Dr. Robert Zubrin - Moon Direct - International Space Development Conference - May 26, 2018
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- Опубликовано: 6 ноя 2024
- From the National Space Society's annual ISDC conference, held in Los Angeles from May 24-27, 2018.
This is Robert's first public presentation on his Moon Direct architecture.
Robert's Moon Direct slides are here: nextgen.marssoc...
He's also written a research paper on Moon Direct: nextgen.marssoc...
#MarsMissionPlanning #MarsHumanMissionArchitecture
Man Zubrin, what a great guy. I hope he will witness the exploration he has so forcefully argued for.
One really has to admire Dr. Zubrin for not giving up. I regard him as a voice of common sense and at the same time a visionary in space travel. A real benefit for the scientific world and a role model for every aspiring engineer. Best wishes and greetings from a German colleague.
That was AWESOME!
This plan makes too much sense and costs too little money so NASA will never do it. It's a good plan for future missions from private companies though.
The staggering amount of money that gets wasted and lost in mission inefficiency bothers me so much. That's so much potential that all goes down the drain simply because politicians insist on using aged components in order to keep their jobs where they are.
The COTS/CRS commercially competitive contract model has proven superior to traditional NASA contracting. They should use it for developing inflatable habitats, ISRU and ascent/descent systems for human lunar & martian exploration. We already have crew capsules (Dragon, CS100) and heavy lift launchers (Falcon Heavy, New Glenn).
While your childish slur of your president (assuming you're a citizen of the USA) does nothing for your message, your assessment is pretty correct otherwise. It's important to understand all of this in context.
My take is that the ISS is as great an achievement as the risk-averse political machine would tolerate at the time it was launched. Never mind that it placed human lives at significant risk, with the only possible payoff being those humans going in circles 200 miles up, performing some weightless "zero-gee whiz" experiments and spinning in microgravity to amuse schoolchildren on the ground. I think we share the lament that our space program has literally been going in circles since the late 70s.
With that said, If Lord King Obama wanted to cancel the ISS program, I'm all ears as to who actually stopped him. One thing I know for sure is that, If Obama really felt that way, and was somehow able to get that program canceled, the very last thing he would do would have been to redirect such resources towards an effort that might actually expand the sphere of human influence. I mean, come on. His chief science advisor was John Holdren, for heaven's sake. What anti-humanist approves of Manifest Destiny? These types wish to keep everyone living within their own sphere of influence at all costs. Obama would view a sustained and thriving human presence on another world as a severe failure of containment. After all, there's no way to enslave them now that they've arrived at their destination. Certainly no taxes can be collected from the Martian surface, and that's just for starters.
His regret is that he couldn't have spend all that revenue on more Obamaphones and cars for cash instead.
It's just money in the pocket of ULA. Useless launch alliance.
@@DrMackSplackem what the fuck are you talking about he didn't mention any presidents you fucking lunatic. Shut the fuck up.
I love the way he's angry about it because he's right and he knows it
Such a wonderful presentation! Dr. Zubrin's ideas are the exemplar and should be seen by everyone. They will change the exploration of the solar system in the 21st century and beyond.
I am curious how this presentation was recorded. The quality reminds me of a magnetic tape VHS recording from the '90s; in fact, hearing the static in the audio I felt tremendous nostalgia thinking of the terrific May 1990 Zubrin presentation for Mars Direct at the National Space Socety conference! Joking aside, this nitpick about the recording quality in no way detracts from the awesome value of these sound and creative enigneering plans from one of the most important minds of our time. Many thanks for posting it!
I'm so glad you uploaded this because I was sad to miss it! I was at ISDC, but I was in the other room competing in the NewSpace Business Plan competition.
thx for posting
Well, this gives me some hope for Lunar exploration :-)
Why can't NASA hire Zubrin as a planner? NASA needs real space visionaries in high level positions wielding power. We don't need bureaucrats that just want to give handouts to wealthy and politically influential traditional aerospace contractors. Elon Musk and SpaceX are impressive, but I don't believe that a private company, that's stuck with having to make a profit, can do what a government can do in terms of research and development that might only pay off financially in the long term. Some of the benefits of space exploration don't pay off in the economic sense at all, but are still really valuable in other ways. Spreading humans to multiple worlds increases our long survival prospects, for example. Basic research gives us a better understanding of our place in the universe. Studying the climates of other planets helps us better understand how to protect the Earth.
