LOP-G: Our Gateway to the Stars 

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I’m waiting for the Whistler mega-project, where Simon cracks immortality and becomes a technologically advanced sentient RU-vidr throughout all time and space. The whistleverse.

Space Mega-projects are the best ever, Looking forward to witness the Starship MegaProject

"why am i going from imperial to metric to imperial?" as a Canadian this is an all too common problem in my part of the world. being a former commonwealth and current besties with the United States got us all messed up.

The Shackleton Crater should be named the Worsley Crater since Ernest Shackleton repeatedly almost got his crew killed. But his navigator, Frank Worsley, repeatedly pulled off miraculous feats of navigation that ultimately got them rescued.

2:20 - Chapter 1 - Orbital origins 6:55 - Chapter 2 - To orbit 14:55 - Chapter 3 - Construction 17:10 - Chapter 4 - Operation & orbit

MP Simon is by far the most wholesome version...

Thank you for the excellent video. As one of the Negative Nellys on your Artemis video, I appreciate the end of this one: putting everything into perspective. It doesn't mean politicians won't put their interests before those of humanity, but it does mean that if we can get there in the end, people won't look back and remember the strife we had but the strides we took.

Ion/Hall Effect is cool... but NERVA would have enabled a 3 month trip from LEO to Mars with the right window. Nuclear thermal propulsion is 2x as efficient as LH2/LOX engines in vacuum with good thrust characteristics. Not enough to get to orbit but once you're up there?

Please do a video on Starship/ Superheavy! Both the lunar lander variant and the standard LEO/mars version

I don't think I can possibly describe how Crest fallen and disappointed I would be if this project doesn't make it there. It would be the moon landing that I never got to live through. And it would be such a feat to succeed too.

I love videos like this. It's amazing to think where we will be in just 50 years.

With so many of these Megaprojects being about military vehicles and weapons of war, I can't express how much I love the idea of this particular project. Exploring and learning are more important to humanity's future than finding creative and high tech ways of killing each other.

As popular as your channel is this might have already been mentioned in the comments. I love your channel but you said that Mars is our nearest neighbor which isn’t even close. Venus our nearest is 31 million miles away, Mercury is 2nd at 66 million miles away with Mars is a staggering 202 million miles away. Still love your show and hope people don’t try to pick me apart for a negative comment! ☺️

from playing around in KSP, the lower power of the new hall effect thrusters shouldn't have to much effect on the time to get to the moon, it will only have an effect on the time it takes to execute the burn.

Suggestions for future videos: New York City Water Tunnel Number 3 (will take over 50 years to complete) and Reversing the Flow of the Chicago River (Dubbed the "Civil Engineering Landmark of the Millennium" by the American Society of Civil Engineers)

Its been re-renamed to just "Gateway" now. (Probably good since "LOP-G" is cumbersome.) iHAB and ESPRIT have been co-manifested on SLS Block 1B launches for Artemis IV and V, and Orion will dock them to to Gateway. If the landing itself gets pushed back, the missions will still go to Gateway ensuring no part of the program getting delayed will prevent returning at least to Lunar orbit!

Simon - "describes thruster" Me - a TIE Fighter you say factboy?

18:48 most people would point this out as an inaccuracy but since I’m obsessed with COLS, I’m gonna say this is some good foreshadowing from you

If I was in charge, I would have a space-station parked at the Earth-Moon L1 Lagrange Point.

Can you do the history of The Thunderbirds? Not the TV show, the AIRSHOW! The aircraft are always evolving, the history is decades long, tragic, and they've entertained millions. Thank you from Nellis AFB, home of The Thunderbirds!!

so 866sqft is actually very useful once you realize that ceiling height is basically standardized in the USA to about 10 ft so 8660 cubic ft or 245 cubic meters so basically 1/2 of a new york apartment worth of space

little that people know that space stations are real life Voltrons, I mean they are multiple things that combine into a larger thing. "AND I'LL FORM THE HEAD" 🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁

Wow somebody made a video on the infrastructure we need in space to make going to Mars or commercializing space viable, well done Simon

Orbit is throwing yourself at the ground and missing.

20:30 Wallace and Gromit also reached the moon with their space program.

Absolutely love when you do space videos! 🚀

A hohmann transfer will always take roughly the same amount of time once a craft is up to speed and its apoapsis is high enough for it to get caught in the target bodys gravity well if everything is where is it should be in the orbit. The only problem with ion thrusters is their thrust to weight ratio and getting up to that speed may take several burns taking advantage of the oberth effect by burning closer to periapsis but taking time doing orbits in between burns. Or a less efficient big burn while passing periapsis but losing energy burning radail in and out. A low thrust to weight ratio engined craft would also have to start burning retrograde earlier once it reached its target bodys gravity well. The great thing about ion thrusters though is their efficiency and the craft wouldn't have to do a hohmann transfer and could burn for longer picking up more speed as long as it had enough ∆v and could slow down again once it was approaching or in the target body gravity well. Don't let anyone ever tell you video games can't teach you anything all that was learned playing Kerbal Space Program.

