A moon landing in 2024? NASA says it'll happen • Hacker News Board

Re: A moon landing in 2024? NASA says it'll happen

#101

Post by m4rtink » Mon, Feb 10, 2020, 2:53 AM UTC

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #84

ChuckMcM wrote: post #79

I agree with most people that it would be nearly impossible without a Manhattan Project style commitment from the Government and I don't see that happening. That said, an interesting thought experiment would be to put a Falcon 9 second stage to 'sleep' on an up coming mission for a couple of weeks and then have it wake up and relight. If that works push it to a month. With a system like that you could Falcon Heavy to…

They've done extended, multiple relight tests of the second stage as part of their Air Force mission rating tests. I don't think it is anywhere near designed to stay usable after multiple days of staying cold, that is a completely different mission profile from what the second stage was designed to do, aka earth orbit missions. I would expect the stored cryogenics would not take well to it.

Exactly, the main issue is the liquid oxygen on board - withou either active cooling or very clever isolation, there will not be any left after a while, as it will evaporate.

The soviets did experiments with a blok d upper stage that was also kerosene/LOX and were able to push it to a couple days, maybe up to a single week.

So really multiple weeks are not doable due to LOX alone withou turning your already mass limitted upper stage to an advanced orbital propelant depot.

Also longer term you will start hitting also other issues, such as battery power (might need to add solar panels), stuff getting too cold/hot, long term exposure of electronics to cosmic radiation, lack of ulage fuel, etc.

Re: A moon landing in 2024? NASA says it'll happen

#102

Post by NikolaeVarius » Mon, Feb 10, 2020, 2:55 AM UTC

mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #98

Aloha wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who did it are dead or dying, the tribal knowledge wasn't written down.

Hm, it seems I should have been more specific. I am aware of the mechanism, I'm hoping someone might have even a bit of insight into what that tribal knowledge is/was.

https://www.history.com/news/moon-landing-technology-inventi...

Stuff like

> Finally, the parachutes were folded and packed by hand. During the Apollo missions in the 1960s and early 1970s, only three people in the country were trained, and then licensed by the Federal Aviation Administration, to fold Apollo parachutes—Norma Cretal, Buzz Corey and Jimmy Calunga —and they handled all 11 Apollo missions. Their skills were considered so essential that NASA forbade them from ever riding in the same car together. The agency couldn’t afford to chance that all three would be injured in a single accident.

I also doubt that the seamstresses techniques to sew those parachutes are something easily written down

Re: A moon landing in 2024? NASA says it'll happen

#103

Post by runarberg » Mon, Feb 10, 2020, 2:55 AM UTC

redahs wrote: post #9

There's not much reason to settle the moon and mars prior to the remote establishment of an independent food supply. Aggressive remote terraforming through domes, mirrors, foreign microorganisms, explosives, and robots should come first. Establishing automated synthetic systems on these rocks to mimic what nature provides for free on Earth is the hard problem to be solving. Without such systems already place, wages w…

Please, leave Mars’s surface alone! We’re merely starting to explore it and we don’t understand it. Don’t ruin it before we have a chance to.

Re: A moon landing in 2024? NASA says it'll happen

#104

Post by redis_mlc » Mon, Feb 10, 2020, 2:57 AM UTC

Can somebody explain what the benefit of sending men to the moon is?

I mean science or engineering. I don't mean PR or funding visibility - you can get that by sponsoring a NASCAR ride.

Both the Space Shuttle and ISS have been huge money sinks with no benefit. How will another moon visit be any different?

Re: A moon landing in 2024? NASA says it'll happen

#105

Post by m4rtink » Mon, Feb 10, 2020, 2:58 AM UTC

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #37

nine_k wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be easier to undertake a massive industrial operation on an unfamiliar celestial body when there is a human around to oversee things first-hand and troubleshoot issues when (not if) they arise. First Lunar habitats are going to be mostly underground anyway, and nuclear-powered. Not much is needed to terraform.

I'm constantly "impressed" (not in a good way) at how good some people are at saying completely unfounded statements as fact. There is literally no reason to believe either premise of most bases being underground, nor is there to believe nuclear power will be the dominant power source. We have a hard time getting RTGs inside steel boxes capable of surviving disasters into orbit.

Actually, its not hard to make RTG that survives reentry, multi RTGs did just that, one of them even being relaubchen after they recovered it.

Also since some rather missinformed protests back in IIRC cassini times I don't thin anyone really cares about modern RTGs being launched these days.

