Should China develope Space Shuttle to transport minerals and resources from Moon

Re: Should China develope Space Shuttle to transport minerals and resources from Moo

BigWang said:

of course this is a defense forum, and if you possess shuttle tech and moon base, that will act as serious deterrence against adversaries.

Imagine shuttle carry weapons from moon base to head straight to adversaries geo location on earth.

You avoid the long flight path of conventional ballistic missiles over earth atmosphere.

Practically you delivering weapon bay load at adversaries doorstep and give them no time for response..

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Not true. It takes an ICBM a maximum of 40 minutes to reach from anywhere on earth to anywhere else on earth along an energy efficient trajectory.

It would take a warhead launched from the moon 3 days to reach earth along an energy efficient trajectory. Even with an big booster and willingness to do whatever it takes to reach earth the fastest, it would still take about 9 hours for a warhead fired from the moon to reach earth using available or confidently foreseeable technologies.

Re: Should China develope Space Shuttle to transport minerals and resources from Moo

BigWang said:

of course this is a defense forum, and if you possess shuttle tech and moon base, that will act as serious deterrence against adversaries.

Imagine shuttle carry weapons from moon base to head straight to adversaries geo location on earth.

You avoid the long flight path of conventional ballistic missiles over earth atmosphere.

Practically you delivering weapon bay load at adversaries doorstep and give them no time for response..

Click to expand...

chuck731 said:

Not true. It takes an ICBM a maximum of 40 minutes to reach from anywhere on earth to anywhere else on earth along an energy efficient trajectory.

It would take a warhead launched from the moon 3 days to reach earth along an energy efficient trajectory. Even with an big booster and willingness to do whatever it takes to reach earth the fastest, it would still take about 9 hours for a warhead fired from the moon to reach earth using available or confidently foreseeable technologies.

Click to expand...

Perhaps as a third option for nuclear warhead launch after the SSLB had launched there's or failed to for some reason? Either way it's mighty expansive to keep and maintain as well.

Re: Should China develope Space Shuttle to transport minerals and resources from Moo

Equation said:

Whoa there chuck I have to disagree with you there. The NASA space shuttle provided many new scientific and engineering discoveries and lessons about space. Without the shuttle the ISS would not have been built today. Yes maybe I'm a little bias because I lived in Houston where NASA JSC (mission control) is located. The shuttles has its shares of disasters yes, but the over all from the past 33 years has since Columbia was launched it did many missions that no rockets hasn't done lately because of its payload capacity.

Now if China wanted to build a space shuttle it has to be design to its mission and space goals. IMO China should had two types of shuttles. One for the lunar missions and the other for orbital missions. Making one shuttle to do both will be hard on maintenance plus costly delays.

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The failure of the space shuttle is not that it achieved nothing. It is that what it achieved pales next to what could have been achieved if the same funding is applied to a manned capsule and a separate heavy lift rocket. It was a boondoggle because it was clearly known even before the shuttle program was approved by the congress in 1972 that the shuttle could never ever approach the level of performance and sortie rate being sold to the public - which is necessary if it were to become competitive with capsules and reusable rockets on cost-effectiveness grounds.

The main reason why the shuttle was pursued inspite of it's known inability to be competitive is it was developed near the tail end of the era when it was still thought having a man in a cockpit adds greatly to the possible utility of military space mission. NASA realized it was selling the public a bill of goods with the shuttle, but it was hoping to be able to conceal this by getting the air force to heavily subsidize the shuttle. To pursued the airforce to fund the shuttle program, nasa then further compromised the economics of the shuttle design by giving it it's distinctive delta wing planform so it can make large cross range deviations in its atmospheric renew try flight path, in order to launch and return to vendenburg AFB in just one orbit.

In the end, having a man in the cockpit proved to be worthless to military space missions. Vendenburg was never used to launch or recover the shuttle, and the shuttle became an albatross around Nash's neck, costing 2 - 3 times to do what capsule and expandable rockets could have done if funded.

