NASA Scraps Shuttle And Returns to Rockets 553
nathanh writes "NASA is building a launch system that they've informally dubbed Apollo On Steroids. It's a hybrid design of the Apollo capsules and the Shuttle's booster rockets and engines. Crew and cargo are lifted by two different rockets: the crew use a single-booster/single-engine rocket and the cargo is lifted by an awe-inspiring two-booster/five-engine rocket. NASA reckons this craft will take humanity back to the Moon and then to Mars. Has NASA realised that the old designs were better? Or is this all a ploy to recapture the hearts of the public?"
Finally.... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Finally.... (Score:3, Funny)
Their art department is still over budget from that whole moon landing hoax. But I'll agree, even the moon landing was rather unoriginal.
Re:boondoggle defined... (Score:3, Funny)
We're sending all the "important" people first. Lawyers, politicians, door to door salesmen, etc. We'll be right behind them.
Re:boondoggle defined... (Score:3, Insightful)
For example, let
Re:boondoggle defined... (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't disagree that life on Mars would be very tough. Where I do disagree is in the assessment of whether it is so tough as to make it impractical. Some people would have said there just isn't a spare scrubber on Apollo XIII while others would have said I can make something that will work from what I have on hand because I have to. The difference in attitude made the difference in the outcome of the mission.
To head off a possible charge of ignorance leading to irrational exuberance: I am an engineer
Mars? (Score:3, Interesting)
You need a spinning ring to provide artificial gravity or they will literally collapse when they set foot on Mars.
Re:Mars? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not necessarily. If you accelerate at 1 g for half of the trip, then do a flip and decelerate at the same rate for the second half of the trip you get the same effect, with the added bonus of getting there faster. The only problem is the energy required to do that, but I'm sure they'll figure that out some day...
Re:Mars? (Score:2, Informative)
That is a phenominal waste of fuel... bloody ridiculous.
If/when we get working fusion + ion drives or something then it might be feasible, but with conventional rockets this is out of the question.
Re:Mars? (Score:2)
Re:Mars? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Mars? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Mars? (Score:4, Interesting)
The energy problem however remains and cannot to my knowledge be solved currently. If we could make ion engines or the hydrogen & electric arc systems more efficient and get a small fission or, better, fusion reactor onboard that might stop sounding utterly ridiculous though. On the other hand, using a tether-based rotation as proposed in "mars direct" is way cheaper and obtainable today...
Re:Mars? (Score:3, Interesting)
Nice idea in principle though. I'd suggest it might work well for targets further away, but the reality is that anything in our solar system is only a matter of a very short time away at 1g constant acceleration (ok, flip over 1/2-way through to accelerate at 1g the other way so your velocity at your target is low enough to orbit/
Re:Mars? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Mars? (Score:5, Funny)
Unless they order the astronauts to have sex during the flight... Oh wait.
Re:Mars? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Mars? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Mars? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Mars? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Mars? (Score:5, Interesting)
Could be a new reality TV show
Re:Mars? (Score:3, Interesting)
If you want to go to Mars, send people to Mars on a one-way trip. Land hospital modules, food, equipment to build housing and greenhouses, rovers, everything. Land the supply drops
Re:Mars? (Score:5, Informative)
It can be done much simpler: split the spacecraft in two and connect them with a long steel cable. That way the two halves can rotate around their center of mass and create artificial gravity without the trouble of getting a huge construction into space. Also it is easier to make a large diameter for which a low angular velocity will be sufficient to create 1 g, thus reducing disturbing Coriolis forces.
Re:Mars? (Score:3, Informative)
For buildings and things like that you are completely right, since they have to withstand compressive forces (gravity) and the lever effect of forces that try to bend the structure. However, with the
Capsules? (Score:5, Insightful)
Both the shuttle and the capsules are lifted by rockets...
Re:Capsules? (Score:2)
Re:Or rather (Score:5, Insightful)
In the 1980s, a Soyuz booster did explode (just like the Challenger), but since they didn't commit the fundamental design flaw of omitting an escape system, the cosmonauts walked away from the incident.
