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"What started as an April Fool joke by Google for 2008 called Project
Virgle is now a real and genuine effort by an increasing number of
people to create ideas and ways in which humankind can live
sustainably in space using free and open source technology. This
project is a place for all space enthusiasts to cooperate on
simulations of space settlements. Rather than argue whether L5 or Mars
or the asteroids or the Moon or the rings of Saturn should be
humankind's first space settlement, we could be asking what is common
between those efforts so that that groundwork can be shared."

And then the (real) one-man groups out there that talk over this list.
I think we are seeing a different way of doing things happening, but
at the moment lots of the engineering knowhow seems to be locked up in
those old dinosaurs. (and if I am wrong, then all the better)

I don't know how seriously joking Google can be when they are putting
forward money for things like the Google Lunar X Prize.

- Bryan

Plaintext of the article that was linked to:

In 1992 as a student enthusiastically working on projects associated
with the Shuttle, tethers in space, small satellites, and the Space
Exploration Initiative (SEI), I, along with some fellow students wrote
papers about technologies that could be used in the return to the Moon
effort. One conference that we wrote a paper for was the American
Society of Civil Engineers Space 1992 conference in Denver Colorado,
which at that time was a wellspring of great academic and research
interactions regarding practical approaches to building Lunar and Mars
outposts.

During this time I kept a daily diary of my interactions as this was
literally at the dawn of today's Internet and we still used paper for
many things. At this conference were many NASA luminaries and at one
panel discussion a startling, and in hindsight prophetic statement was
made. The statement that is in my diary goes "SEI by 1994 or will not
happen until after 2004". The person that made this statement was the
head of NASA Code X (X for exploration), and his name was Dr. Mike
Griffin. Dr. Griffin also stated that without the SEI the United
States would begin to fall behind in aerospace technology. It seems
that with 14 years of hindsight that Dr. Griffin was exactly right on
both counts.

Those of us who were disappointed with the demise of SEI shared the
frustrations that I am sure that Dr. Griffin shared and is trying to
fix today with the ESAS architecture. NASA is furiously working to
make the Ares 1 overcome its problems while also looking to the future
in the development of the Ares 5 and the retirement of the Shuttle.
However, there are many of us out here who were around then, I have
written before, think the same forces that killed SEI are going to
kill the ESAS architecture and Constellation systems. The chances of
this are high enough that like a prudent military commander, we need a
plan B for space. This is not going to come from NASA just as there
was no plan B in 1993. Therefore as a service to the community that is
desperate for a plan B, the following plan is offered for
consideration.

Critical Features of Plan B

The follow-on to the shuttle and the vehicle that returns humans to
the Moon is not a business decision, but a political one. Therefore
political considerations are paramount. At this time there are four
primary political considerations that any plan B has to address and
these are:


Reap the science harvest for the U.S. and International partners for
the $100 billion spent on the International Space Station.


Workforce retention and continuity.


Open the Moon and beyond to exploration while leaving enabling low
earth orbit as the domain of commercial space


Close the American human spaceflight gap as much as possible

These four considerations force a Solomon's choice on NASA, Congress
and the aerospace community. We cannot have it all so we have to make
choices on how to carve up the space program into viable chunks that
the nation can afford and can buy into in the moral choices between
space and other priorities. As military strategists are wont to say,
the perfect is the enemy of the good, so the question is, is there a
"good" solution that satisfies the above requirements? In other words,
is there a possible politically workable plan B?

The problem with positing a plan B today is that NASA has been
pummeled for the past three years in relation to plan A and has put up
their defensive shields and will not consider anything but the current
plan. This is too bad as the agency and its engineers are working very
hard to make the current system work, but it is highly unlikely that
the current plan is going to be funded after the election, just like
in 1993. Therefore we have to do it for them (I have received a lot of
professional input on this but most of them work on the current
contracts and are more than willing to allow me to fall on the sword
and make Dr. Griffin mad on this in the hopes that something
constructive will come out) and hope that if Dr. Griffin or his
successor sees that plan A is dead that they will remember plan B and
make it work.



