Or what you are going to call it, an unrealized proposal from Aerojet around 1984. PDF Found on NTRS.
The idea was to have two turbopumps (like on SSME), but instead operate on the expander cycle. Two heat exchangers, two turbines, two pumps. One for each propellant.
This is a LOX-hydrogen engine. Also this means that since [...]
Archive for the ‘ISRU’ Category
Reality and Future
Posted in Architecture, Demotivation, Depot, ESA, Global, ISRU, Lunar, Motivation, NASA, RLV:s, Spacecraft, industry, tagged NASA, Augustine, Depot, Jeff Greason, HSF on Tuesday 2009.08.11 | 4 Comments »
Jeff Greason is a rational person who simply gets it. It is mind boggling how completely opposite from someone like Mike Griffin he is.
See Jeff’s presentation with the Augustine Panel.
Paraphrasing, “we could go to Mars with Ares V but we shouldn’t – cause we couldn’t stay anyway”. Exactly. That’s the problem with NASA. (or the [...]
Heavy Lift Unnecessary
Posted in Architecture, Demotivation, Depot, ISRU, NASA, RLV:s, industry, tagged NASA, Augustine, Depot on Tuesday 2009.08.11 | 5 Comments »
There are a lot of implicit assumptions that heavy lifters of this or that throw weight must be used for future exploration beyond low Earth orbit.
These “needs” have never been logically derived from anything.
Yet space policy and exploration architectures must be based on rationality above all. There is no excuse whatsoever to do things on [...]
Lunar Bases Must Be Buried
Posted in Architecture, Colonization, ISRU, Lunar, Motivation, Science, Spacecraft, tagged excavation, lunar base, NASA, regolith, whiskers on Wednesday 2009.04.22 | 4 Comments »
Concept art of lunar bases tends to show spherical or cylindrical structures, but they suffer from one problem: radiation. (Both of the gamma / particle and heat kinds). The lunar environment has lots of solar and cosmic radiation. Nights also last for two weeks, during which a badly insulated thing will freeze.
If you bury your [...]
What NASA Should Do
Posted in Architecture, Depot, ISRU, NASA, RLV:s, Spacecraft, Suborbital, industry on Tuesday 2009.04.21 | Leave a Comment »
And partly what this blog is about (I realized in the middle that I’m typing like in a slide show, so I changed it into bullet points, as it’s an overview and not a deep text). I present my vision that should be aimed for:
What should NASA do?
In the near term, NASA should change to [...]
FLEX – Flexible Exploration Architecture
Posted in Architecture, Depot, ISRU, Lunar, Models, Motivation, NASA, RLV:s, Spacecraft, industry, tagged Architecture, Ares V, ESAS, exploration, FLEX, Griffin, liquid oxygen, NASA, propellant depot, VSE on Friday 2008.11.21 | 17 Comments »
I wrote this architecture proposal, FLEX, a few years ago. It analyzes NASA’s approach that the ESAS study picked and notices how most of the mass in a lunar exploration stack in LEO is actually liquid oxygen. By using a propellant depot, the LOX can be lifted with tankers and any launchers imaginable (I wouldn’t [...]
Thorium MSR Design Possibilities
Posted in Architecture, Climate, Colonization, ISRU, Models, Motivation, Science, Thorium, tagged Bismuth, Blanket, Core, lftr, Moderation, msr, Protactinium, real and revolutionary, Single Fluid, Thorium, Two Fluid, Uranium on Monday 2008.09.01 | 2 Comments »
There are a huge array of design possibilities for a Thorium molten salt reactor / liquid fluoride thorium reactor, but this post takes a very simplified approach to map a small part of the fascinating and diverse landscape with a little rough drafting. We concentrate on thermal spectrum designs. I’m strictly an amateur in these [...]
Bringer of the Second Nuclear Age
Posted in Architecture, Climate, ISRU, Science, Thorium, tagged breeder, lftr, msr, online reprocessing, sorensen, thermal spectrum, Thorium on Monday 2008.08.18 | 7 Comments »
Thorium Molten Salt Reactors – A Really Short Intro
Thorium is about thrice as abundant compared to Uranium. And countless times more abundant than the U-235 Uranium isotope that is used mostly by modern nuclear reactors.
You can use Thorium, Th-232, as the sole fuel in a special nuclear reactor, which first turns the Thorium into Uranium, [...]
Fed Up
Posted in Architecture, Demotivation, ESA, ISRU, Motivation, NASA, RLV:s, Suborbital, tagged Armadillo, COTS, ESA, fed up, Future, NASA, RAGA, RLV, SpaceX, XCOR on Wednesday 2008.06.18 | 9 Comments »
I’m quite that just right now. It will pass. Perhaps.
There’s been some discussion in various places about both NASA and potential future launch vehicles. Everything’s just so static in a large sense. Completely hopeless. I’ll throw in the towel for now.
Almost nobody has the required long attention span or patience to make any useful progress [...]
European Lunar Program Alternatives
Posted in Architecture, Colonization, Depot, ESA, ISRU, Lunar, tagged AES, ESA on Tuesday 2008.03.11 | Leave a Comment »
ESA’s Architecture for Exploration Study (AES) is overviewed in Lunar Base Quarterly 1/2008 (EDIT: to be clear, the Quarterly was released in January):
Lots of Ariane 5, Angara and Soyuz launches with space docking, a space station in Earth-Lunar L1 and many new crewed and non-crewed craft and capabilities.
They had a red team / blue team [...]
