option, outside of finding a convenient lava tube, is to use a small crater and robot lander to construct a shielded habitat. This might serve to make a human-crewed lander more of a priority:

“The omnibus bill includes $1.195 billion for NASA’s Human Landing System (HLS) program to develop a lunar lander version of SpaceX’s Starship vehicle for the Artemis 3 and potentially future missions. That is the funding NASA requested, although House offered $150 million more and the Senate $100 million more in their individual bills.”

The starship is the most bizarre lander possible. What a mess.

• • Buck86  SLSFanboy Gary, why is it bizarre?! Explain the mess to me.
  • SLSFanboy  Buck86 Joining the troll dogpile huh,? The username is SLSFanboy. Disgusting harassment.

Well…artificial gravity is a requirement but so is a cosmic ray shield, which would be massive, but there is nothing to be said about that. Or it being in LEO, which is a dead end. Or it pandering to billionaut tourists, which is a dead end. Or what it is going to manufacture, which is nothing since there are no products in close to half a century from space stations. As for the mentioned “Gravity Ring”; any rotation close to 3 R.P.M. is very likely not going to be tolerable and going with a conservative 1 R.P.M. the “ring” would be over a mile in diameter. This is actually the way it is going to happen…two multi-thousand ton masses spinning around each other using a approximately kilometer long structure or tether and likely a combined light stabilizing structure and tether system. The main obstacle is where to get the massive amount of water shielding. Bringing water derived from lunar ice up from the Moon requires 20 to 25 times less energy than from Earth. And then, back to what is it going to manufacture- the answer to that might be gravity itself. Factory workers on the Moon, or rather under the Moon, in subsurface lunar industry, may need to go up into Lunar orbit periodically to rehabilitate with one gravity. What are those factories on the Moon making? Space Solar Power components as the solution to climate change.

I am actually not happy to see this for several reasons. It is extremely difficult to “divert” heavy nuclei GCR and this is, as they state, only a half measure.

And “the Halbach Torus” is going to be endlessly hyped as the solution to radiation when it has a low probability of even halfway providing the required protection.

The “Guaranteed to work” solution, described by Eugene Parker (the “Parker Minimum”) is 5 meters of water.

Medusa is the really practical solar sail they could use to take humans to the outer solar system within a ten year apollo time frame. It just doesn’t use our sun and instead relies on tiny momentary suns.

Look at what got us there the first time: a hypergolic pressure fed ablative thrust chamber two stage lander, with a variable thrust landing stage and a second, even simpler, ascent/abort stage. The absolute simplest and most reliable construct possible. Because it had to work.

This time it is going to have to work also. And that 14 story office building has got to do it all, everything the whole Apollo stack did. And we don’t even have any cryocooler hardware yet….or the fleet of tankers to even make this possible. It is a tremendous project compared to a more conventional design like Altair was. Just saying.

So you work in space…and get exposed to radiation often enough. And there is a lifetime dose and if you are a young female that dose is different and exposure accrues…year after year. Living for years, year after year away from Earth and outside of LEO, if you are in that near sea level Earth environment those frequent short term exposures are not a problem because your body can repair itself- to a certain extent.. But if you are already living, 24/7, in an environment where you are constantly getting dosed, it all falls apart very quickly. And humankind as a species is simply not going to go offworld, into an environment that is harmful in that way. If you are young, female, have any notion of bearing children, or imagine children growing up….it is not going to happen. That is why it is “Orwellian” to say GCR exposure is “acceptable” for humans in space. It is the “calling the opposite the truth” which is one meaning of the term “Orwellian.”
That is the best I can do for you Tom. Have a good day.

Well, that is the thing….depending on how you define it, it would not be a “spacecraft”, it would be a “Spaceship.”

I would classify a vehicle with the required massive cosmic ray water shield AND a tether-generated artificial gravity system, providing a near sea level radiation and one gravity environment, AND with a nuclear propulsion system to propel it- since chemicals are essentially useless for those tens of thousands of tons- as a Space-ship.

Likewise, I would classify something with that shielding and artificial gravity but no nuclear propulsion as a Space-station.

A Lunar Cycler is a problem to classify because it might just use a nuclear tug to get it going and rely on periodic rendezvous or some kind of solar electric system to keep “Cycling.”

But, vehicles without the water shield or tether system and chemically propelled, or even NTR propelled, would be classified as Space-craft. What we call a space station now would more properly be a “platform.”

If that is a non-starter than Human Space Flight is a non-starter because that is what we have to have to send people Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit.

I appreciate your civilized discourse. The shiny is actually very striking and beautiful in a sci-fi sort of way. Setting aside the “super heavy”, which is not so striking, I have to say though it is just another Shuttle, except it is bigger and brings the external tank back with it, at a huge penalty in lift. And like the Shuttle, I do not see it being successful…as anything but a second stage. The problem with stacking a third stage on top is obvious- it can only be so tall. If as a second stage Starship could put a third stage with an escape tower/capsule and close to the size of the Apollo stack into LEO, if I recall that was a little under 60 tons, I would be happy with it. Still not a Musk fan, but I would be supporting that particular project.

I claimed “Near Sea Level”, or rather, the expert, Dr. Eugene Parker, specified 5500 meters (about 18,000 feet). The “reality” is that what you get on Earth is not what you get in space. The particles might be measured at a certain energy and mass and summed as Sv but the effects are different. http://www.igpp.ucla.edu/pu…

No…I said “Near Sea Level” and Eugene Parker specifies the same protection that the Earth’s atmosphere provides at 5500 meters, about 18,000 feet.

