Would China be capable of building moon bases ?

[Lohan2008]

China has reached to point where they are going to go through their space programs over next 5 yrs to test docking/ satellite/ science experiments. I was wondering if China would be capable of building Moon bases in the foreseeable future ? http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering_Technology/Building_a_lunar_base_with_3D_printing

[Nibb31]

Any country/agency is "capable" if given the mandate by their political authority and the budget that goes with it.

At least some of their unmanned Moon missions seem to be in preparation of a manned program, but it is still far away. Whether they are interested in building a Moon base isn't clear. Doing both a manned LEO program and manned Moon program simultaneously seems a bit ambitious and they seem to be committed to Tiangong for at least the next decade.

[xenomorph555]

Depend on the definition of a moon base, if you mean a single module, extended stay/tiangong type base then sure. If you mean ISS on the moon, ur no...

[Frozen_Heart]

If given the budget and political will, then yes. Easily.

In reality. Probably not.

[Torquemadus]

Building a base on the Moon requires that China build a heavy lift rocket to throw the payloads there. It took NASA five years to develop and fly the Saturn V during the 1960s.

Beyond that, building a base is mainly dependant on finding ways to exploit Lunar resources to support the base. Most likely, they would develop a way to extract oxygen from the Lunar rocks.

Getting a Lunar base built requires convincing the government of a spacefaring nation that a base is in their national interest. Russia and China have both expressed interest in extracting helium3 from the lunar regolith as a means of guaranteeing their long-term energy independence.

The surface of the Moon is composed of essentially volatile free "trash rocks", leading to it being referred to by some as "the slag heap of the solar system". Many elements vital to industry are essentially absent from the Moon, meaning that any kind of settlement there would be heavily dependant on large scale imports.

Helium3 is an incredibly high enthalpy fuel that could be used in fusion reactors on Earth. It is present in the regolith in parts per million quantities, meaning that very large quantities of regolith must be processed to extract it. Although helium3 would be an incredibly profitable export, it would need to cover the cost of establishing and running the base. There has been a lot of debate over whether a lunar base could turn a reasonable profit and return on investment, with both optimistic and pessimistic views being put forward.

The logistics of a Moon base become much more favourable in an economically developed inner solar system. Compared to Earth's resource poor Moon, Mars is rich. Due to the propulsion requirements involved in sending cargo to the Moon, it would be much cheaper to import supplies from Mars than from Earth!

[Kibble]

Building a base on the Moon requires that China build a heavy lift rocket to throw the payloads there. It took NASA five years to develop and fly the Saturn V during the 1960s.

CNSA is developing Long March 9, a perfectly suitable rocket to land Tiangong-derived modules on the Lunar surface.

building a base is mainly dependant on finding ways to exploit Lunar resources to support the base.

That's not true. You could construct and keep up a piloted Moon base without advanced ISRU techniques. We have been soft landing robots on The Moon since Luna 9 - we could have an equivalent of Space Station resupply missions. Long March 3B landed 140 kg of rover, and Long March 5 with an appropriate upper stage like 3A3 could presumably land about a metric tonne.

The surface of the Moon is composed of essentially volatile free "trash rocks", leading to it being referred to by some as "the slag heap of the solar system". Many elements vital to industry are essentially absent from the Moon

Moon rocks are rich in titanium and oxygen - easy to extract, useful, and burnable as rocket fuel. Not to mention large quantities of volatiles presumably extant at the Lunar poles. The hydrogen detected by LRO could very well be in ammonia and water ice.

[magnemoe]

CNSA is developing Long March 9, a perfectly suitable rocket to land Tiangong-derived modules on the Lunar surface.

That's not true. You could construct and keep up a piloted Moon base without advanced ISRU techniques. We have been soft landing robots on The Moon since Luna 9 - we could have an equivalent of Space Station resupply missions. Long March 3B landed 140 kg of rover, and Long March 5 with an appropriate upper stage like 3A3 could presumably land about a metric tonne.

Moon rocks are rich in titanium and oxygen - easy to extract, useful, and burnable as rocket fuel. Not to mention large quantities of volatiles presumably extant at the Lunar poles. The hydrogen detected by LRO could very well be in ammonia and water ice.