Their launch cost = 1/20th of shuttle launch cost.
Which country's taxpayers are getting a better deal for their money?
Pray It's All Cancelled. (Score:5, Insightful)
We can barely afford to keep a low-earth-orbit space station from burning up in the atmosphere, never mind actually doing anything useful. (The crew spends all its time on maintenance.) Now we're supposed to keep a lunar station going using super-sized Apollo designs that were abandoned decades ago because they were too wasteful. What are the crew supposed to do on the moon, anyway? Dig? What are they supposed to do on Mars? It's hard to imagine more useless lumps of dead rock.
Asteroid missions (manned or not) would be interesting. Space elevators would be very interesting. Even another Cassini (for Jupiter) would be interesting. Instead, they're gutting JPL. Anybody who says this is something other than a disaster for NASA and for space exploration is drinking Kool-aid.
Re:Pray It's All Cancelled. (Score:5, Informative)
Well, they are polluters, but I suspect that even if we moved to 1 a day, that we would not make too big an impact.
As too expensive, that is not accurate. The solid fuel is slightly more expensive than liquid O2/H2 systems. However, it does not require the cost infrastructure that does liquid systems. In addition, this is being used primarily to launch crew, not cargo (I suspect that the airforce will probably keep a few hanging around to launch spy sats. on a moments notice). When it comes to life, we should be (and are) willing to spend a bit more to get a better saftey record.
Now as to fragile, it is one of the most stable since it can not blow up. Now, I am sure that somebody is going to mention challenger. The solid booster did NOT blow up. It was the main liquid tank that did due to the O-ring leaking a plume into it. if we had this system in place, the leakage would have meant that those 2 segments would have had a hole and they would have been unuseable. If the hole actually got big enough, it would have meant that the capsule would have been jetisoned for crew ecscape, and everbody lives. This would have been a fraction of the costs of the challenger/columbia incidents.
At this point, the solid units are one of the best approachs at getting man into space, quickly. Long term, we will almost certainly change. In fact, I am in hopes that t/space will be a big winner.
Re:Pray It's All Cancelled. (Score:4, Informative)
Great point. If anyone cares to remember the soild boosters kept going after the main tank exploded.. Ground control had to blow them up since they were now uncontroled. Now that's stable!
Re:Pray It's All Cancelled. (Score:4, Interesting)
The escape mechanism mentioned in the article is worth remembering too. Remember, when Challenger blew up, three objects survived - both SRBs and the forward section of the shuttle itself, which is believed to have had at least part of the crew alive inside. Had the shuttle been equipped with an escape rocket (Which the Gemini, Appollo, and Soyuz capsules all were/are, and like the system shown in the article will), at least part of the Challenger crew may have survived.
But, the fundamental "airplane" design made that impossible or extremely expensive, and it was never done, even after Challenger.
Re:Capsules? (Score:5, Funny)
Please don't post to Slashdot until I've had more coffee.
The new space horror genre (Score:3, Funny)
Untill they have actual hardware... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Untill they have actual hardware... (Score:2)
At least the new NASA boss is making noises [slashdot.org] that he understands that the $250 billions into shuttle and space station weren't a good use of resources.
But Goldin did things like that, too, in the beginning, if I remember correctly and the old aerospace companies that made the shuttle gets more work.
Sigh, when thinking about it, you are right -- sounds like a newly "elected" banana republic president p
Face it, some of the _shuttles_... (Score:3, Interesting)
I vote that we build two real bang-bang [wikipedia.org]s and put a real station into a real orbit [space-frontier.org] with one, and a real mine and a real slingshot onto the Moon with the other. Far less polluting and far safer than the hundreds of missions they would replace, and they'd shave, oh -- I don't know -- maybe 50 years off the space program?
Any word on the next gen space shuttle (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Any word on the next gen space shuttle (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Any word on the next gen space shuttle (Score:3, Informative)
Reusing shuttle tech (Score:3, Insightful)
More like a ploy... (Score:3, Interesting)
NASA's funding is continuously being cut while they are being forced to stay in the space race by other countries, and consequently, the White House.