The data on Ramsar is inconclusive- a very small pull and not very meaningful anyway in regards to something like a Mars mission. You stick with it though. I know you will. Your dogma demands it and you cannot admit anything except the NewSpace trivialization of this problem. Good luck.

Do you know how to stop? You tried to use that to promote your company and now your point is….what?

Could it be, like a good fanboy, you are just trying to fill up the page in hopes that these unfortunate comments casting doubt on your hero go unnoticed? It seems any thread where such comments appear are quickly flooded with pictures of dogs and cartoons and long bloviating analogies.

I believe the best way to get people to and from the Moon is with shielded Lunar Cyclers. Intercepted from Earth they quickly exchange passengers and the same exchange occurs in the closest pass to the Moon. From Earth it would likely be some model of capsule and from the Moon a Lunar Lander. It is obvious how that would work from Earth but from the Moon it could be done a couple different ways. But that is later and we have to start somewhere.

Robot Landers….deriving water from lunar ice, processing some of that water into propellants, and shuttling that water up to large empty stages in lunar orbit, might be what is needed long before any humans are sent there. It might take a couple or more years with robots first. Once we have these massive containers of water, with a crew compartment in the center, everything becomes much easier. I will let the subject of zero G debilitation rest and concede addressing that problem might take several more years- but not having to worry about solar events and having water to make breathable oxygen and propellants out of is the way to start.

So I would say we should be focusing on that first- setting up a place people can survive despite radiation or any possible solar event. When we have that…THEN SEND PEOPLE.

Nuclear Pulse Propulsion. The critical element of the system has been tested over 1000 times. It has an Isp an order of magnitude (and this is not Musk hyperbole) greater than NTR’s. Truth.

Trying to contain a reaction a million times more powerful than chemicals when it is difficult just keeping chemical rockets from melting, is an exercise in futility. At incredible expense, you get comparatively little improvement.

Nuclear Pulse Propulsion. The critical element of the NPP system has been tested over 1000 times. It has an Isp an order of magnitude (and this is not Musk hyperbole) greater than NTR’s. Truth.

Trying to contain a reaction a million times more powerful than chemicals when it is difficult just keeping chemical rockets from melting, is an exercise in futility. At incredible expense, you get comparatively little improvement. NTR’s are a dead end.

People like von Braun with wet workshops. Freeman Dyson with Nuclear Pulse, Eugene Parker with radiation shielding, Paul Spudis with Lunar Resources, and Gerard K. O’Neill with Space Solar Power, had all we need to know figured out long before the SpaceX wunderkind decided he knew it all. The world is slowly being dragged, kicking and screaming, as with the Lunar return, which was verboten for years, toward the realization that NewSpace is the wrong path.

I would guess the structure being discussed would serve to deploy and aid in stabilizing a tether system suspending mult-thousand ton masses, rather than be the actual load bearing part of the system.

And while zero G debilitation is half the problem, the other half that must be solved along with it is cosmic radiation, which requires those thousands of tons of mass, almost certainly water derived from lunar ice.

It is fascinating to see the waffle-comments on this due to NewSpace dogma that has always trivialized any of the physiological requirements. True believers tend to anchor themselves to their false doctrines. The reality is one gravity and near sea level radiation is what astronauts, especially young females, must have for real careers in space.

Just mention a spacex product and all the screaming cheap and hatred for anything not from the mind of Musk magically disappears. Amazing.

The “structure” is not absolutely necessary when using the other requirement for any long duration human missions, which is a massive cosmic ray water shield. With thousands of tons of water involved, the mass and dampening effects make a tether system far more practical.

A Tether Generated Artificial Gravity system (TGAG) is integrated with a Cosmic Ray Water Shield (CRWS) to provide a Near Sea Level Radiation 1 Gravity environment (NSLR1G). This is how human beings are going live and thrive in space. Not with any lesser measures.

Martin has a job waiting for him at SpaceX. Obviously. I would suspect much the same thing happens with anyone who is promoting something like the Starship, or the V-22 for example. It is much like the V-22 and the CH-53K. One is a monstrosity and the other can really lift some stuff. Just like the Starlifter and the SLS.

Koch is burning in the bad place; they made it hotter just for him. His brother will join him and they just might pour some more gasoline on both of them for the reunion. That is what you get for spending a fortune on propaganda convincing people to do nothing to avert a global catastrophe with the potential to kill billions.

That the NewSpace fanboys think space stations are going to be “cheap” and they will be able to take out a second mortgage and get their astronaut wings that way is how the movement started.

Juvenile, ridiculous, harmful to space exploration.

SLSFanboy Michael Weidler 

Another spacex advertisement…thanks for the second hand pot smoke.

Vladislaw  SLSFanboy and how is that different than your non stop never ending advertisements for the SLS? Heck you even advertise it in your name with every post.

Nate  Vladislaw The difference is that he’s right, because he says he is.

SLSFanboy  Nate And you…are cyber stalking me, along with a couple others now. Pretty soon every comment I make will have a long trail of disgusting harassing nonsense replies. So much for free speech.

SLSFanboy  Vladislaw LITERALLY libraries of death-to-SLS comments have been written for years by a legion of Musk fanboys. And you are upset about my views on America’s space program and rocket to the Moon? Pathetic.