Shackleton crater is an obvious candidate here, putting up an base first to claim and then to extract water would fit well within China policy of long term and large scale infrastructure projects.

If you just go for science I would stick to rovers with some manned missions to plant the flag and to help solve questions the rovers has problems with.

And yes Long march 9 and enough funding would manage it.

[Torquemadus]

CNSA is developing Long March 9, a perfectly suitable rocket to land Tiangong-derived modules on the Lunar surface.

That's not true. You could construct and keep up a piloted Moon base without advanced ISRU techniques. We have been soft landing robots on The Moon since Luna 9 - we could have an equivalent of Space Station resupply missions. Long March 3B landed 140 kg of rover, and Long March 5 with an appropriate upper stage like 3A3 could presumably land about a metric tonne.

Moon rocks are rich in titanium and oxygen - easy to extract, useful, and burnable as rocket fuel. Not to mention large quantities of volatiles presumably extant at the Lunar poles. The hydrogen detected by LRO could very well be in ammonia and water ice.

There's no doubt that China has the technical capability to establish a Moon base. Oxygen extracted from the rocks would greatly reduce the mass of propellant that would need to be brought to the Moon for use on the return flight, this is because the oxidiser needed to get back to Earth is much heavier than the fuel.

Water is known to exist at the poles in permanently shadowed craters. It might exist as small crater ponds of water ice, or it could exist as dilute permafrost spread widely over the poles. A probe with suitable active sensors, such as high frequency ground penetrating radar, would be needed to gather high resolution data to establish whether the water is present in an accessible form.

A Moon base could be justified as being in China's national interest in the same way that the Apollo Program was for the United States. At first glance, the Moon seems to be an ideal next incremental step after learning to fly in Low Earth Orbit. I would expect that a Chinese Moon program would result in a similar outcome to Apollo. China would benefit greatly from learning how to get to the Moon and return safely to Earth, but justifying a long term presence there would be much more difficult. There isn't really anything on the Moon that China needs, other than the Helium3, which is expensive to extract.

Most present day advocates of Moon basing argue that going to Mars is too hard, therefore an extended Moon base program is critical to evolving the technology needed to go to Mars. Others have tried to make a Moon base critical by insisting that it should be used to make fuel for huge interplanetary spaceships to go to Mars. Few are trying to justify a Moon base for it's own sake.

Mars is far more similar to the Earth than it is to the Moon. Unlike the Moon, Mars has the resources needed to support large scale colonisation and industrial development. Mars can support greenhouse agriculture without the need for prohibitively heavy shielding to prevent crops being killed by solar flares. Mars can be (at least) partially terraformed with presently understood technology (handy if you're a real estate speculator BTW ). Mars can not only support a major new branch of human civilisation in it's own right, but it can also offer fifty times less mass ratio to launch cargo from it's surface to the main asteroid belt compared to Earth.

Asteroid mining outposts, which would lack adequate division of labour for self sufficiency, and would be prohibitively expensive to supply from Earth, would be supplied with food and manufactured goods from Mars. This would allow a "triangle trade" to operate, where high tech goods would be sent from Earth to Mars, food and low tech manufactures would be sent from Mars to the asteroids (and perhaps helium3 miners on the Moon), while inexhaustible supplies of precious and semi precious metals (and possibly helium3) would be sent to Earth. A later economic model of the Solar System would also add inexhaustible supplies of helium3 being sent to Earth from the gas giants. Helium3 also has sufficient enthalpy to fuel fusion thermal rockets with sufficient ISP for interstellar flight!

The key to unlocking the resources and economic potential of the inner solar system is Mars, not the Moon. The worst possible case would be for China to expend a lot of resources getting to the Moon, only to realise that it's economic potential is poor (which is why Apollo was cancelled). The Moon has the potential to create an expensive and unnecessary diversion from humanity's real next step in space, which is Mars.

I would recommend reading Robert Zubrin's books The Case For Mars and Entering Space to understand how the economic development of the Solar System will be achieved in practice. Both books are quite readable to anyone who knows how to play Kerbal Space Program. As an introduction, I would advise watching The Mars Underground.