Classic Simon. This one made me tingle. Today I'm proud to be a human. Oh! Let me live to see some of it. Politicians stop throwing stones and see the amazing potential of mankind. Simon you just rock!

330 million? It would cost more than that just to get all the components launched

There was NEVER a lunar orbiting space station proposed until it was realized that the SLS wasn't powerful enough to get the heavy Orion capsule into a low lunar orbit (although the Saturn 5 could get the Apollo capsule and it's lander into LLO). The only experiments you need to do while orbiting the moon is to test different types of radiation protection for 'deep' space and this sure doesn't require a multi-billion dollar space station. As far as Mars goes, no past proposals (dating back to Werner Von Braun) suggested a requirement for a lunar space station. The LOP-G is just a money project to get money to the traditional aero space contractors like Boeing, Lockheed and Northrup Grumman. We should go with something like the earlier proposed European Lunar Village concept.

Just getting started on the video, but you & the whole team are AMAZING! This is like the 4th video today from the various channels.... and I watch em' ALL !!!

*holds apple* "The power of a rocket engine, in the palm of my hand"

4:07 no, anything orbiting Earth with a periapsis above the atmosphere at 200km will be going anywhere from 7.8km/s to about 11km/s

No mention of how starship is being used as the liner lander? It's honestly hilarious when you compare the size of starship to the gateway

Video starts at 1:44

Finally a real Mega Project

The Lunar gateway sounds like the most complicated way to solve these problems. It sounds like its designed by a commitee who all want a piece of the manufacturing pie. Starship plus crew dragon, job done.

Science, knowledge and curiosity focused Megaprojects are like cakes they don't come often but god are they good to savor

Oh man, I actually beat the guy who says, "great video." Even though it just posted....wow Im early!

Basically the real life red dwarf

Maybe do an episode on "fragging" that occurred during the Vietnam War. It's rarely talked about.

More like this!! Please🥺

Super exciting! Great video as usual!

Yes, yes, the Esprit module... but what about the United Colors of Benetton module? Or the 80s Banana Republic module with safari clothes? Or an Orange Julius module?

I love all your shows, thank you. Your prodigal sons the USA, love and esteem you.

He needs a fantasy projects channel covering babylon 5 or ds9 etc...

Instead of putting the LOP-G in an orbit based on communications needs how about putting some communications satellites into moon orbit? Has that been looked at and were any conclusions drawn?

Just one small problem. NASA hasn't hired enough astronauts to crew both the ISS and Moon missions. Also, when they first started training astronauts for the ISS it took 5 years - an undertaking that now only takes 2 years. In deciding on various timelines for moon missions, they used current ISS training time as a model despite the fact that they should have used the earlier duration as we will again be training new people on new equipment and procedures just like in the early days of the ISS. The normal time to hire crew from the time of the announcement of their missions is 2 years. Add that to the 5 years for the first class of moon bound astronauts and you get 7 years. So the earliest any new hires could be readied for a lunar mission is 2029. And they were concerned about the lunar spacesuits not being ready until 2025. Now a moot point.

Man that last quote should be used more often.

And used the freshest footage of a rocket engine available with the latest Nasa test. Nice work!

Great video! For the record, LOP-G was just a placeholder name that was used until 2018 or so. Since then it's just been called "Gateway" or the "Deep Space Gateway".

Would you guys do an episode on the 2030s space station proposals?

Whilst I may generally be a nihilist, I must say that I appreciate the uplifting message at the end of this video.

Simon OMG!!! Get a captains chair like the one from Voyager.

Good job Simon. This one was a cut above the rest.

I had no idea about the LOP-G, the perfect Megaprjects subject. Love the space projects.

At 4:08 you say orbital velocity is somewhere between 10 and 20 thousand meters per second. I'm not sure where you got those numbers from, but orbital velocity for a low earth circular orbit is about 8000 m/s, and is slower for higher circular orbits. That's for circular orbits. The speed at the low point (perigee) of an elliptical orbit could be higher, but only for the lower parts of the orbit, and would be

This is all great, but I'm still holding out for taking off in a rocket from Earth and landing it directly on the Moon, Duck Rogers style. But no reverse gear on the rocket engine.

The sign off quote was epic. Great work as always!

"Chemical rocket engines are the only engines able to overcome the earth's gravity" Seems Simon isn't familiar with Project Orion "ol' boom boom" the nuclear bomb powered rocket.

Excellent. Thank You for great up to date information. Artemis is delayed by technical problems and a hurricane presently. Hopefully a successful and safe launch and mission in the near future.

To Infinite and Beyond! This should be the first new words on the moon surface.