Unlike almost everyone else here, I am NOT emotionally invested in any machines. I was a technician and crew on some pretty amazing aircraft and while everyone else waxed poetic over their beauty and exalted place in the universe I never thought of them as anything but…machines. My focus is on humankind not going extinct. Dont’ care at all about Elon or spacex or Boeing or SLS or any of those things. The dominant ideology of the fanboys here makes money the god of this world- it is an Ayn Rand in space kind of thing and it is all bad. Your gang has emotional issues, not me. Probably why I see right through rocket jesus.

“Rocket Cargo” for Space Force? Bizarre and one of those programs that is just plain stupid DOD waste. Space Force should have been disbanded by Joe Biden. It was Trump’s way of giving the military the middle finger, whom he considered “suckers and losers.” Creating a service where none of it’s members go in harm’s way, yet receive all the prestige and benefits of those that do. Classic bone spur. Which, by the way, should be the nickname for their star trek service insignia.

If Space Force had at the bare minimum been given command of the Minuteman launch silos, something could be said for it. But as it is, they sit in front of a screen controlling satellites and drive home for dinner with the family every night. If they had stated their goal was to have humans in space doing something…but they have not. They have nothing meriting their status. They will forever be known as a creation of Trump. Biden should have disbanded them and on the same day recreated them as “Space Corps” and given them some mission that would merit them being a separate service.”

Everytime one of you troll me with that dogwhistle you show the world what a bunch of toxic creeps the Musk fanboys are. Garbage.

Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ  SLSFanboy What do you find so offensive about being called by your actual name?

SLSFanboy  Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ My username is SLSFanboy and that dogwhistle has been used for years to harass and bully someone. You are one of the most vicious and insulting of all of those trying to silence free speech. You know very well because of that, that question is insulting, sarcastic, condescending; it is sick and disgusting all by itself. You know what you are.

Christopher James Huff  SLSFanboy You are Gary Michael Church and SLSFanboy is only the latest of a long, long list of sockpuppets you have used over the years to harass and bully virtually everyone in every space-related online forum or comment section you could find, repeatedly creating new ones to circumvent the inevitable bans and continue your abuse. Maybe if you’d conducted yourself as a decent human being, your name wouldn’t be something to be ashamed of.

SLSFanboy  Christopher James Huff What a disgusting creep you are. Classic fanboy accusing someone of being exactly what Musk worshipers are. You and Hug Doug and a couple dozen others. The Musk cyberthugs that tolerate no ideology except their own twisted Orwellian Cult.

Starship 2.0 is big enough to have cosmic ray water shields. Need 5 meters of water for “the Parker Minimum.” Of course that is thousands of tons of water and most NewSpace fanboys react in shock and outrage at such talk. And using the Starship that way would in effect be a “wet workshop” which also makes NewSpace fans froth at the mouth in rage.

I like it.

So go tell some cancer researchers you want to spend 200 billion dollars of their funding on a space station to crystallize proteins and see how that goes.

I commented a couple days ago that we landed using the simplest, most reliable devices possible; hypergolic pressure fed rockets with ablative thrust chambers. Two of them; one variable thrust for landing and a second one on an ascent/abort stage even simpler.

I think that is what we will land with next time also. Maybe bigger and slightly more complicated, maybe a single stage with multiple engines. But as I also commented, that we have no cryocooler hardware yet tells me that using cryogens might not happen. This is not a good situation.

Very skeptical that spacex is going to land that giant multiple refueled tower on the Moon. Not for a very long time anyway.

“Specifically, the high-quality engines-“

The SLS engines were reusable, but cost more to reuse than to expend. The SRB’s have to be sent to Utah on a train in sections so they never should have been selected of course. The RS-25’s were a little too cutting edge and had to be rebuilt like dragster engines after every flight. This was mitigated during the program but they were still high maintenance. But very powerful and efficient which made the Shuttle, in fact, a Saturn V class launch system. But as I frequently reiterate, it wasted most of it’s lift on a 737 size glider.

The Starship is a more powerful variation of the Space Shuttle, except VTVL instead of VTHL, and it lands the external tank back instead of expending it. That is the only difference between the Shuttle and the Starship. And Starship, like the Shuttle, wastes a huge amount of lift on bringing part of the upper stage, the entire upper stage in fact, back to Earth. It also has no escape system- a critical red flag.

The SLS ended up with shuttle components and we would not spend the money to recover them for reuse because both SRB’s and engines are not really suited to reuse for the reasons I stated. SpaceX supporters habitually make this situation out to be some kind of conspiracy and the end of the world with the great John-Galtish savior Musk as our only hope. So tired of it.

In hindsight the most desirable design feature for the Shuttle was pressure-fed liquid boosters, which, sadly, were a little too expensive and could not meet budget requirements. This would have made reusing the boosters very economical, and prevented the loss of the Challenger. The most undesirable feature was the side-mounting of the Orbiter, which led to the loss of the Columbia. Recovering the engines separately in a module was studied for a Shuttle C cargo version and this would have allowed a much lighter version of the Orbiter to be stacked on top of the core tank- and prevented the loss of the Columbia. Again, in hindsight, the biggest mistake of all was not having an escape tower/crew capsule combination. A mistake that keeps happening.

Starship is a new Shuttle with a different set of problems and, in my opinion, just as likely to fail.

