Next Generation Space Shuttles 226
zymano writes "Popular Science has an article about the next generation space shuttles. If you're wondering about what happened to all those cool ideas for a new shuttle and what happened to them then this story will explain it. Mentions the politics, design, costs and time for a new shuttle." There's some neat images of mockups as well.
Hey hey, (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hey hey, (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Hey hey, (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re:Hey hey, (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Hey hey, (Score:3, Funny)
Much as I love my Athlon... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Much as I love my Athlon... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Hey hey, (Score:5, Insightful)
What's wrong with the current computers on board? Sure, they're old but they still work and if they still work, why replace them? IIRC, the computers did all they could to try and save the shuttle. In the end, I'm sure it wasn't the computer's fault.
Geoffeg
Re:Hey hey, (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hey hey, (Score:5, Insightful)
The advantage of the Shuttle's computers are that they've been round since the late 1960s, their design has been thoroughly debugged as have the programming tools used to write their code AND the code itself.
The Shuttle code is widely regarded as some of the best programming ever completed.
Throw the Shuttle computers away and you lose all those hard-won achievements.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Re:Hey hey, (Score:2)
Re:Hey hey, (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem with this is that the machines will have to be repalced at some point. The MTU (Master Timing Unit) designed by Westinghouse in the seventies was still being used as late as 1993. It was in need of a redesign then because the oscillator used was getting scarce. I have no idea if the thing is still being used but NASA better design a replacement very soon. Half of the parts used in the thing can't be had for love or money. Obsolete technology can be a danger on it's own if it's a critical i
Wrong with the computers (Score:5, Insightful)
This could save NASA billions in costs. The problem is that NASA wants a new device that is massively better than the shuttle, instead of doing a CBA and get a fleet that is modern, 2-4 times safer, and costs half to operate.
The problem is that NASA won't go with replacement programs until they get a 200-fold safety improvement and a 10-fold cost savings. So as a result, we are spending a fortune on an aging fleet of increasingly primitive vehicles.
Instead, it would be nice if NASA would go for 2-4x safety improvements and 50% cost savings, and then build a new reusable launch vehicle every 10-20 years.
If we left alone or increased NASA funding, we could support perpetual research on new shuttles, with each generation bringing down in costs. If the operating costs dropped, you could save the money and use it towards research. The shuttle program produced a LOT of technology for the US economy (remember everything was space-age in the 80s), and new research programs will continue to do so. However, just relaunching the same thing for billions doing retarded thing like ants in space isn't pushing technology forward, it's just spending money to protect NASA's turf.
Re:Hey hey, (Score:2, Informative)
In all likelyhood, the newest computer system with deep-space certification (radiation hardening, etc) would be a 386 or 486.
Most shuttle flights in the last ten years have taken "modern" laptops for scientific uses. The flight computers have worked perfectly well for over twenty years. The only reason to even think about replacing them is the availability of replacement parts--and it may very well be cheaper to rep
Re:Hey hey, (Score:2)
Er, they didn't go to the ISS, they were in a completely different orbit. But still , you'd think *someone* coulda suited up and had a look.
Even if they couldn't repair it, they could have then had a chance to say goodbye to their family before trying a (now known to be suicidal) reentry.
Something must be wrong... (Score:5, Funny)
I swear to God, though, if they make a mock up of this one, call it 'Enterprise', and try to pretend like it was actually made before the first shuttle Enterprise , I'll shoot someone.
Re:Something must be wrong... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Something must be wrong... (Score:2, Interesting)
I was thinking about momentum and launching... why not get something really really really heavy to move at a moderate speed (could be through some environmentally friendly means, possibly a mag-lev to minimise friction. This heavy objects then hits the light shuttle, propelling it over some runway at fantastic speeds into orbit (could be in a vacuum tube for some time).
Maybe the Gs will be too much for a manned flight above... so how about bombarding a capsule with neutrons or something through a la
Re:Something must be wrong... (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, wait, it's been done... it's called Project Orion [angelfire.com] .
Or we could do something even more efficient... throw stuff out the back at high speed and let the reaction provide propulsion. Hell, if you can throw it fast enough, it doesn't have to be heavy...
Oh, wait... that's been done, too. It's called a rocket.
Seriously, though, why do you say a rocket is "flawed and wasteful"? What makes you think that throwing rocks at a spacecraft would work better (or at all)? Have you done any math to substantiate it? Is it, just maybe, possible that all those rocket scientists might know what they're doing?
