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I will grant you that the Space Shuttle's maximum ceiling was designed into the craft. It did not need to go any higher to complete its missions. However, if the mission had been to assemble a permanent space station in one of the Lagrange Points between the Earth and the moon, then the Space Shuttle would have been designed differently.
The initial station need not have been built at L5. A lower orbit would have been satisfactory as a staging/launching platform. The L5 station was a Cadillac concept out of Stanford.
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Such an enterprise would have been enormously expensive. Since we still do not possess the technology to shield astronauts from radiation, we would have to go "old school" and use very dense (and very heavy) material to block the energetic particles. In order to rotate the craft, to simulate one gravity, would require a great deal of fuel due to its mass.
Only to get rotation started. And a full gee would not be necessary.
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Fuel could be mined and refined then shipped to the space station from the moon. That would certainly be cheaper than sending the fuel from Earth.
Yes, we knew all that in the 50s.
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If NASA had a budget similar to the Department of Defense for the last 45 years, then something like that could have been possible.
It would not have taken that much, especially not for 45 years.
The initial station need not have been built at L5. A lower orbit would have been satisfactory as a staging/launching platform. The L5 station was a Cadillac concept out of Stanford.
Actually, I was thinking L1, which is between the Earth and the moon. A station in L5 or L4 would be the same distance to the moon from Earth, only 30° ahead or behind the moon. On the exact opposite side of Earth as the moon, but at the same distance as the moon, is L3. L2 is on the other side of the moon, opposite of Earth. Only L1 would be the closest to Earth.
If the space station is in Earth's orbit, then it would certainly cost more to fuel it from the moon and it would not serve as a useful platform for further space exploration. The space station cannot be in orbit around the Earth or the moon.
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Originally Posted by Ralph_Kirk
Only to get rotation started. And a full gee would not be necessary.
For the most part that is true. Drag in space is almost completely negligible, but some does exist from the solar winds. That is why it is important to put the space station in a Lagrange Point, so that fuel will not be necessary to maintain a stable orbit. If you put the space station somewhere other than a Lagrange Point, you will require fuel to keep it in orbit.
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Originally Posted by Ralph_Kirk
Yes, we knew all that in the 50s.
We did not know that until 2009 when NASA crashed the two-ton LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) into the moon. It is not going to work while the space station is in Earth's orbit. It has to be closer to the moon than Earth for this to work.
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Originally Posted by Ralph_Kirk
It would not have taken that much, especially not for 45 years.
It probably would have cost a great deal more. You underestimate the cost of putting something into space. It costs ~$20,000 to put one pound into low-Earth orbit. It would cost considerably more to build a space station in a Lagrange Point.
Actually, I was thinking L1, which is between the Earth and the moon. A station in L5 or L4 would be the same distance to the moon from Earth, only 30° ahead or behind the moon. On the exact opposite side of Earth as the moon, but at the same distance as the moon, is L3. L2 is on the other side of the moon, opposite of Earth. Only L1 would be the closest to Earth.
If the space station is in Earth's orbit, then it would certainly cost more to fuel it from the moon and it would not serve as a useful platform for further space exploration. The space station cannot be in orbit around the Earth or the moon.
For the most part that is true. Drag in space is almost completely negligible, but some does exist from the solar winds. That is why it is important to put the space station in a Lagrange Point, so that fuel will not be necessary to maintain a stable orbit. If you put the space station somewhere other than a Lagrange Point, you will require fuel to keep it in orbit.
We did not know that until 2009 when NASA crashed the two-ton LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) into the moon. It is not going to work while the space station is in Earth's orbit. It has to be closer to the moon than Earth for this to work.
It probably would have cost a great deal more. You underestimate the cost of putting something into space. It costs ~$20,000 to put one pound into low-Earth orbit. It would cost considerably more to build a space station in a Lagrange Point.
You underestimate the miltary budget (which includes the NSA budget and some other black programs).
We were able to put men on the moon back in 1969. It's now some 45 years later. If we had had the ambition to push ahead with the same intensity of effort that we put into getting a man on the moon, could we have had a man, or even a sustainable colony on Mars by now? Could we have sent a man to one of the moons of Jupiter?
I have seen the Project Orion posted at the science forum before, but will do so again:
The wiki article is more scathing and claims quite an expense, but almost all of the research and tooling propulsion cost had been done through military requirements. Not needing expensive alloys due to the ballast issue, one could send many years worth of food and lots of equipment. Mars would have been a possibility in the early 1970's, including landing. One ship could land on the moon, go to Mars, even do a grand tour (Saturn and Jupiter have issues with the magnetic field which have restricting issues).
We can not legally do this now, due to the treaty against nuclear devices in space (1967) and the limited treaty against tests (1963). I have read in a reputable science magazine that the USSR exploded lots of nukes unnecessarily so to get that ban as started on its own terms, in part as there would be no way they could easily copy the Orion and might have a mega horrible accident on USSR soil. All Soviet launches were in country, and they did not have much of the capability to move. (The US planned to launch it by way of Christmas Island or other remote south sea island, to limit issues.) It would be interesting to have at least known better estimates of the costs.
With enough equipment, a colony should not have been too great a difficulty. Phobos or Deimos Moons would be far more likely at first, as surface resources would have to be remotely sensed by close observation to maximize use nearby once in the deep gravity hole. Make the trip one way settlement for most.
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