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Do you know anything about the process that led to the space shuttle? Yes NASA solicited design bids--many design bids. Not just from the usual suspects (Boeing, Rockwell, Lockheed, North American, etc., etc.) but also from surprising sources such as Chrysler (they had a neat SSTO design). NASA, contrary to your suppositions, does not do everything in house. In fact, even the launches are technically operated by ULA, a joint effort by Lockheed Martin and Boeing.

Well yes, NASA collected a large number of competitive design proposals for the space shuttle, many of them quite innovative. It then tossed them out and picked a contractor which would build the design the folks at NASA Marshall had in mind:

http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/shuttle.htm

Following the usual charade of competitive bidding, NASA picked the same prime contractor as for X-15 and Apollo, who could be trusted to build precisely the vehicle NASA had in mind. North American Rockwell was selected to build the orbiter, with its Rocketdyne Division making the main engines. Thiokol was selected on political grounds for the solid rocket boosters. Martin Marietta would build the External Tank, but at the government Saturn IC factory at Michoud.

It's worth noting that pretty much the exact same thing happened with the current (like to soon be past) architecture. NASA spent about a year soliciting innovative competitive proposals from a number of companies, such as t/Space, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing, and then selected the most promising proposals for further study. Then the new administrator Michael Griffin came in, threw out all the competing studies, ran his own 2-month study which (surprise!) said that Griffin's own design from a couple years prior was the best one, and then essentially made NASA the prime contractor for what's now known as the Ares I rocket.

When National Geographic wanted some space history background material, they contacted NASA' history office. NASA's history office sent National Geographic to http://www.astronautix.com/ I assume NASA sent NatGeo there due to its objectivity and completeness, because they sure didn't send them there for pro-NASA propaganda. This is a good example: http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/ares.htm

Ares is a salvage project from its inception. It is an attempt to build a family of lifters from existing designs, technology and manufacturing as much as possible, with as little new design, technology and manufacturing as they can get away with.

Ares was designed by ATK Thiokol, manufacturer of the shuttle's solid rocket boosters, using derivative components of the shuttle, and in the case of Ares 1, the solid rocket boosters as the main engine. It is far more adaptation than it is invention. This is in keeping with NASA's "faster, cheaper" mind set that served well in many planetary probes. But since it is not a ground-up design, where flaws are handled when they first occur, it is prone to problems emerging from more complex configurations, the errors themselves more often due to complex interactions. Vibration problems, such as the current Ares booster 'pogo-stick' problem, are a common example of such emergent behavior.

One of NASA's greatest inventions during the early manned space program was systems analysis software, intended to examine a large system as it was built to determine where problems might and/or did occur. But even now, with far greater computational capability, the complexity of potential interactions due to starting with a large system that has been altered in numerous small ways from its original design puts the Ares designs beyond predictability. That will continue to occur as long as the design philosophy is maintained. If this fact, and the fact that such problems could emerge only under certain conditions -- say at max Q, pushing a heavy load with a smaller, lighter load on the top (ie. an Orion) -- isn't at the forefront of those minds trying to decide whether to scrap it and start over, it should be.

Had the shuttle component and system design philosophy been based on extensibility and adaptability (such as with SpaceX's Falcon 1 -> Falcon 9 design), Ares might have a better chance. But the core design of Ares 1 is the SRB, which was designed over 35 years ago for one purpose -- to be strapped on the side of the shuttle to help with its initial lift phase. It did that job well, with its only major failure having been a NASA decision going counter to a Thiokol recommendation. Now we have Thiokol recommending and NASA deciding the same things.

Robert Truax designed vehicles using surplus components. He designed so many, with so much acclaim for his designs, that there was a TV show based on it (Salvage 1, with Andy Griffith, ABC, 1979). But Truax was salvaging components to use in their intended fashion, not entire systems being adapted to entirely new designs.

One has to wonder at the basis for decision making when an agency first builds from scratch, then declines designs reusing some of the parts, but later chooses to rebuild existing designs. The probability is great that the decision is not technical but rather administrative. When the decisions were technical we got "Not on my watch." and Apollo 13 got home. When the decisions became administrative we got "My God Thiokol, what do you want me to do, wait until April?" and the Challenger didn't come home. This is the sort of fuzzy, intuitive, gut-feeling stuff that gets trashed in serious discussions about such major projects as a space vehicle. But the people that trash that kind of thinking aren't going to fly these things. A pilot that doesn't have a personal example of an intuitive, gut-feeling decision that was right hasn't been flying long, and the older the pilot they more likely that following such a gut feeling

When National Geographic wanted some space history background material, they contacted NASA' history office. NASA's history office sent National Geographic to http://www.astronautix.com/ I assume NASA sent NatGeo there due to its objectivity and completeness, because they sure didn't send them there for pro-NASA propaganda. This is a good example: http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/ares.htm

Ares is a salvage project from its inception. It is an attempt to build a family of lifters from existing designs, technology and manufacturing as much as possible, with as little new design, technology and manufacturing as they can get away with.

Ares was designed by ATK Thiokol, manufacturer of the shuttle's solid rocket boosters, using derivative components of the shuttle, and in the case of Ares 1, the solid rocket boosters as the main engine. It is far more adaptation than it is invention. This is in keeping with NASA's "faster, cheaper" mind set that served well in many planetary probes. But since it is not a ground-up design, where flaws are handled when they first occur, it is prone to problems emerging from more complex configurations, the errors themselves more often due to complex interactions. Vibration problems, such as the current Ares booster 'pogo-stick' problem, are a common example of such emergent behavior.

One of NASA's greatest inventions during the early manned space program was systems analysis software, intended to examine a large system as it was built to determine where problems might and/or did occur. But even now, with far greater computational capability, the complexity of potential interactions due to starting with a large system that has been altered in numerous small ways from its original design puts the Ares designs beyond predictability. That will continue to occur as long as the design philosophy is maintained. If this fact, and the fact that such problems could emerge only under certain conditions -- say at max Q, pushing a heavy load with a smaller, lighter load on the top (ie. an Orion) -- isn't at the forefront of those minds trying to decide whether to scrap it and start over, it should be.

Had the shuttle component and system design philosophy been based on extensibility and adaptability (such as with SpaceX's Falcon 1 -> Falcon 9 design), Ares might have a better chance. But the core design of Ares 1 is the SRB, which was designed over 35 years ago for one purpose -- to be strapped on the side of the shuttle to help with its initial lift phase. It did that job well, with its only major failure having been a NASA decision going counter to a Thiokol recommendation. Now we have Thiokol recommending and NASA deciding the same things.

Robert Truax designed vehicles using surplus components. He designed so many, with so much acclaim for his designs, that there was a TV show based on it (Salvage 1, with Andy Griffith, ABC, 1979). But Truax was salvaging components to use in their intended fashion, not entire systems being adapted to entirely new designs.

One has to wonder at the basis for decision making when an agency first builds from scratch, then declines designs reusing some of the parts, but later chooses to rebuild existing designs. The probability is great that the decision is not technical but rather administrative. When the decisions were technical we got "Not on my watch." and Apollo 13 got home. When the decisions became administrative we got "My God Thiokol, what do you want me to do, wait until April?" and the Challenger didn't come home. This is the sort of fuzzy, intuitive, gut-feeling stuff that gets trashed in serious discussions about such major projects as a space vehicle. But the people that trash that kind of thinking aren't going to fly these things. A pilot that doesn't have a personal example of an intuitive, gut-feeling decision that was right hasn't been flying long, and the older the pilot they more likely that following such a gut feeling

A relevant piece of a recently submitted and rejected article on lessons from post-Apollo to Orion/Constellation. There were many suggestions on Apollo derivatives and follow ups, but only Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz made the cut. Many more could have flown. That fact in itself is a valuable lesson -- build for adaptability.

