Landau-Strange baseline design

Any comments? Anybody have links to other documents of this plan?


Snidely scribbled something like ...

Have we discussed the plan championed by Landau and Strange? I'm
catching up with my print reading, and when I saw their article in the
Dec 2011 Scientific American, I thought it was strange that I didn't

oops, should have used a synonym.

recognize it as an SSP topic.

Their plan involves a capsule ride to a deep-space ion-drive ship,
used in a kind of powered-shuttler scheme, and to support EV tasks
with pods. Test flight would be to an orbit above the lunar south
pole to control a fleet of robotic explorers.

"Focusing on an easier mission could stunt exploration by setting a
dead end for technological capability. Conversely, striving for a
harder mission could perpetually delay any meaningful exploration by
setting targets too far out of reach. Our desgin baseline falls
between these extremes. It is a one-year round-trip that launches in
2034, with 30 days spent exploring asteroid 2008 EV5."
(pg 62)

What's the reaction of SSP to the 3 principles they use: flexibility,
not having to newly invent everything, and to design a program that
can maintain forward momentum even if one component runs into problems
or delays.

/dps

Snidely wrote:
Any comments?

Their plan involves a capsule ride to a deep-space ion-drive ship,
used in a kind of powered-shuttler scheme, and to support EV tasks
with pods. Test flight would be to an orbit above the lunar south
pole to control a fleet of robotic explorers.


I suppose that's an interesting 'test'. But robotic lunar exploration is just
as easily accomplished from Earth as it is from an "ion-drive ship". And
likely for a whole lot less $$$ and for a lot longer period of time.

Dave

David Spain scribbled something like ...

Snidely wrote:
Any comments?

Their plan involves a capsule ride to a deep-space ion-drive ship,
used in a kind of powered-shuttler scheme, and to support EV tasks
with pods. Test flight would be to an orbit above the lunar south
pole to control a fleet of robotic explorers.


I suppose that's an interesting 'test'. But robotic lunar exploration
is just as easily accomplished from Earth as it is from an "ion-drive
ship". And likely for a whole lot less $$$ and for a lot longer period
of time.

The idea of doing the lunar trip is to do a shakedown cruise near enough to
earth for safety, and the robot control is just a serving of gravy on top
of the rest of the mission objectives.

The trip to 2008 EV is the centerpiece of the baseline plan, hence my
original subject line.

/dps

Snidely scribbled something like ...

David Spain scribbled something like ...

Snidely wrote:

SciAm has supplemented the December article with a Skype Interview
http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...-space-landau-
strange



Any comments?

Their plan involves a capsule ride to a deep-space ion-drive ship,
used in a kind of powered-shuttler scheme, and to support EV tasks
with pods. Test flight would be to an orbit above the lunar south
pole to control a fleet of robotic explorers.


I suppose that's an interesting 'test'. But robotic lunar exploration
is just as easily accomplished from Earth as it is from an "ion-drive
ship". And likely for a whole lot less $$$ and for a lot longer
period of time.

The idea of doing the lunar trip is to do a shakedown cruise near
enough to earth for safety, and the robot control is just a serving of
gravy on top of the rest of the mission objectives.

It is also approximately the starting point for the Oberth maneuver for
the trip to Mars or 2008 EV


The trip to 2008 EV is the centerpiece of the baseline plan, hence my
original subject line.

So nobody here has been reading about the Landau-Strange-et-alia plan?
(Merryl Azriel apparently has, with a brief mention in Space Safety
Magazine at
http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/2...ics-engineers-
explain-roadmap-crewed-mars-mission/)

Here, by the way, is a set of slides at seti.org providing some
additional data, with Jonathan Battat as an additional author:

http://tinyurl.com/LandauSEPslides


There a short list of potential asteroid destinations at ESA:
http://www.esa.int/gsp/ACT/doc/MAD/p...-MAD-2010-(DPS)
Humans2Asteroid.pdf

Those two seem to come together at
http://targetneo.jhuapl.edu/pdfs/sessions/TargetNEO-Session3-Landau.pdf




/dps

Snidely wrote:
So nobody here has been reading about the Landau-Strange-et-alia plan?

No sorry, the day job has been keeping me busy.
Thanks for the links, I'll try to take a look over the weekend.

Dave