[Kibble]

Mars has little that can't be found other places in the solar system. Planets in general are hard to get to, and the only thing they have in abundance as compared to Small Solar System Bodies of the inner Solar System is CO2 atmospheres. But this isn't limited to Mars - Venus has an even thicker CO2 atmosphere, and is easier and faster to get to, and arguably easier to establish a permanent piloted outpost on. Your primary assertion that growing food is only possible on Mars is false - we have grown plants in micro-gee environments, specifically the Bion satellites, Skylab, Spacehab, and Space Station. Small Solar System Bodies are much more accessible - just (relatively) small, airless bodies in outer space - the robot's natural habitat. They also are extremely numerous, not just among the Asteroids, they thickly populate the inner Solar System. Unlike the Planets, their entire mass is accessible (not limited to how deep you can dig) and they appear to vary enormously in composition.

If you can find volatiles like methane or CO2, water, and ammonia buried in the rock you have all the CHON elements right there. With water you can make (well, water), oxygen and hydrogen for rocket fuel, oxygen for breathing, hydrogen for Sabatier stock, and hydrogen peroxide for rocket fuel. With ammonia you can make hydrazine for rocket fuel, and you can process it with hydrogen peroxide to make nitrogen tetroxide. A layer of regolith seems to be ubiquitous in SSSBs and can, like on The Moon, be used for radiation shielding.

However that isn't to say the Planets are useless, they make the task of capturing small bodies for resources extraction much easier, with aerocapture onto orbit. This would very likely happen at Mars or Venus, since nobody is going to let you aerocapture a space rock thru Earth's atmosphere! They also provide you with a bunch of gravitational acceleration which, while it makes it harder to take off from, it makes a more comfortable environment for astronauts without rotating facilities, although with Kirk Sorenson's xGRF concept, rotating piloted spacecraft have been made very viable.

[Nibb31]

The key to unlocking the resources and economic potential of the inner solar system is Mars, not the Moon. The worst possible case would be for China to expend a lot of resources getting to the Moon, only to realise that it's economic potential is poor (which is why Apollo was cancelled). The Moon has the potential to create an expensive and unnecessary diversion from humanity's real next step in space, which is Mars.

That has nothing to do with why Apollo was cancelled.

We have to focus on goals that can be achieved, not pipe dreams that will always be 30 years away. Returning to the Moon is something that can be done. We could probably even support a small semi-permanent science outpost there, something like Scott-Amundsen base, but on the Moon. We would learn a lot about building and maintaining off-world infrastructure, ISRU, operating equipment in "dirty" space environments, low-gravity biology and surviving beyond the Van Allen belts. There are all things that are much easier to study 3 days away than 6 months away every 2 years.

Mars is pretty much out of our reach in terms of "resources and economic potential". There is nothing there (or anywhere else in space) that can't be obtained by easier and cheaper means on Earth. We could probably send a limited manned mission for scientific sorties if we wanted to (and we don't), but "Colonization" will not happen in this century (or even the next), because there really is no reason for it. It's nice material for science fiction books, but it's not an idea that has any roots in reality. There is no economical incentive, no political motivation, and no public support. Therefore, not gonna happen.

[magnemoe]

That has nothing to do with why Apollo was cancelled.

We have to focus on goals that can be achieved, not pipe dreams that will always be 30 years away. Returning to the Moon is something that can be done. We could probably even support a small semi-permanent science outpost there, something like Scott-Amundsen base, but on the Moon. We would learn a lot about building and maintaining off-world infrastructure, ISRU, operating equipment in "dirty" space environments, low-gravity biology and surviving beyond the Van Allen belts. There are all things that are much easier to study 3 days away than 6 months away every 2 years.

Mars is pretty much out of our reach in terms of "resources and economic potential". There is nothing there (or anywhere else in space) that can't be obtained by easier and cheaper means on Earth. We could probably send a limited manned mission for scientific sorties if we wanted to (and we don't), but "Colonization" will not happen in this century (or even the next), because there really is no reason for it. It's nice material for science fiction books, but it's not an idea that has any roots in reality. There is no economical incentive, no political motivation, and no public support. Therefore, not gonna happen.

Yes, its true that moon is resource poor, however its likely to have ice at the poles, this is the most near term resource, Mars is better however Mars is to far away, plenty of closer asteroids both in time and dV. Resources on an Mars base can only be used at Mars.

