The Space Shuttle Program: What Next? 333
Chaltek writes "Courtesy of Google News, a transcript of a panel discussion regarding the future of the shuttle program in the wake of the recent incident. Interesting details about the next-generation shuttle replacement programs."
What's next? (Score:5, Interesting)
Mark my words, nothing will change until NASA is no longer under the authority of a beancounter, and the Congrassholes stop worrying so much about brangin' home tha pork(tm).
Hopefully, China's aspirations of creating a moon base will change the idiocy that happens in Congress regarding spaceflight. After all, they can't let godless commies build a moon base first, now, can they?
Re:What's next? (Score:5, Funny)
All you need is for some communist country (China), or some other country we don't like too well, to send an unmanned solar power radio broadcaster to Mars. On Mars this unit would broadcast anti-american propoganda to Earth 24/7 and claim ownership of Mars. In English. Over all of the publically used frequencies.
and call bush chicken.
Re:What's next? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What's next? (Score:5, Insightful)
Umm, NASA having vast budgets and no accountability is the problem. How will removing oversight on how the taxpayer's money is spent help? What NASA needs is to be forced to commercially justify every project and every member of staff. Until then, the culture of waste, inefficiency and mismanagement will continue unabated.
Re:What's next? (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps instead, we could finish a program through to completion most of the time. I can see there are times when it is not feasible to continue, but I'm sure that most of the time with some ingenuity (and maybe some duct tape), they can work out any problem that arises.
I call Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is not unaccountable management unable to properly track funds (or outright embezzlement). The problem is congress setting specific goals for NASA to achieve while drastically underfunding those objectives. Look at the original Space Station Freedom goals set during the Reagan administration. Compare that to the funding provided. So NASA spent huge sums of money designing a space station that never got off the ground because the goals set by Reagan and congress couldn't possibly be met with the funding allocated. Congress later responded by killing the project and blaming NASA for budgetary mismanagement after Reagan left office. One might claim that NASA should have told congress upfront that they couldn't possibly build Freedom for the money provided, but they wouldn't have even begun the project had they played the game straight like this. The original shuttle design of the late sixties and early seventies follows the same pattern. NASA knew what they wanted and how to build it. They went to Nixon and congress asking for $20 Billion to get it done properly. Nixon and Congress balk and say, 'No, but we'll give you $10 Billion'. Instead of NASA balking with the responsible answer, 'No, we can't meet your objectives with that level of funding', they agreed, knowing that once on board they'll get more down the road from cost overruns, and so followed through on a sub-par design from the start. See Boston's Big Dig for another example of this kind of budgetary madness in action. You see the same kind of insanity in the commercial sector from unreasonable attention paid to per-quarter results at the expense of long term business objectives. I don't blame the bean counters, they just provide reports to upper management. It's the top level decision makers - those who set policy - who are at fault.
I agree that NASA (and every other commercial and government agency) needs aggressive budgetary oversight by a qualified third party auditor. But I don't think that making certain money was spent in each appropriate line item without fraud will actually solve this problem, until policy makers get realistic about how much legitimate engineering costs. A great example of this is the design and construction of the shuttle main engines, which were designed and built top down with no component safety tests ostensibly in order to save money. Sure, it reduced the budget for a short time, which helped sell the shuttle to congress. But long term this cost the shuttle program dearly as once the engines were built they had to be tested as a complete unit, with any component failure requiring a complete disassembly of the engine (never mind design flaws requiring a whole redesign and reconstruction of the engine). Every engineer on the program knew this was a safety nightmare, but the purse strings are controlled by congress and so the engineers had no say in the matter. If Nixon and congress had followed through on the original $20 Billion request, and NASA had followed through on their original design goals, we likely would have a significantly safer shuttle, and one which would have more closely met the original per-launch cost reductions from a reusable vehicle. Penny wise, pound foolish.
Based on this I argue that further congressional oversight is not the solution. Congress should set a strict and consistent yearly budget, provide goals for NASA to meet, and let NASA engineers decide on the timetable.
What NASA needs is to be forced to commercially justify every project and every member of staff. Until then, the culture of waste, inefficiency and mismanagement will continue unabated.
I disagree. Do not forget that unlike large scale commercial engineering, such as building a bridge or a skyscraper, NASA pushes the envelope of current science and technology in ways which makes following concrete budgets and timetables at times impossible. Thus only a non-commercial organization like a government has the necessary resources to pave the way for commerce by funding infrastructure for future commercial space enterprise. Space exploration will never be commercially viable until the infrastructure is in place for business to exploit whatever resources are available. If we had relied on only commercial enterprise to fund our roads and bridges we would never have built the interstate highway system. That expenditure was peanuts compared to the economic benefit we've all realized as a result of that government spending. Space is the same. We'll need government to invest upfront to build infrastructure and set standards so that someday business can exploit the abundant resources available. JMO.
Cheers,
--Maynard
Re:I call Bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, so does IBM. They're at the forefront of materials science and solid-state physics, to name just two. A fab is possibly the most complex and expensive artifact on the planet, except maybe for a nuclear aircraft carrier, and IBM is a leader in this field. Yet, every year on the commercial side of their business, IBM announce more (memory, MIPS, reliability, energy efficiency, whatever) per dollar. And this is directly fed from the research side.
If IBM (and their competitors) can do it, why can't NASA? The answer is simple: IBM know that if they don't deliver, they'll go out of business. Maybe not in the short term - they're too big and too well funded - but they plan in terms of decades. Whereas NASA know that there will always be more of the taxpayer's money to spend, and they plan in terms of the next Congress.
You don't know what your talking about (Score:3, Insightful)
Bad analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a bad analogy, and in fact makes my point. The initial costs for a new chip fab is on the same order as a large skyscraper, a new bridge, or the Boston Big Dig. Yes, a fab represents a huge upfront capital investment for IBM (or Intel for that matter), but an expected ROI time schedule is planned upfront. The technology involved represents incremental advancements (new lithography techniques, increasing wafer sizes, etc) not entirely new technologies. And there's already a market for chip technology. The only market for space currently is putting up communications satellites, yet we know there are many worthwhile uses for space technology: preventing catastrophe from an asteroid/comet collision; asteroid mining; scientific advances both from creating the technology to get out there and the discoveries as a result. If we limited spending on space to only those items which would generate an ROI within a five or ten year time horizon none of those goals could be met in the near term. You're comparing an already mature market with an embryonic potential market.
Certainly there are many situations whereby the commercial market does a better job at allocating resources than government. But those situations are limited to ones where a financial ROI is evident and recoupable within a short time horizon. Recouping space investment may well take one to two hundred years, well beyond the time horizon of any private enterprise. The real question is: do we (as a society) wish to invest long term without knowing the quantifiable ROI, since any return would be so far into the future it's completely unpredictable. I think that, yes, the obvious long term gains from space research make this spending worth our while. But I also don't have a bias against spending on certain government programs. Transparent government spending which benefit the entire population (education, infrastructure, health care), with a public and open budget, tend to be good investments IMO. Secret spending, without public oversight, tends to be a predictable nightmare. See the Bradley infantry transport vehicle for an example of classified financial mismanagement of a government program.
In short, I'm not ideologically opposed to taxation for public spending, nor do I think that all government spending must be inefficient by design. I think government financial mismanagement is better understood on a case by case basis. And I think that's the core of where we ideologically diverge.
Gotta go, lunchtime! (betcha we do both eat
Cheers,
--Maynard
Re:What's next? (Score:3, Interesting)
Which planet is that on? The NASA contractor I worked for was characterised by micromanagement, bureaucratic strangulation of the creative spirit and ever shrinking budgets. I swear the job was 10% actual engineering and 90% government paperwork.
Grants and prizes (Score:4, Insightful)
Now NASA spends $2-3 billion a year on human spaceflight via the shuttle. If just 10% of that were redirected (or added on) to provide competitive grants to small companies that seem to have promising approaches to real low-cost human spaceflight (Armadillo, XCOR, JP Aero, etc.) - grants that provide the money without micro-managing, but repeat grants only awarded for significant progress (or even profitability) that would make a huge difference. Additional money in the form of prizes beyond the X prize (eg. first reusable orbital spacecraft with short turn-around) would also give these entrepreneurial approaches a huge boost.
What we need is a diverse human space launch environment that supports frequent (daily!) launch and brings the cost down to near-affordable for the adventurous tourist and real commercial applications. There are a lot of small companies that seem to be making progress to that goal - if it were really adopted by a government program (and perhaps it should be in a different department than NASA - Transportation, perhaps?) it could bring that day a lot closer.
But the way NASA has funded these things in the past, as the parent comment indicates, is never going to work...
Re:What's next? (Score:2, Insightful)
The aerospace industry loves the shuttle. It's ridiculously expensive and prone to component failure, which means it likes their pockets. Congresscritters love it as well, because the aerospace industries bring in jobs to their districts.
I'd argue against the idea that the space program's budget could do any better for the world at large if spent elsewhere - it is ridiculously small compared to most other government spending.
But you know what? You're right. Seeing what happens to tomatos in zero-g accomplishes absolutely nothing. We might as well be spending that cash elsewhere.
Re:What's next? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's next? (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously, there has to be a common good payoff for it to be worth it, doesn't there? Something good for everyone? Or at least the taxpayers who fund it?
Perhaps instead of investing in growing tomatoes, we should investigate moving bodies/supplies faster from here to Mars and back.
Re:What's next? (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course, one mars trip may lay the groundwork for more trips, more advances and bigger payoffs.
what next indeed? (Score:3, Funny)
The tribespeople blasted the Intertribal Sea Platform today, saying that it achieved nothing that unmanned lobster pots could do for less and that there was nothing of value over the ocean anyway.
Likewise the replacement for the ageing sea-canoe is looking like it won't make the next funding round since the wood is needed to build more huts.
In other news, the tribal chiefs dismissed claims of "Tall Ship" sightings and wild rumours of so called "white people" or "haoles" kidnapping islanders and selling them into slavery. In spite of all the sightings, no conclusive proof of "white people" has ever been produced... [203.97.34.63]
Re:what next indeed? (Score:2, Insightful)
I think it's a pretty safe assumption that we are not the only (relatively) intelligent species in the universe. Do we really want to have our pants down when they (the other species) meet us?
