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Space Science

Next NASA Vehicles To Resemble Shuttles 205

Posted by Zonk from the stick-with-a-good-thing dept.
ausoleil writes "Spaceref.com has an internal NASA memo outlining potential plans for the next generation of launch vehicles. They will closely resemble the current Shuttle and use some of the same hardware. Of course, they plan to leave the exploding parts out of their next versions. From the article: 'NASA has decided to build two new launch systems - both of which will draw upon existing Space Shuttle hardware. One vehicle will be a cargo-only heavy lifter, the other will be used to launch the Crew Exploration Vehicle.'"
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Next NASA Vehicles To Resemble Shuttles More

Next NASA Vehicles To Resemble Shuttles

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  • Nice to see an Ares stack finally getting props (Score:5, Informative)

    by rossifer ( 581396 ) * on Saturday July 02, 2005 @03:49PM (#12970045) Journal
    This memo could be a photocopy of something circulating thirty years ago. Sounds like they're finally going to take advantage of the modular parts of the shuttle the way they talked about when the shuttle stack design was being originally being funded twenty-five to thirty years ago. One nice change is that the rumor mill believes the heavy lift stack bears a striking resemblance to Robert Zubrin's Ares [astronautix.com] stack (a.k.a. Shuttle-Z).

    The "Shuttle-C" cargo stack (and variations) were originally publically discussed in the early '80s as reasons why the shuttle was worth all we were spending (you don't just get the shuttle, you also get a "normal" heavy-lift launcher). Those variants, however, have had problems [thespacereview.com] that could only be resolved by massive cultural change at the NASA level. One of the biggest issues was payload capacity of the side-slung configuration. Since then variations including the Ares stack and the more recent Shuttle-B [gzspace.com] have appeared and pretty much gone nowhere.

    I suspect that the United Space Alliance's (USA's) "risk averse" culture will actively hinder and ultimately frustrate all of these plans. If you've ever worked for a government contractor, you'll understand the culture I'm talking about. They (Boeing and Lockheed-Martin, the companies in the USA partnership) don't have to compete in markets, and are positively allergic to any hint that they may have to compete with other companies for revenue. If NASA's hoping for bargains, they won't find them when dealing with USA.

    Regards,
    Ross

    • Re:Nice to see an Ares stack finally getting props (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Seumas ( 6865 ) * on Saturday July 02, 2005 @04:07PM (#12970138)
      First cynical point: They'll be using the existing shell design, because they're going to use existing everything. We pay billions, they claim to have redesigned everything, they redesign nothing. They make a few minor cosmetic changes and we all live under the assertion that we live in a brave new NASA world of progress once again while some beaurocrat reappropriates the money for his own black-ops.

      Second cynical point: If our one big goal is to go BACK to the MOON within the next decade (or was it twenty years?), why do we need such new complex spacecraft? We did it in April of 1969 with the computing power of today's calculator, but we need a complete overhaul to manage to do something we already did almsot four decades ago?

      I'm seeing us spending a lot of money here. Doing a lot of grunt work here. Yet, all we're achieving is the same thing we've already achieved. How disapointing.

      • It's not merely disappointing --- it's disgusting. The shuttle was a bad idea from the start, and that the same mistakes will be recapitulated is awful.

        Is the real reason we backed away from manned exploration in the 70's because the "right" people weren't making a profit off of it? It could well be that, until there is a consistent and projectable profit to be had from the manned exporation of space, we will be stuck back here on Earth. I memorized every announced space launch, manned or otherwise, wh

        • Re:Nice to see an Ares stack finally getting props (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Seumas ( 6865 ) * on Saturday July 02, 2005 @05:29PM (#12970494)
          I'm not old enough to have remembered anything about anything to do with space launches and exploration, beyond historical events (landing on the moon almost a decade before I was born or updates about space probes that were sent out before I was born).

          The only "big" space events and launches in my life time were the Columbia, which exploded, when I was seven years old, the next successful launch to occur after that disaster (not a big deal, other than everyone in the world tuned in to see if they made it through the launch) and then the explosion upon re-entry a couple years ago.

          So really, my generation knows little more of the space program outside of historical events, save for disasters and budget crunches.