Re:Something must be wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
But a single space launch uses a hell of a lot of fuel and creates a lot of pollution - this is not sustainable.
Yes, rocket propulsion is efficient in a chemical-kinetic energy transfer way, but not efficient if all other costs are taken into account. Use geo-thermal energy to power such a mag-lev launcher thing... I find that preferable.
Save rockets for the last resort. Yes they are good at a quick effective solution... but multiple space launches a day (manned or unmanned but something IMHO, necessary for more than the minor interest we have in space now)... rockets no longer become the best option.
Re:Something must be wrong... (Score:2, Insightful)
Rockets aren't just a "good" solution. They're the ONLY solution we have for getting into space. (And, FWIW, they don't even have to make that much pollution--if the shuttle didn't have to be a heavy-lifter it could ditch the boosters, and
Re:Something must be wrong... (Score:3, Informative)
While I was reading about the Space Elevator [highliftsystems.com] , I came across a neat article about something very similar to what you want.
It was a horizontal platform, very tall (kilometers?), looking like a series of "A"s, with a track running from the top of each "A" to the next. It woul
Environmental? Re:Something must be wrong... (Score:3, Interesting)
That's not actually true. A rocket produces about the same amount of pollution as burning the same amount of fuel in a car engine. The main pollutant it creates is CO2, and it doesn't, overall, produce any CO2 if you use biomass to make the rocket fuel (since the plants suck up as much CO2 as they grow as the rocket produces).
Yes, rocket propulsion is efficient in a chemical-kinetic energy tra
Re:Something must be wrong... (Score:4, Insightful)
The present shuttle's main engines burn hydrogen + oxygen --> H2O. The "pollution" in question is... WATER!
Admittedly, the solid rocket boosters use ammonium perchlorate and aluminum, which does produce nastier stuff - but they're replaced with more liquid fueled rockets in all the proposed shuttle replacements, too.
Yes, rocket propulsion is efficient in a chemical-kinetic energy transfer way, but not efficient if all other costs are taken into account. Use geo-thermal energy to power such a mag-lev launcher thing... I find that preferable.
Why? It can't be cleaner environmentally, and I very much doubt you could build such a "mag-lev launcher thing": for starters, a vehicle accelerating along a maglev track to escape velocity would require either insane lengths of track (on a Great Wall of China scale) or acceleration which would pulp the occupants. A rocket, meanwhile, can give a reasonable acceleration throughout the climb to orbit - spreading the acceleration out over a few minutes.
A space elevator might one day be a feasible approach. Maglev won't, unless/until you find a way to project the magnetic field a few hundred miles away from the ground equipment producing it...
Re:Something must be wrong... (Score:2)
"Have to"? None! (It can all be done with solar or wind power.) Right now, ISTR it's supplied by a specialist contractor who probably use regular grid electricity - which they could buy from someone like Green Mountain [greenmountain.com] (who offer electricity in Texas generated exclusively from wind + hydro schemes). Using renewables to convert water into a totally clean-burn
Do they think out of the box? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Do they think out of the box? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Do they think out of the box? (Score:2)
Of course the fact that they don't do this, makes NASA a monopoly and gives it completely no incentive to clean up it's act; so in the long
Re:Do they think out of the box? (Score:2, Informative)
The space program... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The space program... (Score:2)
Maybe we should throw a few dollars towards education first? Hmmm?
Re:The space program... (Score:2, Insightful)
HOTOL - the unrealised 1980s alternative (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, as soon as Bond had designed the revolutionary air-breathing engine that the project was based on, it was classified by the British government. Score one for stupid politics. So, perhaps the best rocketry engine designed never got built.
Later, HOTOL variants and derivatives were proposed, including an Anglo-Russian project called Interim HOTOL.
Here are a few related links to check out, most of which contain illustrations of what the orbiter would have looked like:
HOTOL [geocities.com]
HOTOL and Interim HOTOL [easynet.co.uk]
Wikipedia entry for HOTOL [wikipedia.org]
Google search for "HOTOL" [google.com]
Of course, HOTOL and HOTOL-derived orbiters are still a viable alternative today. Air-breathing engines seem to be the logical next step.
Re:HOTOL - the unrealised 1980s alternative (Score:3, Interesting)
The main thing that killed it, was the projected development cost- around $20 billion or more (and I think these are 1980 prices). The engines look like they would be really expensive to design, and they are the heart of the vehicle. Basically, he couldn't find anyone to fund it.