Simon’s disembodied consciousness on a screen, 2,000 years from now, telling our descendants about Earth & hairless apes while they’re on some far-flung planet in the galaxy

How about a megaprojects or a biographical video on Simon's RU-vid career, I feel that would be a pretty funny April fool's video

I keep my hydrozene in the attic. The raccoons monitor the storage module, so win/win.

The musical cue at about 17:08, the start of “Operation and Orbit”: what is it? I know it from somewhere but can’t place it and it’s been driving me crazy every time Simon plays it!

The cannonball actually never "turns." It actually travels in a straight line. It's the space around the mass it's orbiting that's curved.

VIDEO STARTS AROUND 7:12

I have the weekender bag. It’s phenomenal!

The main purpose of this is to maintain a constant communication with a base at the south pole, which a small, unmanned satellite could do just as well. Manned lunar missions would save fuel by going straight from earth orbit to low lunar orbit, with rendezvous there if necessary. If its a lab to study deep space exposure, just say that. Or whatever it really is.

Wouldn't it be better to have one ship that specializes in going from the Earth to an Earth-orbiting space station and then have another ship that specializes in going between the Earth space station and the moon (like they did in the movie 2001)? Couldn't you just use the moon as a launching point for interplanetary missions?

Your comparisons are NOT pointsless. They make sense.

The LOP-G is also a test spaceship for trips to Mars and back.

Simon's wearing just a tshirt? The world is ending

THANK YOU for calling it by its name: The Canadarm. So rarely do Americans refer to it by its actual name. Invented, developed and created in Canada and named by an elementary student. It’s a point of pride in Canada and it always bothers me seeing American news sources refer to it as “the space arm” or something insultingly generic. So I thank you for calling it by its actual name.

I understand that the James Webb Telescope uses chemical thrusters and that they are the main limiting factor on it’s lifespan. I’m sure NASA considered electric thrusters but probably thought they weren’t quite ready yet? Just curious.

Thought: Would you consider making a video on Nauka and Prichal? Two ISS modules which have launched and joined with the ISS since you made your ISS video when you launched the channel.

Really good video Simon! Inspirational!

Just clicked, hoping Zubrin and others rejections gets brought up. Zubrin calls this the Lunar Tollbooth as a dig to what a waste of money it is in every way

Remarkable 👍👏👏😮 An astronomical project! 🚀 Another TRUE MEGAPROJECT

I would like an inflatable habitat added to the LOP-G.

So could we also get North Sea Dam as video. We are probably get that before we get any space gateways.

Ive had that bag for 5 years. Still amazing and use it all the time!

Don’t tease me Simon. This better be good…. Will cue it up and devour it soon

Excellent presentation.

Can you make a video about the Swedish fighter jet jas 39 gripen or the Swedish submarines the Gotland class and the Södermanland class?

$332 million is such an insultingly small budget for something like this. Hell, the US just completed a $10 billion aircraft carrier. God forbid we put that money towards something like NASA.

The Science of Dreams would be an interesting Topic for soon. Why do we dream and more importantly: When is the much-needed Tech discovered that makes you sleep dreamless? Me and others really need it.

Now, imagine for a while, that since the end of the Cold War, the ammount of funding for US military and NASA was swapped. We would be living on Mars by now.

16:06 HLS is not directly related to gateway, SX with dragon XL and PPE/HALO launch is but BO isn’t

16% of US total federal spending is on defense. Social Security, federal transfers, Medicare, Medicaid, and other means tested welfare programs make up over 70% of US total federal spending. Also since we now have a space defense force chances are defense spending will go towards some long term space programs.

A seventy year lifespan in the 1700's - born while there were horses and carts, died when there were horses and carts. A seventy year lifespan in the 1800's - born while there were horses and carts, died when there were steam engines. A seventy year lifespan between 1950's and now - born while there were airplanes, died when there were interplanetary spacecraft. I was born before sputnik, and I still find it mind-buggering to see how far we have come in a comparatively short time.

Great to see Northrup Grumman, Boing, Lockheed Martin SpaceX Airbus Blue origin are teaming up on this. Has to be a group effort financially. Can't wait to see this orbit the moon.

Yay, the best video about gateway I’ve seen, thanks. Really hope it works out

Added context, Hall-effect thruster have the potential for acceleration up to ~30% the speed of light in a vacuum, though currently we can only get between only 10-15% the speed of light with them (theoretically). A Hall-effect thruster is a type of Ion thruster.

Great video overall and a good resource for public info on the station Some small errors: -Astronauts do not travel using the ppe -falcon heavy will not transport crew -the station can not be used for mars missions due to its orbit this would take more fuel than departing from Earth

Star Trek Wars…the easiest way to get two groups of nerds in an uproar simultaneously

That ending remark gave me chills

They used to say that if man was meant to fly, he’d have wings... Instead he has the LOP-G!