Shuttle C + EELV + ISS + International Participation as Plan B

Shuttle C

There have been many variations of Shuttle Cargo (C) designs over the
years so a clarification is necessary. The lowest cost, fastest
schedule system for a Shuttle C is the version shown in the image here
of the version that basically is a Shuttle with the wings and crew
compartment removed. A Shuttle C with this capability could loft about
45 metric tons to ISS and as much as 52 metric tons to a 28.5 degree
orbit.

Critics will correctly immediately point out that this is inadequate
for boosting a human mission to the Moon. However, if the payload is
sent to the International Space Station, these payloads can be
aggregated into enough payload with two launches of a the Shuttle C
and an EELV-lofted CEV to do a lunar mission. It may be that we will
have to sacrifice the capability to send four crew to the Moon but
that is three better than zero.

The value of the Shuttle C as configured here is that it requires no
changes to the launch pads at KSC, no changes to the VAB high bays,
and only minimal changes to the payload handling system at the pad to
deal with the longer length (85 feet vs 60 feet) for the extended
cargo bay. In the original Shuttle C studies of the late 80's and
early 90's the cost for developing the system was minimal, less than a
billion dollars according to an external report and no more than $2
billion by NASA. If you include a recoverable SSME pod this might go
as high as four billion dollars but would eliminate the $35-$50
billion for the development of the Ares 1 and Ares 5. It would take a
lot of Shuttle C flights and years of operations to equal that amount
of money.

As an engineering solution the Shuttle C as described is far from
optimum. It does not fully take advantage of the throw weight of the
Shuttle system as it is volume limited and a larger volume would be
nice. However, larger volume would require a lot more changes at the
Cape, which negates the larger cargo volume, especially if you want
this system to fly soon. Further, these losses are offset in that
performance is at least partially used in getting the system up to ISS
or to a higher orbit. As a political solution it does solve three of
the four problems above. It is becoming increasingly clear that the
Shuttle is going to fly beyond Sept 10, 2010 and Congress may force
the issue as it pertains to the gap in human spaceflight and the
ability to fly spare parts to the station. A Shuttle C with the same
cargo carrying ability and connections as the orbiter could carry
anything that has ever been designed by NASA for the orbiter. This
brings in another facet of why this is a good solution: our
international partners.

The Role of ISS in Lunar Development

For years now our European partners have been upset because it seems
like the day that their investment of tens of billions of dollars in
hardware is lofted into orbit, NASA wants to walk away from that
investment. Congress has been less than thrilled about this as well.
Today NASA says that this must happen as it is not efficient to go
through the station to get to the Moon. While this may be technically
correct, it is politically tone deaf and in the end self-defeating.

The station, even at 51.6 degrees inclination, is an amazing outpost
in space. With the truss almost complete, the European module in place
and the Japanese Kibo addition just weeks away, the station is
becoming what we always dreamed it would be, our first outpost in the
sky and while it is far from the perfect location, it is a good
location to support return to the Moon. From there we can take
advantage of the European, Japanese, and even Russian cargo and human
carrying systems. This also extends to the commercial systems such as
the SpaceX and Orbital Sciences COTS systems. Eventually if SpaceX
gets their Dragon human carrying system operational, it is conceivable
that non NASA explorers could depart from ISS to the Moon. How would
this be accomplished?



During the SEI Era there was an amazing cadre of engineers who sought
to maximize the utility of the Shuttle system to support exploration.
One of the concepts shown here (designed by Brand Griffin and
illustrated by Paul Hudson) was a lunar lander that would fit in the
cargo bay of a Shuttle or Shuttle C. This lander carried its payload
in a center section where it could be easily lowered to the surface, a
much simpler arrangement than the top loaded payloads that are
required when a conventional launch vehicle is used. The Shuttle C
lander used four RL-10 engines in a horizontal arrangement that took
advantage of the layout of the long and narrow cargo bay, which moots
the argument by some that the cargo bay layout is insufficient for a
lunar lander. With modern control systems and RL-10's used at 50%
power this system provides an abort to the surface fully redundant
system. This horizontal arrangement would negate the need for heavy
lifting devices to remove payloads from top loading lunar landers.

