totm dec 2023 Artemis Discussion Thread

[jinnantonix]

@tater so you are saying that NASA has no plans to look for water on the moon, no plans to manufacture fuel, no plans to try to stage deep space missions with fuelling in lunar orbit?  You say, all they want to do is demonstrate  Orion.  Seems to me they will achieve that goal without a lunar landing, without Starship, etc.  What's all that about?

[tater]

8 minutes ago, jinnantonix said:

@tater so you are saying that NASA has no plans to look for water on the moon, no plans to manufacture fuel, no plans to try to stage deep space missions with fuelling in lunar orbit?  You say, all they want to do is demonstrate  Orion.  Seems to me they will achieve that goal without a lunar landing, without Starship, etc.  What's all that about?

The Artemis goals are fine by me. They are tied to SLS/Orion, so at the rate shown, literally nothing interesting happens in human spaceflight past the cool Lunar Starship landing—unless private companies do it themselves. 2-4 people on the surface for 2 weeks per year is not getting us lunar propellant manufacturing. We'd need a human base more staffed than ISS for that I'd wager.

[jinnantonix]

20 minutes ago, tater said:

The Artemis goals are fine by me. They are tied to SLS/Orion, so at the rate shown, literally nothing interesting happens in human spaceflight past the cool Lunar Starship landing—unless private companies do it themselves. 2-4 people on the surface for 2 weeks per year is not getting us lunar propellant manufacturing. We'd need a human base more staffed than ISS for that I'd wager.

I happen to think the whole program is fascinating, and that SLS and Orion are just a rather expensive sideshow for political expediency.  The real game is in the mostly autonomous CPLS landings and setup of mining infrastructure.  Humans are nearly redundant, and becoming more so as AI, robotics and remote monitoring becomes the norm rather than the exception.

[SunlitZelkova]

47 minutes ago, jinnantonix said:

I always thought that the idea of Artemis was to investigate fuel manufacture on the Moon, and staging missions from moon orbit, to see if this would improve the economics of deep space missions - including, but not exclusively, for, crewed or uncrewed Mars missions.  This isn't about landing lots of folk on the Moon, that isn't the goal, although proving the capability is part of the overall requirement for establish fuel production on the lunar surface.  Artemis 3 is just a step in a very long process.  Have I misunderstood?

Artemis is about going back to the Moon for lunar science. Fuel production is indeed part of it, but so far only for landers and assorted lunar support craft.

All of this could, in theory, be applied to Mars, but there are no plans to do so at the moment- NASA has no idea what it’s Mars architecture will look like (departing from Moon or LEO or wherever, what vehicles, etc.) and is still in the process of making a new one. When it will be released is unknown.

6 minutes ago, tater said:

The Artemis goals are fine by me. They are tied to SLS/Orion, so at the rate shown, literally nothing interesting happens in human spaceflight past the cool Lunar Starship landing—unless private companies do it themselves. 2-4 people on the surface for 2 weeks per year is not getting us lunar propellant manufacturing. We'd need a human base more staffed than ISS for that I'd wager.

Again, I don’t get what people are expecting. We can’t just go straight to a massive lunar base, the first expeditions will be relatively short and temporary just as the first long duration missions in LEO were. There is more distance involved and, for all intents and purposes, we don’t really have any experience with people on the Moon- the experimental and clunky Apollo equipment is a poor example.

It took around a decade of relatively short term space stations to get to Mir. Trying to get a lunar base or anything else “interesting” any faster seems unrealistic.

Even SpaceX expects their “Mars city” to consist of only small scale expeditions at first.

[tater]

16 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Again, I don’t get what people are expecting. We can’t just go straight to a massive lunar base, the first expeditions will be relatively short and temporary just as the first long duration missions in LEO were. There is more distance involved and, for all intents and purposes, we don’t really have any experience with people on the Moon- the experimental and clunky Apollo equipment is a poor example.

The second an all-up Lunar Starship lands on the Moon, there's already a nearly ISS-sized base on the Moon. This timeline has a lander-looking "surface habitat" in 2031. LOL. Looks to be some fraction of LSS.

If the goal is a base, and Lunar Starship... EXISTS, then this timeline is comical. Make a habitat lander using Starship. Land that. Done, it's got the volume of an A380, combined with the LSS that brings crew, you could have 10-20 people up there for a few months at a time.