"With the Apollo 11 lunar landing nostalgia wave over, and the ongoing discussions about keeping, changing or abandoning designs and plans for Constellation, the new Ares rocket and the very Apollo-looking Orion crew vehicle, it is interesting to examine the development, evolution (including evolutionary dead ends) and the many never-were projected possibilities for the Apollo and Saturn components. Encyclopedia Astronautica offers a feast of details about Apollo developments, both successes and failure, in The Apollo Development Diaries http://www.astronautix.com/articles/apoaries.htm . Plans for the vehicles were later not so much lost as is claimed now, but were abandoned as unfeasible, unnecessary, and in the cases of some such as the high jumping Lunar Leaper and slithering Lunar Worm vehicles, just too weird http://www.astronautix.com/craftfam/apollo.htm .

As for the actual Lockheed Martin piece referenced in TFA, it's pure PR. But since they feel the need to waive their flag, perhaps there are rumbles from within NASA that they might consider alternatives.

A relevant piece of a recently submitted and rejected article on lessons from post-Apollo to Orion/Constellation. There were many suggestions on Apollo derivatives and follow ups, but only Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz made the cut. Many more could have flown. That fact in itself is a valuable lesson -- build for adaptability.

"With the Apollo 11 lunar landing nostalgia wave over, and the ongoing discussions about keeping, changing or abandoning designs and plans for Constellation, the new Ares rocket and the very Apollo-looking Orion crew vehicle, it is interesting to examine the development, evolution (including evolutionary dead ends) and the many never-were projected possibilities for the Apollo and Saturn components. Encyclopedia Astronautica offers a feast of details about Apollo developments, both successes and failure, in The Apollo Development Diaries http://www.astronautix.com/articles/apoaries.htm . Plans for the vehicles were later not so much lost as is claimed now, but were abandoned as unfeasible, unnecessary, and in the cases of some such as the high jumping Lunar Leaper and slithering Lunar Worm vehicles, just too weird http://www.astronautix.com/craftfam/apollo.htm .

As for the actual Lockheed Martin piece referenced in TFA, it's pure PR. But since they feel the need to waive their flag, perhaps there are rumbles from within NASA that they might consider alternatives.

Reviving a 30-year-old Russian capsule which lost out to Soyuz sounds risky.

If it's revamped and passes modern qualification testing, I don't see any reason not to reuse it. Also, unlike the Gemini, the tooling apparently still exists to construct new ones (unless I'm misreading). From what I've read, it seems that the reason the Almaz was ended didn't have anything to do with technical problems with the capsule, but more that the Soviet Union decided that having armed military space stations probably wasn't the best investment:

http://www.astronautix.com/project/almaz.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almaz

Nice submission, although here's a few more details from my own submission:

Excalibur Almaz has come out of stealth mode and unveiled their reusable spacecraft capable of carrying a crew of three and/or cargo to orbit for up to a week. According to VP (and former NASA astronaut) Leroy Chiao, the spacecraft are designed to be launched on a variety of rockets, and are modernized versions of vehicles developed and flight-tested for the Soviet Union's military space station program (the company has also purchased some of the space stations for potential future use). EA plans to begin flight tests in 2012, with revenue flights starting in 2013. The company will likely be competing with the SpaceX Dragon and Bigelow Aerospace's recently-announced "Orion Lite" for a chunk of the emerging commercial orbital transportation market.

An interesting bit of trivia is that the original Soviet Almaz space station carried a rapid-fire cannon and performed a successful test-firing on a target satellite. I'm assuming the space stations which Excalibur Almaz bought don't have the cannons anymore. :(

They seem to base their ideas on what the OTRAG project tested and worked on in the late 70s. The idea is that the rocket is made up of inexpensive paralell coupled "segments".

The idea behind the OTRAG design was that if each segment where identical, the manufacturing process could be streamlined to a very cost effective level, much like how cars are made.

More on the OTRAG project here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OTRAG
http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/otrag.htm

The most important single advance that could help spaceflight, manned and unmanned would be to reduce the cost to LEO. This will require, ultimately, a SSTO (single stage to orbit) launcher. Of course it's tough (remember the X-34? the Delta Clipper?) but that doesn't mean that with new advances in materials (can you say carbon nanotube reinforced composites) it's impossible.

Actually, the Delta Clipper (DC-X) didn't seem too "tough," at least as far as manned space projects go. The only problem it had was an easily-fixed faulty landing gear, and the main reason NASA cancelled it was so that it could focus attention on the much more expensive X-33. The follow-on orbital SSTO program, DC-Y, was estimated to only cost $5 billion to develop, which would include 4 production vehicles. Hopefully Armadillo Aerospace and Blue Origin (which has hired many of the original DC-X engineers) can pick up the torch.

Even with SSTO though, I think SpaceX is showing that you can lower costs quite a bit by designing a multi-stage rocket with cost in mind. Elon Musk seems to believe that he's fully capable of dropping launch costs by at least an order of magnitude with his current approach, and has bet quite a bit of his own money on that.

The ultimate mission of Apollo was to build a moon base.

Do you have a citation for this? My understanding is that in 1969 Von Braun proposed as a follow-on project to Apollo not a lunar base, but human exploration of Mars. Under Von Braun's 1969 plan, the first Mars manned mission would launch in 1981, with a 50-person Martian base by 1989, using reusable spacecraft and under a peak NASA budget of $7 billion a year. Of course, I suppose he may have wanted a lunar base in parallel.

Astronautix has a pretty fascinating overview of all the shuttle concepts here:

http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/shuttle.htm

Unfortunately, this seems to be a recurring problem with NASA: Soliciting proposals from the commercial sector, many of which are really great, and then discarding them all so they can use their own design which is more responsive to the needs of politics than engineering and economics.

Quite right. Although Apollo was ideal for its specific goal of landing people on the moon by a specific deadline, the lack of affordability and sustainability made it fail miserably at the wider goal of opening up space.

It's quite interesting to take a look at Werner von Braun's pre-Apollo rocket designs and launch architectures, which emphasized reusability, in-space assembly, and high launch rates. However, once the Apollo program was announced, money was no object and the deadline was all-important, so he shifted to more costly but faster-to-develop expendable boosters.

It looks like Von Braun's 1969 Mars proposal would have been rather more sustainable than Apollo, but unfortunately didn't go through:

http://www.astronautix.com/craft/vonn1969.htm

The Mars spacecraft itself would refurbished via shuttle flights, two additional PPM stages attached, the whole thing resupplied and refueled, in readiness for further expeditions to Mars in 1983, 1986, and 1988 - leading to a 50-person Mars base by 1989. With the exception of the MEM, all of the spacecraft was reused. Von Braun estimated this colonization of Mars within 20 years could be accomplished with a peak NASA budget of $ 7 billion per year. This robust, relatively safe plan was the culmination of 20 years of Mars mission planning by the Peenemuende team and took full advantage of the other space infrastructure elements in NASA's master plan. It offered the possibility for Von Braun to witness his long-held dream of a manned expedition to Mars in his lifetime.

The Space Task Group made its final report on 15 September 1969, recommending the whole vast infrastructure envisioned by Von Braun. It was not to be -- every element of the NASA plan, except for a much-compromised space shuttle design, would be stripped away by Nixon's budget office. There was no public support for such a grand scheme. The view of Mars as a seemingly barren, lifeless, and uninteresting world in any case was reinforced by the Mariner 7 mission which flew by the planet the day after Von Braun's presentation was made. His ultimate dream crushed, Von Braun was sidelined to a headquarters post at NASA seven months later. He left NASA in 1972 and died in 1977.

Quite right. Although Apollo was ideal for its specific goal of landing people on the moon by a specific deadline, the lack of affordability and sustainability made it fail miserably at the wider goal of opening up space.

It's quite interesting to take a look at Werner von Braun's pre-Apollo rocket designs and launch architectures, which emphasized reusability, in-space assembly, and high launch rates. However, once the Apollo program was announced, money was no object and the deadline was all-important, so he shifted to more costly but faster-to-develop expendable boosters.