Re:HOTOL - the unrealised 1980s alternative (Score:4, Insightful)
Best wishes,
Mike.
Re:HOTOL - the unrealised 1980s alternative (Score:2)
Why not launch from under a host aircraft? (Score:2)
Using a host aircraft to take your otherwise single-stage-to-orbit flyer part of the way up may be unsexy, but it provides a significant gain in various launcher design parameters and the safety of a tried and tested technique. (Safer for crew too, not just for the accountants.)
It would be damn nice to see fewer purity advocates and more genuine engineers in this a
Re:HOTOL - the unrealised 1980s alternative (Score:2)
Concorde's technology also got classified, but that didn't stop them building it and making a success of it.
Besides, this is the '80s we're talking about - people were still paranoid about espionage back then.
Anyway assuming the law doesn't change, it'll all get declassified automatically in another 20-odd years, thanks to the "30-year rule". (though it mig
Hmm (Score:5, Informative)
They've flown for 22 years. Imagine what the mileage is? Somewhere in the millions, maybe even billions.
Only two out of five have failed.
I would only concede the disaster-prone point when considering that the astronauts lives were lost; that's certainly a little more impactful than a bunch of drunken teenagers totalling a car, right? But even then, the shuttles themselves are not disaster-prone; it's just that any slight mishap is instantly promoted to National Disaster and Mourning Period status.
The person's point above, that the shuttle's computers are outdated, is partially true - but they are entirely adequate for running the onboard software. When you're developing a system like the shuttle, you simply cannot use the latest technology. It has to be military-certified for mission critical systems, and it has to go through about two years of testing to acheive that status. That point was made in the article, that once you "freeze" development, that's what you're stuck with.
The shuttles work as they were designed.
The problem is that NASA made them too high-maintenance.
I fully agree with the article's point, that an automated human escape mechanism is required in reusable space flight vehicles. Heck, even Star Trek has escape pods.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
No. The problem is the 1970s technology made them too high maintenance.
NASA and the contractors made some bad decisions in reguards to the heat shielding and SRBs that NASA is paying for now.
Re:Hmm (Score:2, Informative)
I came to my conclusions about the STS problems from reading Dennis R. Jenkins's Space Shuttle: The History of the National Space Transportation System: The First 100 Missions and T. A. Heppenheimer's two volume History of the Space Shuttle - Space Shuttle Decision and Development of the Space Shuttle.
If you read one book on the Shuttle's history, read Jenkin's book.
Re:Hmm (Score:2, Interesting)
Not quite. Sure, there have been advances in computers, metallurgy, etc, in the interening years since the shuttle fleet was built. But the main problem was the short-sightedness of the Congressmen who controlled NASA's budget while the shuttle was being designed. The reason we wound up with a shuttle with so many shortcomings, problems, delays, etc, is largely due to Congress' having cut the shuttle development budget SEVEN TIMES
Then why was 60s technology cheaper? (Score:2)
Yeah, well then they should have used 1960s technology. Saturn V rockets were cheaper to launch than Shuttles and they outperformed shuttles. Suyuz rockets are cheaper than shuttles. The Shuttles are the result of some cold war political goal to best the soviets by trying to build a reusable rocket.... If they would have set out to build a cheaper rocket they would have stuck with expendibles.
The orbital space plane is finally se
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Official NASA documents estimated that you should be able to fly the shuttle 10,000 times before you lost one ("five nines reliability"). The reality is much closer to 100 times (two nines). This is very poor. If airplanes would kill you one time in a hundred, I sure wouldn't want to fly on an airplane... and there is nothing inherent to space operations which justifies the poor record of the shuttle.
We need to replace it with something safer, and that is possible.
steveha
Re:Hmm (Score:3, Insightful)
As an example, please build a rocket car that can go 10 times as fast as a normal car but you want it to run on a normal dirt road.
There's nothing technically impossible about it, but boy it would take a lot of work and effort.
And I'd bet that you killed an awful lot of people to do it!
Re:Hmm (Score:2)
It's not as hard as you think.
A rocket is a fundamentally simple device. You have fuel tanks, some sort of pump, and a reaction chamber. There is no reason to think that all space vehicles will be tremendously unsafe like the shuttle.
You can always increase risk with stupid design, and I'm afraid that's what the shuttle did. Columbia broke up because of compromised thermal tile
Re:Hmm (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hmm (Score:2, Insightful)
Each shuttle launch is ten miles up, and then ten miles down. The rest is just coasting. So the mileage is in the thousands, not anywhere close to the millions.
