[FPSPACE] Re: Deep Space Expeditions

[Robert G Kennedy III]

"Jim Oberg" <joberg at houston.rr.com> said:
>Not to argue with the issue of a test flight or two,
>but where is 'Proton' mentioned in the proposal?
>Read it more carefully.

That would be my fault. I mentioned "Proton".

I assumed the simplest way (i.e. w/o much new engineering) to throw a
7-tonne Soyuz capsule around the Moon in a reasonable time (i.e. w/o the
orbital hooping trick which saved AsiaSat 3A) would be to mate it up in LEO
with a single tanker on the order of 20 tonnes (i.e. a Proton escape stage).

(Uncharacteristically for me) I did not bother to look up the delta-vee for
the mission, thus estimate the mass fraction. Perhaps I should.

I also stipulate that if this is going to be a continuing business, not
just a one-off stunt, then more refinement (spend money to reduce mass)
would be justified.

And, like I said before, the true cost of the mission may be much higher
than the subsidized-by-economic-collapse space launch prices of the
mid-1990s.


--
Robert Kennedy, PE
http://www.ultimax.com