In my opinion no corporation can afford to maintain a LEO space station without massive government sponsorship. Not enough stupid billionaires are willing to pay hundreds of millions to vomit and float in a radiation bath. That pretty much explains why, as I said, spacex fanboys defend the ISS to the bitter end despite it being an example of the “super-pork” they so despise. They have written literally libraries of death-to-SLS comments over the years trying, in effect, to stop America from going back to the Moon, simply because they want that money for their hero. And that is why they will never say anything about ending the ISS despite it being useless and long past due for decommissioning. It is a cult.

“Space is never going to be meaningfully explored or settled by humans via government”

And that worldview is why NewSpace is the worst thing that has ever happened to space exploration. It is “anti-space” because the truth is actually the opposite.

Cheap transportation to do what Vlad? There is nothing out there you cannot get on Earth except for one thing; carbon free energy. Gerard K. O’Neill, a physicist, understood how the scientific method works and came up with how to colonize space. All of his conclusions are still valid. As I keep saying, O’Neill was the true prophet of space colonization, not the false prophet now being followed by so many.

“NASA issued a $776 million modification for the contract Feb. 28 for the three flights, bringing the total value of the contract to $3.51 billion.”

Unfortunately, the best course of action is to deorbit the ISS and focus on the Moon. Immediately.

Where to send the toxic dragon if there is no ISS? Just billionaut tourist trips?

They will quickly run out of uber-rich adventurers when it becomes common knowledge that vomiting while floating in a radiation bath is the adventure. After a few get their faux astronaut wings the novelty will fade.

It is the nature of the toxic crowd that thinks they own this forum. The standard technique of borderline sociopaths is to first trivialize the issue, then mock the solution, then denigrate the person who they cannot silence. Exactly.

“Of course to you, this is not a matter of economic analysis so much as it is a matter of religious faith.”

What a petty insulter you are. Like Trump and his wind turbines. Sad.

Because of Climate Change, it would have to be the “cheapest” in terms of preventing human suffering. But being a worshiper of Mammon, you cannot even understand how that works.

Not how we went to the Moon. And it is not going cheap, but creating an industry to support a settlement that matters. Going cheap is more likely to result in failure.

Space Solar Power is the only industry for the foreseeable future that will enable colonization. And that is going to require a state sponsored public works project. You have it completely backwards.

“The Shuttle was designed by bureaucrats-“
No…it was actually designed by engineers, but they had certain requirements imposed on them, like SRB’s from Utah.

Because they had to be rail-transported they were nowhere near as powerful as the monolithic monsters like the AJ-260 that Aeroject tested in the everglades.They had to be shipped to the cape in segments, assembled, stacked, launched, recovered from the ocean, disassembled, inspected, and then rail-transported back to Utah to be reloaded. SRB’s were not a good idea to start with but if the really big ones had been used it might have been economical. Liquid fuel boosters would have been stacked, fueled, launched, recovered from the ocean, and inspected, all on site very quickly, and could also have been used in cross-feed schemes.

Then there was the Orbiter, which the Air Force wanted to have a huge cargo bay and wing. Due to the limited power of the SRB’s, This meant that to meet even the minimal payload target there could not be any kind of escape system. As it was it actually could lift quite a bit but most of that was wasted on a 737 size glider that was never going anywhere except LEO. The basic idea, which I keep mentioning, is “a Saturn V class vehicle that sacrifices a big tank on the altar of the rocket equation and reuses everything else”, was, and is, an excellent concept.

“The deliberately hyper-expensive ways government pursues it will never allow more than token efforts.”

No…Saturn V worked well because they spent what was required. The Shuttle failed because they went cheap. If the Shuttle had been configured like the SLS, except with pressure-fed liquid boosters, and a separately recovered SSME module, it never would have killed anyone and would still be flying. So it is more about NOT going cheap. See how that works?

The Panama Canal and Hoover Dam were public works projects. That is the difference between what O’Neill envisioned and “entrepreneurship saving the world.” The energy industry is getting plenty rich right now and the result is runaway climate change and a slow motion catastrophe.

“People” are going to get screwed over by this greed on a planetary scale. Space Solar is about the only way to provide a western standard of living to 10 billion people by the end of the century AND solve climate change.
So…”getting rich” is not what anybody with a functioning moral compass cares about.

That is not true at all. Misleading and disingenuous.

The reason humankind is not expanding into the solar system is there is no industry to support habitation. This was the vision of Gerard K. O’Neill. Space Solar Power is the economic engine that will enable space colonies. There is no other industry in the foreseeable future that will get humankind into space.

There is the true prophet of space colonization and there is the false prophet most follow now.

Thank you for some sanity for a change.
I would say that SS might work as a second stage. It will never be human-rated without some kind of escape system and because that is not even being entertained that tells me something.

But all those tanker launches? Not practical at all. I would guess Elon thinks it is all great fun and the only thing that MUST work is his money machine- which is Starlink. And that has a good possibility of turning out to be the next Enron.

“Current space radiation guidelines pertain only to missions in LEO and are not considered relevant for missions beyond LEO. The acceptable levels of risk for space exploration beyond LEO have not been defined at this time and need to be dealt with before sending manned missions to colonize the moon or to deep space, such as a mission to Mars” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4206856/

Honestly? This expectation that the profit motive is going to make us a multi-planet species is the worst thing that has ever happened to space exploration. Simply because so many have now bought into the NewSpace cult it is expected that everything will pay for itself. It is history repeating. That was how they advertised the Shuttle- it would pay for itself by being the national launch vehicle.

Well…according to Mars fans the methane and oxygen will be manufactured from the Martian atmosphere and this has been dogma since Zubrin made his case. Which, if you agree with O’Neill that no natural bodies other than Earth are suitable for colonization, is no case at all.

