Prelude to the Lunar Base Systems Study I: Lunar Oxygen (1983)

Climbing toward reusability: liftoff of the Space Shuttle Orbiter Columbia at the start of mission STS-2 (12-15 November 1981). Image credit: NASA.

At the heart of the Space Transportation System (STS) was the Space Shuttle. The first Space Shuttle mission, STS-1 (12-14 April 1981), was the first two-person Orbiter Flight Test (OFT) mission and the first flight of the Shuttle Orbiter Columbia. The second OFT, STS-2 (12-15 November 1981), had to be cut to two days in orbit from a planned five following the failure of one of Columbia's three electricity-producing fuel cells. Nevertheless, STS-2, the first reflight of a reusable spacecraft and the first flight of the Canada-built Remote Manipulator System (RMS) robot arm, was viewed as a success.

When Columbia glided to a landing for the second time, the form the STS would eventually take was still poorly defined. It would remain so at least until the destruction of the Shuttle Orbiter Challenger (28 January 1986) at the start of the STS-51L, the 25th flight of the Shuttle Program. The loss of Challenger and her seven-member crew marked the end of the optimistic first phase of the Space Shuttle Program.

Before that, however, the STS seemed ripe for augmentation. It would, of course, include expendable rocket stages attached to satellites carried to low-Earth orbit (LEO) in the Shuttle Orbiter Payload Bay; these "upper stages" were meant mainly to boost payloads from LEO to geosynchronous orbit (GEO), but could also launch robotic spacecraft from LEO on interplanetary trajectories. In addition, the STS would include Spacelab, a European-built system of Payload Bay-mounted laboratory modules and scientific instrument pallets. Development of upper stages and Spacelab had commenced in the 1970s, shortly after Space Shuttle development began.

Many saw the stages and Spacelab as interim steps toward more complex and competent STS elements. The former, it was expected, would lead to a reusable Orbital Transfer Vehicle (OTV); the latter, to a Space Station assembled in LEO from Orbiter-launched components. The OTV and its "little brother," the Orbital Maneuvering Vehicle (OMV), were typically seen as auxiliary vehicles based at the Space Station.

NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas, anticipated that the Space Station would support ambitious space construction projects; for example, large communications platforms in GEO. In 1979, inspired in part by its involvement in joint Department of Energy/NASA Solar Power Satellite studies, JSC studied a Space Station concept it called the Space Operations Center (SOC). After an initial flurry of planning activity, Shuttle delays put the SOC on the back burner; immediately after STS-1, however, JSC efforts to promote the assembly base in LEO kicked into high gear.

The Space Operation Center (SOC), a Shuttle-launched low-Earth orbit (LEO) space station, as it was envisioned in 1982. Intended as an assembly and repair base, the SOC would have included a "surrogate" Shuttle Orbiter Payload Bay (lower center) for satellite servicing and a hexagonal hangar (center right) for storing and servicing the Orbital Transfer Vehicle (OTV) and Orbital Maneuvering Vehicle (OMV). Image credit: NASA. 

A remote-controlled Orbital Maneuvering Vehicle (OMV), a small "space tug," closes in on the Gamma Ray Observatory (GRO) in this illustration from 1986. After its launch in 1991, GRO was renamed the Compton GRO. The reusable modular OMV, intended as an auxiliary vehicle for extending Shuttle Orbiter and Space Station capabilities, was cancelled in 1987 in the aftermath of the Challenger accident. Image credit: TRW/NASA.

JSC is widely known as the home base of the astronauts and site of the Mission Control Center. Less well known, perhaps, is its long-time contribution to lunar and planetary science. The Lunar Receiving Laboratory (LRL), built in 1967, was used for analysis and storage of lunar geologic samples beginning with Apollo 11 in July 1969. JSC also played a key role in organizing the annual Lunar Science Conference (LSC), the first of which was held in Houston in January 1970.

At the time, JSC was called the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC). It was renamed in 1973 after the death of President Lyndon Baines Johnson. The LSC was renamed the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) in 1978.

Michael Duke was on hand when the Apollo 11 samples arrived at the LRL; he was Lunar Sample Principal Investigator for the mission. In July 1969, he had been working for the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Branch of Astrogeology for six years. In 1970, he left USGS to become Lunar Sample Curator at MSC, a post he held until 1977, when he became Chief of the JSC Planetary and Earth Sciences Division.

Shortly after STS-2, Duke and another scientist in his division, Wendell Mendell, became concerned that developing the SOC and other proposed STS elements might mean reduced funding for NASA science programs. Space science at NASA was already hurting; the new Administration of President Ronald Reagan had made deep cuts. Rather than oppose new STS elements, Duke and Mendell sought ways that the SOC, OTV, and other proposed hardware could advance scientific exploration. Specifically, they sought to make the case for a base on the Moon.

Their efforts in some ways paralleled those of lunar scientists at the dawn of the Apollo Program, when lunar science barely existed as a field of study. Much like those early pioneers, Duke and Mendell sought to find and bring together individuals and organizations to build a constituency. Initially, they found prospective lunar base allies through informal, low-profile contacts. By late 1982, however, it was time to go public.

This they did by organizing three public special sessions at the 14th LPSC, which was held at NASA JSC in March 1983. The lunar sessions were titled "Return to the Moon" and "Future Lunar Programs." The third session, "Prospects for Planetary Exploration," sought to tie their lunar base efforts to the interests of the broader Solar System exploration community.

In their introduction to the lunar special sessions abstract volume, Duke and Mendell explained that "very little vision is required to see the [STS] reaching to the Moon." They argued that "the lunar option requires decisions today — but not dramatic ones." They pitched a Fiscal Year (FY) 1985 start for the lunar base program, but took pains to stress that the lunar base would need little or no new dedicated funding before FY 1991 or FY 1992.

In fact, they expected that lunar capability would grow more or less naturally from the STS in the late 1990s, several years after the SOC, OTV, and OMV were in place to support GEO missions. The amount of energy required to put a satellite into GEO is, after all, very nearly the same as that needed to put a payload into low-lunar orbit (LLO).

The lunar special sessions abstract volume included 22 abstracts by more than 30 authors and co-authors. The abstracts covered topics ranging from philosophy, law, and economics to geology, physiology, and energy. Of particular interest was an abstract by Hubert Davis, Senior Vice President of Houston-based Eagle Engineering, Incorporated (EEI). In it, he proposed to extend the STS to the Moon. His aim: to make the STS more economical by mining, refining, and using as rocket propellant oxygen chemically locked in lunar dirt.

EEI had been established by retired NASA JSC engineers. Davis, a co-founder of the company, began his career as an aircraft maintenance engineer in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War. Inspired by President John F. Kennedy's May 1961 call for a man on the Moon, he went to work for the MSC Power & Propulsion Division in March 1962. He oversaw the test program for Lunar Module 5; better known as Eagle, it bore Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin to the lunar surface on 20 July 1969.

As Apollo ended, Davis transferred to the MSC Special Projects Office, where he studied new STS elements — cheap solid-propellant STS upper stages and a Shuttle-derived heavy-lift launcher — as well as Solar Power Satellites manufactured from lunar materials. He took early retirement in 1978 after being made the JSC Engineering Directorate representative to the Space Shuttle Program Office; in a 2009 NASA JSC oral history interview, Davis explained that he had left the space agency at age 48 because he found the Shuttle oversight job to be boring.

The industry magazine Aviation Week & Space Technology made his presentation the centerpiece of its coverage of the LPSC lunar base special sessions. Two months following the special sessions Davis published an expanded version of his abstract and presentation as an EEI report called Lunar Oxygen Impact Upon STS Effectiveness.

Davis acknowledged that his study was incomplete and preliminary. He did not, for example, examine how his oxygen mining and refining facility would be established on the Moon. That the study was preliminary explained why it was incomplete; if it could not provide an early indication that lunar oxygen would enhance STS capabilities, Davis argued, then there would be little point in conducting a more detailed study of the concept.

To illustrate how lunar-produced liquid oxygen might enhance the STS, Davis used as an example STS-40, which was scheduled to place the Galileo spacecraft into LEO on 30 May 1986. Galileo would reach LEO attached to an expendable Centaur G' upper stage which, following release from the Orbiter payload bay, would launch it out of LEO on a direct trajectory to Jupiter.

The Galileo spacecraft was expected to weigh 2510 kilograms and the Centaur G' without propellants, 2650 kilograms. Support equipment for maintaining Galileo and Centaur G' in the payload bay would weigh 470 kilograms and 3640 kilograms, respectively. Filling the Centaur G' large tank with low-density liquid hydrogen fuel would add 3310 kilograms to STS-40's payload weight; filling the Centaur G' small tank with dense liquid oxygen oxidizer would increase payload weight by a whopping 16,570 kilograms. STS-40 payload weight thus came to 29,480 kilograms, with liquid oxygen making up 56% of the total.

The Galileo Jupiter spacecraft and an expendable Centaur G' upper stage move away from the Shuttle Orbiter that deployed them in low-Earth orbit. The large-diameter forward section of the stage (center), to which Galileo is attached, contains low-density liquid hydrogen fuel; the small-diameter aft section, to which are attached two rocket motors, high-density liquid oxygen oxidizer. Image credit: NASA.

Davis then imagined a 2510-kilogram Shuttle-launched payload in the first decade of the 21st century, after the STS had been extended to the Moon. A reusable OTV would replace the Centaur G'. Permanently basing the OTV at the SOC meant that it would not add to Shuttle payload weight.

The Shuttle Orbiter would carry a 660-kilogram tank containing 3310 kilograms of liquid hydrogen for fueling the OTV in LEO. The propellant dump in LEO near the SOC would provide the OTV with lunar liquid oxygen. Support equipment in the payload bay for the spacecraft and hydrogen tank would bring the total Shuttle payload weight to just 7280 kilograms, or about one quarter of the STS-40 total.

A chemical process called hydrogen reduction of ilmenite formed the basis of the lunar oxygen STS infrastructure. Ilmenite (chemical formula FeTiO3), a titanium ore, is a mineral common in the basaltic rocks, dirt, and dust that form the dark-hued lunar plains known as maria (Latin for "seas").

Davis focused on ilmenite rather than lunar polar ice — which can provide both hydrogen and oxygen — because in 1983 no one knew that water ice exists at the lunar poles. Though the lunar polar ice hypothesis was by then more than 20 years old, the first evidence that it might be correct would not be found until 1994, when Clementine became the first spacecraft to explore the Moon from lunar polar orbit.