The unflown Apollo Phase 4 mission (1-2 were flown, 3 was a 28 day polar orbit mission, also unflown), was for 14+ day stays (about a lunar day). That would have been 2 landers, one cargo for consumables, then the "taxi" LM.  That and the pressurized rover and the ELS (Early Lunar Shelter) for 14-50 day stays.

At the rate of the above chart, I'll be long dead before anything interesting happens on the Moon, and no humans walk on Mars until  long after that.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Just now, tater said:

a nearly ISS-sized base on the Moon

Should I read that as 'ISS-sized craft' or 'habitat'? 

 

Serious question; I know SS is big; I don't know what it's habitable volume is likely to be compared to the ISS.

[tater]

Just now, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Should I read that as 'ISS-sized craft' or 'habitat'? 

 

Serious question; I know SS is big; I don't know what it's habitable volume is likely to be compared to the ISS.

ISS is ~932m³ pressurized volume, but ~600m³ is equipment, apparently. Starship payload volume is ~1000m³.

Starship = ISS, or exceeds it.

Landed, it's less, since the floor is actually down (but normal plumbing would work!). Each 9m deck would be ~63m² (~680 sqft). Could have 5-7 decks (upper 2-3 smaller). Lower would be airlocks, etc. Accomodations like a capsule hotel for sleep, then common areas. Could easily have 6-10 crew, with the airlock deck that's a decent sized house.

 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

9 minutes ago, tater said:

ISS is ~932m³ pressurized volume, but ~600m³ is equipment, apparently. Starship payload volume is ~1000m³.

Starship = ISS, or exceeds it.

Landed, it's less, since the floor is actually down (but normal plumbing would work!). Each 9m deck would be ~63m² (~680 sqft). Could have 5-7 decks (upper 2-3 smaller). Lower would be airlocks, etc. Accomodations like a capsule hotel for sleep, then common areas. Could easily have 6-10 crew, with the airlock deck that's a decent sized house.

 

That's actually a lot of volume for science / operational payloads, too.  Interesting.

[tater]

The Original Enterprise bridge (old series) was apparently 38-40' in diameter at the outer edge, 35 ft clear console to console. SS is 29.5' in diameter.

 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Now I'm interested to see what NASA has SS do with the crew/payload design.

Just now, tater said:

The Original Enterprise bridge (old series) was apparently 38-40' in diameter at the outer edge, 35 ft clear console to console. SS is 29.5' in diameter.

 

That's a really great visual reference!  Thanks

Edited March 29, 2022 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[darthgently]

31 minutes ago, tater said:

Starship = ISS, or exceeds it.

Landed, it's less, since the floor is actually down (but normal plumbing would work!). Each 9m deck would be ~63m² (~680 sqft). Could have 5-7 decks (upper 2-3 smaller). Lower would be airlocks, etc. Accomodations like a capsule hotel for sleep, then common areas. Could easily have 6-10 crew, with the airlock deck that's a decent sized house.

Do a "Skylab Conversion" on the lower tank portion of Lunar SS after landing and so turning it from a craft to a permanent base and the amount of space would be many times ISS.  Of course this would require a spare Lunar SS

[Beccab]

4 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Which is probably why NASA is so quiet about crewed Mars exploration, because if they lump that in with Artemis Congress starts to raise its eyebrows

Honestly thought, how can you call your program "Moon to Mars" if none of the launches you have planned for the next decade have anything to do with Mars?

[tater]

14 minutes ago, Beccab said:

Honestly thought, how can you call your program "Moon to Mars" if none of the launches you have planned for the next decade have anything to do with Mars?

Because they spent years telling people SLS/Orion was the thing that would take humans to Mars.

https://www.news.com.au/technology/science/space-launch-system-the-worlds-biggest-rocket-goes-into-full-production-as-nasa-gets-closer-to-mars-mission/news-story/fc1af4025135721c78b51d4b39d207af

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/photos-nasa-prepares-orion-send-humans-mars

 

 

[RCgothic]

No part of SLS/Orion is taking people to Mars. Ever.

Not at this cadence.

To continue with this schedule will be to totally surrender crewed space exploration initiative to private endeavours.

[sevenperforce]

6 hours ago, RCgothic said:

No part of SLS/Orion is taking people to Mars. Ever.

Not at this cadence.

To continue with this schedule will be to totally surrender crewed space exploration initiative to private endeavours.

The nonsense “SLS to Mars” aspirations existed in an alternative universe where Block 1B was launching multiple times a year starting in 2018.

And even that probably wouldn’t have quite the cadence needed for a flags-and-footprints Mars mission. 

[tater]

19 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

The nonsense “SLS to Mars” aspirations existed in an alternative universe where Block 1B was launching multiple times a year starting in 2018.

And even that probably wouldn’t have quite the cadence needed for a flags-and-footprints Mars mission. 

Yeah, and the idea was that the Orion TPS could deal with direct entry from a Mars transfer. Regular people reading the PR wouldn't understand that however.

And the Mars DRA/DRM documents show mission profiles that involve many SLS launches per Mars flight. Comical.

[wumpus]

12 hours ago, tater said:

ISS is ~932m³ pressurized volume, but ~600m³ is equipment, apparently. Starship payload volume is ~1000m³.

Starship = ISS, or exceeds it.

Landed, it's less, since the floor is actually down (but normal plumbing would work!). Each 9m deck would be ~63m² (~680 sqft). Could have 5-7 decks (upper 2-3 smaller). Lower would be airlocks, etc. Accomodations like a capsule hotel for sleep, then common areas. Could easily have 6-10 crew, with the airlock deck that's a decent sized house.

 

Except that there is no way for Starship to power or cool the equipment inside ISS for very long.  You'd need the solar array and cooling radiators.  Possibly you could dig a "cooling well" (make a lunarthermal heat pump,  similar to a consumer geothermal heat pump) if you are on the Moon, but expect to need batteries (or kilopower class nuclear reactors) capable of month long nights instead of ~20 minute nights on ISS.   Or you could move to the polar crater (it is a popular choice for base ideas) so you can have 28/365 solar power and protection from solar radiation (especially flares).

But it shouldn't be a surprise that ISS has far more capabilities as a habitat than Starship, although eventually they will have to get it to the point where it can sustain people for the months it takes to get to Mars.

[Beccab]

Just now, wumpus said:

Except that there is no way for Starship to power or cool the equipment inside ISS for very long.

[wumpus]

Just now, Beccab said:

 

Ok, is the white part supposed to be enough to cool it?  Probably a higher ratio than ISS.

[StrandedonEarth]

15 minutes ago, wumpus said:

cool the equipment

Well, if it’s an ice mining operation, then the waste heat could be used to melt the ice and/or preheat/boil the water for distillation and hydrolysis 

[Beccab]

13 minutes ago, wumpus said:

Ok, is the white part supposed to be enough to cool it?  Probably a higher ratio than ISS.

That was about the "power" part, which is definitely and extensively covered by HLS. For the thermal part it wouldn't be hard to go the Shuttle way, i.e. foldable (and retractable) radiators Space Tug style

[tater]

24 minutes ago, wumpus said:

Except that there is no way for Starship to power or cool the equipment inside ISS for very long.  You'd need the solar array and cooling radiators.  Possibly you could dig a "cooling well" (make a lunarthermal heat pump,  similar to a consumer geothermal heat pump) if you are on the Moon, but expect to need batteries (or kilopower class nuclear reactors) capable of month long nights instead of ~20 minute nights on ISS.   Or you could move to the polar crater (it is a popular choice for base ideas) so you can have 28/365 solar power and protection from solar radiation (especially flares).

But it shouldn't be a surprise that ISS has far more capabilities as a habitat than Starship, although eventually they will have to get it to the point where it can sustain people for the months it takes to get to Mars.

1. The current Artemis plan in in fact to land on a polar crater rim with a longer solar day than 14-15 days, more like 20-something days of sunlight, a handful of night.

2. Yeah, it needs radiators, but current planned Artemis missions allow for 2 weeks, which is a nominal day for the rest of the Moon, so dealing with radiators should not be an issue.

3. The equipment on ISS is old, and likely draws way more power than modern stuff—and much is not needed. There are few useful experiments for lunar gravity, so it's ECLSS and not much else. Geological gear for immediate analysis would make sense. Nothing like 600m³ of equipment.