Re:What's next? (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, the journey time can be massively increased depending when launch takes place, but they give a rough idea.
Re:What's next? (Score:2)
Turning every research project into a life-or-death proposition wildly inflates cost and decreases scientific ambition.
Re:What's next? (Score:3, Insightful)
The most important part of that article was the reiteration that we already know how astronauts respond to zero-G environments.
(And they sure ain't eating tomatoes, unless they're bringing seeds with them and growing them in water thawed from beneath the Martian surface. Those tomatoes will be growing in a non-zero-G environment.)
The real point of that article wasn't what the astronauts will eat on Mars, because it's a moot point - it doesn't matter what they'll eat, because as long as we pour money into the Shuttle and ISS, there will be no astronauts going to Mars. EVER.
Re:What's next? (Score:3, Interesting)
I submitted a proposal (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I submitted a proposal (Score:5, Funny)
My design involved powering up a very powerful electromagnet while on one of the magnetic poles. The only problem is that he ship tends to flip over and plummet to the ground.
It turned out most of the dot-coms had already patented that.
My two cents. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd like to refer to Isaac Asimov's "A Choice of Catastrophes" which points out that almost every danger, imminent or not, can best be countered by human-technological progress. One of these things is exploring space.
I therefore want to encourage NASA and others concerned, to continue their work.
What if it all fails? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What if it all fails? (Score:5, Interesting)
The shuttle's only mission is now scientific (ISS missions could be considered scientific)...
The military no longer uses the shuttle...they use unmanned rockets...companies have never used the shuttle...some things would not be possible any more (fixing satelites in space), but there are a lot of countries with space agencies...the end of NASA would not be the end of all manned space research...
Re:What if it all fails? (Score:2)
--Joey
Re:What if it all fails? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:What if it all fails? (Score:5, Insightful)
They are safer. IIRC, they haven't lost any cosmonauts since 1971 when three died from lack of oxygen because of a stuck air valve on reentry. They learned their lesson and started using space suits on reentry after that.
They've been safer because they use the right tool for the job of getting people into space: a simple, debugged and reliable launch vehicle.
In 1983, a Soyuz booster blew up on the launch pad. But guess what: the crew was saved by the escape tower. What a concept; the shuttle could use one of those. Nothing beats having a backup plan in case of failure.
For reentry, if I had to choose betting my life on thousands of fragile glued-on tiles vs a simple small ablative shield, I'd pick the latter. The KISS principle works.
Re:UK Rocket? (Score:2)
Save some money, hire H-1Bs (Score:3, Funny)
N.A.S.A.: Need Another Seven Astronauts (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately, as news reports come in about disregard for safety for Shuttle Columbia, it appears that such "joke" has a major element of truth. NASA bureaucrats (and probably politicians up to and including at the White House, as well) disregarded Morton Thiokol engineers in 1986, and we're now hearing that engineers warned NASA officials and the President prior to Columbia's launch that the Shuttle system itself was prone to such a disaster as witnessed yesterday. We know that Columbia was hit with "something" ("foam" or more likely, ice) during its launch on January 16th, and apparently, officials didn't take it seriously enough (Cain slew Abel; did Leroy Cain slay Columbia?). The excuse that "Columbia's crew was doomed from the start because they couldn't make repairs" is both silly and illustrates the current "can't do" attitude of today's NASA, which is far different than the NASA which both put humans on the Moon AND safely returned a crew to Earth after Apollo 13 had a "major malfunction" way up there.
For NASA's bureaucrats (and some politicians), it appears that risking astronauts' lives, NOT for the "unknown variables," but for glamour, expediency, and selfishness, is "acceptable." Perhaps this is to be expected in today's America where style and appearance are far more valued than substance and tangibility.
The "joke" way back in 1986, "N.A.S.A. = Need Another Seven Astronauts," has tragically turned out to be 2003's reality.
Re:N.A.S.A.: Need Another Seven Astronauts (Score:5, Insightful)
Kennedy pretty much stated that they'd go to the moon, _knowing_ that he wouldn't be president by the time they got there, and although various political commentators might point out the propaganda issues involved, I personally think that the result is what counted there.
OD
Re:N.A.S.A.: Need Another Seven Astronauts (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:N.A.S.A.: Need Another Seven Astronauts (Score:2)
Re:N.A.S.A.: Need Another Seven Astronauts (Score:4, Insightful)
It's crazy when people talk about them like they are forced to be astronauts and die for no reason. Everyone dies, life is terminal. It's purely a matter of how and when, and astronauts die pushing science. They could take the safe path, work a corporate job in a cube pushing paper around and die another 30 years later from eating McDonalds their whole life. But exactly how is that a better fate?
Your rant is boring. You're endorsing that hindsight should be taken more seriously. When you figure out a way to implement hindsight in an evaluation before the fact, let us know.
Re:N.A.S.A.: Need Another Seven Astronauts (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is why the real tragedy wasn't the 7 lives - it was the waste of a $2B orbiter and $500M in launch costs.
Before you mod that as flamebait, hear me out. I loathe the Shuttle and the NASA bureaucracy, but I'd fly on one tomorrow if NASA gave me the chance.