This isn't an attempt at something nouveau and ground-breaking engineering-wise, but a pieceing together of cheap rockets and whatever else is in the warehouses.
Re:More like a ploy... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:More like a ploy... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:More like a ploy... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:More like a ploy... (Score:4, Funny)
You: Excellent! Wait till I tell Fred!
Boss: Ah, well, bad news. We let Fred go and you're going to have his job too.
Re:More like a ploy... (Score:5, Insightful)
until there's some fantastic new propulsion technology, ground-breaking engineering isn't going to happen anyway. there's only so much you can do within the bounds of chemical rockets. nuclear propulsion is politically off-limits, and ion engines haven't scaled to multi-ton spacecraft yet.
Re:More like a ploy... (Score:2)
Well, you can push a multi-ton spacecraft with an ion engine to incredible speeds. Sure, you'll be 80 by the time it gets to 1,000 mph, but I digress.
ion engines (Score:2)
Re:More like a ploy... (Score:2)
And NASA probably did get their budget cut since they keep making mistakes and blowing up astronauts.
Nuclear propulsion (Score:3, Insightful)
It is off limits for more reasons than just evil liberals and environmentalist and their protests. While I agree that for the forseeable future there is no way to get around nuclear technology in large sized space craft for deep space exploration I also share some of the concerns voiced by people arguing against using nuclear power with wild abandon in the design of spacecraft. The problem is how do you build a large sized space craft capable of really worth whi
Re:More like a ploy... (Score:4, Informative)
Hopefully not for too much longer. According to recent polls Americans are less likely to agree with or pay attention to environmental groups than at any other time since the '60's, and many who previously would've opposed the construction of nuclear power plants are now in favor of using them to replace current oil and coal-fired plants. The trend is especially marked with the under-40 age group, who describes itself as "disenchanted" and "increasingly skeptical" of environmentalist claims.
With the primary political base of environmentalism shrinking due to the aging of its main supporters, it's quite possible that nuclear power - once the Great Boogeyman of our hippy past - will make a strong resurgance. And with that comes the possibility of using it for other applications (international treaties to the contrary be damned).
Max
Cheap and sloppy is more effective. (Score:4, Interesting)
As much as people might hate to hear it I'd cut corners on manned space vehicles too although not near as many corners. Exploration has always been a dangerous business. Let the bold take their chances and reap their rewards. Open being an astronaut to anyone that passes a basic phsyical and psych test and whom might be able to do something useful. Honestly we're going to need to send up some cheap manual labor. If 1 in 3 ships doesn't make it it really doesn't matter if the people going are replacable and the ship itself didn't cost much. Hell, fall back to the old system of taking recruits among prisions and the poor. It may be dangerous but it gives them a chance at a new life. Always exploration has been a chance for those with nothing to lose to risk everything for that chance. Do it again.
In the longer view I think the space elevator is going to be the delivery mechanism for the masses but for now ultra-cheap rockets is a good idea. The cheaper the better so long as they can still get the job done at a rate faster than what we're doing now. (Wasn't there a story recently on rockets that need 1/10th the fuel for the same lift? which means carrying less fuel weight which means needing less than 1/10th the amount of fuel to achieve the same work.)
Caution will not win us new frontiers. Let man go where no man has gone before.
Did You Know? (Score:5, Interesting)
Back to the topic, i wonder how much cold-war flaunting the shuttle represented at the cost of practicality...
Re:Did You Know? (Score:2, Funny)
When there are enough super-solar-panels up there the whole day will be like a rave. w00t, strobe sun! Oh yeah!
Re:Did You Know? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Did You Know? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Did You Know? (Score:3, Interesting)
You look at stuff like some of the cathedrals/castles in Europe that they made with tech that was nowhere near ours, (or temples in the far east, some of the stuff the egyptians built etc) and thye had vision to build stuff that took well in excess of 35 years
Cathedrals and castles in Europe were all built after we had built much smaller and simple things like houses, for hundreds of years. They used known techniques, they planned everything out, etc. What have we built in space so far that we think we co
Re:Did You Know? (Score:5, Informative)
What is know from documentation (Egyptians did write, and tho not everythign has been preserved, they did also write about their technology and history) as well as found evidence is that pyramids were not the first substantial stone structures they built, and they did not start out building the big pyramid from scratch.