Agree that the only reason to go to Mars in this century is for science and to plant the flag. For resources its Moon and the asteroids. And this is resources to make space activities easier not to export to Earth, this involves Mars missions and LEO not only the base.

[Newt]

That has nothing to do with why Apollo was cancelled.

We have to focus on goals that can be achieved, not pipe dreams that will always be 30 years away. Returning to the Moon is something that can be done.

Indeed. It is nice to talk about going to Mars, and there are many arguments that could be made that for colonization purposes, Mars is leaps and bounds better than the Moon. But Mars is very far away, just in order to get a human there you would have to fly them for longer than the longest single stay in space ever, and the crew would not even be on the ground yet. Suggesting that in just a few years a long term base on Mars reasonably could happen is pretty out there, as it would constitute a massive project for any state or coalition. If such a project is happening, it needs to get started very soon. As Nibb said, there is not really a reason for it anyway.

Probably the first bases will be more ISS-like. A crew can stay, either permanently or every so often, bring supplies from Earth and perhaps supplement their food with a greenhouse of sorts. Resource utilization might be investigated, but the primary goal will be science, as it was in the (planned) Apollo Applications missions. China and Russia might like to get their hands on some of the materials there for industry, but the cost to bring them back to Earth will make them overpriced for anything beyond research and novelty. The base will not need to build anything really large, perhaps a 3D printer will come along, but it will be stocked with material from Earth. Though water might be available for drinking/fueling purposes at the pole, scientists will want to look at it carefully, not mine and melt and alter it. We already have some pretty good means to recycle and use water effectively for spaceflight, and a base on the Moon will follow the traditions of the ISS most probably.

So, could China have a base on the Moon in the foreseeable future? They have probably the ability, technically, to begin a programme to do so, probably would feature a few more robotic landers, followed by brief manned landings, and then combinations which would land people, robots, and supplies to build longer term facilities. Slowly the length of time crews would spend on the surface would grow, but no one would really live on the Moon for more than a few months to a year probably. Is it possible? I think so. Not a colony but an outpost. The main issue is sadly political will. China wants to look good in space, but it also wants to do other things, and with major manned projects such as a base would be, there is ample risk. China does not want to look bad when their crews killed or rockets fail or robots malfunction.

[Torquemadus]

Indeed. It is nice to talk about going to Mars, and there are many arguments that could be made that for colonization purposes, Mars is leaps and bounds better than the Moon. But Mars is very far away, just in order to get a human there you would have to fly them for longer than the longest single stay in space ever, and the crew would not even be on the ground yet. Suggesting that in just a few years a long term base on Mars reasonably could happen is pretty out there, as it would constitute a massive project for any state or coalition. If such a project is happening, it needs to get started very soon. As Nibb said, there is not really a reason for it anyway.

The current received wisdom is that Mars is too hard, and therefore we should go to the Moon first.

Traditional thinking about flights to Mars are derived from Wernher Von Braun's book The Mars Project. This is viewed as the "conservative" way of thinking about the engineering problems involved. The original version used a largely meaningless "flags and footprints" landing to justify a massive space infrastructure buildup. The idea has been revised over the years, but always follow the same theme: Justify spending on whatever the various factions within NASA currently want to do by making everyone's pet project mission critical to a Mars mission. The fact that the resulting plan is likely to be a complete mess is considered unimportant.

The basic outline of the plan is that all of the propellants and consumables needed for the stay on Mars and the return to Earth have to be lifted from Earth. This requires the construction of a massive interplanetary spaceship (dubbed "Battlestar Galactica" by it's critics), which uses advanced propulsion technologies to speed it through space, thus sparing the crew from the ravages of zero gravity and radiation. A small landing party descends to the surface for a brief "flags and footprints" exercise. The spaceship then returns to Earth via a deltaV intensive Venus gravity assist, thus minimising the overall time away from Earth. If there happens to be a dust storm going on when the spaceship arrives at Mars, then the landing (which can't be delayed until after the storm subsides) has to be scrubbed and the mission can be considered a complete failure. The mission's woes are compounded by the fact that the huge spaceship is too big to aerobrake safely into Martian orbit, which adds yet more deltaV to the already huge ship.

