Re: Moonlab - could the SIVB be used to put a Skylab on the Moon?

On May 7, 5:14 am, Pat Flannery <flan...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Damon Hill wrote:
Skylab was launched "dry"; no propellants, no J-2. A "wet"
S-IVB on a Saturn 1-B was proposed, but soaking station
equipment in LH2 was a Problem.

Could you use modified slosh baffles in the tanks for floors, and outfit
her with cargo carried atop the Saturn 1B that launched her?
At most this should take two Saturn I launches.
Is that cheaper than one Saturn V launch?

Skylab was actually the refitted S-IVB second stage of a Saturn IB
booster (from the AS-212 vehicle), a leftover from the Apollo program
originally intended for one of the canceled Apollo Earth orbital
missions.

A product of the Apollo Applications Program (a program
tasked with finding long-term uses for Apollo program hardware),
Skylab was originally planned as a minimally-altered S-IVB to be
launched on a Saturn IB. The small size of the IB would have required
Skylab to double as a rocket stage during launch, only being
retrofitted as a space station once on-orbit. With the cancellation
of
Apollo missions 18-20 a Saturn V was made available and thus the "wet
workshop" concept, as it was called, was put aside and Skylab was
launched dry and fully outfitted.

Skylab's grid flooring system was a
highly visible legacy of the wet workshop concept.

The one we really should have gone for is the Saturn V S-II wetlab concept.

That was what vonBraun proposed.

With cargo equivalent to the weight of Skylab sitting atop the the S-II
stage, we should have been able to outfit the S-II stage with one
launch to a basic configuration,

Yes.

and then get it fully functional with a
second Saturn V launch carrying all the other equipment atop the S-IVB
(take out the TLI requirement, and that S-IVB could carry some mighty
heavy stuff into LEO)

Yes. But a second launch wouldn't be needed. Unless you wanted to
tether two S-II space station modules together and spin them for
gravity.


This would really be something to see; if we had done it that way, we'd
probably still be using it today.

Yes we would.

It would be huge as far as internal crew volume went.

And cheaper than ISS by a large factor.

You could have done a six-crew Shuttle-supplied station that way.

An two SIVB end to end with a docking collar at each end, with two
coilable booms extending about 100 m in opposite directions, each
attached to a S-II station - would be pretty much the start of a
rather massive station that would be added to over time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_workshop

And with RL-10 engines to land on the moon, the basis of a technology
that would be used for moon habitation, long-term habitation modules
for interplanetary flight, and mars habitation.

http://www.astronautix.com/astros/vonbraun.htm

I am thinking about Philip Bono's rombus design -

http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/rombus.htm

- imagine each of the 8 drop tanks on the rombus are about the size of
a Shuttle's SLWT - ET - This woud make the entire vehicle system 6.5x
bigger than the original rombus, and this super-rombus would put up
about 3,100 MT (6.8 million pounds - nearly a fully loaded Saturn V!)
into LEO. Great for a 20 GW inflatable solar laser powersat.

But, such a vehicle lightly loaded could take ALL EIGHT SLWT-ETs to
orbit, and THEY could be used as a space station or lunar base.

Equipped with a small LOX/LH thruster cluster (RL10 based!) and
carrying about 250 MT each of residual LH/LOX mix - with ALL the
propellant of the central rombus vehicle depleted, and the entire
system separates when its at apogee opposite the launch point. The
main core is on a one orbit sanger sub-orbit - in reversal of normal
operation, a wet-station ET cluster (of 8 total!) would continue a low
gee burn to escape Earth while the rombus main vehicle returned to the
launch center. The ET cluster would fly to orbit the moon or mars, or
venus or mercury, or land on the moon, mars, or mercury. Instant
space city!

With a NERVA engine added to the RL10 cluster and 100 MT of LH and 20
MT of LOX (to attain orbit before firing up the NERVA engine - with
bimodal electrical power) the system could carry six to twelve
astronauts each in the intertank space during lift-off, and allow them
to cruise to Mars inside the LOX tank once depleted. And then when
landed on Mars, refuel the LH tank by decomposing atmospheric water
vapor there into LH - and oxygen - and return to Earth - to do it all
again. The NERVA is 5 MT in this scenario, and the 12 astronauts and
their payload 100 MT - per tank.

8 flight elements with 12 astronauts each, 96 astronauts total, lots
of spare capacity - especially if flown in parallel with an unpiloted
permanent station.

Similar systems can be imagined for the moon, but here you'd need
rocket braking as well as carrying ALL the propellant, until a source
of water is found. But duration is shorter and so stores are less.




Bring up the supplies via Shuttle and trade out three of the crew every
six months, using the remaining three crew to get the three new crew up
to speed.

http://www.astronautix.com/craft/stsation.htm

The Shuttle's ET could also be used - and its larger than the S-
II ... configured as a strap on tank (1 of 8) on a Bono style super-
rombus vehicle a wide range of missions can be imagined that would
make use of ETs as space stations, moonbases, mars bases, mission
modules, planetary bases, etc., especially if equipped with a nuclear
power source and nuclear propulsion element.


Cargo delivery could also be done via Atlas-Centaurs, or for heavy
stuff, Titan III's, using automated docking gear...an ability we should
have developed decades ago, Progress-style.

An ET -SLWT- equipped with an annular aerospike engine at its base -
could operate as a SSTO capable of placing 30 MT into LEO. Which
would cheaply resupply the stations described. A modular plug in
NERVA 'sustainer' engine would give such a vehicle 'legs' to cross the
solar system cheaply. Resupplied with hydrogen on mars or the moon,
the vehicle would return. A 3-component vehicle with two cross-
feeding to a central core, could place 225 MT into LEO -which would
provide a single mission of the type described above. A 7-component
vehicle with 6 supplying a central core would place 700 MT into LEO -
a fully fueled ET element. 8- ETs strapped on to a rombus style
central core -would increase capacity to orbit to 3,100 MT - all using
a common element throughout.

A subscale version 1/3 the size of the ET - to test these concepts
would have 1/3 the capacity (10 MT/75 MT/1030 MT) at a program cost of
about 1/2 that of the full-scale system.

This would be a $18 billion program - throughout. Done in phases.



Pat

William

.

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