They partly used this idea in Phil's favourite movie, Armageddon, (Favourite if you like ripping things to shreds :wink: )

But Any hue, if they ever allow the shuttle to fly again, Could a standard space shuttle be used as the effective command modual to do a round trip to the moon?

The landing would be made by another craft carried in the cargo compartment - to be designed (Now that would be an interesting science project)

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Can a shuttle fly to the moon?

Answer: no. They can't carry enough fuel.

Scraping the barrel here, and I will after posting this look at Phil's review of Armageddon, but in that film they had the idea of refueling the shuttles from a space station.

Could it be possible to prepare by sending up or building in space an extra fuel tank and then filling it in a series of flights, much how they used to supply the ISS?

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Freedom For Fission A breath of fresh Iodine-131

It'd probably end up being cheaper just to design and build a new moon capable craft.

Homer Hickam had the premise of taking the shuttle to the moon by adding on a new engine over the old one. He has a fiction novel entertaining the idea.

Link

SSMEs are not restartable. Presuming you solved that problem, you'd have to figure out how to dock a new external tank to the orbiter and seal the plumbing, a task that now takes a building full of fixtures and a crew of highly trained assemblers. Then you'd have to figure out how to keep all that cryogenic fuel cool enough while it's stored in orbit waiting for the orbiter to come find it. That's what you'd need for TLI.

For LOI and TEI you'd have to use the OMS, because the cyrogenic fuel probably won't stay cold enough during the trip. The orbiter doesn't have enough OMS fuel for either of those manuevers. Presuming you put a LM-style lander in the cargo bay and used the rest of the space for OMS fuel, you might have enough gas to get into and out of lunar orbit.

The last little bit of the trip would be the hardest because the orbiter's TPS won't handle re-entry at translunar speeds. So you'd either have to replace the entire TPS with something able to withstand a greater heat load, or you'd have to figure out how to get rid of some 10,000 pesky feet per second of velocity and re-enter Earth orbit.

That's just the propulsion problems. There are problems with thermal loading, communications, and navigation that haven't been addressed.

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Clavius Moon Base

oh well this one is a non starter then

pity

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Moderations in purple

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It's a nice idea, albeit somewhat impractical. But thinking about it is a good way to understand some of the real world aspects of space travel. Knowing why you can't do something is the first step to figuring out how to do it.

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Clavius Moon Base

Sorry to show my ignorance on this but what did the acronyms

LOI
TEI
OMS
SSME
TLI
TPS

stand for
ops:

Would it be practical to design a Space Ferry that goes between Earth orbit and Lunar Orbit but never lands on either, and a re-usable Lunar Modual ?

The problem I saw with Apollo was that you needed a new one for every moon shot. Could a re-usable system cut the cost and bring the Clavius moon base a step closer to reality ?

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Moderations in purple

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LOI - Lunar Orbit Insertion. This is the set of maneuvers that puts a spacecraft in lunar orbit. In Apollo it was broken up into LOI-1, which slows the spacecraft down enough to go into an orbit, and LOI-2, which makes the orbit more or less circular.

TEI - Trans-Earth Injection. This is the maneuver that "breaks orbit" and puts the spacecraft back on course to Earth.

OMS - Orbital Maneuvering System. The pods at the tail of the space shuttle that are used for large-scale maneuvers in orbit, especially to de-orbit the spacecraft and bring it back to Earth. The OMS is to the space shuttle what the SPS (service module engine) was to Apollo, and in fact they are built the same way.

SSME - Space Shuttle Main Engine. The three hydrogen-burning engines on the orbiter that are fed from the big external tank. They aren't used except for the ascent to orbit. These are extremely powerful engines, but of course require lots of fuel.

TLI - Trans-Lunar Injection. The maneuver that puts the spacecraft on a course to the moon from Earth orbit. Apollo used the third stage of the Saturn V to do this.

TPS - Thermal Protection System. The various materials on the space shuttle orbiter that protect it from the heat of re-entry, including the tiles on the underside, the carbon pieces on the nose and leading edge of the wing, and the blankets that cover the upper part of the hull.

Would it be practical to design a Space Ferry that goes between Earth orbit and Lunar Orbit but never lands on either, and a re-usable Lunar Modual?

That's an attractive-sounding solution. But for now, re-usable spacecraft require considerable refurbishing between missions. Engines, for example, must have their thrust chambers remilled and resurfaced between firings. We'd have to figure out a way to do that in space, and it's pretty hard to do right now on the ground.

And a ferry would have to figure out how to slow down enough to enter Earth orbit on the way back. Apollo did that by combining aerobraking with re-entry using a tough but disposable heat shield. You'd either have to design a heat shield that could withstand aerobraking maneuvers without requiring extensive service afterwards, or else carry enough fuel with you to use your engines to slow down. So right now it's a choice between being wasteful, or not knowing how to do it at all.

A properly funded return to the moon might explore some of these options and break new ground, the way Apollo broke new ground decades ago. But for now the most economical way to go to the moon is the way Apollo did it, using expendable spacecraft.

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Clavius Moon Base

So....as our resident Rocket Scientist, do you think that a Shuttle type craft that takes off from Earth, travels to the moon and returns is a possible at all? If so what sort of things would it being needing its designs?

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Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

Well, the question, as always, is, "What's the mission?"

How many people? For how long? To do what? Will we use lunar orbit rendezvous? Single-vehicle or multiple vehicles?

When we know the answers to those questions then we can begin thinking about the vehicle(s).

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Clavius Moon Base

By way of analogy, I recall reading that the earliest jet engines, the British and German ones, and immediate post-WWII engines required complete rebuilds of the turbines after a short time because they lacked the metals that could withstand the heat. A case where the theory is on the cusp of technological ability.

Perhaps a reusable lunar ship is eventually achievable if it is confined to basically LOI, TEI and TLI only, rendezvousing with the space station rather than worrying about Earth reentry, and only landing and taking off from the lunar surface. Akin to the big shuttle envisioned in Stanley Kubrick's "2001 – A Space Odyssey."

Well, to me, "shuttle mission" from moon to Earth implies at least 20 or 30 people (paying passengers--we're talking Robert Heinlein/2001 Space Odyssey here, businessmen going back and forth), and the mission would be, to go back and forth, at will, from a moon-orbiting shuttle stop (bus stop) of some kind to an Earth-orbiting shuttle stop. Assuming Burt Rutan or somebody gets an Earthside-to-orbital shuttle service going...You'd "change trains" at the ISS, or something, so to speak.

For how long--well, for as long as it would take for the average shuttle engine to putt-putt itself back and forth between Luna and Earth.

And then customers could complain about the slowness of the service...

The traffic to the moon would be personel and equipment to construct and maintain the permenant moon base. The ideal would be to have on the base a hydroponics section as part of the recycling stuff.

Moon to earth would be personel at the end of their tour of duty, minerals and stuff mined.

It was suggested somewhere that the moon would be a good launch base for any exploration of further planets or for mining the asteroids that occupy Earth's orbital trejectory, it not being so much of a gravity well that Earth is.

As years progressed the idea would be to build colonies on the moon.

In a sci fi serial I did at my first University I had the idea that a number of lunar colonies banded together and declared UDI. Because of their experience of recycling and the wealth coming in from mining of the asteroids that intersect the Earth's orbit, they were self sufficient. The moon then becomes an independant state with a seat on the UN (except the UN had by then collapsed)

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I recommend the book Moonrush, by Dennis Wingo, for a serious and practicalll approach for building a moon-earth ferry system using the ISS and existing technology, buy the book is especially interesting as to why would we go to the moon - he advocates mining, especially platinum, but other kinds too to refuel spacefreighters so we could mine further in Uranus or Jupiter - this could enrich humanity beyond our wildest dreams...

"We go to Mars to take our civilization there - we go to the Moon to save our civilization here" - is the motto of the book.

Hmmmm. Okay

Assuming we go for a moon base as well, then it'll have to carry a crew (say 4?) plus passengers so well say 12-14 people all up. Obviously you need to be able to carry the equipment to build and later resupply the base. It would need a way to get the crew up and down, using a VTOL System would be the most fun way, but probably not the most practical way I am guessing, but using the one vechile would probably be the easiest overall. Obviously it would have to be able to take off and land on Earth too. Assuming it'll be re-usable would be best.

So can you build me one?

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Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

Mission profile.....

When I read the thread, my thought on profile would have been to see if a small return mission could use the existing hardware.

So we'd have been talking 3-5 crew max, Apollo LM sized lander with 2 or 3 occupants (3 would be nice, just to show we have improved in 40 years.

Interesting thread

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