NASA’s Lunar Space Station Is a Great/Terrible Idea
spectrum.ieee.org
spectrum.ieee.org
What: Land a man on the moon and return him safely
When: Before the decade is out
That meant NASA could really focus and throw out everything that wasn't directly on that path.
Reusability - take too long, we'll build each craft from scratch.
Permanent mission - Too complicated, keep the missions very short.
Multi-launch architecture - Nope, too complicated again. Launch it all together.
Crew size? Two on the moon so they could help each other, one in the CM to aid in docking. Want a larger crew? Sorry, no. Three is the minimum so that's what you get.
Complicated re-entry vehicles? Nope. We know we can make ablative work.
What is NASA's manned programme for now? Maybe the Moon. When, who knows? Maybe Mars. What architecture, when, how, for how long? Who knows. Moon orbit? For what, when? who knows.
It's impossible to run a clear programme if you don't know what it's for!
On the other hand, the result was only what was asked for. We went half a dozen times and then that was it. You want bigger missions? A base? Mars? Nope, not what we’re going for.
Without JFK’s challenge, I’m sure we would have taken longer, but maybe it would have been more sustainable.
Could be specified as well:
"Internationally organized base station (ISS style) on the Moon by 2030, permanently staffed after 2032, an experimental ecosystem to work towards self-sustaining O2 and food generation set up by 2037, usable as launchpad for Mars missions by 2045"
That would at least provide clarity on priorities but it's risky: the success would make you famous forever (see JFK) but so would failure.
On the other hand, it requires the next 7 administrations to support a programme that will make _you_ famous, not them.
If the original goal had been "land on Mars before 1980" rather than "land on the Moon before 1970", I do not think it would have happened.
It seems like if you immediately aim for something you can’t do, then you develop a bunch of technology and infrastructure that isn’t very good for other tasks. You end up with a stunt that doesn’t really go anywhere. That gets you rockets like the Saturn V, which was amazing but too big and expensive to be used for much besides Apollo. We’re doing it again with SLS: a big, catastrophically expensive rocket built to achieve a specialized goal. It’s not going to be very useful and it might not even fly.
Compare with SpaceX’s BFR. It has much more general capabilities. At first blush this might look bad: why lug a heavy heat shield all the way to the surface of the moon and back? Why all this focus on reusability if your goal is to send just a few missions? But at the end of the day you’re much better off with a rocket that’s ok for a bunch of stuff than one that’s really good at one thing.
Or just look at the space vehicles of the era. Many of them are still flying today, with lots of evolutionary improvements. How many Apollo-derived vehicles are flying today? I don’t think there are any.
Apollo makes me imagine a Roman emperor declaring a program to send an expedition to the South Pole. They can’t even get there! You need to work on your ships before you set such a specific goal.
As a bonus, steady, incremental improvement is the sort of thing you can sustain across political changes, if you can just get to the point where people stop asking for moonshots.
With incremental progress you risk things looking invisible (just like AI is always just the things we can't yet do, while newly possible tasks are merely computations).
"Do some notable thing in two terms" monument building exercises risk being shot down on budget reasons when any part of government ends up under new management (see Congress).
So I guess you can go incremental (but solve the visibility bit somehow) or grand vision. Right now, NASA seems to be going through the worst of all.
The cost per launch for the Saturn V was around a $1 billion in today's money. That's lower than some estimates for the per-launch cost for the Shuttle. It wasn't unsuitable, the US could have continued with it just like the Russians continued with the Soyuz.
> But at the end of the day you’re much better off with a rocket that’s ok for a bunch of stuff than one that’s really good at one thing.
Perfecting the rocket is opportunity cost eating up missions you could be flying today if you just mass produced your existing but flawed rocket. The US could have had something like a hundred moon missions many the ISS's mass many times over in orbit by the start of the 90s if they just continued improving on the Apollo architecture.
There is a POV that robots are good for scientific missions up to certain price point. After that manned missions become more cost effective.
