Okay, I will open my mouth once more, insert a foot, and start chewing.
… Discovery; Old shoe leather tastes like dead crow. How humiliating.

NASA did build an “interim upper stage” which got used 20 or more times. It just wasn’t the same thing as what I recall being called the
IUS back when it was becoming clear that the original Upper Stage (aka “Space Bus”) would never be built.

Still, you win the point. Mea culpa.

It wasn’t built? Who knew?

Shuttle is dead as of late 2010, early 2011. It isn’t likley to be extended, not for the billions that would cost for a few more missions. As for what we do with the ISS, God only knows. It didn’t strike me as within my purview, which was moon/planetary colonization. Let’s leave a few things for Charles Bolden to deal with!

As for the operational costs of all my vehicles, who can say? My guess is that they would be cheaper than the Ares V system, because I was trying to come up with something more akin to camping with a backpack than a Winnebago. But I might be wrong — Winnebagos have their good points.

But as for the “sociological plan, political, and financial plan, that can move us towards becoming spacefaring, rather than a technical plan” … you’re asking too much. You’re asking for a new religion or a new vision of society, on a par with FDR’s liberalism or Ronald Reagan’s conservatism, and I’m not so convinced of my wisdom that I’m going to start spouting off. Besides, all the arguments for spaceflight have been made, many many times. They convince some people; they fail to convince others; and such is life. We have to live with it. We aren’t going to get the space progam we’ve always wanted, not all at once, but maybe we can get a start and build on it.

That’s all the philosophy I can really offer. Sorry.

I am going to borrow (and slightly alter) a comment by Pat Bahn – amateurs talk technical, professionals talk politics (and the truely wise merge the 2). Thats why I asked for a sociological plan, political, and financial plan, that can move us towards becoming spacefaring, rather than a technical plan. Because you can offer all the glorious technology you want, but unless there is good reason to both develop and use that tech, the plan will never see the light of day.

Is there a solution to this, one that actually moves us foward? Yes. Will it deliver measurable, observable, results? Yes. Can it work with where we are right now, both techwise, financial wise, and political wise? Probably

Can it utilize the status quo as is? No

All of this adds to the budget, and significantly – remember Jeff Greason’s comment “If Santa Claus delivered us a working Constellation program tomorrow, we’d have to cancel it the next day, because the operational costs are double the current budget” You have to be looking at operation cost, more than development costs in fact.

One other issue that is worth pointing out –
NASA has spent forty years now hanging around low earth orbit; that’s what it’s good for in most people’s eyes. That’s the space program that the people who run the US decided to run in the early 1970’s. It would be …undemocratic .. to argue with the collective wisdom of Richard Nixon, the New York Times, and the National Science Foundation, wouldn’t it? So NASA should just keep its damned mouth shut through the 2010’s and just keep repeating, when pressed, that it has a goal of building a self-sustaining lunar colony at such and such a date, for such and such money, and that its progress
is visible at such and such a web site. Progress excuses lots of political incorrectitude.
First, that assume that they will make great, measurable, and observable (yes, it has to be observable, otherwise, it becomes ripe for being canceled) progress (something more than a few people are concerned about, since NASA has a bad history of not delivering progress), and second, that the reason NASA has stayed in LEO because of Societal fiat – NASA has stayed in LEO because they didn’t have the budget to go beyond LEO. Shuttle and Station made it impossible to consider doing beyond LEO operations, becasue there was no budget to develop beyond LEO vehicles. In point of fact, there wasn’t budget available to even develop a shuttle replacement (and we have needed a shuttle replacement since the early 90s, IMHO)

You are right, NASA needs to be accomplishing stuff, but with its current budget, I don’t see it accomplishing those steps (particularly your 3 vehicles) before 2030, being optimistic (and more realistic 2040).

As for making me happy – no, it doesn’t, but not because it takes time – it makes me unhappy because I see it as unsustainable, politically and financially, and I never see the transitioning happening, without vast improvements in technology. In short, we’ll see a worse situation than we do right now.

Thank you for the comment; I’m going to reread it a couple times after I get a good nights sleep and give it more thought. Bear in mind, I haven’t been presenting any really well developed ideas; I’ve just been winging it like an old SF writer should since Ferris egged me into this today.

Step 4. It should be clear that my “Federal Express Package” is not an Orion. It’s two (or more likely four) clam-shell pieces that are bolted together in orbit, after being boosted by an Extended Fairing Atlas or whatever, and probably stuffed (at the front) with a Bigelow Genesis X module to provide life support, and at the back with what amounts to a machine shop. Food and air for 2 astronauts for a period of several weeks will be provided — this should suffice for a lunar mission, but the FEP should be capable to housing 4-6 astronauts for several months in other circumstances. The FEP might weigh about ten tons; life support and fuel modules could potentially double that. My guess is a FEP might be about as big as a railroad car, but considerably uglier.

A FEP would be transported to lunar orbit by a Hauler. It would not carry a full complement of fuel/food/air modules. These would be provided by modules already in orbit, thanks to Slingshots. If the FEP was not able to link up with those supply modules, the mission would be aborted, and the FEP and Hauler would return to their original launch point (presumably at the international space station or some successor station).