Re:Hmm (Score:2, Informative)
Not quite. Yes, only two out of five have failed (that's 20% of the fleet) in 22 years. But thats two out of 107 flights. That's slightly less than a 2% catastrophic failure rate. If commercial airlines failed at that rate, we'd have to have a couple dedicated news channels just to handle the crash coverage for the dozen per day per major airport.
The sad truth that is starting to bubble to the surface is that the shuttle was simumtaneously the only way NASA could surviv
Just a thought (Score:2)
Re:Hmm (Score:2)
if 1 in 50 trips in a car failed you'd be dead. Long dead
Re:Hmm (Score:2)
Atlantis, Discovery, Enterprise, Endeavor, Challenger and Columbia.
Technically correct - Enterprise, OV-101, is listed [si.edu] as being a "space shuttle" - but is not equipped for orbital flight: it was purely a test vehicle, for testing the adapted 747 shuttle transporter's characteristics, and practising landings at a dry lake bed and Edwards AFB. (It's now owned by the Smithsonian as an exhibit.) Only the other 5 you list have been into orbit, with the original two now listed [nasa.gov] as being "retired
Doesn't make sense without large launch schedule (Score:4, Insightful)
At current launch rates, NASA should stick with expendable vehicles.
Re:Doesn't make sense without large launch schedul (Score:2)
We know that an existing launch costs $500 million. If this cost only half as much to launch as the existing vehicle, it would only need to fly 128 times to recoup the cost of the development.
The $32 billion figure is because NASA can't stand to not create new technology every time they build something. They are always looking at lighter fuel tanks using some exotic material that has never been tested before inst
Re:Doesn't make sense without large launch schedul (Score:2)
Reusable vehicles (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Reusable vehicles (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not necessary to have a reusable vehicle, but if it ends up being cheaper, market forces demand that it be developed.
Re:Reusable vehicles (Score:2)
Re:Reusable vehicles (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Reusable vehicles (Score:2)
as for how many NASA launches? and how many the Airforce launches out of vandenburg.. thats a good question (one im to lazy to google for)
also.. i think that %49.9 or %51.1 of the NASA budget comes out of the pentagons budget... so they can hush things up and what not.
Re:nice math (Score:2)
with a reusable vehicle you need more R&D, more $$$ on better quailty longer lasting parts, more $$$ on repairs and replacments
with a use once.. it only has to to be build to last that one flight, throw it away, build another.
Re:nice math (Score:2)
If all of the costs of a reusable program over your operating period can be less than the costs of a disposable program over the same years (ALL COSTS), then it's "cheaper" to go with a reusable program.
Part of NASA's place is also to spur research. It is anticipated that the private sector will be able to build off of some of some of that research.
It makes sense (and NASA would seem to agree with me here) that if you can put enough research into a reusable program, you can get the c
Re:nice math (Score:2)
1 -okay.. if your looking at the TCO you need a team to build it (or 5 of them) AND you team to repair them (yes im sure some of the jobs would migrate over)
OR
you could just have one team to build it, and build it right every time
2-spur research? HELL YA!!
reusable shuttle = your locked into a vendor specific whatever (metal, parts, technology, whatever) overhauls and upgrades are premo expensive
disposable shuttle = as soon as new technology,
Re:nice math (Score:2)
Re:Reusable vehicles (Score:5, Interesting)
the russians dont have a reusable vehicle, and that because of that their saving 100's of millions of dollars over the US (original post had facts and figures)
K.I.S.S
Keep it simple stupid,
instead of one vehicle with 3 backup systems.. why not just build 2 of them really really well?
Re:Reusable vehicles (Score:4, Interesting)
We should probably take a hint from the miserly Russians in this regard.
Re:Reusable vehicles (Score:2)
Re:Reusable vehicles (Score:2)
tmtowtdi (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:tmtowtdi (Score:2)
It's called a rocket. That's what people use for freight now. The shuttle is rarely used for freight because it too expensive. i know the private sector almoast exclusively uses rockets.
Easy or not... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Easy or not... (Score:2)
Simple.
Money.
ESA abandoned the Ariane 5/Hermes mini-shuttle when the economics spiralled out of control. ESA have conducted studies on various spaceplanes, but always it comes down to the extraordinary amounts of money that would be required to get such a project up and running.
