When it comes to getting back to the moon and then off to Mars. I think we are going in the wrong direction. A couple of years ago, if asked, most of us could agree that the shuttle's 50,000 lb payload was a medium to heavy lift.

What NASA needs is an extreme heavy lift shuttle (500,000 lb payload) leaving the small payloads to private industry. The competition that would result would drive the price down for smaller payloads.

The EHLS would allow for the ISS to be built quickly and the next generation station planned/built. For instance, if the EHLS had a 60 W x 30 H x 240 L payload it would be able to store 10-15x the number of ISS modules that the current shuttle can.

Another great benefit of such a large platform is that it could easily be the platform that transports the future lunar landers to lunar orbit. Its capacity and payload alone allow it to function a make shift space station, which is ideal for lunar and future mars mission.

As for the engineering challenges, just think of the Antonov AN225 and the Airbus A380. If we can make these beasts then we can certainly make the EHLS.

NASA has also shown that they can not handle the complexities of a rapid launch schedule (i.e Columbia and Challenger).

i.e. NOVA ? http://www.astronautix.com/lvfam/nova.htm or Sea Dragon http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/searagon.htm

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Clear skies Maksutov.

In both cases I fail to see the valid logic.

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Why does everyone think we have to go a SINGLE direction. I know the funding sways it that way, but there's a lot more complex things going on.
I would tend to agree here. Although shuttle (implying SSTO)? time will tell.
I'm not sure what competition you're talking about. Competition for smaller payloads will primarily be smaller rockets since those would be the only commercially viable alternatives for some time.
Unfortunately the ISS was designed to be lifted by shuttle. If there was an easy conversion, you would see deltaIV lifting the sections with suyuz lifting the workforce.
For the next gen... I would agree.
Lift alot, do alot. My thought is to lift the fuel required to leave orbit (although not the HLV itself)
Huh? I hate when people say "if we can... then". We're talking different technologies here.
I think it just proved that Shuttle didn't live up to its potential.

500.000 lbs SSTO shuttle? With the current state of technology, that's an engineers dream, but an engineering nightmare. Do not overestimate our capabilities. I'm not saying it's impossible and very likely we'll see (heavy lift) SSTO in the future, but at the moment both SSTO and 500.000 lbs lift are major engineering problems, let alone combining the two .

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Unfortunately, a single direction is all that budgets can afford. But in building an EHLS we leaving an area that private industry can expand and fill the vacuum that would be created. X Prize just showed that the potential exists. Small rockets would be the first stage of private industry filling the gap and with time launch vehicles.

I don't see that SSTO is a requirement. It would be nice but is not needed. Staging is far more efficient. Plus I don't see the point of having SSTO is we were to retask an EHLS for lunar orbit requirements.

As for the fuel requirements they would be quiet large.

Plus keep in mind that we need time for EHLS to be developed. Delta and Atlas would have to lift some of the modules to the ISS if we have any hope of ever finishing it.

I doubt there's anything close to enough $ in NASA's budget to develop a 500,000 lb lift vehicle. If NASA's budget was to get a huge infusion of $, I'd like to see:
1) Manned Mars mission
2) More aggressive robotic exploraion of the Jovian system, focusing on Europa (and either Callisto or Ganymede, whichever of those two is icy and potentially hides an ocean). Follow up with manned missions once technology allows this.
3) Observatory on the Moon, with a very large telescope and other instruments for the various EM wavelengths, though with adaptive optics, maybe it isn't necessary to put instruments beyond Earth's atmosphere any longer, at least for certain wavelengths.
4) More aggressive development of terrestrial planet finding missions/technology.

Given NASA's limitations, I'll stick with #2 and add Mars to that as well as #4. I guess I just highjacked this thread, apologies...

Y'know, truthfully, I've had enough of this "exploration" junk. I want to see colonization. Anyone else with me on that?

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What do you consider "colonization"? Currently, there is no place we can reach where you'd actually want to live. I mean, Antartica is less hostile .