It's not the bureaucrat faults. NASA is built on political coalitions which want to ensure that their particular interests are covered. This was originally done to ensure acceptance from the majority of the state's involved (i am not sure Mississippi would be a proponent if space if it whereby for the fact that they hade a sizeable research facility there.... for instance.
Paul Patton, I don't think hiring Robert Zubrin would make much of a difference. NASA's choices are not really governed by what furthers the goals of going to the moon or Mars. NASA's goal are governed by what fills the pockets of old-space companies like Boing. These guys buy politicians who in turn sets the goals for NASA. NASA's job is sadly just to come up with details which will make sure they have to buy overpriced, delayed crap from old-space companies.
NASA or any other US government organization cannot really work until money is taken out of US politics. 70% of the time of political candidates in the US today is spent talking to donors. It has become a joke. I am not American, but it saddens me to see such a great nation not reach its awesome potential due to the corruption of its political system. The way to fix it may not be popular but it is pretty simple. In my native Norway we don't have this problem with companies buying politicians. The fix was simple: We pretty much banned all political ads. You can put ads on billboards and such, but no ads in radio and TV. Without ads to spend money on, money matters a lot less.
It would be great to have the presentation/videoshoot in a quality that enables you to actually read the graphs....
TMS is always recruiting volunteers :)
This was at the NSS conference which did not have a professional recording staff. It was recorded, edited, and uploaded by volunteers. Our august convention will have a professional recording staff, as this is very important to us to not only get the word out about our Plenary & Panel talks, but all of our great session track speakers.
There is a link in the video description that contains all of the slides.
Zubrin, as smart as he is, sure is committed to his own solutions. I wish he had a more open mind and a more credible public presence. Maybe we could have gone further by now. Still, little steps are still steps. Thanks for giving the moon a chance.
Zubrin going to the moon. I guess he's confident SpaceX will get to Mars. Better video quality would be great.
No. He probably just gave up on Mars. He's been pushing Mars since forever but NASA is busy "doing things to spend money" as he puts it. hahaha
He's talking about a moon mission because the Trump administration has made it clear that's where we're going.
This is a great idea to improve on current outpost plan, but from a real politik perspective, any plan NASA is involved in is going to involve Orion/SLS (sunk cost). Alternative: a) still do phase 1 the same as Zubrin lists b) phase 2, have your LEV comanifested with Orion, but leave it in LLO after mission 1 (to be reused), with crew returning to earth on Orion. Mission 2+ brings another Orion plus fuel for LEV till... c) you get the ISRU up and running (phase 3). Then the recurring is just crew to LLO. Addition of another LEV to LLO increases redundancy/ allows mission overlap.
The Paul Simon of space - :) awesome guy
Robert, I am going to have to stop you on flying being the only way to travel large distances on the moon. The Circumference of the moon is about 11000 km, so the distance between any two points is ~5,500 km or less. Adding in an obstacle avoidance factor of 20%, and any two points should only be a maximum of ~6,600 km drive distance away. The land speed record on the moon was accomplished by Eugene Cernan at 18 km/h. Assuming you couldn't improve on that, you could drive between any two points in less than 366 hours or about 15 days....or less. Accessing any point in a hemisphere could be done in a week or less or two weeks round trip. The only thing that hasn't been demonstrated is the manned range. Apollo 17 travelled about 36 km. You would need to improve that by two orders of magnitude for a significant percentage of global access. My guess is you would use liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen to run fuel cells to get the range you need, but unlike a rocket engine, the resultant water can be captured and recycled. Given that the Toyota Mirai goes about 500 km on 5 kg of hydrogen, ~70 kg of liquid hydrogen in a cubic meter of storage and ~550 kg of oxygen in a half cubic meter of storage should get a small SUV sized vehicle pretty far on the moon.
I agree in principle, though the safe speed limit for the moon would be lower. I in-vision instead landing a massive tracked laboratory which crawls across the surface, it could stop somewhere for a day or a few hours, take samples and observations then start crawling away towards a the next destination while testing and experimenting on the gathered samples. The crawler wouldn't need to travel the whole distance or even return to its starting point if not required. A return vehicle could land nearby which the scientists and samples board before returning home or to the 'gateway'. Perhaps a small VTOL could be carried for several hundred kilometer hops away from teh crawler, to inspect future manned investigation sites or whatever.
