CHOICES for LONG TERM SUSTAINABLE SPACE EXPLORATION and HABITATION with RECOMMENDED NEAR TERM FOCUS

With reference to the following two previous technical papers provided by authors of the Space Propulsion Synergy Team (SPST): EXPLORATION AND SPACE HABITATION PUBLIC SUPPORT, 48 th AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference AIAA 2012-4154 and LONG TERM SPACE OBJECTIVES USING OPTIONAL ROADMAPS, 49th AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference AIAA 2013-3801, this paper addresses the issue of making choices with focus on the near term to establish long term sustainability and a strong public support. There are many ways for accomplishing our objective of space exploration and habitation, but the choices we make in its pursuit will determine our sustainability for long term success. Last year’s technical paper presented some of the infrastructure building blocks to achieve the objective of achieving affordable and sustainable exploration and habitation of space. This paper will present functional requirements for these building blocks and provide a listing of some of the technologies that will be required with development through flight demonstration. The paper will also present some of the “Life Support” and “Space Replacement Hardware” functional requirement development needs as there will be no physical ground support available when traveling beyond earth orbit. These basic building blocks must be developed, deployed and operational in space to serve as an effective and efficient space infrastructure to enable the exploration and eventual habitation of space. The paper may focus on why there is a need for long term visibility to place a perspective on which major task should be developed first, e.g., reusable space tug or a propellant depot or trying to assemble a large space transportation system in orbit vs. providing an orbiting platform to perform such large tasks in space. The paper will place focus on the phasing of the long term roadmap such that the element options for development would be visible to any of the interested stakeholders for funding and execution.