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Could they land something like this on the moon and build a quick habitat?

mabbo 9y ago
I think the real challenge would be getting it to the moon. A falcon heavy ought to be able to get it into orbit, but then you're still a lot of Delta-V away from a moon landing.
- matte_black 9y ago
  Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did it almost 50 years ago in a tin can, built from a box of scraps!
  - teraflop 9y ago
    Landing this thing on the moon would be a dramatically bigger technical challenge than the Apollo Lunar Module. The B330 supposedly has a mass of 50,000 lbs, which apparently doesn't include any significant propulsion mechanism. The LM was less than 10,000, including engines, and still required about 24,000 lbs of fuel for a round-trip. Even if you assume that you could just scale up the design by a factor of 5, you're still talking about something that's too big to launch on a Falcon Heavy.
    - avmich 9y ago
      Fueled LM had mass about 15 tons, empty second stage - 2 tons, second stage fuel - about 3 tons. So to land B330 with mass 50,000 lbs you'll need about 75,000 lbs of fuel (and then scale some more because you need to include tanks and engines). Not trivial... but I think can be done with another launch of a boosting stage.
      - ChuckMcM 9y ago
        This would be my guess as well. Launch the habitat, and then launch the translunar tug/landing apparatus.
        avmich 9y ago
        Ok, we need about 3.1 km/s for translunar injection, about 1 km/s to enter Moon orbit and then some 2.4 km/s to cancel orbital velocity (1.7 km/s) and land. Total is 6.5 km/s . For storable fuels with Isp of 3.5 km/s mass ratio becomes exp(6.5 / 3.5) = 6.4, so if you want to land 50,000 lbs mass on the Moon, you have to start from LEO having 320,000 lbs or 145 metric tons. More than Saturn V and more than twice FH. And here we don't even include tanks for fuel and engines which will get us to the Moon. We can consider LOx/LH2 stage, which improve masses considerably. Wonder why SpaceX didn't buy XCOR yet?.. http://space-access.org/updates/sau148.html http://space-access.org/updates/sau148.html So it's doable with at least one docking, and perhaps more. Maybe refueling should be involved as well.
- ChickeNES 9y ago
  Could they launch an extended second stage into orbit on a Falcon 9 and then use that second stage for TLI? Would that pencil out weight-wise?

I think the real challenge would be getting it to the moon. A falcon heavy ought to be able to get it into orbit, but then you're still a lot of Delta-V away from a moon landing.

matte_black 9y ago
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did it almost 50 years ago in a tin can, built from a box of scraps!
- teraflop 9y ago
  Landing this thing on the moon would be a dramatically bigger technical challenge than the Apollo Lunar Module. The B330 supposedly has a mass of 50,000 lbs, which apparently doesn't include any significant propulsion mechanism. The LM was less than 10,000, including engines, and still required about 24,000 lbs of fuel for a round-trip. Even if you assume that you could just scale up the design by a factor of 5, you're still talking about something that's too big to launch on a Falcon Heavy.
  - avmich 9y ago
    Fueled LM had mass about 15 tons, empty second stage - 2 tons, second stage fuel - about 3 tons. So to land B330 with mass 50,000 lbs you'll need about 75,000 lbs of fuel (and then scale some more because you need to include tanks and engines). Not trivial... but I think can be done with another launch of a boosting stage.
    - ChuckMcM 9y ago
      This would be my guess as well. Launch the habitat, and then launch the translunar tug/landing apparatus.
      - avmich 9y ago
        Ok, we need about 3.1 km/s for translunar injection, about 1 km/s to enter Moon orbit and then some 2.4 km/s to cancel orbital velocity (1.7 km/s) and land. Total is 6.5 km/s . For storable fuels with Isp of 3.5 km/s mass ratio becomes exp(6.5 / 3.5) = 6.4, so if you want to land 50,000 lbs mass on the Moon, you have to start from LEO having 320,000 lbs or 145 metric tons. More than Saturn V and more than twice FH. And here we don't even include tanks for fuel and engines which will get us to the Moon. We can consider LOx/LH2 stage, which improve masses considerably. Wonder why SpaceX didn't buy XCOR yet?.. http://space-access.org/updates/sau148.html http://space-access.org/updates/sau148.html So it's doable with at least one docking, and perhaps more. Maybe refueling should be involved as well.
ChickeNES 9y ago
Could they launch an extended second stage into orbit on a Falcon 9 and then use that second stage for TLI? Would that pencil out weight-wise?