What is it about?
This paper looks at candidate architectures for a space fuel depot supplied with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen harvested from the Moon, not sent from the Earth. The paper looks at different locations for a fuel depot (LEO, GEO, and L1), and different methods of transporting the propellants (bulk transfer, or canister exchange), and different locations for the electrolysis/liquefaction (on the Moon or on the depot itself), and determines the best alternative based on the mass of propellant consumed in delivering propellant and the mass of propellant lost due to boiloff.
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Why is it important?
Numerous "architecture" papers for space depots have been written which attempt to envision "how things might work" and the numbers of vehicles required. This is the first paper to evaluate candidate architectures based on propellant consumption and loss calculations. This method gives the greatest credible insight into potential depot operations, because all the supporting calculations-- delta-v, propellant consumption, thermal environments, propellant boiloff, and others -- are well established and understood.
Perspectives
Harvesting water from cold traps at the lunar poles will allow mankind to push out into the solar system and break the "take everything with you" paradigm of space exploration. This paper gives credible insights into where a depot supplied from lunar resources should be located and how it might be operated.
Mr. Thomas M Perrin
NASA Marshall Space Flight Center
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Architecture Study for a Fuel Depot Supplied From Lunar Resources, September 2016, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA),
DOI: 10.2514/6.2016-5306.
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