More on the Orbital Space Plane

AP has a decent piece looking at NASA's orbital space plane program, and describing it as a sedan compared to a tractor-trailer. National polls show that public support for the space program continues to be very strong.

Comments

Interesting article at SpaceDaily

[tftp]

Read this to find out what knowledgeable people think about the "Smaller Shuttle" idea.

Re:We shouldn't depend on Government

[Captain Nitpick]

Actually apollo 12 went to the moon. Unless you mean apollo 8 circled the moon?

Just to set things straight:

• Apollo 1 - preflight test that killed Gus Grissom, Ed White, Roger Chaffee.
• Apollo 7 - circled the Earth
• Apollo 8 - first trip to the Moon, no lunar landing
• Apollo 9 - tested the full Apollo system in Earth orbit
• Apollo 10 - orbited Moon, lunar module descended to 14 km, did not land
• Apollo 11 - first manned landing on the Moon
• Apollo 12 - picked up portions of the Surveyor III probe
• Apollo 13 - we've all seen the movie
• Apollo 14 - Alan Shephard golfing
• Apollo 15 - first use of the lunar rover
• Apollo 16 - a "routine" mission
• Apollo 17 - Eugene Cernan becomes the last man to walk on the Moon

Re:Rockets? Ummm, no

[cmowire]

You haven't been keeping up. The Delta IV Large, which is the current largest available production booster, has a 5 m diamater fairing and can lift 25,800 kg to LEO. The Hubble Space Telescope is a mere 10,863 kg. At that rate, even the Delta IV Medium could lift it.

Re:What were Apollo 2 thru 6 ???

[Captain Nitpick]

What were Apollo 2 thru 6? Or did they just skip fromn 1 to 7, and if so, was that the origin of so many computer software versions jumping to 7.x just to artificially make them appear more mature?

I knew I should have looked that up. Here goes:

• Apollo 4 - First unmanned test of the full Apollo system (although the Lunar Module was a mockup)
• Apollo 5 - Unmanned, tested the Lunar Module
• Apollo 6 - Intended to simulate Command Module reentry at the speed it would have been travelling at on return from the Moon. Unmanned for obvious reasons. Numerous engine problems meant that it failed to achieve the required speeds.

As for Apollos 2 and 3, they didn't exist. Before the missions that tested the operations of the actual Apollo spacecraft, there were a series of missions for testing the Saturn V launch stack and the reentry heat shield, designated AS-201, AS-202, AS-203, and AS-204. AS-204 was intended to be the first manned Apollo mission, and was the one Ed White, Gus Grissom, and Roger Chaffee were preparing for when the disastrous fire happened.

After the fire, AS-204 was renamed Apollo 1 as a retroactive memorial. Then it gets a little weird. The NASA Project Designation Committee decided that the first full Apollo test mission would be named Apollo 4, and that the remaining 3 AS-20x missions would not be renamed. Why they did this seems to be a bit of a mystery.

Thus, the lack of an Apollo 2 or Apollo 3 can be blamed on a committee. It seems somehow appropriate.

And just to add some symmetry on the other end, there were 3 missions that were to be Apollos 18-20. These were cancelled to free up Saturn V launchers for Skylab, and funds for...wait for it...the space shuttle.

Only one of the Saturn V's set aside for Skylab was actually used. The other two are on display, one each at Johnson Space Center, and Kennedy Space Center (the specifics of which pieces of what rockets are where is a bit complicated, and not terribly interesting). A full-scale test version is on display at the Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, but it was not built to actually fly.