I think the first step should be landing simple robots that can make building materials, like steel wire for example, from lunar resources.
The water is much more useful as water. The regolith is highly oxidized thus can be reduced and then used as fuel.
Wouldn't be prudent to just to jump into a cold creator and start making fuel to burn as it may be the greatest treasure chest known, including preserved evidence of solar system's history that we just couldn't get anywhere else. You may also like to consider that smelters have fewer considerations and achieving 6 km/s is just simple ballistics when in a vacuum.
Also consider all those lunar impacts didn't burn on way down and didn't wash away.
There is a lot more to moon than just its sun burnt skin.
IMO: I think a better use of resources would be to give all this money to companies and universities to develop robots.
Robots could be used to:
1) Mine the surface for creating raw materials.
2) Plow a network of smooth roads to allow easy travel between different areas of the moon.
3) Create small habits with water from the bottom of a crater.
4) Build telescopes and a communication network
The knowledge gained from building these robots would be much more useful than building the base itself.
Someone needs to show this to the US Space Council (Pence etc.), before they make even more costly political mistakes.
It would be interesting to know if SpaceX has technologies to refuel their FH in situ from a standard rocket fuel pump.
I love Zubrin, but the more diplomatic approach would be to stress that the architecture he proposes can supply both the Moon surface directly for max. payload delivery capacity, and indirectly via the LOP-G if less payload needs to reach the surface.
This presentation has increased relevancy just a year later, thanks to NASA Administrator Bridenstine's Moon 2024 objective. 'By any means necessary' was his directive, yet the proposed architecture he spoke of this last fortnight still involves Gateway and SLS. He needs to see this and explain why he's still stuck on the most costly/mass constrained architecture. Get Zubrin into the office and debate him. If not then it really is politics and job/funds protectionism that is calling the shots and what a wasted opportunity that will be.
thats bc being a director of NASA doesnt give you free hands to do anything you want
NASA and congress have interests in SLS for a long while, they wont ditch it anytime soon
The mass values for the LEV are hugely exagerated
The Apollo LM weighed 16 tones fully fueled and 6 tones empty
And that was striped down hugely to achieve this low mass
The LEV would have to weigh a lot more to achieve what Zubrin is proposing probably in the order of 20+ tones since it is single stage and therefore way less fuel efficient
It also has to carry more crew and perform much better Delta V wise than the LM
In the end the LEV would be too heavy to get to the Moon using a falcon heavy which means that it would require an SLS launch to be able to reach the Moon
It would also require a Falcon 9 and a Falcon Heavy launch to keep sending crew after phase 2
This would create a number of safety and infrastructural problems
Forcing the use of severely underpowered rockets like Falcon Heavy and New Glenn really makes this too complex
This whole thing could be done by an SLS Block 1b with much less complexity and a comparable recurring launch cost
Mastercrap 42123 ...I’m glad to see you questioning the numbers, but the amateur weights I find are near Zubrin’s.
The Apollo LM Ascent Stage-not the full LM vehicle is what Zubrin’s aiming to duplicate. For just the ascent stage, Wiki shows these masses: Dry = 3.87 tons; Gross = 5.15 tons; fuel = 2.59 tons. So, Gross + Fuel is 5.15 + 2.59 = 7.74 tons. This was for the two-man part of the LM that only had to rise from the lunar surface to the command module. Zubrin’s plan would have to go from the lunar surface to LEO for Crew Dragon rendezvous, but, as he mentioned, today’s materials technology should enable us to make a lighter vehicle. So, we’d have to produce a new human-rated Lander vehicle that could get from LEO to land on the moon carrying about 8 tons of stuff, including two astronauts and the new LM Ascent vehicle. Everything else for the mission is hardware we’re currently using, no?
@@737smartin Modern landers are going to be heavier than the LM not lighter
The requirements for a new lunar exploration program cannot be fullfilled with minimalistic 10 ton lander design that can barely house a couple people for a few days
The upcoming Artemis lander awards will demonstrate this pretty well
Just look at how large the Constellation Altair lander would have been
Way more capable than the LM but over 40 tons in wet mass because of that increased capability
Mastercrap 42123 certainly, if we stick with putting six feet on the moon instead of four, and greatly increasing capabilities per the Artemis plan, the lander will necessarily weigh considerably more. Still, rather than stick with the “the plan” requiring several launches of the impossibly expensive SLS, I have no doubt that we could accomplish a safe, productive manned lunar mission with existing rockets much, much sooner and MUCH, MUCH, MUCH more affordably.
