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Delta IV RocketCam Videos
dmaas writes "High-quality RocketCam videos from the inaugural launch of Boeing's Delta IV rocket have just been made available (in MPEG-1 and Quicktime formats). Of note are the spectacular strap-on solid rocket booster separation, the extension of the second-stage engine nozzle, and the red-hot glow of ablative material in the second-stage engine. (disclaimer: my company prepared these videos for Ecliptic Enterprises, maker of the RocketCam system)" We did RocketCam photos for model rockets a few weeks ago, if you want to compare.
I wonder how the politicians that feel the space program should be cut can watch something like this and not be moved... Sure the space program is expensive, but in spite of how trite it sounds, space really is the final frontier. We've explored pretty much all of surface of our planet, and short of being into submarines (which isnt anywhere as cool as the Space shuttle!) earth orbit and beyond are the last frontier for exploration. All of human history has been about going beyond the next hill... seeking out what we dont know. It seems awfully short sighted to expect that drive to just fade away... Sometimes a concept is worth more than money.
They don't carry enough payload. They will carry up a 500-1000 pound satellite, but 2 people plus all the life-support crap necessary to keep them alive would weigh about the same. Not too economical to just send 2 people up, with no cargo. Also, they're not re-useable, nor cheap enough to be more economical than a re-useable vehicle. We need to send more than just people into space; we've been there, done that. Cargo capacity is the most important consideration, but cost is also important - the Shuttle holds lots of cargo, but it's too expensive to use for everything we want to send up.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
You'd be amazed at how wrong this conventional "reusable" wisdom is; not that you haven't put some thought into it, but history and current events shows it to be wrong.
Take, for example, the Saturn V moon rockets. This behemoth rocket, standing who-knows-how-many stories tall, and all you get back is this teensy little capsule with three astronauts in it. Wasteful, eh?
Well, yes it is, but engineers plan that wastefullness into the system. For example, the massive Jupiter engines that were on the first stage of the Saturn V were designed to work once, and only once. As such, you immediately can dispense with one of the largest expenses of the shuttle fleet -- namely, the tear down and inspection process following every launch. There's nothing to inspect when your launch system is expendable. Ironically, the shuttle costs more per pound of payload than the Saturn V did, even taking inflation into account, and the inspection procedures are a large part of this.
Take it a step further and you'll see that reliability comes into play. How many shuttle launches have been delayed or scrubbed due to equipment failure? Quite a few, and it's because the shuttle has sacrificed much to the altar of reusability. Weight, the evil bugaboo of the space program, has been ruthlessly trimmed to the point where things aren't as overengineered as the were in the Apollo days. Such cuts had to be made or the shuttle wouldn't be able to carry as much as a postcard into orbit. Apollo, by contrast, was rarely delayed because the equipment wasn't being pushed as hard as the Shuttle is. Again, Saturn V's were designed with finite lifetimes, and the engineers used that to build cheaper, more reliable, but somewhat less efficient systems.
Lastly, reusability comes at a heavy cost in payload capacity. The shuttle can only reach low earth orbit, and only a few orbital trajectories at that. Why do you think so many companies still use Delta's for satellite launches? It's cheaper and it's more reliable, otherwise you'd bet that companies would be bashing down NASA's door trying to get space on a shuttle launch.
I'll leave you with a good analogy from the motorsports world: drag racing. A Top Fuel dragster is designed to do one thing -- run the quarter mile as fast as possible. To that end, the engines are designed to be torn down and practically rebuilt in between runs, and are junked after a very few runs. Why is that? Well, parts designers realized that to design a longer, more reusable lifespan into these engines would either diminish their competitiveness (heavier components last longer but hurt performance) or cost an unholy amount of money in exotic materials and technologies. The analogy is not complete, of course, since drag engines still cost a fortune, but you get the picture as big, dumb boosters do not cost a fortune with respect to the shuttle.
The shuttle is, and has been, a political jobs program. It should never have been made, and should not be continued. Manned spaceflight to LEO could be just as easily accomplished with cheaper, expendable boosters like the ones we were using forty years ago. In fact, with the technology advances of today, those yesteryear boosters could be much cheaper to operate today than they were then.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky