Thinking big picture / long term again | General | Forum

Did the end of your post get cut off?

rpulkrabek said:

Yes.

Let's do it. For one, I have the bulk of my work put towards OHKLA, and I have been enjoying the work and the learning experience. I am also keen on results and data. It seems do-able that we can send a rocket to space and gather some sort of data. This can then provide a great start towards satellites and such.

I also say we continue to use the OHKLA name and can then use OHKLA in a currently unnamed project.

Sorry, just to be clear, this "yes" is in resposne to what, precisely?  Am I correct in taking it that you are in support of justifying OHKLA as being the leadup to a larger suborbital rocket project for doing experiments on.  What are your thoughts on the "Project X" satellite project?

Post edited 6:19 am – February 10, 2010 by Luke Maurits

Oh.  I never meant to propose that the Project X satellites be launched from an OHKLA derivative.  That would require us building a hybrid launch vehicle capable of carrying payloads into orbit, which is something everyone seems keen to avoid.  It will of course be much simpler to put the Project X satellites into orbit than the CLLARE hardware stacks, but it would still be an orbital launch vehicle and fall foul of ITAR etc.  I had envisioned the Project X satellites being launched on commercial launchers.

On the other hand, I do have no problem with OHKLA being the first step in a larger project rather than making a separate future project to expand OHKLA technology.  This would require renaming the project, though, since the "Karman line attempt" part wouldn't really make much sense.  This rename would be a minor hassle with regards to the website, although certainly not impossible.  That said, I wouldn't really be upset by making OHKLA and the future suborbital work separate projects.

Rizwan said:

Can you elaborate on this? I am a little confused on it. I am in agreement with othe points though

Well, currently the Selene booster design is a "part" of the CLLARE project (it is in the Wiki as such).  Since people no longer seem keen on s building a launch vehicle (for a few good reasons) and since it looks like the Falcon 9 will provide a suitable LV for CLLARE at a good price I am asking if we want to remove the Selene stuff from CLLARE and make commercial launch the "official" approach for CLLARE.  If we are opposed to engaging in the construction of something like Selene as its own project because of legal difficulties etc., it makes little sense to require the same construction project as part of CLLARE.

May be could keep these projects in the pipeline and not start work on them until we have a good member base?

May be a wiki page for "Tentative Future Projects"

Doing so will benefit two ways.

1) We do not spread ourselves too thin

2) We still have the project in our mind. So it is not completely abandoned.

Something new which is, I think, extremely relevant to the revival of this discussion.

Elsewhere, KellyJ recently asked:

even if the CLLARE project does succeed and put a man on the moon, then
what? What options are opened up as a result of CLLARE which werent
available before?

I think this is a fantastic question for us to ask ourselves.  Should we be concerned that right now there is no answer to "What comes after CLLARE?".  Does CSTART need a "Vision for Space Exploration" that charts a more long term path forward (for both manned and unmanned exploration)?  This is not necessarily idle future speculation, it could be quite important to have a plan like this because:

1. The better we know our long term path, the better we can plan ahead and maximise the reusability of our technology.  If we know that after landing on the moon we want to aim for, say, Mars, then it's worth taking some effort to ensure that the CLLARE hardware is as easy as possible to recycle/upgrade for a Mars mission as we can possibly make it (without compromising on the original CLLARE goal).  It's unlikely we'll be able to completely reuse too much of the hardware, but it would be great if we could reuse and/or upgrade half of them instead of having to start completely from scratch.  We're more likely to end up with the latter scenario than the former if we don't think ahead now.
2. We might have better luck at attracting (and maintaining!) attention and dedication from our community if we have a clear long term vision, rather than CLLARE looking like a "dead end" flag planting endeavour, something a lot of people are very wary of.
3. A clear long term plan for manned exploration could be good to inform our plans for unmanned exploration.  If we know we want to eventually colonise various bodies in a certain order, we can design unmanned probe missions to those bodies in the correct order.

In addition to a long term plan having these benefits, it's also a great way to get the community involved.  Asking /r/tothemoon what they believe is the most promising long term plan going forward with regard to something like colonising the solar system would certainly get a lot of responses.