Goodbye deep-space gateway hello LOP-G. Now just in case you're wondering what
I'm going on about, this is the news that the next Space Station, the one to
replace the ISS has had a bit of a trumpian makeover and will now be called
the Lunar Orbital Platform Gateway or LOP-G instead of deep-space gateway but
we'll come back to that a bit later. Now the most expensive object ever built was
the International Space Station which combining launch, assembly, maintenance
and contributions from Russia Europe Japan and Canada has so far cost more
than $150 Billion U.S Using that price tag if we
assume that the ISS has had some 20,000 person days from 2000 to 2015
it works out at about $7.5 Million dollars per person per day.
The previous U.S. space station Skylab, was about $5.5 million dollars per person
per day. Even by the standards of space programs $150 billion
is an astronomical sum. The entire cost of the Apollo program
adjusted for inflation has been estimated at a $109 Billion
and the constellation Mars program which was in 2000 was projected
at a mere $40 Billion. The bill for the ISS will also continue to rise NASA
has recently committed to a future investment of $3 billion per
year until at least 2024. But why has a space station received so much of NASA's
budget where many other ambitious programs suffer cuts and cancellation. To
answer this question we have to look back at the history of the first space
stations in low-earth orbit. In the 1960s both the USA and the USSR invested in
designing massive rockets specialized for lifting super heavy payloads into
orbit and onto the moon. The Saturn V could carry an unsurpassed 140 tons
into low-earth orbit. The Soviet N1 rocket was designed to lift 95 tons
above the earth even though it never actually made it past its first four
test flights, though its successor the Energia which flew the Buran into
orbit was able to lift a 100 tons. When it became clear that the Americans
would be the first humans to land on the lunar surface the USSR shifted their
focus to another thing you can do with a super heavy launch capacity. This
shifting focus began an ambitious program of Space Station development the
Soviets launching four Salyut space stations and three Almaz military
stations, between 1971 and 1986. America answered with the 1973 launch of Skylab,
a 77 tons station built from a modified upper stage for Saturn 1b which hosted
three manned crews before re-entering over Australia in 1979 and from that
point the U.S. then concentrated on the space shuttle.
Although the Soviet Salyut stations were much smaller at less than 19 tons each,
they paved the way for Mir, the first modular space station but when the USSR
collapsed in 1991 Western governments worried that the brain drain from the
Soviet rocket labs could provide rogue states with engineers and scientists to
spread ballistic missile technology. To avoid this the American government
searched for ways to keep Russian engineers employed in peaceful space
projects. One solution was to repurpose the plan for the Soviet Mir-2 space
station to form part of a new International Space Station. This was
agreed upon and the first modules from the MIR - were adapted to form two of
the core modules of the ISS. The ISS also provided continued employment for
American engineers and the space shuttle which flew 26 missions to lift the
components into orbit. Visible from all over Earth as a bright dot racing
across the night sky, the ISS provided an impressive and expensive collaborative
purpose for the world space programs at a crucial moment at the end of the
most violent century of human history. But after decades of development and
investment the ISS will at some point in the not-too-distant future be abandoned
to the forces of Earth's atmosphere ending its 30 years or so mission as the
most expensive firework display in history somewhere over the Pacific Ocean.
Meanwhile the space industry is going through another period of turbulence a
new space race this time between public and private agencies. Looking ahead to
the next decade NASA has gone back to the drawing board to plan a new
International Space Station for the 2020s. This project also appears to have
the support of the current US presidential administration. If you are
thinking that by now we will have space stations we've giant centrifugal rings
creating artificial gravity for the living and working quarters like ones
that were all the rage in the sci-fi films 50 or so years ago then you'll be rather
disappointed. In fact if you're comparing the LOP-G to the ISS you're going to be
disappointed. The LOP-G in its current form will be a lot smaller with just four
modules compared to the 16 of the ISS. Like the ISS, the LOP-G will be a
collaborative venture between private and public entities and will draw up on
funding from NASA, Rososmos, ESA, JAXA - Japanese Space Agency and CSA the
Canadian Space Agency. Unlike the ISS, the LOP-G will draw up on
designs of previous cancelled projects. The first proposed module is the PPE or
Power and Propulsion Element and will provide as the name suggests electrical
power plant and an ion thruster propulsion capability. The PPE will
feature international docking system standard ports either end for connecting
additional modules and ones like the next generation Russian spacecraft and
possibly at some point in the future a Chinese module. The PPE is based on a
robotic spacecraft designed as part of the Asteroid Redirect Mission or ARM.
That mission which was defunded last year and aimed to land on a near-earth
asteroid capturing a boulder and returning it to cislunar space for study
by astronauts. The 7-1/2 ton PPE module is set to launch on the
exploration mission EM2. That will be the second mission for the SLS and
the Orion spacecraft in 2022-23. This will also be the first manned flight of
the Orion crewed module, so mission success will depend a lot upon the new
systems functioning as planned. The SLS will deliver the Orion and the PPE
to a translunar injection orbit which will then set the space station off
towards a course to the moon then the PPE's thrusters will fire for the
first time to complete the planned orbit. This isn't a lunar orbit. It will be in
cislunar space which means an orbit between geostationary Earth orbit and
lunar orbit. Here the space station will remain outside of much of the Earth's
and the moon's gravity wells allowing efficient access for future missions
either to the moon or back to the earth. The SLS block 1b rocket can actually
lift 39 metric tons into translunar injection orbit, enough to lift all four
sections of the proposed LOP-G in one launch or two depending upon volume
limitations. However the current plan is to launch each module alongside a 23 ton
Orion spacecraft and deliver the habitation module, then the Logistics
Module and finally the airlock by the middle of the 2020s. On each of these
missions a four-person crew will be able to remain at the lock G for up to 21
days doubling Orion's maximum mission time. So
if the LOP-G is going to be much smaller than the ISS what will it be used for. One
of the main goals is testing equipment for the upcoming Mars missions when the
LOP-G is fully assembled with its four modules the airlock will double as a
berth for construction of the new deep-space transport (DST).
This large interplanetary spacecraft will be a reusable manned craft to take
humans on towards Mars The LOP-G will also be outside of the
Earth's magnetic field and the protection it gives against charged
particles and cosmic rays. Now some might say why do we need to redo all the
testing when it was done with Apollo. Well the longest Apollo mission was
Apollo 17 and it was 12 days long including three days on the moon and
compared to now it used 60-year old tech. We've learned a lot since then and
manufacturing techniques have changed dramatically but it's still needs testing.
Missions to Mars will be six months there and the same coming back, much
longer and in deep space where no human has been before. The LOP-G gives us the
best opportunity to test the conditions like this but still be relatively close
to the earth. It could also be used to remotely operate equipment on the moon
and be a stopping-off point for the next generation of lunar explorers as a
transit from the earth to the moon and in back again. However if the LOP-G can
demonstrate and prove the technology needed to survive beyond the Earth's
magnetosphere, then a proven launch platform such as the SLS or maybe a
private company like SpaceX, it may open the door for a more long-term program of
more ambitious missions around the solar system. As always a giant leap forward in
political cooperation will be necessary before we take the next steps towards
manned exploration of our planetary neighborhood. So do you think we'll get
the LOP-G up and running by the mid-2020s or will it fall victim to the
political flip-flopping that has plagued previous space programs and will the SLS
at a billion dollars per launch be sidelined at some point in the future
for a much cheaper reusable system. Let me know what you think in the comments.
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