It looks like Von Braun's 1969 Mars proposal would have been rather more sustainable than Apollo, but unfortunately didn't go through:

http://www.astronautix.com/craft/vonn1969.htm

The Mars spacecraft itself would refurbished via shuttle flights, two additional PPM stages attached, the whole thing resupplied and refueled, in readiness for further expeditions to Mars in 1983, 1986, and 1988 - leading to a 50-person Mars base by 1989. With the exception of the MEM, all of the spacecraft was reused. Von Braun estimated this colonization of Mars within 20 years could be accomplished with a peak NASA budget of $ 7 billion per year. This robust, relatively safe plan was the culmination of 20 years of Mars mission planning by the Peenemuende team and took full advantage of the other space infrastructure elements in NASA's master plan. It offered the possibility for Von Braun to witness his long-held dream of a manned expedition to Mars in his lifetime.

The Space Task Group made its final report on 15 September 1969, recommending the whole vast infrastructure envisioned by Von Braun. It was not to be -- every element of the NASA plan, except for a much-compromised space shuttle design, would be stripped away by Nixon's budget office. There was no public support for such a grand scheme. The view of Mars as a seemingly barren, lifeless, and uninteresting world in any case was reinforced by the Mariner 7 mission which flew by the planet the day after Von Braun's presentation was made. His ultimate dream crushed, Von Braun was sidelined to a headquarters post at NASA seven months later. He left NASA in 1972 and died in 1977.

If Apollo had continued, it would have stopped at Apollo 20. That was the plan. Apollo itself was the dead-end plan to win the space race. And strange as it may seem, the loss of soonest and long term success in space and the the formation of NASA were one in the same.

The alternative project "Man In Space Soonest" could have had an American in orbit well before Yuri Gagarin's flight. An excerpt from http://www.astronautix.com/craftfam/manonest.htm :

"On 10 July Brigadier General Homer A Boushey of Headquarters USAF informed ARDC that Eisenhower's Bureau of the Budget, firmly in favor of placing the manned space flight program in the new civilian agency, was blocking further release of funds for the program. On 16 July the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 was passed by Congress, and NASA was created out of the NACA and some Army and Navy rocket laboratories. But ARPA told the Air Force there was still a chance the White House would support MISS if costs could be kept to under $50 million in FY 1959. They could present the project as so far along, and with so low a cost to complete, that it would be a big setback to start all over with NASA.

But BMD couldn't make the figures come out this way. Funding of only $50 million in FY 1959 would delay the first American in space to early 1962. Instead, on 24 July, General Bernard Schriever at BMD issued the sixth revision to the MISS development plan. This had a total cost of $106.6 million with the bare Atlas as the booster. Salient features included establishment of a worldwide tracking network, resolving quickly the heat sink versus ablation heat shield issue, and continuing with design of the Thor WS-117L and Thor-Able as backups in case the Atlas proved to be unreliable. Assuming immediate authorization from ARPA, Schriever promised release of the final tender documents to the contractors within 24 hours, and orbiting of the first man in space by June 1960.

The next day there was one last session with ARPA Director Johnson at the Pentagon. BMD pointed out that only full, unrestricted, immediate program approval to go ahead with MISS would give the United States a real chance to be "soonest" with a man in space. Johnson flatly refused. Eisenhower saw no valid role for the military in manned space flight. NACA didn't plan to spend more than $40 million on their manned space program in FY 1959, fiscally much more attractive than the $107 million the Air Force was asking for.

On that day - 25 July 1958 - America gave up its chance to put the first man into space. A manager like Schriever could undoubtedly have rammed the project through on the promised schedule. The collection of scientists and tinkerers at NACA had no chance."

Had MISS progressed, Neil Armstrong may still have been first on the moon. However, he would almost certainly have been the first person ride a space craft into orbit and actually fly it home. He was scheduled to take the first orbital flight of Dynasoar http://www.astronautix.com/craft/dynasoar.htm in 1964. NASA's track placed this milestone under the space shuttle, 20 years later. The 'what if' scenario changed long before the question in TFA.

Had the original visions of space exploration been carried out, we may or may not have gotten where we did by 1970, but we darn sure would have gotten there with no intention of backing down and starting over again later. Instead of Ares and Orion, we'd have had true stepping-stone space stations building and launching manned planetary missions. Recall, some of Von Braun's ideas centered on building permanent construction sites in orbit, using the 'bicycle wheel' design. Time and again he was stifled and forced to channel his enormous talent from that which made good sense to that which he would be allowed to see succeed.

The front page of Encyclopedia Astronautica http://www.astronautix.com/ is covered with links to the actual history, the underlying and hidden history, and the might-have-beens of the race for the moon.

If Apollo had continued, it would have stopped at Apollo 20. That was the plan. Apollo itself was the dead-end plan to win the space race. And strange as it may seem, the loss of soonest and long term success in space and the the formation of NASA were one in the same.

The alternative project "Man In Space Soonest" could have had an American in orbit well before Yuri Gagarin's flight. An excerpt from http://www.astronautix.com/craftfam/manonest.htm :

"On 10 July Brigadier General Homer A Boushey of Headquarters USAF informed ARDC that Eisenhower's Bureau of the Budget, firmly in favor of placing the manned space flight program in the new civilian agency, was blocking further release of funds for the program. On 16 July the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 was passed by Congress, and NASA was created out of the NACA and some Army and Navy rocket laboratories. But ARPA told the Air Force there was still a chance the White House would support MISS if costs could be kept to under $50 million in FY 1959. They could present the project as so far along, and with so low a cost to complete, that it would be a big setback to start all over with NASA.

But BMD couldn't make the figures come out this way. Funding of only $50 million in FY 1959 would delay the first American in space to early 1962. Instead, on 24 July, General Bernard Schriever at BMD issued the sixth revision to the MISS development plan. This had a total cost of $106.6 million with the bare Atlas as the booster. Salient features included establishment of a worldwide tracking network, resolving quickly the heat sink versus ablation heat shield issue, and continuing with design of the Thor WS-117L and Thor-Able as backups in case the Atlas proved to be unreliable. Assuming immediate authorization from ARPA, Schriever promised release of the final tender documents to the contractors within 24 hours, and orbiting of the first man in space by June 1960.

The next day there was one last session with ARPA Director Johnson at the Pentagon. BMD pointed out that only full, unrestricted, immediate program approval to go ahead with MISS would give the United States a real chance to be "soonest" with a man in space. Johnson flatly refused. Eisenhower saw no valid role for the military in manned space flight. NACA didn't plan to spend more than $40 million on their manned space program in FY 1959, fiscally much more attractive than the $107 million the Air Force was asking for.

On that day - 25 July 1958 - America gave up its chance to put the first man into space. A manager like Schriever could undoubtedly have rammed the project through on the promised schedule. The collection of scientists and tinkerers at NACA had no chance."

Had MISS progressed, Neil Armstrong may still have been first on the moon. However, he would almost certainly have been the first person ride a space craft into orbit and actually fly it home. He was scheduled to take the first orbital flight of Dynasoar http://www.astronautix.com/craft/dynasoar.htm in 1964. NASA's track placed this milestone under the space shuttle, 20 years later. The 'what if' scenario changed long before the question in TFA.

Had the original visions of space exploration been carried out, we may or may not have gotten where we did by 1970, but we darn sure would have gotten there with no intention of backing down and starting over again later. Instead of Ares and Orion, we'd have had true stepping-stone space stations building and launching manned planetary missions. Recall, some of Von Braun's ideas centered on building permanent construction sites in orbit, using the 'bicycle wheel' design. Time and again he was stifled and forced to channel his enormous talent from that which made good sense to that which he would be allowed to see succeed.

The front page of Encyclopedia Astronautica http://www.astronautix.com/ is covered with links to the actual history, the underlying and hidden history, and the might-have-beens of the race for the moon.

