Space shuttle.....to the Moon?

[R1Geezer]

As the shuttle is well established and it's launches are almost routine, I started to wonder....

Is there any reason the space shuttle could not fly to the moon and orbit? If it could, could some system be devised so it could land and take off again?

[ChuckFickens]

the biggest issues are fuel and weight.

The shuttle gets into earth orbit with pretty much no fuel left on it, so it would require more fuel to accelerate it out of the earth orbit and on it's way to the moon, and that is when the weight issue comes in, the shuttle is pretty heavy so would require a huge amount of fuel to accelerate it towards the moon (and you would need to be carrying enough fuel to get home again remember)

There are a couple of other smaller problems that could probably be overcome, such as the return flight from the moon would cause the shuttle to hit the earths atmosphere at a far higher speed than it was designed to causing much higher temperatures and loads than it's designed to withstand (sure you could use thrusters to slow it down, but that brings us back to the fuel/weight problem again)

[R1Geezer]

it does have cargo bay so it could carry more, I would have thought that it would need very little fuel once up to speed, need it mosty for slowing down/landing.taking off! Just though that it would be a good step up to start if they are thinking about going back.

[jake-the-peg]

To give some perspective to what chuck says.

The final stage of the saturn V rocket carried about 150 tonnes of fuel and LOX. the shuttle has a maximum payload of 25 tonnes

45 tonnes of Apollo made it to the moon's orbit as opposed to about 112 tonnes of Space shuttle


Why on Earth would you do so anyway? you'd be far better assembing a reusable Earth-moon shuttle in orbit .

That's if there were any real point in putting humans back on the moon - which I greatly doubt.

The shuttle's being retired soon anyway

[R1Geezer]

Fair enough jake, just mulling over the possibilities. I like the idea of a light wieght craft going from earth orbit though, I would have though that would need reletively little fuel.

Anyway as to why you'd want to go, there is some speculation about setting up a moonbase staging post for perhaps a mission to Mars. They say they would also want to utilise the water at the lunar poles rather than lift it from earth, that sort of thing, all speculative stuff at the moment.

[jake-the-peg]

If there is water on the moon - even at the poles it's at incredibly low densities. Taking the kit up there to get it out and running it is likely to be like trying to set up a gold mine from a quarter of a million miles away!

Ditto using the moon as a staging post.

I'm not convinced we'll ever see a manned Mars mission. Not unless there is a real impetus like a robot finding a highly plausible fossil.

The technical problems knock Apollo ito a cocked hat and the sheer costs are mind numbing

[dundurn]

The shuttle fleet is down to 60% of its original size due to two fatal crashes. It is being withdrawn from service as being unacceptably risky so describing its launches as almost routine is a bit of an overstatement.

All spacecraft are designed to do a specific job. There just isn't enough margin to permit a Jack-of-all-trades machine. The shuttle is a low orbit truck. It was designed around a 60' long by 15' wide cargo bay since that was the proposed size of the modules for an early design of space station. To get it to do anything else at this stage would be very difficult.

The most elegant solution to lunar flights while incorporating the shuttle in the loop would need at least two shuttle flights; one to launch a lunar lander and the other to launch a Centaur (or equivalent) rocket to get the lander to the Moon.