Lunar Gateway: China Has Other Ideas
Chinese space official seems unimpressed with NASA’s lunar gateway, Ars Technica
“Another slide from [CNSA’s Pei Zhaoyu] offered some thoughts on the gateway concept, which NASA intends to build out during the 2020s, delaying a human landing on the Moon until the end of the decade at the earliest. Pei does not appear to be certain about the scientific objectives of such a station, and the deputy director concludes that, from a cost-benefit standpoint, the gateway would have “lost cost-effectiveness.”
A lunar orbiting station is much more important to the future of humanity than a moon surface base. It is stupid to strand yourself inside another gravity well. Only thing that has to be added to LOPG is to spin the station to provide 1g artificial gravity.
No useful or enhanced scientific knowledge that cant be provided at ISS or from satellites, no insitu resources available and thus no sustainability, and this list goes on as if the first two were not show stoppers alone. But I agree with the partial-g space station.
LOP-G is just make work for the SLS and Orion. According to NASA ‘s own plans we might get 4 tours of 30 days with 4 astronauts each playing sightseeing tourists with very little to do. They couldn’t even tele-operate Lunar rovers while at the LOP-G, since there is no funded Lunar lander programs yet.
The cost for the LOP-G is roughly $24B in my conservative estimation. Breaks down to $12B for the SLS, $6B for the Orion and $6B for the 6 LOP-G components. This is not counting the ground support at the various NASA centers and the required commercial logistic flights.
As current configured the LOP-G stack can only be used in a micro-gravity environment. It is not designed to take the stress of of being spin or have an rotating component attached.
How much would a full g rotating habitat cost? To start with it can be simple as two boxes as big as the ISS 2 km apart connected by a steel tube. Not counting the SLS orion trips.
A 2000 meter metal tube that can take the stress of a few hundred tonnes on both ends while spinning is beyond current technological know how IMO.
Also how do you suggest to approach and dock with such a structure by visiting spacecrafts?
The stress of a hundred tonnes is less than you might think. A standard-sized container, for a container ship, filled with steel, is about 200 tonnes. Those get lifted on and off ships by cranes all the time. (Ok, they don’t fill them, but we’re probably taking about 100 tonnes as a typical mass.) And I don’t see a need for a 2000 meters length. 100 meters should be fine.
But there is a long list of things we’ve never done before, from deployment, to spin up, to dynamics (if you have to make a station keeping or debris avoidance burn, what sort of oscillations do you get?) Even if the stress on the cable doesn’t worry me, those other issues are beyond the current state of the art.
Docking, by the way, would be with a de-spun module at the center. You could also use it for microgravity experiments.
You concepts seems workable with more funding.
AFAIK weight of a standard shipping container are usually about what a class 8 semi can haul.
My doubts are on what @dd75 posted. He or her propose the 2000 meter steel tube with ISS size masses on the ends in a spinning structure.
As far as the weight of standard shipping containers goes, I suppose you’re right. I just took the volume (which is the formal standard) and the density of steel. And then guessed at a 50% filling factor. That was probably a bad example. But cables to hold 100 tonnes at 9.8 m/s^2 isn’t pushing the state of the art. It’s probably the most straight-forward, well-understood part of such a conceptual space station.
As far as the 2000 meter steel tube, I’m inclined to look at the concept, not the suggested implementation. Once, when I was in Stockholm, I saw the _Vasa_, which sank on its maiden voyage in 1628 and was raised, restored and had a museum built around it, starting in 1961. The moral of that story is not to let the managers get their hands on the blueprints. The customers, users and managers should specify the requirements and what the thing is supposed to do; then let the people who worry about the details worry about the details.
We need to think in terms of potential height, d*EquivG.
When we are more serious about things, we will need to try crews at 0g, 0.1g, .2g,…0.8g, & 0.9g. Maybe we could set the different g levels 0.2g apart instead of just 0.1, after all. Or, maybe we could just do one at a time, in series, in steps of 0.2g. But of course that would be slow, as it will take a year or so at each level to do it right.