If Apollo had continued, it would have stopped at Apollo 20. That was the plan. Apollo itself was the dead-end plan to win the space race. And strange as it may seem, the loss of soonest and long term success in space and the the formation of NASA were one in the same.

The alternative project "Man In Space Soonest" could have had an American in orbit well before Yuri Gagarin's flight. An excerpt from http://www.astronautix.com/craftfam/manonest.htm :

"On 10 July Brigadier General Homer A Boushey of Headquarters USAF informed ARDC that Eisenhower's Bureau of the Budget, firmly in favor of placing the manned space flight program in the new civilian agency, was blocking further release of funds for the program. On 16 July the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 was passed by Congress, and NASA was created out of the NACA and some Army and Navy rocket laboratories. But ARPA told the Air Force there was still a chance the White House would support MISS if costs could be kept to under $50 million in FY 1959. They could present the project as so far along, and with so low a cost to complete, that it would be a big setback to start all over with NASA.

But BMD couldn't make the figures come out this way. Funding of only $50 million in FY 1959 would delay the first American in space to early 1962. Instead, on 24 July, General Bernard Schriever at BMD issued the sixth revision to the MISS development plan. This had a total cost of $106.6 million with the bare Atlas as the booster. Salient features included establishment of a worldwide tracking network, resolving quickly the heat sink versus ablation heat shield issue, and continuing with design of the Thor WS-117L and Thor-Able as backups in case the Atlas proved to be unreliable. Assuming immediate authorization from ARPA, Schriever promised release of the final tender documents to the contractors within 24 hours, and orbiting of the first man in space by June 1960.

The next day there was one last session with ARPA Director Johnson at the Pentagon. BMD pointed out that only full, unrestricted, immediate program approval to go ahead with MISS would give the United States a real chance to be "soonest" with a man in space. Johnson flatly refused. Eisenhower saw no valid role for the military in manned space flight. NACA didn't plan to spend more than $40 million on their manned space program in FY 1959, fiscally much more attractive than the $107 million the Air Force was asking for.

On that day - 25 July 1958 - America gave up its chance to put the first man into space. A manager like Schriever could undoubtedly have rammed the project through on the promised schedule. The collection of scientists and tinkerers at NACA had no chance."

Had MISS progressed, Neil Armstrong may still have been first on the moon. However, he would almost certainly have been the first person ride a space craft into orbit and actually fly it home. He was scheduled to take the first orbital flight of Dynasoar http://www.astronautix.com/craft/dynasoar.htm in 1964. NASA's track placed this milestone under the space shuttle, 20 years later. The 'what if' scenario changed long before the question in TFA.

Had the original visions of space exploration been carried out, we may or may not have gotten where we did by 1970, but we darn sure would have gotten there with no intention of backing down and starting over again later. Instead of Ares and Orion, we'd have had true stepping-stone space stations building and launching manned planetary missions. Recall, some of Von Braun's ideas centered on building permanent construction sites in orbit, using the 'bicycle wheel' design. Time and again he was stifled and forced to channel his enormous talent from that which made good sense to that which he would be allowed to see succeed.

The front page of Encyclopedia Astronautica http://www.astronautix.com/ is covered with links to the actual history, the underlying and hidden history, and the might-have-beens of the race for the moon.

Whatever happened to the considerable R&D projects to replace the shuttle with a new model?

Off the top of my head, here's a quick summary of the various serious efforts into creating new manned spacecraft over the past 10-15 years:

• DC-X: A low-cost VTVL prototype built under a $58 million contract, which is still regarded by many as an ideal approach to an orbital vehicle. Plans were to create incrementally larger versions of it which would eventually be able to attain orbit in a cost-effective fashion. Unfortunately, during one of its flight tests a field technician messed up the landing gear, so it fell over when it landed and was destroyed (1996). The company told NASA it'd need $50 million to build a new one, but NASA used the opportunity to cancel the project so it could instead give more funds to the billion-dollar X-33/Venturestar project. Its spiritual successors are John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace and Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin. In fact, the secretive Blue Origin company has hired several of the former DC-X engineers. One of the Armadillo members has a great write-up of the DC-X here: http://media.armadilloaerospace.com/DCX/
• X-33: Interesting project which would have tested a bunch of fascinating technologies (e.g. composite cryogenic fuel tanks, metallic thermal protection, an aerospike engine, lifting body design). Unfortunately, NASA really should've tried testing those technologies individually first, instead of putting every single one of them in the critical path of a new vehicle design. Oops. I believe the main problem ended up being the composite fuel tank, and when that failed the entire project (which had used up a billion dollars thus far) had to be canceled in 2001.
• Orbital Space Plane: A low-cost vehicle intended to launch on already-existing EELVs, started in 2003 and expected to start carrying crew by 2010. In 2004, this project was transferred to the Crew Exploration Vehicle project.

Now, the currently ongoing projects and contenders:

• Crew Exploration Vehicle: This is a little complicated. Back in 2004, the Crew Exploration Vehicle was announced, and it was assumed it'd be similar to the Orbital Space Plane project it derived from: a low-cost capsule which could be launched on already-existing EELV rockets like the Delta IV Heavy or Atlas V. This went through a number of stages of design studies and competitive flight tests planned, with unmanned tests by 2008 and unmanned tests sometime in the 2010-2014 range. Unfortunately, in 2005 Michael Griffin came in, proclaimed that he had a superior design and tossed out all the prior work. Although he claimed his design was simpler and faster, and commissioned NASA studies to "prove this," history has pretty well proved that his design (now the Ares I) was nowhere near as simple and straightforward as he thought it would be. Instead of the plan to have low-cost CEV launching on existing vehicles it had before, NASA currently has the Ares I which has an ever-increasing cost, currently around $35 billion. The per-launch cost is also expected to be as much as or higher than the space shuttle. Oops.
• DIRECT: A bunch of undercover NASA engineers who didn't believe Ares was the best solution but were afraid of retribution from Griffin, so they anonymously released a plan they thought was superior. Since it's Shuttle-derived it's certainly more expensive than an EELV-based design, but would have a larger payload.
• EELVs: These rockets are already used regularly to launch payloads for NASA and private industry, and most of the final proposals for the pre-Griffi

This isn't engineering, this is aerospace. In this case they almost always build two designs and select one. For instance, the F-35 was selected from the X-32 and X-35. ... In every other case I can think of, at least two designs are presented and one goes to metal. ... This all-eggs-in-one-basket approach is actually highly unusual for the aerospace industry, at least in terms of government funded projects. Consider that they funded both Delta and Atlas, precisely to ward off ending up with nothing if the one they selected came in too heavy - precisely what's happening with Constellation.

The saddest part is that NASA was actually well on its way to doing things in a sane fashion, and in 2004-2005 was soliciting multiple proposals from companies for the CEV. The plan is that the top two proposals would be selected, in 2008 there would be a competitive flight test between the two vehicles, and the best vehicle would be chosen. Unfortunately, when Michael Griffin became administrator in 2005 he threw out all the proposals and instituted his personal design as the One True Way that would be faster and cheaper, even though it's actually been slower and an order of magnitude more expensive:

http://www.astronautix.com/craftfam/cev.htm

By the time the final CEV proposals were received, Mike Griffin had been appointed the new NASA Administrator. He saw that the CEV plan would realistically leave NASA with a half-decade gap between the retirement of the shuttle and the commencing of CEV flights. Griffin obtained White House backing to reject all of the contractor's proposals abandon the long, expensive, 'spiral' development process, and plunge ahead using existing technology and NASA's best judgment. On June 13, 2005, NASA announced the down-select of two contractors: Lockheed Martin and the team of Northrop Grumman and Boeing. However the selected contractors would only build a CEV to NASA's own design. Phase 1 was now accelerated so that a single contractor would be selected without prototyping or flight-test in 2006, so that the spacecraft could be available by 2010 as a shuttle replacement. ...