Re: A moon landing in 2024? NASA says it'll happen

#106

Post by m4rtink » Mon, Feb 10, 2020, 3:00 AM UTC

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #63

nine_k wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need the reactor working, or assembled, on the way to the destination. Consider a pebble-bed design. Digging underground is a reasonable way to get a massive layer of radiation protection without carrying it with you. This is important when you are just starting a long-term habitat. Later designs can of course be different.

1) The issue isn't limited to the existence of the reactor. It is linked to the public perception of anything nuclear being launched into the air. A commercial/proven pebble-bed reactor doesn't even exist yet, and last I heard they only started the first design in 2018. Digging underground is reasonable if your only requirement is "block radiation". Its less reasonable when requirements also include 'get the digging…

There are already big suitable underground spaces in the form of lunar lava tubes. Those should help massively with bootstrapping of any undrground lunar colony.

Re: A moon landing in 2024? NASA says it'll happen

#107

Post by m4rtink » Mon, Feb 10, 2020, 3:02 AM UTC

HuShifang wrote: post #34

btilly wrote: post #29

NASA's best bet is to bite the bullet, scrap the SLS already, and help pay for SpaceX's development. SpaceX has a publicly announced rocket design that is capable of getting men to the Moon and back. They are working on it for themselves. They are looking for every source of funding that they can get. They already are planning suborbital flights this summer, and already are looking for it to be human rated by NASA. T…

There's a reason SLS is nicknamed the Senate Launch System -- Sen. Shelby of Alabama rains fire down on any NASA official who comes anywhere near observing that SpaceX could fulfill any objectives allocated to the SLS. It's as much a pork barrel, to use the political lingo, as it is a rocket -- a steady source of jobs for Alabama and a couple other Southern states for as long as it's in development / production. And…

It really does seems rather un-democratical if just single (albeit voted) representative wields so much power, apparently withou much the others can do about it.

Re: A moon landing in 2024? NASA says it'll happen

#108

Post by ChuckMcM » Mon, Feb 10, 2020, 3:08 AM UTC

m4rtink wrote: post #101

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've done extended, multiple relight tests of the second stage as part of their Air Force mission rating tests. I don't think it is anywhere near designed to stay usable after multiple days of staying cold, that is a completely different mission profile from what the second stage was designed to do, aka earth orbit missions. I would expect the stored cryogenics would not take well to it.

Exactly, the main issue is the liquid oxygen on board - withou either active cooling or very clever isolation, there will not be any left after a while, as it will evaporate. The soviets did experiments with a blok d upper stage that was also kerosene/LOX and were able to push it to a couple days, maybe up to a single week. So really multiple weeks are not doable due to LOX alone withou turning your already mass limi…

This was the ULA paper I read about 5 years ago : https://www.ulalaunch.com/docs/default-source/extended-durat... There are a number of papers on the ULA site describing fairly innovative ways to keep the LOX from boiling away. As this stage would not have a "payload" in the traditional sense it could have a refrigerator attached :-)

Re: A moon landing in 2024? NASA says it'll happen

#109

Post by LargeWu » Mon, Feb 10, 2020, 3:08 AM UTC

rdlw wrote: post #21

redahs wrote: post #9

There's not much reason to settle the moon and mars prior to the remote establishment of an independent food supply. Aggressive remote terraforming through domes, mirrors, foreign microorganisms, explosives, and robots should come first. Establishing automated synthetic systems on these rocks to mimic what nature provides for free on Earth is the hard problem to be solving. Without such systems already place, wages w…

Viability due to public opinion is a reason. I think that NASA has been successful enough in popularizing the ideals of not interfering with the potential biospheres (or lacks of biosphere) of other planets, 'Planetary Protection', that any plan for 'aggressive remote terraforming' would be met with public outcry, for the sake of preserving areological history.

"the ideals of not interfering with the potential biospheres (or lacks of biosphere) of other planets"

I think their ideal is to protect planets from interfering with their ecosystems unintentionally. Microbial contamination, for example. Especially Mars, since we don't know what kind of life, if any, existed or currently exists there. Also some of Saturn's and maybe Jupiter's moons. But I think if there were ever a strategic reason and viable option to terraform one of those bodies, which I think is pretty unlikely anyway, NASA would probably consider it. But by that time, I think it's extremely likely that NASA and the USA probably wouldn't exist as we know it anyway.

Re: A moon landing in 2024? NASA says it'll happen

#110

Post by hss » Mon, Feb 10, 2020, 3:13 AM UTC

I would like to know the "why" behind landing on moon project. Don't we already know enough about moon? Why waste money on it? Can't this money be used in other space projects like Mars Landing or earth projects like fighting poverty?