Why not explore the Moon remotely for a while? Based on our experience with the ISS, it seems that human systems will likely be damaged by the very low Moon gravity. Instead, build rotating space stations in low Earth orbit. You can even experiment with different rotational speeds to observe long-term effects on the human body. One thing about space stations is they can be utilized in a lot of different places with very little modification. I don't understand the obsession with putting people on these surfaces - nobody adequately explains the 'why'. If you really want a long-term colony somewhere, the only sure bet is a space-based one.
I would consider manufacturing fuel from an automated skid in phase 1 (or phase 1A) before humans arrive so they don't have to take fuel with them and they can still return immediately if the need arises.
A question here: no doubt Mr. Zubrin makes a good case here why the DSG is a bad option. But I cannot help to wonder, how come decision makers in NASA, which are all experts in their field choose the worst possible option of all? They surely all know this same simple math that Zubrin used to draw his conclusions... So why did they still go with this plan? There surely has to be a better explanation that government made them do it or something similar? Also something I must say... I read Mr. Zubrin's work and I think it is amazing, I support him 100%. But he has been advocating this for 20 years now and very few (including Elon) included his work for their Mars colonization plan. Bigger players than SpaceX, that are more important to be persuaded are seemingly ignoring Zubrin's wise words. To have a good idea is one thing, but you need to have right people listen to it, otherwise it is useless. Sure he can persuade people on the internet and smaller conferences but it accounts for little. This is sad but it's how it is.
There is a reason why the SLS is called the Senate Launch System... it is designed by congress to primarily keep jobs in certain districts, and not to necessarily get anywhere... really sad.
Stefan Panajotovic, come on it IS all POLITICS. NASA is hamstrung. They have to do what politicians tell them. Politicians are bought by old-space companies. Look how utterly useless old space is. They cannot get anything done in any reasonable time and with reasonable budgets.
Back in the 60s, NASA built the Saturn V, lunar lander etc, everything within 7 years using slide rules and having zero experience doing this kind of stuff. They had inferior materials, worse electronics, computers and everything. Yet today they still haven't finished the Orion capsule in 14 YEARS!!! That is just a small part of the mission. Likewise just making the SLS is taking longer time than Saturn V, despite having advance CAD systems instead of slide rulers, far better understanding of the physics, super computers, advance materials etc.
I think the reasons are simple, Old-space have one simple goal: give maximum profit for shareholders. Actually getting to the moon or mars is irrelevant. What matter is making money. That means designing complicated systems in a slow and wasteful manner. The 60s was different. The US was in a desperate struggle against the Soviet Union. Share holder profits had to take second place after national prestige.
Why does SpaceX do so much better? Because they are not really profit driven. Their company goal is not: maximum profit for shareholders. They goal is to get to Mars, profits is just a way of reaching that goal. Elon Musk has no benefits from going slow and wasteful to suck money out of NASA. He HAS to be frugal and move fast to reach his goal.
I think the only thing that can put the senators in place sabotaging NASA (other than campaign reform) is to embarrass NASA. If SpaceX beats them to the Moon or Mars, or alternatively if the Russians or Chinese do it, then it will re-invigorate NASA. It will have a goal other than being a milking cow for old space.
By 2030 we will have artificial general intelligence which will be ideal for space exploration. I think Spacex has the right idea on how to use and explore space.
That was very interesting. Like several others I have no confidence in the government run space program. I am concerned that powerful people in congress will cut Musk and Bezos off at the knees in order to keep money coming to their states for the SLS boondoggle. So Mr. Musk and Mr. Bezos please go as fast as you can, because congress is slow. That way you might just make it. Good luck to both of you.
3.4 km/s is sufficient for surborbital hops to any point on the lunar surface. See hopsblog-hop.blogspot.com/2014/06/travel-on-airless-worlds.html
If we use aerobraking to circularize at LEO, 3 km/s is sufficient to get from the moon to LEO.