There are examples of failed pyramids, and there is very good reason to believe that first of all, the attempted as well as the finished pyramids were substantially bigger then anything built before them (and actually, only in recent times humans built anything that would match them in size), and were pushing the limits of building technology at the time (they would have done that untill about 150-200 years ago and maybe even more recently).
So, while they did not start building them without any previous experience in stone building in general, the known number of failures, documentation and archeological evidence seem to suggest that pyramids were pretty much developed with trial and error, over a relatively short time (a few generations), and by attempting to build soemthing way beyond the known possibilities of technology at the time.
Re:Did You Know? (Score:2)
Re:Did You Know? (Score:3, Insightful)
Combined spend on the shuttles and the space station:- around $250bn
US _annual_ defence budget: $417bn in 2003, and increasing.
Planning ahead + adjusting on the fly (Score:2, Insightful)
Congressional s
Finally! (Score:2)
Enuf said.
Fifty year old technology.. hmmm.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Old doesn't necessarily mean unreliable in design terms - after all, the Russian's workhorse Soyuz orbiter is based on a 1960s design too, but you'd hope that by 2018 we'd be using something.. a little more high-tech.
Just to give a reminder of how much momentum has been lost in the space program: I was born in the same year the movie 2001 came out - when that film was made it was absolutely believable that the sort of technology portrayed in the film could be in use by 2001. The (admittedly flawed) Shuttle was an obvious step towards this future - but somewhere everything went wrong. This is not the future we were promised. Where are the flying cars?.
Still, it's all progress of a sort, I suppose.
Re:Fifty year old technology.. hmmm.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The Soyuz orbiter is being constantly updated, pretty much each one that goes up is an improvement on the previous one. I think to call what flies now 1960s technology is a bit harsh. Yes you did say it's based upon it, but in that case, I just drove to work in a low-tech vehicle based upon a 1908 design.
Damn I hoped I'd get more for my money than that
Keep the budget even lower (Score:2, Funny)
And, at the very least, we can stop wasting taxpayers'money on
Re:Keep the budget even lower (Score:2)
Taking money from NASA won't help any of that. There's plenty of pork barrels around that will absorb any spare cash. Why not look at larger i
Re:Keep the budget even lower (Score:5, Insightful)
The things you mention, and other unavoidable stuff like a massive meteor strike, are precisely the reason(s) we should be doing these things. Our goal shouldn't be to "simply" get to the Moon, or Mars. Our goal should be to establish a viable self-sufficient colony there that would ensure, should some catastrophy strike here on Earth that wipes out all life on the planet, the survival of the human species. Right now, all of humanity's eggs are in one basket, and as you've pointed out, that basket is looking more fragile by the day.
Re:Keep the budget even lower (Score:3, Insightful)
Or you could retrain them, but adding man-power doesn't nessesarily solve the problems very much faster.
Re:Keep the budget even lower (Score:3, Interesting)
Or maybe mad enough to take their experience in designing accurate and reliable missiles to the highest bidder. Wasn't that what we were worried about after the collapse of the Soviet Union?
Scraping Shuttle? Old capsules? Nope! (Score:5, Informative)
You might carry a Luna space ship into orbit with the shuttle, but then you will just be carrying a spaceship within a spaceship. That would be a waste of fuel.
The shuttle is only good if you wish to bring stuff back down with you. In that regard you might have used it on returning to the earth. The returning spaceship could dock with the space station and transfer men and cargo to the shuttle for safe landing. But that's only saves the weight of a single heat shield.
So dropping the shuttle for a Luna and mars mission is the obvious choice. A lot of comments will be made in regard to "return to the old capsules". But this is not really relevant. The "old" capsules were a good design. The engineers for the first Luna expedition did a lot of thinking and testing before going there, so it's a good design. To come up with something new, just for the case of "making something new" would be stupid.