Incredibly, NASA made the same mistake again, fifty years later. The same approach was used. First, proposals from industry were solicited. In both the Apollo and CEV cases these were imaginative, innovative, and incorporated all of the lessons of hundreds of millions of dollars of advanced research funded not just by NASA, but also by industry and the US Air Force. Superior contractor designs using the Soyuz-type separate orbital module or a winged spaceplane approach were made in both cases. In both cases the contractors were thanked, and NASA then proceeded with its own in-house government design. This was then suitably tweaked until it will passed the Congressional pork test.

Not the italian guy again ... Hey, Gaetano, DIRECT was NASA's idea in the first place (by about a decade and a half); See the National Launch System.

None of the DIRECT engineers or face people deny this fact. Thus, the only one who is falsely claiming ownership of the concept is you!

Neither the delta IV nor the Atlas has (or will ever have) the launch capacity to support a moon mission.

It's more that you lose the capacity to support a very specific type of moon mission. Before Michael Griffin came in, the prior administrator had been considering a number of lunar proposals which didn't involve building a new heavy-lift vehicle. One example is Spacehab's proposal, which could have actually been launched entirely in 15 metric ton (33,000 lb) chunks on existing commercial boosters. Of course, after Griffin came he threw all this previous work out.

It may be true that the Delta IV-H is cheaper than Ares I, but Delta IV-H plus Ares V is likely more expensive than Ares I plus Ares V.

But assuming it's needed, how do those options compare to Delta IV-H plus Delta IV-Super-Heavy?

You might be interested in heading over to the bad astronomy board. There is a lot of discussion over there (some of the people are even rocket scientists) and the consensus seems to be developing that scrapping Ares I would be a bad idea. nasaspaceflight.com also has a lively discussion.

Thanks! I sometimes skim nasaspaceflight.com, but haven't read bad astronomy too much yet.

The same people who, working with von Braun, gave us some fundamental and essential inventions, such as cryogenically (regenerative) cooled motor nozzles, when necessary resorted to outright hacks to get the job done. For instance the Saturn 1B was a collection of 8 Redstone missile tanks and motors clustered around a Titan tank. They went for whatever was the best combination of fastest, cheapest and most powerful. More important, they went for what made the best sense. Their focus was on getting the job done. In fact they solved more problems and developed more programs than were ever put into space. For instance, had the namesake of my UID been followed, Neil Armstrong would have been the first real space pilot, riding a winged craft into space then flying it to landing, 5 years before his Apollo flight and decades before the shuttle made this mission profile a reality.

One of the von Braun groups visions was to make the road to space a series of reusable and adaptable stepping stones rather than a series of one-shot spectaculars. Central to this philosophy was the development of orbital construction, refueling, scientific, telecommunications, command and control, permanently inhabited (through crew rotation) space stations. Their ideas, and similar ones from others, evolved over the years through a sort of intellectual genetic algorithm to give us the present ISS, a working model but as is unsuitable for the purposes they had in mind. They wanted, after all, to make it possible for us to get started on making it possible to do more and more things. As such their designs were far more generic and capable of adaptability. A collection of designs through the years can be seen at:
http://www.astronautix.com/craftfam/eurtions.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/craftfam/usstions.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/craftfam/sovtions.htm

Their plans were to get there for good, by means that made the most sense. Only when given the option of working only on fastest did they turn to building vehicles from existing hardware to carry out one-shot missions. They had no intention of doing anything by such-and-such a time, as that limited their options. They wanted a permanent presence that never had to back step and /or reinvent.

A program that was actually meant to get us there and keep us there would follow their design philosophy and quite likely end up with many of the same steps. Permanent orbital construction and outfitting stations would make the most long term sense. Expensive to build and taking a long time, they'd at first seem to stifle those with the urge to GO. But the expense, spread over the great number of missions they'd make possible, create and support, would be far less than faster alternatives. Similarly, once these are mature, many more varied missions could be sent more often, eventually allowing the number of missions to surpass what would otherwise have been possible in the same time frame.

Kennedy's challenge to get to the moon allowed us to show ourselves what we could do, a valuable lesson, but not the basis for a future. von Braun's vision was more aligned with what were could become. Sadly, even Aldrin's vision falls short in most respects. However, in calling for an international consortium (rather than half partnered, half competing teams) he may be pointing to the sort of organization that might be able to carry out such a program.

Eventually even O'Neil type habitats could be built providing the same services as these earlier stepping stone stations, fulfilling yet another dream but in a rational manner. They'd be built only after learning how through building their predecessors. Similarly, from these stations permanent settlements could be sent out, but their permanence would quite likely be made possible through the creation of permanent infrastructure on tho

The same people who, working with von Braun, gave us some fundamental and essential inventions, such as cryogenically (regenerative) cooled motor nozzles, when necessary resorted to outright hacks to get the job done. For instance the Saturn 1B was a collection of 8 Redstone missile tanks and motors clustered around a Titan tank. They went for whatever was the best combination of fastest, cheapest and most powerful. More important, they went for what made the best sense. Their focus was on getting the job done. In fact they solved more problems and developed more programs than were ever put into space. For instance, had the namesake of my UID been followed, Neil Armstrong would have been the first real space pilot, riding a winged craft into space then flying it to landing, 5 years before his Apollo flight and decades before the shuttle made this mission profile a reality.

One of the von Braun groups visions was to make the road to space a series of reusable and adaptable stepping stones rather than a series of one-shot spectaculars. Central to this philosophy was the development of orbital construction, refueling, scientific, telecommunications, command and control, permanently inhabited (through crew rotation) space stations. Their ideas, and similar ones from others, evolved over the years through a sort of intellectual genetic algorithm to give us the present ISS, a working model but as is unsuitable for the purposes they had in mind. They wanted, after all, to make it possible for us to get started on making it possible to do more and more things. As such their designs were far more generic and capable of adaptability. A collection of designs through the years can be seen at:
http://www.astronautix.com/craftfam/eurtions.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/craftfam/usstions.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/craftfam/sovtions.htm

Their plans were to get there for good, by means that made the most sense. Only when given the option of working only on fastest did they turn to building vehicles from existing hardware to carry out one-shot missions. They had no intention of doing anything by such-and-such a time, as that limited their options. They wanted a permanent presence that never had to back step and /or reinvent.

A program that was actually meant to get us there and keep us there would follow their design philosophy and quite likely end up with many of the same steps. Permanent orbital construction and outfitting stations would make the most long term sense. Expensive to build and taking a long time, they'd at first seem to stifle those with the urge to GO. But the expense, spread over the great number of missions they'd make possible, create and support, would be far less than faster alternatives. Similarly, once these are mature, many more varied missions could be sent more often, eventually allowing the number of missions to surpass what would otherwise have been possible in the same time frame.

Kennedy's challenge to get to the moon allowed us to show ourselves what we could do, a valuable lesson, but not the basis for a future. von Braun's vision was more aligned with what were could become. Sadly, even Aldrin's vision falls short in most respects. However, in calling for an international consortium (rather than half partnered, half competing teams) he may be pointing to the sort of organization that might be able to carry out such a program.

Eventually even O'Neil type habitats could be built providing the same services as these earlier stepping stone stations, fulfilling yet another dream but in a rational manner. They'd be built only after learning how through building their predecessors. Similarly, from these stations permanent settlements could be sent out, but their permanence would quite likely be made possible through the creation of permanent infrastructure on tho

The same people who, working with von Braun, gave us some fundamental and essential inventions, such as cryogenically (regenerative) cooled motor nozzles, when necessary resorted to outright hacks to get the job done. For instance the Saturn 1B was a collection of 8 Redstone missile tanks and motors clustered around a Titan tank. They went for whatever was the best combination of fastest, cheapest and most powerful. More important, they went for what made the best sense. Their focus was on getting the job done. In fact they solved more problems and developed more programs than were ever put into space. For instance, had the namesake of my UID been followed, Neil Armstrong would have been the first real space pilot, riding a winged craft into space then flying it to landing, 5 years before his Apollo flight and decades before the shuttle made this mission profile a reality.

