NASA, ISS partners quietly completing design of possible Moon-orbiting space station

[radtech497]

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blo...ation.html

http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/mo...pace-plan/

http://russianspaceweb.com/imp.html


Gee. How many ways can this go wrong?

Hopefully all of the horrors my pessimism can conceive are being planned for.

I have always felt that returning to Luna first was perhaps the best way to indefinitely postpone a human presence on Mars, in that a lunar program can suck up all of the resources and talent needed to go to Mars. On the other hand, I remain far from convinced that sending astronauts to either Mars or Luna has, aside from the entertainment value, the ROI of competently designed, funded, and managed automated missions

If they truly intend to put a crewed habitat in Lunar orbit, NASA could do worse than to dust off the (vintage 1970) proposal to place a Skylab in lunar orbit. Might even save some time and effort. Like they did by recycling a bigger Apollo Command/Service Module study (also from 1970) into the Orion Crew Module.

Radtech497