Re: Re. (...) Economic Role of Manned Space Stations

paul@i2.to
21 Jul 1999 11:40:00 -0700

On Tue, 20 July 1999, Spike Jones wrote:

> paul@i2.to wrote:
>
>>Completely unnecessary. With the right booster, the shuttle without *any*
>> modifications could easily reach lunar orbit. ...
>
> Paul, is this *really* you who wrote this, or an impostor?
>Hand over the ransom note.... {8^D

I currently have the real Paul tied and gagged in the corner! :-)

> If you take the shuttle in its current form, make the entire payload
> into more fuel and tanks, you *still* would be unable to get the
> delta vee necessary to take it to the moon. Nor would you
> want to.

Yikes Spike! Certainly not. What I was suggesting is that you strap some kind of inter-orbital transfer booster on after it has achieved LEO. The delta-V necessary to get to LEO is already (4/5?) the amount necessary to get to lunar orbit and back. So I'd imagine these inter-orbital boosters would not have to be nearly as big or dramatic as the solid-rocket boosters used on takeoff.

Cheers,

Paul