One of the von Braun groups visions was to make the road to space a series of reusable and adaptable stepping stones rather than a series of one-shot spectaculars. Central to this philosophy was the development of orbital construction, refueling, scientific, telecommunications, command and control, permanently inhabited (through crew rotation) space stations. Their ideas, and similar ones from others, evolved over the years through a sort of intellectual genetic algorithm to give us the present ISS, a working model but as is unsuitable for the purposes they had in mind. They wanted, after all, to make it possible for us to get started on making it possible to do more and more things. As such their designs were far more generic and capable of adaptability. A collection of designs through the years can be seen at:
http://www.astronautix.com/craftfam/eurtions.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/craftfam/usstions.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/craftfam/sovtions.htm

Their plans were to get there for good, by means that made the most sense. Only when given the option of working only on fastest did they turn to building vehicles from existing hardware to carry out one-shot missions. They had no intention of doing anything by such-and-such a time, as that limited their options. They wanted a permanent presence that never had to back step and /or reinvent.

A program that was actually meant to get us there and keep us there would follow their design philosophy and quite likely end up with many of the same steps. Permanent orbital construction and outfitting stations would make the most long term sense. Expensive to build and taking a long time, they'd at first seem to stifle those with the urge to GO. But the expense, spread over the great number of missions they'd make possible, create and support, would be far less than faster alternatives. Similarly, once these are mature, many more varied missions could be sent more often, eventually allowing the number of missions to surpass what would otherwise have been possible in the same time frame.

Kennedy's challenge to get to the moon allowed us to show ourselves what we could do, a valuable lesson, but not the basis for a future. von Braun's vision was more aligned with what were could become. Sadly, even Aldrin's vision falls short in most respects. However, in calling for an international consortium (rather than half partnered, half competing teams) he may be pointing to the sort of organization that might be able to carry out such a program.

Eventually even O'Neil type habitats could be built providing the same services as these earlier stepping stone stations, fulfilling yet another dream but in a rational manner. They'd be built only after learning how through building their predecessors. Similarly, from these stations permanent settlements could be sent out, but their permanence would quite likely be made possible through the creation of permanent infrastructure on tho

That means both reusable capsule technology and low-cost fuel.

Fuel costs are at the level of noise in the costs of running a rocket. Liquid hydrogen costs $3-$4 per kilogram. The shuttle goes through 10600 kg of liquid hydrogen, so thats only $40,000. Liquid oxygen is about ten cents a kilogram, or $60,000 per launch. It costs an average of $450,000,000 to launch a shuttle, so even if fuel prices quadrupled, they'd still be less than 1% of the total cost of a launch.

The problem with the fuel is that it is in the wrong location. We need fuel depots in strategic orbits: Low Earth Orbit, Lunar orbit, etc. The bulk of the mass that you lift to do a space mission is fuel, and the more massive the payload, the bigger and more expensive the rocket you need. You may be able to reduce the cost of a mission by launching several smaller rockets rather than a single large rocket.

I agree with the reusability aspect, although I'd rather see an HL-42 style crew module rather than the Orion. Ideally, that would only be to "shuttle" the crew from planetside to orbit and back. Once in orbit, they'd go to the Moon or Mars in a much larger Trans-hab/Bigelow styled craft.

"but most nuclear thermal engines have a poor thrust to weight ratio for launching from the surface"

The Soviet RD-0410 seemed promising.

??? RD-0140 had a thrust that wasn't even twice the weight of the engine. (e.g., http://www.astronautix.com/engines/rd0410.htm ). If you carry enough fuel to give you enough delta-V to get to orbit, it wouldn't even lift its own weight.

In general, nuclear thermal rockets are poor as booster stages for Earth launch.

STNP and Dumbo too. It's not perfect, but if you couple it with a cheap enough propellant (the 0410 used LH2, which is not cheap), you may have something as a result.

Liquid hydrogen's cheap enough. The problem with it is the low density. However, since the specific impulse is inversely proportional to the square root of the molecular mass of the exhaust, if you don't use hydrogen or helium, your specific impulse drops so much that you might as well just use chemical. (I've also proposed lithium, with lower specific impulse, but still better than chemical if you can run hot enough, and it's much much denser than hydrogen. Lithium and boron hydrides are good, too.)

The following is fairly negative, but is posed honestly, not as flamebait, troll or other such nonsense.

It seems to be becoming a standard /. format to raise a topic, pose a question, and then proceed to discuss the issue and/or raise more questions as though the answer to the first was affirmative. The result is something that looks like it belongs in Ask Slashdot, and makes sense mostly if you read it while nodding vigorously. The real answers to the questions could often be found by doing some real research on the subject, but that doesn't happen as it would disrupt the chain of wishful thinking. The same could be said of locating information disproving the imaginary thesis, but that's even less likely to occur.

Space science encompasses pretty much anything that goes on over that magical 100 km altitude, even studying things up there from down here as well as technology associated with such work. $10M/year could fund your traditionally fine radio telescope program. It could as easily apply to using that hardware to support a space based radio-location (ie. GPS) program or even satellite relayed telecommunications. $10M/year might be able to get stretched to develop a sounding rocket if you scrimped by using something like Indonesia's sugar based solid fuel motors. It could also get swallowed whole easily maintaining your existing launch sites and related infrastructure. $40M would cover the initial training of a shuttle mission specialist but not the technical training for a specific mission. Many space related projects could be funded by the budgeted amount, except a "space program", taken to mean something like an Aussie spam-in-a-can riding into the black in an Aussie capsule on top an Aussie booster -- a home grown manned space flight program. Ain't gonna happen for that amount. That amount over 4 years might be able to fund the development of an administration and engineering group capable of doing something like that at some later date for a much greater amount. Given such an organization, that amount/time frame could go to make good progress on the proposed Ausroc LCLV, but almost certainly not enough to finish it.

Australia has a decent record of booster and payload/program development and execution without having burdened itself with a top heavy centralized administration. Sites have been operating quite well on an independent basis. For instance, Woomera has operated 15 pads and launched well over 500 missions in the past half century without a hint of need for an oversight agency. It's fairly inactive now but could wind back up if needed for the Ausroc or similar projects. Other sites have similar records, and the cumulative national record is impressive (see http://www.astronautix.com/country/ausralia.htm ). It ain't broke. Don't fix it. Have the sense not to replicate programs long since superseded elsewhere, such as early (ie. Mercury and Gemini) NASA, when one could obtain far more for the money via partnering with present day US or Russian programs. Sure, you could develop a manned program, or you could put that money to better use and get more out of it, as you have been all along.

And please do your homework so you can jump past the leading questions rhetoric and approach it from a position that lends to more fruitful discussion. If the quoted figures are your actual budget, then it was discussed and voted on. That means your own representative politicritter was at least peripherally involved, and an inquiry in their direction could well provide much more solid information (or at least proposed intentions) than the referenced vagaries and attached hypotheticals.

Finally, a piece of synchronicity. As I was writing this the following fortune/tagline was at the bottom of the page: "Mitchell's Law of Committees: Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings are held to discuss it."

It's gratifying to know that /. allows people with no background in the subject matter and no understanding of the classifications in mods to have an editorial voice in moderating, as well as giving them the freedom to not pay attention to the guidelines and definitions in "Moderation Help".

A troll is a false statement. What I said about both the administrations as well as the incestuous relationships between governance, agencies and business are a matter of public record. Several stories regarding NASA with just this plot line are included in the single most complete independent web site covering space program history, Encyclopedia Astronautica http://www.astronautix.com/ The statements I made are echoes of project managers and staff from axed programs over the last half century quoted in books, articles and personal interviews. There is no shortage of them because there are far more axed programs than successful ones. To support my assertions, look up the proposals NASA rejected for what has become the Constellation system and Ares launcher -- the early proposals from BigAero were based on existing or planned boosters such as upgraded Delta and Atlas.

