re why not give billion to first year lo in article apr iti org aws iti org allen w sherzer wrote in article c sjdp f zoo toronto edu henry zoo toronto edu henry spencer writes this prize isn t big enough to warrent developing a ssto but it is enough to do it if the vehicle exists actually there are people who will tell you that it would be enough to do ssto development if done privately as a cut rate operation of course they may be over optimistic in spite of my great respect for the people you speak of i think their cost estimates are a bit over optimistic if nothing else a working ssto is at least as complex as a large airliner and has a smaller experience base it therefore seems that ssto development should cost at least as much as a typical airliner development that puts it in the g to g range for the purpose of a contest i d bet some things could be cut like fuel for re entry any kind of heat shielding etc etc even still if the contest participants had to fund dc development it probably wouldn t be worth it to develop dc just for the contest just give me the cheapest heaviest lift man rated or at least under or so gs booster if i don t have to pay for dc development great i ll use it but back to the contest goals there was a recent article in aw st about a low cost it s all relative manned return to the moon a general dynamics scheme involving a titan iv shuttle to lift a centaur upper stage lev and crew capsule the mission consists of delivering two unmanned payloads to the lunar surface followed by a manned mission total cost us was billion joint esa nasa project was billion for the us share i didn t find a mention of how long the crew could stay but i d bet that its around days and the total payload delivered was about metric tonnes so if you ignore the scientific payload hitch a ride in the crew habitation module no return trip and toss in a few more tonnes for the additional consumables to last another months then you might be able to get a year visit out of tonnes and in case its not obvious that s a wild ass guess a pretty boring visit since every trip outdoors eats up a bit of lox and i m not certain if a home brewed or college brewed life support system could last a year but let s round this up to tonnes convient since the gd plan talks about ton payloads delivered to the lunar surface this adds up to two centaurs two levs two shuttle flights all to put a single man on the moon for a year hmmm not really practical anyone got a cheaper better way of delivering tonnes to the lunar surface within the decade anyone have a more precise guess about how much a year s supply of consumables and equipment would weigh and i was wondering about the gd lev is it reusable or is it discarded to burn up on return to leo if its not discarded could it be refueled henry do you know anything about the gd lev i noted that it uses rl engines aren t they reusable restartable would a lev fit in a dc i ve forgotten if i ever knew what the cargo bay dimensions are for the dc all in all i m not certain that the single goal prize of staying on the moon for a year is wise and or useful how about a prize for the first non government sponsered unmanned moon landing then another for a manned moon landing then yet another for a system to extract consumables from lunar soil another for a reusable earth moon shuttle and so forth find some way to build civilian moonbase infrastructure having a single goal might result in a bunch of contestents giving up after one person appeared to win and for those that didn t give up i find something a little scary about a half dozen people huddling in rickety little moon shelters i d like to see as much a reward for co operation as for competition lastly about ten or fifteen years back i seem to recall that there was an english space magazine that had an on going discussion about moonbases on the cheap i recalled it discussed things like how much heat the human body produced how much lunar material it d need for protection from solar flares etc unfortunately i don t remember the name of this magazine does this ring a bell to anyone craig keithley i don t remember i don t recall apple computer inc i got no memory of anything at all keithley apple com peter gabriel third album