          People are so narrow-minded and short-sighted that they think "we should be spending money on helping our own people here on earth instead of exploring space". Well, look, there will always be misery and poverty and hunger and war on earth. We're not going to change that and we can't sacrifice exploration and the future of the human race (and ever creature on the planet for that matter) for some fantasy date way off in the future when the world will be perfect and we can proceed with uncharted territory.

          Personally, I want us to be a major player in space. We should have stations and colonies already. We should be looking toward a future when mankind has several planets and when his existence as an entire species isn't hinging on the potential devestation of any number of cosmic events that could occur on his home world.

          Space exploration is inherently about the continuation of the human race. There is nothing more natural, human or - even - American than that. And damn it, I want to have the awe and thrill of watching heros do amazing things and take amazing risks to explore the universe. My generation needs their own Right Stuff. We need our own glued-to-the-television-in-anticipation experience.

          I mean, does anyone even think that landing on the moon a second time is going to be much of a news story? I doubt there will be much coverage (and certainly not real-time) of the launch. And even when they make it to the moon, it will probably rank as a quick blurb in between sports scores and weather on the news. Nothing more. There won't be parades. There won't be speeches. There wont' be much of anything. And I sympathize with the astronauts who probably themselves dream of conguering new territory rather than re-hasing what others have already done.
        • "Is the real reason we backed away from manned exploration in the 70's because the "right" people weren't making a profit off of it? It could well be that, until there is a consistent and projectable profit to be had from the manned exporation of space, we will be stuck back here on Earth. I memorized every announced space launch, manned or otherwise, when I was a kid. I looked forward to life in space, or at least something better from the space program than satellite TV and phone service. A terribly sad s
      • It seems like a dumb, minor change, but it's not. Also, the shuttle is 30 year tech pimped out with 21st century updates. We need to start planning replacements before another shuttle gets destroyed, rather than wait and end up with a 5 year delay in our space program.

        The problem with the current line of shuttles is that Americans aren't comfortable with the 1/40 expected fatal disaster rate. Splitting the cargo away from the crew lets you pay extra for an extremely safe crew launch, and run a cost b
      • "First cynical point: They'll be using the existing shell design, because they're going to use existing everything. We pay billions, they claim to have redesigned everything, they redesign nothing. They make a few minor cosmetic changes and we all live under the assertion that we live in a brave new NASA world of progress once again while some beaurocrat reappropriates the money for his own black-ops"

        Well; mostly the money goes to the contracters such as boeing, and other large companies who do nasa's work
    • NASA should take a leaf from the bidding manual of the United States Air Force (USAF) and open up bidding for the next shuttle to both American and Japanese companies. All such companies would submit a proposal for the next shuttle and would use their own finances to build a prototype. Then, all the prototypes compete in aggressive endurance tests.

      The group of companies submitting the winning prototype will receive the bulk of the funding to build a fleet of shuttles. However, the group of companies su

      • NASA should take a leaf from the bidding manual of the United States Air Force (USAF) and open up bidding for the next shuttle to both American and Japanese companies.

        Why Japanese companies? Wouldn't it be better to approach Russian companies, assuming that the idea is to build a manned spacecraft which dosn't kill it's crew.

  • Vehicles only to look like shuttle on the outside (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 02, 2005 @03:49PM (#12970050)
    To obscure that fact that we are going back to a model used back during Apollo. After all this waste, we go back to non reusable heavy lifting and deorbiting like a stone.

  • That's just great (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Chmcginn ( 201645 ) on Saturday July 02, 2005 @03:52PM (#12970066) Journal
    As such, while much of what is done by the existing infrastructure and workforce at KSC will be similar to what is done for the Space Shuttle system, it will likely require a much smaller workforce. While members of Congress from the space states will be happy to hear of a new launch system - one that retains some existing infrastructure - they will not be happy to hear that jobs will be lost.

    So, as always, (good science/actual military need/sensible budget-keeping (pick appropriate phrase based on article) ) takes a backseat to Senator Whosit saying, "You won't cost my state jobs!"

  • SRBs not SSMEs! (Score:5, Informative)

    by mikejz84 ( 771717 ) on Saturday July 02, 2005 @03:52PM (#12970068)
    Overall, not a bad idea--it will be a Saturn V class booster. I am not crazy about using 6 SSMEs however, they are designed to be reusable, not flown on an expendable booster and are expensive as hell (about $300 million for the 6 first stage engines alone) Also, I seems to only speak of using 2 SRBs in the in-line HLLV, it would seem to me to make more sense to use 4 or 6 clustered around the core. After all, the shuttle SRBs are some of the cheapest power you can get.

    • Re:SRBs not SSMEs! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Agripa ( 139780 )
      It may have been there intention to make the SSMEs reusable but from what I read in the original Feynman report they were designed so close or past the engineering of the time that they had to be completely rebuilt after every flight anyway. His description of how they redefined what a "failure" was when estimating how long the each engine could safely run still gives me the creeps.

      • Re:SRBs not SSMEs! (Score:3, Informative)

        by DerekLyons ( 302214 )

        It may have been there intention to make the SSMEs reusable but from what I read in the original Feynman report

        [frustrated sigh] You do realize that the Feynman report was written nearly twenty years ago?

        The frustrated sigh is because of people who keep quoting that damm report and act as if the Shuttle is stuck in some kind of time warp. The amount of utter ignorance on Slashdot about the Shuttle amazes and frightens me... Here's an incredible ongoing engineering feat with tons of information avail

        • I probably should have been more clear. What I was getting at was because of various other concerns, the engines were poorly engineered and safety issues were deliberately ignored. Why would things have changed since then?

          NASA promised the sky with the shuttle (fast turn around, high reliablity, and high throughput come to mind) and when they could not deliver what they had promised, systematically covered it up and ignored good engineering practices. Has this aspect of NASA changed in 20 years?

    • Re:SRBs not SSMEs! (Score:3, Informative)

      by ciroknight ( 601098 )
      It's okay you're not okay with the idea. The engines are only being used now because the current space shuttle uses them. If you really want to think about it, all they have done is strip the wings off the shuttle, stuck the shuttle on top of the liquid fuel tank, and taken two shuttle engine packages and stuck it to the bottom. Nothing more than an out of box reconfiguration of the parts, hardly nothing new has to be constructed, and all of the surplus shuttle parts get used. Not to mention it allows them
  • The Crew Exploration Vehicle [wikipedia.org] is certainly nothing new. Nor am I surprised by NASA's desire for a more powerful booster. It is, however, good to see NASA again contemplating super boosters. While many people feel that such boosters are useless (hi Rei!), there are certain circumstances under which they can be tremendously useful.

    Take the case of SkyLab vs. the International Space Station. According to Wikipedia, the two stack up as follows:
    Mass:
    SkyLab: 77,088 kg
    ISS: 419,000 kg (when completed; currently 183,283 kg)

    # of Lauches for complete construction:
    SkyLab: 1
    ISS: 50 (39 Shuttle flights)
    Now with some simple math, we find that SkyLab averaged 77,088 kg per launch which the ISS averages about 8,380 kg per launch.

    If you didn't just do a double take, you should have. The booster that lifted SkyLab stuck over 9 times the mass into orbit that current ISS flights do! Just what is going on here?

    The answer lies in the Saturn V Booster vs. the current Space Shuttle. A three stage Saturn V had a maximum payload of 118,000 kg. (That's enough to send the entire ISS up in only 4 flights.) The Space Shuttle, OTOH, only has a cargo of 28,800 kg to LEO. So why does NASA want to reuse the tech? Because of the weight of the shuttle itself.

    The Space Shuttle orbiter weighs in at a whopping 104,000 kg! Combined with its cargo capacity, the Space Shuttle is capable of 132,800 kg to LEO! That's way more than the Saturn V could manage on all three stages. So if we ditch the orbiter itself, the shuttle's infrastructure could be the most powerful superbooster ever designed.

    • Re:What's old is new again (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Rakishi ( 759894 ) on Saturday July 02, 2005 @04:03PM (#12970124)
      You're missing certain points. That shuttle weight includes the engines, have fun launching things without those. So that wil ltake up some mass as well. In addition the Shuttle engines were designed along the lines of: efficiency and reusability above all else including cost. Yup, they're expensive, efficient and designed to be reused. So those of course can't be used for a non-reusable launch vechicle which means the engines used won't be quite as good. It can stil lsend a lot into LOE but not nearly as much as you're talking about.