The USSR had Polyus, which never made it to orbit, which had a self-defense cannon and a blinding laser. http://www.astronautix.com/craft/polyus.htm
However if don't incinerate the target, then you are left with more debris that you may run into. They need a space "refuse" service which will remove
debris, old satellites, and other stuff. Maybe all space faring countries can contribute to an fund that will allow an creation of this organization so that some private or public organization will do this job.

As part of a last gasp effort to regain relevancy by showing command of the sky, a test battlestation was launched on one of the two Energia boosters that flew.

It's worth emphasising the word 'test' here!

The Polyus was based on a TKS logistics vehicle (combination man-rated cargo transport, tug and on-orbit living quarters module that was intended for Mir-2) that was surplus from a test stand (!), mated to a mockup of the Skif-D battlestation that had been under design for years but had no actual functioning hardware. The mockup contained a lot of hardware stolen from other programmes, including Buran, in order to meet the crash deadline; the guidance system that failed and caused the deorbit was a guidance sensor that had been ripped out of an existing Cosmos spacecraft. It sounds like a horrible mess and was obviously intended as a prestige project rather than as anything useful.

In terms of weapon systems, it did contain a cannon designed to defend against anti-satellite weapons. It's unclear whether it was actually loaded. Other military hardware included a targeting laser, a barium cloud release system that was an experiment in deflecting beam weapons, and some target release systems.

So from a dakka perspective it's much less exciting than you make out!

From a space hardware perspective, though, it's deeply cool; not for what it did, but because it massed 80 tonnes and was 37 metres long, and went up (and then down again) in a single launch. Energia was quite a beast. It was a shame it only flew twice.

There are some decent technical specs and photos here (with practically no mention of the military aspects), and some information about the programme as a whole here.

Some of the Stanford AI crowd in the 1980s were talking up a proposal for a long-term project to build robots capable of building a moon base by the year 2000. I commented at the time "How soon can you do it in Arizona?" This yielded some embarrassment.

NASA robotics efforts have had an overall negative effect on robotics as a field. They take forever, they produce one-off devices, and they suck smart people out of useful areas. JPL's rovers are really rather simple-minded devices, and are mostly teleoperated. They're just well engineered. Robotics efforts out of the NASA "centers" have generally been embarrassing.

I don't think a liquid air collection engine (LACE) was ever successful, but there were preliminary designs for some (don't know about prototypes). Here's a short article on the subject:

http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/aerplane.htm

By keeping the air a gas, it simplifies the plumbing while still letting you use essentially a rocket engine design (liquid fuel is vapourised before burning anyway, usually by using it to cool the nozzle).

The downside to this is that water vapour will freeze on the cooling fins/surface of the intake, and cause ice buildup. For the length of time this engine is expected to operate that's not a big deal, but in humid air or for longer operation, ice could clog the air intake.

...could be hired to work for GM or Chrysler, Toyota and Honda would be the ones needing a bail-out.

How about the people who built the Apollo LRV? It even folds up so you can save on parking space.

That's much better than Voskhod 2, which also landed off-course in the Urals in similar circumstances, and was surrounded by hungry wolves.

http://www.astronautix.com/flights/voskhod2.htm

Ares I is an abortion, and Ares V is being made without specific applications in mind. With the specs changing so often, I doubt either will ever fly.

Why, oh why, did NASA drop funding for SLI which was supposed to develop new generation staged combustion engines? Developing new engines is the first step in developing any new space transportation system. If we had RS-84, or something like it, it would change the game. We need to develop technologies for reliable and cheap access to orbit dammit, not gigantic White Elephants made of old tech, that is fitter for launching nuclear warheads than people.

Then there is the fact that they dropped landing, like the Russians have done for yonks, in favour of dropping into the ocean. What a retrograde step! If they couldn't make the stupid air bags light enough, they just needed to add retrorockets like the Russians. That capsule is too damn big anyway. They should shrink it into something that can fit an EELV.

What's maddening is that nobody involved in this debate seems to realize that:

1. We solved resonance and pogoing issues in the 1960s vis-a-vis the Saturn V stack.

2. We can simply dust off the Apollo 18-20 J-series mission plans and the Apollo X/ALSS/AES/LESA studies, and execute them.

3. All we need to actually get back to the Moon is a Saturn V stack updated with newer materials and automation technologies.

4. SRBs are insanely dangerous due to their non-throttalability, and should not be man-rated beyond the poorly-designed Shuttle stack.

We knew all this *more than 40 years ago* (we ignored the SRB issue back then, which led directly to Challenger); how can these people be so ignorant?!

Here's a link to just a few of the studies which were done of follow-on missions. Here are links to Apollo X, ALSS, AES, and LESA.

Stephen Baxter's Voyage is an interesting alternate history based upon some of these mission plans (although he's way too hard on the Germans, IMHO).

The bottom line - if NASA want to go back to the Moon (far better to offer a $20B X-Prize for the first organization to put 30 men on the Moon for a year and a day, and return them safely to Earth), all they have to do is to start building modernized Saturn Vs, Apollo CMs, SMs, & LMs.

What's maddening is that nobody involved in this debate seems to realize that:

1. We solved resonance and pogoing issues in the 1960s vis-a-vis the Saturn V stack.

2. We can simply dust off the Apollo 18-20 J-series mission plans and the Apollo X/ALSS/AES/LESA studies, and execute them.

3. All we need to actually get back to the Moon is a Saturn V stack updated with newer materials and automation technologies.

4. SRBs are insanely dangerous due to their non-throttalability, and should not be man-rated beyond the poorly-designed Shuttle stack.

We knew all this *more than 40 years ago* (we ignored the SRB issue back then, which led directly to Challenger); how can these people be so ignorant?!

Here's a link to just a few of the studies which were done of follow-on missions. Here are links to Apollo X, ALSS, AES, and LESA.

Stephen Baxter's Voyage is an interesting alternate history based upon some of these mission plans (although he's way too hard on the Germans, IMHO).

The bottom line - if NASA want to go back to the Moon (far better to offer a $20B X-Prize for the first organization to put 30 men on the Moon for a year and a day, and return them safely to Earth), all they have to do is to start building modernized Saturn Vs, Apollo CMs, SMs, & LMs.

What's maddening is that nobody involved in this debate seems to realize that:

1. We solved resonance and pogoing issues in the 1960s vis-a-vis the Saturn V stack.

2. We can simply dust off the Apollo 18-20 J-series mission plans and the Apollo X/ALSS/AES/LESA studies, and execute them.

3. All we need to actually get back to the Moon is a Saturn V stack updated with newer materials and automation technologies.

4. SRBs are insanely dangerous due to their non-throttalability, and should not be man-rated beyond the poorly-designed Shuttle stack.

We knew all this *more than 40 years ago* (we ignored the SRB issue back then, which led directly to Challenger); how can these people be so ignorant?!

Here's a link to just a few of the studies which were done of follow-on missions. Here are links to Apollo X, ALSS, AES, and LESA.

Stephen Baxter's Voyage is an interesting alternate history based upon some of these mission plans (although he's way too hard on the Germans, IMHO).

The bottom line - if NASA want to go back to the Moon (far better to offer a $20B X-Prize for the first organization to put 30 men on the Moon for a year and a day, and return them safely to Earth), all they have to do is to start building modernized Saturn Vs, Apollo CMs, SMs, & LMs.

What's maddening is that nobody involved in this debate seems to realize that:

1. We solved resonance and pogoing issues in the 1960s vis-a-vis the Saturn V stack.

2. We can simply dust off the Apollo 18-20 J-series mission plans and the Apollo X/ALSS/AES/LESA studies, and execute them.

