LOST... Old concepts to project never going off paper

[tater]

Gotta love Bono:

 

[Beccab]

On 7/29/2022 at 3:11 PM, GuessingEveryDay said:

Here's a picture of what they would look like with the H-II booster. It's ridiculously cursed.

21 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Not with this. The H-II (including the reusable proposal) features a guidance system, only most solid fuel launchers lack one.

Presumably launching would look somewhat similar to the Atlas V variants with one booster or the Shuttle.

Now I'm curious, has NASDA/JAXA ever published a design of a crewed mars lander/base? I've tried searching a bit for it on google to no avail, the furthest I got was finding a few lunar landers (and even then, it's one crew lander and one cargo lander)

[SunlitZelkova]

1 hour ago, Beccab said:

Now I'm curious, has NASDA/JAXA ever published a design of a crewed mars lander/base? I've tried searching a bit for it on google to no avail, the furthest I got was finding a few lunar landers (and even then, it's one crew lander and one cargo lander)

A search of “日本の有人火星着陸” (Japanese crewed Mars landing) yields nothing.

English Wikipedia cites a bizarre news article claiming the “ministry of science and technology” decided to pursue “crewed Mars exploration”, but that ministry, which also encompasses education, culture, and sports, is usually referred to by its abbreviation MEXT in the press, and the article claims the government had “originally only planned to focus on building settlements on the Moon”. Neither the government nor JAXA ever declared this. It is possible the news site took preliminary information about MMX and trumped it up for clicks.

Perhaps there may be something hiding in their archives that hasn’t been digitalized yet (I would not be surprised given some government organizations still regularly use fax), but I think it is unlikely. A space station or crewed lunar landing is one thing, but everyone in the West seems to agree Mars is too expensive for one nation alone to handle.

If you are still interested though you might try creating your own. Here are some ideas. After writing these down they seem really cool and I will probably use these myself, but feel free to use them too!-

Japan would probably adopt a split architecture (IIRC the indigenous lunar architecture JAXA proposed had the lander sent to lunar orbit ahead of the crew vehicle) and you could have the lander design based somewhat on their real lunar lander proposal, but with a heat shield and added fuel, and so on. The American SEI’s Mars lander was basically their Lunar OTV but with a heat shield on the bottom, for lack of a better alternative, it could be assumed JAXA might utilize a similar method to save costs instead of developing an entirely new lander.

The MTV would definitely need a lot of launches to assemble, and could either use a huge number of cryogenic drop tanks and a single engine unit (kind of similar to the SEI STCAEM-CAB) based on how their lunar architecture utilized various stages for getting to the Moon (each launched one at a time and then docked together before TLI), or it could use solar electric propulsion, based on their experience with the Hayabusa series.

It may plausible for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to develop an even larger rocket than the H3 Heavy for such a mission, allowing the MTV to be assembled in fewer launches. Because an SHLV would be expensive and a bit large for Tanegashima, perhaps a Falcon Heavy/R-56 class launcher might be pursued (40 to 60 tons to LEO, real life H3 Heavy only does 28 tons or so to LEO). I am not sure whether that could be built by slapping existing engines on larger tanks or if a new engine would be needed.

They would probably use an opposition class profile, to avoid a prolonged stay on the surface. If the Fukushima disaster still happens in any world you decide to use this in, nuclear power is likely out of the question. Lack of a reactor would probably not permit a prolonged surface stay.

If somehow Japan doesn’t develop a “nuclear power allergy”, nuclear electric propulsion would also be a possible choice. But NTRs are unlikely to be adopted, simply because Japan has more experience with ion propulsion.

[Second Hand Rocket Science]

Interesting point. Quick google and search on Wikipedia turns up nothing. Immna keep looking everywhere I can. Tomorrow. It's 10 o'clock at night where I live RN, so, in the real Gen Z form:

Aight, imma head out.

Scratch that, this is me 2 minutes later. Google Advanced Search pulled up this with the keywords "JAXA Mars Manned Mission"

PowerPoint プレゼンテーション (exploremars.org)

Anyone know what this is?

Edited July 30, 2022 by Second Hand Rocket Science

[SunlitZelkova]

15 hours ago, Second Hand Rocket Science said:

Interesting point. Quick google and search on Wikipedia turns up nothing. Immna keep looking everywhere I can. Tomorrow. It's 10 o'clock at night where I live RN, so, in the real Gen Z form:

Aight, imma head out.

