SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for takyon
An article at SpaceNews.com asks Is the Gateway the right way to the moon? — the "Gateway" is The Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway.
This article originally appeared in the Dec. 17, 2018 issue of SpaceNews magazine.
Sometime in 2028, competing for attention alongside a presidential election and the return of the Summer Olympics to Los Angeles, NASA will return humans to the surface of the moon.
A lunar lander will depart the cluster of modules in an elliptical orbit around the moon, called Gateway, and descend. One stage will take the lander to a low lunar orbit and then separate, after which the descent module will handle the rest of the journey to the lunar surface. A crew of up to four will spend days — perhaps up to two weeks — on the surface before boarding the ascent module, which will take them back to the Gateway.
At least that’s NASA’s plan for now. A year after President Donald Trump formally directed NASA to return humans to the moon in Space Policy Directive (SPD) 1, the agency has developed the outlines of a plan to carry that out, while emphasizing the language in the policy to do so in a “sustainable” manner and with international and commercial partners. But as the agency describes two of the biggest elements of the plan, the Gateway and a “human-class” lunar lander, it’s still struggling to sell the proposal to its various stakeholders, including its own advisers.
[The somewhat long article is well worth a read. Notable members of NASA as well as former astronauts weigh in on their views of the pros and cons of such an approach as opposed to direct flights to and from the moon. To my eye, NASA was instructed to make the Deep Space Gateway happen so there was a destination for the Space Launch System (SLS) which currently costs something like $2 billion per year in launch and development costs. By comparison, I recall reading that SpaceX anticipates it can develop its next-generation Big 'Falcon' Rocket (BFR) and Big 'Falcon' spaceship (BFS) — now called "Super Heavy" and "Starship", respectively — for about $2 billion total. --martyb]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Friday December 28 2018, @06:21PM
Well, we'd be mostly building and paying for it short-term, with technology that will be mostly obsolete in the long term, so it seems reasonable to ask what the short-term benefits are. Once the moon becomes a thriving resource source *then* an orbital space station probably makes sense.
There's also no need to stop in orbit to land on the moon, that just provides a convenient last-minute abort opportunity for landers that are either not reliable enough to neglect it, or which have an orbital propulsion module that can't land - as was the case for the manned lunar landers so far. As with Mars, there are considerably more efficient trajectories that go directly from Earth orbit to the lunar surface.
And, once the moon is a thriving resource source, then the cost of building a lunar space station will drop considerably. So, what's the point of building a lunar-orbit space station today?
As for rescue - the only way that an orbital space station would be in a position to assist is if they have a rocket on standby - a rocket that could just as easily be on standby at one (or more) of the lunar bases - in which case they can help each other out with only a slightly longer delay.
Research - what exactly are you going to be researching in Lunar orbit, that you couldn't research just as well in Earth orbit? The only difference is the lack of magnetosphere and correspondingly higher radiation levels. Orbital study of the moon itself can be better done by satellites - as witnessed by the massive amount of Earth research done by satellites instead of the ISS.
Also consider that the SpaceX Starship is likely to be in regular operation long before the LOP-G gets off the drawing board. And that means provide more pressurized volume than the ISS, easily deliverable to either Lunar orbit, *or* the lunar surface in short order. If SpaceX makes them available for long-term lease/purchase then they will make for a far cheaper and more reliable basis for early lunar surface and orbital space stations than anything else available - with the added benefit of full-station emergency abort
The only reason I can think of for a lunar "gateway" early on is emergency medical and resupply services available to multiple surface bases. However, I'm dubious as to how many medical conditions are severe enough to not be more cost-effectively handled in place, time-critical enough to not be able to afford another few hours of transit to a "primary" lunar base, and tidy enough to be able to handle in free-fall. That last one probably rules out most surgeries or anything else that involves a lot of fluids.