    • Well, sorta (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Chmcginn ( 201645 )

      The Space Shuttle orbiter weighs in at a whopping 104,000 kg! Combined with its cargo capacity, the Space Shuttle is capable of 132,800 kg to LEO! That's way more than the Saturn V could manage on all three stages. So if we ditch the orbiter itself, the shuttle's infrastructure could be the most powerful superbooster ever designed.

      You're leaving out the fact that a portion of the engine is built into the orbiter. I'm not sure exactly what it masses, but I'd take a guess it's bigger than the difference

    • If you didn't just do a double take, you should have. The booster that lifted SkyLab stuck over 9 times the mass into orbit that current ISS flights do! Just what is going on here?

      What's going on? Ignorant comparison of apples and oranges.

      Yes, there are 50 flights to ISS during the construction phase - but that includes the manned Soyuz flights, which carry crew, not construction materials. Of the 39 Shuttle flights only about 20-21 of them carry construction materials, the remainder carry crew and/or

      • Yes, there are 50 flights to ISS during the construction phase - but that includes the manned Soyuz flights, which carry crew, not construction materials. Of the 39 Shuttle flights only about 20-21 of them carry construction materials, the remainder carry crew and/or consumables. 419,000/21= approx 20,000kg/flight.

        While I was being simplistic, you forget that I left off the ~30 Progress flights that support the ISS. That's where the brunt of the human carrying capacity is.

        Even if we take your figures a

  • Exploding parts? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Suburbanpride ( 755823 ) on Saturday July 02, 2005 @03:54PM (#12970079)
    without "exploding parts", how will the shuttle take off? Isn't the ignition of the bosters and kind of explosion?

    The escape hatch also has exploding bolts.

    The only exploding part that should be left off is the leaky o-rings that helped the chalenger to exploded in '86.

    now if we'd stop spending our money exploding things in the middle east, where could have these new luanch vehicles sooner rather than later.

    • Re:Exploding parts? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by georgewilliamherbert ( 211790 ) on Saturday July 02, 2005 @04:09PM (#12970154)
      without "exploding parts", how will the shuttle take off? Isn't the ignition of the bosters and kind of explosion?
      No, not explosives.

      The solid boosters ignition starts with a small Nasa Standard Initiator (NSI) http://www.hstc.com/pdf/nsi.pdf [hstc.com].

      That then ignites a small pellet of boron / potassium nitrate.

      Which ignites a small rocket motor which is about 4 inches long.

      Which ignites a medium sized rocket motor about three feet long.

      Which fires a jet of flame for about a tenth of a second, all the way down the whole inside length of the solid boosters, which ignites the whole inside at the same time.

      • There are exploding parts, The nuts holding the orbiter to the platform blow on liftoff. The eight giant bolts holding the orbiter to the platform are severed at launch.

        The shuttle's SRBs would take the platform up with it if the bolts are not blown. I believe this is the last possible thing to go wrong that you can pull back from (At like t minus .01) before the candle is lit.

        http://yarchive.net/space/spacecraft/explosive_bo l ts.html [yarchive.net]

  • good designs but... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by J05H ( 5625 ) on Saturday July 02, 2005 @03:59PM (#12970099)
    Both the single-stick CEV launcher and inline Shuttle-derived HLV are good, useful rocket designs. They have hardware heritage, long experience and the SRBs are one of the safest (if roughest) rockets around.

    The only problem is that this continues the massive NASA workforce, which is going to limit the actual implementation of said designs. The standing army needs to be repurposed instead of played to - shutting down the OPF isn't enough. These are massively labor intensive rockets they are creating - they may create as many problems as they solve.

    The Shuttle has got to go, I'm glad Dr. Griffin is taking this step.

    Josh

  • What's On The Drawing... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Saturday July 02, 2005 @04:00PM (#12970106)
    It's nice to know that NASA is putting together two new launch vehicles for cargo and crew. However, what's on the drawing board to follow those vehicles in the next 10, 20, or 50 years from now? Or, is NASA is doomed to repeat the shuttle experience again by using the new vehicles for the next 30 years without having anything new in the pipeline?

    What we need is NASA to get out of the vehicle design business and let the free-market industry come up with innovative designs to build, test and deliver. It should be like building cars when the designs keep getting better and more reliable every year.