Zubrin seems oblivious to what Spudis, Brindenstine and Bezos have been saying. They want to target the cold traps for in situ propellent and life support consumables.
you cant gain interest for masses if you have video quality of the 80s
Microwaving ice to get fuel is handwaving at this point...
Finlay MacNab Why? He's using photovoltaics up above the crater to get the constant sunlight, then beaming power down into the shadowed crater in microwave radiation. Seems very practical.
Thought this Mars guy hated the moon.
Nah he likes the moon. He just likes Mars a thousand times better and thinks it's the mission worth doing. The moon is cool but Mars is the future. But if the political winds are hell bent on the moon than of course he is happy to demonstrate the absurdity of official plan and propose something much cheaper and much more capable. Really LOP-G is hard to comprehend how dumb it is on all levels. And there is just no way they will make it by 2024 with that plan. I'm willing to bet the tollbooth won't even be finished by then, never mind a lunar lander that not even in development yet.
Sorry but I disagree with Zubrin. The plan that NASA and ESA are putting in place makes more sense.
They are spending more money because they are getting more out of it, it's not only about the Moon, it's about Mars: the LOP-G is not a simple staging post for lunar landings, it's 80% of what's needed for crewed missions to Mars, including propulsion and a more closed-loop life support. What's missing is a lander.
Also, all the cost calculations will completely change once the are propellant depots in space. This is what ESA is pushing for, having pretty much every rocket that does GTO also start delivering payloads to NRHO near the Moon, to expand the club of rockets that contribute to the Moon exploration and increase competition.
It costs more because there's currently political support for the Moon, so NASA is using the money to also prepare for Mars, while still delivering the Moon.
I think it should be obvious they have no real intent of using this to go to mars. What makes you have faith in this administration completing it's goals when the last how-ever many years worth of administrations promised this and that and never followed through. They are stalling to wait for private industry to do it instead for cheap while still creating "Jobs" and wasting vast amounts of tax $.
Why send humans to the moon or Mars? We can do all our exploring using robots and it will be much cheaper and safer. I can't see us ever having a totally independent base in space or on other moons or planets. They would all be very dependent on supplies from Earth. I love exploration and science, but manned missions in space do not make any sense to me. There are so many better things NASA could be spending their money and brilliant engineers on.
Considering how little ice there is on the moon I disagree with using it for fuel (or find the best alternative first thing). Whenever we build a lunar colony that water will be very precious, and how many people can all the lunar water support? It would be such a shame if half that water ended up being used as fuel rather than supporting human life.
Little Cripple Water for human consumption can be recycled and you don't need very much of it. At the point where you have a colony of significant size that would require ice mining for sustenance you'd already have vastly improved transportation and other infrastructure and it would be much less of a problem.
First, however precious water may be on the moon, it will always be better to source it on the moon than shipping it from earth.
Second, water is not rare on the moon. There's plenty of it, not just the poles.
+Playgrrl Not to mention that Earth is so close anyhow, so there will be little incentive to become self-sufficient in any primary resource.
We're talking about 600 million metric tonnes. That's enough for 100 million of these lunar missions. If we had a million people on the Moon then it might be an issue in a few hundred years, but otherwise we're good.
I agree with you Little Cripple that the weak point of this mission is the use of water from ice. It is the critical point of the mission on which a lot of uncertainties around water mining persists. An Moon-Direct alternative without ISPP should be designed which include the potential growth toward a ISPP enabled mission.
why are people just not start collecting money and do what they said .. nice all these stories but that it always stays stories ..
DO IT like Elon Musk
Zubrin can talk nice but that doesn't do anything
Why is he not get some sponsors and do it..
You know why he is not do it .. just think about ..
Sorry Zubrin stop talking , just workout you Idea and do it .. he is talking like this for many years and he will be talking like this for years
and when something is done he said look just what I said many years ago..
but talk do not place people on the moon or mars.
so start collecting money and if yo fail it is clear it is not the correct plan or not the correct person ..
sorry to be so hard but we need to do things and stop just staking about it ..
@@henrifritsmaarseveen6260 "talking"
nobody is talking about it, why stop talking? isnt it free speech?
its an advocacy of something
he cant do anything alone, he have to convince people to do this plan
the ones who have money have no ideas
@@zazugee i think that Cosmos guy was trying to correct his spelling