Mining robots would continuously gather ilmenite-rich lunar dirt at a rate of 28 metric tons per hour and deliver it to a separation facility. The dirt would first be sieved to remove large dirt particles, clods, and rocks. The resulting fine-grained dirt and dust would then be heated and subjected to an electrostatic process that would separate the ilmenite at a rate of 2.27 metric tons per hour.

The ilmenite would be moved to the hydrogen-reduction unit, where it would be exposed to hydrogen gas at 700° Celsius (C) and 2.7 Earth atmospheres of pressure. The hydrogen would bind with and free the oxygen bonded to the iron. This would yield water vapor at a rate of 0.26 metric tons per hour, which would be cooled, condensed, and subjected to electrolysis, splitting it into oxygen and hydrogen.

The oxygen would be chilled until it condensed into dense liquid, then stored in spherical tanks. The hydrogen would be returned to the reduction unit for reuse and the powdery titanium oxide and iron left over from the reduction process — about 90% of the original mass of the lunar dirt — would be stacked out of the way for possible future use.

The facility would use a little more than six megawatts of electricity continuously; this might be reduced if waste heat from the refining process could be exploited effectively. Davis estimated that his mining and refining facility could produce 150 metric tons of liquid oxygen per month.

The Aft Cargo Carrier (ACC) — the blue short cylinder and truncated cone attached at left to the bottom of the orange Space Shuttle External Tank (ET) — would augment the 4.57-by-18.28-meter Shuttle Orbiter Payload Bay (the blue cylinder within the Orbiter outlined by dashed lines). The 9.72-meter-long, 8.38-meter-wide ACC would, among other things, facilitate launch of OTV components and spherical tanks filled with liquid hydrogen. Image credit: Martin Marietta.

This painting by Eagle Engineering artist Pat Rawlings displays elements of Davis's proposed lunar oxygen STS infrastructure in LEO. The close proximity of the elements is schematic, not realistic. At lower right, a remote-controlled OMV detaches a spherical tank filled with liquid hydrogen from an ET/ACC. The LEO propellant dump is at lower left. Small in the distance above it, silhouetted against the Earth, is a Shuttle Orbiter. A version of the SOC is depicted to the right of the Orbiter. In the foreground, a small OTV prepares to leave Earth orbit; liquid hydrogen tanks bound for lunar orbit ride on its bowl-shaped rigid aerobrake heat shield.

Davis described his lunar oxygen STS infrastructure in operation. A Space Shuttle would launch liquid hydrogen for the LEO propellant dump in a spherical tank inside an Aft Cargo Carrier (ACC) fitted over the dome-shaped end of its External Tank (ET).

Normally, the ET would separate from the Orbiter as it neared orbital velocity, tumble and break up in the upper atmosphere, and fall into the Indian Ocean. When the ACC was attached, however, the Shuttle Orbiter would boost the ET/ACC combination to LEO and separate. A remote-controlled OMV based at the SOC would then detach the hydrogen tank from the ACC and move it to the propellant dump, where refrigeration and high-tech insulation would ensure that no hydrogen was lost to boil-off.

Zero liquid hydrogen boil-off was, Davis explained, critical to making his lunar oxygen STS infrastructure viable. He wrote that the Centaur G' stage was expected to lose about 3% of its liquid hydrogen to boil-off per day. A similar boil-off rate at any point in his lunar oxygen STS infrastructure would be "intolerable."

Davis assumed two types of modular OTVs, each of which could be tailored to carry out several types of missions. The OTVs, clusters of spherical propellant tanks linked by struts, would perform roundtrip missions between LEO and GEO and between LEO and an LLO SOC and propellant dump. The OTVs could operate with or without a pressurized module containing a crew.

The smaller OTV, which would burn 25 metric tons of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen during a voyage from LEO to LLO and back, would include a rigid aerobrake heat shield 18 meters wide. The heat shield, which would include thermal protection tiles akin to those attached to the Space Shuttle Orbiter, would enable the OTV to use atmospheric drag to capture into LEO with minimal propellant expenditure. The smaller OTV could transport nearly 43 metric tons of liquid hydrogen from the LEO propellant dump to its counterpart in LLO.

A single-stage Lunar Module lander based on the smaller OTV design would burn 28 metric tons of liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen propellants to travel from LLO to the lunar surface and back. It would be capable of lifting 41 metric tons of liquid oxygen from the lunar surface to the LLO propellant dump.

Davis used Lunar Module landing gear as an example of how hardware in his lunar oxygen STS infrastructure would need to be optimized to reduce mass. The Apollo Lunar Module's four landing legs and foot pads accounted for 3.3% of its landed weight; the small OTV-based Lunar Module would exploit new materials and improved understanding of the lunar surface to reduce the figure to 2%.

On the Moon: at lower left, a robotic front-end loader scoops lunar dirt; behind it, another deposits dirt in a hopper at the start of the lunar oxygen refining process. Cables strung on poles link the lunar oxygen refinery to a nuclear reactor just over the horizon. Lunar oxygen is liquified and poured into a tank at center right; the filled tank will be added to the stack of tanks in the background at center top. Conveyor belts transport tailings to a storage area at upper left, just beyond the Lunar Module launch & landing pad, and to the open pit mine at center left. Image credit: Pat Rawlings/Eagle Engineering, Incorporated/NASA.

In lunar orbit: in the foreground, a large OTV with a stowed white ballute heat shield prepares to depart LLO for Earth orbit carrying a cargo of lunar oxygen. In the background, the LLO propellant dump orbits close by the lunar SOC. Meanwhile, a Lunar Module bearing lunar liquid oxygen moves in to dock with the propellant dump. Image credit: Pat Rawlings/Eagle Engineering, Incorporated/NASA.

In its basic form, the larger OTV would carry a propellant load of 33 metric tons. Two such OTVs could be combined to form an OTV with a propellant load of 78 tons. The latter configuration would be capable of transporting more than 200 metric tons of lunar oxygen from LLO to the LEO propellant dump. This would, he calculated, require an aerobrake heat shield about 115 meters wide; that is, wider than an American football field with end zones.

One might be forgiven for asking why such a large lunar oxygen cargo was necessary; that is, why Davis did not propose transporting it to LEO using several smaller OTVs spaced out over time. He explained that minimum-energy opportunities for travel from the LLO propellant dump to LEO would occur less than once per month. They would be infrequent because the OTV could only depart LLO as its orbital plane coincided with that of the LEO propellant dump. To do otherwise would demand plane-change maneuvers that would contribute toward making the lunar oxygen STS infrastructure uneconomical.

During aerobraking, the OTV would pass through Earth's upper atmosphere at an altitude of between 50 and 100 kilometers so that atmospheric drag could reduce its speed. The OTV would then climb back into space toward an apogee (orbit high point) near SOC altitude (about 400 kilometers). At apogee, it would ignite its engines to raise its perigee (orbit low point) out of Earth's atmosphere. For the perigee-raise maneuver, Davis budgeted only enough propellants to change OTV speed by 100 meters per second. He suggested that, if further analysis showed this to be insufficient, then an SOC-based OMV might retrieve the OTV and lunar oxygen payload at apogee.

In neither the small OTV nor the large OTV case could aerobrake heat shield mass exceed 3.5% of OTV mass at the time of Earth atmosphere entry. Davis focused on heat shield mass reduction because other OTV systems were already optimized, OTV propellants had been trimmed to the bare minimum required, and reducing the liquid oxygen cargo would defeat the purpose of the exercise. He conceded that cutting aerobrake heat shield mass so dramatically might constitute a significant technical challenge; most OTV studies, he explained, had assumed that the heat shield would make up at least 10% of OTV mass at Earth atmosphere entry.

Ballute in action. This is representative of ballutes in general; the inflatable heat shield is shown here attached to a single-engine cylindrical tug, not the two-engine large OTV Davis described, and aerobraking events take place at higher altitudes than in his scenario. Image credit: NASA.

To reduce the mass of the large OTV heat shield, Davis suggested that it might take the form of an expendable fabric ballute ("balloon-parachute"). The OTV would point its twin engines in its direction of motion as the donut-shaped ballute inflated; the engines would then operate in "idle" mode to create a relatively cool gas barrier between the ballute surface and the high-temperature plasma generated in front of the ballute by Earth atmosphere reentry at lunar-return speed (3.2 kilometers per second).

Davis used computer models to attempt to determine the Mass Payback Ratio (MPR) of his proposed lunar oxygen STS infrastructure. An MPR of 1 would mean that the mass of resources (mainly propellants) expended to exploit lunar oxygen would equal the mass of the lunar oxygen supplied to LEO. NASA would thus gain nothing from putting lunar oxygen to work in the STS. If, on the other hand, the mass of the lunar oxygen delivered to LEO exceeded the mass of the resources needed to exploit it, then more detailed study might be justified.

Davis cited a computer model that included 25 roundtrip OTV flights between LEO and LLO and 103 roundtrip Lunar Module flights between LLO and the lunar surface. He wrote that, in exchange for 983 metric tons of liquid hydrogen, hydrogen tanks, and OTV attitude-control system propellant dispatched to the Moon, 2414 metric tons of lunar liquid oxygen would arrive in the LEO. He judged that this quantity could support 90 OTV flights between LEO and GEO over a period of about five years.

This indicated a preliminary MPR of 2.45, which, Davis wrote, justified additional study. He anticipated, however, that it probably would not provide enough margin to maintain a positive MPR if the mass of hardware and propellants required to establish and maintain the lunar oxygen STS infrastructure were taken into consideration.

Davis did not provide weight estimates for the LEO propellant dump, the LLO propellant dump and LLO SOC, and the Lunar Modules. Neither did he estimate the weight of the Earth-launched liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants needed to initiate the lunar oxygen STS infrastructure, nor the weight of Earth-launched liquid hydrogen needed to fly resupply and crew rotation missions after lunar oxygen became available. He assumed that the OTVs and LEO SOC would be built for LEO and GEO operations even if NASA did not return to the Moon, so disregarded their weight in his model.

