NASA “We Are Going” Video

[Sky Vagrant]

In this video, at 2:20, they say that Gateway will, “...balance between Earth and Moon’s gravity.” That sounds like they plan to park it at Lagrange Point 1 (L1) in the Earth-Moon system:

Has anyone else seen this spelled out somewhere? If they don’t mean L1, what do you think they mean?

Also, let’s just discuss the video in general. I think it is a good video, but I don’t think the SLS will meet schedule and they should just go with Space X.

[StrandedonEarth]

Well, they also said it can be moved between orbits. So no orbit would be permanent, even L1. Maybe a little self-contradictory.

And they will need every rocket they can build, buy, borrow, or beg, no matter who supplies it. 

[ZooNamedGames]

1 hour ago, Sky Vagrant said:

Also, let’s just discuss the video in general. I think it is a good video, but I don’t think the SLS will meet schedule and they should just go with Space X.

[snip]

You completely ignore ULA, ESA, Northrup Grumman, Blue Origin, Russia and JAXA just to praise Musk.

Edited May 16, 2019 by Snark
Redacted by moderator

[Sky Vagrant]

58 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

[snip]

You completely ignore ULA, ESA, Northrup Grumman, Blue Origin, Russia and JAXA just to praise Musk.

I’m excited about Blue Origin, but they are a bit behind right now in terms of lift capability. They may really catch up and their moon lander looks promising. I was specifically discounting SLS, not all the other efforts out there. I’ve seen the SLS concept being tauted since the late 80’s and I think if it were a good idea we’d have done it already.

I was really hoping Virgin Galactic and Burt Ratan would have gone orbital by now too. I was a Burt fanboy long before I had heard of Space X. 

[StrandedonEarth]

59 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

[snip]

You completely ignore ULA, ESA, Northrup Grumman, Blue Origin, Russia and JAXA just to praise Musk.

Agreed. I admit to being a SpaceX fan mostly because they broke out of the expendable rut, but I'm also a fan of all these marvelous creations that ride a controlled continuous explosion into space

52 minutes ago, Sky Vagrant said:

I’m excited about Blue Origin, but they are a bit behind right now in terms of lift capability. They may really catch up and their moon lander looks promising.

Ah, but you only mentioned SpaceX. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's best not to put all of one's eggs in one basket, lest they all get scrambled.

[ZooNamedGames]

[snip]

52 minutes ago, Sky Vagrant said:

I was specifically discounting SLS, not all the other efforts out there. I’ve seen the SLS concept being tauted since the late 80’s and I think if it were a good idea we’d have done it already.

Which is fair- but if it was truly that easy- someone would've beaten NASA to the punch by now. Instead it's nearly 2020 and only NASA and one other company show serious ability to develop and build a SHLV. So perhaps before you throw SLS under the bus, you should keep it mind it's all the world has with the exception of BFR, which is even further behind in it's development cycle and being developed by a company notorious for pushing back and failing to meet promises.

Edited May 16, 2019 by Snark
Redacted by moderator

[Snark]

Some content has been removed. Folks, a friendly reminder not to make personal remarks.

Name-calling is not okay.  Nor is it appropriate to generalize groups of people by attributing motivations or deficiencies to them.  It's especially inappropriate to accuse or imply that the person you're talking to is in some particular stereotyped group or other.  Please address the post and not the poster.  Ad hominem remarks are not the way to win an argument, and they're not conducive to the civil tone that we appreciate so much, here in the KSP forums.

So play nice, please.  Thank you for your understanding.

[KSK]

Pretty video. Rather heavier on aspiration, mockups and renders than actual hardware though.

And I agree it's not going to happen by 2024. I would dearly love to be wrong (mail me your hats wrapped round a bottle of ketchup if I am) but I don't think I will be. Sad to say, I think all that manifest destiny stuff about striking out into the solar system for Science is just not a message that's going to resonate with enough people. Heck, it didn't back in the Apollo days when crews were setting out for the Moon on a regular basis.

Space travel is still in its barnstorming days. It's the preserve of the few with the fortunate, brave and rich getting to tag along occasionally. Much like the early air tourists and thrillseekers going up for a ride in a plane.

The only way I see that changing is through the private sector. Forget all the cheerleading for one company or another, the private sector has the chance (although a 'chance' is an awful long way from guaranteeing that any of them will make it, even the more familiar NewSpace companies) to do two important things. Firstly - they can move spaceflight firmly out of the 'gubmint boondoggle' trailer park. At that point, Joe Public might not care about spaceflight but they're not paying for it either, so they don't have to care.

Secondly, the private sector might just make spaceflight something for the masses to participate in. Think early airlines rather than barnstormers. It's a big, probably implausible ask, but I think its the only way that the aspirational elements of that video are going to happen. And its not something that I see NASA or any other government space agency managing to do.

Oh - and the orbit. According to Wikipedia, LOP-G isn't going to a Lagrange point, although I have no idea how current the article is.

 

[tater]

SLS commercial.

18 hours ago, Sky Vagrant said:

Has anyone else seen this spelled out somewhere? If they don’t mean L1, what do you think they mean? 

It's related to EML-2, actually.

It's NRHO (Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit). It's a stable, but highly elliptical orbit around the Moon.

 

[Brownie352]

I'm wondering why nasa wants to build the gateway,the only convincing argument was for manned experiments

also why would you need the gateway to go to mars you need more dv by having a rendezvous with the station, right?

I'm not a scientist but it doesn't make sense to me

(Sorry if i posted this in the wrong topic)

[Sky Vagrant]

4 hours ago, tater said:

It's related to EML-2, actually.

It's NRHO (Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit). It's a stable, but highly elliptical orbit around the Moon.

 

Is that your theory or have you seen a reference that Gateway will be in one of those orbits? What is the benefit of these orbits?

[tater]

26 minutes ago, Sky Vagrant said:

Is that your theory or have you seen a reference that Gateway will be in one of those orbits? What is the benefit of these orbits?

It's an orbit that Orion can go to. NRO and NRHO are the 2 orbits talked about for Orion/Gateway from the beginning, it's never been anything else (and I think NRHO alone for Gateway, vs NRO for Orion EM-1).

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20150019648.pdf

 

 

[ZooNamedGames]

6 hours ago, Brownie352 said:

I'm wondering why nasa wants to build the gateway,the only convincing argument was for manned experiments

also why would you need the gateway to go to mars you need more dv by having a rendezvous with the station, right?

I'm not a scientist but it doesn't make sense to me

(Sorry if i posted this in the wrong topic)

It isn't the most efficient to travel to the station, but it is a waypoint that could be better optimized for deep space exploration. Despite being our newest endeavor to date- the ISS is old. Really old. We don't need to be using it anymore in all actuality and a lunar space station offers deep space 0g research (more intense than what's currently available to the VA belt shielded ISS), a way point between the Earth and the moon (a place for landers to dock and stay while awaiting crew and then to return crew to). With Mars exploration vehicles being deployed from the station, and using ion thrusters, can get good ISP at the cost of launching from the moon, but seeing as they're so efficient, it isn't so bad. Plus, it's easier to launch missions from lunar orbit than from the lunar surface.

That said- I am thinking that gateway development is going to get pushed back or be put to commercial development to the point that either there will be only the PPE, a life support module and a habitation module and that's about it, with crews arriving to the station just to board the previously commercially launched lunar lander and descend using it or have the full station, commercially launched anyway. Reason being that time spent by NASA assembling the station will waste time they could spend actually going to the moon.

After all, looking at history. The way NASA got to the moon before was by contracting our segments of development. Now they are just contracting out the launching part too for everything except crew.

[RocketSquid]

8 hours ago, Brownie352 said:

I'm wondering why nasa wants to build the gateway,the only convincing argument was for manned experiments

also why would you need the gateway to go to mars you need more dv by having a rendezvous with the station, right?

I'm not a scientist but it doesn't make sense to me

(Sorry if i posted this in the wrong topic)

Ah, the trick is that nothing keeps the station from having fuel on it. Hell, moonrock contains enough aluminum and oxygen that they could make (admittedly rather low quality) fuel on the moon with nothing but power. And nothing then keeps them from making a habitation cylinder out of lunar aluminum and filling it with lunar oxygen. Obviously this isn't likely to happen in the near future, but having an alternate, less-gravitationally-limited starting point is nothing to scoff at.