How do I do this different yet stay true to the concept?

[Laie]

As some of you no doubt have heard often enough, I'm trying to do a 1950s space program, according to plans compiled by von Braun and as pictured in magazine illustrations of the time. My attempt at devblogging can be found here.

Now, what bugs me is the lunar landing. It would be an expedition-style thing with some 40-odd crew spending a fortnight on the moon, doing excursions in hydrazine-powered tracked vehicles. So far, that's fine with me. However, the landers are pictured like this:

And I'm pretty certain that I don't want to do it quite like that. For one thing, they're tall and spindly. What's worse, they're not reusable (while most other vessels are, on a "gas and go" basis) and, perhaps the biggest problem, no LOR. Although *a lot* of docking and refueling (and handwaving) goes into assembling these vessels in the first place (160ft tall, 4370 tons, if you zoom in on the crew module you can see a human for scale), the landers as pictured are designed to carry the fuel for the return trip all the way down to the surface.

This makes no sense. With docking and refueling being as easy as they make it out to be, a LOR kind of mission should be a no-brainer.

Actually, the "right" way to do it would probably look a lot like the 1969 integrated program plan:

...but that concept strikes me as far too advanced, even without a nuclear shuttle. Besides, I don't think I really want to set up a regular moon service.

So, I'm looking for ideas (or historic proposals) that would allow me to make several (but not regular) visits to the moon while keeping with the general jive of my 1950s space program. Spaceships being ships and requiring a proper crew of several specialists is an important part of that. As is sending small fleets for mutual support, because the occasional breakdown has to be expected as a matter of course.

I can't quite think of something. Can you? Then please tell me.

[Geschosskopf]

1 hour ago, Laie said:

I can't quite think of something. Can you? Then please tell me.

Well, making a lander like that is no problem if you use a few mods.  @NecroBones' Lithobrake for the mondo legs, stock Mk3 or @Angel-125's DSEV for the crew section, and one of several options for the spherical tanks (plus of course RealFuels for the propellants specified).  Easy enough to stick a docking port on top and then you can refuel it as desired.  The bigger question to me is, what's the lifter for that supposed to look like?  The lander doesn't look like it has many natural dividing planes to facilitate orbital assembly.

As to why this was designed for no LOR, it seems simple to me.  With 40-odd guys at risk here, this thing had better be able to get its own self back to Earth.  That way, you have a safety net.  If the lander itself breaks down, the support fleet provides Plan B.  OTOH, if the lander actually required the support fleet, there is no Plan B.

 

 

[Corona688]

How about a big, reusable miner as a lander?  The monster in your image doesn't look quite so silly when it keeps all its tanks, and it'd have plenty of use for a big crew.  Six-to-ten big, not forty-big.

Send your pilots out on crawlers to gather data.  Engineers will be busy running mining equipment.  Some scientists will be busy in the lab, and more will be needed to reset instruments when the crawler comes back.

Then once it's refueled itself, the whole thing lifts off and lands at another mineral patch.  Rinse and repeat until you've extracted enough scientific value from the moon to justify sending that bloody huge thing.

Edited November 25, 2017 by Corona688

[Laie]

37 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

The lander doesn't look like it has many natural dividing planes to facilitate orbital assembly.

You're underestimating the sheer scope of the undertaking. Each lander would have required more than 100 launches, and "orbital assembly" means nuts and bolts. I love these old plans because they manage to be technically sound and utterly ludicrous at the same time. Also, not knowing about the radiation belts, the proposed station would have been smack in the middle of them (what's so special about a 2hr orbital period, btw? I can understand why a stationary orbit would seem attractive, but not 1730km)

Extraplanetary Launchpads is a good workaround to convert a crate of rocket parts into a large "lightweight, inflatable" (procedural) tank, and KIS makes for orbital assembly just as intended. As KIS doesn't know about symmetry, I've grown fond of Konstruction ports , shipping up parts with pre-attached ports as attachment nodes and collapsing them once the bulky stuff is in place.

But that's only happening on a proof-of-concept scale. I certainly won't do hundreds of launches to assemble everything from first principles. At some point, I'll resort to magic and just spirit whole vessels into space.

TL;DR: I think I've got the "how to make it work in the game" angle covered pretty well. I just can't figure out what kind of mission I want to make.

15 minutes ago, Corona688 said:

How about a big, reusable miner as a lander?

I don't think one can square away ISRU with a 1950s space program. Even if allowing for the concept, the first couple of lunar landings would be looking for resources rather than using them.

[Corona688]

I know, but there's not much point making a huge lander without it.

You could have a big orbiter perhaps, carrying enough fuel to send the "boat" down several times, plus facilities for scientists.

