
Bigelow Space Operations – B330 Space Station - ChuckMcM
http://www.bigelowspaceops.com/b330.php
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blackrock
Can we attach a few of these units together, like 10 units, and then spin them
up to create a rotating space station?

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NotUsingLinux
No kidding! Sadly it seems they don't plan this far ahead...so much potential:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmLWxptFFYc&feature=share](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmLWxptFFYc&feature=share)

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ChuckMcM
I like how you could throw one of these up on a single Falcon Heavy launch.
The lack of windows seems challenging to me, if you're going after tourists I
would think this would be a priority feature.

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sq_
If I remember correctly, the B330 is too big in terms of width to launch with
the current fairing on a Falcon Heavy; although I think that Elon indicated at
some point that they could do bigger fairings at customer request.

It'd definitely be awesome to see essentially an entire space station go up on
top of one FH though.

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kevin_thibedeau
It would be better to design the B330 to be its own fairing with just a
launcher specific adapter ring at the base. That would provide a significant
weight savings, reduce the volumetric constraints, and eliminate fairing
separation mishaps.

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greglindahl
Fairings are an extremely tricky thing to design, and the B330 is not made out
of materials that can survive a launch.

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matte_black
Could they land something like this on the moon and build a quick habitat?

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mabbo
I think the real challenge would be getting it to the moon. A falcon heavy
ought to be able to get it into orbit, but then you're still a lot of Delta-V
away from a moon landing.

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matte_black
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did it almost 50 years ago in a tin can, built
from a box of scraps!

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teraflop
Landing this thing on the moon would be a dramatically bigger technical
challenge than the Apollo Lunar Module.

The B330 supposedly has a mass of 50,000 lbs, which apparently doesn't include
any significant propulsion mechanism. The LM was less than 10,000, including
engines, and still required about 24,000 lbs of fuel for a round-trip. Even if
you assume that you could just scale up the design by a factor of 5, you're
still talking about something that's too big to launch on a Falcon Heavy.

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avmich
Fueled LM had mass about 15 tons, empty second stage - 2 tons, second stage
fuel - about 3 tons. So to land B330 with mass 50,000 lbs you'll need about
75,000 lbs of fuel (and then scale some more because you need to include tanks
and engines).

Not trivial... but I think can be done with another launch of a boosting
stage.

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ChuckMcM
This would be my guess as well. Launch the habitat, and then launch the
translunar tug/landing apparatus.

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avmich
Ok, we need about 3.1 km/s for translunar injection, about 1 km/s to enter
Moon orbit and then some 2.4 km/s to cancel orbital velocity (1.7 km/s) and
land. Total is 6.5 km/s . For storable fuels with Isp of 3.5 km/s mass ratio
becomes exp(6.5 / 3.5) = 6.4, so if you want to land 50,000 lbs mass on the
Moon, you have to start from LEO having 320,000 lbs or 145 metric tons. More
than Saturn V and more than twice FH. And here we don't even include tanks for
fuel and engines which will get us to the Moon.

We can consider LOx/LH2 stage, which improve masses considerably. Wonder why
SpaceX didn't buy XCOR yet?.. [http://space-
access.org/updates/sau148.html](http://space-access.org/updates/sau148.html)

So it's doable with at least one docking, and perhaps more. Maybe refueling
should be involved as well.

