Quote:
Originally Posted by michaellxv
I agree heavy servicing in space is not practical yet. Surely a design which gets even only 2 trips out of a spaceship is an improvement on the single trip of the Apollo design. Even this won't be easy as just resupply of food and water in space is not trivial let alone oxygen and rocket fuel. But, if we are serious about regular space travel these are the type of obstacles to be overcome.
It would be easy to say it's too hard and that the physics is against us, but I think there is a solution out there. It may just be that we need to keep incrementally building in space as has been done since the beginning.
|
Actually, I believe that a we have enough reliability these days to keep a vehicle in continuous service for a full year. So a vehicle designed only to shuttle crew and stores from Earth Orbit to Lunar Orbit and back could run non-stop for a full year and then it becomes expendable...no servicing required.
A Lunar Orbit shuttle to the surface could have two options. The first option is to use an expendable descent stage but have a reusable ascent stage, or, have a reusable single vehicle. In this scenario, the second option, although heavier and fuel thirsty, has the greatest degree or reliability in that an ascent and decent two vehicle option are a mated pair, and must perform flawlessly...if decent stages are expendable after each use, there's no telling if the next decent stage will be reliable as it has not been tested as a mated pair to the reusable ascent stage. So in this case the safest option is to go with engine reliability and trade-off payload to and from the surface.
There is an alternative appearing here; make technology extremely reliable, but once a service life has been reached, that component (vehicle) becomes expendable...there is no servicing schedule! The key is to keep machines continually in service as they tend to fail when they stop-start all the time. Aircraft are never more reliable than when they are flown day-n-night and better still turned-around while still running (hot-refuel and turn-around).
The Booster Rocket from Earth to Earth Orbit is of course a separate and big issue.