Idea "Man on the Earth" project.

[Scarecrow]

I agree with Siberian Tiger about the floating launch platform. Allow me to flesh out the idea a little.

http://www.prinzeugen.com/V2.htm
Read that, especially the last half, about the floating containers.

I think that the best plan for this is to drop one of these into the ocean, near the coast, with an unfueled rocket inside. Obviously it would need to be bigger than a V2, but it doesn't seem too unreasonable, and it won't need fuel initially, since it can make it onsite with electrolytic cells. The heat shield can drop away after it's not needed anymore. It should land in good weather, but even so, immediately drop an anchor, and use ballast tanks to submerge to a depth of a few hundred feet and stay there to protect itself from wave action. It should also have a bouy on the surface with a radio, for communications. It would use this to verify to mission control that it's safe, it is manufacturing fuel at the predicted rate, etc. It could use a nuclear reactor (or an RTG, depending on power requirements) to power the electolytic cells. The bouy would use solar panels, so the only connection between the bouy and the platform would need to be an anchor line (it could use an acousic modem or low frequency radio for communication with the submerged launch platform). Once mission control is satisfied that everything is all set with the launch platform, the landing vehicle splashes down near the launch vehicle, and either the lunatics explore the ocean primarily, or they could take a boat to the shore. When they're all done, they take their boat to the launch site, and mission control commands the launch platform to surface. By this time, the rocket is fueled up and ready to fly. Obviously the top end of the platform would be lighter than the bottom end (possibly by only partially blowing the bottom ballast tanks). The lunatics climb aboard, the top hatch is opened, and they fly away. Their launch capsule does not need maneuvering capability after reaching orbit (except perhaps some reaction wheels, or some other way to keep it from starting to spin due to gravity gradient torque before docking), since the LRV can come to it. After that, the mission proceeds as the rest of you have described it so well.

 

[Linguofreak]

For NTR propellant I say hydrogen. I think you can get H2 from lunar soil, and the big drawback of H2, which is a large volume tank, doesn't mean as much since it doesn't have to be launched through an atmosphere.

I think you're right, but keep in mind that bigger does mean heavier.

Landing on dry terrain is nice, but for both mission science and ISRU reasons I think someplace with nearby water and abundant life is best. This shouldn't be hard to find provided you do good landing site recon mapping before launching the mission. Although I'm partial to North America for obvious reasons, a site near the equator in South America or Africa would have more diverse life to study, and be easier to plan orbit-wise.

But too much vegitation or water and you can't land safely. Ideally you would want to find some flat rocky space next to a teeming jungle. That might be hard, though.

 

[T.Neo]

I think you're right, but keep in mind that bigger does mean heavier.

Yes. LH2 tanks weigh up to 10% of their contents, whereas, say, RP-1 tanks weigh 1% of their contents.

Also, hydrogen is not abundant in lunar soil. There is some at the poles, but the amount in soil is mostly negligable.

But too much vegitation or water and you can't land safely. Ideally you would want to find some flat rocky space next to a teeming jungle. That might be hard, though.

Wide, flat spaces are the best for the lander. Like salt flats. The problem is, these places will give you very little scientific information. This is a big dilemma.

Also, the landing site should be able to launch into the plane of the Moon.

 

[Ghostrider]

Wide, flat spaces are the best for the lander. Like salt flats. The problem is, these places will give you very little scientific information. This is a big dilemma.

You should carry around a solar-powered rover and/or a small aircraft.

 

[T.Neo]

Solar power is feeble, and I have a feeling that 60's/70's solar was not as efficient as today.
We need a rugged off road vehicle.

Also, venturing away form the lander could be risky...

 

[Andy44]

Also, venturing away form the lander could be risky...

Riskier than landing a do-it-yourself rocket kit on an alien planet, assembling it yourself, and hopfully launching yourself into orbit with no abort options? :-D

 

[T.Neo]

Riskier than landing a do-it-yourself rocket kit on an alien planet, assembling it yourself, and hopfully launching yourself into orbit with no abort options? :-D

Yeah, something like that.

 

[Linguofreak]

I just ran the numbers on using a scaled down version of the NERVA alpha engine, designed in 1972, and found that even with it's much lower thrust/weight and power/mass ratios (thrust to weight about is 3:1 on Earth, or 18/1 on the moon, and power/mass is 25 kW/kg), we can still get a LRV with a fueled mass of 11 or 12 metric tons (including 1 ton of engine). In fact, since the LRV will have used up alot of its fuel on the Earth departure burn, we probably don't need quite as much thrust as I had calculated, so we might be able to get by with 10 or 11 tons (half a ton of engine).

