Lunar Crew Survival and Reusability
The NASA press conference last month on lunar exploration was in reality the announcement of a single major program decision, along with a list of categories of reasons for the lunar program itself, and a set of slides showing a sample of results from background concept studies which have been underway for over two years. In addition, the possible large role of other nations in lunar missions was more clearly addressed. The main decision announced was to not begin human lunar flights with a series of “sortie missions” to different lunar sites, but instead to first pick a primary base site (probably at one of the lunar poles), and then proceed to send all manned and cargo flights to that single location with the intention of building up an initial lunar base. This decision does not, though, rule out sortie missions later on after the base has been established. Read more
