[QUOTE=Lumpy]
For the launch of three Saturn V’s you could land your habitat, a supply module, and then your astronauts,
[/QUOTE]
We don’t have the Saturn V (i.e. we no longer have the tooling, handling fixtures, and many of the engineering details needed to build it) nor anything of the same payload class (118,000 kg to LEO). The next most powerful vehicle that one could plausibly put together in a short time would be a Shuttle-derived platform like the Shuttle-C (~77,000 kg to LEO). The Energia system used on the Buran–an Energia Core plus 4x kerosene/lox strap-on motors–carried about 90,000 kg to LEO, and the Vulkan (a Core plus 6x strap-ons) would have carried somewhere around 110,000 to 120,000 kg to LEO, but as far as I know the Energia booster is no longer available for manufacture. The next heaviest vehicles are the Delta-IV Heavy and Atlas V EELVs with 25,800 kg and 20,000 kg to LEO. The Soyuz-U (used for manned Soyuz capsule launches) is 7,200 kg to LEO, and the Long March 2 (used for Shenzhou-5 and -6 launches) must loft somewhere between 12,000 and 20,000 kg (based on scaling of the Soyuz-like capsule). So we don’t have anything to launch an Apollo-type mission (lunar orbit rendezvous with a full-up command capsule, service module, and lunar ascent vehicle), and we’d be stretching to launch an Earth orbit rendezvous using two separate systems. The Apollo system was also pushed to the limit to soft-land 5,000 kg on the lunar surface. (It’s no good to get your hardware there only to dash it into the regolith, and you have no atmosphere for gliding or parachuting, so you’re burning all the way down which eats away at payload).
So we don’t have the launch vehicle to do it, although NASA and their contractors are busy developing the Ares rocket system to replace it, with the man-rated Ares IV giving payload to LEO performance about twice the Saturn IB, and the payload-rated Ares V giving performance somewhat superior to a Saturn V. Neither of these is expected to be ready before 2018 (the scheduled date for the Ares V-Y all-up test flight).
[QUOTE=Tom Tildrum]
Would there be an advantage to building a telescope on the dark side?
[/QUOTE]
No. First of all, there is no “dark side of the Moon.” There is a far side of the Moon, because the Moon is tidally locked to the Earth and the far side always faces away, but it spends half of its ~29.5 day Solar-synodic period facing the Sun. (There are patches near the poles that are, due to geography, in permanent shadow, but they’re few and probably not well suited for astronomy, besides being difficult to reach.) Second, the Moon is not geologically stable; tidal stresses result in occasional Moonquakes and frequent smaller vibrations which are not ideal. Finally, placing an observatory on the surface of the Moon would limit its observational field to whatever is above the horizon. Placing a satellite observatory in orbit, on the other hand, gives you nearly the entire horizon for the asking and isolates you from the problems of vibration, atmosphere, et cetera. There is absolutely no reason to go to the excess effort of constructing a Lunar based telescope when you already have to lug it up from the Earth’s surface.
As for the questions of the o.p., and assuming that in addition to an unlimited budget that we’ll also accept a much higher threshold for risk, we could probably build a system to place people on the Moon in 5-8 years. A Moonbase is a somewhat more difficult proposition, but once you’ve matured the basic difficulty of getting there it is more a matter of incremental and evolutionary improvements; 10-12 years would be my call. However, in a more risk-adverse and limited budget environment (among other problems that the current space program has to deal with) the current estimate of a return to the Moon sometime around 2020 is probably highly optimistic.
[QUOTE=FoieGrasIsEvil]
I wonder what (if any) alternate propulsion means are being developed/considered for future space travel?
[/QUOTE]
Such as? Aside from eventually promising but currently too small thrust to be useful ion jets, and proposed but undeveloped and risky nuclear fission thermal systems, burning chemical fuels to get momentum transfer is our only means of viable propulsion. Nuclear fusion powered rocket motors would be great; now all we have to do is make controlled fusion workable. It’ll only be another “another “another twenty or thirty years.””
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