ATWG Virtual Teams: Lunar Sustained Presence Team

Content

This team will be identifying and fleshing out the functional gaps between an "exploration mission" and a "sustained presence"

This will require an improved understanding of the changes in functional objectives, infrastructure and commodities that fill-in the gap, including: re-supply, in-situ products, energy harvesting and disposal concepts. The following is a very early list of challenges within these topic areas:

  • High Risk Life Support Systems
  • Energy Management Challenges
  • Affordable Earth Booster Costs
  • Lunar Spaceport Facilities
  • Biosphere type Earth Research and Development Laboratories                
  • Lunar Exploration Grids  

The virtual working group at this moment is working on defining the desired results from the fall ATWG meeting (announced on this website).

On September 16th ATWG workshop, this Virtual Group will break the problem down into four breakout session topics, as follows:

  • How do we get to the near environs of the Moon?
  • How do we get to the moon surface and set up infrastructure for basic Operational and Living Concepts?           
  • What are the functions we will perform to create value in the eyes of the supportive public?
  • How do we stay there minimizing re-supply and return to the Earth?

In the mid period of these sessions we will ask the groups to reconvene in plenary session to give an initial report and to understand the issues that cross cut between break out sessions and then reconvene.

The workshop will conclude with reports from each of the breakout sessions.

After this workshop the Virtual Working group will return to virtual status to: collate, consolidate, and represent the issues that emerge from the workshop. These results will be presented at the ATWG spring meeting.

 

Documentation
Please click the links below to see the documentation from this team.

A Journey to Inspire, Innovate, and Discover. (2.15megs)
On January 14, 2004, President George W. Bush announced a new vision for America’s civil space program that calls for human and robotic missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. This vision set forth goals of: returning the Space Shuttle safely to flight; completing the International Space Station (ISS); phasing out the Space Shuttle when the ISS is complete (about 2010); sending a robotic orbiter and lander to the Moon; sending a human expedition to the Moon as early as 2015, but no later than 2020; conducting robotic missions to Mars in preparation for a future human expedition; and conducting robotic exploration across the solar system. 		Work in progress (check later)
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