Subject: Space-tech Digest #129 Contents: Admin: space-tech machine change Saturn V reincarnation - again (8 msgs) lunar colonies on the cheap (8 msgs) ------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1992 23:43-EST From: Marc.Ringuette@GS80.SP.CS.CMU.EDU To: space-tech@cs.cmu.edu Subject: Space-tech machine change The space-tech list is moving from my old workstation to my new one. The change should be invisible to most users. The regular addresses will continue to work: space-tech@cs.cmu.edu - goes to the whole list space-tech-request@cs.cmu.edu - goes to the maintainer The space-tech archives are already available for anonymous ftp on the new machine: gs80.sp.cs.cmu.edu (128.2.205.90) /usr/anon/public/space-tech The old host, daisy.learning.cs.cmu.edu, will disappear in a few days. -- Marc Ringuette (mnr@cs.cmu.edu) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 3 Nov 1992 16:02:27 -0600 (CST) From: SMITH@EPVAX.MSFC.NASA.GOV (The Ice-9-man Cometh) Subject: Saturn V reincarnation - again To: space-tech@DAISY.LEARNING.CS.CMU.EDU Greetings folks. I have a theoretical question for you. Now, I have read that the specific manufacturing data for the Saturn boosters are long gone, this being the main reason why reviving the S-V is not a valid alternative to the (now nonexistant) NLS. Suppose, hypothetically, that some rebellious soul had placed a complete set of engineering drawings and specifications for the Saturn V in a disused building somewhere. Suppose these were found, and dusted off. What justifications could be made for using them to build the "new" heavy-lift launch capability in the US? What problems would pop up, both technical and political? Note that such data would probably still be restricted to NASA and contractor employees, by default. If I remember this thread correctly from several years ago, it was cut off fairly abruptly by the fact that the complete engineering data were not available, requiring a complete set of stress, static, vibrational, etc. tests and models before bare-bones drawings would be useful. I wish to start again from the assumption that they ARE available. If this was covered before, please feel free to say so; also please send me a copy of the discussion or tell me where to get it, if it exists. A curious soul, | James W. Smith, NASA MSFC EP-53 | SMITH@epvax.msfc.nasa.gov | | If wishes were fishes, we'd all smell like a can of sardines. | | Neither NASA nor (!James) is responsible for what I say. Mea culpa. | ------------------------------ To: The Ice-9-man Cometh Cc: space-tech@DAISY.LEARNING.CS.CMU.EDU, gwh@lurnix.COM Subject: Re: Saturn V reincarnation - again Date: Tue, 03 Nov 92 15:27:36 -0800 From: gwh@lurnix.COM The problem isn't that the Saturn V plans are lost, really; several copies (at least one "full") do exist, and there seems to be nothing major missing. My understanding of the problem with restarting production is that you'd have to restart production: you can't get the parts off the shelf anymore. It would cost hundreds of millions of dollars for people to tool up to produce the (60's vintage) systems again, or hundreds of millions to re-engineer some systems with 1990's technology and hardware where sensible. In any case, it would cost over a billion dollars, easily (I've heard a lot more) to restart production, between the systems and the structure. -george william herbert Retro Aerospace gwh@lurnix.com gwh@retro.com (coming soon to an internet near you) ------------------------------ From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu Date: Fri, 6 Nov 92 17:04:00 EST Subject: Re: Saturn V reincarnation - again To: space-tech@DAISY.LEARNING.CS.CMU.EDU The problem is that the engineering documentation is relatively complete, as such things go... but it doesn't tell you about things like exactly how the engine-nozzle parts were heat-treated. If you want to build a Saturn V without having to re-test everything, you need to duplicate the manufacturing processes used to build the originals. The information needed to do that was never gathered in one place, and quite a bit of it is long gone. In practice, considerable re-development is inevitable. There are some other problems like where do you build it and launch it. (The old Saturn V facilities have been converted for the Shuttle.) Note that a souped-up Saturn V is one of the heavylift architectures Griffin's people specified as a possible launcher for a return to the Moon. The idea is being taken seriously, but it's harder than it looks. Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ To: space-tech@cs.cmu.edu Subject: Saturn V avail? From: can2can@ziggys.cts.com (Tim Edwards) Date: Sat, 07 Nov 92 07:57:29 PST There is a Saturn V on it's side outside the Johnson manned Space flight center... NASA put it there in the hopes that they would never be called on to produce anything but reports... Can it be refurbished? There was a suggestion made by Jerry Pournell to the effect that you could put a permanent settlement on the Moon quite easily, by not wasting mass on life-boats/return vehicles. Everyone that lifts, knows it is a one way trip. That Saturn, if usable could be my ride to the frontier. can2can@ziggys.cts.com - BBS (619)262-6384 Ziggy's Den Of Iniquity ------------------------------ From: pgf@srl03.cacs.usl.edu (Phil G. Fraering) Subject: Re: Saturn V avail? > There is a Saturn V on it's side outside the Johnson manned Space flight > center... NASA put it there in the hopes that they would never be called > on to produce anything but reports... Can it be refurbished? No. Neither can the one in Huntsville, or at Kennedy. Imagine the difficulty of an airplane that had been sitting out in the elements unprotected all that time. These are moon rockets. They fare a lot worse. > There was > a suggestion made by Jerry Pournell to the effect that you could put a > permanent settlement on the Moon quite easily, by not wasting mass on > life-boats/return vehicles. Everyone that lifts, knows it is a one way > trip. That Saturn, if usable could be my ride to the frontier. But we don't have closed-cycle life support good enough to send a bunch of people one-way to survive for more than a few months. You'll need some form of resupplying them. And once you're running that sort of thing, returning is more trivial than you think. I again recommend that y'all look up Zubrin's Moon Direct scheme, which apparently duplicates an Apollo mission with two Titan IV's or a titan and a shuttle... ------------------------------ From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu Date: Sat, 7 Nov 92 20:18:29 EST To: space-tech@cs.cmu.edu Subject: Re: Saturn V avail? >There is a Saturn V on it's side outside the Johnson manned Space flight >center... Can it be refurbished? Probably not to any state that would be considered "flight ready" by NASA standards. Quite apart from all the time it's spent sitting unprotected, it's entirely possible that replacement of some parts would be needed simply due to age. That hardware was never qualified for long periods in storage. The Saturn IBs used to launch the Skylab crews, in storage for only a few years (between the IB production run and Skylab), needed replacement of some structural parts which had cracked while in storage. >a suggestion made by Jerry Pournell to the effect that you could put a >permanent settlement on the Moon quite easily, by not wasting mass on >life-boats/return vehicles... Actually, a lifeboat is not that big a mass investment. I think you've misunderstood Pournelle. His point is that you save enormously if you build a lunar *colony* rather than a lunar *base*. The difference is that there is no crew rotation for a colony; the only return capability is for extreme emergency. A secondary issue is that self-sufficiency (in basic consumables, not high-tech stuff like semiconductors) tends to get higher priority in colony design than base design. The Columbus Project, an early-80s proposal from (I think) Livermore, was (I'm told -- I've never seen technical detail) a reasonably detailed scheme for establishing a six-person lunar colony, including emergency return capability, with six shuttle payloads. It did it partly by accepting some significant risks. Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ From: ssi!lfa@uunet.UU.NET (Louis F. Adornato) Subject: Re: Saturn V reincarnation - again To: uunet!cs.cmu.edu!space-tech@uunet.UU.NET Date: Mon, 9 Nov 92 7:22:51 CST > In practice, considerable re-development is inevitable. I think you'd have to re-test everything anyway, since you'd be rebuilding production lines, and each line would have to be recertified. It's _still_ hard for me to beleive that any of the manufacturers would have tossed thier copies of the specs, let alone their knowledge of the technologies used. The Lunar program having been the presteige project that it was (some companies actually bid under cost), you'd think that they would have kept the records around just for historical purposes. One reason why action should begin soon - the original work force (at least, a significant fraction thereof) is still alive, though