Retrieving a sample is cheaper with a robot - Luna-24 costed a fraction of Apollo. Knowing what to retrieve while having flexibility of choosing surface regolith, separate rock, samples dug out from a better place or else - that's where humans win.
If we were trying to maximize science per dollar, every manned program would have a lot of robotic preparation. Are we doing that? No. We've spent almost nothing on the Moon and only a tiny, tiny fraction of the manned budget on robots to Mars.
As in, if the Soviets got to control the ultimate "higher ground", they could rule the world from it. Apollo made sure no one could control space, and we now have peace in space.
I kinda believe in this, though I don't know how historically verified it is. It's of course not what you ever say in your rousing speeches to the nation and the world!
On that basis the military was advocating for a moon mission years before Kennedy's speech. It's hard to tell if this actually played a big role in the decision to go to the moon, but it was the cold war after all.
Also the Soviet Union was winning most of the relevant milestones in space (first satellite, first animal in orbit, first human, first woman, first space walk, etc), and this was a great source of national pride. Beating them had great propaganda value.
The Cold War resulted in a lot of really nutty thinking so I can't rule it out entirely, but it's hard to imagine what such a base would look like, especially with 1960s tech.
Of course actually getting ICBMs on the moon is a whole other endeavor.
You'd never get first strike launching from the Moon, regular ICBMs would be all over you long before the moon IPBMs made the 1 day journey back to Earth. Even with the faster travel speed from only having to accelerate out of the Moon's gravity well, you're talking about a distance of 384,000km vs. 8,000km. Your missiles arrive to a planet that is already a radioactive moonscape.
It would also be fairly obvious that someone was trying to move several thousand pounds of hardware onto the moon, and launch detection satellites would be even more effective at monitoring the moon. So you've got a first strike, that will be detectable basically immediately, and weapons that now need to travel ~385,000 km and survive even more serious re-entry than the ICBM's based on Earth. Or you've got a second strike capability that cost you billions of rubles/dollars.
Once you look at it like that, its pretty easy to see why the submarine launched weapons were the preferred method for threatening rapid first strike while providing a guaranteed second strike capability.
The lunar orbit->earth delta-v is 4.8km/s. I didn't check your other numbers but they seem to be off by a factor 1000 too.
I didn't do the math but at that speed you don't need a warhead to destroy a target. Let's try with 1000 kg steel or whatever won't melt down
1/2 mv^2 = 500 * (3200 * 3600)^2 = 345,500,000,000 J
1 J lifts about 100 g mass by 1 m on the surface of Earth. That energy would lift 345,500,000 kg by 100 m.
I would rather say that the Soviet Union was winning the irrelevant milestones, precisely for the propaganda value. First woman in space means nothing, really - you put a woman on your spaceship, wham, easy win. The moon landings forced the USA to tackle real engineering challenges - rendezvous and docking, piloted spacecraft and piloted orbit changes, functionally useful EVAs, keeping humans alive in space for long periods, etc.
One of the last major "firsts" was "first organisms to circle the moon" - they barely squeaked this one in a few months before Apollo 8, and they accomplished it by shoving some tortoises into a Soyuz (no food or water required!).
First woman in space is technically easy, but it does say something about the two cultures that the Soviet Union put a woman in space almost immediately, whereas the United States didn't do so for decades.
Sure simply learning this stuff is interesting, but the costs are so extreme it’s effectively a vanity project.
The data points from microgravity experiments don't exist in isolation; presumably there are data points for similar experiments at surface gravity. Removing gravity from a system could say very much about how gravity affects the system, and thus how the system works on Earth.
We also might discover effects so important that it would be worth going to microgravity to get them. Stepping out into the unknown just to learn how it works is important.
(Disclaimer: I know jack about what kind of microgravity experiments are going on.)
The traditional example is doing basic physics that needs long duration microgravity.
These sorts of research aren't a large fraction of what's currently done on the ISS, but it's also not zero.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZBLAN
2: https://www.asme.org/topics-resources/content/growing-human-...
Aka Manufacturing would be that larger goal I was referencing.
