Merry Christmas

I suppose that greeting isn't politically correct, but as you may guess by now, I don't care about that.

Because of the holiday, there may not be any more posts today after this one.  But, I want to be sure to keep posting every day, because that is my intention.  Someone may have to shoot me in order to get me to stop.

I'll keep posting my ideas about space travel too.  It may not be the official way that our fearless leaders are interested in, but the ideas may actually work.  If they don't, it's fun to speculate about them anyway.

So, far, I have written about a Paul Spudis' Moonbase, a Deep Space Station, and now my plans are to write a bit about Mars.  I read some free samples of Zubrin's books on my Kindle.  I will be writing more about that in coming posts.

By the way, my ideas for the Deep Space Station are based upon a NASA study done in the early eighties on what to do with the big external tanks being used at that time in order to launch the shuttle into orbit.  I'm just tossing in a few of my ideas.  In effect, I'm proposing turning this into a flyable space station for deep space missions, hence the name Deep Space Station.

Summing up, in order to get to Mars, you need a plan.  Once you get to Mars, you need another plan for when you are there. Finally, you need an exit plan in order to get back.

I think that a Moonbase and the Deep Space Station are good first steps.  I don't think that it's an either/or proposition.   You do the Moon and Mars both.  But the idea of launching a mission directly- from the Earth's surface to Mars- is much too ambitious.  We should set up a system which will allow many missions over a long period of time.  An Apollo type mission to Mars will generate about as much as the lunar version.  A few trips and a very long lag of nothing afterward.

So, this plan here is to go to the Moon first.  Establish a Moonbase, and a Deep Space Station, then set our sights upon Mars, the asteroids and beyond.

Some further thoughts on the Deep Space Station.  Since the shuttle derived system can be partially loaded and still deliver a payload, here is an idea.  Fully load the rocket with fuel and send the ET tank to EML1.  The ET's become the payload.

Perform six of these launches and assemble the station at L1.  Configure it so that it can use the rocket engines already there to power it to missions beyond Earth.  The configuration will allow for lunar water from the lunar base to be accumulated and converted to rocket fuel for interplanetary missions.  It may take several years to fill the tanks.  But on the other hand, you may not need to fill the tanks to get to and from Mars, nor any other location.

I got an idea about how the external tank holding the fuel can be permanently shaded.  This will make it very cold in the shade and allow for cryogenic storage for long periods of time.  The idea was to use shuttle tiles as a heat shield against heat build up which will cause boil off.  These tiles can keep the underside cool, while the outside gets hot.  Assemble these panels inside the station, and then deploy these around the tank so as to make a permanent shading facility that will also serve as an insulator.  You can make it into a big square box for ease of assembly.  Put the big panels around the big tank.  The panels don't have to weigh much.  They just need to be attached to something that can be assembled in space.  On second thought, you may not even need a box.  Just a big flat panel that creates a big enough shade to shield the ET holding the fuel.

With such an apparatus for storing fuel, we can then collect it over a long period of time.

With our rocket engines, we have a means of propulsion.

With our big empty tanks remaining, we have a habitation system for long term space voyages.  They can be spun up to provide artificial Martian gravity at 2 rpm.  They can be supplied with lunar water and other life support supplies (from the Moonbase) for the long voyages, such as a Mars mission.

There's a lot of room inside the Deep Space Station.  You can store a lot of machinery and whatnot for your deep space missions.

You have everything you need to do whatever you want.

That's my Christmas present.  Do you like it?