This system could be sent to the Moon by itself ahead of the human
crew that would depart from the station via a concept developed during
the late 90's by NASA as part of their Orbital Aggregation and Space
Infrastructure System (OASIS) study carried out under their
Revolutionary Space Concepts studies office. This concept called a
Crew Transfer Vehicle or CTV looked like this:



NASA OASIS Crew Transfer Vehicle (CTV) (Reusable)

This reusable vehicle, when married to an aerobrake, would allow for
crews to be transferred from the station to lunar orbit and back
again. In order to do this there needs to be a transfer stage. This
transfer stage could be reusable or expendable, brought up on the
Shuttle C as a payload and could use the same RL-10 engine packs as
would be used on the Griffin horizontal lander.

There has been a lot of very competent work done on this concept and
at least part of it was the NASA baseline at the beginning of the SEI
era. The problem this was that that the space station had to be built
before anything else could happen, along with a heavy lift launcher
(Shuttle C). Well we have the station now and a Shuttle C solves a lot
of the problems that confront the program now. That leaves the EELV to
deal with. Also, going through the station gives a perfect entry for
ESA, our long-suffering European partners, to participate. The Ariane
V could be used to bring up cargo and payloads, including extra
propulsion packs. A slightly modified ATV could be used to provide an
initial boost of the CTV from the station to a higher orbit, to
increase the total system performance. The Japanese and Russian ISS
partners would also have a seat at the table and could contribute to
the ultimate return to the Moon, one that works with our friends,
rather than leaving them in the lurch with the billions that they
invested in the station infrastructure.

EELV/Orion

The last part of this equation to deal with is the Orion. Part of the
reason for the gap is that NASA is trying to develop a launch vehicle
with inadequate performance at the same time they are trying to build
a vehicle that can carry crews to the station as well as to the Moon
and beyond. This is creating enormous problems for the NASA and
contractor teams that so far have not been solved. The General
Accounting office has roundly criticized such practices in the Defense
Department in a newly published evaluation of the reasons for the lack
of cost control of military space and other programs. If the GAO
report findings hold for NASA (which is being done by the same
contractors), we can expect huge overruns and there are indications
that this is already happening in the Orion/Ares programs.

In the plan B outlined above, the Orion vehicle would no longer carry
crews to the Moon, so a lot of mass savings could be had that would
solve the weight problem. It would solve it so well that no longer
would the CEV have to ride on the Ares 1 and that part of the system
becomes no longer necessary. The latest iterations of the Ares 5 no
longer use anything from the Ares 1 but the J2-x engine. Since with
the Shuttle C the Ares 5 becomes a moot point, tens of billions of
dollars can be saved by just moving a lighter weight, less demanding
Orion that only goes to ISS over to the Atlas V or Delta IV heavy
launch vehicle. The J2-x would survive and would still provide its
role for an Earth Departure Stage.

This cannot be an impossible dream in that both Robert Bigelow and
Elon Musk are designing similar vehicles. Also, by reducing the number
of requirements that each system has to satisfy, lower development
costs can be had and the savings applied to doing things on the Moon
that we must do to open the space frontier. With this approach and by
standardizing hardware, the same avionics that are used for the Orion
could be used for the CTV, the lunar lander, and any other hardware
that we send to the Moon.

Synthesis

This missive started out with the contention that with an election
coming up and with none of the current candidates expressing
enthusiasm for increasing NASA's budgets by the amount that is
necessary to support the current ESAS plan, we need a plan B. This
plan B must solve the political problems of workforce retention, close
the American human spaceflight gap, enable ISS utilization, bring in
international participation, and preserve our ability to go to the
Moon in a budget-constrained environment. In 1992 our current NASA
administrator stated that if SEI did not happen by 94 that it would be
delayed to 2004 and history has proven him right. He has worked
mightily to create momentum that will keep going after this election
but with the problems that daily crop up with both the Ares 1 and Ares
5, and with the unhappiness in Congress over making Brevard county
Florida a ghost town as happened after Apollo, we must develop a plan
B that Congress can buy into. In 1993 there was no plan B, and it was
only with the incorporation of the Russians as a foreign policy goal
that the space station itself survived by only one vote in congress.

The above is by no means the only idea out there and technically
perhaps not the best, but the perfect is the enemy of the good, and
with a good plan B, we can do the things we need to do while not
requiring more money than our congressional investors are willing to
spend on this effort. I don't fault Dr. Griffin in his planning as I
know that he is amazingly dedicated to this effort and shares our
vision of a positive future, but without that plan B, it is unlikely
that we will have any plan at all.