The Martian atmosphere seems to be the great resource because of aerobraking and propellant manufacture. But the very gravity well that retains that tenuous atmosphere is a huge problem that vastly outweighs the advantages. Icey bodies like Ceres and various moons of the gas and ice giants have very shallow gravity wells and are largely MADE of propellants and many have vast oceans beneath their surfaces. Those are the places to explore with submarines. Mars is a rock.

So…I expect the damnation of SLS will be a chorus here loud enough to shake the roof of heaven. Except…the expected shiny miracle is not what everyone seems to think it is. The large number of “tanker” launches alone are a huge project that makes launching SLS look simple. Starship is essentially just a Space Shuttle that lands the external tank back and has a somewhat larger payload. That’s it.

The way to reduce costs is to buy more flights. It is not like we are only going 4 times. Future SLS iterations can replace the SRB’s with reusables and place the core RS-25’s in a recoverable module. And then you have what the shuttle was meant to be; a Saturn V class launch vehicle that sacrifices a big tank on the altar of the rocket equation and reuses everything else. I cannot say this enough…it was, and is, an excellent concept.

What the spacex fanboys are doing with this endless crusade against SLS is the worst thing that has ever happened to space exploration. Worse than both shuttle disasters. It is anti-space.

Does not bode well for Human Space Flight Beyond Earth Orbit.

We put people on the Moon over half a century ago using pressure fed hypergolic engines with ablative thrust chambers- the absolute simplest and most reliable devices practical; one with variable thrust for landing and one even simpler for ascent, or abort if needed. Neil Armstrong even wanted no electrical system on the ascent engine- just a lever.

I would guess NASA will not assign a program manager because Starship is not something they would be allowed to “manage”, and…compare it to what we landed with originally. Using cryogens without any cryo-cooler hardware to date seems to me to also be an elephant in the room.

And that guy talking about “Our ultimate goal is putting people on Mars,” was, in my opinion, not…reality. We are not going to Mars until we have some massively shielded nuclear propelled “true” spaceships. And by the time we have some of those I would predict that Ceres will be the first destination. Mars is too deep of a gravity well and not much likelihood of an ocean, while Ceres is the opposite. It is as simple as that.

I know I have a fundamental disagreement with most of the people commenting here about the requirements for interplanetary travel. What I mean by a “true” spaceship is that it has a near sea level radiation one gravity environment crew compartment. If not, then it is a space- “craft,” not a space-ship. The massive cosmic ray water shield and tether generated artificial gravity system is NOT going to be propelled by chemical energy. Only nuclear energy will work.

And the Moon is where we get the water shielding and assemble, test, and launch, those nuclear spaceships.

“FDR is not the best example on how to deal with a monster.”

My first reply was moderated into oblivion because I used a bad word.

It is common for conservatives to denigrate FDR, and for “the Libs” to idolize him.

As a progressive, I more than idolize him. The New Deal is near the center of my worldview.

The short version goes like this: Free Markets inevitably concentrate wealth and maximize inequality, and eventually crash societies. Like in 1929. Keynesian economics regulate the free market and provide social safety nets. These programs that guarantee the welfare of the citizenry, regardless of what those who have great wealth want, are supported by progressive taxation. Which means the wealthiest pay the most. This is called “Embedded Liberalism.”

Neoliberalism is an ideology that makes the Free Market the god of this world. It is really just a way the wealthy become demi-gods by manipulating the masses into thinking that is the way it should be. They propagandize those two key functions, Regulation and Progressive Taxation, as oppression and theft. When you hear the conservative talking heads blather about “Freedom”, you can usually replace that word with “Greed” and what they are talking about becomes crystal clear (it almost always has to do with money).

When I read unflattering assessments of FDR I usually attribute them to a decade short of a full century of neoliberal influence. Paid for by those who used to pay a 91 percent tax rate.

This has EVERYTHING to do with the subject being discussed. The fossil fuel industry has brainwashed a whole generation, courtesy of the Koch brothers. And another bad actor has also steered the collective consciousness away from Space Solar.
The ISS needs to end; the Moon, and the only viable space industry, is waiting.

I greatly appreciate the opportunity to express my views here. Thank you, Jeff Foust.

“It will be technically difficult to divorce this marriage.”

Not really. Abandon the ISS and splash it. Not technically difficult.

“All alternatives, short and long term, should be explored. If necessary, even the use of SLS should be considered, diverted from a lunar goal that is ambiguous. “

Splash the space station to nowhere and the goal is no longer ambiguous. I becomes crystal clear:

Reestablish a permanent human presence in space, but not in LEO; in the vicinity of the Moon.”

Negative and pessimistic article. Thumbs down Dwayne. Did you even think to mention that likely the only way to provide a western standard living to a population of 10 billion near the end of the century, while solving runaway climate change and preventing the wrecking of civilization, is…Space Solar Power?

Did it occur to you that factories on the Moon can manufacture Space Solar Power satellite components with zero environmental regulation and no carbon footprint on Earth? That rockets launched from Earth to the Moon with factory tooling and equipment, using hydrogen, would also not contribute carbon?
Do better next time.

Gerard K. O’Neill envisioned Space Solar Power as a state sponsored public works energy project. Like Hoover Dam except funded like Apollo. He saw it as the economic engine that would enable space colonization.

