Category Archives: Lunar

Lunar Lander Challenge 2009

Armadillo finally won L2 already. Masten and Unreasonable are still flying for second place I think (I’m not 100% clear on the rules) today! Spacetransportnews is the place to watch all this. (Or it has the links collected.) It’s historical … Continue reading

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Delta IV Manrating

Skimming the document (thanks NSF, Florida Today). Cute how a launch without an upper stage at all in the heavy configuration works out for ISS (burn SM fuel for orbit):

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Good News Everyone

From Hobbyspace, highlighted by Transterrestrial Musings: The program of record (i.e. Ares I/V/Orion/Altair), which exceeds the expected budget substantially, will no longer be in the options table but kept separately just as a reference. Yes! The historic words have been … Continue reading

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Reality and Future

Jeff Greason is a rational person who simply gets it. It is mind boggling how completely opposite from someone like Mike Griffin he is. See Jeff’s presentation with the Augustine Panel. Paraphrasing, “we could go to Mars with Ares V … Continue reading

Posted in Architecture, Demotivation, Depot, ESA, Global, industry, ISRU, Lunar, Motivation, NASA, RLV:s, Spacecraft | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Lunar Bases Must Be Buried

Concept art of lunar bases tends to show spherical or cylindrical structures, but they suffer from one problem: radiation. (Both of the gamma / particle and heat kinds). The lunar environment has lots of solar and cosmic radiation. Nights also … Continue reading

Posted in Architecture, Colonization, ISRU, Lunar, Motivation, Science Links, Spacecraft | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

NASA's near future

I’ve been an opponent of Ares I for quite a long time (not from the beginning though, but I have become more of an optimist since, regarding better  ways). In light of these things, it might seem that the huge … Continue reading

Posted in Architecture, Depot, industry, Journalism, Lunar, meta, NASA, RLV:s, Spacecraft | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

FLEX – Flexible Exploration Architecture

I wrote this architecture proposal, FLEX, a few years ago. It analyzes NASA’s approach that the ESAS study picked and notices how most of the mass in a lunar exploration stack in LEO is actually liquid oxygen. By using a … Continue reading

Posted in Architecture, Depot, industry, ISRU, Lunar, Models, Motivation, NASA, RLV:s, Spacecraft | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 17 Comments

Chinese Mini Space Station

From Slashdot via Hobbyspace. There’s some confusion regarding Shenzou 7 (the upcoming mission), 8, 9 and 10 forming a space station by snapping together in orbit. The orbital module of Shenzou can stay behind on orbit just fine, it can … Continue reading

Posted in Architecture, Depot, Lunar, Spacecraft | Tagged , , | 8 Comments

Conceptual Design at NASA

The Constellation program has been going on for about 3 years. Kicking off with the ESAS study of a few months, it still hasn’t settled very much about the architecture. Even the number of solid segments and liquid engines on … Continue reading

Posted in Architecture, Depot, engines, Lunar, Models, NASA, Spacecraft | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Ares V is in a Bit of a Trouble

David Harris finally wrote the article on NSF that was a long time coming. Ares V might very well move to 5.5 segment SRB:s. There goes the commonality with Ares I. Mike Griffin, Scott Horowitz, Doug Stanley and the others … Continue reading

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