The Moon Society Forum

type of vehicles. shuttle versus rocket cap type, versus lunar lander bug versus bouncing thing that jpl made which was very interesting for mars. did you see the bouncing thing? versus satelitte-looking thing,

lunar bug/rover

i mean, we are very new to space travel. think of all the variations of craft for different purposes. have we been doing space travel for hundreds of years with all kinds of craft ?

no so this is new for us


===ATTACHMENT BELOW====

please let me know what you think of my drawings..././//. !!! ! thank you , michael

good luck in school. get your homework done

Well, Michael, you've got to keep in mind that those wings will be useless on the Moon—there's no air! That's why Apollo used a jet landing.

If you're wanting to look at science-fiction concepts for moon landing spacecraft, how about the Space:1999! Eagles:

• They land horizontally, so the pilot can see his touchdown spot (pilots hate making jet landings on instruments!), but accelerate longitudinally for space flight.
• In the concept, they are modular, so they can be adapted for special needs.
• They have plenty of room for instruments or all kinds of general cargo.
• And...they just look cool!

It looks like we are discussing spaceships as well as ground vehicles. The space freighter image attached is built of lunar materials. It carries ore or finished products. The manned section can detach and operate independently of the cargo section. Say a meteor smashes up the cargo section or some other accident occurs, the manned section can function as its own life boat.

notes on space freighter

1) maybe this discussion should be moved??

2) an ore carrier would probably be best to consist of just metal and glass fiber mesh bags and be fully robotic and use nuclear electric propulsion. mass drivers don't reach exhaust Vs as high as VASIMR so more propellant is needed with mass drivers. VASIMR can use many different propellants-hydrogen, vaporized metals, even oxygen

3) the space freighter above was originally envisioned for carrying crates of finished products thru space. magnesium boxes with finished products (glass wares, electronics, even canned goods, etc.) packed in glass or mineral wool. The cargo hold is rectangular because aerodynamics don't matter in vacuum and flat plates and straight beams are easier to make and put together. As one engineer at the Moon Soc. St. L chapter says,"flat is good, flat is your friend." Titanium alloy has higher strength to wt. than aluminum alloy and we don't have much to alloy Al with on the Moon so our plain Al won't be real strong. Al is hard to produce also. Magnesium is "Moon makeable" and lighter than Al and the cargo hold skin won't endure much stress. Titanium is "moon makeable" also. So we have a square ship packed with square boxes.

Items for Interplanetary (Moon, Mars, Space stations and colonies, Earth, etc.) Trade

1) Objects d'Art
a) glass workings
b) paintings
c) sculptures
d) jewelry
2) Gems and stones-lunar zircons, martian diamonds, etc.
3) fragarances, perfumes, colognes
4) seeds, genetic material
5) pharmaceuticals
6) exotic foodstuffs (canned in glass jars) and spices and essential oils
7) Electronics of all sorts, customized computers and servers
8) currency-official paper and coin
9) hard copy documents???
10) fashions
11) fancy furniture
12) tobacco, coffee and tea???
13) religious relics and such
14) bodies of the deceased or their ashes
15) geological specimens
16) scientific insturments
17) precision tools
18) wood items for those willing to pay the price!
19) whatever else you can think of!!!

yes this is getting off topic

19) musical insturments-from a terran Stradovarius to a simple martian flute
20) vintage wines- some grapes only grow in specific regions and nobody knows why, and some people really value wines
21) bee products-honey, royal jelly, propolis, some people can't live without these. Bees gather pollens from vast areas to make small qtys. of honey and even smaller qtys. or royal jelly. We might not have enough farm space to support bees, and who wants to get stung anyway? Honey etc. could be pricy treats for space dwellers.
22) ????

I've always been working class and don't have expensive tastes for novelties like martian cigarettes or lunar objects d'art or their terran equivalents....but some people do and if they are willing to spend the money I am willing to leave my home on the Moon and spend 180 days en route to Mars, layover for 26 months, then spend 180 days back to the Moon and Earth to sell them whatever luxury they want!!! Not to be elitist, but the first space tourists will be wealthy, and there will be others who make homes in space who get rich too, and they will have money to spend.