So if we are in a hurry, we might want to go for five levels at once, in parallel? But the linear separation of the levels could be 100m, or even less, with a cable stretching between them, not a tube.
We could hang an elevator along side, maybe with a pressurized car, to let us go between levels in a hurry. But of course too much gadding about would spoil the experiment. Let’s just make it safe for emergencies, not too luxurious for visitation.
We could really do all this in LEO, cheaper and safer, near ISS.
I’ve seen them do that before in 2001. Go for the middle and put in the same spin.
No doubt the concept of a variable spin center hub in a wheel type space station as depicted in the 2001 movie is doable.
However the quoted remarks is in replied to poster dd75 and his simplistic concept of a spinning space station of “two boxes as big as the ISS 2 km apart connected by a steel tube”.
Well, someone needs to figure out how to get to, operate on, and return from _some_ surface. There is no such thing as 100% efficient recycling. Existing life support systems are not completely closed, and in some respects, that state of the art is closer to 0%. Any orbital station will need some source of supplies. Mostly hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen, traces of other things, and oh, yea, spare parts for everything they can’t manufacture themselves and raw materials for everything they can. Were you thinking of getting that from the solar wind?
Anything spinning for gravity wouldn’t look vaguely like LOPG, and I don’t think lunar orbit is a place to test this. There are medical limits on how quickly you can spin people around. The standard I learned was 3 rpm at most, and 1 rpm would be a better idea. But I’ve also heard that’s based on fifty-year-old research with some iffy things in the methodology. 10 rpm might be ok. At 10 rpm, you need to be 9 meters from the spin axis to get 1 g of centrifugal force. At 1 rpm, it’s 900 meters. LOPG isn’t 18 meters across, and isn’t designed to spin or play games with tethers. I don’t want to think how much it would cost for NASA to build a space station that way.
The LOPG need not be 900 metres across. It can be split into 2 boxes each as big as the ISS and separated by 2 or 3 km and connected by a steel tube for transportation to the boxes from 0g.
That’s certainly how I’d do it. Well, I’d use a tether, and I’d probably go for 3 rpm and 90 meters, and also put in a partial gravity station half way up the tether. But that was exactly what I was talking about when I mentioned “playing games with tethers.”
We could debate how much such a spin/tether station should or could cost. But we were talking about LOP-G, not hypothetical stations in general. We have a fair idea of how much a roughly 3 m diameter, 10 meter long can would cost, when designed, built and developed by NASA. The answer is lots. As in over $10 billion, possibly as much as $50 billion.
Given that, and the relative complexity of the multiple module, tether, and spin design, you might understand why I wrote, “I don’t want to think how much it would cost for NASA to build a space station that way.” Not that someone couldn’t do it for a more reasonable price; not that it wouldn’t be a good idea. Just that this isn’t what LOP-G is, and that NASA couldn’t do something much more complex without it costing much more.
“Were you thinking of getting that from the solar wind?”
From comets, asteroid and moon mines and planetary mines.
“spare parts for everything they can’t manufacture themselves”
3D printing is maturing enough that there wont be anything they can’t manufacture themselves soon.
1) You were objecting to a lunar surface base, and now you’re talking about supplying an orbital station from “moon mines.” Doesn’t the later sort of require the former?
2) If they do everything with additive manufacturing (which would be a smart idea) they will still need raw materials to make spare parts. And most of the extraterrestrial mining ideas I’ve heard have a serious gap in the process. Some people imply you can just shovel regolith into a 3D printer. You would actually need to turn the regolith into things like finely powered aluminum. That’s not a trivial step.
Ah additive manufacturing the answer to everything! Love it as I do it has many, many limitations. Take for example the current front runner: additive layer manufacturing. It relies directly on gravity to maintain the integrity of the powder bed. This gravity also limits the shapes that can be produced without slumping or stalactites or indeed encapsulating powder. Direct deposition such as WAM could work wonderfully in zero g but you need the wire. Never mind the fact that the additively manufactured materials are markedly different from their precursors and turn 70 years of careful metallurgy somewhat on its head.
