Put simply, if we wanted to recreate the accomplishments of the Apollo Program ASAP (maybe we’ve found out moondust cures herpes or something, don’t fight the hypothetical), how soon could we expect our new project to achieve fruition? Could we just recycle all the old ideas from the '60s and dust off the Saturn Vs or would we need to start from scratch?
Last time this came up, the concenses was that we could use the ideas of the Apollo project but we would have to rebuild literally everything–the VAB has been repurposed for space shuttles, for instances. The best guess to time to a moon landing was about ten years.
We might be able to speed things up and simplify if we skip the whole “Saturn V” part of the equation and stage things at the International Space Station.
We could recycle all of the old designs, but would we want to? New knowledge and materials should allow the mission to be done more cheaply.
The original Apollo program took about eight years to land a man on the moon, and started almost from zero. The Mercury program started in 1959, so you could probably say it took ten years from knowing nearly nothing about spaceflight to landing a man on the moon. The first Saturn V rocket flew in late 1967, so theoretically you could take everything we knew at that point and start from there and say that if we really were committed to getting a crew to the moon ASAFP, we ought to be able to do it in 18 months.
The reality is that a lot of institutional knowledge that was developed during the 1960’s has probably been lost, in terms of the science and engineering to build a moon rocket, and in terms of the mission management that evolved over the course of several Apollo flights. Even with all of the Saturn V blueprints in hand, I think you’d have to redo a lot of R&D before you could even begin assembling a new rocket.
It seems much more likely that NASA would start nearly from scratch using the latest materials and techniques to build a modern moon rocket. A lot of aerospace knowledge that was learned in the 60’s (what happens to a vehicle at Mach 5/10/20 at 10K/50K/500K feet, etc.) would be useful though.
This seems pessimistic, since it took about ten years the first time, and those guys were starting nearly from scratch. We know a lot more about space flight now than they did back then, and we have faster development cycles for designing and building harware. Whereas in the '60’s they had to design parts according to very basic theory using slide rules and drafting pencils, then test prototypes that took a long time to fabricate, then repeat the cycle with some guesses at refinements, now we can design parts using solid-modeling software, subjecting them to rigorous numerical simulations and refinements along the way before a real part ever gets fabricated. Fabrication with CNC machines is pretty quick, and once that part gets made for the first time, it’s already a lot closer to optimal than it would have been 50 years ago, so it takes far fewer rounds of testing/refining before you arrive at the final design.
I would like to think that if we threw the same kind of resources at the problem as was done 50 years ago, we could do it in less than five years.
The other question, I would think, is “how safe?”
Is it a race like last time, or are we building a permanent path? How many test flights before the real deal?
I would imagine there are a lot of pieces that can be recycled. We have rockets that can heft a decent mass; we have rendezvous capability; we have extra stages like the one that boosted the planetary satellites, quite capable of launching from orbit to orbit. We could build habitation units to hold a live astronaut quite easily. The lander might be the only custom-built device, but it might also recycle used parts. And the re-entry vehicle; IIRC, they used the atmospher to slow down , entering much faster than LEO entry.
heck, even the most recent candidates for the USA new space flight programs recently incorporated pieces of existing equipment.
The question is whether there would be any glitches when you bolted it all together…
I would guess, in a hurry there’d be something in a year. Worst case, 3 years. Now, who wants to volunteer to test it?
Airbus took about ten years to design and test the A380. And that’s with a standing army of engineers with the specific domain knowledge to do it. I can’t see how it’s possible to design and test a spacecraft in less time. Even if money is no obstacle.
Would it be needed to be a manned mission? Perhaps a up and coming mars rover can be repurposed. This would lower the thrust requirements as the rover can take longer then what is reasonable for human travel, and should be able to use existing rockets used to launch probes to Mar, Jupiter and Saturn. We would not have to reconstruct the Saturn V.
Airbus is a large private company. Presumably, this hypothetical wouldn’t be answered by having Airbus get you there: It would be one or more national governments, mobilizing all of the resources that the nation(s) can bring to bear on the project. That doesn’t mean the entire economy would be devoted to a moonshot–it’s not a war, and there’s ultimately only so much to do–but a lot more than any private company could mobilize.
Not to be a smart ass, but time from “we choose to go to the moon, not because it easy, but because it is hard” to “that is one small step for [a] man” was less than ten years. Seems illogical that it would take longer, but maybe with the way project management and planning is done now - it just would take longer. Of course we don’t have as much of a motive as we did then.
They weren’t starting from scratch when Kennedy made this comment, nor even from Mercury. Designers spent all of the 1950s planning for a moon launch. They just needed the institutional backing, public support, and lots of money.
What they got out of it was a tin can on top of a firecracker.* It worked just sufficiently well enough to move around test pilots used to discomfort and danger. The Russians had institutional backing, public support, and lots of money too, and failed in the venture, probably because too much time and money kept being bled off for showy “firsts” and because Korolev died in 1966.
I do agree with Machine Elf that the limited goal of another tin can on top a firecracker is achievable in five years and probably less. The question is whether it would be possible in today’s world to create something so knowingly dangerous. I would bet not, even if moondust created unlimited potency until death.
*I don’t get hits on this phrase, but it was something similar. Please remind me if you remember the original.
Maybe Roman Candle instead of Firecracker.
It would also depend how much money we were willing to devote. At it’s peak in 1966, NASAs budget was 4.41% of the federal budget. If we were to devote whatever it took, it’d happen faster. As others have said, we know a lot more about how to do it than we did before Apollo.
