Could this "Lunar Shuttle" Work?

[jjake101]

here would be the procedure...


1. 3 LRB's fire for 510 seconds
2. Deactivate and jettison LRB's 30 seconds before orbit is reached
3. Fire fuel tank rocket for 30 seconds
4. Burn Fuel tank for 150 seconds - TLI
5. Burn Fuel tank for 110 seconds to get 350km Lunar Orbit
6. Jettison Fuel tank
7. Extend Landing Legs
8. Perform retro maneuvers
9. land with a speed of 0.5 m/s
10. perform surface activities for 10 days
11. Extend 4 downward facing liquid rockets
12. Fire downward rockets for 20 seconds
13. retract downward rockets and fire main shuttle rockets for 60 seconds, establish orbit
14. fire main shuttle rockets for TEI - put on a course for the west Atlantic, off the coast of Florida
15. Reenter the Earths Atmosphere
16. Detach the crew section of the shuttle and activate the parachute and splashdown (could function as an escape pod during liftoff)
17. the main shuttle body: extend landing legs and inflate wheels. perform computer controlled landing


Edit: detaching the crew section is a good idea because a splash down is one of the safest way's on landing a spacecraft

assume all the engines are as powerful as those on the deltaglider (thats what I got the numbers from, but they will probably need to be changed due to the mass difference between the space shuttle and the delta glider.

Inflating the wheels is neccessery becuase they are same landing struts used on the Lunar Surface and landing on the lunar surface with the whes may damage them

Description of appearance: Think of it as a Buran Space Shuttle with larger SRB's and a third SRB attached to the bottom of the fuel tank


Basically... this is just a quick idea I came up with for a Lunar Shuttle so I dont have any of the solid numbers, config etc...

 

[Urwumpe]

I have no idea what you are talking about. What is the configuration at launch?

3 unspecified LRBs, a "fuel tank rocket" and what...

This is all senseless as you describe it. You lack solid numbers there. You have no configuration described, no analysis of the logical stages is possible.

Detaching the crew section for landing and land the main body separate... why??? just why???? Inflating wheels - again, why do you need this? the wheels won't be much smaller deflated.

What I need for telling you if this can work, is first of all some proper drawings of the rocket. Not accurate to the bolt, but describe how it looks like. Then I need numbers. How heavy is each stage, how much fuel does it have, what kind of engines, with which specific impulse and which thrust force do you use?

With that data, we can start talking, if your plan can even be feasible.

---------- Post added at 09:30 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:55 PM ----------

Buran had already 4 liquid fuel boosters, adding another booster opposite of the payload would make the rocket harder to control. The core stage of the Energia is not restartable, but if you assume it, it could at least fly your trajectory approximately. Depends on how heavy the payload is.

The safest way to land is land horizontally on a runway.

 

[Hlynkacg]

I strongly suggest that read this page here and it's associated links, especially the section on "Realistic design" before continuing.

Learn it, Love it, Digest it and then get back to us.

detaching the crew section is a good idea because a splash down is one of the safest way's on landing a spacecraft

Not really no.