Copyright 2013 Robert Clark
In the post "Golden Spike" circumlunar flights I argued the new Falcon 9 v1.1 would be able to do manned circumlunar flights carrying a Dragon capsule. Note that this could also prove Elon's claims that the Dragon could serve as a lunar mission capsule. Moreover, such a unmanned test could be carried out this year with the first test flight of the Falcon 9 v1.1.
This is important because the original circumlunar flight carrying Apollo 8 used the huge Saturn V rocket. Then the feeling came about that even to do a manned circumlunar flight required a super heavy lift rocket such as the Saturn V. Then showing a much smaller rocket such as the Falcon 9 v1.1 could accomplish such a mission would be important to confirming the idea that lunar landing missions also could be much smaller, and much cheaper, than imagined.
As further support of that, currently existing medium class launchers such as the Delta IV Medium and Atlas V without side boosters, can also do circumlunar missions by using a capsule half-sized to the Dragon. One such half-sized capsule would be the Orbital Sciences Cygnus, given life support systems and heat shield, as discussed in Budget Moon flights: lightweight crew capsule.
Another possibility might be the capsule designed by Andy Elson for SpaceX for the Falcon 5 rocket. Since the Falcon 5 had half the payload capability of the Falcon 9, and this capsule was to carry half the passengers of the Dragon, quite likely it would be about half-size to the Dragon:
Magic Dragon: The UK's first commercially built manned capsule demonstrator.
By Rob Coppinger on April 9, 2008 4:13 PM |
The Delta IV Medium and Atlas V without side boosters have a payload capability of about 10 metric tons (mT) to LEO. Page 2 of Boeing's "Delta IV Technical Summary" gives the translunar injection (TLI) payload capability of the Delta IV Medium as 3 mT, sufficient for the dry mass of the Cygnus.
The payload capability to TLI for the Atlas V can be estimated by Dr. John Schilling's Launch Performance Calculator by selecting the escape trajectory option. This gives about 3.4 mT capability to TLI.
The Ariane 6 is to be a medium class launcher comparable to the Delta IV Medium and Atlas V. Then the liquid-fueled version would not only have the advantage over the solid-fueled version of being able to do manned missions to LEO but manned circumlunar missions as well.