He did, however, provide a weight estimate for the lunar surface mining and refining facility. Mining robots, a habitat for housing 10 facility caretakers, refining equipment, storage tanks, a nuclear reactor for generating electricity, radiator panels, and other equipment would have a combined weight of 437 metric tons. Adding this to the 983 tons of hydrogen, tanks, and attitude-control propellant would lead to an MPR of only 1.7.

If, somehow, the MPR remained sufficiently favorable after more detailed technical studies yielded credible complete weight estimates, then complex economic analyses would follow. These would, Davis explained, be based on real-world dollars and would take into account societal factors such as "affordability."

Davis conceded that extending the STS to the Moon probably could not be justified solely on the basis of economics. He argued that lunar resources should nevertheless be developed. He cited a January 1982 Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) proposal for an international research laboratory on the Moon; it promised wide-ranging scientific, economic, political, and defense benefits. With a nod to the political language of the 1980s United States, Davis declared that the "vitality of Free World commerce and physical security would be greatly increased by the presence of. . .resources in space."

This post is the first in a series on lunar base planning in the 1980s centered on activities at NASA JSC. The next installment will examine NASA JSC's March 1984 in-house Lunar Surface Return study.

Sources

Space Operations Center presentation materials, NASA Johnson Space Center, 18 January 1982.

"NASA Conference to Highlight Return to the Moon," NASA News Release 83-007, Steve Nesbitt, no date (March 1983).

"Economic Benefits of Lunar Base Cited," E. Bulban, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 18 April 1983, pp. 132-133, 135-137.

Fourteenth Lunar and Planetary Science Conference Special Sessions Abstracts — Return to the Moon — March 16, 1983, Future Lunar Program — March 17, 1983, LPI Contribution 500, Lunar and Planetary Institute, 1983.

Lunar Oxygen Impact Upon STS Effectiveness, Report No. 8363, Hubert Davis, Eagle Engineering, Inc., May 1983.

"Return to the Moon," Andrew Chaikin, Sky & Telescope, June 1983, p. 493.

NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project Edited Oral History Transcript: Hubert P. Davis, 28 July 2009 (https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/DavisHP/DavisHP_7-28-09.htm — accessed 20 March 2020).

More Information

Harold Urey and the Moon (1961)

Apollo Science and Sites: The Sonett Report (1963)

Electricity from Space: The 1970s DOE/NASA Solar Power Satellite Studies

One Space Shuttle, Two Cargo Volumes: Martin Marietta's Aft Cargo Carrier (1982)

"A Vision of the Future": Military Uses of the Moon and Asteroids (1983)

Mission to the Mantle: Michael Duke's Moonrise (1999-2009)

Visions of Spaceflight: Circa 2001 (1984)

The Mars Orbiter and Mars Lander (center) cast off the Interplanetary Vehicle (upper left) before aerobraking in the upper atmosphere of Mars. Image credit: Michael Carroll.

The year 1984 was nearly equidistant between the first Moon landing of 1969 and the evocative year 2001. The Space Shuttle, flown into orbit for the first time on 12 April 1981, had been declared operational by President Ronald Reagan at the end of its fourth mission on 4 July 1982. In his 25 January 1984 State of the Union Address, Reagan gave NASA leave to use the Shuttle to launch and assemble its long-sought, long-postponed low-Earth-orbit (LEO) Space Station.

Space supporters could be forgiven for believing that, after a gap in U.S. piloted space missions that spanned from Apollo-Soyuz in July 1975 to the first Shuttle mission, a new day was dawning: that Shuttle and Station would lead in the 1990s to piloted flights beyond LEO. Surely, Americans would walk on the Moon again by 2001, and would put boot prints on Mars not long after.

There were, of course, some problems: despite being declared operational, Shuttle operations had yet to become routine. Despite some high-flown rhetoric at the time it was announced — President Reagan spoke of following "our dreams to distant stars" — the Station the White House agreed to fund was meant to serve as a microgravity laboratory, not a jumping-off place for voyages beyond LEO. Hardware for any "spaceport" function it might eventually have would need to be bolted on later, after some future President gave the word.

In addition, NASA's robotic exploration program remained a shadow of its former self. There would, for example, be no U.S. robotic probe in the international armada to Halley's Comet in 1985-1986.

Nevertheless, with American astronauts in space again and concept artists hard at work on tantalizing visions of sprawling space stations, very few foresaw rough waters ahead. It seemed the perfect time to revive advance planning for missions to the Moon and beyond, which had been virtually moribund in the U.S. since the early 1970s.

Advance planning revived first outside of NASA. Participants in the 1981 and 1984 The Case for Mars conferences, mindful of how Apollo had left no long-term foothold on the Moon, developed a plan for establishing and maintaining a permanent Mars base. The Planetary Society, with 120,000 members the largest spaceflight advocacy group on Earth, helped support the conferences.

The Planetary Society had grown rapidly following its founding in 1980 in large part because its President was planetary scientist Carl Sagan. His 1980 PBS television series Cosmos had done more to popularize space exploration than any public outreach effort since Wernher von Braun's 1950s collaborations with Walt Disney and Collier's weekly magazine.

In 1984, The Planetary Society asked the Space Science Department of Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) in suburban Chicago, Illinois, to outline three piloted space projects for the first decade of the 21st century. These were: an expedition to scout out a site for a permanent lunar base; a two-year journey to a near-Earth asteroid; and, most ambitious, a three-year mission to land three astronauts on Mars.

The three projects were not meant to occur in the order in which they were presented, and any one of them could stand alone. In its report to The Planetary Society, the six-man SAIC study team declared that "any. . .would be a commanding goal for future U.S. space exploration."

The Planetary Society paid SAIC a modest fee. In their foreword to the SAIC report, Sagan and his lieutenant, Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineer Louis Friedman, called the team's work "a labor of love."

Space missions of an international character were of interest to The Planetary Society; it saw in them a means of reducing geopolitical tension on Earth and of dividing the cost of exploration among the space-faring nations. In their foreword, Sagan and Friedman wrote of their hope that the study would "stimulate renewed interest in major international initiatives for the exploration of nearby worlds in space." The SAIC team did not, however, emphasize this; apart from the European Space Agency-provided Spacelab modules from which the pressurized modules of its spacecraft would be derived, there was little evidence of international involvement in its proposed projects.

The SAIC team assumed that NASA would convert the Space Station into an LEO spaceport at the turn of the 21st century. The U.S. civilian space agency would use the Space Shuttle fleet to launch to the Station hangars, living accommodations for crews in transit to destinations beyond LEO, remote manipulators, propellant storage tanks, and auxiliary spacecraft such as Orbital Transfer Vehicles (OTVs). Parts and propellants for the team's piloted Moon, asteroid, and Mars spaceships would also reach the Station on board Shuttle Orbiters.

For its lunar base site survey mission, the SAIC team assumed no Space Shuttle upgrades. The standard Shuttle Orbiter could in theory carry up to 60,000 pounds (27,270 kilograms) to LEO in its 15-by-60-foot (4.6-by-18.5-meter) payload bay. Of this, 5000 pounds (2268 kilograms) would comprise Airborne Support Equipment (ASE) — that is, hardware for mounting payloads in the payload bay, providing them with electricity, thermal control, and other required services, and deploying them in LEO.

Schematic of a mission to deliver cargo to the lunar surface. The mission is described in the post text. Please click on the image to enlarge. Image credit: Science Applications International Corporation.

Schematic of a mission to deliver astronauts to the lunar surface and return them to Earth after 30 days. The mission is described in the post text. Please click on the image to enlarge. Image credit: Science Applications International Corporation.

SAIC's lunar mission closely resembled the one it had presented in its December 1983 report to the National Science Foundation (please see "More Information" below). The mission — for which SAIC gave no start date — would need a total of 12 Shuttle launches and four piloted and automated "sorties" to the Moon.

SAIC planners assumed that the beefed-up LEO Station would normally include in its fleet of auxiliary vehicles two reusable OTVs, each with a fully fueled mass of about 70,400 pounds (32,000 kilograms). These would suffice for the lunar project, but more OTVs — including some considered expendable — would be needed for the asteroid and Mars missions.

At the start of each lunar sortie, a "stack" comprising OTV #1, OTV #2, and a lunar payload would move away from the Station. OTV #1 would fire its twin RL-10-derived engines at perigee (the low point in its Earth-centered orbit) to push OTV #2 and the lunar payload into an elliptical orbit. OTV #1 would then separate and fire its engines at next perigee to lower its apogee (the high point in its orbit) and return to the Space Station for refurbishment and refueling. OTV #1 would burn 59,870 pounds (27,215 kilograms) of propellants.

OTV #2 would fire its engines at next perigee to place the lunar payload on course for the Moon. Depending on the nature of the payload, OTV #2 would then either fire its engines to slow down and allow the Moon's gravity to capture it into lunar orbit or would separate from the lunar payload and adjust its course so that it would swing around the Moon and fall back to Earth.

The SAIC team envisioned that OTV #2 would be fitted with a reusable aerobrake heat shield. After returning from the Moon, it would skim through Earth's upper atmosphere to slow itself, then would adjust its attitude using small thrusters so that it would gain lift and skip up out of the atmosphere. At apogee, it would fire its twin engines briefly to raise its perigee out of the atmosphere. OTV #2 would then rendezvous with the Station, where it would be refurbished and refueled for a new mission.

The SAIC team's lunar base survey mission would begin with Sortie #1, which would include no crew. OTV #2 would swing around the Moon after releasing a payload comprising a one-way lander bearing a pair of nearly identical 15,830-pound (7195-kilogram) lunar surface vehicles. Each vehicle would comprise a pressurized rover and a trailer. The lander would descend directly to a soft landing in the proposed lunar base region.

Like Sortie #1, Sortie #2 would include no crew. Unlike Sortie #1, Sortie #2 would see OTV #2 capture into a 30-mile-high (50-kilometer-high) lunar orbit. There it would deploy an unfueled single-stage Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) lander. OTV #2 would then fire its twin engines to depart lunar orbit for Earth. After aerobraking in Earth's atmosphere, it would return to the Station.

The first piloted sortie, Sortie #3, would see OTV #2 deliver to lunar orbit four astronauts in a pressurized crew module. They would pilot the OTV #2/crew module combination to a docking with the waiting LEM. The crew would board the LEM, load it with propellants from OTV #2, then undock. OTV #2 would fire its engines to depart lunar orbit, fall back to Earth, aerobrake in the atmosphere, and return to the Station.

