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How NASA will fly back to the moon

Funding has been forthcoming and design work has begun to send men back to the moon.

The centerpiece of the stack is Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV).It will be bigger, able to carry four astronauts comfortably and six a bit more snugly—twice the load of the three-man Apollos.

For another thing, it will be equipped with solar panels, a sensible addition in a sun-drenched place like the inner solar system—and one that reduces the demands on fuel cells and batteries. It will also be able to either splash down in the water as the Apollos did or thump down under a parachute on dry desert. Finally, modern composite materials and computers will improve on the ungainly weight and clanking brain of the older ships.

The new lunar lander will be similarly improved, with updated electronics and materials. It too will be a larger ship than its predecessor, big enough to carry all four astronauts down to the surface while the mother ship idles empty in lunar orbit.

Two new rockets—both adapted from shuttle engines—will get all this hardware into space. The larger of the two will loft the lunar lander and other equipment into Earth orbit. A second, smaller rocket will follow, carrying the CEV. The crew vehicle and the lander will then link up and fly off to the moon.

One selling point of the CEV is its versatility. If the spacecraft is ready by its 2011 starting point and the moon trips indeed don’t start until 2018, that means seven years of downtime. Astronauts could fill part of that gap flying shakedown trips to the International Space Station. After the U.S.’s moon presence is re-established, the CEV could become a central player in eventual Mars missions. "The spacecraft would have to evolve for the different demands of a Mars flight, particularly the higher re-entry speed," admits Horowitz. The basic design, however, would remain the same.

posted by: kyawoo at 21:38 | link | comments |
manned missions

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