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Orbital Space Plane Problems
FTL writes "NASA's next big step in space (after getting the remaining Shuttles flying again) is the construction of the Orbital Space Plane. It is a small vehicle designed to transport people to and from ISS. Jeffrey Bell takes a close look at OSP in this article and comes to the conclusion that it will result in yet another crippled vehicle. Sounds like what people were saying about the Shuttle's problems back when it was being designed."
and the prototype is working.
they used a modified 747, and a special tow line. they then tow the orbiter up to very high altitutes and launch the orbiter.
the orbiter then ignights its rockets and because it it already high in the atmosphere, it can use half the fuel of bullistic launch.
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OK, NASA still looks screwed up.
Possibilities we must consider:
What should we (the United States in particular and humanity in general) be doing?
"Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy." -- B. Franklin
But, sometimes when you're just going for a drive or taking a trip, you don't really need a bus, a moving van, a construction truck, a science lab, or a race car. Sometimes, a simple compact car would make traveling a lot more convenient and less expensive. The same principle applies to spaceflight.
I wonder if NASA has considered actually bringing some compact car makers as consultants. How would Honda, Mitsubishi, or Toyota would go about tackling these problems? Combine the efficiency of the Civic or the Insight with the existing X-plane aerospace technology of Lockheed Skunkworks and Boeing, and see what happens.
The trouble with orbital flight is that there is a hell of a lot of stuff orbiting up there already. You wouldn't want to accidentally run into any of it, either. Some of it is classified. I would assume (don't know for sure) that only NASA knows for sure where it all is and how to safely avoid it all. Better to stick with suborbital for now, at least until NASA collapses under it's own weight (should happen any day now).
Direct quote from the article(around 3/4 of the way down, under the heading "Weight a minute..."):
The external fuel tank, for instance, is full of oxygen and hydrogen cooled to -400F. to make the gases flow as liquids. Ice will form on the tank. When Columbia's tiles started popping off in a stiff breeze, it occurred to engineers that ice chunks from the tank would crash into the tiles during the sonic chaos of launch: Goodbye, Columbia. So insulation was added to the tank.
Indeed...
I'm surprised it took so long to happen.
Goodbye, Columbia.
If the situation is thus, NASA is way too bloated a govermental organization to keep things running smooth, maybe unmanned space flight for now is the only responce.
If you notice, many of the experiments performed on shuttles are ones that there is really no need for a human to be involved, you can have a robot or control from the ground do it fine and have it be both safer, and more cost effective than spaceflight. In fact its almost as if NASA is making busy work for astronauts now, with the fact most experiments can be done without human aid.
But is this really the case, is it maybe more, NASA scientists are unimaginative? I can think of tons of very valid and important human experiments yet to be performed in space that NASA never does for one reason or another. Not to mention a lot of the "future in space" projects they alwaysed perposed end up getting tossed for something else unimportant. We dont need to know stuff like how insects perform in space or GASP how fish f**k, We need to know stuff like staisis and how a better sleep system might be invented or creating artifisial gravity or other things that pertain more to humans living in space than anything else.
Which leads me to my next point, a lot of my suggestions are next to impossable right now cause we dont have enough data on them, so why dont we make it. Limit human spaceflight, study more things on the ground, and then when we are ready go back with the new data in HUMAN experiments. Go back to the old days of Apollo and Gemini and stuff where it was an exploration, not busy work.
perhaps GASP slow down and let science catch up!!!
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"Halfway to Anywhere" by G. Harry Stine should be required reading for anyone interested in new manned spacecraft design. It's out of print, but used copies are readily available.
"I'm assuming you don't realize how many technologies you use on a regular basis that were developed by NASA"
As someone who has worked in a government lab, it seems that every invention or achievement that is even remotely associated with the lab they take credit for. I wonder how many of those technologies were really developed by NASA or really just developed by associated companies and institutions. NASA doesn't devise new technology, individuals that may or may not work for them do.
Regardless, developing consumer goods is not their mission and cannot be a measure of their success. Even if Tang is really good at removing stains.
This is something that I've often wondered about - yes NASA has created a number of things that have improved life for the rest of us, but is it really a good return? Couldn't we have given a fraction of that money to the same clever people and said "please invent me some UV-filtering sunglasses" while we went off and spent the rest on healthcare, or beer, or whatever?
Not an attack on you, btw - I can understand that the end goal of space flight can motivate greater innovation than a simple request for invention, I just wonder if the effect is that great.
Cheers, Paul
It's a pet project of mine, but I think it bears commenting on: The space elevator.
I think it may be a _very_ good option for the nation's space needs.
More information can be found here:
Space Elevators: Low Cost Ticket to GEO?
More on Space Elevators
Going Up?
Calling the Space Elevator
Space Elevator May Become Reality - The Linked Study(PDF) Was fascinating.