That said, when you get a massive subsidy by NASA, these costs are less obvious.
But even beyond that this is precisely what governments are supposed to do, gather and distribute costs that would make little sense for individual companies or even massive conglomerates to do.
https://jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/news/news_releases/release.sfe...
Even beyond things like that the only real way to study the effect of space on the human body is to put people up there for a long time and test. There are some analogues available here on Earth but they can only really test a few things at once like fluid redistribution and not the entire set of effects.
No president (or congress) would let that happen again. When a president of party 1 sets such a goal the next president of party 2 will shift the goal to make it his achievement instead. Repeat ad infinitum.
Well, getting shot. Kennedy wasn't all that important in getting is into Vietnam, that was mostly before and after Kennedy.
Obviously, launch & orbital vehicles are critical dual-use civilian/military technologies (space exploration & delivering ICBMs).
In contrast, visits to the moon are not (at least for the near & intermediate future) dual-use civ/mil technologies.
Nixon killed the moon program when he got into office, and it is very unlikely he would have started one had he won in 1960.
Any attempts to change the game would have been seen for exactly what it was: weakness. He may have hated Kennedy but he loved the US more.
If the Chinese managed to put a human on Mars the US would get its shit together quickly.
In the past 10 years, NASA has had an answer for all of those questions. Two different ones over time.
Also, SNC's Dream Chaser isn't ablative, and it's funded by NASA's CRS-2 program.
No nukes, no ICBMs, no Apollo.
It’s insane the waste that occurs from random political moves like this. I understand the need to be able to direct NASA, but that should be in addition to the described 5 - 10 year plans. This would give the flexibility needed, while at the same time ensuring skills and contractors are maintained and long term visions are still possible.
I kind of view the “gate” in its current state as NASA knowing it’s the correct choice technically and trying to politically make it viable. Shouldn’t we listen to the experts here?
I think what the people actually working there try to do (as it can be seen here) is find a way to fit what they have already done, with what the new mission statement is, so that they won't have to scrap everything they have done, only the limited amount. That's good is some senses (less wasted work), but the result is then usually not the most fitting solution.
I've got two friends there, a civil servant and a contractor, and I've heard no such thing. That doesn't mean it isn't true, but I'm curious whether there's any data to back this up. You'd have to be careful looking at that data, too: a lot of people are retiring from NASA simply because they're old.
Nothing that's happened to NASA lately is a new phenomenon.
Today, the President signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2017, which funds the U.S. government for the remainder of the fiscal year. NASA received $19.65 billion—its best budget since 2010—and the Planetary Science Division saw its budget increase to $1.846 billion—its best budget in more than ten years.
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/casey-dreier/2017/fy2017-plan...
NASA still does quite a bit of science work though, so I wouldn't count them out entirely. Administrations come and go. Sometimes you just gotta keep your head down and keep doing your job until someone better is voted in.
Public servants get demotivated and set to mediocrity. Hired cattle gets demotivated and try to get out.
Only managers and middle managers are driven by the ego boost coming from "changing things".
Here's their Vision and Mission statement: [0]
Vision: We reach for new heights and reveal the unknown for the benefit of humankind
Mission: Drive advances in science, technology, aeronautics, and space exploration to enhance knowledge, education, innovation, economic vitality and stewardship of Earth
Given the history of using the space program as a tool of political/nationalist/defense goals it's probably more realistic to simply act as if the stated purpose of the agency is really a kind of "marketing" that is significantly independent of the "lived experience" so to speak.
At minimum I would expect that a mental model of NASA that ignored the vision and mission statements would result in much better predictions about what NASA was likely to do.
I should add that I consider all of this deeply unfortunate and I'm not defending it in the least.
Long-term planning requires alignment of incentives. In government, the incentives of top officials are short-term in the extreme: get re-elected at all costs; grow next year's budget at all costs (e.g. waste all the ammo at the end of the year). Of course, more authoritarian states often tout their 5 Year Plans, but you're making quite a few tradeoffs of civil and economic liberties to get there.