But these new capsules are not old! They use a new propellant, to prepare them for the mars expedition. And as the old Luna Lander had computer power equivalent to a modern average car, I'll expect the new ones will be far more advanced.
This is the same case in regards to the boosters. These are actually based on the Shuttle engines and lifters. So the engines are the same, even thou the exterior is not. And these boosters are far more advanced than the old ones as well.
So scraping the Shuttle and returning to the old capsules?
Not true.
Re:Scraping Shuttle? Old capsules? Nope! (Score:3, Informative)
A returning space ship would also need to brake before it could dock with a space station because it is very likely that it will approach earth at a much higher speed than the speed at which space station turns around the world. And for braking (outside the atmosphere) requires fuel. And that is not even taking into account the fact
Not a ploy... for once (Score:5, Informative)
If you think about automobiles, for instance, the most efficient configuration seems to be a combination of small passenger cars and large semi-trucks. The shuttle was basically an SUV: high maintenance, high cost, low gas mileage and range, and not big enough for truly heavy lifting. It was popular because it fit into the American one-size-fits-all independent mentality.
But the shuttle was also part of a natural evolution. We started out driving a Pinto. We had newfound freedom, but little useful to do with it. To take the next step required a vehicle capable of doing some serious work. But we couldn't afford to go from a Pinto to a Mack Truck. That would've been too expensive, and risky. Instead, we got a Suburban, and used it as a daily-driver, as well as for some backyard projects. The insurance was less than having two autos. There was some maintenance, but we could do it ourselves, without an expensive mechanic.
Now, though, we can afford both the Mercedes and the F-350 flatbed. We have a legitimate use for each. Eventually, we may need the equivalent of a subway car, and a Greyhound bus, and a bullet train. But even here on Earth we have lots of different ways to get around, each optimized for a specific task. We shouldn't be surprised that space is no different.
It's not a SUV, it's a TRUCK (Score:5, Insightful)
The original shuttle design was, basically, a car. It cheap, reusable, and could carry buggerall cargo. And only in some orbits.
Then NASA wanted the Army's space budget. The Army was launching some bloody huge spy satellites (the solar panels alone are pretty darn big) in a polar orbit. And they already had the rockets to launch those. If they were gonna give NASA their budget, NASA had to be guarantee they'd put those huge spy satellites up there. What the Army wanted, basically, was a truck.
So the shuttle got inflated to being big enough a truck to haul up anything that the Army could possibly want hauled up.
So here we are with a one-size-fits-all solution that makes as much sense as saying that a 10-wheeler truck is the one-size-fits-all automobile. You can drive it for anything from cargo transports to groceries to driving your kids to school, right? It has to be the perfect family vehicle, right?
In practice, that one size still didn't fit all.
For starters, now for anything smaller (e.g., a 1-2 ton satellite), packing it in a bloody huge and heavy shuttle makes as much sense as packing a half a pound Walkman in a 100 pound steel safe when shipping it by UPS. Yeah, so the safe is reusable, but you still pay entirely too much for shipping.
As a more insidious thing, it just created the problem of crew safety in a lot of situations where a crew just wasn't needed to start with. (Which, as we know, just jacked prices up even more, and made it even less attractive to use the shuttle for a lot of things. Other than as a national Our-Penis-Is-Bigger-Than-Yours status symbol.)
E.g., the army was already lifting and positioning those satellites in orbit without a crew. A computer is perfectly capable of positioning a satellite in orbit on its own. You don't need a crew of cosmonauts for that.
Using cosmonauts for that just means you have the extra worry of bringing them down in one piece, and bad PR when you don't. An unmanned rocket with a satellite exploding is something we all don't get too emotional about. E.g., you can joke about the Arianne incident and how it shows the risks of reusability, and noone will take it as insensitivity. Or about the Mars lander metric/imperial screw-up. But toast 5 cosmonauts and people get this weird thing called empathy.
pedantic reply (Score:3, Informative)
Not the Army, but the Air Force, and really the NRO, whom the Air Force is working for in the spysat biz.