Space Elevator Could Cost Less Than You Thought
Stepping Closer To The Space Elevator
Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but copyright will always protect me.
Actually, X-15 was to be replaced by a space plane which had incorporated the lessons learned in the NF-104 Starfighter (which had motors to manouver above 120,000 feet to learn the basics of orbital manouvering). But that was cut.
e ms/air craft/x-31.htm
X doesn't mean buzz when it comes to a project.
The X-31 ESTOL is a very sucessful X-plane right now.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/syst
X-32 JSF
X-35 JSF
..spaceflight has advanced over the last 50 years..
..;).. maybe the army/navy should start using those apollo boosters for weapons delivery. :p
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The conclusions at the end of the article are pretty decent. Using refurbed (or updated versions of old) Apollo-era capsules is a good idea. Wings on spacecraft are there because the USAF mandated that spacecraft be piloted by ... you guessed it ... pilots. Pilots fly things with wings. They were horribly opposed to the "spam in a can" image being laid out for them in the 50's. Much of the crap in NASA's systems are a direct result of pilot intervention being mandated by the USAF.
If I was scheduled to go to the ISS, I'd want the dirt-simplest flight equipment available. I'd definitely want the reentry profile to be *fundamentally* stable - just like the Apollo-era return vehicles. I don't give a crap where it comes down - that's what we have aircraft and helicopters and boats and trucks for.
Only by desperate weight reduction measures, resulting in incredibly fragile vehicles, is anything made to fly into space at all. The vehicles are almost all fuel. Pieces have to be thrown away after launch. Payloads are dinky for the size of the vehicle. Costs are insanely high.
[...]
Space travel won't work until we get a better energy source.
It works fine for communication satellites and other objects that are worth spending lots of money to put up there.
*Cheap* space travel won't be possible without chemical fuels, but this is by no means a reason to abandon space.
The various launch proposals that don't require you to carry fuel with the craft turn out to have infrastructure costs large enough to be very expensive as well. This includes the Space Elevator. Being in a deep gravity well tends to suck that way.
Absolute rubbish. That article is the most well reasoned piece of analysis I've seen on the space business in a long time. His data is pretty strong, and his arguments logical. It all even seems obvious, with hindsight.
You might not like what Bell says, but there is no point in shooting the messenger. Judging by your infantile remarks, it's clear that you just didn't understand what he was saying. Your response is reminiscent of an infant shouting and stamping his feet.
I got all the way down to...
"Astronauts, after all, are easily replaceable. The number of overqualified applicants vastly exceeds the demand. But the OSP vehicles will be expensive, hand-built national treasures that simply can't be thrown away."
Before I stopped reading.
You may not like it, but it's true. Even with the knowledge that they may die with a fairly high probability, it's not hard to find enough astronauts. They are practically standing in line. That certainly doesn't mean that their lives are worthless, but we should accept that some lives are lost, just like we 'accept' driving accidents because transportation by car is considered very important in our society. Those accidents or 'thrown away' lives are simply the price we pay for our desired lifestyle and we can bear them.
On the other hand, it's very difficult to find the budget to replace a multi-billion dollar space craft. The gain is too small to replace one regularly. We don't consider space exploration to be that important, compared to military spending, healthcare, etc. We could divert money from healthcare to NASA, but that would also cost lives. In fact, all the money that we don't spend on saving lives makes us guilty of 'throwing away' lives that could be saved. So in the end, the budget problem is also about human lives. We (usually unconsciously and erratically) value life in dollars by refusing to save lives if the expenses become to high. Unless you believe that we should spend all the money we have on saving lives, you place a dollar value on life as well. And if you accept that human life can be valued in dollars, you should understand that a multi-billion space craft represents many saved lives and that it is more important than a few astronauts. We don't want to throw billions worth of lives away regularly, but we can accept a few casualties now and then.
The Drowned and the Saved - Primo Levi
It's a pretty one-sided analysis. He hinges his argument on two assumptions that I frankly don't think are valid:
The first point is questionable from two fronts - first, the "winged craft aren't worth it" idea has enough mindshare that a capsule design is one of the ones proposed, and second, they need the new craft to actually work. The shuttle fleet _will_ be retired from service by NASA or by nature by around 2010+, so they can't afford another dead-end project for crew transport. This will lead to a more conservative, proven design - probably a capsule.
The second point is silly. The whole reason a new crew vehicle is being developed is so that the shuttle can be dropped like the white elephant it turned out to be. Cargo can much more cheaply be sent up by unmanned expendable boosters. The only change needed will be to either redesign new/proposed station structural components to fit in a 10-20T payload range, or to design a heavier ELV that can carry a payload comparable to the shuttle's in one shot.
Without these points, and especially without the second point, his argument falls apart.