If you're talking about bases, that's something else. But why would you build a base on say Mars other than as help in exploration?

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Fine with me. I may not agree with your list, but do agree with the realism. Although I do want the WOW.

Yep; as in WOW.

That is the problem, isn't it?

Clearly, I'm not looking for colonization to be quick. But we need to start at some point. Terraform Mars. It'll take a few hundred years (at least), so lets get going!

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And if you confine your thoughts to reality?

Terraforming 101: perform a notable, controllable and reversible influence on the weather on (part of) the earth. Failed the test? Then why dream about terraforming another planet?

Well, you can dream of course. BUt it's not something we should start to "develop" now, as we don't have the technology at all.

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But I'm saying that we should develop that technology. The first step would be a successful experiment along the lines of Biosphere 2. Once you can build a sustainable facility like that, plop a few down on Mars.

Bam. Permanent habitation.

From there, continue to develop infrastructure and move toward a self-sustaining economy. And, of course, continue work on technology that would allow for terraforming.

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I disagree. First attempt at terraforming SHOULD be done on a lifeless planet. That way if your first try screws up, it is not fatal. A "notable, controllable and reversible influence on the weather on (part of) the earth" should not be even attempted until we worked out the bugs elsewhere.

Not that it is close to reality either...

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

What I meant was that some think that terraforming is possible now, if only we invested enough money in it. If that were the case, why has nobody ever thought of focusing our energy to fixing some environmental issues on our own planet first, before dragging an atmosphere towards another planet and the like. I'm not saying it should be attempted here first, I was talking about how far the required technology is from our level of development.

I agree that Biosphere2 like things (but working) would be an excellent approach for permanent bases on other planets, because they're self sustaining. Also without the idea of terraforming later, doing research to self sustaining closed habitats is a good thing. Even if we were only to find out that a closed habitiat has not got enough "critical mass" to be self sustainable, at least we would know that then.

I don't think the potential for terraforming should drive any decisions now. But if we're thinking about permanent bases outside the earth, thinking about ways to reduce the number of required cargo transports is a good idea. Things like Biosphere 2 that means.

But building a Biosphere2 like thing on Mars (once the concept is proven of course) is a bit beyond the current budget .

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Which is why you need an economic incentive for this to work. But I can't think of one.

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Well a superheavy lift SSTO would be quite doable with nuclear propulsion using a gas core reactor.
The big problems with that are the political issues involved with nuclear propulsion within earths atmosphere.
http://www.nuclearspace.com/a_liberty_ship.htm
CU
Skipjack

"one big problem with that is the political issues involved"

If you say "superheavy SSTO" in 2006, there's more big problems than politics alone.

MSTO is "extremely" efficient, and SSTO can only be more efficient if it is done very, very good. We can't even do it bad at the moment, apart from so bad that it doesn't work. Throwing off stages ahlfway is very efficient as you get rid of some dead mass. THe penalty is the extra mass of subsequent engines. The lack of throwing out dead mass halfway in SSTo needs to be smaller than the gain in not carrying extra engines. We're not there yet by far.

The ultimate in efficiency would be continuous burn to orbit: a self-eating rocket that leaves no useless mass after part of the fuel has burned off, but keeps the engine working. Think of a solid fuel rocket in which there is no fuel tank whatsoever, and somehow the flame can still be directed without there being an actual engine, just burning. That kind of idea .

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Using rockets for big payloads is never going to be easy imho.


The people with the money need to start taking alternative methods of space travel seriously. Space elevators shouldn't been seen as just some wacky science fiction. There should be a high budget mission to try out solar sails (I believe the failure of Cosmos 1 will come to be seen as a significant setback for our exploration of space).

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Solar sails are nice, but useless as launcher.
Space elevators have their own set of enormous engineering problems, most of them fundamental problems re material properties. They're at least in the same position as (superheavy...)SSTO at the moment.