probably more than half are now retired. A lot of the holes could be filled in by picking a few selected brains. But like the rest of us, they're not getting any younger. > There are some other problems like where do you build it and launch it. > (The old Saturn V facilities have been converted for the Shuttle.) The old VAB was a pole barn on steroids; if a new building is put up, the dominant expense would probably be the crawlerway spur. The mobile launch pads and the crawlers (on which I'm proud to say my father worked) are still in use, as are the cryo tanks and plumbing, roads, the crawlerway, and most of the infrastructure (are you as sick of that word as I am?). In fact, I think one of the old Saturn pads was never converted to STS use (although, given the airborne salt levels, the gantry itself is probably scrap iron). The LCC is probably still compatable, although it might be cheaper to scrap it and use newer technology instead. I'd guess that the biggest costs would be the preflight and launch software (including development, certification and maintenance of the tools), and retraining the ground crews. Of course, these cost could be recouped fairly easily; take the third stage of the fist NuevoSaturn, drain off the fuel, add a docking adaptor... Bye bye SSF, hello Skylab2. Now you've got not only a space station, but a heavy lift system to support planetary exploration. Seems to me to make a lot more sense to build the bridge at the same time you're building the bridgehead... > > Note that a souped-up Saturn V is one of the heavylift architectures > Griffin's people specified as a possible launcher for a return to the > Moon. The idea is being taken seriously, but it's harder than it looks. > > Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology > henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry Nah. This time we get the Canadians to help. Seriously, I expect it would cost more than the original development program, simply because of the difference between the 1965 dollar and the 199? dollar. Lou Adornato | "Sure, the cow may have jumped over the Supercomputer Systems, Inc | moon, but she burned up on reentry" Eau Claire, WI | The secretary (and the rest of the company) uunet!ssi!lfa or lfa@ssi.com | have disavowed any knowledge of my actions. ------------------------------ From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu Date: Mon, 9 Nov 92 11:56:12 EST Subject: Re: Saturn V reincarnation - again To: space-tech@cs.cmu.edu >It's _still_ hard for me to beleive that any of the manufacturers would >have tossed thier copies of the specs, let alone their knowledge of the >technologies used... Perhaps unlikely as a conscious decision -- although twenty-year-old prestige cuts no ice when money is tight -- but such things happen by default all the time. "You want us to make some more of those parts? Well, gee... we've got the plans... but we aren't set up for that forging process any more... we ripped out the big heat-treatment furnace when we stopped using those hi-temp stainless steels for large jobs... and the last guy who remembered how to get surface finishes like that retired five years ago when we got out of military contracts... sorry." Some of the Saturn V subcontractors don't even exist any more (hell, some of the *shuttle orbiter* subcontractors don't exist any more). >... you'd think that >they would have kept the records around just for historical purposes. Historians know that they have to move fast when a big operation closes down. There are already places in Apollo history where we will never know exactly how some decision got made, because the records are incomplete and the people involved don't remember. >> There are some other problems like where do you build it and launch it. > >The old VAB was a pole barn on steroids; if a new building is put up, >the dominant expense would probably be the crawlerway spur. The mobile >launch pads and the crawlers (on which I'm proud to say my father >worked) are still in use, as are the cryo tanks and plumbing, roads, >the crawlerway, and most of the infrastructure ... The VAB was pricey to build all the same. However, that's one thing we don't have to duplicate, because two of the VAB's four bays are now mostly used for storage; we could use them. However, we'll need a good chunk of cash to fit them out -- they were never fully operational. And while various other bits of hardware are still in use, often they have been modified. The mobile launchers no longer have the umbilical towers the Saturns needed (the reason why