🚀 go-pugleaf

-From: wools@athena.mit.edu (Aaron M Woolsey)
-Subject: lunar base/life-support on freedom
-Date: 23 Jan 93 19:17:25 GMT
-Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

-	o.k., I'm not an aerospace engineer, just a biology major, but I was
-wondering what the outlook is, in the near future, for establishing a lunar base.
- It seems logical to me that before we start planning a manned mission to Mars,
-we ought to start planning a permanent base on the moon.  Is NASA devoting any
-time or resources toward this direction?  

There's some low level of effort in that direction. Galileo did some lunar
science on the recent flyby, Clementine is apparently scheduled to launch
early next year, and there are proposals for further lunar science missions
and some work on planning manned missions. Some of the work done on SSF should
be applicable to establishing a lunar base. We'll probably have a better idea
of how much interest the new Administration has in a lunar base (and if there
is interest, how much they'll be able to sell to Congress) in 100-200 days.
My impression is that a lunar base is of more near-term interest than a
Mars mission.

-	also, does anybody know how the life-support/environment control systems
-will operate on the space station Freedom (or how they operate on mir)?  I
-suppose that these technologies will come in handy when we establish a base on
-the moon.  How is oxygen replenished, what's the waste managment program,
-and how will they replenish the water supply.  

This was discussed in May 1992. According to Henry Spencer, there are plans
to recycle the water (though perhaps mainly for washing, etc.). Dani Eder
says that SSF is scheduled to import all its oxygen for a few years, then
eventually start recycling its CO2 to recover some of the oxygen. Also
according to Henry, the "last-but-one" design of SSF was to use excess water
as reaction mass for reboost and orbital maneuvering, but this was called off
due to design cost constraints.

John Roberts
roberts@cmr.ncsl.nist.gov