3 ms·
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 l
by 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 agoThis would be my guess as well. Launch the habitat, and then launch the translunar tug/landing apparatus.
- avmich 9y agoOk, 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.