they move the shuttles from VAB to pad in the early morning hours is that thunderstorms are least likely then -- the umbilical towers supplied lightning protection for the Saturns) and their exhaust ducts have been extensively reworked for the shuttle's engine layout, ditto the rest of the plumbing. The mobile service structures are now mounted in fixed positions at the pads, and have been heavily altered for the shuttle. The VAB work platforms (in the two fully-equipped bays) have been ripped out and reinstalled for shuttle work. Etc. If memory serves, Griffin's proposal for a revived Saturn V involved building a new fixed pad (the proposed-but-never-built pad 39C) and at least a couple of new mobile launchers. Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu Date: Sat, 7 Nov 92 20:24:23 EST Subject: lunar colonies on the cheap To: space-tech@cs.cmu.edu >> permanent settlement on the Moon quite easily, by not wasting mass on >> life-boats/return vehicles. Everyone that lifts, knows it is a one way >> trip... > >But we don't have closed-cycle life support good enough to send >a bunch of people one-way to survive for more than a few months. But a lunar colony does not need closed-cycle life support. Oxygen is abundant there, at the cost of some extraction effort. Hydrogen is scarcer, but water recycling *is* pretty nearly a solved problem, and there is *some* hydrogen there. The key to colonization is exploiting local resources, not trying to live without them. Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ From: pgf@srl03.cacs.usl.edu (Phil G. Fraering) Subject: Feed me, Seymour! Date: Sat, 7 Nov 1992 20:26:17 -0600 (CST) > But a lunar colony does not need closed-cycle life support. Oxygen is > abundant there, at the cost of some extraction effort... I was referring to food; I suspect brute force chemical recycling of oxygen and water would be possible, but the moon is _extremely_ lacking, I've heard, in carbon and nitrogen... by the time you're shipping enough equipment to extract hydrogen, you probably have other ways of solving the problem with less effort. ------------------------------ From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu Date: Sat, 7 Nov 92 22:58:19 EST Subject: Re: Feed me, Seymour! To: space-tech@cs.cmu.edu Local sources of anything volatile -- which includes carbon -- are pretty slender, unless there are frozen polar volatiles. Long odds you'd need some ongoing resupply for make-up to cover recycling losses. But I still think the recycling issue is being overblown. We know how to get food for a colony: grow plants (the Chinese have been fertilizing fields with human waste for millennia). Water recycling is the trick, since we need a lot of it and it's hard to replace on the Moon. Air recycling is barely worth the trouble if we have lunar oxygen extraction, although any plants you're planting for food will help with oxygen too. Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ From: szabo@techbook.com (Nick Szabo) Subject: Lunar "colony" reality check To: space-tech@cs.cmu.edu Date: Sun, 8 Nov 92 8:18:35 PST Lunar "colony" reality check: * The moon has no significant sources of hydrogen, nitrogen, or carbon. Wishful thinking about polar volatiles or scrounging solar wind particles are hardly significant. * A livable atmosphere is mostly nitrogen, not oxygen. * Plants and animals need copious amounts of hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon. * There is no affordable way to crack oxygen out of lunar rock or to recycle it. This would cost, at bare minimum, tens of millions of dollars per astronaut per year. * Because of transportation costs for recycling equipment, recycling on the moon is far more expensive than recycling on earth. Even on earth the best attempt at building a livable, working biosphere masses hundreds of thousands of tons and leaks over tens of tons of air per year. * Hydrogen is extremely innefficient to transport from earth. The stoichiometric volume of LH to make water is _larger_ than the volume of oxygen; huge amounts will be wasted on tankage. Much of the LH will leak before it can be used; it's extremely difficult and expensive to store even for the few days trip. * The annual per capita consumption of water in the U.S. is over 500 tons. In this as in many other areas, the "colony" will be living in abject poverty despite the $billions spent on its construction. * It takes more than a rocket payload full of hydrogen to make the water needed by industry. If we're to have any significant manufacturing industry in space, we're