[Geschosskopf]

4 minutes ago, Laie said:

You're underestimating the sheer scope of the undertaking. Each lander would have required more than 100 launches, and "orbital assembly" means nuts and bolts. I love these old plans because they manage to be technically sound and utterly ludicrous at the same time.

Well, underestimation of the difficulty is hardwired into KSP    That aside, physically attaching each nut and bolt of such a thing in orbit is ridiculous even by 1950s standards, which envisioned reusable SSTO rockets carrying about the same amount of crew.  So launch it in dockable sections.

 

4 minutes ago, Laie said:

Also, not knowing about the radiation belts, the proposed station would have been smack in the middle of them (what's so special about a 2hr orbital period, btw? I can understand why a stationary orbit would seem attractive, but not 1730km)

Hmmm.  Just a guess, but if you need 100 launches to assemble said Lunar lander and you don't have an equatorial launch site, then you need an orbit that overflies the non-equatorial launch site as often as possible while still being high enough to avoid atmospheric drag from pulling the incomplete lander to flaming doom.

[KerikBalm]

On 11/25/2017 at 1:41 AM, Laie said:

I love these old plans because they manage to be technically sound and utterly ludicrous at the same time.

Me too... Von Braun's ideas for a Mars mission were also pretty great (the biggest technical flaw is that they had vastly overestimated the density of the Martian atmosphere)

http://www.astronautix.com/v/vonbraunmarpedition-1952.html

Quote

Das Marsprojekt was the first technically comprehensive design for a manned expedition to Mars. Von Braun envisioned not a simple preliminary voyage to Mars, but an enormous scientific expedition modeled on the Antarctic model. His Mars expedition was to consist of 70 crew members aboard ten spacecraft - each spacecraft with a mass of 3720 metric tons! To assemble this armada in earth orbit, Von Braun proposed a fully recoverable, reusable three-stage launch vehicle, which was designed to deliver 25 metric tons of cargo plus 14.5 metric tons of 'excess propellant' for the Mars fleet with each launch. Assembly of the expedition would take 950 launches of 46 these reusable space shuttles over eight months from a very busy base at Johnston Island in the Pacific Ocean.

After this fleet of 10 spacecraft reaches mars, they have:

* a one way winged landing on skis at the poles (the only place they thought they could guarantee would be flat enough)... then these first explorers would then

* Go 6500 km overland in 80 day in rovers to reach the equator where they would: 

* Prepare a landing strip for additional winged landers would land to set up the basecamp for the next 400 days.

...Riiiiigggghhhhttttt........

[Laie]

On 11/25/2017 at 2:01 AM, Geschosskopf said:

1950s standards, which envisioned reusable SSTO rockets

Perhaps in Astounding, where they used the term nuclear as a modern-day stand-in for "magic". The von Braun plans were technically sound insofar as he assumed an ISP of ~280s and a 50:1 wet:dry ratio, picked up a slide rule, and went to work.

2 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

Me too... Von Braun's ideas for a Mars mission were also pretty great (the biggest technical flaw is that they had vastly overestimated the density of the Martian atmosphere)

You should perhaps have a look at my "dev blog", (which isn't very impressive, I'm not a good writer). That was indeed my startiong point,  I have a functional Ferry Rocket and am now planning my next steps. Or rather, trying to make up my mind how close the original plans I'm supposed to keep.

Edited November 26, 2017 by Laie

[Oiff]

On 25/11/2017 at 1:41 AM, Laie said:

what's so special about a 2hr orbital period, btw? I can understand why a stationary orbit would seem attractive, but not 1730km

Electricity perhaps?

1950 batteries were very heavy and didn’t store very much power.  They also had to be at a reasonable temperature to operate at all.  The solar panels back then were also only a few % efficient whilst electrical equipment would have been incredibly inefficient by today’s standards.

Keeping the station powered would be quite difficult and likely rely heavily on fuel cells.

A solution would be to be in an orbit that maximises the amount of time spent in direct sunlight.

 

I’m sure that they would realise the issues with radiation eventually.

[Laie]

7 minutes ago, Oiff said:

Keeping the station powered would be quite difficult and likely rely heavily on fuel cells.

He assumed trough-like solar collectors (also on the picture above) to vaporise mercury and drive a turbine. Because, when you handle hydrazine by the shipload, why should a little mercury scare you?

Edited November 26, 2017 by Laie

[NSEP]

Something like this? Maybe?

[Corona688]

21 hours ago, Oiff said:

I’m sure that they would realise the issues with radiation eventually.

It's why we keep all our stations in LEO, we still rely on the magnetosphere to protect them.

[Oiff]

Fortunately Kerbals seem quite hardy when it comes to radiation, although they are green so maybe they are already irradiated