The Lunar Laboratory - an attractive option for the next phase of lunar development Model 3.0-March 1996

The proposal of returning to the Moon to stay was made by President Bush in July 1989, but the changes in the geopolitical environment since the end of the cold war have prevented a serious discussion of this proposal until now. It is expected, however, that this question of a permanent installation on the Moon will come up early in the next decade. Thus concepts and plans have to be ready by that time to be discussed and evaluated. This report describes in detail a Lunar Laboratory that is supposed to grow from about 20 to 100 people in 50 years. Some 1500 metric tons of facilities and equipment are needed on the Moon. Average crew duty cycles are assumed to be 6 months. A lunar space transportation system is proposed that is comprised of a heavy lift launch vehicle, a lunar ferry vehicle and a space operations center in lunar orbit. The systems behaviour, the dynamics of selected parameters and the overall performance and cost-effectiveness of the lunar laboratory are analysed and presented. It is shown that the average annual cost of a lunar man-year are less than 40 million (1993/94) dollars and that the average annual operations cost of this lunar base are less than 3 billion. The results are summarized in 19 tables, 7 figures and two appendices with the computer models, comprising 65 pp. (orig.)Available from TIB Hannover: RN 3442(303) / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekSIGLEDEGerman