Utah vs. NASA On Heavy-Lift Rocket Design 285
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the my-money's-on-the-dudes-with-rockets dept.
from the my-money's-on-the-dudes-with-rockets dept.
FleaPlus writes "Utah congressmen Orrin Hatch, Bob Bennett, Rob Bishop, and Jim Matheson issued a statement claiming that NASA's design process for a new congressionally-mandated heavy-lift rocket system may be trying to circumvent the law. According to the congressmen and their advisors from solid rocket producer ATK, the heavy-lift legislation's requirements can only be met by rockets utilizing ATK's solid rocket boosters. They are alarmed that NASA is also considering other approaches, such as all-liquid designs based on the rockets operated by the United Launch Alliance and SpaceX. ATK's solid rockets were arguably responsible for many of the safety and cost problems which plagued NASA's canceled Ares rocket system."
Re:Hmmmm... (Score:1, Interesting)
How about strapping the people who made this dumb law to them, then shooting them off into low earth orbit? Or, better still, just _short_ of low earth orbit :)
How this sounds to me (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Like riding a firecracker (Score:4, Interesting)
Mercury had solid rocket motors for the deorbit burn, but you would never want to stop that burn half way. The Shuttle can dump the SRBs during launch (taking a big risk of being fried as they fly away) but if one SRB fires more than 100ms after the other SRB on the pad its all over for the orbiter and the crew.
Re:Just to be clear... (Score:1, Interesting)
Living in Utah I can give you a hint, he is the only at least somewhat unowned man among the current congressional delegation. One of a few politicians I actually have hope for on either side of the aisle. Hopefully senator-elect Lee who was also elected against the establishment Republican's wishes will also be a bit less owned then Bennett, a guy can dream right?
Re:You dont... (Score:4, Interesting)
Indeed. I had to read that summary again, as on first reading I thought I was reading it wrong. NASA breaking the law for investigating alternatives to a single supplier? It just doesn't read right. When I started reading I expected it to be the other way around, as in NASA going for a certain supplier, without properly investigating other options.
If those solid boosters caused so many problems, then it only makes sense they will search other options. On top of that I'm not expecting anything less from a research institute like NASA. Isn't development of new technologies part of their mandate?
My recollection is that this is not new (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been trying to confirm this for years, because hey, I could have remembered it wrong, but decades-old back issues of Aviation Week are still not online in searchable form.
Re:Like riding a firecracker (Score:1, Interesting)
Be that as it may, we have 60+ years experience designing and building reliable liquid-fuel rocket engines. How much experience do we have designing and building these "advanced" solid-fuel engines and how safe and reliable are they? Has anyone even built an actual rocket using these "advanced" engines yet? How big? Or are they still in the proposal stage?
Deja boom (Score:5, Interesting)
As I recall, the reason the boosters were not a safer one-piece design was because Hatch had to have Morton Thiokol in Utah get the contract. MT could only build them in segments using the questionable O-ring joints because a whole booster could not be shipped from Utah to Florida.
Seven people would still be alive today if Hatch had kept his sanctimonious oinky nose out of NASA's engineering process.
yes, this is common knowledge (Score:5, Interesting)
After the disaster in 1986, everyone knew about the role of Utah's senators in the disaster - but as you say, it's hard to find now. Between the fact that much data from that era was never put online, and possibly some gaming of search results to steer searchers elsewhere, I don't see anything now. I imagine that certain rocket companies in Utah would prefer that no one knew about that.
Anyway, it was common knowledge at the time.
The only space legisl;ation we need. (Score:3, Interesting)
Tax Breaks for companies keeping permanaent stations in orbit and lunar bases.
Just say that any company that can man a permanent lunar base with an increasing number of astronauts ever year has to pay no taxes on earth.
Lockheed and Boeing and maybe even SpaceX would have permanent lunar bases on the moon so fast it would make your head spin.
The taxes you wouldn't collect would probably even be less than the extra money we throw at NASA every year, win-win.
Make the moon a tax shelter and watch the human race expand into the solar system.