Location
Holiday Inn, Manatee Rooms A & B
Start Date
26-4-1995 2:00 PM
End Date
26-4-1995 5:00 PM
Description
Exploration of the Moon and development of lunar resources will require delivering habitat facilities to a number of lunar surface locations and include grouping habitats to form colonies plus emplacement of storage facilities for lunar-derived fluids. Liquid Oxygen Tank-lntertank Structure subassemblies derived from the National Space Transportation System (NSTS) External Tank (Figure 1) can be outfitted as Lunar Tank Assemblies (LTA) at the International Space Station Alpha (ISSA) to provide such support facilities. The ISSA would require the addition of an auxiliary truss and a second Space Station Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS); these additions would not compromise the ISSA functionality. On-orbit outfitting would not degrade the structural integrity of the external tanks. These LTA concepts would be capable of autonomous unmanned flight and soft landing at a preselected lunar site. These concepts include habitats and industrial configurations for liquification/storage of oxygen or hydrogen. Previous evaluations of on-orbit outfitting, utilizing the U. S. Space Station Freedom, were performed in support of the NASA Langley Research Center (References 1 and 2). As a result of independent efforts, Bionetics obtained patents for the habitat configuration shown in Figure 2 and for outfitting an external tank as a cryogenic transporter for the lunar-derived isotope Helium-3 (not shown). The current study describes concepts for LTA outfitting at the ISSA with specific features for habitats and industrial storage configurations. Assessments of transit and lunar surface operations led to the conclusion that on-orbit outfitting of LTA's would be an asset to any lunar program.
Paper Session II-C - On-Orbit Outfitted Shuttle External Tanks Applied to Lunar Exploration and Industrialization
Holiday Inn, Manatee Rooms A & B
Exploration of the Moon and development of lunar resources will require delivering habitat facilities to a number of lunar surface locations and include grouping habitats to form colonies plus emplacement of storage facilities for lunar-derived fluids. Liquid Oxygen Tank-lntertank Structure subassemblies derived from the National Space Transportation System (NSTS) External Tank (Figure 1) can be outfitted as Lunar Tank Assemblies (LTA) at the International Space Station Alpha (ISSA) to provide such support facilities. The ISSA would require the addition of an auxiliary truss and a second Space Station Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS); these additions would not compromise the ISSA functionality. On-orbit outfitting would not degrade the structural integrity of the external tanks. These LTA concepts would be capable of autonomous unmanned flight and soft landing at a preselected lunar site. These concepts include habitats and industrial configurations for liquification/storage of oxygen or hydrogen. Previous evaluations of on-orbit outfitting, utilizing the U. S. Space Station Freedom, were performed in support of the NASA Langley Research Center (References 1 and 2). As a result of independent efforts, Bionetics obtained patents for the habitat configuration shown in Figure 2 and for outfitting an external tank as a cryogenic transporter for the lunar-derived isotope Helium-3 (not shown). The current study describes concepts for LTA outfitting at the ISSA with specific features for habitats and industrial storage configurations. Assessments of transit and lunar surface operations led to the conclusion that on-orbit outfitting of LTA's would be an asset to any lunar program.
Comments
Lunar Industrialization and Colonization
Session Chairman: Hyam Benaroya, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Rutgers University
Session Organizer: Alan Drysdale