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For some time now, we've puzzled about how to add on to the lunar base after we have the revenues from the first flight in the bank. Here's one option: we just keep adding habitats similar to the one we flew on flight #1.
First, take a look at what flight 1 looks like on its way to the moon (figure 1). We're looking down on the modules. Outside dimensions for the triple module are about 324 inches long by 160 inches wide by 134 inches high.
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Translunar Lunar Descent
Engines Tanks LTV Airlock Habitat Engines
Figure 1: Flight 1 Stack at Translunar Injection
Here we've built up a lunar transfer vehicle and added a to-the-moon propulsion package to a single Spacehab module. The external equipment also will have to include provision for electrical power (solar cells?), thermal control (body-mounted radiators?), communications, and navigation equipment.
Next comes the airlock, derived from a SpaceLab adapter airlock with its side hatch. Then a triple Spacehab module for the lunar habitat, and the descent stage package.
Once the vehicle gets to lunar orbit, everything from the airlock on separates from the LTV and heads for the surface. Figure 2 shows what we end up with on the surface as our initial base.
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Lunar Descent
Airlock Habitat Engines
Figure 2: Flight 1 on the surface
Suppose we decide to land another of these multiple Spacehab modules on flight 2. We'll probably bring up some heavy equipment on flight 2 so we can do some really serious exploring and materials processing, but here we're talking about expanding the habitat.
In figure 3, we added a short, flexible tunnel between Hab 2 and the airlock end hatch; this gives us some margin in aligning and positioning the second habitat. Note that we brought up another airlock and attached it to the first in a T formation.
Watch out for the slight-of-hand: the airlock hatch for the SpaceLab adapter is on the top, not the side. We slipped in a redesign while you weren't looking.
The new airlock allows use of the original airlock as a path from Hab 1 to Hab 2 even while the airlock is depressurized.
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Habitat #2 Flexible Habitat #1
Tunnel
Figure 3: Flight 2 on the Surface
After that, figure 4 shows we can continue expanding by adding more habitats to a growing manifold on connecting tunnels.(still using little squiggles to represent flexible tunnels). This essentially becomes the node and module philosophy the space station was following for so long.
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| | Airlock
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| Hab #2 | || | | | Hab #1 |
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| Hab #4 | || || | Hab #3 |
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| |~~ -------- ~~| |
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Figure 4: Additional Pressure Vessels
attached to a common manifold
We're not really fond of this layout, but it would work.
Somewhere along the line we'll start using inflatables and in-situ materials to build pressure vessels. At that point the number of architectural options becomes innumerable.
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