However one area where it can positively be used right now is on the lunar regolith. There exist electro thermal process that can crack oxygen (>40% of the mass) out of the regolith and leave pure metals. Si can be sintered in the absence of oxygen (No SiO on the material surface). Vacuum EBW is old hat. QED we can build stuff remotely on the surface of the moon right now, using current technology, without shipping up resin or other building materials. We just need to land the tools and start working it out.
Why 1 g, we don’t need experience with that, we need experience with 0.38 g
So that we can test if artificial gravity is as good for health when people exercise as little as they do on earth which is to say never. Because future space settlements will be 1g because we are more comfortable at that and will demand 1g and not 0.38g.
Fortunately Einstein already answered that for us when he stated that gravity and acceleration are the same thing. So 1 g of artificial gravity will work just fine as far as astronaut health. Although depending on the design there could be a strata of gravity within a spacecraft, in which case not all of the time is spent in 1 g. Or maybe a centrifuge where astronauts spend part of their time in 1 g. So I agree there could be some benefit to experimenting with 1 g artificial gravity, but we have a much higher priority to test partial gravity.
Because what we don’t know is how healthy astronauts will be in lower g environments. Mars gravity is 0.38 g and astronauts will have to live in that environment for at least two years, or longer if they stay semi-permanently. Presumably with plenty of exercise like they do on ISS they should be okay, but we need to know for sure and also how much exercise is needed. Also exercise doesn’t solve all of the problems caused by reduced gravity. Better to test now rather than wait until the first astronauts go to Mars. Especially if we will eventually be sending couch potatoes to Mars as you suggested, or at least people less athletic than current astronauts. And what happens if someone gets injured on Mars and can’t exercise.
Also the first astronauts to Mars will likely be spending several months in 0 g on the way to and from Mars. Currently astronauts go from 1 g to 0 g when they go to ISS for long term missions, in other words they start their 0 g missions at maximum strength. However what happens when an astronaut starts their 0 g return trip to Earth after having lived in 0.38 g for two years on Mars.
As you saw from the other answer, although it’s not impossible to create artificial gravity it is difficult, even spinning with a tether isn’t as easy as it sounds. It might help in the design if the spacecraft only had to provide say half of Earth’s gravity. If we can determine what is the minimum healthy amount of gravity needed then spaceships can be designed to provide that amount of gravity.
Unfortunately after decades of space research this is a gaping hole in our knowledge, which is why I think partial gravity research should be a priority on any space station that is being marketed as preparing us for deep space travel.
Then we should insist that LOPG be modified for artificial gravity research while it is still in the planning stage.
It isn’t quite as simple as that. There are plenty of medical effects from being spun around at 10 rpm (or 3 or 1.) Or the centrifugal gradient. At 10 rpm and a 9 m radius (to the floor), your feet are at 1 g and your head is at 0.8 g. I’m not sure how healthy that would be in the long term. Being the sort of scientist who likes controlling variables, I’d like to see spin and 1 g. Spin and 0.38 g would raise questions: Were the noted effects due to spin or due to partial gravity?
It will also be interesting to find out how the body reacts to constantly changing gravity as people move about a spacecraft or space station that is rotating. We know that when going from 1 g to 0 g the vestibular system gets quite confused leading to disorientation and various levels of space sickness depending on the individual. Although within a couple of days the brain adjusts. Then readjustment is needed on return to Earth, many astronauts say they have balance problems the first few days back. But what happens when the brain has to deal with constantly changing levels of gravity. Maybe it will adapt to that also but we don’t know. Will an astronaut get dizzy just from standing up after sitting down for awhile due to the slight change in gravity that the brain will experience.
A friend of mine made this years ago and its still valid as far as I can tell: https://www.artificial-grav…
This automatically presupposes that no one has any interest in going to Mars or the Moon. That is not true. You might disagree, but if you make that built-in assumption part of everything you say, you aren’t going to convince people.
The central point of the story seems to be that the European partners in ISS are wondering whether to go on the the Gateway with the US or collaborate with China in LEO for now and later perhaps in human flights to the lunar surface.
“So far, NASA has yet to finalize commitments with Europe, Russia, or other International Space Station partners on contributions to the gateway. While European officials are interested, it seems like they may also be willing to go along with China if that country has a more direct plan to land humans on the Moon.”