Buran was one of the major contributors to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Had it been continued the economics would have been almost as bad as those of the Shuttle. But Buran was a superior craf
Re:Easy or not... (Score:2)
Now, NASA arguably has accomplished much more than those other countries, so it's reasonable they'd need more money. But after thinking about it -- what has NASA accomplished? The shuttle, the space station, the Apollo missions... I don't think these accomplished anything. D
Just gotta say... (Score:3, Funny)
It's simple (Score:5, Interesting)
It's also very clear that NASA is not capable, as an organization, of doing this. NASA has some smart people working there, but any really large project will safely bury the smart ones under red tape where they can't do anything. If you want to convert money into piles of paper, have NASA attempt to make a follow-up to the shuttle.
The US government should make iron-clad promises to buy launches. Station re-supply launches for the International Space Station would be a great place to start. If John Carmack's company, or any other company, can get a vehicle going that can run supplies to orbit, the government should hire them to do it. In other words, pay for results but for nothing else, and don't have any part of the government (especially NASA) trying to help design the ships.
steveha
Re:It's simple (Score:2)
Yes. The "Orbital Space Plane" is supposed to do that. It's basically a winged nose cone that seats up to 7 people for existing boosters. NASA ought to build that and buy heavy-lift boosters from the Russians.
NASA is a pork program. NASA's charter requires it to spread money around various states. There are 15 major NASA centers, probably about three times
Re:It's simple (Score:2)
Re:It's simple (Score:2)
Sadly, no one has a truly heavy lifter any more. Russia had one that could lift a lot more than the shuttle, but I think NASA's shuttle fleet has the most capacity still in use. I'm not sure what happened to Russia's system, I think that heavy lifter had chronic problems due to having too many small engines, and that the engines failed too often. I think ESA's Araine(sp?) 5 has suffered something like three or four failures in its dozen or so launches, which is more failures than th
It looks like the Farscape Space Craft (Score:2, Funny)
Why still give up on scramjets? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is that still the case? That was a decade ago, have no other improvements been made? The idea of something that takes off and lands just like a plane still seems very, very appealing.
My suspicion is that this is another one of those cases where the too-early version failed, and now everyone's afraid to try it again.
-Zipwow
Re:Why still give up on scramjets? (Score:2)
There are lots of problems with scramjets. They've been a research project for decades and it's only in the last few years that one even gave positive thrust in real flight.
The problems with trying to survive at mach 6+ in thick atmosphere should not be underestimated, it is a far, far worse environment than the Shuttle faces w
Re:Why still give up on scramjets? (Score:2)
The first successful testflight [uq.edu.au] of a scramjet engine occurred at the Woomera rocket range in Australia in 2002. project homepage [uq.edu.au]
It will be a long time (maybe never?) before this becomes a viable technology for a space shuttle though. Even the more immediate goal, of a cheap launcher for small satellites, is decades away. NASA were completely correct to discount it.
Re:Why still give up on scramjets? (Score:2)
What makes even more sence is keeping a supply of fuel in orbit, as well as smaller craft docked to a space station for the high orbit recovery missions, craft that don't have to be weighed down by needing trivial little things such as heat shielding and enough fuel to reach escape velocity.
Have three classes of
Re:Why still give up on scramjets? (Score:2)
The problem is that liquid oxygen is both cheap and pretty compact. And, once you burned it, it's gone. Your scramjet design needs scramjet engines, and it will carry those engines to orbit and back. They only help during the initial takeoff phase, but the weight penalty is there 100% of the time. The same applies to the wings.
You want your
The new shuttles... (Score:2, Insightful)
It's classic "don't want to fix the bugs, let's rearchitect" syndrome. However, if NASA and its partners hunker down and fix the problems, we can have a new f
Re:The new shuttles... (Score:2)
The cost per kg for launching the shuttle is astronomical, far too expensive, far more expensive than is necessary, but using the current shuttle & booster design it's a cheap as it's gonna get.
And after every launch, so much has to be rebuilt/repaired that the reusability is pathetic, this also means that the turn-around time from launch to launch is absolutely hopele
Answer is simple and obvious (Score:2, Insightful)
Japanese and technology (Score:4, Informative)
Also check out their current indiginous fighter project - even given the basic F-16 design to copy, it's still not finished (it's not an exact copy, but it's taken longer than some of from-scratch designs).
Japanese companies are very good at using mature technology, and at making technology mature. They are fairly bad at using immature technology for end products. Rocket technology is still a long way from being mature.
