Difference between revisions of "OpenLuna talk:Community Portal"

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(New page: An all-important aspect of any mission to the Moon is payload mass. It is not clear to this new member here what kind of payload mass is being considerd for the project or whether this is...)
 
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So now we are at 1820 kilograms, or about 30% more than the Mercury spacecraft used in the '60's weighed.  Landing gera, tank structure and landing engines would round out the mass to about two metric tionnes even, or about 4400 pounds.
 
So now we are at 1820 kilograms, or about 30% more than the Mercury spacecraft used in the '60's weighed.  Landing gera, tank structure and landing engines would round out the mass to about two metric tionnes even, or about 4400 pounds.
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Just a note, We are considering even less weight, and some items are much lower. For example, we are looking at a lunar lander in the 35 kilo range, and an inflatable heat shield of project moos type landing, in the 20 kilo range.
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Very good questions, Please continue.
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--[[User:Paul|Paul]] 18:29, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
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Revision as of 14:29, 25 September 2008

An all-important aspect of any mission to the Moon is payload mass. It is not clear to this new member here what kind of payload mass is being considerd for the project or whether this is still an open topic. I will assume it is an open topic until I here otherwise.

I have always ascribed to the 'smaller is better' philosophy. In this context it leads me to ask: What is the smallest payload we could reasonably contemplate for a manned vehicle to the lunar surface? I don't know that there is a single 'right' answer to this but there are certainly some answers that are better than others.

A minimum manned lunar mission would be a single astronaut weighing, say, 100 kilograms. His food, water and oxygen for the round trip will be 10 kilograms per day, or about 100 kilograms total for five days out and five days back. This astronaut will need a spacesuit able to protect him from space conditions. This can be as little as 20 kilograms if we assume he only needs a pressure suit with thermal control and oxygen supply. For actually working on the Moon, however, the astronat will need better thermal management, longer life-support capability and portable communications capability plus power to maintain all this. A strategy of pre-delivering lunar elements of a space suit and relying on the lightweight flight suit would keep the mass to the 20 kilograms noted above.

To this point we have 220 kilograms for payload.

Structure to protect the astronaut during flight and heat shielding to enable Earth re-entry would come to about 1,500 kilograms. Internal systems equipment for communicatiions, navigation and life support are going to be around 100 kilograms.

So now we are at 1820 kilograms, or about 30% more than the Mercury spacecraft used in the '60's weighed. Landing gera, tank structure and landing engines would round out the mass to about two metric tionnes even, or about 4400 pounds.


Just a note, We are considering even less weight, and some items are much lower. For example, we are looking at a lunar lander in the 35 kilo range, and an inflatable heat shield of project moos type landing, in the 20 kilo range.

Very good questions, Please continue. --Paul 18:29, 25 September 2008 (UTC)


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