The spaceship is far too heavy to contemplate launching from Earth. Therefore, huge on-orbit assembly facilities are needed to construct and fuel the ship. This means that in addition to the spaceship, the huge space station facilities where it will be built must also be constructed in orbit. This is a dream come true to anyone trying to justify a large launch manifest. The number of Space Shuttle and heavy lift launches required would be truly staggering!

To push the idea further, proponents of Moon basing have got in on the act. Due to the cost of lifting all that mass from Earth, Moon basing proponents insist that as much of the propellants and construction materials as possible should come from a mature Moon base. Never mid that due to the lack of an atmosphere for aerobraking, the deltaV to go from LEO to the Moon is actually more than LEO to Mars! The spaceship is either built in LEO and sent to the Moon for refuelling, or built at orbiting stations somewhere in the lunar vicinity, such as an Earth-Moon lagrangian point. Water is know to exist at to lunar poles, but it could be in the form of dilute permafrosts in parts per mission quantities, so the question of whether the water is available for fuel production remains unanswered. Otherwise, all of the fuel used for operations in cislunar space will have to come from Earth, with the oxidiser (which accounts for roughly 75% of total propellant mass) coming from the Moon.

Even if lunar materials can't be used. Moon-basing proponents argue that we must go to the Moon first to learn how to live and work on Mars. Mars is much more like the Earth than the Moon. There are some quite hostile Arctic and Antarctic desserts on Earth that can serve as far better analogues. These can be used not only to test hardware, but to learn how to work and explore in an analogue environment. In fact, any desert on Earth would be a better Mars analogue than the Moon. Such research is currently being undertaken by the Mars Society http://www.marssociety.org/.

[Torquemadus]

Going to Mars requires a plan. The first problem is how to get there. Conventional propulsion can be used to get there in eight months for a minimum energy transfer. This can be reduced to six months for a modest additional propellant expenditure. Supposedly, this is too long, even though an average tour of duty on the Space Station is also six months, and much longer space station stays have been completed successfully in the past.

The primary obstacles are claimed to be zero gravity and radiation. A big part of the medical research conducted on Skylab and the ISS has been to study the effects of zero gravity de-conditioning. These effects are well understood at this point. Astronauts can in any case be protected from the effects of zero gravity through the use of tethered artificial gravity. This approach has been objected to, not for technical reasons, but because it would de-justify future zero gravity research spending.

The effects of radiation on humans and other living things are well understood at this point. The key is to avoid prompt doses of radiation, which could lead to life-threatening radiation sickness. Solar flare radiation would produce such prompt doses, but can be mitigated by the provision of a storm shelter. Much of the shielding for the shelter can be provided by the hardware and consumables already present aboard the spacecraft, so the mass penalty of providing such a shelter is not crippling to the mission. The crew will be exposed to cosmic radiation during the flight, this cannot be stopped by shielding, but it comes as a chronic, rather than prompt dose. This slightly increases the crew's risk of cancer in later life (a small risk compared to the other dangers they face). Space station crew members are also exposed to this radiation at lesser dosages. Some of the longer duration space station stays have exposed astronauts to equivalent chronic dosage to a round trip Mars mission with no radiological casualties. Mars offers a good deal of protection from both kinds of radiation, especially if the crew observe to throw sandbags onto the roof of their hab to provide additional protection.

It's also been claimed that the crew, confined as they are to a small spacecraft cabin during transit, will either go mad, or suffer dangerous breakdowns on morale and group cohesion. This is despite the fact that 19th century polar explorers endured far harsher conditions without encountering any such problems. There are many examples innhistory where human beings, often without specialised training, have endured incredible hardships far in excess of anything the astronauts would be expected to go through. Needless to say, the supposed solution to this apparent problem is spending vast amounts of money of "human factors" research.

[Torquemadus]

The biggest "problem" that supposedly haunts Mars missions is the need to haul all of the propellants and consumables needed for the surface stay and return trip from Earth (or possibly the Moon). This problem can be eliminated by using indigenous resources. This allows the payload mass that must be sent to Mars to be reduced in scale to the point that it can be thrown directly from Earth by Saturn V class (or modern equivalent) heavy lifters.

