Manned Lunar Exploration Models?

Anyone know where any good pictures of proposed vehicles for the NASA manned exploration of the moon ending with a landing as early as 2018 are, and do any builders have any interest in building models of them?

Sounds like an interesting project. I wonder if NASA even knows what they might look like yet.

-Ghoti

From http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/mars/mars_crew.html



-Ghoti

BTW, your sig makes the baby Linden cry.

I read today they will be very similar to the apollo capsule but on a larger scale mounted on top of one 4 segment shuttle srb. Capable of a 4 person crew to a lunar mission and 6 person crew to LEO. The cargo, i.e. trans-lunar stage and lander will launch atop a hybrid of the ET with shuttle derived main engine cluster and two 5 segment srbs.

Dear Lord that I don't believe in, please I beg you, let me live long enough to see humans on the moon and Mars. Thanks and amen.


Maybe A. Grommett the great car maker and avatar maker could do a set of space vehicles, rockets, satellites, mooncars, etc.?

I pray for this also to Anubis! I remember watching the landing in 1969 on a 13" black and white tv and Walter Cronkite crying on national tv. Great stuff.

Yeah, I was thinking it would be cool to make life-size models of the new system. Then again, I've been thinking about making models of Apollo for a while and that never happened (it'd be cool to fly up up up to the top of a Saturn 5).

Nasa has high quality renderings and information on the Crew Exploration Vehicle and lunar mission here:

http://www.nasa.gov/missions/solarsystem/cev.html

The basic design is in place and it includes major elements of Apollo. But it hasn't been fully engineered or built yet, so these renderings really are just artist's concepts, except for the various rocket engines which are existing shuttle components. If someone builds this in SL, post about it here so I know to come and check it out

A CEV simulator would be cool (and considerably easier to model than a shuttle).

Some issues:

- The CEV reference design proposes two launch vehicles:
- The unmanned cargo module, eg: lunar module and translunar stack
- The manned CEV capsule

- This means launching the cargo module first, then the crew module, then docking

- This means simulating orbit
- would these be vehicles (in the LSL sense of the term)?
- or just use physics and impulses?
- how would docking work?

- If the project includes a lunar module, where would it land?
- Where would the CEV land?
- How would the CEV track the cargo module?

- Should the docking and landing sequences be automated?
- I think the real spacecraft would be automated
- but manual docking and landing would be more fun

- The current designs suggest a sequence of actions after launch
- SRB release, escape tower release, a number of burns
- should these be player-controlled or automated?

- Should there be any "Houston we have a problem" events?

All in all, I think this would be a great project. If we can't have a black man on the moon in RL, at least we could do it in SL.

Moved to Off-Topic.

Interesting, a discussion about a building and scripting project for Second Life gets moved to off topic.

Gee I wonder who send the bad post report.

Yah, strange move.

-Ghoti

Sorry - moved to Building for further building rumination.