The astronauts, meanwhile, would descend in the LEM to a landing near the one-way lander. After unloading the twin rover-trailers, the four-person crew would split into two two-person crews and begin a 30-day survey of candidate base sites within the 30-mile-wide (50-kilometer-wide) proposed lunar base region.

In addition to providing living quarters, the rover-trailers would each carry 2640 pounds (1200 kilograms) of science instruments for determining surface composition, seismicity, and stratigraphy at candidate base sites, plus a scoop or blade for moving large quantities of lunar dirt. They would rely on liquid oxygen-liquid methane fuel cells for electricity to power their drive motors.

The rover-trailers would travel together for safety; if one broke down and could not be repaired, the other could return all four astronauts to the waiting LEM.

Travel in harsh sunlight would be avoided. SAIC assumed that the rover-trailer combinations would spend most of the two-week lunar daylight period parked at a "base camp" under reflective thermal shields, venturing out for only a few 24-hour excursions. They would travel continuously during the two-week lunar night, however, their way lit by headlights and sunlight reflected off the Earth.

Sortie #4 would see OTV #2 and the crew module return without a crew to lunar orbit. The crew, meanwhile, would park the rover-trailers under the base camp thermal shields, load the LEM with samples, photographic film, and other souvenirs of their rover-trailer traverses, and ascend in the LEM to lunar orbit to rendezvous and dock with the OTV #2/crew module combination. They would then undock from the LEM, depart lunar orbit, aerobrake in Earth's atmosphere, and rendezvous with the Station. The SAIC planners proposed that the orbiting LEM and parked rover-trailers be put to use again during the initial phase of lunar base buildup.

Asteroid mission Earth departure would require five OTVs operating in series over 48 hours. SAIC proposed a similar departure method for all three of its missions. Please click on the image to enlarge. Image credit: Science Applications International Corporation.

For its piloted asteroid mission, SAIC considered eight mission plans taking in two asteroids in the Main Belt between Mars and Jupiter and four Earth-approaching asteroids. Three of the Earth-approaching asteroids were hypothetical — asteroid hunting was ramping up in the early 1980s, so the SAIC team sought to anticipate new discoveries. The team settled on a two-year voyage that would include a wide swing out into the Main Belt. There the spacecraft would fly past asteroid 1577 Reiss.

The main target of the mission would, however, be the Earth-approaching asteroid 1982DB, in 1984 the most easily accessible Earth-approaching asteroid known. Now named 4660 Nereus, nearly 40 years after its discovery it remains among the most accessible known asteroids.

Nine upgraded Shuttle Orbiters would launch parts and propellants for the asteroid mission spacecraft and the OTVs necessary to launch it from Earth orbit. The "65K" Shuttles SAIC invoked would be capable of launching 65,000 pounds (29,545 kilograms) to the Space Station. As with the lunar base survey mission, ASE would make up 5000 pounds (2268 kilograms) of the total. Following assembly and checkout, the piloted asteroid mission spacecraft/OTV stack would move away from the Station.

A total of five OTVs would be needed to launch the asteroid mission spacecraft out of Earth orbit. OTV #1 would ignite at the stack's perigee to raise its apogee. It would then separate and fire its engines at next perigee to lower its apogee, re-circularizing its orbit so it could return to the Station. OTV #2 would ignite at next perigee to boost the stack's apogee higher, then would detach and aerobrake in Earth's atmosphere to return to the Station. OTV #3 and OTV #4 would do the same.

The time between perigees would increase with each burn: the five-burn sequence would need about 48 hours, with nearly 24 hours separating the OTV #4 and OTV #5 perigee burns. On 5 January 2000, OTV #5 would fire its twin engines at perigee, launching SAIC's asteroid mission spacecraft onto a Sun-centered path toward 1577 Reiss and 1982DB. OTV #5, its propellant tanks empty, would then be cast off.

Of the spacecraft SAIC proposed, the asteroid mission spacecraft would venture farthest from the Sun. Please click on the image to enlarge. Image credit: Science Applications International Corporation.

With the Earth-Moon system shrinking behind them, the three-person crew would spin up their spacecraft. Twin 81.25-foot-long (25-meter-long) hollow arms, each carrying a solar array and a radiator panel, would link twin habitat modules to a cylindrical central hub. Habitats, booms, and hub would spin three times per minute to create acceleration in the habitats, which the crew would feel as a continuous pull of 0.25 Earth gravities.

SAIC lacked data on whether 0.25 gravities would be sufficient to mitigate the deleterious effects of weightlessness (indeed, such data do not exist at this writing). The team explained that its choice of 0.25 gravities constituted "a compromise between the desire to have a near normal gravity, a short habitat arm length, and a slow spin rate."

A logistics supply module and two propulsion systems would be linked to the central hub's aft end. The main propulsion system, which would burn liquid methane and liquid oxygen, would be used for course corrections during the long trip from Earth to 1982DB and for departure from 1982DB. The storable-bipropellant secondary system would be used to perform 1982DB station-keeping maneuvers and course corrections during the short trip from 1982DB to Earth.

The hub's front end would have linked to it an experiment module, an "EVA station" airlock module for spacewalks, and a conical Earth-return capsule with a 37.4-foot (11.5-meter) flattened cone ("coolie hat") aerobrake. The experiment module would carry attached to its side a 16.25-foot (five-meter) radio dish antenna for high-data-rate communications.

The modules and propulsion systems on either end of the hub would spin as a unit in the direction opposite the hub, arms, and habitats, so would appear to remain motionless. Astronauts inside the hub-attached parts of the asteroid mission spacecraft would experience weightlessness.

The crew would point the Earth-return capsule aerobrake and the asteroid spacecraft's twin solar arrays toward the Sun, placing radiators, propulsion systems, logistics module, hub, hollow arms, experiment module, EVA station, and Earth-return capsule in protective shadow. In the event of a solar flare, the crew would use the spacecraft's structure as radiation shielding: they would retreat to the logistics module, placing aerobrake, Earth-return capsule, EVA station, experiment module, hub, and logistics module between themselves and the active Sun.

During their two-year mission, the asteroid mission crew would spend about 23 months carrying out "cruise science." Four hundred and forty pounds (200 kilograms) of the spacecraft's 1650-pound (750-kilogram) cruise science payload would be devoted to studies of human physiology in space, and 375 pounds (170 kilograms) would be used to perform solar observations and other astronomy and astrophysics studies. In addition, the spacecraft would carry 55 pounds (25 kilograms) of long-duration exposure samples on its exterior. These swatches of spacecraft metals, foils, paints, ceramics, plastics, fabrics, and glasses would be retrieved by spacewalking astronauts before the end of the mission.

SAIC's asteroid mission spacecraft would fly past 4.2-kilometer-wide 1577 Reiss at a speed of 2.8 miles (4.7 kilometers) per second 14 months into the mission (2 March 2001) and would intercept 1982DB just over six months later, on 12 September 2001. The 1577 Reiss flyby would occur while asteroid and spacecraft were 216.7 million miles (348.7 million kilometers) from the Sun. The spacecraft would spend 30 days near 1982DB, during which time Earth would range from 55 million miles (90 million kilometers) distant on 12 September 2001 to 30 million miles (50 million kilometers) away on 12 October 2001.

While close to 1577 Reiss, the crew would for the first time activate the "asteroid science" equipment packed in the experiment module. They would bring to bear on the Main Belt asteroid a 220-pound (100-kilogram) package of remote-sensing instruments, including a mapping radar and instruments for determining surface composition. They would also image 1577 Reiss using high-resolution cameras with a total mass of 110 pounds (50 kilograms).

The asteroid science instruments would be put to use again as the spacecraft closed on 1982DB. During approach, the crew would locate the asteroid precisely in space, determine its rotational axis and rate, and perform long-range mapping. They would then despin the spun parts of their spacecraft and, using the secondary propulsion system, halt a few hundred miles/kilometers from 1982DB to perform detailed global mapping. This would enable selection of sites for in-depth investigations.

The astronauts would then use the secondary propulsion system to place the spacecraft in a "stationkeeping" position a few tens of miles/kilometers away from 1982DB. Every three days they would move even closer — to within a few miles/kilometers — so that a pair of space-suited astronauts could leave the EVA station module airlock to explore the asteroid's surface.

The astronauts would each use a Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU) to transfer from the spacecraft to 1982DB. The asteroid mission MMUs, modeled on the MMU first tested during Space Shuttle mission STS-41B (3-11 February 1984), would use gaseous nitrogen as propellant.

The exploration of Earth-approaching asteroid 1982 DB. Image credit: Michael Carroll.

The SAIC team noted that 1982DB would have "negligible gravitational attraction," so the asteroid mission spacecraft would be unable to orbit it in a conventional sense. Spacecraft and asteroid would instead share nearly the same orbit around the Sun. 1982DB would, meanwhile, rotate at some unknown rate. The asteroid's rotation would mean that astronauts at a site of interest on its surface would tend to be move away from their spacecraft. In fact, if 1982DB rotated quickly enough, astronauts on its surface might pass out of sight of the spacecraft during their four-hour "asteroid-walks."

The SAIC team judged that loss of radio and visual contact with the surface crew would be undesirable, so proposed that the astronaut left behind on the spacecraft perform station-keeping maneuvers to match 1982DB's rotation; that is, that the astronaut keep his or her shipmates in sight by maintaining a "forced circular orbit" around 1982DB. The team budgeted enough secondary propulsion system storable propellants for a velocity change of 32.5 feet (10 meters) per second per surface visit.

If 1982DB were found to rotate slowly, then the velocity change needed to maintain the spacecraft in its forced orbit would be reduced. In that case, only astronaut stamina, the supply of MMU propellant, and the mission's planned 30-day stay-time near 1982DB would limit the number of surface visits. The SAIC team envisioned that the astronauts might explore as many as 10 sites. After each surface excursion, the spacecraft would resume stationkeeping several tens of miles/kilometers away from 1982DB.

The SAIC team assumed that 1982DB would measure 0.62 miles (one kilometer) in diameter. They noted that an asteroid of that size would have roughly the same area as New York City's Central Park (1.32 square miles/3.41 square kilometers). Based on this comparison, they judged that "a 30-day stay time should provide ample time to complete a thorough investigation of the object." (I would argue that 10 four-hour visits to Central Park would be nowhere near sufficient to characterize it, but presumably 1982DB would lack the many unique amenities and diverse population of that iconic urban oasis.)

During their surface visits, the astronauts would deploy four small and three large experiment packages on 1982DB and would collect a total of 330 pounds (150 kilograms) of samples. The 110-pound (50-kilogram) small experiment packages would each include a seismometer and instruments for measuring temperature and determining surface composition. The 220-pound (100-kilogram) large packages would include a "deep core drill," a sensor package for insertion into the core hole, and a mortar.

After the spacecraft resumed station-keeping for the last time, the crew would remotely fire the mortars in succession to send shockwaves through 1982DB. The seismometers would register the shockwaves, enabling scientists to chart the asteroid's interior structure.

On 12 October 2001, the asteroid mission spacecraft would use the primary propulsion system for the last time to depart 1982DB. Using the secondary propulsion system, the crew would bend its trajectory so that it would almost intersect Earth. They would then spin up the spacecraft to restore artificial gravity in the hollow arms and habitats.

Three months later, they would load their samples, film, and other data products into the Earth-return capsule and undock from the spacecraft. On 13 January 2002, almost exactly two years after Earth departure, the crew would aerobrake their capsule in Earth's atmosphere and pilot it to a rendezvous with the Space Station. Meanwhile, the abandoned asteroid mission spacecraft would swing by Earth and enter a disposal orbit around the Sun.

Although designated the Mars Exploration Vehicle in this illustration, SAIC designated this three-part spacecraft the Mars Outbound Vehicle (MOV) in its report text. It would become the Mars Exploration Vehicle only after it cast off the Interplanetary Vehicle (lower left). Please click on the image to enlarge. Image credit: Science Applications International Corporation.

SAIC's third proposed project, the first piloted Mars landing, would employ a four astronauts and six spacecraft (not counting OTVs). The largest spacecraft combination, the 265,880-pound (120,600-kilogram) Mars Outbound Vehicle (MOV), would comprise the 43,870-pound (19,600-kilogram) Interplanetary Vehicle (spacecraft 1), the 25,130-pound (11,400-kilogram) Mars Orbiter (spacecraft 2), and the conical 83,555-pound (37,900-kilogram) Mars Lander (spacecraft 3). The Mars Orbiter and Mars Lander together would comprise the Mars Exploration Vehicle.

The Interplanetary Vehicle would resemble the SAIC team's asteroid mission spacecraft, though it would lack an Earth-return capsule and would move through space with its logistics module pointed toward the Sun. The Interplanetary Vehicle's hub, twin hollow arms, and twin habitats would revolve three times per minute.

The Interplanetary Vehicle's EVA station would link it to the Mars Orbiter, a bare-bones, non-rotating vehicle made up of a single habitat module and hollow arm, a solar array, a radiator, a radio dish antenna, an EVA station, an unspecified propulsion system, and the conical Mars Departure Vehicle (spacecraft 4). The Mars Orbiter EVA station would link it to the Mars Lander ascent stage. The Mars Lander would include a 175.5-foot-diameter (54-meter-diameter) flattened-cone aerobrake.

The Earth Return Vehicle would leave Earth first but reach Mars 30 days after the Mars Outbound Vehicle. Please click on the image to enlarge. Image credit: Science Applications International Corporation.

SAIC's second, smaller Mars mission spacecraft combination, the 94,600-pound (43,000-kilogram) Earth Return Vehicle (ERV) (spacecraft 5), would resemble the asteroid mission spacecraft even more closely than would the Mars mission Interplanetary Vehicle. The ERV, which would include the 9750-pound (4430-kilogram) Earth Return Capsule (spacecraft 6), would depart Earth ahead of the MOV, on 5 June 2003, but would follow a Sun-centered path that would cause it to reach Mars after the MOV, on 23 January 2004. It would leave LEO with no crew on board.

A total of five Shuttle launches, each capable of putting into LEO 60,000 pounds (27,270 kilograms), would launch ERV and OTV parts and propellants to the Station. ASE would make up 5000 pounds (2268 kilograms) of each Shuttle Orbiter payload.

Three OTVs (two based permanently at the Station plus one assembled specifically for the Mars mission) would then launch the ERV toward Mars. Each OTV would in succession ignite its engines at perigee to increase the ERV's apogee, then would separate. OTV #1 would use its twin engines to return to the Station after separation, OTV #2 would rely on its aerobrake heat shield, and OTV #3 would expend all of its propellants to place the ERV on course for Mars and be discarded. The ERV's three-orbit Earth-departure sequence would last about six hours.

The MOV with four astronauts on board would leave Earth orbit 10 days later, on 15 June 2003. Thirteen Space Shuttle launches would place MOV and OTV parts and propellants into Earth orbit. Seven OTVs would perform perigee burns over the space of a little more than two days to boost the 265,300-pound (120,600-kilogram) MOV toward Mars. Following separation, OTV #1 would ignite its engines at perigee to return to the Station; OTVs #2 through #6 would return to the Station after aerobraking; and OTV #7 would burn all of its propellants and be discarded.

The MOV would arrive at Mars on 24 December 2003, 30 days ahead of the ERV. Assuming that telemetry from the ERV indicated that it remained able to support a crew, the MOV crew would cast off the Interplanetary Vehicle (this is depicted in the image at the top of this post), strap into the Mars Lander ascent capsule, and aerobrake in the martian atmosphere. The abandoned Interplanetary Vehicle would swing past Mars and enter solar orbit.

Following aerobraking, the two-part Mars Exploration Vehicle would climb to an apoapsis (orbit high point) of 600 miles (1000 kilometers). The Mars Orbiter and Mars Lander would then separate. One astronaut would remain on board the Mars Orbiter. He or she would ignite its propulsion system at apoapsis to raise its periapsis (orbit low point) to 600 miles (1000 kilometers), giving it a circular orbit about the red planet. The three astronauts in the Mars Lander, meanwhile, would fire its engine briefly at apoapsis to raise its periapsis to an altitude just above the martian atmosphere.

As the planet rotated beneath the Mars Lander, the three astronauts would prepare for atmosphere entry and landing. As the target Mars landing site came into range, they would ignite the Mars Lander engine at apoapsis, lowering their periapsis into the atmosphere. They would cast off the aerobrake after atmosphere entry and lower to a soft landing using the Mars Lander descent engine.

Immediately after touchdown, the crew would deploy a teleoperated rover. Trailing power cables, the rover would carry a small nuclear reactor a safe distance away from the Mars Lander and bury it. The crew would then remotely activate the reactor to supply their encampment with electricity.

SAIC's Mars mission would, of course, have a range of cruise, Mars orbital, and Mars surface science objectives. The study team explained that, during the six-month Earth-Mars cruise, the astronauts on board the Interplanetary Vehicle would have at their disposal a cruise science payload identical to that carried on board the asteroid mission spacecraft.

Human physiology studies during the trip to Mars would, in addition to any scientific objectives, have a prosaic operational goal: they would emphasize keeping the Mars landing crew in good shape for strenuous activity on the planet. The astronauts would also observe the Sun for science and to detect solar flares that might cause them harm.

The one-person Mars Orbiter and three-person Mars Lander crews would have many objectives at Mars, some primarily scientific and others primarily operational. The "primary duty" of the lone astronaut on board the Mars Orbiter would be to support the surface crew, the SAIC team explained. Four hundred and forty pounds (200 kilograms) of remote sensors would enable her or him to spot threatening weather conditions near the landing site and generate detailed maps of landing site terrain and surface composition for both the crew on Mars and scientists and mission controllers on Earth.

The surface crew would have as "a major goal" the selection of a future Mars base site, the SAIC team explained. They would have at their disposal 1980 pounds (900 kilograms) of science equipment, including a 220-pound (100-kilogram) Mobile Geophysics Lab rover, 110 pounds (50 kilograms) of high-resolution cameras, four small deployable science packages with a mass of 110 pounds (50 kilograms) each, and three large deployable science packages with a total mass of 880 pounds (400 kilograms) each.

The small packages would measure temperature, detect Marsquakes, and determine surface composition, while the large packages would include a 440-pound (200-kilogram) deep-core drill, a 220-pound (100-kilogram) sensor package for insertion down core holes, and a mortar for generating shock waves that the seismometers in the small packages would register, permitting scientists on Earth to understand the subsurface structure of the landing site. The surface crew would also set up an inflatable "tent" in which they would begin examination of the 550 pounds (250 kilograms) of Mars samples they would collect for return to Earth.

As their stay on Mars reached its end, the surface crew would load their samples, film, and other data products into the Mars Lander ascent stage and blast off to rendezvous and dock with the Mars Orbiter. The nuclear reactor they left behind would power equipment long after they departed. The SAIC team suggested, for example, that it could provide electricity to a device that would extract oxygen from the martian atmosphere and cache it for future Mars base builders.

The ERV, meanwhile, would close in on Mars. Like the asteroid spacecraft, it would move through space with its Earth-return aerobrake pointed toward the Sun.

After docking with the Mars Orbiter, the reunited crew would transfer their surface and orbital Mars data products to the Mars Departure Vehicle, then would undock from the Mars Orbiter and set out in earnest pursuit of their ride home. Because launching it back onto an interplanetary path after crew recovery in Mars orbit would demand considerable quantities of propellants, the ERV would not enter Mars orbit.

Instead, to reduce overall Mars mission mass (and thus the number of Shuttle launches needed to launch it into LEO and and the number of OTVs needed to place it on course for Mars), the crew would rendezvous with the ERV as it raced past the planet on a free-return trajectory that would take it back to Earth after 1.5 orbits around the Sun and 2.5 years of flight time. This approach, which SAIC termed Mars Hyperbolic Rendezvous (MHR), resembled the Flyby Landing Excursion Mode put forward by Republic Aviation engineer R. Titus in 1966. SAIC did not reference his pioneering work.

As might be expected, the SAIC team felt it necessary to study possible contingency modes for crew recovery in the event that MHR failed. If, for example, the unmanned ERV malfunctioned en route to Mars before the crew discarded the Interplanetary Vehicle and aerobraked the Mars Exploration Vehicle into Mars orbit, the astronauts could perform a powered Mars swingby maneuver using the Mars Lander and Mars Orbiter propulsion systems, bending their course so that they would intercept Earth 2.5 years later. The crew would separate in the Mars Lander near Earth and use its aerobrake to capture into Earth orbit.

