40 years...

[kengr]

2:54 pm PST Man leaves the moon for the last time.

Just a reminder folks. At the current time it'd likely take us until the 50th anniversary of the departure to get back.

Comments

[seawasp]

Not if we had a reason to go.

So far, no one's come up with a good reason.

Much as I want to see a big and healthy manned space program, I just don't see it happening unless and until someone comes up with a GOOD reason to send people up there, and thus far, none of the purported reasons hold up under any scrutiny.

[kengr]

I'd be *really* surprised if anything less than an emergency need could get us there in much under 10 years. We just don't have the heavy lift launchers, nor the man-rated launchers.

We have a lot of things that can get all sorts of (fairly small, light) stuff to LEO. And a few things that can get heavier or larger stuff there (different vehicles or large and for heavy).

And a fair assortment of things that can get satellites to GEO.

But doing Lunar orbit rendezvous (like Apollo did) would require reinventing a fair bit of stuff. Or at least designing practically from scratch.

Doing the more sensible Earth orbit rendezvous (like all the pre-Apollo designs assumed) would require a *lot* of infrastructure work in earth orbit. Both LEO and possibly GEO.

The ISS ain't suited for the sort of stuff that'd be needed. So we'd need a new station, likely in a higher orbit (so it won't need re-boosts as often). And suited to act as an orbital shipyard.

Oddly, we could use such a station *now* as well as the "orbital tug" that is a likely component of such a lunar program. If nothing else, they'd allow *fixing* satellites and likely doing so cheaper than launching new ones (assuming satellites started getting designed to *be* fixed).