Quote:
|
Originally Posted by cjl
And why must it land on only one part of the moon?
You forget that there is ALWAYS a location on the moon which you could land on - there is ALWAYS a spot in lunar dawn. As for your reliability arguements, you have failed to prove anything with your handwaving. You'll need to make more specific claims before we can make anything of them (specific as in NUMBERS. I don't care if the plan is always changing - the changes right now are minor. Do calculations based on its current state).
|
The moon has a day and a night, the travel from earth to the moon is of three days and the exploration time of each mission will be of seven days.
These are arguments and NUMBERS that cut over 60% of the 95-days max orbital loither time.
About the place to land...
The first VSE/ESAS moon missions plan was to build a CEV able to change its lunar orbit (also to polar) and an LSAM able to land in everyplace on the moon, but recent news say that both will be too heavy for the planned rockets, then, the new plan is for equatorial landing only and (probably) only three astronauts (that must remain 10 days on the moon instead of seven).
However, the most important reason for the "single place" landing is "MONEY"
The LSAM will have a cargo version to send up to 21 tons of hardware on the moon, but the moon-hardware, the cargo-LSAM and the launch will be VERY VERY VERY expensive!
I don't think that the NASA budget (and common RATIONALITY) may suggest to spend $6 billion for the manned mission and $5/10 billion for one-two cargo-LSAM with EVERY mission!
Then, to avoid waste GIANT quantity of money (that NASA will not have) the only way is to concentrate this VERY VERY VERY expensive moon-hardware on one or (max) two places and explore the surface around these places with pressurized rovers.