22) Human Beings- no, i am not talking about interplanetary slave trading...There will be people on the Earth, Moon or Mars who need to bring their professional expertise on site because 3D holography by radio wave isn't good enuff, esp. with the lag time 'tween Earth-Moon and Mars and elsewhere. If they can't afford a luxury cycling station hotel I and others like me will be willing to bring them along on my interplanetary tramp steamer for a reasonable price.

Also, there will be interplanetary internet romances and mail order brides who need transportation, not only of themselves but their mother's even their grandmother's wedding dress! We should have extra cabins on the freighter for people willing to travel aboard our square ship.

We don't really have a forum area specifically dedicated to design of spacecraft, although perhaps we should. Peter requested this area and he is the moderator; if he wishes to move it he is free to do so. I was thinking about moving it to "Lunar Surface Logistics", but I think his vision for that forum is to focus on lunar surface transportation (lunar railroads, moon rovers, and the like). If this discussion really takes off I'll go ahead and give it its own area.



I haven't heard of VASIMR before this. Do you have a link for more information?




Building the first true space-to-space ship with nuclear (or equivalent) drive is going to be a HUGE milestone on the way to developing a spacegoing civilization. I agree that it should be a cargo/passenger carrying design—perhaps with modular containers which can be swapped out as needed for each mission.

VASIMR= VAriable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasmic Rocket

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/space/travel ... lsion.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_S ... sma_Rocket

The following links are to the U of Florida where they are designing a high temp vapor core reactor and MHD system for powering VASIMR drives. My research into this has turned up info citing that a VCR (Vapor Core Reactor) + MHD + Rankine cycle turbogenerators could produce a complete power system with 1 kWe per kg. of mass. That's the kinda powerplant we need for electric propulsion!

http://www.inspi.ufl.edu/

http://www.inspi.ufl.edu/gcr.pdf

http://www.inspi.ufl.edu/research/gcr/index.html

Perhaps a large metal pallet instead of a closed cargo hold would be lighter. Cargo modules would be strapped to the pallet. Some cargo modules (magnesium shipping crates) could be pressurized with 1 to 3 psi of inert gas if necessary. Glass or mineral wool packing would protect fragile items from rough handling damage and maybe provide some thermal insulation also.

Future rocket launchers could greatly reduce the cost of a pound to LEO. On the Moon we could launch with mass drivers for a low price and even have a space elevator cable dangling down from a station at L1 or L2 for cheap transport. A mass driver atop Pavonis Mons on Mars could launch cheap, and reusable aerobraking modules could land cheap. I am told a space elevator on Mars could be made of kevlar...but one of the moonlets has to be moved unless the cable is oscillating in rythmn with that moonlet. Eventually, with carbon nanotube super materials we could build a space el on Earth.

Until we get a terran space el, shipping between the Moon, Mars, space stations/colonies, asteroid bases, etc. will be cheaper than from Earth. This will all involve a lot of infrastructure development in space.

Cargo ships might haul blocks of martian plastic made from Mars resources as well as ingots of martian copper and zinc to the Moon and space cols. Since launch windows tween Earth-Moon space and Mars occur every 26 months, convoys of ships will leave at the same times...and this will improve safety for human crews as they could board another ship in the convoy if theirs is crippled somehow. Humans will be able to handle tasks that baffle even AI robots. Since there is no rust or corrosion in outer space, these ships will have long lifetimes thus they will be able to pay for themselves and turn a profit for space shipping companies.

You're definitely correct on that. That's one of the reasons Jerry Pournelle has postulated the Moon as the "hub" of an asteroidal space civilization; it is actually a lot easier to access earth's moon from most of the asteroid belt than to go to one of the major asteroids such as Ceres or Pallas.