credit NASA/Flight / caption: this amended image purports to show a refuelled descent stage ascending
NASA is considering launching Moon rock samples into low lunar orbit using refuelled Altair lunar lander descent stages to overcome the cargo return limitations of its Constellation programme vehicles
After each of the lunar missions, expected to start in 2020, NASA's scientists want hundreds of kilograms of lunar rock brought back for analysis. But the space agency's transportation system can only deliver 100kg (220lb) while the Apollo programme could bring back 110kg
The 100kg limit is due to the Altair lunar lander and Orion crew exploration vehicle's capabilities. So NASA has set a goal of increasing its sample return capabilty to 250kg. Conceivably, once in orbit the reused descent stage would be met by Orion and its rock samples transferred by astronaut extra-vehicular activity?
NASA's Altair project office manager Kathy Laurini told Flight no robotic sample return vehicle was being considered with that refuelled descent stage and she did not know how the stage's sample cargo would reach Earth
"Maybe we could build Altair so it can be reused but you would need to get the fuel there. We have a couple of years to work on these problems," says Laurini, who replaced Lauri Hansen on 1 October 2008
Another reason to reuse the landers would be to reduce the number needed and limit what Laurini described as the "boneyard on the lunar surface" of spent descent stages
Before Christmas Laurini's team also started discussing a recyclable Altair. This would see landers disassembled on the Moon and their components used for surface elements and their materials as feedstock
NASA is to award contracts for conceptual Altair design work by July. This industry work will follow the agency's Lunar Design Analysis Cycle-3, which ends in March, and its first Requirments Analysis Cycle that will look at overall vehicle configurations
Laurini added that "there are Altair designs that look nothing like the ones you have seen. [For deploying habitats] we have side loading designs."
on February 12, 2009 3:23 AM | Reply
Could the refueled Altair be used as a reusable surface to orbit shuttle? It would seem to be better than launching a new Altair for every mission.
on February 12, 2009 11:54 AM | Reply
Refueling used Altair landers to get moon rocks into low lunar orbit because of weight constraints. Apollo did better in the sixties. Aarrgh, what's in store next?
Whatever happened to that spirit of making things happen within a space of eight years (1961: first American in space => 1969: first humans landing on the moon)? Forty years on there seems to be a lack of ingenuity and common sense. Goals appear to be too ambitious but yet they are not. Mind-boggeling. You can't say it all comes down to having less money to spend.
on May 5, 2009 7:19 AM | Reply
Finally, someone is thinking about the Altair decent stage and the resulting boneyard at the Armstrong Base. Myself (an economist) and several friends (aerospace engineers) here in Boulder have been exchanging emails and backyard beer talk about this problem .
We have been thinking about the design of a few astrobots that would be at the base (can we get them to land Orion 13 with a cargo of semi-self fabricating astrobots) and pull the residual LOX and LH2 out of the Altair decent stages that will follow.
It could be run through a fuel cell turning into water then ice for storage at the base. Back of the napkin we're talking about at least 500 kg and maybe as much as 3,000 kg of water - depending on the burn rates of the final RL-10 based design, how much decent reserves will be required and the flight profile coming down.
The decent stage itself could be disassembled by a Surface Transportation Astrobot with a couple of Fabrication Astrobots mounted on its back and equipped with a fairly simple tool kit. They could pull a lot of useful stuff (like actuators) off the Altair and use them in making additional bots and equipment with the majority of these items' mass being in simple standardized cast parts made from Lunar titanium, iron and aluminum. Hell, I'd attach wheel sets to the landing legs and drag the unfueled Altair decent stages back to the base's sintered regolith construction plaza where I'd break it down piece by piece.
Keep in mind that we don't need completely self-fabricating robots to grow the base's capacity to make stuff. They bots merely need to be able to manufacture an increasingly larger percentage of their offspring’s mass. Nor do the created bots (offspring) need to be identical to the parent bots (the fallacy of self-replication). If we never produce microchips on the Moon, so what? In economics we call this comparative advantage. If we have to ship 5,000 kg of chips, sensors and difficult to fanricate parts to the Lunar base to "finish" the fabrication and assembly of 50,000 kg of otherwise Lunar fabricated bots, we've won.
Parhaps some Altair decent stages should be brought back to the base and kept for use in various rockets that could be assembled on the Moon. If there is any significant lunar ice around the base (presumed to be near the Southern Lunar Pole), it would not be that damn hard to refuel the thing with Lunar manufactured LOX and LH2. There are four RL-10 (4+ km/s) engines on the stage. Build a couple of large tanks (they don't even have to be aerodynamic) and mount them on top of the decent stage and stick a water ice electrolysis astrobot on top and you might be able to escape out to some icy NEA. If there's not much H around in any form, at least the unspent fuel from previous mission could be accumulated to refuel say 1 in 5 Altair decent stages for a flight up.