    • Re:What's On The Drawing... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Saturday July 02, 2005 @04:38PM (#12970280) Homepage Journal
      ...is NASA is doomed to repeat the shuttle experience again by using the new vehicles for the next 30 years without having anything new in the pipeline?
      Short answer: of course. The political situation that created the disastrous Shuttle is still in effect, only more so. Which is: politicians need to be seen to be backing manned space travel, but don't have any incentive to give it real funding. So NASA gets enough money to keep one manned space program going (barely!), and no more.

  • Do We Have To Keep Carrying Our Fuel With Us? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DanielMarkham ( 765899 ) on Saturday July 02, 2005 @04:00PM (#12970107) Homepage
    Seriously. Why are we still building giant fireworks? Couldn't a mass-driver work with new heat-resistant materials? Or those JP Aerospace guys [jpaerospace.com] with the blimps-to-orbit plan?
    Even the Space Elevator doesn't have this problem. Surely there are better things to do with the money to lower cost-to-orbit than building giant bottle-rockets. As long as we remain under the paradigm of taking our fuel with us, it seems to me the cost and complexity goes through the roof. My two cents only.

    NASA Budget Shows Shuttle Phase-Out [whattofix.com]
    • Don't forget about these people. [skyramp.org] Skyramps were Werner von Braun's original idea for putting things into orbit. Arrayed against him were the USAF, who favored vertically-launched rockets because they could quickly be fired off in annihillating volleys at the Soviets, and probably the rocket manufacturers themselves, who stood to make far more money from vertical-launch than from von Braun's more efficient method.

      Check out the site. It's full of fascinating stuff.

      • Don't forget about these people. Skyramps were Werner von Braun's original idea for putting things into orbit. Arrayed against him were the USAF, who favored vertically-launched rockets because they could quickly be fired off in annihillating volleys at the Soviets,

        You can just as easily use "skyramps" to launch missiles, as demonstrated by the Luftwaffe. The problem is that they can be more easily damaged by enemy attack than harderned silos.
      • "Skyramps were Werner von Braun's original idea for putting things into orbit."

        I don't know about you, but there is one thing I certainly don't even want to think about when going at Mach 3 on a jet sled: mechanical friction.

        There is only one way to *safely* launch a spacebound vehicle on a horizontal lauch pad: Magnetic rails.

        And *pooof* goes the "reduced cost" argument.
    • The short answer is "no". No one has ever built an effective mass driver: the technology is about as available as Star Trek transporters, and should be considered as likely to work until someone actually does the design and testing of even a small one for launching significant masses across a few hundred feet, much less launching to LEO.

      • Well, we've built and 'fired' them in the lab. The technology doesn't really require any breakthroughs, just the refinement of existing technology.

        It's true that building a large-scale one is currently out of our reach for the above-mentioned reasons; but the Navy is embarking on a huge project to develop them for armaments, and there will undoubtedly be spinoffs from their R&D.

        Star Trek-style transporters on the other hand require at least three major breakthroughs in theory, so that was a poor
        • OK, Star Trek transporters ws hyperbole, but not by much. Building a large-scale mass driver is still wildly infeasible: the switching of large magnetic fields at high propagation rates has turned on to be far more difficult than anticipated when mass drivers were first proposed. Like computers that understand spoken English, the proof of concept is easy. Getting it to work has turned out to be a bear.
          • the switching of large magnetic fields at high propagation rates

            Reminds me of fusion for some reason :)

            I do think that if serious money/brainpower/computer time is thrown at EMRs that we'll have one soon. The Navy certainly seems determined - and I find I agree with their reasoning... plus I like the idea of the tech propogation thru the space industry. Even if it isn't feasible to use a EMR to launch from Earth (and there are plenty of other difficulties there! :) at least we'd have it for any lun
  • Of course, they plan to leave the exploding parts out of their next versions

    The parts that explode are the fuel tanks, and without them the craft wont get very far off the ground. The exploding parts stay!

  • Exploding bits? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by FTL ( 112112 ) * <slashdot@neil.fras[ ]name ['er.' in gap]> on Saturday July 02, 2005 @04:03PM (#12970122) Homepage
    "Of course, they plan to leave the exploding parts out of their next versions."

    Erm, actually they are keeping the "exploding bits" and leaving out the bits that so far haven't exploded. The SDV will include the solid rockets (which doomed Challenger) and the fuel tank (which doomed Columbia). The only bit they are leaving out is the orbiter, which has so far has worked properly.