Until there is market-driven demand for humans to be on or around the Moon, politics will dominate the story.
I don't know if I've ever thought this before, but wow. That's a great argument
If the president says my goal is to land humans on Venus (with asbestos booties naturally) in 20 years then odd are in 4 years the new non-crazy president will scrap that goal and change it to land on Jupiter in 20 years. And then it will be to put a flag on the Sun. And so on.
With 4 year goals the goals may be idotic but they will probably be finished because it'll be a single lunatic from start to end.
It's also possible that from one crazy administration to the next there could a chance to build on what was accomplished so at the very least something will be accomplished.
When have politicians ever actually listened to experts?
Of course I could have shortened this by just writing, 'The market is thriving right now for thinktanks'.
We have to understand that our problems with advancing manned spaceflight are mainly organizational. And because of that, it's beneficial to focus efforts not on a grand goal, which may not survive the next budgetary fight in Congress, but instead on capabilities which can mostly be used for whatever goal we'll have in mind at any particular moment.
We're well on the way along this idea already. Whatever payload can be used for on LEO, we already have means to get some 20 metric tons there reliably. This, as Heinlein put, is already half-way to anywhere in the Solar system. We also work on manned spacecrafts, which, while useful for getting to ISS and back, can also be used - mostly - for much more distant trips, to near-lunar space and more. We're growing a network of automatic stations, which can provide early reconnaissance for various sky bodies, navigational beacons and relays. A bunch of companies have growing experience with controlled landing and launching of one-stage rocket devices.
Gateway has a good property in that it's another component on the way to the Moon - and elsewhere - which has higher chances to survive another organizational shakeup because it's easier to build Gateway than to mount a sizable manned program to the Moon surface. Gateway is an ISS on steroids - in terms of getting to a much higher point - but not much more in terms of complexity, and we became pretty good with building and maintaining ISS. A smaller ISS in Moon vicinity can be less risky and less expensive than many other projects. As for usefulness - given that Gateway is in place, it's much easier to manage risks for more bold manned and unmanned projects on the Moon. Here I disagree with Griffin - he doesn't seem to recognize organizational challenges which Gateway allows to solve.
Gateway has benefits in easier construction (you don't need to land heavy modules on the Moon), better understanding of international cooperation (e.g., ESA will get experience launching modules towards the Moon), uses other than Moon (for later stages, when we might have some flow of materials from the Moo surface), easier return to Earth (so less risks), better coverage of Moon surface in terms of accessibility etc. IMO, not bad for something which actually has a better chance to get funded to completion than existing alternatives.
Given the constraints of politics/funding, NASA can't pull off long-term & ambitious goals like they used to in the 60s-70s, and the administrator of NASA, Jim Bridenstine, knows that.
Using your term: ISS on steroids, the next stepping stone would be the Gateway on steroids: an orbiting station around Mars.
Here's a cool pdf from NASA that goes into details:
https://arstechnica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/2019-Why-...
No one will care about a Lunar space station, it's not enough of a step forward to capture the public's attention. It's sad that NASA's 'futuristic' new proposal is to do half of what we were able to do 50 years ago. People will quickly vote to cut funding for it, and maybe they should.
Maybe SLS and BFR - but those are not nearly ready, and SLS may not be able to launch directly to the Moon what we may require to launch this time.
Remember that one of the problems of today is significantly lower risk tolerances. We'll want system to be much safer, and that will translate into more mass of the system for all kinds of backups. So Saturn-V or similar payload throwers won't cut it this time. BFR may - but this is much less visible on the horizon.
> No one will care about a Lunar space station... People will quickly vote to cut funding...
I doubt. ISS may be seen as a giant step back from Apollo (even if it has a pile of its own benefits). Comparing to ISS Gateway is a significant step forward. Just imagine: deep space instead of "just" 400 km up, Moon vicinity, flights measured in days and not because one need to synchronize orbits; platform for telescopes which are much more stationary and aren't obscured with Earth every hour...
And launching expedition to the Moon from Gateway can be that much more convenient.