The Chinese have money; they have resources. Why would the European partners be interested in the US? What do they gain?
They would gain the joys of having to deal with ITAR and US export control laws.
I’d be curious to know if they wouldn’t have to deal with export control laws if they worked with China. I don’t think China would share all their stuff. Maybe with almost no sharing except for common components like for docking, and no non-Chinese companies working on Chinese stuff, it would be easier. No sharing or all sharing would be easier than sharing with some limits and checks.
It seems to me that this may be the best of both roads. I think the Gateway is the key to deep space, and the Moon is likely to be an expensive desert.
But how cost-effective is it really likely to be to mine the Moon for water ice for rocket fuel, and possibly other valuable resources? It seems to me a reusable, round-trip single stage LOX/LH2 robot shuttle might be able to haul a mass of ice to low lunar orbit (LLO, where an ion-drive cargo ship could reach it, to carry it higher), about equal to its total propellant needs for the round trip.
If the ice is really there in mine-able quantities and condition, that might be a bonanza for fueling fast passenger ships to Phobos, etc, to reduce the high-energy cosmic ray exposure of the passengers, leaving slower electric cargo ships to handle the rest of the traffic.
I think we really need more information about what we will find on the Moon, and more details how we might be able to use it and get it out of that lunar gravity well. (For comparison, the Earth’s equivalent potential well is about 6,300 km deep, from surface to escape at 1g, while the Moon’s well is only, roughly, 250 km deep (also at 1g, from lunar surface to Earth-Moon/L1, or about 125 km from surface to LLO.)
I’d be happy to see the Chinese investigate this possibility, while we establish the Gateway near L1, which I think will be needed soon as the essential transfer point for economical access to more distant points in the Solar System. (And then we don’t have to wait 10 more years for humans to return to the Moon.) And it even allows us (humans) to finesse the stupid American ban on collaboration with the Chinese.
No one knows how useful the moon is for water or any other resource until “Proven” volumes of such resources and the technology to extract, process, store and transport them to awaiting users has been thoroughly vetted. Beginning that highly detailed prospecting process in earnest and a timely manner is what is needed.
The Gateway is NOT the key to deep space! One of the main unknowns in human exploration beyond LEO is the effect of long-duration LOW-g. Unless Gateway is spun up to create an artificial gravity, it will tell us NOTHING we don’t already know from astronauts aboard the ISS. In addition to other scientific and commercial investigations about ISRU, a manned lunar base would give us the data we need about low-g. If 1/6g will minimize the physiological problems, the 3/8g of Mars is not problem. If not, then we may have to build a centrifuge on the Lunar surface to crank up to 3/8g. IMHO, Gateway is a waste of money and time!
Ad Luna! Ad Ares! AD ASTRA!
Mining and exporting Lunar ice as propellants to the Lagrange points have much less economic impetus in the short and medium terms if there is cheap lift to LEO.
Before you get propellants from Lunar ice. You have to to set up cis-Lunar logistics, Lunar external surface activities infrastructure, Lunar habitation infrastructure, mining infrastructure, Lunar spaceport, propellants refining & storage and have a large pool of trained workers to run all that infrastructure.
LOP-G is not going to be at L1. It is going to be in a near-rectilinear halo orbit around the Moon.
And before you get “lunar-water” you first have to find it in volumes that are attainable. We know of no such volumes, therefore this whole thing is a non-starter. So, in the mean time, what is the use of any cis-Lunar station? What truly novel and cost worthy scientific research can only be done there?
As a reviewer for Journal of Geophysical Research once put it, “How the authors conclude that something is not present when they have no data is a mystery.” Just because we haven’t found ice deposits doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
In fact, we haven’t looked for them at all in a meaningful way. We’ve mostly looked for hydrogen, and it’s present in quantities and places which are hard to explain without subsurface ice. So I wouldn’t say “whole thing is a non-starter.” When we’ve looked, and found out the ice is a few percent abundance, mixed in with regolith, then I’d be willing to say lunar water as a resource is a non-starter.
will not that give the LOP-G continuous communications with earth while in that orbit? Would it not make a great coms base? Not having to be staffed year round would be a benefit? Will not Phase II start once it is in place? The transport ship for a martian fly by?