“So depressing to read the comments here inferring what a bad idea anything not made by private industry to make a fortune is- and somehow not how the world works. The world might work a certain way but it does not necessarily have to. If we don’t do something that is good for everyone we just might end up as that extinct species alien archeologists knew were too stupid to survive. I am pretty sure all the video gamers who think low latency is going to pay for a thousand shiny starships are going to be disappointed.”

Most of the posts that so gravely offended the Musk fanboys appear to have been deleted. Maybe one or two cut and pasted here in earlier entries. Oh Well.

“-carrying enough shielding is impractical-“
The “problem” is that this statement is bassackwards; NOT carrying enough shielding is impractical. It is the elephant in the room, the wall that Human Space Flight advocates keep trying to get around- but there is no getting around it. If humans are to live and thrive in space then they must have a near sea level radiation one gravity environment. What is being promoted right now is the equivalent of going into the North Sea in the winter in a dugout canoe and calling that transatlantic trade. That is what NewSpace is doing- pushing dogma that is a farce and guarantees failure.”

“Whose “current view”? I suggest you look at that article I cited and it will be made clear to you that you have to stop the heavy nuclei component of galactic cosmic radiation completely because it hits light shielding and generates secondary radiation. Which is why you would NOT go into a “storm shelter” in conventional spacecraft because the radiation level is far higher than in the rest of the craft. Except during a solar storm…then you want to stop that flood of lighter radiation particles from profoundly dosing you. Do you understand how that works?”

“People get off planes after a few hours and the body has some ability to repair the damage but cosmic radiation is different. It is a problem according to the scientist who is the acknowledged expert on space radiation. They named that solar probe after him; Eugene Parker. You say it is not a problem, but science says otherwise. You might want to reread that classic laymen’s guide, “Shielding Space Travelers” in Scientific American.

And if you have “no idea” what we will be doing on the Moon, you skipped over most of what I wrote and maybe this is not the right forum for you to express your views.”

“Nobody is going to be working on the surface of the Moon. That is a given. All those pretty graphics of Moonwalkers in spacesuits are pure fantasy. Not much manual labor can be done in a spacesuit anyway and as I explained, the accrued dose will determine how long a person works in space. Being on the Moon is going to be about being below the surface. Only emergencies will provoke EVA’s in suits. The acceptable lifetime dose is not going to be anywhere near as high as it is presently because the cancer risk, especially for young females, is completely unacceptable. That is the reality.”

https://cbboff.org/UCBoulde…
“The link is how you do Cyclers.

The idea is to intercept a Cycler and exchange passengers, getting the passengers on the Cycler behind shielding and on their way to the Earth or Moon and the passengers getting off for Earth or the Moon down to the surface as quickly as possible to minimize dosing.

This is because a career in space will be determined by a lifetime dose and how much permanent debilitation is incurred. While zero G is not a concern for a cislunar transit it would be for the crew of the Cycler who likely do a lengthy tour of duty. A cislunar transit would add to an astronaut’s lifetime dose and any solar event, even in a “storm shelter” would cut short that career. That is how this works.
The rest of your reply was mostly a Starship advert and in my opinion Starship is going to be successful as an unmanned second stage and not as intended.”

“I envision development of the Moon as a series of steps toward it becoming essentially a giant factory for building first space solar power components and then large metal constructs like Nuclear Pulse Propulsion discs and sections of miles-in-diameter space colony habitat. The NPP discs being used for spaceships and to lift those sections off the lunar surface. But long before that a way to get people, not so much equipment, to and from the Moon will be needed. A fleet of shielded Lunar Cyclers would travel around the Earth/Moon and provide safe passage without any dosing, either from solar events or cosmic radiation. These Cyclers will just go round and round and they have to be intercepted by spacecraft launched from the Earth and from the Moon to embark and disembark passengers. If Starship is going to lift cargo into LEO then it might be able to launch “tugs” carrying passenger capsules to intercept Cyclers. I would guess this tug would burn three times, first to escape Earth orbit, second to match the Cycler, and third to reenter, the capsule, carrying passengers from the Moon back to Earth, would then separate from the tug and they would reenter separately for reuse. This would be different than a cargo tug which would burn direct to the Moon and the engine would separate for free return, reentry, and reuse. In my opinion this is the best way to support Moon development, by NOT refueling Starship in orbit but by using it simply as a second stage.”

“It is not that I hate Musk personally, he is a human being just like everyone else and I have to forgive due to my religious beliefs. It is his rabid gang of libertarian followers I cannot stand. As a New Deal Progressive I despise this NewSpace cult as profoundly anti-American. That said, I can see Musk radically changing his agenda and modifying his project and making it work, but it is unlikely.
1. The 30 odd engines is a non-starter. SpaceX needs a “Super-Raptor” in the 2 million pound thrust range.
2. Starship would work as a second stage with a third stage on top of it; which means it is just too tall and so that 1st stage needs to be separated into two side boosters. This results in a Saturn V class vehicle that lands back in three pieces. No chopsticks.
3. Forget Starlink and Mars and go to the Moon to build Space Solar Power satellites. Get the DOD to fund it.

There you go.”

“The ability to hover over a spot on the Earth, from over 22,000 miles up, has always fascinated me. This would seem to me to be the place for large space stations, able to accomplish many missions, and also as extensions of the nation each is poised above or at least an embassy of a sort when over other areas, or over the ocean. How to accomplish this space station in GEO is a difficult question to answer. One of the first criticisms of such crewed platforms is they are not stable enough, that the movements of the crew generate vibration and oscillations that affect positioning and observations. This is where the descriptor “large” comes into play and also relates to the true obstacle to humans in GEO, which is radiation.

