Altair Concept RFP Hits The Street

I assume the ascent stage will be crashed into the lunar surface once the crew is back aboard the CEV as was done with Apollo.

What a waste.

Proposals are due to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston by 2 p.m. CST on Feb. 27.

The United States does not even have a FY09 budget yet ?

well Push forward NASA's Constellation Program before you are changed. It is best to try and drum up support for the MOON program I agree.

altair orion ares rover and Pooof NOTHING exist. This is some wacky funny stuff.

@Mark S.:
What do you suggest? Spending fuel to return the ascent stage to LEO? Saving fuel by launching only a new descent stage and fuel for the ascent stage from Earth on the Ares V? Mating the old ascent and new descent stages in LEO? In-space refueling of the ascent stage?

I suppose someone has done a cost-benefit tradeoff analysis...?

Here's a chance to do some "value engineering" as how to re-use the hardware once it's primary purpose is achieved. Might drive technological advances.

Forget this rocket-based junk... build the Jupiter-2 saucer for manned space exploration.

Mark S, wrote:

"I assume the ascent stage will be crashed into the lunar surface once the crew is back aboard the CEV as was done with Apollo.

What a waste".

Please respond to the RFP with your technical concept and the supporting life cycle cost data which shows it to be superior.

The concrete around the Altair design is quickly drying up. Time is rapidly running out to make any dramatic conceptual change. NASA is cupping their ear and giving us one last chance to alter the current configuration before the concrete dries. Once they hardwire the design for the current lunar ascent stage configuration, the future crews going to the moon will be stuck with it just like they were during Apollo. During that time, we had some very brave heroes willing to take that risk.

But, consider this, the first time an ascent stage fails after liftoff from the lunar surface is the last trip to the moon for quite some time. We have all been witness to human tragedies in space. People justifiably mourn for our national and sometimes personal losses and it takes years to complete this healing process.

This Achilles Heal of the Constellation Program can be easily fixed by providing the capability to refuel and reuse the descent stage once it lands on the moon. That way, the crew can feel much safer knowing there is a backup stage to get them to lunar orbit once they commit to launch from the lunar surface. BTW, that is how the Apollo 13 crew got safely back to Earth, using their backup stage, i.e., their lunar lander descent stage.

Oh, but that is going to increase the program cost and cause the initial buy-in to the program to become unreachable. I don't think any man-rated launch vehicle ever got off the Earth’s surface without a last ditch effort abort system to save the crew just in case something went deadly wrong with the rocket once it ignited. During the Apollo program, the public did not realize what the dangers were until they actually launched from the lunar surface. I don't think the public and the intelligent people working the conceptual design will be so naive this time around.

I am not sure where all these concepts stand today. But how about creating a "fail-safe" with some of the first landers?

Say you send first a few (3, 4?) of them uncrewed to the surface of the Moon. You can organize their landings at strategic locations on the Moon. Then you send a crew to the Moon. When the crew leaves the Moon you have the potential of sending the uncrewed ascent vehicles for a rescue mission. Probably expensive but a lot less than losing the entire program on a one time failure.

Parachutes don't work on the Moon. Think about this fact for a minute.

In the current lunar lander ascent configuration, if your primary ascent stage fails after liftoff from the lunar surface but before you make it safely to lunar orbit, then landing the aborted vehicle with the engines failed or something else gone haywire so a pre-positioned unmanned vehicle can come to your rescue, is fatal 100% of the time since the landing of a crewed vehicle requires a working non-aborted system.

Ignoring this weakness in the design configuration at such a critical development stage of the lunar lander can have enormous repercussions later, after the concrete dries (both political, financial, personal safety, and even perhaps having to convince the future crew’s families that there is nothing we can do now after the crew is on there way to the Moon since the vehicle was designed without any man-rated lunar ascent abort system). It could be perhaps surprisingly survivable, if you have a completely separate stage system that could be quickly activated in an emergency abort situation similar to the retro-rockets on top of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. The current lunar ascent stage configuration is a perfect match to this contingency assuming you have refueled and re-ignited the descent stage for lunar liftoff. Where oh where does the fuel come from? Let me think here a minute. Oh, yeah, you simply pre-position it with another similar lander that just hauls fuel to the surface or you build a giant and costly infrastructure to refine the fuel from lunar regolith. The second option will remain in the realm of science fiction even after many manned trips to the Moon, hauling their own gear with them. BTW, the ARES I has an abort system using retro-rockets to safely extract the crew from a launch system gone haywire.

The amazing difference between the Apollo era and now is the Internet which has revolutionized how we humans communicate and change science fiction into real life.

Larry:

Hmmm... Did not see anyone talking about parachutes...

The Ares I Launch Abort System DOES NOT WORK (i.e. save the crew), so far anyway. And there is NO certainty that the Apollo Launch Escape System would have worked either. The amount of risk the nation was willing to take during Apollo is orders of magnitude higher than today since it was perceived that the Soviets in Space were an imminent peril. Not the case today.

In any case, you cannot set up a vehicle or an infrastructure to be 100% safe, period. So what do we do? Nothing? Because you can come up with all possible scenarios for LOC. What if a space suit suffers a catastrophic decompression on the Moon? No escape...

Not that I'm all that keen on the current disposable architecture of Constellation, but Larry is forgetting that the ascent stage of Altair, like the Apollo LM, has (potentially) a secondary propulsion system available for supplying thrust in the main propulsion system's place: the attitude control system and its four down-facing nozzles. I vaguely recall reading (or hearing in a conversation with one of the Apollo folks) that the ascent stage could nearly make it to orbit on those four thrusters, cross-fed (I believe)from the same propellant supply as the ascent engine.

I enjoyed hearing from Bob M. and Mr. Common Sense and many others who, no doubt, have much more technical knowledge and experience than I on matters relating to the safety of the crews coming back from the Moon. “What if’s” are a constant threat to a design configuration but they play an important role during the design. It is the decision makers taking on the risks that will eventually have to make their decisions on budget and schedule and customer promises, however. My only purpose is to get people with similar goals as us to read my comments, your comments, think about it, and possibly take some rational action that benefits NASA and their beloved astronauts in the long run.

It just seems to me that, in this case, having two powerful engine systems (using them as primary and backup) is far better than having only one powerful engine system as a primary and a barely capable and complicated backup engine system. Hey, the Navy pilots seem to prefer two engine jets to single engine jets. I just hope we get the chance to use the lunar lander configuration that makes the best sense meaning it does not sacrifice a sensible understanding of crew safety for cost and schedule.

I just hope we get the chance to use the lunar lander configuration that makes the best sense meaning it does not sacrifice a sensible understanding of crew safety for cost and schedule.

LOL
Hope is all you have at this point.

Keep thinking...