From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Sun Jul 14 2002 - 23:05:14 MDT
At 10:37 AM 7/14/02 -0700, Robert wrote:
>I don't know what the Shuttle's maximum service duty is
>(its sometimes weather constrained), but I would bet
>you could launch one a month if you wanted to use them
>to ferry up enough material to rapidly build a lunar
>colony in the next decade. So you could probably put
>~100,000 kg of support material on the moon in a year
Why use the Orbiter to move bulk mass? Incidentally, couldn't fuel for the
return trip from the lunar surface also be fired up in Big Dumb Objects
with layers of balloons? The outer layers pop, the inner one bounces, when
they arrive? (Too much waste of gases?) Or are balloons primarily oafish
aerobrakes? And I suppose the cargo modules would end up all over the
place. I assume fuel wouldn't burn if they hit too hard?
Damien Broderick
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