When a vehicle costs $2B plus $500M per launch, you damn well want it to come back in one piece.
If a vehicle cost $50M, maybe you don't care if 10% of the damn things blow up on the pad.
If NASA said "We are going to explore Mars. We will train you. We will give you a flight on a launch vehicle. If you make it off the pad, and if you don't suffocate in space, and if you don't burn up on re-entry, you will land on Mars. You will grab the pick-axe and the geology textbook you were reading en route, and you will start digging. If your crew return vehicle makes it (and if we aren't lying about the existence of a crew return vehicle :), or you are able to trek across the surface 100 miles to the other guy's return vehicle and reactor, you will be able to fly back home in five years. You will be paid $100,000 per pound of rock you come back with, $1M per pound of ice, and $10M if we can prove the existence of Martian life at any point in the past from your samples, and $100M if you find a live specimen thereof."
I'd sign up for that, even without the cash rewards for the sample return. (The sample return part is to give NASA a motivation to get me back - or at least my freeze-dried carcass, as long as the rocks are OK! A 60-year-old might just say "fuck it", and send back an empty ship full of rocks so his grandkids can enjoy the money!)
And I suspect I'd still have to get in a line several miles long.
Anyone who thinks that "We need volunteers to send on missions where we know some of them are gonna die" would get no volunteers need only look as far as their military recruiting office, where people take on high-risk jobs at low pay levels, all for the sake of an idea, every day.
replace the shuttle with..? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know if the reusability factor of each shuttle ever balanced what it cost to launch each one but I guess it must have helped. and cost wasn't the only benefit anyway, it's just a smarter way of doing it if you bring the spaceship back home with you instead of dumping it on the moon.
Anything which comes after the shuttle would surely have to be reusable, be able to land like a plane and be able to carry cargo. That's basically what a shuttle is, so I think we might see a shuttle 2.0 with just some different approaches to the same problems.
A millenium falcon style design would be pretty cool though...
Re:replace the shuttle with..? (Score:5, Insightful)
Each shuttle flight cost $450 million.
Back in '93 on the Compu$erve Aviation Week forum, some smart Johnny pointed out that if you took the total Space Shuttle budget from 1977-1993 and divided it by the flights over that same time period, you came up with an amortized flight cost of $1 billion per flight.
The Space Shuttle was never reusable. After every flight, it was essentially stripped down to parts and rebuilt. Main engines which were meant for 27,000 seconds of operation were doing well to get a tenth of that.
So could we please stop spreading this silly meme about the Shuttle being "reusable"? It's not. Never was.
In the end, the Shuttle has proven to be disposable. Unfortunately, the lives lost with each disposable Shuttle aren't.
See my full rant about the Shuttle here [earthlink.net].
Re:replace the shuttle with..? (Score:5, Informative)
NASA's budget always seems to be the one that can be cut. I don't know entirely why, but it's almost always the first on the block. It also gets cut before military spending. If NASA had the budget to pay enough folks and for the spare parts to do it, they could launch 26 missions a year and they have launched many more then the current small number of launches per year. I believe that in 1986, there were more launches then there ever was in any year before that year. After Challenger, they discovered to increase safety, they have to lower the number of launches (big surprise there) in order to operate within budget. Sure they could launch 26 a year, but the money is just not there to do it safely.
Also, if you look at just the shuttles that have gone up, yes, the record is bad. But if you look at the entire record....after the shuttle is dead and buried or dead and put on display in the Smithsonian, I bet the record would be lower. So would, if offered, I go up on one? In a heartbeat.
I think the point that really needs made here is that the Shuttle was made to fly through the atmosphere on landing as an airplane. It's this form factor that builds up alot of the expense. If they actually made the spacecraft to perform AS A SPACECRAFT primarily, you'd be back to the capsules. Why? Because as far as safety is concerned, that's the best from factor. You have no wings that could break off, you have nothing that could be compromised(well, the heat shield, but now it would be less complex). No control surfaces or anything. Basically you have a reversed and slightly misshapened bullet. The right tool to the right job applies here. They made the space shuttle the way the did because air force and navy pilots wanted to fly it. If they stuck to or made a redesigned capsule, we may have even had a cheaper system. I am not saying I know the answer. But what I want to know is why does everything else look like a morphed shuttle? Does it HAVE to be a lifting body or some other form of a airplane when it's being launched like a rocket anyway?
Re:replace the shuttle with..? (Score:5, Informative)
Fortunately, I didn't claim that's what happened. Read my post. I said it was "essentially stripped down to parts and rebuilt", which is factually correct. So many different components are disassembled, inspected, recertified and reassembled that each launch costs 25% that of an entirely new Shuttle. It's extremely fair, given the outrageous refurbishment expenses, to say that each shuttle is "essentially stripped down to parts and rebuilt".
But I didn't claim it was stripped down to the airframe. Although that did happen once, if I recall correctly--Columbia had a bow-to-stern strip-down and refurbishment which lasted from '99-'02.
Some tiles on the Columbia have been in place for it's entire lifetime
IIRC, during Columbia's last refurbishment it had a total overhaul of the TPS.