    Having said that, it is still an extremely good design. It's almost exactly what the Soviet Union built (separate Energia heavy lift and Soyuz crew vehicles). The only difference is the use of solid motors (which explains why the stock price of Thiokol's parent company has been going up like a, erm, rocket).

    • If the orbiter was on top, rather than mounted on the tank, foam from the tank would not have hit the orbiter. So these designs fix that one.

      As for the solids, yeah, I agree. They should not be used for space exploration. They are mostly useful for military missiles, which need to be storable and fast to fire.

      • And I think it possible that a top-mounted spaceplane might have survived the Challenger explosion as well -- it would have been thrown free (or blown free by the crew if they realized what was going on) and could have at least attempted a landing.
  • Then how the hell is it to get off the ground? Some sort of antigravity levitation?

    Didnt know NASA was that advanced yet.

  • NASA to Buy Commercial Transport to ISS (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FleaPlus ( 6935 ) on Saturday July 02, 2005 @04:14PM (#12970175) Journal
    Well, I've been trying to submit a story to slashdot over the past few days about a "parallel path" to government-built shuttle-derived that NASA recently announced, but I haven't had any luck. I've already had four or five variations on it rejected. Anybody have ideas on what might be wrong with the following submission?

    At a recent talk, Michael Griffin outlined NASA's plans [space.com] for helping to generate a robust and competitive commercial market in orbital spaceflight. The speech [spaceref.com] and Q&A [spaceref.com] transcripts from the talk are available. In a move reminiscent of the US government kickstarting the early airline industry by purchasing airmail services, NASA plans on supplementing government-derived transport by purchasing cargo delivery services to the International Space Station from commercial providers, followed by crew transportation after the systems have proven themselves. Unlike traditional government contracts, sellers wouldn't see a profit before the services are delivered and the emphasis will be on actual performance instead of process and specifications. Aviation Week has some commentary [ecnext.com] on the announcement.

  • So, to go forwards... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by payndz ( 589033 ) on Saturday July 02, 2005 @04:15PM (#12970179)
    ...it's necessary to go backwards. Expendable stacks and capsules rather than re-usable orbiters.

    On the one hand, I'm glad. The Shuttle has proved to be a horrible waste of money, a boondoggle of 1970s technology dictated by political pork and military paranoia rather than being designed for an actual specific purpose, and I'm glad it's going to be replaced.

    It's just a shame that the only way we can get people out into space seems to be with 1960s technology rather than 2000s. At least, under the current government-funded model.

    • Without the government-funded model, we would never even have gotten into space. If corporations are anything, they are risk-averse.
    • It's just a shame that the only way we can get people out into space seems to be with 1960s technology rather than 2000s. At least, under the current government-funded model.

      Part of that is that the "older" aerospace technology is often so close to optimal that only tiny tweaks are needed to get improvements, and that massive changes are often far more costly than they get in return. This is especially the case with aircraft, and I am not surprised that it may be the case with spacecraft too.

      In reality,
  • "Of course, they plan to leave the exploding parts out of their next versions."

    We're talking about rockets. They rely on exploding parts, otherwise they tend not to go anywhere.

    Unless NASA will be opting for nuclear power on these things (HA!), rest assured that the launch area will be heavily laden with "NO SMOKING!" signs.
  • Good news: They want to reuse at least some of the immense investment made in the space shuttle and they want to build something bigger instead of smaller.

    Bad news: The glamour of having a real spaceship is going to dissappear.

    The stacked heavy lifter is going to be so expensive and so inflexible, only 1 launch is going to be possible per year, containing all the cargo for the entire year.

    The delta IV would have been a better match for the CEV. We old timers just have a lot of bad memories of solid rock

  • Does not at all resemble the Shuttle (Score:3, Interesting)

    by everphilski ( 877346 ) on Saturday July 02, 2005 @04:31PM (#12970255) Journal
    The vehicles being proposed do not at all resemble the shuttle. The shuttle itself is being scrapped. The solid rocket boosters, a modified external tank, and the Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSME's)

    The key difference between the new models and the existing shuttle is serial architecture versus parallel architecture. The Space Shuttle is an example of parallel architecture - all of the stages firing together. The new proposals operate in serial, one stage at a time. That's a lot safer: abort modes are easier to implement. A first stage failure is not immediately a fatal incident. Also notice they are implementing the CEV for the crew module, not a shuttle.