NASA said they may purchase two of the Propulsion modules .. could not the second one be placed in LLO? and act as a commercial hub?
You don’t need an outpost for comm. purposes.
Going back to the Apollo days, there was a proposal to place 2 surplus Tiros satellites into lunar orbit; to provide for a proposed mission to the “dark side’ of the moon.
In the initial stages of lunar ops. any advantages from a space outpost can be met by utilizing an Earth orbital facility such as the ISS.
If future lunar resource extraction operations require a “closer” outpost, then by all means. But at present…not essential.
NASA seems set on Mars and nothing has shown me they plan on deviating from that plan. They will put up something there and then do phase II unless it all gets scrapped along with SLS and Orion. That just does not appear to be happening. If it IS going to happen then as many uses as possible should be packed into it.
my .02 cents
The President is set on Mars… a goal that as I as a lifelong space buff love.
OK.. now back to reality. So far no dedicated funding from Congress for this goal. Even if it happens tomorrow, the goal will have to be supported by multiple Administrations and Congressional Sittings to be accomplished.
Barring the absence of even initial Congressional and overt public support for such an initiative, I still believe that continued long term ops in LEO are sufficient for the foreseeable future. This does not preclude any future lunar landing/basing programs that I hope will occur in the future; nor would such LEO focussed operations be unable to support a Mars initiative if wiser heads prevail in future times.
In short while a Gateway might be desirable in an “ideal pro-space” climate, it is not necessary to accomplish future hoped for Lunar and/or Mars operations; and at worst will reduce funding for these very exploration goals.
In an extremely distant, fifty years from now, sense, I guess you could say human landings on Mars have been a consistent goal. Why, what sort, and everything to do until then, however, seem to change a couple times a decade.
I have been wrong before but I have a feeling a tipping point has been reached or is about to and that capital is going to be entering this sector at an unprecedented rate. This will lead to a growth spurt that I really hope we plan for.
I know I’ve said this before, but the Chinese should already have a communications to cover the lunar far side. Queqiao, part of the Chang’e 4 mission, was launched two months ago, and should have reached is Earth-Moon L2 halo orbit a month ago. I haven’t seen any news about it (CNAS is spotty about press releases…), but presuming everything worked, that means it should be well into commissioning and possible already into normal operations. Of course, they won’t have any communications to relay until the far side lander arrives towards the end of this year. But there are some scientific instruments on Queqiao.
Do you think they may have encountered problems with it?
I would have assumed they would release a press notice if all was well?
We’re talking about China and CNSA, and their approach to media relations isn’t NASA’s. NASA has a tendency to put out as many press releases as possible. I don’t see as many from CNSA, and they tend towards announcing complete success.
My suspicion is that everything’s fine with Queqiao. The lunar flyby was successful, and it should have gotten onto the L2 halo orbit about a month ago. (One of the two small spacecraft seems to have failed, but the other appears to be in lunar orbit.That’s according to amateur radio tracking and Jonathan McDowell, not a CNSA press release.)
One or two months for checkout and commissioning is reasonable, especially since they don’t have any reason to rush (they won’t need the relay for months, not until the Chang’e 4 lander launches.)
My guess is that they are waiting to have Queqiao fully up and running before the issue a press release. NASA might do a “we’re there” announcement followed by an “and everything works” press release a couple months later. But I can imagine CNSA waiting and making one announcement of complete success. I won’t start worrying unless we haven’t heard by the end of August.
Thank you for the response. Your take on this makes sense.
It will be simpler and cheaper to use a small comsat with electric drives.
It is my suspicion that the second PPE is for DTS development if it gets funded.
Yup, very likely.