The ones that need more work get put somewhere and otehr engines brought in to replace the one that needs work
... incurring a huge operational expense. NASA keeps on telling us the Space Shuttle's main engines are the most advanced liquid-fuel engines ever built--which is true--while not telling us that as a result of these engines being built at the limit of aerospace engineering capability, we're lucky to get ten percent of the original life out of them. Gee. Thanks, NASA, for keeping us well-informed.
NASA's budget always seems to be the one that can be cut.
Why shouldn't it be? An embarassingly large portion of NASA is completely unable to live within a budget. Take a look at ISS if you don't believe me--the total costs for ISS are expected to top $100 billion. It was originally pitched for just a couple of billion. When NASA has a factor-of-20 budget overrun, you're damn straight I want NASA's budget cut!
This ain't rocket science. If a governmental agency shows itself to be perpetually incapable of reigning in cost overruns, you slash their budget and tell them to learn how to live within their means. Period.
If NASA had the budget to pay enough folks and for the spare parts to do it, they could launch 26 missions a year
No, they couldn't. The shuttle fleet is not physically capable of 26 flights per year--much less 26 per year per orbiter, as was originally claimed in the '70s.
Also, if you look at just the shuttles that have gone up, yes, the record is bad. But if you look at the entire record....after the shuttle is dead and buried or dead and put on display in the Smithsonian, I bet the record would be lower
The Shuttle is dead. I will be phenomenally surprised if we ever see any significant resumption of Shuttle flights--maybe one or two flights so NASA can say "see, we can do it after all!", but then I expect the fleet to be quietly mothballed. So yeah, we have the numbers right now to look at. The numbers ain't good.
I think the point that really needs made here is that the Shuttle was made to fly through the atmosphere on landing as an airplane. It's this form factor that builds up alot of the expense.
A braindamaged form factor which was only added at the insistence of the U.S. military. Long story of why (makes achieving polar orbits easier, etc.), but it gives the Shuttle better capabilities for launching certain military payloads. Of course, since the 1970s (when the Shuttle was conceived) the percentage of military payload aboard the Shuttle has steadily decreased, to the point where the glider concept is a huge albatross around the neck of the space program.
They made the space shuttle the way the did because air force and navy pilots wanted to fly it
Bullshit. They designed the Space Shuttle that way over the objections of Air Force and Navy pilots. Have you ever seen the numbers on a Shuttle landing? They make carrier landings at night seem safe. The Shuttle comes in blisteringly hot--220mph. A DC-9, which is roughly comparable in size, comes in at 130mph. As a ballpark figure, that means the Shuttle landing gear and braking system has to bleed off roughly three times as much as an airliner. Oh, and I forgot--on an airplane, your wheels and brake system weren't freezing at -250 degrees for a couple of weeks before landing.
Let's also look at abort options. If you're a pilot and your landing gear doesn't come down as you're approaching the runway, no problem--pull up, punch to full 'burner and get some altitude while you and ground control figure out what's happening. In the Shuttle, you don't know until a few seconds before touchdown whether or not your gear works. If it doesn't, well, tough shit: you get to do a 220mph crash into asphalt. You don't get to punch 'burner and try again, or look around for a nice patch of water in which to make an emergency landing.
Are you getting the picture yet? Nobody wants to fly the damn thing, because it doesn't fly. All it can do is drop out of orbit like a brick.
Just to nitpick (Score:2)
But usually, it's the other way around. Airspeed provides lift so acceleration is your main priority.
Pitch for airspeed, power for altitude.
Rich
Re:replace the shuttle with..? (Score:3, Informative)
The $450 million per flight number comes from NASA. See this link [nasa.gov] for details.
The $1 billion amortized launch expense 1977-1993 comes from Aviation Week Forum on Compu$erve, 26 July 1993.
Re:replace the shuttle with..? (Score:2)
Yeah, yeah, I know, that's heresy for Slashdot. Sue me.
Now IS the time (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Now IS the time (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems more and more that the Cold War dynamic was a better engine of progress than we gave it credit for at the time.
War Sux (Score:2, Interesting)
Will we ever move beyond fighting amongst ourselves? How, in a world with mass communication and cheap technology does a person like Saddam Hussain have supporters? How can an entire nation like North Korea be held hostage by a regime that doesn't give a shit for it's own people?
Nobody wants a better shuttle, except space freaks (Score:5, Insightful)
In short, I don't see any real (read: economical or military) necessity for a cheap SSTO launch vehicle. Sad, really.
Re:Nobody wants a better shuttle, except space fre (Score:3, Interesting)
No they aren't (Score:2)
The steel would melt very high up in the atmosphere, and as it descended could break up into droplets that would slow and cool too quickly to do much damage. IIRC the Earth gets hit by 1 ton meteors pretty regularly, which don't make it to the ground with anything intact.
You really want some sort of heat shielding, to keep the steel from melting (or vaporizing!) until it hits the target. There's a study called "Air Force 2025" that's relevant; the main site seems to be down right now, but if you do a search for that term and "hydrodynamic penetrator" you can still hit the Google cache.
Space Program justified (Score:5, Insightful)
Robert Zubrin's the Case for Mars (Score:5, Informative)
Rich.