    And although the spaceref article and pretty pictures are new, the ideas/rumors have been floating around the Aerospace community for quite some time now.

    -everphilski-

  • This isn't FARK, leave the crude headlines to them (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ayeco ( 301053 ) on Saturday July 02, 2005 @05:17PM (#12970437)
    Please, have a little respect. The "exploding parts" comment in the headline was uncalled for and childish.
  • This is so disappointing it makes this dyed-in-the-wool space enthusast want to embrace the Flat Earth Society. I hardly know where to begin:

    1) we're reusing the solids which have already killed one crew, and which are neither cheap, reliable, efficient nor reuseable. A single shot of this new vehicle will be at least $100 million - 5 times what a Soyuz ride goes for.

    2) We're reusing the SSME engines, which are the latest 1970's technology. They have a decent specific impulse, but are very expensive to

  • The whole approach looks rather complex and costly. What's wrong with 60's and 70's technology? It looks to me that anything developed since has been much more expensive and has had less capacity.

  • Ok, so I'm probably not the only one here who's dissapointed in finding that NASAs next big plan looks and sounds really BORING. But if we're really serious about space exploration, then what's most important is what it can do to further that progress, not how it does it. Now, my big gripe is that "progress" itself doesn't seem all that important in this design as Congress keeps whining about space program employment and timeline crunches, but if this is the quickest and cheapest way to improve the space

  • ... all of our old mistakes.

    Horrible, horrible idea. They're taking two of the three worst components of the current shuttle platform and reusing them in a system where we have already made and used much better systems. The only way they could make it worse is to rely on the current shuttle thermal tiling.

    So, lets look at the other two pieces. SRBs? They killed Challenger. They've never worked properly, or we wouldn't have been getting blow-by as routine. If NASA is insisting on sticking with solid
  • The original shuttle design was going to have the shuttle itself only used for lighter payloads, with the HLLV doing the, well, heavy lifting. There was also going to be a permanently orbiting vessel for inter-orbit transfers, using something like an ion drive... basically, the original shuttle design was going to be lighter and more reliable and just one member of a fleet of specialised vehicles. Congress wouldn't pay for all of them so NASA scaled up the Orbiter and it ended p costing more and doing less than originally planned.

    Man, I hope they let NASA do it right this time. If they reduce the weight of the new shuttle so the SSME don't need to run over redline just to do their jobs, maybe they won't have to rebuild it after every flight like it was some damn MIG engine... and if the HLLV doesn't need to be man-rated they can use a less expensive version of the SSME in it and save even more.
  • Better to kill your astronauts in the devil you know, than

  • Not all launch vehicles will look like the shuttle (Score:3, Funny)

    by uncoveror ( 570620 ) on Saturday July 02, 2005 @11:23PM (#12971916) Homepage
    Not all of NASA's upcoming launch vehicles will look like the shuttle. The X-4000 Launch Aparatus [uncoveror.com] will resemble a giant catapult.

  • Titanium frame instead of aluminum? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by antispam_ben ( 591349 ) on Sunday July 03, 2005 @12:11AM (#12972099) Journal
    I haven't checked this out, but a Usenet poster said the original Shuttle frames were going to be built out of titanium, of course for its great strength-to-weight ratio. There was a decision to switch to aluminum, supposedly both as a cost savings on the Shuttle manufacturing, and because there was great demand for titanium in building US Military aircraft. Due to the extra weight of a same-strength frame made of aluminum, two solid-rocket boosters needed to be added to the launch vehicle which were not a part of the titanium design.

    Is this true?

    Regardless, it seems clear that any launch hardware intended for reuse should be made of the best strength-to-weight materials available even at larger initial cost, so either there's less energy (the fuel itself is rather cheap, but less of it means smaller launch vehicles, fewer complications, fewer SRB's, etc.) required to launch, or a larger payload could be put into orbit with the same launch energy because of the lighter hardware.
    • Nope, not true. The orbiter can't get off the ground on its own without the assistance of some kind of booster. It can keep going on its own to orbit, once it's off the ground and 'started', hence the boosters are cast off only two minutes into the flight. The boosters don't have to be solid, or even segmented, either -- monolithic solids were investigated (and should have been used; they weren't for political reasons) as were liquid boosters.

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