A landed SS would be a far superior habitat to ISS in every way.

[StrandedonEarth]

 

On 3/28/2022 at 9:57 AM, RyanRising said:

Put me in the doubters camp then - if there is such a gap (between NASA missions), I don’t think SpaceX will put any additional people on the lunar surface during it. I doubt a viable market will exist for selling people trips to the moon when they’re just starting to have the capability, and putting more boots on the moon isn’t as close to the The Mission as putting additional work into getting starship ready for Mars.

While those two goals aren’t necessarily contradictory, I don’t think putting people on the moon outside of NASA’s program so early on advances the latter goal enough to be worth the extra development and support you’d need to make it happen.

Oh, I’m not so sure, Mr Isaacman will probably want to get his boots ‘lithy. 

Edited March 29, 2022 by StrandedonEarth
Autocowrecked

[tater]

 

Starship managing to do the uncrewed demo landing completely obviates SLS and Orion. They would no doubt continue via institutional inertia and the sunk cost fallacy, but should Starship succeed in this one, official NASA mission, it's the end for SLS as anything serious people think about, at least for human spaceflight. Any in progress at that point should probably be retasked for very high C3 planetary probes.

[SunlitZelkova]

17 hours ago, tater said:

The second an all-up Lunar Starship lands on the Moon, there's already a nearly ISS-sized base on the Moon. This timeline has a lander-looking "surface habitat" in 2031. LOL. Looks to be some fraction of LSS.

If the goal is a base, and Lunar Starship... EXISTS, then this timeline is comical. Make a habitat lander using Starship. Land that. Done, it's got the volume of an A380, combined with the LSS that brings crew, you could have 10-20 people up there for a few months at a time.

The unflown Apollo Phase 4 mission (1-2 were flown, 3 was a 28 day polar orbit mission, also unflown), was for 14+ day stays (about a lunar day). That would have been 2 landers, one cargo for consumables, then the "taxi" LM.  That and the pressurized rover and the ELS (Early Lunar Shelter) for 14-50 day stays.

At the rate of the above chart, I'll be long dead before anything interesting happens on the Moon, and no humans walk on Mars until  long after that.

That wasn’t my point. Yes, the surface habitat is likely redundant and silly.

But it would be dangerous to go straight to 90 day long stays on the Moon or longer. Even if there is equipment ready, the steps should be incremental.

Apollo is a poor model for a number of reasons. Apollo had its funding peak in 1967, and was only able to launch at the rate it did due to that money- it is not an example of sustainability or economic efficiency. Apollo also was flown before we had a good understanding of the effects of long duration space flight, and it was very experimental in nature (basically every flight had some kind of malfunction).

The plans you mention come from the Apollo Extension Series, which was created in 1968. It would have not been workable because coronal mass ejections were not well known until the 1970s. The crew of the Phase 3 Apollo mission may well have been fried as a CME hit the Earth-Moon system in July 1974. The ELS likewise offered little protection against such an event.

There are very likely new unknowns about working on the lunar surface. Jumping straight to long duration missions is not feasible.

I think Artemis has nothing to do with Mars because SpaceX will be going there on their own anyways. I can’t see any reason why a program with their pace of development would take longer than the 2030s, considering the closest thing to a serious Mars program in history (ironically the poor IPP proposal) still managed to put the landing in 1982 or 1986 given enough funding (with a start in 1970 or so). These were estimates by engineers, not NASA officials making up timelines for political purposes.

If there are private companies that want to risk people’s lives with dramatically upscaled missions from what has been done before, I think that is completely fine. It is their choice. But to criticize NASA for playing it safe seems unjust.

16 hours ago, Beccab said:

Honestly thought, how can you call your program "Moon to Mars" if none of the launches you have planned for the next decade have anything to do with Mars?

Because everybody interested in space flight and the general public are hypnotized by Mars due to the cultural push it was given by Percival Lowell, Tsiolkovsky, and von Braun in their respective countries. Mentioning Mars gives them PR bonus points and makes the program look more groundbreaking and innovative than it necessarily actually is in its present state.

Edited March 29, 2022 by SunlitZelkova