Mere hours after sharing an updated animation of the construction of the Lunar Gateway, Lockheed Martin spoils the crowd at IAC2018 by unveiling their notional design for a 21st century crewed reusable lunar lander.
As they inform us in a press release:
“The crewed lunar lander is a single stage, fully reusable system that incorporates flight-proven technologies and systems from NASA’s Orion spacecraft. In its initial configuration, the lander would accommodate a crew of four and 2,000 lbs. of cargo payload on the surface for up to two weeks before returning to the Gateway without refueling on the surface.
“NASA asked industry for innovative and new approaches to advance America’s goal of returning humans to the Moon, and establishing a sustainable, enduring presence there,” said Lisa Callahan, vice president and general manager of Commercial Civil Space at Lockheed Martin Space. “This is a concept that takes full advantage of both the Gateway and existing technologies to create a versatile, powerful lander that can be built quickly and affordably. This lander could be used to establish a surface base, deliver scientific or commercial cargo, and conduct extraordinary exploration of the Moon.”
The unique orbit of the lunar Gateway provides global lunar access for a lander. Having the ability to visit multiple sites with a reusable lander supports many international, commercial, and scientific communities, in addition to NASA’s sustainable exploration of the Moon. After a surface mission, it would return to the Gateway, where it can be refueled, serviced, and then kept in orbit until the next surface sortie mission.
“The Gateway is key to full, frequent and fast reusability of this lander,” said Tim Cichan, space exploration architect at Lockheed Martin Space, who presented the lander concept at IAC. “Because this lander doesn’t have to endure the punishment of re-entering Earth’s atmosphere, it can be re-flown many times over without needing significant and costly refurbishment. That’s a major advantage of the Gateway and of a modular, flexible, reusable approach to deep space exploration.”
The investments made in technology developed for Orion can be re-used to reduce the cost, complexity and development timeline. Some of the human-rated, flight-proven systems used in the design include avionics, life support, communications and navigation systems, and a light-weight version of its crew module pressure vessel.
Reusable landers are enabled by the lunar Gateway and are important for sustainable exploration. Additionally, landed human lunar missions and a lunar orbiting outpost are valuable to prepare for sending humans to Mars. While the Moon doesn’t have an atmosphere, there are still many lessons that apply to a future crewed Mars lander, such as: operations experience in a challenging and dynamic environment, operating and refueling out of orbit, long-duration cryogenic propulsion, and terminal descent navigation, guidance and control.
If you want to learn more about the lander and the thinking that went behind it, Lockheed Martin also made available a 10 page white paper with more details about how this lander fits in their future architecture.
ONESTAGETOSPACE’s Lunar Lander
Lunar landers are a popular subject these days, that is why we at ONESTAGETOSPACE are also designing our version. Instead of Liquid Oxygen and Liquid Hydrogen, we opted for Liquid Methane and Liquid Oxygen. Our reasoning was that Methalox would be plenty available in space once the BFR comes online. It also has many additional benefits in the first stages of a local lunar ISRU economy as a bonus chemical resource in addition to the mined lunar water.
Our Working Document_ONESTAGETOSPACE_LUNAR LANDER_2018_Sept, which is a discussion text that can be shared freely if credit is given to ONESTAGETOSPACE and Joris Luypaert, shows some alternative options for a lunar lander. The goal of the document is to invite input on the design and possibly find engineers who would like to cooperate around this basic concept. Feel free to get in touch via the details provided in the document.
Working Document_ONESTAGETOSPACE_LUNAR LANDER_2018_Sept.
Diagrams, mass break down and interior sketches can be found in the document.
(Note. If you like our effort, please consider making a small donation on this page. If enough of you people do this, we’ll all celebrate on the Moon)