going to need tons of volatiles. For example, here is the water used to make a few kinds of products on earth: gallons/unit ------------ finished steel, ton 40,000 automobiles, unit 12,000 trucks, buses, unit 20,000 ref: Mark's Standard Handbook for Mechanical Engineers, 1987 * There is no signficant economic resource on the moon. Revenues as a percentage of costs will be 0%. * SSF bare-bones habitat operations costs will be $2 billion per year. Scaling for transport costs gives over $10 billion per year for a bare-bones lunar "base". Redesign will cost even more than SSF cost, since industry has no reason to participate beyond the usual NASA-contractor mode. * Calling a few astronauts huddled in a Winnebago a "base" is a major exaggeration. Calling it a "colony" is an abominable misuse of the word. There are dozens of other pathways to space colonization. Fixation on obsolete concepts like the "lunar base" and oxymoronic concepts like the "lunar colony" is one of the main reasons why the space colonization movement lies mired in failure. Nick Szabo szabo@techbook.com ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 8 Nov 1992 16:44:51 MST From: "Richard Schroeppel" To: space-tech@cs.cmu.edu Subject: Air recycling in a lunar colony Henry Spencer writes ... > ... Air recycling is barely worth the trouble if we have lunar oxygen extraction, although any plants you're planting for food will help with oxygen too. You may want the carbon, and the water vapor. Rich Schroeppel rcs@cs.arizona.edu ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 8:52:48 -0600 (CST) From: SMITH@EPVAX.MSFC.NASA.GOV (The Ice-9-man Cometh) Subject: Why go back to the Moon? To: space-tech@CS.CMU.EDU > Even on earth the best attempt at building a livable, > working biosphere masses hundreds of thousands of tons and leaks > over tens of tons of air per year. Isn't Biosphere II the first completely closed biosphere attempt? One would expect some problems. But I wouldn't go so far as to say that there is no affordable way to recycle. Given lots of energy (something the Moon is rich in, due to solar flux), and ingenuity, I hesitate to believe that the problem can't be solved. >* Hydrogen is extremely innefficient to transport from > earth. The stoichiometric volume of LH to make water is > _larger_ than the volume of oxygen; huge amounts will > be wasted on tankage. Much of the LH will leak before > it can be used; it's extremely difficult and expensive > to store even for the few days trip. Finally, a subject I know something about. :) Again, given energy, it is possible to store LH2, LOX, LN2 etc. for long periods using an active thermodynamic vent system. "Long" here means weeks on the lunar surface or months in orbit; the time on the lunar surface could be greatly extended by building sunshades with local materials (rock). I won't deny that it's expensive, though. "Thermodynamic vent system" is just a fancy name for a refrigerator with a safety valve and an ullage collapse method. However, it's cheaper to just ship water. No cryogenic problems, higher density and lower tank factor than shipping the ingredients, and easy to crack if you need to on the Moon (given energy). Ice chunks would be good candidates for extremely-dumb mass-driver launches, someday. >* It takes more than a rocket payload full of hydrogen > to make the water needed by industry. If we're to have any > significant manufacturing industry in space, we're going to need > tons of volatiles. The main reason industry uses a lot of water in manufacturing is because it can. Cooling water is cheap on earth. Active refrigeration is going to have to be the norm in space, because energy is cheap while volatiles are expensive. I like Bob Forward's molten-metal-droplet spray radiator idea, but there are lots of ways to skin this particular cat. You can't avoid using volatiles completely, but the use can be reduced a lot over Earth industry. Question: didn't someone write a paper on the use of rock-foam as a lunar building material? If I remember correctly, you can make the stuff with very little equipment but a large parabolic mirror and some ceramic molds. >* Calling a few astronauts huddled in a Winnebago a "base" is > a major exaggeration. Calling it a "colony" is an abominable > misuse of the word. No argument here. I'd call it a "proto-colony" as long as they were expanding and building a real colony, but a redesigned SSF sitting on the Moon is pretty ludicrous in any case. >There are dozens of other pathways to space colonization. Like Mars? :) But seriously