Assuming, however, that all occurred as planned, the Mars Departure Vehicle would dock with the ERV a few hours after leaving Mars orbit. As Mars shrank behind them, the astronauts would transfer to the ERV with their samples and other data products, cast off the spent Mars Departure Vehicle, and spin the ERV's arms and habitats to create acceleration.

During the 2.5-year cruise home to Earth, the astronauts would study human physiology, the Sun, and astrophysics using a science payload identical to that carried on board the Mars mission Interplanetary Vehicle and the asteroid mission spacecraft. The SAIC team suggested that they might also continue study of the samples they had collected on Mars, though they did not indicate how this would be accomplished in the absence of a sample isolation lab, instruments, and tools.

On 5 June 2006, three years to the day after they left Earth, the crew would undock in the Earth Return Capsule, aerobrake in Earth's atmosphere, and rendezvous with the Space Station. The abandoned ERV, meanwhile, would swing past Earth and enter solar orbit.

SAIC offered preliminary cost estimates for its three projects and compared them with the cost of the Apollo Program, which encompassed 11 piloted missions, six of which landed two-man crews on the Moon. A dispassionate observer might be forgiven for believing that SAIC's cost estimates were unrealistically low. Partly this was the result of Shuttle cost accounting. Taking its lead from NASA, the SAIC team calculated that the 18 Shuttle flights needed for its Mars mission would cost only $2 billion, or about $110 million per flight.

The lunar base site survey would, the SAIC planners calculated, cost only $16.5 billion, or about a quarter of the Apollo Program's $75 billion cost in 1984 dollars. The asteroid mission would be slightly cheaper, coming in at $16.3 billion. The Mars mission, not surprisingly, would be the most costly of the three. Even so, it would only cost about half as much as Apollo; SAIC estimated that it would cost just $38.5 billion.

Launch of Space Shuttle Orbiter Challenger on 28 January 1986. Image credit: NASA.

Just 15 months after SAIC turned over its study to The Planetary Society, the optimistic era of piloted mission planning that had begun with the first Space Shuttle launch drew to a close. Following the loss of the Shuttle Orbiter Challenger on 28 January 1986, at the start of the 25th Shuttle mission, advance planning did not stop; in fact, it expanded as NASA sought to demonstrate that the Shuttle and Station Programs had worthwhile long-term objectives, and thus should continue in spite of Challenger.

The rules, however, had changed. After Challenger, few planners assumed that the Space Station President Reagan had called for in January 1984 would ever become an LEO spaceport, and even fewer assumed that Shuttle Orbiters alone would suffice to launch the components and propellants needed for piloted missions beyond LEO.

Post-Challenger plans would call for a purpose-built LEO spaceport to augment the Station and Shuttle-derived heavy-lift rockets to augment the Shuttle. Both of these would increase the estimated cost of piloted exploration beyond LEO.

Color artwork in this post is Copyright © Michael Carroll (http://stock-space-images.com/) and is used by kind permission of the artist.

Sources

Manned Lunar, Asteroid, and Mars Missions - Visions of Space Flight: Circa 2001, A Conceptual Study of Manned Mission Initiatives, Space Sciences Department, Science Applications International Corporation, September 1984.

"Visions of 2010 - Human Missions to Mars, the Moon and the Asteroids," Louis D. Friedman, The Planetary Report, March/April 1985, pp. 4-6, 22.

More Information

NASA Glenn Research Center's 2001 Plan to Land Humans on Mars Three Years Ago

High Noon on the Moon (1991)

Near-Term and Long-Term Goals: Space Station and Lunar Base (1983-1984)

A New Step in Spaceflight Evolution: To Mars by Flyby-Landing Excursion Mode (1966)

Revival: A Piloted Mars Flyby in the 1990s (1985)

An Orbital Transfer Vehicle (OTV) carrying a drum-shaped Command Module aerobrakes in Earth's atmosphere in this NASA painting by Pat Rawlings. 

In the 1960s, NASA expended nearly as much study money and effort on piloted Mars and Venus flyby mission planning as it did on its more widely known plans for piloted Mars landings. Italian aviation and rocketry pioneer Gaetano Crocco had described a free-return piloted Mars/Venus flyby mission in 1956. Piloted flyby studies within NASA began with the EMPIRE study the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) Future Projects Office initiated in 1962 and culminated in the NASA-wide Planetary Joint Action Group (JAG) piloted flyby study of 1966-1967.

The Planetary JAG, led by the NASA Headquarters Office of Manned Space Flight, brought together engineers from MSFC, Kennedy Space Center, the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC), and Washington, DC-based planning contractor Bellcomm. It issued a Phase I report in October 1966 and continued Phase II study work in Fiscal Year (FY) 1967. The Phase I report emphasized a piloted Mars flyby mission in 1975, but included Mars and Venus flyby missions tailored to low-energy mission opportunities through 1981. All would be based on hardware developed for the Apollo Program and its planned successor, the Apollo Applications Program (AAP).

The piloted flyby spacecraft would carry automated probes, including one that would land on Mars, collect a sample of surface material and launch it back to the flyby spacecraft for immediate analysis. A leading point in favor of the piloted flyby mission was, in fact, the ability of the flyby crew to examine a Mars sample for signs of life less than an an hour after it left the martian surface.

Red planet off the port bow: a piloted flyby spacecraft based on Apollo spacecraft hardware releases probes as it passes Mars. Image credit: Douglas Aircraft Company.

According to Edward Clinton Ezell and Linda Neumann Ezell, writing in their 1984 NASA-published history On Mars: Exploration of the Red Planet, 1958-1978, NASA MSC was largely responsible for the demise of 1960s piloted flyby mission planning. On 3 August 1967, the Houston, Texas-based center, home of the astronaut corps and Mission Control, distributed to 28 aerospace companies a Request for Proposal (RFP) for a piloted Mars flyby spacecraft sample-returner design study. By doing this, MSC appeared to disregard warnings from Congress that no new NASA program starts would be tolerated.

In the summer of 1967, NASA was preoccupied with recovery from the 27 January 1967 Apollo 1 fire, which had killed astronauts Virgil Grissom, Roger Chaffee, and Ed White. Many in Congress felt that NASA had been lax in enforcing quality and safety standards at North American Aviation, the Apollo Command and Service Module spacecraft prime contractor, so deserved to be "punished" for the accident. Other members of Congress were angered by NASA's apparent failure to share its concerns regarding NAA's performance so they could exercise Congressional oversight. They did not, however, wish to cut Apollo funding and endanger accomplishment of Apollo's very public goal of a man on the Moon by 1970.

In addition, by August 1967, the Federal budget deficit for FY 1967 had reached $30 billion. Though negligible by modern standards, this was a shocking sum in 1967. The deficit was driven in large part by the cost of fighting in Indochina, which had reached more than $2 billion a month, or the entire Apollo Program budget of $25 billion every 10 months.

After learning of the MSC RFP, long-time House Space Committee Chair and NASA supporter Joseph Karth declared angrily that "a manned mission to Mars or Venus by 1975 or 1977 is now and always has been out of the question — and anyone who persists in this kind of misallocation of resources. . .is going to be stopped." On 16 August, the House cut all funding for advanced planning from NASA's FY 1968 budget bill and slashed the budget for AAP from $455 million to $122 million. Total cuts to President Lyndon Baines Johnson's January 1967 FY 1968 NASA budget request amounted to more than $500 million, or about 10% of NASA's FY 1967 budget total.

Though he opposed the cuts, President Johnson bowed to the inevitable and signed the budget into law. The Planetary JAG and Bellcomm tied up loose ends of the piloted flyby study during FY 1968, but most work on the concept ended within a few months of the Houston center's ill-timed RFP.

It is ironic, then, that NASA's next piloted Mars flyby study took place in Houston, at Johnson Space Center (JSC), as MSC had been re-christened following President Johnson's death in January 1973. Barney Roberts, an engineer in the JSC Engineering Directorate, reported on the study to the joint NASA-Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) Manned Mars Missions workshop in June 1985.

The workshop, held at NASA MSFC, was a significant step in the revival of piloted Mars exploration planning within NASA after the long drought of the 1970s. Unfortunately, in their plan for a piloted Mars flyby in the 1990s, NASA JSC engineers demonstrated little sign of awareness of the 1960s piloted flyby studies. As a result, their proposed mission was less credible than it might have been.

Roberts explained that the NASA JSC flyby plan aimed to counter a possible Soviet piloted Mars flyby. He cited a 1984 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) memorandum that suggested (without citing much in the way of evidence) that the Soviet Union might attempt such a mission in the 1990s — possibly as early as the 75th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1992 — in order to garner international prestige. The CIA study had been performed at the request of Apollo 17 moonwalker Harrison Schmitt, whose chief spaceflight interest in the early-to-mid 1980s was a piloted Mars mission.

NASA's piloted Mars flyby would be based on space hardware expected to be operational and readily available in the late 1990s. Space Shuttle Orbiters would deliver to NASA's Space Station an 18-ton Mission Module (MM) and a pair of expendable propellant tanks with an empty mass of 11.6 tons each. The MM, derived from a Space Station module, would carry a 3000-pound solar-flare radiation shelter, 7000 pounds of science equipment, and 2300 pounds of food and water.

Going for a ride: a piloted Mars flyby spacecraft prepares for launch from Earth orbit in the late 1990s. A = twin Orbital Transfer Vehicles (OTVs); B = twin strap-on propellant tanks; C = Command Module; D = Mission Module. Image credit: NASA/David S. F. Portree.

The MM would be docked to a six-ton Command Module (CM) and two 5.75-ton Orbital Transfer Vehicles (OTVs). The OTVs would each include an aerobrake heat shield and two rocket engines derived from the Space Shuttle Main Engine. The JSC engineers had assumed that the CM and OTVs would be in space already as part of a late 1990s NASA Lunar Base Program. The strap-on tanks would be joined to the MM/CM stack by trunnion pins similar to those used to anchor payloads in the Space Shuttle Orbiter payload bay, then Space Station astronauts would perform spacewalks to link propellant pipes and electrical and control cables.

Shuttle-derived heavy-lift rockets would then deliver a total of 221 tons of cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants to the Space Station to fill the piloted flyby spacecraft's twin tanks. The propellants would be pumped aboard just prior to departure from Earth orbit to prevent liquid hydrogen loss through boil off. Mass of the piloted flyby spacecraft at the start of its Earth-departure maneuver would total 358 tons.

