Human operations beyond LEO by the end of the decade: An affordable near-term stepping stone

The Space Review ^ | 01/10/11 | Harley Thronson, Dan Lester, and Ted Talay

[KevinDavis]

For more than a decade, several teams have assessed designs for a long-duration free-space human habitat beyond low Earth orbit (LEO), building upon years of hard-won experience with the International Space Station (ISS). These systems would enable multiple achievements for science and human space flight. Most were intended to be deployed using available or near-future capabilities within about a decade after funding begins and serve as the first major human “stepping stone” beyond LEO. Last year, Thronson and Talay summarized work up to that time on expandable or inflatable concepts for deployment at an Earth-Moon (E-M) L1 or L2 location (see “‘Gateway’ architectures: a major ‘Flexible Path’ step to the Moon and Mars after the International Space Station?”, The Space Review, February 8, 2010). Here we summarize our team’s more recent work both on a long-duration human habitat that could be deployed beyond LEO within a decade and on the priority goals that such a habitat might accomplish. Particulars of this and other concepts for human operations in cis-lunar space are posted at www.futureinspaceoperations.com, will be presented at professional conferences, and detailed in future publications by our group.

[KevinDavis]

[GraceG]

The sooner we get off this rock the less liberal BS our great grandchildren will have to deal with.

[KevinDavis]

I agree...

[saundby]

With a real Orion spacecraft in the works and the SLS to launch it on (DIRECT 3.x Jupiter derivative), there’ll be an infratructure to support doing this.

Without a spacecraft and launch vehicle, it’d just be fairy dust.

Still, I gotta wonder how well a space voyage to an empty place in space will sell to the public, no matter what its utility. In support of a moon base, maybe.