folks...Yes we need to develop our orbital capabilities before fooling with the Moon very much. But dismissing it completely is a mistake. I think Nick's main point is that there is no real return on the Moon-colony investment, and he's mostly right. We need specific goals and a list of things we can ONLY do by going back to the Moon, if we're going to go to the effort of doing it. | James W. Smith, NASA MSFC EP-53 | SMITH@epvax.msfc.nasa.gov | | There's a long, hard road and a full, hard drive | | And a sector there where I feel alive | | Neither NASA nor (!James) is responsible for what I say. Mea culpa. | ------------------------------ To: space-tech@cs.cmu.edu Subject: Re: Feed me, Seymour! Reply-To: jerbil@ultra.com Date: Mon, 09 Nov 92 09:14:14 -0800 From: Joseph Beckenbach > We know how to get food > for a colony: grow plants (the Chinese have been fertilizing fields > with human waste for millennia). Water recycling is the trick, since > we need a lot of it and it's hard to replace on the Moon. Air recycling > is barely worth the trouble if we have lunar oxygen extraction, although > any plants you're planting for food will help with oxygen too. I've got a friend at University of Alaska (Fairbanks) who's been working towards a closed ecosystem for one to two people. Plants form the basis from which everything else works. The water cycle is buffered by the hydroponics, which hosts both plant and animal food crops. The carbon and oxygen cycles depend heavily on biomass for closure. He's been working pretty much by himself, with some friends assisting where possible. The control garden of food plants has been yielding data and edibles for two years now (barring a pesky moose), but it's not a really good diet (even for a vegetarian). The tilapia in the makeshift tanks have been growing quite well, though they need to be separated past a certain size (and eaten). Lots of details still need to be worked out regarding nutrition, crop cycling, and steps towards closure of all systems; right now everything is exceptionally open. (Heat will of course be a heavy concern, even in winter, because of the projected energy flows.) It's not clear whether he'll be able to shoehorn the entire ecosystem for one person into a five-meter sphere; it depends on the number of plants needed to support an extended stay. Joseph Beckenbach --- Joseph Beckenbach jerbil@ultra.com 408-922-0600 x246 Speaking from, but not for, Ultra Network Technologies. Theater is life; film is art; television is furniture. ------------------------------ From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu Date: Mon, 9 Nov 92 12:58:55 EST Subject: Re: Lunar "colony" reality check To: space-tech@cs.cmu.edu >* The moon has no significant sources of hydrogen, nitrogen, > or carbon. This is impressive -- Nick knows more than the professional lunar geologists. It would be good to see references for this. The fact is, we *don't know* whether there are significant sources for such things on the Moon... which is why most serious plans for lunar activity put a very high priority on geochemical mapping from orbit. If indeed there are no adequate sources -- and I agree that mining regolith for solar-wind volatiles is rather doubtful -- then high-grade recycling is needed, and make-up supplies must be included in the colony's trade with Earth. > ... Even on earth the best attempt at building a livable, > working biosphere masses hundreds of thousands of tons and leaks > over tens of tons of air per year. I assume this refers to Biosphere II. But it is tackling a much harder problem than what a lunar colony has to face: producing a fully-closed simulation of Earth's biosphere. A lunar colony's life-support system need not be fully closed and need not (probably will not) function by trying to mimic Earth's biosphere. Trace elements and nutrients are almost certainly best handled on an open-cycle basis, and chemical processes probably beat biological ones for many jobs until the scale gets seriously large. >* There is no signficant economic resource on the moon. Sure there is: scientific knowledge. Resources need not be physical, as witness any number of towns and cities whose primary economic activity is education or government. Contract research work is an obvious business for a lunar colony. I doubt that it could show a near-term profit unless transport costs are very low and granting agencies are very generous, but there is potential for *some* revenue. Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ End of Space-tech Digest #129 *******************