As the launch window for the Mars flyby opportunity opened, the piloted flyby spacecraft would move away from the Space Station using small thrusters on retractable arms, then the four OTV engines would ignite and burn for about one hour to put it on course for Mars. The only propulsive maneuver of the baseline mission, the burn would empty the OTV and strap-on propellant tanks. Roberts advised retaining the spent tanks to serve as shielding against meteoroids and radiation for the MM and CM during the year-long flight.

Roberts told the workshop that the flyby spacecraft would spend two-and-a-half hours within about 20,000 miles of Mars. Closest approach would bring it to within 160 miles of Mars. At closest approach, the spacecraft would be moving at about 5 miles per second.

The spacecraft would then begin its long return to Earth. Roberts provided few details of the interplanetary phases of his piloted Mars flyby mission.

As Earth grew from a bright star to a distant disk, the Mars flyby astronauts would discard the twin strap-on tanks. They would then undock one OTV by remote control and re-dock it to the front of the CM. After entering the CM and sealing the hatch leading to the MM, they would discard the MM and second OTV, then would then strap into their couches to prepare for aerobraking in Earth's upper atmosphere and capture into Earth orbit. After the OTV/CM combination completed the aerobraking maneuver, the crew would pilot it to a docking with the Space Station.

Almost home: the piloted Mars spacecraft prepares for the aerobraking maneuver in Earth's atmosphere at the end of its epic year-long interplanetary voyage. A = OTVs; C = Command Module bearing crew; D = discarded Mission Module (attached to discarded OTV). Image credit: NASA/David S. F. Portree.

Roberts told the NASA/LANL workshop that Earth return would be the most challenging phase of the piloted Mars flyby mission. The OTV/CM combination would encounter Earth's upper atmosphere at a speed of 55,000 feet (10.4 miles) per second, producing reentry heating well beyond the planned capacity of the OTV's heat shield. In addition, the crew would suffer "exorbitant" deceleration after living for a year in weightlessness.

Roberts proposed a "brute-force" solution to these problems: use the OTV's twin rocket motors to slow the OTV/CM to lunar-return speed of 35,000 feet (6.6 miles) per second. The braking burn would, however, increase the Mars flyby spacecraft's total required propellant load to nearly 500 tons. He calculated that, assuming that a Shuttle-derived heavy-lift rocket could be designed to deliver cargo to LEO at a cost of $500 per pound (an optimistic assumption, as it would turn out), then Earth-braking propellant would add $250 million to his mission's cost.

Roberts briefly considered partially compensating for the large mass of braking propellants by substituting an MM derived from a five-ton Space Station logistics module for the 18-ton MM. This would mean, however, that the crew would have to spend a year in cramped quarters with no exercise or science equipment.

Planners in the 1960s had wrestled with and prevailed over the same problems of propellant mass and Earth-return speed that NASA JSC engineers faced in their 1985 study. Bellcomm had, for example, proposed in June 1967 that the Planetary JAG's piloted Mars flyby mission conserve propellants through assembly of the flyby spacecraft in an elliptical orbit, not circular Space Station orbit. The elliptical assembly orbit would mean, in effect, that the flyby spacecraft would begin Earth-orbit departure even as it was being assembled.

In addition, returning the crew directly to Earth's surface in a small Apollo-type capsule with a beefed-up heat shield would greatly reduce the quantity of braking propellants required; it could eliminate the braking maneuver entirely. It would also enable an aerodynamic "skip" maneuver that would reduce deceleration stress on the astronauts.

TRW Space Technology Laboratory had proposed as early as 1964, during the EMPIRE follow-on studies, that NASA use a Venus flyby to slow spacecraft returning from Mars. Crocco had described the concept in 1956, in fact, though in a form that turned out to be unworkable because of errors he made when he calculated his flyby spacecraft's orbit about the Sun.

Exploiting a Venus flyby to reduce speed would, of course, limit Earth-Mars-Earth transfer opportunities to those that would intersect Venus on the return leg, but would also eliminate the costly end-of-mission braking burn and enable Venus exploration as a bonus. The Planetary JAG's October 1966 report described Mars-Venus and Venus-Mars-Venus flyby missions in the late 1970s. Bellcomm determined in late 1966 and 1967 that Mars/Venus flyby opportunities are not rare.

Sources

"Soviet Plans for a Manned Flight to Mars," C. Cravotta and M. DeForth, Office of Scientific and Weapons Research, Central Intelligence Agency, 2 April 1985.

"Concept for a Manned Mars Flyby," Barney B. Roberts, Manned Mars Missions: Working Group Papers, Volume 1, NASA M002, NASA/LANL, June 1986, pp. 203-218; proceedings of a workshop held at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama, 10-14 June 1985.

On Mars: Exploration of the Red Planet, 1958-1978, NASA SP-4212, Edward Clinton Ezell & Linda Neuman Ezell, NASA History Office, 1984, pp. 117-118.

Humans to Mars: Fifty Years of Mission Planning, 1950-2000, Monographs in Aerospace History #21, NASA SP-2001-4521, David S. F. Portree, NASA History Division, February 2001, pp. 11-12, 15, 60-62.

More Information

After EMPIRE: Using Apollo Technology to Explore Mars and Venus (1965)

Relighting the FIRE: A 1966 Proposal for Piloted Interplanetary Mission Reentry Tests

Apollo Ends at Venus: A 1967 Proposal for Single-Launch Piloted Venus Flybys in 1972, 1973, and 1975

Triple Flyby: Venus-Mars-Venus Piloted Flyby Missions in the Late 1970s/Early 1980s (1967)

Near-Term and Long-Term Goals: Space Station and Lunar Base (1983-1984)

The Space Operations Center (SOC), a Shuttle-launched multimodular station concept NASA Johnson Space Center and its contractors studied starting in 1978, was an oft-cited exemplar of NASA space station thinking in the early 1980s, when Science Applications Incorporated performed its study for the National Science Foundation. Image credit: NASA.

In December 1983, the Division of Policy Research and Analysis of the National Science Foundation enlisted Science Applications Incorporated (SAI) of McLean, Virginia, to compare the science and technology research potential of an Earth-orbiting space station with that of a base on the Moon. In its report, which was completed on 10 January 1984, SAI cautioned that, because its study was performed "in a very short two-week period," it could offer only "a preliminary indication" of the relative merits of a space station in low-Earth orbit (LEO) and a lunar base. Though SAI did not say so, its study had a short turnaround because its results were meant to inform the White House ahead of President Ronald Reagan's planned announcement of a NASA space station program during his 25 January 1984 State of the Union Address.

SAI explained that its study used a four-step approach. First, the study team judged which science and technology disciplines could best be served by an LEO space station and which by a lunar base. Next, the team developed a lunar base conceptual design capable of serving the disciplines it identified. It then developed a transportation system concept for deploying and maintaining its base. Finally, the team estimated the cost of its lunar base.

The team identified five science and technology disciplines that would be better served by a base on the Moon than by a space station. The first was radio astronomy. Bowl-shaped radio telescopes might be built in bowl-shaped lunar craters, SAI wrote. Radio astronomers might take advantage of the Moon's Farside (the hemisphere turned permanently away from Earth), where up to 2160 miles of rock would shield their instruments from terrestrial radio interference. The 238,000-mile separation between lunar and terrestrial radio telescopes would permit Very Long Baseline Interferometry observations, enabling astronomers to map minute details of galaxies far beyond the Milky Way.

A bowl-shaped crater makes an ideal site for a bowl-shaped radio telescope. Visible stars are artist's license; the harsh glare of the Sun in lunar daylight would banish them from view. Image credit: NASA.

High-energy astrophysics and physics was SAI's second lunar base discipline. The team noted that, because the Moon offers "a large, flat area, a free vacuum, and a local source of refined material for magnets," it might become an economical site for a large particle accelerator.

Lunar geology (which SAI called "selenology") would obviously be better served by a lunar base than by a space station. SAI noted that, despite 13 successful U.S. robotic lunar missions and six successful Apollo landings, the Moon had "barely been sampled and explored." Lunar base selenological exploration would focus on "understanding better the early history and internal structure of the Moon" and "exploring for possible ore and volatile deposits." Selenologists would rove far afield from the base to measure heat flow and magnetic properties, drill deep into the surface, deploy seismographs, and collect and analyze rock samples.

SAI's fourth lunar discipline was resource utilization. The study team noted that samples returned to Earth by the Apollo astronauts contain 40% oxygen by weight, along with silicon, titanium, and other useful chemical elements. Lunar oxygen could be used as oxidizer for chemical-propulsion spacecraft traveling between Earth and Moon and from LEO to geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO). Silicon could be used to make solar cells. (SAI pointed out, however, that the two-week lunar night would make reliance on solar arrays for electricity "somewhat difficult.") Raw lunar dirt — known as regolith — could serve as radiation shielding. If water ice were found at the lunar poles — perhaps by the automated lunar polar orbiter SAI advised should precede the lunar base program — then the Moon might supply hydrogen rocket fuel as well as oxidizer.

SAI's fifth and final lunar base science discipline was systems development. The team expected that lunar base technology development would be "devoted to improving the efficiency and capabilities of systems that support the base," such as life support, with the goal of "reduced reliance on supplies sent from Earth." Transport system development might include research aimed at developing a linear electromagnetic launcher of the kind first proposed by Arthur C. Clarke in 1950. Such a device — often called a "mass driver" or "rail gun" — might eventually launch bulk cargoes (for example, lunar regolith, liquid oxygen propellant, and refined ores) to sites all around the Earth-Moon system.

The SAI team noted that some disciplines might be served equally well by a lunar base or an Earth-orbiting space station. Large (100-meter) telescopes for optical astronomy, for example, might be equally effective on the Moon or in Earth orbit. The Moon, however, would offer a solid surface that might enable the "pointing stability and optical system coherence" such a telescope would need to perform adequately.

SAI acknowledged that its report proposed "research and development activities. . .too numerous and often too difficult for a first-generation lunar base." It thus divided activities within the five lunar base disciplines into two categories: those suitable for its first-generation base and those that would need a more elaborate second-generation facility. First-generation radio astronomy, for example, would use two small dish antennas on Nearside (the lunar hemisphere always facing Earth). In the second generation, a 100-meter-diameter antenna would operate on Farside.