See, for Gateway we have much better TRL (technology readiness level) than for, say, short trips to the Moon surface, not to say about longer term Moon-surface activities like maintaining a base there. For Gateway we need technologies which are similar to ISS, with main changes being:
1) the modules need to be transported to Moon vicinity. That means that in practice, for example, each module needs to be pushed there - so the module should include its own booster (I think it's not very good, as that spent booster won't be used afterwards) or each module should be mated to a booster temporarily. Then modules should be assembled in Moon vicinity similarly to how they are assembled into ISS.
2) we have worse radioactive environment for Gateway than we have for ISS. That means all habitat modules have to additionally include means of protection - be that extra layer of passive material, or active external plasma generators which would reduce radiation by getting it through a weak layer of particles around the module, or something else. A new and a challenging problem, for sure, but with certain payouts in the future if we will ever want to venture from Earth.
There are other differences, like navigation, space debris environment, communications, ways of getting there-and-back etc. but that all seem to be much more attainable than direct Moon missions. And after having Gateway in such a shape, subsequent Moon missions can obviously employ those existing capabilities - i.e. missions would start from Gateway, which is much closer to the Moon, not from Earth, as the path to Gateway would be already well developed.
And we have better hopes of actually having that built before critical changes will happen - so we'll have taken at least some steps forward.
The point of the lunar gateway was to have a close (in time) place for resources and the like. But without any ability to capture and bring in asteroids it's just a waste of space.
Like, you don't want to waste time going after a bunch of tiny asteroids, but if they're too big it would take too much delta-v to move them.
Or I might be wrong entirely.
Casey Handmer's take on that document, the best I know and strongly critical, is here:
https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/05/05/the-lunar-gate...
That is a massively sick burn right there.
If the whole point of the endeavor is just another space race exercise to demonstrate American prowess like the we did in the 1960's-- perhaps that's a waste of effort? Do we really need that symbolic achievement at such an enormous cost? Not to mention the opportunity cost of having to drop more scientifically productive robotic missions?
The fact that the dithering idiocy of our current "administration" is even uttering anything about a moon mission sort of makes me think they see this as just a baloney "show-the-world" stunt.
What if, instead, there was a focus on true science, unmanned missions, and perhaps steps towards actual space applications: mining, asteroid protection, and staging for permanent space installations ?
I agree that it really does seem like at least the official objective of the current administration (mostly the white house) only care about showing the world/the country/someone else that they're the best, that they have done everything, etc, etc, etc. Just like I think it's clear why they wanted to land on the moon specifically until 2024.
I would like to believe that at least for (most of) the people actually working in NASA, they view their work in a more focused way (science, global cooperation and improvements), and it can be seen by the projects that for example are currently being researched by the NASA astronauts in the ISS.
The average person doesn't care much about a probe landing on a comet, even if it is extremely impressive technologically. If you can show people walking on a celestial body, the average person can put that into perspective.
I think that tells us two things:
1) We can still accomplish great things even from lowly motivations, and
2) We shouldn't necessarily take those lowly motivations as proof of a craven administration.
Good things will happen with both. But why not choose the best way forward when it comes to space exploration?
Why not free ourselves from the strictures of yet another "space race" with low-brow nationalistic goals where we again end up citing uninspiring spin-offs as the reward for "winning" the race?
- The US government getting out of the business of designing launchers: We'd acquire launchers the same way the Air Force gets airplanes: define requirements and solicit bids. This isn't perfect (see: F-35), but it's a darn sight better than the current SLS process. After all, in World War 2, it's not as if the US Army Air Corps (and later, the US Army Air Force) designed every plane that it acquired. It put out requirements and solicited designs from aircraft manufacturers like Boeing, Curtiss, Vought, Douglas, etc. Now that rocketry is no longer an unproven and speculative endeavor, we should do the same, and seek to build up multiple competing rocket manufacturers
- Giving near-Earth science to NOAA: Right now, Earth-focused satellites are split between NASA and NOAA. Giving a single agency responsibility for Earth-focused scientific satellites will ensure that they have a single clear voice advocating on their behalf
- Sending the astronaut program back to the Air Force (or maybe create the much ballyhooed "Space Force")
- Creating a new, smaller, more focused organization for exploration of deep space (i.e. space beyond Earth's gravity well). While this organization could wear NASA's logos, I think it would be better if there were a clean break with the past and the organization got a new name and new branding
Isn't the F-35 program criticized for short-circuiting a major part of the traditional procurement process? I'm not so sure you can completely compare the traditional procurement process and what happened with the F-35.