Re:Robert Zubrin's the Case for Mars (Score:2)
Continued manned space flight (Score:5, Interesting)
Discussions involving "What NASA should do next" inevitably seem to attract direct critisism of the purpose of manned space flight. There is merit in such discussion as manned space flight is expensive and I for one would be happy to see the greater use of autonomously controlled systems in space exploration (not least because this is my area of research). However, be in no doubt that manned space flight is a use it or loose it technology. And that the quality of NASA missions has been affected by the retirement of those staff who put men on the moon (amongst other things). These people learnt how to put men into space, the current crop are being told. If NASA looses the ability to put men in space it may never regain it - too much of the knowhow is retained by the personnel involved (technical documentation is so often written to be written, not to be read). It may also never again have the economic momentum to justify the cost.
Whatever NASA do about manned space flight, they should do it. Ultimately we need the ability to get off this rock!
Remove the astronauts (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Remove the astronauts (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Remove the astronauts (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Remove the astronauts (Score:2)
Re:Remove the astronauts (Score:2)
While this is true, the money spent on manned space flight could have bought dozens of replacement Hubble's. So far the only thing that has been gained from the manned program is a lot of knowledge about how to put humans into space. One day that knowledge might actually useful - but it isn't useful now and it will not be useful anytime in the near future.
Re:Remove the astronauts (Score:2, Insightful)
Man-rating (Score:3, Interesting)
So regardless of whether there are people on board, the shuttles _have_ to be made as safe as possible because you can't afford to lose a vehicle that would cost billions of dollars to replace. This is where the whole 'man-rating' argument falls down.
Re:Man-rating (Score:2)
Logical fallacy (Score:3, Insightful)
After all, the only reason why it costs billions to replace it is because it's made as safe as possible. So what your answer boils down to is "the Shuttle has to be made as safe as possible, because you can't afford to lose a vehicle that's as safe as possible".
It's a very common logical fallacy.
For comparison, the Russian Proton-M rocket can hurl a comparable amount to orbit as the Shuttle, and costs only $100 million for vehicle and launch. By comparison, the Shuttle fleet cost $1.7 billion per vehicle and $450 million per flight.
The amount of money that's wasted on the Shuttle program is nothing short of a national disgrace.
A Must Read (Score:5, Informative)
Stream of $$ (Score:2, Insightful)
Look to the future (Score:3, Insightful)
Shuttle is a "reusable?" Ha! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Shuttle is a "reusable?" Ha! (Score:2)
Probably not that much, considering the USSR already did most of the work.
Re:Shuttle is a "reusable?" Ha! (Score:2)
Perhaps the problem is too much funding? Some of the best innovations have come from people struggling to achieve something with limited resources. Perhaps we should be giving people with good sounding ideas around $10M to try to make them work. If they do the great, we have cheapish spaceflight, and if the don't then what's $10M to the US government? Of course it may be impossible to get into space for so little, but if we don't try then it is impossible.
Re:Shuttle is a "reusable?" Ha! (Score:2)
Isn't that what has been happening ?, as the old engineering saying goes "better, faster, cheaper, you can do two but not all three at the same time".
Hey! America doesn't have a monopoly on this! (Score:3, Insightful)
Did anyone in the U.S. ever hear of HOTOL [geocities.com]
I would include the Russian Buran cancellation here as well but that was more as a result of a coup.
It should, however, be noted that the Russian "Starsem" organisation really know how to get a lot into orbit using the disposible Soyuz system.
There have been 1675 Soyuz system launches to date! [starsem.com]
This image [starsem.com] of the Soyuz production line show the extent of the operation.
Develop CHEAP reusables (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Scrap STS (shuttle), and other "spaceplane" designs.
2. Funnel these funds into rapid development of a small, VTVL reusable manned launcher (like Roton, DC-Y, ISAS RVT).
3. Fund this program up front, not with stop-start funding rounds.
Re:Develop CHEAP reusables (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Develop CHEAP reusables (Score:2)
Re:Develop CHEAP reusables (Score:2)
When was the first commercial plane crash? (Score:4, Interesting)
Not the time.... (Score:5, Interesting)
The cheap space plane could be done. The new material sounds intrguing. And as these would be smaller because the primary use would be as a ferry to the space station, there would be less stuff to inspect after touch down and I bet ya they could even do a new runway that would end near the launch pad and then they could recondition it on the run way, lift it atop of the rocket already on the pad and be ready to go in less then 3 days. The concept sounds alot like the concept Ben Bova had in The Kinsman Saga (I believe this was a couple books put together as one). Use cheap Atlas or Delta rockets. The only difference would be the tug they propose which probably means it only has a RCS system (no OMS) and if it has any engines, it only would have enough fuel for a deorbit burn. Wish I had seen the pictures. I bet they would be pretty similar to the Manta in the Bova book.
Re:Not the time.... (Score:4, Interesting)
In my opinion, the ESA is coming on in leaps and bounds. Due to the much less political nature of their funding, they can submit proposals and have them reviewed more on technical merit than short-term political gain or vote-catching.