Second, they never did it. The Vandenberg site was a boondoggle and work on the Shuttle facility was scrapped after Challenger. I was living in L.A. in the early 80s and REALLY looking forward to shuttle flights out of Vandenberg. SLIC-6 at Vandenberg is now an ELV facility, and the Air Force has EELV, which handles their requirements.
Agree, however, that the shuttle was trying to please too many pe
Re:It's not a SUV, it's a TRUCK (Score:3, Informative)
First of all, it's the Air Force, not the Army. Second, no one's putting little tiny satellites on the Shuttle. You've got Pegasus, Minotaur, Athena, and soon Falcon boosters for small payloads, for example. And there most certainly IS a need for heavy-lift capability. After the Challenger disaster in '86, the Air Force was left without a booster for those heavy, polar-orbiting satellites and had to upgrade the Titan boosters to fill
'Bout Time! (Score:5, Funny)
Well it's about damn time. I'm sure it'll beat the pants off all those rubber bands we've been using in the mean time...
Safer design (Score:5, Interesting)
If one thuster fails on a standard rocket then you end up without it going anywere.
Now a normal rocket also offerers better stremlining and as such less fuel needs over the larger front surface profile of the shuttle.
Also the possiblities of having the top command capsule capable of having a seperate jetison detach rocket and parachute landing system incase of failure enabling the crew to for all effect eject and and be recovered does seen alot more viable over any modification to the shuttle design.
So basicly it will be cheaper/simpler/safer and for some....sexier.
Now what I would like to see is a way to send all the old space junk into a pile or crashing onto the moon ready for one day when we do eventualy go back and stay there. Scrap metal/floating space junk is afterall probably the bestest concentrated form of resource up there at the moment that is already past the hurdle for getting to the moon with regards to breaking out of earth's gravity.
This is bullshit (Score:3, Funny)
We want battle star destroyer size ships, capable of shuttling thousands of troops, citizens and refugees between orbits.
No horsing around now, why is NASA peddling "four astronauts" when they could be rock'n roll troopers like those of Star Wars and Battlestar Galatica?
Private sector.... (Score:2, Interesting)
That aside, I remember watching the first televised shuttle launch. I held my breath when it took off, and then watched in awe as it landed some week or two later. It was a sense of something great. It's a pretty good bet I most likely won't feel the sa
Re:Private sector.... (Score:2, Informative)
Russian Philosophy (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, once the Russians solve a problem they reuse the design. The engines used for the boosters that launched Sputnic were fundamentally the same as those used for every subsequent vehicle for decades. Need more thrust, add more engines. If it ain't broke don't fix it.
Re:Russian Philosophy (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Russian Philosophy (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Russian Philosophy (Score:5, Insightful)
Ferrying U.S. astronauts into space aboard much safer rockets.
-Eric
Re:Russian Philosophy (Score:3, Interesting)
Now the Soyuz program is filled with a way too many near-failures and non-lethal failures including sever injuries however no one died. In the shuttle, a near failure is the same as a failure it seems. The newest gener
Old designs better?? (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't use a dump truck to take a cross-country trip.
Doop! (Score:3, Funny)
Then again, it wouldn't be slashdot without the screams of "doop!" :)
Still ignoring Feynman (Score:5, Interesting)
On the solid rocket booster: A more reasonable figure for [reliability of] the mature rockets might be 1 in 50. With special care in the selection of parts and in inspection, a figure of below 1 in 100 might be achieved but 1 in 1,000 is probably not attainable with today's technology.
On the main engine: Engineers at Rocketdyne, the manufacturer, estimate the total probability [of shuttle main engine failure] as 1/10,000. Engineers at marshal estimate it as 1/300, while NASA management, to whom these engineers report, claims it is 1/100,000. An independent engineer consulting for NASA thought 1 or 2 per 100 a reasonable estimate
So, how exactly does this make a safe, reliable launch system?