By use of Super Heavy Lift Vehicles double-hulled “wet workshops” can be sent to the Moon to be captured and inserted into lunar orbit. The empty sphere-inside-a-sphere stage would then have it’s outer envelope gradually filled with water brought up from the Moon and derived from lunar ice deposits. When filled, this envelope would act primarily as a massive cosmic ray shield and would also serve several other functions. The required thickness of the envelope dictates the spherical shape and the name of this concept; the “Fat Workshop.” By connecting crew compartments together with an approximately one mile long tether system, with roughly equal masses at either end, the result is a tether generated artificial gravity system. The resulting near sea level radiation one gravity environment enables long duration human missions on space stations, Lunar Cyclers, and interplanetary spaceships. These water shielded crew compartments could then be transited back across the cislunar sea to GEO for use in space stations.

This “Bola” configuration would allow a human crewed GEO space station and an equipment mast attached to the center of the tether system would enable the stable positioning of desired sensors. Such stations, with their shielded electronics, would be invulnerable to even a Carrington level solar event, with externals being repaired as needed through conveyors on the mast and cable-cars in the tether system.

The advantages of such a ring of space stations are obvious. Laser brooms operated from these stations could sweep lower orbits free of space junk and a constant flow of repair parts and upgraded components would maintain this ring of telecom platforms around Earth.”

“The Transport Layer is a “proliferated” constellation, meaning it has a large enough number of satellites that it would be extremely costly for an adversary to try to take it down.”

It is not “extremely costly” to take down satellites. In fact, it would not take many launches to flood all of Earth orbit with clouds of tungsten pellets and create a Kessler Syndrome, an apocalypse for all overhead assets. If you are losing a war and have done some preparation to fight battles and take advantage after the sudden loss of all satellites, it is the smart move.

This is classic Military Industrial Complex profiteering (contracts worth nearly $1.8 billion); weaponizing space and escalating the risk of MAD for a couple bucks.”

“The AJ-260 was indeed a marvel and much larger ones, truly immense SRB’s were seriously considered, like the 15 million+ pound thrust notional 325 inch solid AKA: Nova GD-S. Status: Study 1963. Thrust: 69,047.00 kN (15,522,383 lbf). Specific impulse: 263 s. Specific impulse sea level: 238 s. Burn time: 116 s. Height: 60.40 m (198.10 ft). Diameter: 8.30 m (27.20 ft). Unfortunately the toxic byproducts of SRB’s make them problematic. I would like to see a ocean-recovered pressure-fed ammonia booster studied. The M-3 was really the lost opportunity; A 3 million pound thrust hydrogen oxygen engine.” I look at Starship and I think, they could make that just a second stage with a big hydrogen oxygen engine and a couple small ones for steering and landing, and replace the “super heavy” with a couple side-mounted pressure-fed boosters. It would have been a great Space Shuttle with the two boosters recovered at sea and the Starship going around the world from parking orbit to land back at the launch site. And a third stage going to the Moon. Instead we were trapped in LEO for half a century.

“It is pretty clear that Rocket Jesus is a religion for many who comment here. I doubt you have the vast engineering or pediatric expertise to get away with advising me on space colonies. The “we don’t know” hammer that is so popular to beat other people over the head with is not convincing. “Even if it is not colonized” sounds like you are on one side and “planetary chauvinists” sounds like you are on the other. That means you are on the fence, or more likely a high horse, and you are telling me…what? Whatever you are trying to get at, I made a comment, and your reply was essentially meaningless. But thanks anyway. And Mars is pretty deep gravity well to be shooting stuff into space from. I am thinking you meant the Moon, which is an O’Neill concept.”

“-those who loathe his guts, and those who think he can do no wrong. You’ll find a handful of the former here, but virtually none of the latter.”

“Congrats on the engineer paper on wall. Cred bragging on a forum like this is a high horse and indeed, you are looking down on me from a great height. You might be good with numbers but you have a problem with cognitive dissonance if you think “virtually” nobody is worshipping Musk here. Probably because you also secretly worship his shadow and are trying to hide it. You see, I have played this game with NewSpace fanatics for going on a decade now.

“The point here is not to impugn O’Neill or his ideas, but to echo his clear belief that dogmatic thinking does no good in engineering or in science.”

I think your “point” actually is to “impugn”, to poison the well and trivialize any criticism of NewSpace as somehow unfair and counterproductive. I am not interested, not in Mars, and not in you wasting any more of my time. Have a good day.”

“I say no one here worships Musk because I recognize what real worship entails. Calling people who think differently ‘NewSpace fanatics’ is a good way to justify your hatred of them, but as you have said you’re a Christian, it goes completely against what Christ said we should do.”

Like I said brother, you have some cognitive dissonance issues. My presbyterian God informs me on what is going on with the majority of the people commenting here. They worship money as the god of this world, and the only sacred and holy things to them are profit and greed. Their Tony Stark/John Galt/Howard Roark demigod has a cult following now, much like Trump. Watching his last rally, I could not but notice the deference paid to him by his sycophants in the audience asking questions. Like Berger from Ars Technica, for example, whose website runs a blatant spacex infomercial. It reminded me of Trump’s cabinet fawning on him. It is the cult of personality and neoliberal ideology is the fundamental base of it all. The science is “clear”; climate change is going to wreck civilization unless a way to provide a western standard of living for a population of 10 billion near the end of this century is found. O’Neill and his students provided the solution. Musk is the anti-solution. Rocket Jesus is actually Rocket anti-christ.

