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Led by Board Chair Gerry Griffin and President\/CEO Alan Stern, Golden Spike are technically a start-up company and don\u2019t have any funding of note behind them \u2013 with their business model built on sales revenue from individuals who have aspirations for trips on future missions to the Moon.<\/p>\n
However, Northrup Grumman appear to be willing to push forward with a study level review of options for Golden Spike at this early stage, in turn showing the effort \u2013 one that may see humans return to the moon by the end of the decade \u2013 is at least moving forward.<\/p>\n
![\"Golden](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/Z3.jpg\" "\\"Golden")
Per a release by Golden Spike on Thursday, Northrup Grumman \u2013 a major aerospace and defense contractor \u2013 will review requirements and synthesize a set of study ground rules and assumptions emphasizing system reliability, automated\/ground command operability, and affordability.<\/p>\nSpaceflight news subscription
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They will also establishing velocity budgets from and to low lunar orbit for pragmatic lunar landing sites, while exploring a wide variety of Lunar Lander concept options \u2013 including staging, propellants, engines, reusability, autonomy, systems capabilities for exploration, as well as landing site flexibility.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis study is one of a number of initial studies we\u2019re undertaking to begin creating the design requirements and specs for the lander contract competition we expect to hold to select a Golden Spike lander for flight development,\u201d said Golden Spike\u2019s Lunar Lander Systems Study (LLaSS) engineering chief, James R. French.<\/p>\n
Northrop Grumman\u2019s legacy companies \u2013 Grumman and TRW \u2013 designed and built the Lunar Module and Lunar Module Descent Engines for the Apollo moon landing missions that between 1969 and 1972 ferried a crew of two astronauts from lunar orbit to the lunar surface and back again six times.<\/p>\n
Their involvement with Golden Spike pushes forward their public plans within a month of their initial announcement.<\/p>\n
![\"Apollo](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/Z5-350x255.jpg\" "\\"Apollo")
\u201cThis is a significant step forward in our plans,\u201d said Golden Spike\u2019s Mr Griffin. \u201cNorthrop Grumman brings Golden Spike a unique body of knowledge and skills as the only company to ever build a successful human-rated lunar lander, the Apollo Lunar Module.\u201d<\/p>\nNo details are provided on the length of time it will take to complete the trade study, although Golden Spike themselves are only in \u201cPhase A\u201d of their forward path. Northrup Grumman appear to be following suit, with the effort noted as establishing a design trade space with pragmatic limits for future more detailed analysis and development.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re very proud to be working with Northrop Grumman,\u201d added Dr Stern, \u201cwhich has the most experience and successful performance record for human lunar lander designs in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
From NASA\u2019s standpoint, a return to the surface of the Moon was cancelled when the Constellation Program (CxP) ended. This proved to be the catalyst for Golden Spike\u2019s plans, per Dr Stern\u2019s comments during the company\u2019s reveal.<\/p>\n
However, there continues to be a movement within the exploration community at NASA for Lunar Surface plans to return to the Exploration Roadmap, as much as it would be completely different to anything Golden Spike have planned, not least from the Lander standpoint.<\/p>\n
![\"NASA](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/Z621.jpg\" "\\"NASA")
Documentation placed the potential for such NASA missions to the moon within the ESD Concept Of Operations (Con Ops) presentations (L2) \u2013 listing it alongside the main NEA (Eear Earth Asteroid) missions under the Architectural Timeframe DRMs.<\/p>\n\u201cLunar Surface Sortie (LSS): Lands four crew members on the surface of the Moon in the equatorial or Polar Regions and returns them to Earth,\u201d noted the presentation.<\/p>\n
\u201cExpected drivers include: MPCV operations in LLO environment, MPCV uncrewed ops phase, MPCV delta V requirements, RPOD (Rendezvous, Proximity Operations and Docking), MPCV number of habitable days.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Atlair](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/Z511.jpg\" "\\"Atlair")
As with Golden Spike, the Lunar Lander is a key element of the viability for returning to the Moon \u2013 although NASA\u2019s lander would be far larger and would require the Space Launch System (SLS) to launch it into space. Golden\u2019s Spike\u2019s small lander could be launched by a vehicle such as SpaceX\u2019s Falcon Heavy.<\/p>\n\u201cLunar Lander: Transports crew to\/from the Lunar surface and supports crew for short duration surface stays. Sortie two-module configuration has Descent Module (DM) and Ascent Module (AM). AM includes Suit Ports and a side hatch opening to the lander deck. Crew equipment, supplies, and consumables stowed in the AM,\u201d added ESD\u2019s Con Ops presentation.<\/p>\n
\u201cA three-module vehicle configuration for extended stays consists of the DM, the AM, and a Suit Lock\/ Suit Port (SL) module.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Altair](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/Z413.jpg\" "\\"Altair")
It is unknown if NASA\u2019s notional plans would result in the resurrection of the Altair lander \u2013 as depicted for use with the Constellation Program \u2013 although a foundation of work on variants of this lander would be available to the engineering teams.<\/p>\nAs listed in the Con Ops, Lunar Surface missions \u2013 based on just SLS related hardware \u2013 would involve two Block 1A SLS vehicles, launching 121 days apart. The first SLS would launch the Lunar Lander, with a Block 1 CPS, followed by the second SLS launching a crew of four on Orion for a 19 day mission, with seven days on the Moon.<\/p>\n
No dates are provided by the Con Ops, although based on the availability of the SLS Block 1A, such a mission would be viable by the first half of the 2020s.<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/Z78.jpg\" "\\"The")
Also providing a boost for the roadmap that includes Lunar destinations \u2013 as a stepping stone towards NEA and eventual Mars missions \u2013 is the large amount of work taking place on evaluating an \u201cExploration Gateway\u201c.<\/p>\nISS and Exploration teams continue to be involved in what is being described as \u201cL2 WayPoint Activities\u201c, with cross-center sources claiming a groundswell of support for marrying SLS and Orion to this drive after the EM-2 mission. See L2\u2019s Exploration Roadmap Update section for additional information (L2 Link).<\/p>\n
As such, NASA\u2019s own roadmap appears to be closing in on the two SLS missions to qualify the launch vehicle and Orion, prior to the drive towards constructing and deploying \u2013 via Solar Electric Power (SEP) \u2013 the Exploration Platform to EML-2.<\/p>\n
Images: Via Golden Spike, L2 content, NASA and Boeing.)<\/p>\n
(To join L2, support NSF and access 5,000+ gbs of exclusive content \u2013 added to on a daily basis \u2013 click here: http:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/l2\/)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The recently revealed Golden Spike Company have announced a contract with Northrop Grumman to design their Lunar Lander. Several designs are likely to be on the table, likely including the sporty-looking lander portrayed in notional graphics during December\u2019s reveal of the Colorado-based company. Golden Spike Lander: During December\u2019s announcement, Golden Spike revealed a list of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30293,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9081,8102,625],"class_list":["post-39940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-golden-spike","tag-lander","tag-moon"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39940"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}