Scratch that, this is me 2 minutes later. Google Advanced Search pulled up this with the keywords "JAXA Mars Manned Mission"

PowerPoint プレゼンテーション (exploremars.org)

Anyone know what this is?

This is not a Mars mission presentation, but a presentation describing the preparations and development tasks that will occur on the Moon as part of Artemis. This isn’t in relation to a Japanese Mars mission but instead is about Japan’s activities within Artemis, pertaining to a possible future international Mars mission.

It appears to be from one of the Humans to Mars conferences judging from the website it came from.

Edited July 31, 2022 by SunlitZelkova
Presentation, not mission

[Beccab]

Here's one of the dozens (possibly hundreds) of crewed mars mission proposals that can be found on NTRS (link: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19870008312/downloads/19870008312.pdf)


This one in particular, a fully propulsive cryogenic mars mission proposal powered by a nuclear reactor, is unique in many ways:
- it's an extremely large vehicle, mostly because of the two arms that simulate artificial gravity during the nearly 3 years long mission;
- it lands not only on Mars itself, using two biconic landers, but on Deimos and Phobos as well releasing six crewed vehicles that do the 6.500 m/s necessary to land on one of the two moons and return to the main vehicle;
- the TMI stage is powered by a large nozzle, restartable SSME to reduce development costs;
- the Earth return stage is not hydrolox, but uses propane and oxygen as fuel so that it hasn't completely boiled off by the time the second synod comes
- last but not least, the choice of RCS for the TMI stage is... curious, we could say. In fact, it uses nothing less than clusters of RL-10 engines (!) which are, well, kinda sizable for a reaction control system lol

[tater]

 

[Beccab]

35 minutes ago, tater said:

 

From the same book that describes the two pictures:

(Did anyone else know that the Delta upper stage was considered for reuse? That's a first for me)

Looks like the IRL Apollo-Soyuz mission was really just someone looking at the International mission profile and the Apollo-Salyut proposal and making realizing that you don't actually need the Titan 3 in the mission if you just add the internationa docking system from the latter

[SunlitZelkova]

Does anyone happen to have any documents related to the Viking derived Mars sample return proposal from Martin Marietta circa 1978?

An NTRS link can be found elsewhere on the internet but it has disappeared for some reason.

Such information would be greatly appreciated.

[Beccab]

Here's probably the weirdest mars lander proposal I've seen on NTRS - on par maybe only with the Boeing mars lander that used a bimodal nuclear engine for propulsion


The lander proposed here would deploy a massive inflatable aerobrake (80 meters in diameter) after passing the first part of reentry to reduce the speed at touchdown; if everything went correctly, the lander would then ignite its four descent engines to land softly on the red planet. However, if those engines failed to ignite, the aerobrake would remain attached to the lander and act as a huge air bag; this way the landing velocity is reduced to a very comfortable 110 km/s that decelerating give only 8 Gs to the lander's crew, which I would call only slightly better than crashing on the planet's surface. A similar architecture was also proposed for a Mars Sample Return mission, which I guess makes slightly more sense there

On 8/2/2022 at 12:02 AM, SunlitZelkova said:

Does anyone happen to have any documents related to the Viking derived Mars sample return proposal from Martin Marietta circa 1978?

An NTRS link can be found elsewhere on the internet but it has disappeared for some reason.

Such information would be greatly appreciated.

I checked and nope, I didn't save anything on that. I can confirm however that there's definitely still some docs on NTRS on it, I remember seeing them a short time ago

[tater]

On 8/1/2022 at 4:02 PM, SunlitZelkova said:

Does anyone happen to have any documents related to the Viking derived Mars sample return proposal from Martin Marietta circa 1978?

An NTRS link can be found elsewhere on the internet but it has disappeared for some reason.

Such information would be greatly appreciated.

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19760011102/downloads/19760011102.pdf

 

[SunlitZelkova]

Just now, tater said:

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19760011102/downloads/19760011102.pdf

 

Thank you!

[Jcking]

An incomplete set of the McDonnell Douglas Space Shuttle Phase B System Study detailing the high cross-range delta wing orbiter (Model 050B) and high cross-range booster (Model 256-20).