The Constellation Program planned to have the majority of the vehicle launched by a large rocket and the manned capsule launched separately to dock in orbit. Perhaps they could use a SpaceX Dragon, and a couple of the currently available rockets to launch the major components. Then the most complicated thing they’d have to design and build from scratch would be the lunar lander.
I’d guess that they could have a new manned lunar landing program up and running within five or six years if it was well funded. Even quicker if we were in a money-is-no-object situation, like humanity was going to be wiped out and saving the day involved getting men to the moon.
I imagine that would be easier by several orders of magnitude; as you say we can reliably send probes to Mars but sending a man (or woman, this is the 21st century after all!) is a far more difficult task. As for the goals - get boots on the lunar surface ASAP, get 'em back - just like Apollo 11.
Rebuilding the mission control support team would be a huge challenge. There was a documentary on that a few years ago. That team was assembled back in the Gemini missions and then continued into the Apollo program. Their years of experience made the difference in getting Apollo 13 home.
mission control for the Shuttle has just been sent to the unemployment line. Any future space missions would require retraining a new mission control team from scratch.
How much do we want to get there? If we really really wanted to get there (everyone in US was going to die if we didn’t), I think we could get there pretty quickly. 4-7 years.
Anything short of death and it could easily take 10 years or more. See, here is the thing, on a broad scale, there is a tradeoff between time and safety.
There is an article that describes the lengths that the shuttle launch software team goes through to make sure their code works properly and safely. One example: “Take the upgrade of the software to permit the shuttle to navigate with Global Positioning Satellites, a change that involves just 1.5% of the program, or 6,366 lines of code. The specs for that one change run 2,500 pages, a volume thicker than a phone book. The specs for the current program fill 30 volumes and run 40,000 pages.” They put all of their effort on proper specifications writing, proper planning, careful execution, exhaustive error checking, re-checking, and re-checking.
If you do everything like that, it take a LONG time to get places. But that is what we as a society want. We don’t want 1 out of 3 missions to get there alive.
Another but related element:
Managing large projects for the government and making them succeed is very hard these days. The requirements never stop moving, safety concerns drive everything, environmental considerations are constantly challenging. The amount of bureaucracy that must be overcome to accomplish anything is staggering.
You know when the joint strike fighter (F35) development contract was signed? Nov 1996. That’s right, 16 years ago, and they expect “operational use” in 2016. And it doesn’t even leave the atmosphere. It’s not a fair comparison, I know, but it just gives an idea of how our government manages large hurdles these days.
As an immediate priority; I was too lazy to think of a scenario though.
What would be the way we’d do it these days? Is it plausible to construct the craft in near-Earth orbit, say by the ISS?
I don’t think we’d need to knock ourselves out coming up with a re-entry vehicle… and we really wouldn’t need to send it to the moon & back.
That assumes it’s no big deal to go from LEO to the Moon and back to LEO to hook up with the ISS, which might be a problem.
Sadly it is a very big deal. You have to get rid of an astounding amount of energy. There is no mechanism to quietly enter orbit and link up with the ISS. LEO has an orbital speed of about 7800m/s. The speed of the Apollo craft on re-entry was about 11,000m/s. This speed is pretty much non-negotiable - the craft has for all intents fallen to Earth from the Moon. Anything taking this journey is going to be going that fast. If you want to link up with the ISS you need to shed this additional energy somehow. This means either a seriously large rocket (which you will have had to take with you all the way to the moon and back) or aero-braking. The latter is possible, but pretty much gets you back to the complexity and risk of a full re-entry vehicle. Once you have shed the energy you also have to contend with the plane of your orbit - which needs to match the plane of the orbit of the ISS, more complication and probably more energy. Re-entry is understood well enough to not be a show stopper. The Orion capsule has been designed to cope, and the Apollo capsule design worked so well they could probably have reused the heatshield.
I don’t understand this. Why couldn’t we do it in a couple weeks, if this were the case? Just re-use plans from the 60s, with multiple groups, locales around the country. If a few missions fail, oh well.
Here are a few questions… Would people inside a space craft hear the roar of the engines on the way to the moon? Secondly, why did one astronaut who went to the moon report that the engines were roaring loud… Third, why would another astronaut who also went to the moon say he didn’t hear the engines because you can’t hear sound in the vacuum of space? The first astronaut’s answer is more believable… So why the conflict? I never believed that we didn’t go to the moon, but a few data points have introduced some doubt in my mind.
Also, if it’s not dangerous to pass through the Van Allen Radiation belt, why is NASA and other scientists working on solutions to destroy the Van Allen Radiation belt?
“HiVOLT (High Voltage Orbiting Long Tether) is a concept proposed by Russian physicist V.V. Danilov and further refined by Robert P. Hoyt and Robert L. Forward for removing the radiation fields of the Van Allen radiation belts[1] that surround the Earth. A proposed configuration consists of a system of five 100 km long conducting tethers deployed from satellites, and charged to a large voltage. This would cause charged particles that encounter the tethers to have their pitch angle changed, thus over time dissolving the Van Allen belts. Hoyt and Forward’s company, Tethers Unlimited, performed a preliminary analysis simulation, and produced a chart depicting a theoretical radiation flux reduction,[2] to less than 1% of current levels within two months[3] using the HiVOLT System.”
Suppose we wanted to send a couple of robots to the moon and back instead of men? How much of the difficulty is simply due to the danger of the mission? There have been many technology advances since the Apollo project. The spacecraft should be smaller, lighter and use more efficient rockets. The lunar module itself was so minimal it probably would remain much the same though.
If this were worthwhile mission unencumbered by risk to human life we’d be able to make something work in 5 years or less. Otherwise, in 15 to 20 years, after numerous failures and cost overruns, we’d land a man on the moon again. He’ll be welcomed by a delegation from China.