T.Neo, could you put together a provisional LRV mesh? I'm going to go with the scaled down NERVA, at least for the moment, and I'm assuming an 11000 kg mass for the full vehicle, so we'll need 7000 kg of hydrogen for propellant. This entails a volume of 100 cubic meters for tankage. We'll need 6 to 10 cubic meters for the crew compartment, and, of course, we'll need landing gear and an engine. How you put it all together is at your discretion, although given the low density of hydrogen and our mass ratio of 2.7, the volume of the tanks is the thing that will change most about the mesh if we decide we need to make the thing heavier or lighter, so you'll probably want to design and place them such that tank volume can easily be added or subtracted if we change the mass.

 

[T.Neo]

I just tried out a preliminary mesh.
I set a cylinder of 3 meters diameter and 3 meters height as the fuel tank, and a cone with a starting diameter of 1, an ending diameter of 3 and a height of 2 as the crew cabin.

My math is not very good, so if the volumes are wrong, please tell me.

I did not know how big the NERVA engine/nozzle are, so I just put in standby parts.
The landing legs are probably way to thin, but I can fix that.

In reality, I think the fuel tank should have ellipsoidal ends to it.

I also think some sort of rad shielding from the reactor needs to be considered.

Again, this is basically a sketch, a doodle so if some things are wrong or not there, it isn't because I lacked the effort to put them in.

LINK TO IMAGE:
http://www.orbiter-forum.com/gallery/data/503/thumbs/anim8orscreenshot3.JPG

 

[Linguofreak]

I just tried out a preliminary mesh.
I set a cylinder of 3 meters diameter and 3 meters height as the fuel tank, and a cone with a starting diameter of 1, an ending diameter of 3 and a height of 2 as the crew cabin.

My math is not very good, so if the volumes are wrong, please tell me.

Try 3.5 meters height for the fuel tank, but this should work for now.

I did not know how big the NERVA engine/nozzle are, so I just put in standby parts.
The landing legs are probably way to thin, but I can fix that.

In reality, I think the fuel tank should have ellipsoidal ends to it.

Yeah, I didn't know exactly how big to tell you to make the NERVA. The one we're using is smaller than the ones proposed, about 500 kg.

Ellipsoidal ends can be added on later as we polish things up more.

I also think some sort of rad shielding from the reactor needs to be considered.

Definitely. I'm not sure if this was included in the NERVA mass figures or not. If not, we may have to add an extra ton or two.

Again, this is basically a sketch, a doodle so if some things are wrong or not there, it isn't because I lacked the effort to put them in.

LINK TO IMAGE:
http://www.orbiter-forum.com/gallery/data/503/thumbs/anim8orscreenshot3.JPG

Can you post a link to a mesh so I can put *.cfg file to it?

 

[T.Neo]

Can you post a link to a mesh so I can put *.cfg file to it?

Sure!

It is saved as a SCN file, don't ask why, but save it as a .msh and it should work fine (I think)

http://orbiter-forum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=1920&stc=1&d=1231802790

 

[Linguofreak]

The LRV in orbit over Central America. Test of transit and landing capabilities based on the engine I've given it to follow.

EDIT: Almost forgot to mention: It seems that the engine bell is only one sided. You might want to fix that.

 

[T.Neo]

Wow, looking good!

Almost forgot to mention: It seems that the engine bell is only one sided. You might want to fix that.

Ah, yes. That is quite easy to fix, It just slipped my mind.

Also, Urwumpe's AN8-MSH script messes with the orientation of the mesh.

 

[Linguofreak]

Wow, looking good!



Ah, yes. That is quite easy to fix, It just slipped my mind.

Also, Urwumpe's AN8-MSH script messes with the orientation of the mesh.

Yeah. I noticed that the thing was 90 degrees off, and was about to ask you to fix that...


-----Post Added-----


Well, I did an ejection burn test and a landing test. The thing appears to have plenty of excess delta V. It doesn't have enough thrust to take off from the moon on its own, but it does have enough to land, which should be fine since it will be carried aloft on a booster with the rest of the mission hardware.

What should we use to put together each stage? *.cfg? spacecraft3? Custom dll? And what should we use to attach the various parts of the stack? Velcro? Multistage? Unfortunately, I've not done alot with addon creation, though I have done a few vessels, one of which I even put up on Orbit Hangar, and I've done absolutely zilch with multistaging aside from modifying a few pre-packaged velcro stacks. I'm pretty confident I can manage at least basic *.cfg work and might be able to do something with Velcro too, but I'm uncertain about anything else, and it will be very learn-as-you-go for me.