Yes, JLOP-G is not close to L1 in km. But it is much closer in terms of energy. I apologize for having been a little too terse above. Because energy is a moveable asset, space vehicles can often move to orbits with the same or near energies with little cost in DeltaV, [if there is also little change in specific angular momentum J (per kgm) involved], because both energy and angular momentum are conserved. All the Lagrangian orbits have the same specific energy E (in Joules/kgm) and similar J. Thus it is usually inexpensive to change between them. As I mentioned above, the lunar G potential well, which is energy, is only ~250 km “deep” at 1g equivalent. Transfer orbits from E-M L1 to SE L2 are also pretty close (but will take about a month to execute due to the ~1 million mile distance, at the low speed required.)
The point is, the Earth-Moon Lagrangian points, and points interior to their contour curves, are nearby in terms of energy cost. And the points near the Sun-Earth Lagrangian contours are also cheap to reach.
Just as it was easy and cheap to move people and cargo back and forth by ship near the Atlantic sea coast in 1700, even though Boston and Virginia were far apart in miles, so it will be relatively easy and cheap to move stuff and folks around inside the Sun-Earth Lagrangian contours, at least so long as you stay away from massive bodies like planets (eg, Earth — 6300 km down!) and moons.
And this is why E-M L1, etc, is sort of the local Interplanetary Space equivalent of New York Harbor, and stashing stuff near there will be economical. The good roads go near there, as it were. So E-M L1 is probably a good place to put a gas station, garage for repairs, hotel, general store, etc. Of course I’m looking out a few decades (which — sigh — I won’t live to see), but we’ll still want to potter around near-Earth space as efficiently as possible for the years between now and 2100.
E-M Lagrange point 1 have the added bonus of people on Earth being able watch the departure burns of manned Interplanetary missions. Maybe even with the naked eye. Something the departing crews’ family & friends will appreciated.
That would be cool, but only a fraction of the launches. The Moon would have to be above the viewer’s horizon (there goes half the opportunities.) L1 is between the Earth and the Moon, so if the Moon were even close to full, it would be a real bright light in the background and probably make it hard (impossible?) to see the burn. And the Moon would have to be up at night, which means it couldn’t be within a week of a new Moon. And, since the timing depends on launch windows, I don’t think slipping it by a day or a week to improve the view would be viable.
Now that I’m done being negative, I will say (again) it would be really cool. Enough so that, even if the viewing geometry only worked for one launch in ten, it would still be spectacular.
“The key to deep space,” despite putting things in another gravity well once you’ve already paid the energy cost to get them out the earth’s? Please explain.
It is amazing that even the Chinese can see that “Gateway” is a bridge to nowhere, especially regarding all the design features forwarded thus far. The ONLY way any new space station, no matter where it is, would prove beneficial as a scientific link to humans living on other worlds in the future would be to make it a partial-g platform that would help fill the hung knowledge gap in human physiology and adaptation between 0 and 1 g. All other scientific research can take place on the ISS, and the cis-lunar space offers no gains in scientific knowledge, especially regarding lunar science, which a satellite could do more cost effectively. and yet we keep pursuing near-useless paths.
Colonizing other worlds would be stupid. If it is habitable we would contaminate/destroy the habitat. If it is not habitable making it habitable is more costlier than living in a 1g space habitat. It will never have the right gravity and right atmosphere and temperature all of which can be provided in a space habitat. Additionally you would be stuck in a gravity well making space travel costlier.
Regarding the gravity well, it depends on resources. More than 0g is better than 0g. Building on a planet with (some proportion of) local materials might be easier than building in orbit. Looking for resources and generating energy should be easier that way too. I don’t think this has all been figured out yet.
And regrading contaminating/destroying existing habitat… well humans have been doing that for at least 10,000 years or so. You could argue it’s different, but I don’t see how that could be a reason to ultimately not colonize somewhere else. Survival is a valid argument.
I can see other uses for a space station. There are advantages to on-orbit assembly rather than single, monolithic launches, at least when it comes to large vehicles for human, planetary missions. A construction shack and a tank farm could be useful in that regard. The tank farm could be useful even if all the fuel came from Earth. But if there were extraterrestrial sources, that would influence the choice of an optimal orbit for the tank farm.