Step 5 (as promised). The landing point for the FEP ought to be blanketed with food and fuel and air modules to replenish the FEP and to permit construction of an interim moon base. These modules would have been dropped from Slingshots, likely with minimal braking. A reasonable guess is that modules are encased in styrofoam or bubble packaging to cope with hard landing on the Moon. If this isn’t univerally successfully … we’ll be sending lots of spares.

Step 6. The two FEP astronauts will quickly construct an interim lunar base– likely something like a quonset hut buried under lunar regolith, lined inside with yet another Bigelow module. Something quick and dirty could be built in a few days. Later on, proper vaults might be constructed, using sintered regolith as a structural material. Several structures are desirable — we’d like one for a living place, with earthlike humidty and air composition, one for a garden/hydroponics site with a high CO2 atmosphere, several for machining and manufacturing.

These are details to be developed as our knowledge matures; Jerry Pournelle sketched them out thirty years ago, and nobody’s come along to sell a better idea ever since.

Step 6. Likely the original FEP will have been cannibalized to build living space, leaving the astronauts with a certain amount of concern (hopefully, there wil be lots of water, air, and food in the supply modules that survived landing on the Moon). After a month or so, a second FEP might
be dispatched to the same site. After unloading its cargo (more machine shop equipment, hydroponics gear, etc.), the first crew could join the second crew and return to lunar orbit together, to be brought back to earth orbit by the original Hauler or one of its stable mates. The lunar astronauts would return to earth via an Orion capsule.

Step 7. End of story basically. With a lunar base in existence, sending new astronauts would be a straightforward proposition. The base could be enlarged, its capability for feeding people expanded, etc. This would all be rather straightforward, and I see no great need to amplify the political considerations that probably have occurred to most people.

We can create a lunar base, it seems to me, even with the many balls and chains we have afastened to ourselves over the last few decades; it can be affordable. Whether it would be loved and adored by conservatives and liberals, by old folks and young, by rich and poor, escapes me.

Sorry, Ferris. You’re the politically oriented guy here, I tried to solve your technical problems, you’ll have to the rest of heavy lifting.

Try to make me happy too while you’re at it.

Existing EELVs and existing fairing sizes would be good enough and Delta IV could have 6.5mx25.9m fairings or so says the Delta IV Payload Planners Guide. But since you need an EDS anyway and an existing upper stage is the best place to start, why not build the new common upper stage for Atlas and Delta that would give you EELV Phase 1? It consolidates two upper stage production facilities which should lead to somewhat lower recurring costs.

You wouldn’t even need propellant transfer for moon missions, although that would be highly desirable. Hypergolic in-flight refueling would be more than enough and a pretty decent solution. This would allow even Mars missions. Cryogenic depots could make things even better, either as a replacement or as an addition.

Step 3 (yeah, I blew my numbering scheme, I see)

My guess is that Slingshot, Hauler, and Federal Express could be developed for aound 12-15 billion bucks (it ought to be much less, but I’ve developed some cynicism about budgets over the years). Much of that would be for developing the standarized fuel/material packages, and getting people accustomed to using standardized packages (for example, if it takes more than than one fuel module to boost a parcel to the moon via Slingshot, then Slingshot should use two fuel modules PERIOD, FINAL, NO MORE NO LESS GODDAMMIT, even if the 2nd fuel module is mostly
unused at the end of the voyage; we do NOT need to build and test a Slightly-Bigger-Than-Standard-But-Surely-More-Efficient fuel module).

Spread over much a decade, this is a bearable number. There will be enough progress to report to please the people who follow this kind of thing; the cost will be low enough to avoid aggrevating the folks who are aggrevated by space programs of almost any size; the awards of contracts to this company and that company and that other company should molify those who are annoyed by NASA insistance on Doing It All Ourselves; the point can legitimately be made that Slingshot, Hauler, and Federal Express have future applications beyond lunar colonization.

Will it actually “sell” the lunar program to people determined not to like space programs? No, but I doubt if much can. NASA has spent forty years now hanging around low earth orbit; that’s what it’s good for in most people’s eyes. That’s the space program that the people who run the US decided to run in the early 1970’s. It would be …undemocratic .. to argue with the collective wisdom of Richard Nixon, the New York Times, and the National Science Foundation, wouldn’t it? So NASA should just keep its damned mouth shut through the 2010’s and just keep repeating, when pressed, that it has a goal of building a self-sustaining lunar colony at such and such a date, for such and such money, and that its progress
is visible at such and such a web site. Progress excuses lots of political incorrectitude.

This doesn’t make you happy, perhaps, and it doesn’t make me happy, certainly, but we’re a big rich powerful country that can do all sorts of things, and does do all sorts of things, even if not everyone is pleased all the time by everything observable. NASA really doesn’t need to be at the top of the national Hit Parade, as long as it keeps accomplishing stuff, and as long as it accomplishing stuff, it’ll probably have a license to continue. Really, we can live with this.