For every tax dollar spent, the U.S. still gets about 7 times the return.
Less dramatically, I don't like just how much the military is the primary domain of non-military objectives. They shouldn't be the leader in nation-building, establishing rule of law, running propaganda in foreign nations (all state department/CIA) or being one of the only avenues for getting free college unconditionally through the government.
NASA has been keen on the idea of shifting their R&D focus to manned deep spaceflight and deep space research, and letting "industry" work more freely i na bid process for LEO. That's basically what is happening.
In a way, Trump's "Space Force" could kinda lead to that, I'd just rather it not be a military focused effort, but something that advances humanity's best things towards space travel and exploration, rather than its worst (violence).
There is actually more support for planetary protection from asteroids, space-based observation of both Earth and Sky (people love the Hubble), resource utilization in space, etc... That is, the real Gerard K. O'Neil stuff.
If it were me I would set a goal of building a sunscreen at the Earth-Sun L1 point (e.g. planetary protection) using lunar or asteroid materials -- something like the lunar gateway would be an ideal crossing point for that. Space-solar power could be a byproduct of these efforts. This should have the urgency of Space Battleship Yamato (aka Star Blazers.)
The lunar gateway is also essential to long-term deep space exploration. One place where Obama was totally wrong was going to Mars without going to the Moon first. Since a Mars mission is going to be isolated from Earth for so long, we need to know that all of the technology is completely reliable and the best way to do that is get it to the point where going to the Moon is like riding the bus.
Radiation exposure in deep space is a known problem with the known solution of using space resources to build a radiation shield. This could be lunar or asteroidal rock and ought to be an early goal.
I am also very curious about Lunar geology and also the possibility that the moon has hidden sources of volatiles. People talk about the water, but you also need Carbon and Nitrogen as well as Phosphorous and Potassium to grow plants and run an economy. (Also you can't breath pure oxygen unless you want to end up like the Apollo 1 astronauts)
An ideal would be at the very least a place for the lander to dock and refuel during the return trip. Then you don't have to haul a lander on every single mission, and thus can use a smaller/cheaper rocket with just the (reusable!) crew module.
Moon Direct probably makes the most sense. It needs only the Falcon Heavy (about $150 million per launch) as a booster. That's a real rocket that's flown. No need for NASA's vaporware Space Lanch System ($14 billion spent so far over 8 years, still unfinished, zero launches.)
Apollo did it with one giant launch, but now that assembling systems in orbit has been done many times, there's no real reason to build something the size of the Saturn V again.
So why is NASA wasting billions to make a rocket, something we've known how to do reliability for more than 50 years? The reason is simple - politics. NASA is a political agency. They suffer from the same short-sighted, narrow focus thinking that a lot of other areas in policy live with. This is what hamstrings NASA the most, the constant change in directive, especially with regards to human spaceflight.
There are commercial alternatives that can already provide heavy lift capability, or at the very least are well positioned to take $1-3B and get one with even heavier capabilities flying. NASA is far too risk adverse these days to be building a rocket or a crew vehicle. They figured this out for commercial crew, why can't they figure it out for other architectures? Imagine NASA being able to cut the $2.5B/year line item that SLS has ballooned to and redirect that to other human spaceflight goals. Leaving commercial companies to build does not mean NASA is entirely removed from the process, for example ULA/SpaceX have been heavily reliant on knowledge transfer and oversight from NASA on their path towards commercial crew.
