Deep Space Gateway - Lunar City

Outbound - We Live And Work In Space

I would like to help you, if you need the assistance.

Co-Founder, Space Cooperative

Definitely a great question to ask!

Co-Founder, Space Cooperative

I suppose one of the fundamental questions is to what degree to the two concepts compete for resources? Curious what others' opinions are on that question.

Giulio Prisco

Co-Founder, Space Cooperative

Definitely complementary I think. The DSG can play a very important role to facilitate early lunar settlements.

If, that is, the DSG ever gets built. Tofay in the US, space is only a pretext for petty political squabbles. If Trump is replaced by a Democratic President in 2020, the DSG will be killed.

I am more and more persuaded that we can't depend on NASA. NASA will continue to have a useful role to play, but only if we-the-people keep it in check. If we really want a DSG, we must build it ourselves.

Co-Founder, Space Cooperative

I agree that we have to be manage our expectations. The worst case scenario is, though, that NASA conducts a few useful trade studies on the concept that save us some head-scratching.

Senior Mission Design Systems Engineer - retired from NASA

For my part, I would prefer to stay focused on the technical and commercial parts and leave the political parts to others

Suzana Bianco

Space Architect

I agree with Giulio that they are complementary. Any complex surface development benefits from having an orbital counterpart close by, especially when there are people involved. What remains a question is wether a government-run orbital facility will contribute freely with a "civilian" Lunar City or if they will impose all kinds of regulations on us.... (Yes, I see myself living there already)

Co-Founder, Space Cooperative

That's a great point, I can see politics and posturing becoming an issue with separate private and public facilities on the Moon. If the DSG ends up being a joint international project, for example, I wonder how things like export restrictions would work if private astronauts from other countries were to rendezvous with DSG. Maybe they'd be confined to their quarters or ship? Even piggybacking off of any DSG infrastructure like a comms link could be made political if it was some sort of chokepoint.

Senior Mission Design Systems Engineer - retired from NASA

We should watch closely how the eventual commercialization of ISS proceeds. The Deep Space GateWay will likely not be started from scratch. Commercial use of the Gateway may be embedded in the initil concept of operations.

Outbound - We Live And Work In Space

I said I would help, and I will. I started tonight, as a matter of fact. This week was a travel week, and a recovery-from-travel week, so it's taken me a bit to get back to this study. But I'm on it now.

To help me out, can you kind folks please discuss the high-level requirements for the Lunar City development? Thanks.

Yalda Mousavinia

Co-Founder, Space Cooperative

We should discuss the high level requirements in a dedicated forum post. Nothing has been fully defined yet!

I create that thread here: https://spacedecentral.net/forum/posts/requirements-gathering-luna-city

Senior Mission Design Systems Engineer - retired from NASA

WE can begin by trying to get insight into the concept of operations that NASA is developing or has developed. Once the ConOps is established, then requirements are developed. In the meantime ...

Yalda Mousavinia

Co-Founder, Space Cooperative

ConOps for DSG is different than for Luna City, right?

Yalda Mousavinia

Co-Founder, Space Cooperative

Hey all, I created a github repository so we can manage tasks and track work: https://github.com/spacedecentral/luna-city

Feel free to use the New Issue button here to capture tasks: https://github.com/spacedecentral/luna-city/issues

Senior Mission Design Systems Engineer - retired from NASA

... In the meantime we can think about our own ConOps. An outline might include

Activities of the Lunar City a. Tourism b. Science c. Manufacturing d. Repository
Transportation a. Earth to ISS or say a Bigelow station b. Station to Deep Space Gateway or perhaps an alternative commercial only gateway in Lunar orbit c. Gateway or alternate station to surface dity
Governance TBD – fill-in by others

Jason Aspiotis

Financial Entrepreneur & Space Systems Engineer

May I suggest that a google drive would be used instead? Github is not very practical for us non-Software Engineers : - )

Outbound - We Live And Work In Space

How do I upload a file on this forum? I keep clicking Upload File but nothing seems to happen. I did make an empty Google doc, though... sheesh... :(

Outbound - We Live And Work In Space

I'm trying to upload an excel file with a very (very) preliminary collection of requirements for DSG and Luna City, lining them up to each other and rating their relative benefit/detriment. The benefits and detriments are on a scale of 1 to 10, with a field in the spreadsheet with a written explanation for the rating. Of course, the ratings are somewhat arbitrary at this point, and I haven't compared everything yet, I just wanted you folks to see which way I was going with this, and how we can figure out a total aggregate score for whether or not the DSG is a net benefit or detriment to the operations of Luna City. We'll have to hash out a lot more of the requirments before we're done with this.