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If you pick a low enough orbit, it gives you a lot of freedom to use a lightweight launch vehicle such as a stepladder.
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The current Artemis 4 plan
Gateway
- Two modules launched together to lunar near rectilinear halo orbit (NHRO)
Lander
- Starship lander launches to LEO
- Some large number of starship tankers (or few tankers doing many flights) refuel the lander
- Lander flies to NRHO, docks with gateway
Transport
- Crew launch and fly to NHRO in Orion
- Orion rendezvous with gateway
- Crew land using the lander, do stuff
- Crew ascend to NHRO in lander
- Lander rendezvous with gateway
- Crew return to Earth in Orion
But I think Artemis 3 is slated to be the first human mission to the moon that actually lands, and that will be pre gateway station so presumably they don’t actually need the space station presumably they can just dock directly to the lander which makes you wonder why they’re even building the station.
The plan has come under a fair amount of criticism for being overly complicated while at the same time not really having any extra operational capacitys over Apollo. Mostly this seems to be a cluge for the fact that starship (the lander is basically just starship with mods) isn’t human rated and obviously NASA has no information on the timeline as to when that will happen, assuming it happens at all. Combined with the fact that Congress insisted that NASA reuse the shuttle engines presumably because they mistakenly assumed that would save money or something. So now they need to build a launcher.
Oh, and they only have enough shuttle engines for three or four SLS rockets anyway so the whole thing isn’t even particularly long lived.
The whole plan is just weird.
Yeah, I think when they decided they needed gateway station they thought they would be using a much smaller lander
For option 4, they could have used a rope and just pulled it closer.
If you pull the Moon closer to the Earth, gravity will begin to disintegrate it and shred it into kwazillion asteroids that eventually become meteors which will bombard the Earth back to the lava age. Once that is done, the moon doesn’t exist and there’s no need to go to the moon ever again. Problem solved.
50 billion birds with one stone kinda solution
LOL. Just need a bigger stone.
just build a stronger moon
Theres a book about that called seveneves
IF no one has thought of it, has it really been rejected?
Simple! Just change the gravitational constant of the universe.
Okay Q
Option #4 - This reads like Mr. Munroe is setting things up for another entertaining article/video/book topic.
The energies required to move the moon closer to the Earth would be staggering. Then there’s the gravitational impact to consider, and how fast it would need to be moving to keep a stable low-earth orbit; assuming that’s what we’re aiming for as a rendezvous. My guess is that, combined, this is close and fast enough to create mile-high tsunamis every day (maybe even all day), all over the planet. Meanwhile, our astronauts would be on the lunar surface watching the destruction from safety.
You should watch the cinematic masterpiece “Moonfall”.
Really shows how the Oscars are corrupt when faced with the fact that this movie didn’t make the cut.
The tidal forces would probably tear apart the moon into rings, the best place to watch would be a higher orbit.
Good call. There’s a good Joe Scott video on what that would look like, IIRC.
Because the main goal was to beat the Russians to the moon. They also came up with a plan to fly astronauts to the moon then later devise a way to get them back.
I heard they would have needed a bigger rocket for that, in order to account for giant clanking brass ones adding to the launch weight.
That’s not “fair”! Such an unbalanced relationship.
Damnit, wrong comment
“Potentially taking longer”
Ive always preferred the idea of putting tugs with nuclear thermal rockers in orbit and using them to ferry things through cislunar space.
“Have your people talk to my people.”
“…but I don’t have any…”
“Well then go get some!”