The key is to find a way to manufacture propellants for the return trip in a way that minimises the risk of stranding the crew. An automated propellant manufacturing plant could be established in advance, but this would require the crew to either land within a hose length of the plant, or conduct convoluted tanking operations whereby the propellants are hauled to the return ship via a rover. The solution is to build the refuelling hardware directly into the return ship and send it out ahead on the preceding transfer window. Provided the crew can land within rover distance of the return ship, they can use it to get home. Apollo 12 managed to land within 200 metres of their Surveyor spacecraft target, so similar or better accuracy should be achievable with modern avionics. Further backup comes in the form of a second return ship, which is on course to arrive a number of days after the first crew, and is intended for use by a later crew. This second return ship can be diverted to land near the first crew if needed. Failing that, the crew have enough supplies to tough it out on Mars until further help can arrive.

The Martian atmosphere can be used to manufacture low grade rocket fuel in the form of carbon monoxide and oxygen. The performance they offer is marginal for Earth return. However, hydrogen feedstock can be brought from Earth in insulated tanks designed to minimise boil-off. The mass of the hydrogen is quite small compared to the total volume of propellants it can be used to produce. A Sabatier reactor is used to produce methane and oxygen, while additional oxygen is made from carbon dioxide, with the resulting carbon monoxide vented as waste. Methane and oxygen offer much better performance and (unlike hydrogen) are suitable for long term storage on the surface. Sufficient propellants are manufactured to allow some of them to be used to run combustion engines for use in ground rovers and auxiliary generators. Once an indigenous source of water is found, later missions no-longer need to import hydrogen as feedstock.

The primary power source for the propellant plant is a small nuclear reactor, producing a power output of around 80kWe. This is deployed by a light truck, which is telerobotically driven away from the return ship, paying out a power cable from a windlass as it does so. The reactor is placed either in a depression, in a crater, or behind a hill, ensuring that there is plenty of dirt between it and the return ship.

The crew remain on the surface for a year and a half, searching for past and present signs of life and looking for resources that would be of use to a future base. A key task would be to locate and drill into a source of geothermally heated water. This would not only provide a haven for any life that might have survived on Mars, but would also provide a source of water and geothermal power for a permanent base. Each crew would land their hab within rover driving distance of previous habs, which would be left behind on the surface. This would gradually establish a network of small outposts, gradually opening up more of the surface to exploration. Once a suitable location was found for a permanent base, all subsequent habs would be landed there and linked together. The emphasis would then change to developing Martian resources and supporting long range expeditions to explore Mars on a global scale.

- - - Updated - - -

Using indigenous propellants to get back to Earth does away with the "Battlestar Galactica" spaceship and the prohibitive logistical requirements it imposes. It also does away with the need to permanently strand the astronauts on Mars, as has been suggested for the Mars One mission.

Instead, each mission can be achieved with two launches of a heavy lift rocket equivalent to the Saturn 5. SpaceX and ULA have both offered to design and build such a rocket for a tiny fraction of the cost of SLS. NASA managed to operate the Space Shuttle, which had almost as much thrust at liftoff as the Saturn 5, for thirty years, with an average launch rate of six per year. A sustained launch campaign for Mars exploration requires only two launches every two years.

The launch requirements are in fact so low that the personnel involved in preparing such rockets for launch would be left with little to do in between launch windows, and they still have to get paid. Therefore, a Moon base would probably be established to help fill the launch manifests. Hardware designed for Mars could be adapted easily for the establishment of a Moon base. The rockets would probably also be used to throw large nuclear powered probes on missions to the outer solar system. This would allow them to support high data transmission rates and active sensors, greatly increasing data return.

A nuclear thermal rocket could be introduced to power the upper stage of the launch vehicle. This would double the payload mass that could be thrown to whichever destination is required. While not essential, it could be used to save money in the long run by reducing the number of launches required.

[Nibb31]

tldr; off-topic for this thread, and already discussed at length on this forum.

Instead of asking "how to get to Mars". Try finding a compelling answer to the "why" question.

Whichever method is used, it's a huge effort that needs a strong political commitment based on wide public support, neither of which exist.

Edited March 1, 2015 by Nibb31