3. All we need to actually get back to the Moon is a Saturn V stack updated with newer materials and automation technologies.

4. SRBs are insanely dangerous due to their non-throttalability, and should not be man-rated beyond the poorly-designed Shuttle stack.

We knew all this *more than 40 years ago* (we ignored the SRB issue back then, which led directly to Challenger); how can these people be so ignorant?!

Here's a link to just a few of the studies which were done of follow-on missions. Here are links to Apollo X, ALSS, AES, and LESA.

Stephen Baxter's Voyage is an interesting alternate history based upon some of these mission plans (although he's way too hard on the Germans, IMHO).

The bottom line - if NASA want to go back to the Moon (far better to offer a $20B X-Prize for the first organization to put 30 men on the Moon for a year and a day, and return them safely to Earth), all they have to do is to start building modernized Saturn Vs, Apollo CMs, SMs, & LMs.

Well a lot of the cost is the inefficient nature of the Shuttle launch system. Every launch of the shuttle puts 110 tonnes in orbit, but around 90% of that is the shuttle itself. Rather than 10s of launches the ISS could have been put up with a handful of NLS launches freeing the shuttle for what it does best, servicing a space station and bringing samples back.

You may be jesting, I'm unsure, but the GP appears to be correct.

The Shenzhou spacecraft appears similar to the Russian Soyuz, but is different in dimensions (slightly larger and heavier) and does not seem to use any detailed parts copied from the Soyuz or built under license. Therefore although it follows the classic layout of the Soyuz, adopts many of the same technical solutions, and the re-entry vehicle has the same shape, it cannot be considered strictly a 'copy'.

www.astronautix.com

I did some more digging on these topics last night but it took be a while because I got side-tracked reading the Columbia accident report which I stumbled across.

According to Robert Biggs, ex Rocketdyne engineer, the original (pdf, page 6 footnote 1) target life of the SSME was 100 missions with occasional thrust excursions to full power level (FPL) which was 109% of rated power level (RPL). That was cut down to 55 missions to allow constant operation at FPL. I think FPL is now 104% with 109% being available in abort situations.

I mis-remembered the original SSME target removal and overhaul frequency, it was 10 missions not 100.

The relatively new block II high pressure fuel and oxidizer turbopumps are advertised (by P&W) to last 10 missions between overhaul with a total life of 30 missions. As far as I know the engines are still being removed every flight.

Me too, old boom boom, AKA "Project orion" http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/orion3.gif, is just too much of an "OMFG they want to do WHAT!" to be forgotten.

http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/orion.htm

Not entirely true. Soyuz 18-1 experienced a third-stage separation failure and a 20.6+g reentry on abort. One crewman suffered internal injuries. Source: http://www.astronautix.com/flights/soyuz181.htm

Further rumours and conspiracy theories about this technological terror; Google will reveal more fantastical speculation than you can possibly imagine :-)

If NASA had that attitude we'd probably have thousands of blown rocket husks laying about the island of Florida's thousand of craters.

Well, the government's first orbital rockets did tally up eight Vanguard husks from eleven launches. I'm very glad we did have Elon Musk's attitude back then, because "never say die" appears to be a big part of how we got to the Moon in the next decade from such inauspicious beginnings. I hope we still have the same attitude now, because it's going to be necessary if we're going to get through the redesign work necessary to make it affordable to get into space to stay.

The reliability problems will get better, if they can afford to make enough flights and gather enough data to work out the problems. One of the best current launch vehicles used by NASA evolved from ICBMs such as the ones that had given us four Atlas A husks out of eight (very suborbital) launches, through a series of successors with failure ratios like 3/10, 2/6, 32/135, 15/48... check out all the different versions for yourself, and get an idea of why aerospace engineering has entered the lexicon with "rocket science" as a synonym for "something really hard".

Your use of a conspiratorial tone in combination with a series of rhetorical questions and vague, but scary, implications in the text you quoted have swayed some of the moderators. Well played, indeed! To that I can only respond, from your own sources:

From the Terra-3 page of your "Encyclopedia Astronautica":
The first applications would have to be limited to anti-satellite, and then primarily to blind optical sensors --Hmmmm...a high-powered flashlight...
Remember: from your own quote it was not "discomfort and temporary blinding" but instead there was a "/" in there. Meaning that the discomfort was the temporary blinding.

Alas, your Register article doesn't fare much better in supporting your beautifully possible theories if you read past the first line. Heres's the second line for your benefit:
The high-powered light was able to blind onboard cameras, acknowledged National Reconnaissance Office director Donald Kerr...
So, if this is the best you have to show, I'm afraid, despite how incredibly impressive really bright lights are, I'll stand by my previous statements about the uselessness of the current military laser technology. Except for what the Men In Black have, of course.

1. Exactly what do you think that is for? Rockets in boost? A laser in space would do a better job. Have you looked closely at the turitt on the front. Surprise, it can point and shoot UPWARDS. Now we have the ability to take ALL chinese sats around the world, not just approaching our soil.
2. Do you think that this is our ONLY laser? What exactly do you think happened in 1977, when Carter found out that USSR had a ground based laser? This is the man responsible for stealth aircrafts. He is the one that wanted to remove all of the large naval ships except for aircraft carriers and SSBN, and move to smaller heavily automated crafts that worked together (surprise; that is the navy that we are moving to now). Take a trip to Alaska sometime. Wonderful things up there to see (or perhaps NOT to see).

Did it ever occur to you there's a reason why Rockoon was abandoned?

Who ever said Rockoons were abandoned? As far as I know, the technology is still being researched and has continued to be used for upper atmospheric research. One example is the Japanese rocket listed at the bottom of this page http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/rockoon.htm that was launched in 1992. I've seen others as well.

The thing is, Rockoons (or balloon launched rockets as they tend to be referred to in modern times) fill a niche. Even if they could be used for large rockets, they would take a lot more logistical effort so they have been relegated to small rockets such as the ones used for upper atmospheric research and now for hobbyist/small business efforts like the n-prize. For small rockets, it's possible to use off-the-shelf weather balloons. The groups that have, traditionally, launched things into space (governments) tend to want to send much larger payloads up.

Except that it doesn't noticeably lower the cost of entry. Your rockets are actually somewhat more expensive (because of the structural penalties imposed by the launch method), and your launches are somewhat more expensive because you add the man hours needed to prepare, handle, and track the balloons on top of that required for the rocket. All you save is a fraction of your fuel - and fuel is cheap.

I fail to see how the rockets actually, substantially, more expensive. Most, if not all, of the support structure is built onto the tether attached to the balloon and stays on the balloon when the rocket launches. It tends to be a rather simple, and cost effective, stabilizing rod and very little else. Since you were, almost certainly, already tracking the rocket, no extra cost is incurred there. As for the balloon structure, it is made light enough so that it's intended to be disposable/lost after launch. What's left of the balloon would act as a streamer to slow what little mass is attached as it falls.

As for the fuel, I think you may be underestimating the amount of fuel mass saved by avoiding the dense lower atmosphere. I've also been told that it affects, smaller rockets disproportionately compared to large rockets thought I can't vouch for the numbers personally. Adding fuel to a rocket tends to be a case of diminishing returns. The more fuels mass you add, the more mass the rocket has to push before it is burned. Also, while rocket fuel may be cheap in bulk quantities like those purchased by governments, that doesn't mean that it's cheap in hobbyist/small business quantities or that those groups are even allowed to purchase the more efficient (and, thus, more dangerous to handle) fuels.

What it really boils down to is that the n-prize and other micro-launch endeavors are a special case where the traditional notions of what is common sense for big rocket launches may, or may not, apply. This may lead you to question whether there is a need/good reason to launch micro-payload or for hobbyists/small business to have space launch capabilities, but that isn't what I'm addressing here.

What was once old, is new again.

http://www.astronautix.com/craft/kliper.htm