Have a good evening.

Two of the most vicious cyberthugs that wallow in the cesspool of Muskrat fanaticism have recently made comments and have commenced blowing the “Gary” dog whistle. Disgusting GIFs and endless harassment is on the way. Meanwhile, the comments keep going up:

“I envision development of the Moon as a series of steps toward it becoming essentially a giant factory for building first space solar power components and then large metal constructs like Nuclear Pulse Propulsion discs and sections of miles-in-diameter space colony habitat. The NPP discs being used for spaceships and to lift those sections off the lunar surface. But long before that a way to get people, not so much equipment, to and from the Moon will be needed. A fleet of shielded Lunar Cyclers would travel around the Earth/Moon and provide safe passage without any dosing, either from solar events or cosmic radiation. These Cyclers will just go round and round and they have to be intercepted by spacecraft launched from the Earth and from the Moon to embark and disembark passengers. If Starship is going to lift cargo into LEO then it might be able to launch “tugs” carrying passenger capsules to intercept Cyclers. I would guess this tug would burn three times, first to escape Earth orbit, second to match the Cycler, and third to reenter, the capsule, carrying passengers from the Moon back to Earth, would then separate from the tug and they would reenter separately for reuse. This would be different than a cargo tug which would burn direct to the Moon and the engine would separate for free return, reentry, and reuse. In my opinion this is the best way to support Moon development, by NOT refueling Starship in orbit but by using it simply as a second stage.”

“se jones: Gary, why don’t you slither back under that rock you’ve been hiding under, you’re not welcome here.”

“se jones- Ball Peen Hammer: Just goad Gary into spouting some revolutionary violence talk, as soon as he starts talking about shooting new-space promoters, Jeff will have Disqus block his addresses.”

se jones-Ball Peen Hammer: Figures that he’s a Bernie bro communist. Manned geo comsats, atomic bomb propelled giant spacecraft, recycled world socialism…same level psychotic delusions. That’s entertainment.

“I can’t have a conversation with you if others are going to attack me. I would direct you to the classic article for the layman on space radiation written by the world’s acknowledged expert on the subject, “Shielding Space Travelers” by Eugene Parker- the guy they named the space probe after. Nothing stops heavy nuclei except 5 meters of a hydrogen rich material. There is no magical force field that is going to stop heavy nuclei. That would be magic. A great deal of misinformation has been put out by those who don’t believe in Feynman’s famous space shuttle quote about what is required for a technology to work. Have a good day.”

Not the war in Ukraine; the war against the Musk Cult. A new tactic is to delete the comment that is being attacked and replace it with a “sorry, I can’t discuss that with a Fanboy in the room calling me a liar.”

“You get what you pay for. You want to go to the Moon you need a vehicle that can get you there. If you believe, with your eyes watering, that this is not worth the tax dollars- then write your congress person. Why cry about it to me? It is a Super-Heavy Lift Vehicle that can send crews directly to the Moon and that sounds perfect to me. There is no other SHLV ready to go. Have a good day.”

“It is going to take America back to the Moon. If it is your political farce and failure of government, you own that. It is my victory and a triumph for Americans.””

“Write your congressperson and tell them you want everything privatized. I am a progressive and despise NewSpace ideology. You are complaining to me why?”

“You don’t have a clue about what you are talking about. America went to the Moon by way of a government agency directing industry to build them what their mission-oriented engineers wanted…not what industry and their profit-oriented boardrooms wanted. Certainly not what a billionaire hobbyist wanted. Why is “NASA” going to the Moon? To explore? For national prestige?

The Government is so tangled up with Neoliberal agendas it cannot state the most logical goal that would justify funding space over DOD projects. That goal being Space Solar Power as the solution to climate change.”

“To provide a near sea level radiation environment requires 5 meters of hydrogen rich shielding. There are no magic magnetic fields that stop heavy nuclei according to Dr. Eugene Parker- the recognized authority on the subject. 16 feet of water (the most likely medium since this would be used in a closed loop life support system) surrounding any space quickly adds up to thousands of tons and for a spaceship with more than a couple astronauts on a multi-year mission the space required equates to tens of thousands of tons of water. That is a true statement. Without shielding and artificial gravity astronauts will suffer dosing and debilitation on long duration deep space missions. TomDPerkins is lying about the shielding not being required because it violates NewSpace dogma.”

Great video posted on a forum crawling with spacex fanboys. It drives them nuts.

“I have three suggestions for Elon.

1. Change the program from Starlink and Mars to Space Solar Power and the Moon.

2. Build a 2 million pound thrust engine to go along with Raptor. Super Raptor.

3. Send up that fundamental building block to get humans off of Earth: the “Fat Workshop”, a double-hulled minimum 60 foot diameter stage. Fill the 16 foot thick outer envelope with lunar water and then attach something of equal mass with a mile long tether and spin at around one RPM and you have a Near Sea Level Radiation 1Gravity habitat. That is how humans get into space.

Once you have those workshops going into space you can put more and more people up there and working in factories under the lunar surface. You can make the workshops into Space Stations (in lunar orbit and in GEO), Lunar Cyclers, or Spaceships. First you start making Space Solar Power satellites and then you can build giant miles-in-diameter space habitats. And finally, with Beam Propelled shuttles you can start bringing human beings into space in large numbers.

And that, Mr. Musk, is how you do it.”