Having defined its lunar base science program, the SAI team moved on to the second and third steps in its study. The team assumed that NASA's Space Shuttle, which at the time they wrote had just completed its ninth flight (STS-9/Spacelab 1, 28 November-8 December 1983), would form part of the lunar base transportation infrastructure, along with an LEO space station. The Shuttle would cheaply and reliably deliver lunar base crews, spacecraft, and cargo to the station, where they would be brought together for flight to the Moon. SAI proposed reapplying hardware developed for the LEO station — for example, pressurized modules — to the lunar base program.

An October 1984 paper by study participants Steve Hoffman and John Niehoff for the first Lunar Bases and Space Activities of the 21st Century symposium provided additional details of SAI's Earth-Moon transportation system and surface base design. Where details in the October 1984 paper conflict with those in the December 1983 report, the description that follows defaults to information contained only in the latter (mostly).

Homeward bound: an Orbital Transfer Vehicle (OTV) bearing a returning lunar base crew aerobrakes in Earth's atmosphere. After aerobraking it will rendezvous with NASA's space station. Image credit: Pat Rawlings/NASA.

SAI's lunar transportation system would include three types of spacecraft. The first, the reusable Orbital Transfer Vehicle (OTV), would be a two-stage vehicle permanently based at the LEO station. SAI assumed that NASA would develop OTVs for moving cargoes between the LEO station and higher orbits (for example, GEO) and that the basic OTV design would then be modified for lunar base use. The OTV, which would operate as a piloted spacecraft through addition of a pressurized "personnel pod," would deliver up to 16,950 kilograms of crew and cargo to lunar orbit.

An OTV-derived four-legged lunar lander would form the basis of two vehicles: the Logistics Lander and the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM). The former would include a removable subsystem module for automated lunar landings and the latter would carry a personnel pod for piloted flight. These were listed as the second and third spacecraft in SAI's lunar transportation system, though one might argue that they were actually tricked-up OTVs.

SAI's one-way cargo lunar flight mode. Please click to enlarge. Image credit: Science Applications Incorporated.

The three vehicle types would support two basic lunar flight modes. One-way cargo missions would use Direct Descent. The OTV first stage would ignite and burn nearly all of its propellants, then would separate, turn around, and fire its engines to slow down and return to the LEO station for refurbishment. The OTV second stage would then ignite, burn most of its propellants, and separate from the Logistics Lander. The second stage would swing around the Moon on a free-return trajectory, fall back to Earth, aerobrake in Earth's atmosphere, and rendezvous with the LEO station. The Logistics Lander, meanwhile, would descend directly to the lunar base site with no stop in lunar orbit.

For two-way crew sorties, the OTV first stage would operate as during a one-way cargo mission. After a three-day flight, the OTV second stage/personnel pod combination would ignite its engines to slow itself so the Moon's gravity could capture it into lunar orbit. There it would dock with a waiting LEM carrying lunar base astronauts bound for Earth, who would trade places with the new base crew. In addition to the new crew, 12,750 kilograms of propellants (sufficient for a round trip from lunar orbit to the surface base and back again) and up to 2000 kilograms of cargo would be transferred from the OTV second stage/personnel pod to the LEM.

SAI's roundtrip crew rotation lunar flight mode. Please click to enlarge. Image credit: Science Applications Incorporated.

The OTV second stage/personnel pod and the LEM would then separate. The former would fire its engines to depart lunar orbit for Earth, and the latter would descend to a landing at the lunar base. The OTV second stage/personnel pod combination would subsequently aerobrake in Earth's atmosphere and return to the LEO station for refurbishment.

SAI's base buildup sequence would begin with a pair of Site Survey Mission flights. The first would see an unpiloted LEM with empty propellant tanks placed into lunar orbit through a variant of the crew sortie mode. An automated OTV second stage bearing the LEM in place of a personnel pod would enter lunar orbit, undock from the LEM, and return to Earth.

The second Site Survey Mission flight would employ another variant of the Crew Sortie mode. Five astronauts would arrive in lunar orbit on board an OTV second stage/personnel pod and dock with the waiting LEM. The four astronauts of the base site survey team would transfer to the LEM along with propellants and supplies. They would then undock and land at the proposed base site, leaving the OTV pilot alone in lunar orbit. After completing their survey of the site, they would return to the OTV second stage/personnel pod, then would undock from the LEM and return to Earth orbit.

Assuming that the base site checked out as acceptable, Flight 3 would see the start of base deployment. A Logistics Lander would employ Direct Descent mode to deliver to the base site an Interface Module and a Power Plant. The Interface Module, which would be based on LEO space station hardware, would include a cylindrical airlock, a top-mounted observation bubble, and a cylindrical tunnel with ports for attaching other base modules. SAI's proposed Power Plant was a nuclear source capable of generating 100 kilowatts of electricity.

Flight 4 would deliver two "mass mover" rovers, two 2000-kilogram mobile laboratory trailers, and a 1000-kilogram lunar resource utilization pilot plant. The rovers would tow the mobile labs up to 200 kilometers from the base on selenologic excursions lasting up to five days. The mobile labs would carry instruments for microscopic imaging, elemental and mineral analysis, and subsurface ice detection, stereo cameras, and a soil auger or core tube for drilling up to two meters deep. The first-generation lunar resource utilization pilot plant would process 10,000 kilograms of regolith per year to yield oxygen, silicon, iron, aluminum, titanium, magnesium, and calcium.

Flight 5 would deliver the Laboratory Module, the first 14-foot-diameter, 40-foot-long cylindrical base module based on the pressurized module design used to build the LEO station. Flight 6 would deliver the Habitat Module, which would provide living quarters for the seven-person base crew, and Flight 7 would deliver the Resources Module, which would include a pressurized control center and an unpressurized section containing water and oxygen tanks and equipment for life support, power conditioning, and thermal control. The final base deployment flight, a duplicate of Flight 1, would deliver a backup LEM to lunar orbit.

Long-term occupation of the Moon would begin with Flight 9, a crew sortie mission that would deliver a four-person construction team. Flight 10 would see three more astronauts join the construction team, bringing the total base population to seven. The OTV pilots for these flights would return to Earth alone after the construction teams undocked and landed at the base in their respective LEMs.

Using the mass mover rovers, the base crew would unload the Logistics Landers and join together the base components. The completed base would provide seven astronauts with 2000 cubic feet of living space per person. They would attach the Lab, Hab, and Resource Modules to the Interface Module, then would link the resource utilization pilot plant to the Lab Module.

The Power Plant would be placed a safe distance away from the base and linked by a cable to the base power conditioning system. The crew would then use hoses to link the Power Plant and base thermal control system to a heat exchanger/heat sink. Finally, after Power Plant activation, the astronauts would use bulldozer scoops on the rovers to cover the pressurized modules with regolith radiation shielding.

Flight 11, the first base crew rotation flight, would see the four-person construction team that arrived on Flight 9 lift off in a LEM and return to lunar orbit, where they would dock with an OTV second stage/personnel pod combination just arrived from Earth. The Flight 9 lunar base team would trade places with them and, following LEM refueling and cargo loading, would descend to a landing at the base. The first construction team and the Flight 11 OTV pilot would then return to the LEO station. On Flight 12, a three-person base team would replace the Flight 10 team.

Lunar base teams of three or four astronauts would rotate every two months. The typical base complement would include a commander/LEM pilot, a LEM pilot/mechanic, a technician/mechanic, a doctor/scientist, a geologist, a chemist, and a biologist/doctor.

Mass mover rover in the field with advanced power cart and deep drill rig. Image credit: NASA.

SAI then estimated the cost of its lunar base and three years of operations based on NASA's cost estimates for the Space Shuttle and the LEO station. At the time SAI conducted its study, NASA placed the cost of its proposed LEO station at between $8 billion and $12 billion. This was in fact an underestimation calculated to make the station more politically palatable to the White House and Congress. NASA placed the total cost of LEO station Logistics, Habitat, Laboratory, and Resource Modules and other structures at $7.1 billion, so SAI estimated the total cost of the lunar base Resource, Habitat, Laboratory, and Interface Modules at $5.8 billion.

Although the OTV would find uses in LEO and GEO, SAI charged all of its development and procurement costs (a total of $7.2 billion) to the lunar base. The expendable Logistics Lander and reusable LEM would cost $6.6 billion and $4.8 billion, respectively. The LEM, though structurally beefier and more complex, would cost less because the Logistics Lander would bear the development cost of systems common to both landers.

Based on optimistic NASA pricing, the SAI team assumed that a Shuttle flight would cost $110 million in 1990. The 89 Shuttle flights in the lunar base program would thus cost a total of $9.8 billion. The LEO station, by contrast, would need only 17 Shuttle flights at a cost of $1.9 billion. SAI placed total LEO station cost plus three years of operations at $14.2 billion. Lunar base cost plus three years of operations came to $54.8 billion.

To conclude its report, SAI noted that both the LEO station and the lunar base could be completed in about a decade. The LEO station would, however, serve a broader science user community and would provide an OTV base in LEO for eventual lunar base use. The SAI team argued that the LEO station was a reasonable near-term (10-year) objective, while the lunar base would yield obvious benefits in a long-term (50 years) space program. It added that the

Space Program will function best if it has both near-term objectives and long-range goals. The near-term objectives assure [sic] that we progress with each year that passes. The long-range goals provide direction for our annual progress. The Space Station and Lunar Base appear to serve these respective roles at the present time.

Sources

A Manned Lunar Science Base: An Alternative to Space Station Science? A Brief Comparative Assessment, Report No. SAI-84/1502, Science Applications, Inc., 10 January 1984.

"Preliminary Design of a Permanently Manned Lunar Surface Research Base," S. Hoffman and J. Niehoff, Science Applications International Corporation; published in Lunar Bases and Space Activities of the 21st Century, "papers from a NASA sponsored, public symposium hosted by the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., Oct[ober] 29-31, 1984," W. W. Mendell, editor, Lunar and Planetary Institute, 1985, pp. 69-75.

More Information

Chronology: Space Station 1.0

As Gemini Was to an Apollo Lunar Landing by 1970, So Apollo Would Be to a Permanent Lunar Base by 1980 (1968)

"A Vision of the Future": Military Uses of the Moon and Asteroids (1983)