NASA Is Considering Fuel Depots in the Skies

[alp227]

Source: NY Times

By considering a proposal to put filling stations in the sky, NASA is looking to accelerate plans to send astronauts to distant destinations.

The filling stations — NASA calls them propellant depots — would refuel a spacecraft in orbit before it headed out to the moon, an asteroid or eventually Mars. Currently, all of the fuel needed for a mission is carried up with the rocket, and the weight of the fuel limits the size of the spacecraft.

Next month, engineers will meet at NASA headquarters in Washington to discuss how propellant depots could be used to reach farther into space and make possible more ambitious missions using the heavy-lift rocket that NASA is planning to build. The discussions grow out of a six-month NASA study of propellant depots, completed in July.

However, the space agency has rejected the study’s most radical conclusion: that NASA could forgo the heavy-lift and use existing smaller rockets, combined with fuel depots, to reach its targets more quickly and less expensively. Those targets, for the next two decades at least, include a return to the moon or a visit to an asteroid. (A trip to Mars is unlikely until at least the 2030s.)

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/science/space/23nasa.html

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

1. You still have to fly other rockets up to deliver the fuel deposit.

So then you just end up with a bunch of little rockets flying up rather than a few large ones.

[joshcryer]

11. But if you can reuse those little rockets...

[Hoopla Phil]

2. I though President Obama canceled the Constellation program.

Without that why are filling stations in the sky needed?

[Jello Biafra]

3. Are we going to see signs in space...

like Mobil and Hess and BP? Do we get full service up there? Do I get my space shield cleaned too?

[nilram]

13. yes on the space shield cleaning

although you're expected to give your servicedroid a tip.

[liberal N proud]

4. Someone must have a lot of rockets to sell

Rockets to assemble fuel depots similar to the space station maybe. Rockets to supply the fuel to the depots, then rockets to use the fuel from the depots.

Too bad NASA doesn't have any rockets.

[Gore1FL]

5. Good.

NASA needs triple the funding it has to keep up with the missions we need from it.

I am glad to see them looking into deeper manned and unmanned exploration.

[SoapBox]

6. Just wait until one of those comes hurling BACK to Earth!

...talk about fireworks.

[asjr]

7. Will BP be in charge?

[tridim]

8. For my money, I'd rather have a space elevator

[on point]

9. How about creating some fuel in space

Use some of that free solar energy to at least run electrolysis on waste water to create hydrogen and oxygen fuel....

[PavePusher]

15. You still have to get that "waste" water into the right place....

i.e. boost from Earth, or move some comets around. And if you can already do the latter, you probably don't need much in the way of distributed fuel depots.

[glinda]

10. Not good enough to pollute this Planet that they have to attack the Solar System. Uggh.

[Gore1FL]

12. If you consider Hydrogen and Oxygen pollutants, n/t

[PavePusher]

14. Seriously? n/t