 

[AstroCam]

Well, a good first mission could be taken along the lines of Apollo 11 - land a simple vehicle in a wide open area, take a walk and collect samples, then return to the moon. Eventually a surface outpost would be constructed, and large scale overland expeditions would occur

Considering a LEM style landing will probably scare the cp out of any macroscopic life in the area, the module should probably stay on the surface for a week if you want birds, etc. to reappear. Then again, we don't know if the lunanites can breath earth's atmosphere

Oh, great project by the way

I humbly submit the deserts of Western Australia as a landing site....

Anyway, a two-stage EEM (Earth Excursion Module) along the lines of proposed mars landers could be useful - a lifting body stage brings all the materials to the surface, is discarded, then a capsule style LV is launched back to orbit.

Also, it becomes an interesting debate as to whether the lunanites would explore the seas or the land first - clearly the oceans compose more of the planet, but it would be easier to mount a mission to the land, and the land would appear more interesting in a telescope.

 

[T.Neo]

@ Linguofreak

What should we use to put together each stage? *.cfg? spacecraft3? Custom dll? And what should we use to attach the various parts of the stack? Velcro? Multistage? Unfortunately, I've not done alot with addon creation, though I have done a few vessels, one of which I even put up on Orbit Hangar, and I've done absolutely zilch with multistaging aside from modifying a few pre-packaged velcro stacks. I'm pretty confident I can manage at least basic *.cfg work and might be able to do something with Velcro too, but I'm uncertain about anything else, and it will be very learn-as-you-go for me.

Me, being a perfectionist, would like a custom DLL. Maybe I'll end up coding it.
Take in mind that Sc3 can be frustrating at times. I think that the actual launch vehicle, from the lunar surface, should be Velcro. We can attach the payloads using CVEL, release both of them, and perform a transposition and docking.

It might be a good idea to give the LRV a bit more "omph", so it can use it's own engine to escape the rest of the stack if something goes wrong.

@ Astrocam

Well, a good first mission could be taken along the lines of Apollo 11 - land a simple vehicle in a wide open area, take a walk and collect samples, then return to the moon. Eventually a surface outpost would be constructed, and large scale overland expeditions would occur

Also, they might want to send probes first, just like we did.

Considering a LEM style landing will probably scare the cp out of any macroscopic life in the area, the module should probably stay on the surface for a week if you want birds, etc. to reappear. Then again, we don't know if the lunanites can breath earth's atmosphere

I think the general idea is that they are essentially humans, except they come from the Moon.

 

[Linguofreak]

@ Linguofreak
Me, being a perfectionist, would like a custom DLL. Maybe I'll end up coding it.
Take in mind that Sc3 can be frustrating at times. I think that the actual launch vehicle, from the lunar surface, should be Velcro. We can attach the payloads using CVEL, release both of them, and perform a transposition and docking.

It might be a good idea to give the LRV a bit more "omph", so it can use it's own engine to escape the rest of the stack if something goes wrong.

You mean for launch abort? How's about we put some of the fuel load in drop tanks? That way it can be dropped off in case of an abort, plus the tanks can be dropped once emptied during normal operations, which *might* allow for a reduction of the weight of the whole craft, if we save more in mass of throwaway tankage than we gain from using drop tanks instead of simpler permanently attached tanks and plumbing.

 

[T.Neo]

You mean for launch abort? How's about we put some of the fuel load in drop tanks? That way it can be dropped off in case of an abort, plus the tanks can be dropped once emptied during normal operations, which *might* allow for a reduction of the weight of the whole craft, if we save more in mass of throwaway tankage than we gain from using drop tanks instead of simpler permanently attached tanks and plumbing.

Great idea! I've always liked the idea of drop tanks.

 

[n72.75]

And what is with us, the humans? Are we existing in this scenario or not? If yes, we need to think about what the humans would do with the selenites, maybe they could help them to get back to the moon.

Lets assume that its the year 5500 or so, that means that earthlings have moved off in to other parts of space and have left earth behind in order to let other species to exolve into sentiant beings.

What do to you think?

 

[T.Neo]

Lets assume that its the year 5500 or so, that means that earthlings have moved off in to other parts of space and have left earth behind in order to let other species to exolve into sentiant beings.

What do to you think?

Nah. My idea is that there are people on the Moon. No one knows how they got there, how they built their vast underground cities, or how they source their rocket fuel, but they're there.

But such scenario you describe would be fascinating, people move to Mars, terraform it, meanwhile the Earth gets trashed by consumerism/nuclear war/evil first world etc, and the history of Earth is forgotten for thousands of years, until the Martian humans regain technology and launch a mission to their blue morning star...