It can only benefit both the US and Europe to work together here. Re-usable SSTO's jointly developed push the envelope back a little further, by applying some of the amazing technical advances of the last 25 years to the technology being used at the moment. The Shuttles really need to be replaced at this point, Columbia tragedy aside.
Ahem (Score:2)
Rumors has (have it? please correct my grammar) it that china wants to goto mars too - now, they are probably willing to send somebody over, bone-loss and radiation damage not-withstanding. US can't do the same; we will see some interesting stuff happen.
To be honest, I'd go even if it was just a one-way trip. I might get a darwin award, but you'd be damn sure that
1) I will populate BEFORE leaving, and
2) fame, baby, and not the 15-minute kind.
Re:Ahem (Score:2)
Either of "rumor has it that...", or "rumors have it that...", would be fine.
China might not care about having the first person to return from Mars, but I am pretty sure that they will not want to go down in the history books as the first nation to land a corpse on Mars. Just getting someone there alive will be no small feat, and China has not yet put a human into orbit. Even if they are serious about going to Mars, it will take them at least a couple of decades.
please, no more Buck Rogers (Score:5, Interesting)
What we should do instead is launch with a traditional dumb rocket, and bring anything we need to bring back in a dumb, reliable, simple, and cheap Apollo/Soyuz-style return vehicle.
But, of course, none of this has anything to do with science, economics, or engineering anyway. If science, economics, and engineering were the driving factors, we'd stick to robotic probes for the next few decades. What this is really mostly about is getting money from the government to aerospace and defense contractors, and for a few politicians to build a monument to themselves.
At least some people have their heads on straight:
Now, that's something where I would like to see my tax-money go.
Best solution. (Score:4, Insightful)
I would seriously look at developing a space plane like that proposed by Orbital Sciences; since it doesn't have to carry cargo or three big booster engines the space plane can be quite small (it should easily fit on top of the Delta IV Heavy rocket), yet still carry up to seven astronauts (2 crew and 5 passengers) to the ISS. Also, because the Delta IV Heavy can launch a substantial load to LEO, it could be adapted to carry future ISS components to orbit.
"the recent incident"?? (Score:3, Insightful)
WTF?? It's time for a rant.
Are we trying to be "sensitive" about it? The fucking shuttle burned up on re-entry, killing all on board and showering east Texas with debris. It's not that difficult to say.
This is the same kind of wishy-washy wording we all got after the World Trade Center went down. "after The Recent Incident" or "because of Recent Events". Have we become so PC and sensitive that we can't even MENTION details that clarify "The Event" we are actually talking about??
Moderate as appropriate.
Re:"the recent incident"?? (Score:3)
What are we supposed to call it? I'm happy to talk about 'your fucking shuttle' or 'your fucking towers', but I tend to get modded down when I do.
'The Columbia Tragedy' sounds like your fucking high school massacre. I suppose it would be '2/1' in the post-towers system of disaster nomenclature.
This is really a no-brainer. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's really amazing to me that the question is even arising; take a look at the archived project page for the Delta Clipper [nasa.gov] ; this is such an obvious solution, low cost, high sustainability, and it's really cool. Aside from the blowing up [army.mil] thing, of course.
While they claim that the X-series [space.com] they are currently working on is just the latest incarnation, that's a bunch of crap; the big contractor corps just don't like the idea of a cheap spacecraft.
It's either this or Prometheus [nasa.gov]; anything else is just a temporary solution.
The future of the shuttle (Score:2)
The long-term future of manned space flight is another matter entirely, but for the immediate future it is 'back off and reconsider'.
Recommended book (Score:4, Informative)
highliftsystems.com (Score:3, Insightful)
Could We Just Finish a Project (Score:3, Insightful)
Hell, here's an idea, finish the damn X-33. Per NASA "Work on the X-33 vehicle has continued at the Palmdale, CA, assembly facility during the tank investigation and subsequent negotiations between NASA and Lockheed Martin. According to the press release, vehicle assembly is currently 75 percent complete, and more than 95 percent of the vehicle's components have been fabricated, tested, and delivered to Palmdale." That was on September 29 2000. The program was scrapped 7 months later in March 2001 for no apparent reason aside from no one wanting to foot the bill to finish it. The only real technical problem encountered was in design of a composite liquid hydrogen fuel tank, which was replaced with aluminum. Gotta' love scrapping a project that is that close to completion because no one wants to spend more money to finish it (and it was within budget up to that point...).
I agree (Score:4, Interesting)
Th real problem was not technical, nor budget overruns. In fact, only 900 million was spent of a budgeted 1 billion. The best determination was that about 300 million would be needed. This is about 10 % over budget. For any government sponsered project, this was a cheap overrun. Most DOD based projects end up double to 10 x estimates. So do many NASA projects.
The real reason why Bush killed this < 1 month into office was politics. CLinton's congress had killed the super collider down in Tx. Bush wanted back at Clinton. The sad thing is the Super collider was poorly placed in Tx, but it was already started. Clinton should have allowed it finish. It put back science by not doing it.
OTOH, W. is killing off NASA without realizing (or perhaps really caring) what is going on. This will impact the USA for the next 10-20 years. In fact, it is probable that China will end up owning the Moon's best property, the southern pole.