Although a lot can be done with the technology that is mature. An example was the McDonnel Douglass Delta Clipper X, which was almost all off-the-shelf technology on a small budget. The rocket engines weren't reusable, but they were just driven at a much lower thrust, eliminating most of the wear allowing them to be reused anyway.
Sadly, after being sold to NASA, the DC-X fell victim to its budget - it was so cheap to operate, it was run mostly in a seat-of-the-pants fashion. During its last flight, a technician forgot to plug in the hydrolic hose to extend one landing gear (it had four), so when it landed, it simply toppled over.
Still, when NASA was looking for its last "replace the shuttle" program, it (or the larger Delta Clipper Y version) was one of three proposals - the other two were the Lockheed VentuStar, and a re-worked Space Shuttle. Although the two that lost were based on working technology, the main goal at NASA was for new technology development, not product development, so the riskiest project was funded (Lockheed's).
It didn't fail, in NASA's view - the innovative engines were developed, and aerodynamic studies performed. They just ran out of money and decided to stop it (the composite fuel tank technology was not completed). An end product wasn't really the goal for them - in the end of the program, Lockheed would have been responsible for building the actual vehicle, operating it, and marketing launch services - NASA would just be another customer. It was Lockheed's choice not to without the NASA funded prototype complete to show investors.
In my opinion, the DC-Y was the best choice - no new technology, just build the prototype and go. But it the program had succeeded, I would have been wrong, so blame doesn't work unless you know the future ahead of time.
Space pessimism, or "where's my damn moon colony?" (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody cares about science or exploration, all that matters anymore is who owns which patch of oil-laden sand in the middle east. NASA has lost both the budget and the backbone for manned spaceflight. We went to the moon almost half a century ago, and now all we can do is putter about in low orbit building overpriced, underperforming space stations. Pathetic.
The human race will die on this godforsaken rock.
Misguided Replacements (Score:5, Interesting)
NASA research programs are sitting on all sorts of interesting innovations and inventions. I think it would be great if some of those innovations got the kind of funding that would allow them to be realized on a useful scale. I want to see a nuclear powered rocket fly to far reaches of our solar system. I want to see some of the technology put to use in putting humans on Mars and a permanent settlement on the moon.
I'm tired of seeing tax dollars blown on orbital crap that can be done faster, better, and cheaper with robots and computers than by humans in flying tin cans when there are far more exciting possibilities for human exploration of space.
Re:Misguided Replacements (Score:2, Interesting)
However the ISS should *not* be canned. It works and the infrastructure has already been built. Why not use it instead of wasting the spent money completely?
The European and Japanese are working on making resupply vehicles that should be finished in a couple of years hence the shuttle will not be as required for routine maintenance. In the meatime the Russians have the means to keep it up.
There are many science modules being bu
Re:Misguided Replacements (Score:2)
Re:Misguided Replacements (Score:2)
Unless of course we produce massive ammounts of space pr0n on it, then I'd imagine that the male readership of
Let's start building Saturn V's again (Score:5, Interesting)
Next Generation Boondoggle (Score:3, Interesting)
The current shuttle is a terrible system that started out with too many compromises. It smacks of a political statement. The same system could have been accomplished with two other, smaller, cheaper systems: crew-mission ships (very X-15 like) and heavy-cargo lifters. But those were too functional (i.e. not sexy enough) and frankly couldn't have funneled that much money into a mondo-beyondo development program run by an aerospace company or three. So, instead, we got a moderate-lift, heavily-crewed ship that tumbles in the airstream of some mishap (thus being completely destroyed) once every 50 to 100 flights.
What was NASA's response to this last November?: let's keep this good thing going
The article claims that for replacement programs, there's "no shortage of ideas"
Re:Next Generation Boondoggle (Score:2)
funny really that's almost exactly what went through my head.
"500 million per launch. Ok, get me 2 really big rubberbands, 4 paperclips and two hookers."
"Two hookers, what for?"
"Because man cannot live on bread alone my friend"
"Oh, you'll be wanting some bread too then I take it?"
It'll never happen! (Score:2)
Re:Simple explanation why there is no new shuttle. (Score:2, Insightful)
Point 2: Islam isn't a superpower; it's a religion that spans a wide variety of implementations; from mild/tolerant to the fanatical.
Re:nasa should focus more on next generation (Score:2)
Re:nasa should focus more on next generation (Score:2, Informative)