Spoiler

Detail Mass Properties Report Part I Summary

Detail Mass Properties Report Part IIA Orbiter Details

Detail Mass Properties Report Part IIB Orbiter Details

Detail Mass Properties Report Part IIIA Booster Details

Detail Mass Properties Report Part IIIB Booster Details

Summary Mass Details Properties Report Final Design Baseline

Program Acquisition Plans Part III-2 Engineering and Development

Program Acquisition Plans Part III-3 Operations

Program Acquisition Plans Part III-4 Facility Utilization and Manufacturing

Program Acquisition Plans Part III-5(A) Test

Program Acquisition Plans Part III-5(B) Test

Program Acquisition Plans Part III-5(C) Test

Program Acquisition Plans Part III-6 Logistics and Maintenance

Program Acquisition Plans Part III-7 Program Cost and Schedules

Propulsion Tradeoffs Documentation

Program Review 270-Day Status

Program Review Selected Issues

Please note that some of these are very large and can take some time to load (especially with slower internet speeds).

[tater]

https://www.spacefuture.com/archive/single_stage_to_orbit_vertical_takeoff_and_landing_concept_technology_challenges.shtml

 

[DDE]

11 hours ago, tater said:

https://www.spacefuture.com/archive/single_stage_to_orbit_vertical_takeoff_and_landing_concept_technology_challenges.shtml

 

What a Kerbal shuttle substitute...

[tater]

 

 

[SunlitZelkova]

Was there ever a concrete assembly plan for Space Station Freedom?

Based on what few documents I could find in the NASA NTRS and astronautix, I managed to put together a schedule of roughly 16 flights in total not including the dockyard for the LTV, but also including the ESA and NASDA/JAXA modules (which were not taken into consideration in the NASA documents).

This seems low considering 27~ Shuttle missions were flown for the ISS.

Was SSF just tiny in comparison or am I missing something?

The configuration I am using is the SEI one.

[derega16]

On 8/21/2022 at 7:41 AM, tater said:

https://www.spacefuture.com/archive/single_stage_to_orbit_vertical_takeoff_and_landing_concept_technology_challenges.shtml

 

Is there any mod that have those big Aerospike?, I know Nexus one but that's too big for this 

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Was there ever a concrete assembly plan for Space Station Freedom?

Afaik, in Alien-3 they were originally planned to live in a wooden asteroid.

But a concrete orbital station irl? That would be cool!

1 hour ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Was SSF just tiny in comparison or am I missing something?

According to http://www.astronautix.com/s/spacestationfreedom.html it would be twice larger (878 m3).

***

Probably it would be very cold onboard, as they were going to wear hoodies.

http://www.astronautix.com/nails/i/ilsm187.jpg

[tater]

@Beccab might be interested in this:

https://web.archive.org/web/20100525233503/http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19710018484_1971018484.pdf

 

[Beccab]

53 minutes ago, tater said:

@Beccab might be interested in this:

https://web.archive.org/web/20100525233503/http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19710018484_1971018484.pdf

 

This is fantastic

[tater]

Just now, Beccab said:

This is fantastic

This is exactly the image that made me tag you.

[wumpus]

On 9/23/2022 at 11:57 PM, kerbiloid said:

Afaik, in Alien-3 they were originally planned to live in a wooden asteroid.

But a concrete orbital station irl? That would be cool!

According to http://www.astronautix.com/s/spacestationfreedom.html it would be twice larger (878 m3).

***

Probably it would be very cold onboard, as they were going to wear hoodies.

http://www.astronautix.com/nails/i/ilsm187.jpg

I think somebody made "lunarcrete" in the 1990s.  No idea if it required water (maybe you can recover most of the water?).

Lunar rocket fuel is possible.  Low thrust/Isp, but if all you need is to get off the Moon and take it to LEO (or better yet, L2).

[tater]

2 hours ago, wumpus said:

I think somebody made "lunarcrete" in the 1990s.  No idea if it required water (maybe you can recover most of the water?).

There were some guys at the Space '90 conference who presented papers on that as I recall. Can't find my copy of the proceedings. Some Los Alamos guys I think. They presented at the Lunar bases and Space Activities conference in Houston a couple years before that as well.

[Beccab]

Everybody talks about Solar Power Satellite microwave transmission, but what about Nuclear Power Satellites?


This is one of the configurations considered in the original 1977 SPS study - *much* smaller than your usual SPS, passing from 20-30 kilometers per 2-3 kilometers to "only" 2km x 3km for the same required energy