Think Where To Go, Not How To Get There (Score:2, Insightful)
Beginning with the Nixon administration, U.S. presidents have failed to exert the leadership necessary to sustain a legitimate U.S. space program. Nixon scuppered all of NASA's ambititous and logical Apollo follow-on projects, allowed the budget beancounters to shape the Shuttle's budget to a point that was certain to cripple it's intended capabilities while simultaneously compelling NASA to put all it's human spaceflight efforts into a Shuttle gambit that they knew could not deliver as advertised.
And, where was this under-funded and bastardized Shuttle supposed to take us? To a space station in low Earth orbit. You know, a new, expensive version of Skylab that goes no place but in circles.
The Shuttle is just a vehicle, a means to an end. Sadly, the U.S. leaders have spent the last 25 years using the Shuttle as a cover for the fact that they lack enough interest, courage and wisdom to select a destination for human travel in space.
Instead of building trucks that go nowhere, the U.S. should pick a target and then build the capability to get there. My own preference -- easily acheived with current technology -- is a return to the moon and the establishment of a pemanent and growing human community there.
What's really wrong. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What's really wrong. (Score:4, Informative)
NASA never asked Paul C. Fisher to produce a pen. When the astronauts began to fly, like the Russians, they used pencils, but the leads sometimes broke and became a hazard by floating in the [capsule's] atmosphere where there was no gravity.
As a side note, another problem with pencils is they smudge, rendering text unreadable. That's why, amongst other reasons, Navy logs are done in pen (ballpoint.)
What's really wrong is your anecdote (Score:3, Interesting)
Jon Acheson
Step 1: Get NASA Out Of The Way! (Score:4, Interesting)
There are a number of other companies out there that are capable of developing space launch systems at a fraction of the cost of a NASA "let's use 8 new technologies and spread jobs across 45 states" efforts.
Here's the US Dept. of Commerce's Technology Administration report on the suborbital market. It lists a number of companies developing suborbital craft, all at a fraction of the cost of NASA's efforts:
Suborbital Reusable Launch Vehicles and Applicable Markets, October 2002 [doc.gov]
There are clearly alternatives to doing it the NASA way, and we should pursue them. If we use NASA's methods, we will get NASA's results.
Jon Acheson
Decouple freight and passengers, etc. (Score:3, Interesting)
Why does the shuttle have to be so big? To lift freight: big satellites. That surely doesn't require people. Separate the jobs, and make the human-transport part smaller and safer.
Part of the shuttle's problem is that it was forced into being a "one size fits all" solution. We basically made the shuttle our only human transport to space and our only big-payload transport to space. Those aren't necessarily compatible missions, especially if you throw in "and it has to have wings and land on a runway".
And why take wings into space? As someone has pointed out, the shuttle is only marginally "reusable" anyway. If you're going to be spending all that time, money, and manpower on shuttle turnaround, why not just use a "capsule"? Why do you have to land the thing on a runway? With modern design, materials, and electronics I'm sure an extremely safe, comfy (that leaves out the Soyuz
And it seems to me that even a "capsule" could be made reusable, if it were designed with a replacable ablative shield in mind...
Whatever - back to the drawing board.
One more comment: NASA no doubt has its problems, and in this day and age people think that the way to sound smart and cool is to diss everybody and everything. But it's easy to forget that space travel is damn hard. Really damn hard.
- Steve
Repeat it enough and maybe they'll understand: (Score:3, Insightful)
- Have seperate systems for Humans & Cargo - because it cost a lot more to make a man-rated system safe
- Build big, dumb cargo lifters. The Russians know how to do this. Build it like a ship, not like a missile.
- Privatize it - NASA specifies requirements, private companies contract to fill those requirements
- Standardize it. Specify a standard payload size, sell launches to anyone with : 1)$, 2)compatible (safe) payload.
- Prime the pump - buy a launch a week for five years (at ~$10e6 per launch, IIRC?) even if you're just launching dead weight and dropping it into the ocean. Let the market get established.
- ???
- PROFIT!
If after spending $500,000,000 / yr for a couple of years, no market develops, give it up as a waste of time. Still cheaper than paying for the shuttle for the same time frame.Nice idea, but for the love of Bob, no. (Score:5, Insightful)
Likely, it's embedded. Why? Adding an OS to a non-general purpose computer adds nothing but bugs, bloat and risk.
Shuttle control is a mission critical thing. Not in the sense of, "Oh no! My database went down and I can't help people with technical support! Woe is me!" Mission critical in the sense that *lives* are at stake.
Thus, it makes sense to reduce things to their simplest and best form in such a situation - why use something capable of running vi and WineX when your computer has only one objective?
(Of course, knowing Fate, the shuttles are probably using Windows. The Gods help us all, someone get them a slackware disc, now!)
Re:Nice idea, but for the love of Bob, no. (Score:2)
The avionics are written in, I kid you not, Assembler. Or, rather, an IBM-designed Assembler dialect called HAL/S (High Order Assembly Language / Shuttle).
Re:Ike is rolling over in his grave (Score:3, Interesting)
Get the military to shot the civilians? We are, after all dealing with a man that actually laughed at a press conference at the idea of listening to the people...
TWW