Re: Should China develope Space Shuttle to transport minerals and resources from Moo

chuck731 said:

Not true. It takes an ICBM a maximum of 40 minutes to reach from anywhere on earth to anywhere else on earth along an energy efficient trajectory.

It would take a warhead launched from the moon 3 days to reach earth along an energy efficient trajectory. Even with an big booster and willingness to do whatever it takes to reach earth the fastest, it would still take about 9 hours for a warhead fired from the moon to reach earth using available or confidently foreseeable technologies.

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What if the Shuttle carrying the missile from the Moon. You can't tell that's an attack till the warhead re-entry the atmosphere.

Re: Should China develope Space Shuttle to transport minerals and resources from Moo

BigWang said:

What if the Shuttle carrying the missile from the Moon. You can't tell that's an attack till the warhead re-entry the atmosphere.

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1. Are you saying china is susceptible to launching sneak nuclear attacks, therefore to avoid being sneak attacked the US should shoot down every chinese space craft from which such an attack could conceivably be launched?

2. How does a sneak attack from a shuttle returning from the moon work better than a sneak attack from any satellite in low earth orbit?

Re: Should China develope Space Shuttle to transport minerals and resources from Moo



The basic premise of a space elevator is like spinning a ball tied to a string. The spin is provided by the rotation of the celestial body, and the string (actually a mesh), made rigid by the spin and weight it is attached to, can be used to move cargo and passengers from surface to orbit.

The catch is that Earth has such a strong gravity field that we do not currently have a strong enough material to create the elevator mesh. However, the Moon has a much lower gravity field such that a lunar space elevator can be built with materials we currently have!

Re: Should China develope Space Shuttle to transport minerals and resources from Moo

A hypothesis remains a hypothesis, and looking at the "Crystal Ball" should not be a recommended option for a professional analyst. Anything can happen to any nation whether Politically, Economically, Social-Cultural, Technology or Security (PESTS) configurations, before any outcome of attacks - sneak or otherwise.

chuck731 said:

1. Are you saying china is susceptible to launching sneak nuclear attacks, therefore to avoid being sneak attacked the US should shoot down every chinese space craft from which such an attack could conceivably be launched?

2. How does a sneak attack from a shuttle returning from the moon work better than a sneak attack from any satellite in low earth orbit?

Click to expand...

Re: Should China develope Space Shuttle to transport minerals and resources from Moo

Space shuttle is not the right tool for transporting goodies between interplanetary bodies. Spaceplanes are confined to low-earth orbit flights only.

Re: Should China develope Space Shuttle to transport minerals and resources from Moo

One nations would be bared by the moon treaty which

• Bans any ownership of any extraterrestrial property by any organization or person, unless that organization is international and governmental.
• Requires all resource extraction and allocation be made by an international regime.

However no major or minor space nation has ratified or signed it other then France which is a partner in the ESA.

Now in order to move assets efficiently from the moon to the Earth would require a platform that could move large amounts of material from Lunar surface to Lunar Orbit to Earth orbit to the Earth. this would have to be far larger then any platform ever built by Man for space. the platform must be large enough to store the unrefined or if you build a refinery on the moon refined product. must be capable of being both launched despite its tonnage and survive controlled earth reentry. best way to do that as i see it? Space cannons. Startram. you build a on the earth. and a on the moon. these are not used to move people but are totally unmanned. the Startram launches empty unmanned containers to the moon on a precision course. these conduct a soft landing and are used to store the product. they are then moved and loaded into the mass driver. the mass driver then fires the freighter back to the earth on a precision course it orbits and then reenters the earth landing in the pacific ( the largest Ocean easiest target.). where it is recovered.

Re: Should China develope Space Shuttle to transport minerals and resources from Moo

space shuttle is not most cost effective way at getting at the H3O. Better to process it in situ, i.e. build the fusion reactors on the moon, and then beam the energy back to Earth using microwaves or lasers.