Rockets are so in-effcient (Score:3, Interesting)
Sudgestions my are:
magnetic pulse/rail gun to repel/shoot the craft (probably work better on the moon)
fire the fule at the craft at a plate unter the craft (exploding on contact)
Space elevator go solar! That Jap station with the 3^2km pannels might come in useful.
What about the ISS? (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously, every one of the comments above did not mention it. The Space Shuttle is the ONLY way to lift the new sections and the only way for America to send/get back astronauts (Though we can hitch a ride with the russians like we already have)
There is a gap between where the Space Shuttle will be retired (if it isnt taken out of service or has another catastrophic failure before that) and when the new CEV and Heavy Lifting vehicles hopefully come online.
There are 15-20 trips required of the Space Shuttle just to finish the ISS, can it make all these trips before 2010 when it has to be recertified and will probably be decommisioned altogether?
What will be done in the 4 year gap to 2014 when the new vehicles are due?
Re:What about the ISS? (Score:5, Interesting)
The ISS doesn't really serve any useful purpose at this point. It exists as a place for the Space Shuttle to go to, and the Space Shuttle exists as a vehicle that gets us to the ISS. Check out this article [idlewords.com] for more indo.
ISS needs to go as well. (Score:3, Insightful)
I figure the best bet would be to push it into a much higher "parking" orbit and revisit it once we get the new launch technology together. This would be more politically acceptable than deorbiting it. By the time we get back
Get the facts straight! (Score:4, Interesting)
- Apparently not a smidgen of Apollo hardware will be used.
- We're talking separate boosters for crew and cargo, again not an Apollo paridigm.
- Using liquid methane ain't the Apollo way either.
It's more a marketing thing, piggybacking on the name of a successfull project. Just like calling everything "Ethernet", even though it's now completely different in every way from the original.Solid boosters still not the safest (Score:3, Interesting)
Solid boosters have plenty of inherent disadvantages when compared to their liquid-fueled cousins. First and foremost, when you light an SRB, it's going to take off no matter what. They can't be stopped. If something goes wrong at any point, your only option is the range safety destruction charges. SRB's cannot be throttled, either. In short, they don't give you a lot of options. They are, however, simpler, requiring no cryogenic turbopumps or internal tanks, and they can be prepped well in advance of the launch.
Using SRB's for cargo is no problem. Using them for crewed vehicles gives me the heebie jeebies. The "old" Saturn V system used liquid-fueled engines for many reasons, and safety and flexibility were high on that list.
Policy failure (Score:5, Interesting)
They decided they wanted to continue to try to drive capital away from commercial launch services so they could continue to keep a strangle hold on access to space.
Time was when I would have supported NASA's science missions, supported by a commercial launch infrastructure. However, now its clear they just use their science missions as an excuse to block anyone from competing for their monopoly position.
Re:Good plan, old design (Score:3, Insightful)
Nothing has changed in external capsule design over the past 35 years either, but don't count on them being oldschool tech - They will incorporate a whole heap of new technologies, and internally they will be totally
Back to the moon to do what? (Score:2)
As far as public support, people already stopped caring around the 3rd Apollo moon landing. What do you think is going to make them "ooh" and "aah" again about the moon landings so they will run to their Congressman and petition them to vote for more NASA funding?
Re:how wasteful (Score:2)
And how exactly are the Shuttles "amazingly safe", did you just wake from a coma and missed the last re-entry disaster?
Re:How will they get back again? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've got'em (Score:5, Informative)
All the plans were there. When they shut down the office, they dumped boxes and boxes of duplicate records, books, etc, that had been collected as the various parts of Apollo, Apollo-Soyuz, Skylab, etc shutdown. I got a chronology of Skylab. Another coworker got books on Apollo and Gemini, along with drafts of the first space shuttle - the one called Dynasoar, and its descendents, from back in the 1950's.
"Systematic destruction" is complete baloney.
Re:Any rocket scientists out there? (Score:3, Interesting)
If we launched rockets from, say, Quito, Ecuador, at an elevation of 9300