An excellent idea, but with EOR you can also do it without refueling, which could be a useful capability long before we have refueling of EDSs.

Today, we can afford to be patient. Good and cheap, rather than good and fast.

We certainly could and that would be one good option. But we don’t have to wait, we can have good, cheap and fast too. There’s a widespread belief that the choice is between the combination of rapid exploration with a government HLV on the one hand and lots of research and development and delayed exploration if you go commercial. This is a misperception.

First of all it is unclear the government HLV would actually be faster (or whether it will even fly), but secondly use of commercial launch vehicles does not require lots of R&D even if you did want to do exploration soon. In fact the soonest way to do exploration that I know of does not require lots of R&D and would be faster than both a government HLV and a program that starts with years of R&D. The fastest way to both commercial development of space and exploration does not lead through HLVs nor does it require lots of R&D up front.

It is only when you want to serve certain economic or political special interests that HLVs and large R&D programs emerge. Unfortunately politics is inevitable, but it is still harmful and reduces what can be accomplished. An HLV would be much, much more harmful than an R&D program and some good could even come from the latter, but it would still lead to inefficiencies and delays, both of which ought to be minimised.

> No the Ares 1 problems(under powered rocket) combined with the lunar problems have rendered Orion non reusable. They think they may be able to reuse parts like Apollo and Soyuz but the capsule as a whole is not reusable.

Thanks. Do you happen to know what specific features now render it non-reusable? Googling shows that in 2008 reusability was still under review, with exposure to “salt fog” during water landing (not the “tremendous forces [of] lift-off and reentry”) being a concern.

http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2008/06/23/224757/orion-reusability-remains-elusive-for-nasa.html

In the hyper-partisan climate in Congress, the announcement brought familiar criticism from Republicans that the Obama administration is ceding U.S. human spaceflight to Russia.

The rhetoric accomplishes nothing, further poisoning the atmosphere when level-headed bipartisan leadership is necessary to steer NASA through the post-shuttle transition.

No the Ares 1 problems(under powered rocket) combined with the lunar problems have rendered Orion non reusable. They think they may be able to reuse parts like Apollo and Soyuz but the capsule as a whole is not reusable.

sftomy

Or just send Orion to L1/L2 and exchange into a lander there. Note Apollo’s lander massed 14MT. 14MT is a little more than what Delta can throw to L1/L2 in a single shot so a either 2 flights or a slight upgrade to delta could help here. There could also be a cost savings as Atlas could lift 14MT to LEO instead of the more expensive delta.

Another point was ULA idea of using a crogenic service module. This could reduce the mass of Orion greatly since Crygenic propellants have more ISP than hypergolic ones and can result in lower mass spacecraft. CXP was going to try to do it with LOX /Methane but decided to drop it early on.

So the moon must wait for a heavy lift unless commercial, Bigelow for instance, gets there first with smaller cheaper on the Delta IV.”

Or, wait for the means to refuel the thing in LEO, previously supplied by any number of existing launchers.. There’s your additional delta-v without developing a new HLV…

Apollo did entire missions in one launch, so as to reach the Moon ‘before the decade is out,’ and before the Soviets, whichever came first. EOR was judged to take too long to develop to met that constraint.

Today, we can afford to be patient. Good and cheap, rather than good and fast.

Ten years from now, I would like to see American astronauts LEAVE low earth orbit, at long last, and depart for the Moon!

Go to Google and look up “Apollo.” We did that over 40 years ago.”

So? Go to Google and look up ‘Wright Brothers.’ ‘We’ did that over a century ago. The goal for this century (and there’s just 89 years left in it already) is to go back to the moon to stay, establish a permanent base- then press on outward. The clock is tickin’. Oh yes, and as the first quarer of 2011 comes to a close, still no commerical firm has launched, orbited and returned a crew safely. Google that… Tick-tock.

I gave it all to you and you don’t want it. You can lead a horse to water…..

No, actually, you didn’t give anything

You pontificated, but you haven’t ever been prepared to fight for your idea.

If you are so sure its right, why don’t you go to Congress & lobby them, instead of complaining here? That would actually have a practical purpose.

No, you gave us a nightmare, that will cost billions per flight.