Honestly, having just graduated from a top aerospace/electrical engineering school and having experience in the industry myself, this is why you see the top talent going to places like SpaceX, Blue Origin, and a whole host of other commercial companies. These companies have a clear vision that NASA lacks. The NASA centers recent graduates gravitate towards are Caltech/JPL and APL/Goddard because they operate (almost) entirely independently from the rest of bureaucratic monster with serious research and a get-it-done attitude. A lot of the work at other facilities is farmed out to commercial companies, leaving a lot of NASA people in oversight/paperwork heavy jobs. This is not a blanket statement, but there is certainly a lot of "one technician doing the work and 5 engineers watching him" going on.
So if you follow the idea that NASA belongs at the forefront of research, what type of work do they do? Well, they are research heavy and build only the most advanced tech as a result. They research Mars and build rovers/architecture to further that research and get humans there. They conduct research on the ISS to further medicine for people back on Earth and learn about long term "0g" exposure. They research deepspace travel and build lunar gateways and architecture to support that. They build drones to go to Titan, build probes to fly by outer planets, etc. And then, they pay a commercial company to fly it for them (just because NASA did the bulk of the research that enables current rockets to be so successful does NOT mean they have to continue being the one making the rocket. Yes SLS has Boeing as a primary contractor, but the point is it's branded as a NASA rocket).
what I'd say would be useful is if this station was the stepping stone for a lunar space elevator. then it would be a great investment and a true stepping stone for a permanent lunar presence, but a stationary orbit around the moon is impossible (too far, you'd fall on earth), so the tether would actually have to anchor the station.
If I'm understanding the mechanics properly (informed mostly by kerbal space program!) the biggest "expense" in traveling most places is getting into LEO. And every doubling of payload requires more than doubling of fuel. All of which requires significantly larger and more complex rockets.
Either I'm misunderstanding the true costs of launches (I know the fuel itself is relatively cheap) or I'm underestimating the complexity of linking two spacecraft in a robust and rigid connection while in orbit.
You're trying to get to orbit, so hold v and delta-v constant. Then you have the ratio of "wet" to "dry" masses constant. So the more you're launching, the more fuel it takes, and that is linear. I don't see how physics would work otherwise?
Over a certain size you can’t build up anymore and have to make the vehicle flat. This is because a certain surface area of exhaust nozzle can only provide so much thrust. So you get to about 100m and then your rocket can’t leave the ground because the mass of propellant is higher than the available thrust.
Then there’s thrust to weight, meaning that to get off the ground and about two minutes into your launch it is far more important to have a lot of thrust than to have high efficiency. The rule of thumb for KSP players is 1.2 thrust to weight on the ground. You will fight gravity losses and end up with about 0.2g acceleration off the pad. This increases gradually as the mass of the vessel is burnt off.
Later in flight the major force to overcome is atmospheric drag. The faster you go, the worse it gets. Fat rockets will have a harder time. So you can’t go too wide, you can’t go too tall, and there are many trade offs to be made along the way.
But the short version is no, you don’t hold v and delta-v constant. There are many more variables to consider when launching a rocket from a standing start where gravity and an atmosphere are involved.
Rockets do not scale linearly.
But the important question is "how much closer". That would be much harder to answer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missions_to_the_Moon
It took many attempts to get a successful moon mission where we landed. How many more before we could dig into the rock for a habitat? Now multiply the time by the round trip to Mars. The fantasy of being on Mars in X years is fraught with dangers that include our own imperfection in execution. Don't expect a man on Mars in your lifetime, at least not one who comes back.
Because it's very near it's obviously much faster and cheaper to ship things there, and it allows near-instant communication back and forth.
Once the technologies are mature it will just be a question of longer shipping to mars or anywhere else.
To use your F-1 analogy: At one point you need to build and an actual car and to drive it on an actual track.
I won't even begin to take a Mars mission seriously until there are permanent, sealed, self-sufficient bases in the Sahara, Antarctica, etc.
So which is it? Do we need to build a base on the moon to develop technologies to let us settle Mars or do we not need to go to the moon at all because we already have the technology to build a Mars base?