10 points to the Chinese equivalent to Gryffindor, for figuring out the obvious: an expensive gateway to nowhere is (1) not particularly good for science compared with other technologies, and (2) not particularly good for anything else.
gosh now THAT is troubling .. a country that doesn’t even have a space station. Well china can get back to me once they have had a space station occupied for over a decade, in LEO, has commercial cargo services, and has commercial passenger services coming online….
Perhaps the Chinese have realized that they can get all the space medicine data they want from the ISS, so there’s no point in building their own.
Then why are they building their own? Why are they trying to get other nations to join it? Why are they spending all the funding to build one?
In order to have a valid opinion you have to have knowledge of the subject..
like I said .. once they have maintained a space station in LEO for over a decade .. they can THEN state why moving from a 200 mile orbit above earth to a orbit 200000 miles away from earth ..is not an impressive feat. Since they seem unable do to ANYTHING in orbit .. including launching astronauts faster then once every 2-4 years. …
I haven’t heard much about the Chinese space program when it comes to “impressive feat[s].” But that’s sort of the point. Yes, putting a space station in orbit around the Moon would be impressive. So would jumping a motorcycle across the Grand Canyon. But why, other than impressing people, would you want to so that?
My take from Pei Zhaoyu’s comments wasn’t that LOP-G wouldn’t be impressive. It seemed more like confusing over what the point was or why someone would do that. He isn’t the only one who’s wondered. If (If) the goal is working towards lunar surface operations, LOP-G is (arguably) a bit of a detour. Perhaps an impressive detour, but even so…
Instead of looking at the number of people they’ve put in orbit, how often they’ve done so, or how long they stayed, I’m inclined to look at what they are trying to do. If the modest accomplishments are a direct and efficient path towards those goals, I’d say they have an good space program. Unfortunately, they are a bit opaque about what those goals are, so it’s hard to say…
First and foremost it is to get to mars.. NASA has never deviated from that. They want phase II the transport vehicle to take off from there to Mars.
Are you certain? Just because they have invited others to join them doesn’t mean they’re ever going to launch it. As one who has been on the edge of a Chinese bait-and-switch over an unmanned project, I have serious doubts about anything they announce.
See, for example: http://www.china.org.cn/eng…
To be fair, the United States doesn’t have a good track record either. We’re jerked around European and UK partners on quite a few occasions.
True. And the Russians have historically had a hard time launching scientific missions within a decade of when they said the launch date would be.
Yes, I remember an old joke about the Russian Mars 96 mission. It was originally Mars 92 (because it was supposed to launch in 1992), but then they had to slip the launch date and they renamed it Mars 94. Then it slipped again and became Mars 96. At some point, a few people started calling it Mars 92+2n.
But I think the issue with China is different. For the US and Russia, this seems to be a problem with unstable budgets. In the case of China, I get the impression that it’s about focusing on their strategic goals and changing their minds based on changing goals or changing plans about how to achieve them. Since they aren’t exactly transparent about what those goals are, that can really be annoying for international partners. When NASA jerks the Europeans around, they can at least complain about disfunctional funding processes. With China, I get the impression it’s more like, “we decided” and that’s probably more frustrating.
Other than giving Orion and SLS some role, I do not see the point of the LOPG Gateway.
There is no science which requires it, and in fact visiting astronauts will have little to nothing to do while there. It will require a lot of dollars and defer any further exploration by years, and likely decades.
There are things that could be done and which need to be done on the way to Mars. A vehicle to test advanced propulsion systems. No reason it needs to be in deep space or in cislunar space at least not until the system has been demonstrated. In fact placing it into the LOPG halo orbit increases costs considerably. A vehicle to test variable G on humans-no reason for it to be in deep space or in a LOPG halo orbit-it just increases costs and decreases accessibility.
It would make sense to establish a prototype outpost on the Moon, but that does not require a LOPG station.
So in short I really do not see the value of LOPG.
NASA ought to put together a coherent plan. They have not done that yet? Why not? What are they afraid of?
Hey Keith, sorry if (very) late to game but just noticed the SpaceRef China twitter account. Does that mean you’ve added someone else to team besides you & Mark?
No we’ve had that account for a long time.