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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.
I, for one, would rather see NASA go with the "overpowered sports-car" model (AKA Ferrari). Those pictures of the "sedan" models aren't nearly sleek enough.
Let's build a Star Wars style ship and paint it Empire black! Yeah! Now that would increase the support for the space program. It's all about marketing...
enter this design in the X-prize competition and win themselves $10 million.
Because the shuttle had to be made far larger than the first one planned, too much new technology had to be invented to make it fly. If the planned progression happened as planned, the shuttles would have cost $200,000,000 rather than costing $2,200,000,000 each.
I predict that the progression of craft will not happen.
The leading article of this week's Economist (subscriber-only unfortunately) is a great summary of why the space shuttle needs to be retired. The shuttle is too expensive, unsafe, and unnecessary to justify dumping more money into the program. The vast amount of money that NASA spends on the shuttle and space station could be much better spent elsewhere. The space station exists because of the need to give the shuttle a purpose and the shuttle program only continues because of the space station. NASA should ditch the shuttle, encourage private enterprise in the space business, and concentrate on developing new methods of space travel that might actually result in new exploration instead of simply traveling around the earth in circles.
Of course, NASA will select the design with wings, probably the most expensive and error-prone variant, because it will be pushed through by the aerospace industry lobby.
We will observe this agency bypass any principle of common sense and experiences from successful space programs, just to have a new shiny and politically pleasing toy. It's like re-inventing the wheel - this time not a round, but a square shaped one.
What's so bad about winged designs?
- Wings are useless during launch and in space, they just add to weight penalty.
- Winged vehicles are unstable during re-entry and need a complex and error-prone automatic flight control system.
- Wings are less fault tolerant and more vulnerable to damage.
The worst idea is however to put a winged vehicle on top of a rocket! This concept has been repeatedly rejected due to very good reasons, the most important one being the high lateral and bending loads on the rocket!The good old ballistic capsule still holds all safety records in manned spaceflight - there are only very few lethal accidents, related to the large number of successful launches and returns. The Apollo capsule could land in an area of about 2 miles diameter so accuracy is not such a big concern. It could be further improved by using a parawing instead of parachutes.
The only real problem with ballistic capsules is the high re-entry deceleration due to the low drag and therefore the late beginning of aerobraking. However, no astronaut was ever killed due to re-entry or landing impact deceleration and the problem could be dealt with by using additional inflatable structures to increase drag during the early re-entry phases.
Read this to find out what knowledgeable people think about the "Smaller Shuttle" idea.
The space plane will have only two missions: [...] and to act as a standby lifeboat, parked at the space station for the evacuation of astronauts if there is an emergency.
This strikes me as a complete waste of money, if that's one of it's uses.
Come on people! Use a bloody Soyuz for that! They're a hell of a lot cheaper than $2.4 Billion Dollars! It's a freakin' lifeboat!
Okay, I understand that we would be limited to six people instead of seven. I don't have a problem with that, personally. We might have to be build another docking area. Fine. I think a Soyuz and a second docking area would be a hell of a lot cheaper than $2.4 billion dollars!
Don't get me wrong, I think the space-plane is a wise idea. Flying the shuttle is an expensive way to get people up to the space station (unless it's delivering parts, too). I could also see having one docked there if we were going to use Space Station personnel as a "fix-it" crew (if the Hubble has problems, send up the parts and use the "sedan" to drive over and fix it).
But leaving one of these expensive things docked there just to get astronauts back to the ground in the event of a catastrophe? Why not just use a Soyuz capsule which does the same thing at possibly a quarter of the cost?
The Shuttle, and any next generation craft, is an attempt at creating not just a reusable vehicle, but also one which offers control at landing at a specific place; in this case a runway. Unlike a reentry capsule, which decends to some semi-random location by parachute, the Shuttle can glide toward a specific spot and land. This is a definite step up from previous capsuls in terms of technology and space readiness. And NASA wanted to do even better with their nextgen shuttle, the X-33 design goals were 'single stage to orbit', and would have allowed for a launch and land system without the costly solid fuel rockets. Also a reasonable design goal. Too bad the materials science for the hydrogen tanks isn't quite ready yet, nor are funds available to continue R&D.
NASA is failing because of two primary problems:
a) They lack funding from Congress, and as such are unable to both meet their launch goals and provide the necessary R&D for nextgen launch vehicles.
b) They have foolishly cut safety funding in order to meet those same launch goals, as demanded by Congress. They should have either said straight - we can't meet your goals with the funding alloted, or dumped the Shuttle program and moved to traditional rockets (as you stated in your previous post).
But to say that their R&D toward an orbital space plane was misplaced goes against the very grain of space exploration. At some point we're going to need vehicles that can operate in both space and the atmosphere. NASA obviously committed themselves toward the goal of creating such ships. Space will go nowhere if we only launch rockets into LEO and land in capsules by parachute. You can argue that our materials technology isn't ready yet for the challenges creating real land to space ships, but you can't argue that such a technology is the end goal for any space faring society.
This is JMO, coming from someone who isn't either an aerospace engineer or involved with NASA - and as such has simply a semi-informed opinion to offer.
Best,
Maynard
Anyone who doubts NASA is in its glory age right now, needs to scribble out a Perl Script (or your language of choice), and download all these NASA Pictures of the Day. NASA in the 90's and this decade is accomplishing FAR MORE than the NASA of the Apollo Era.
. htm
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html
This Space Plane is an excellent solution to a pressing problem.
The NASA program that holds the most incredible promise is Project Prometheus. This program should have an incredible impact on the future of mankind, yet is barely known. It is the coolest thing America is doing today. It is highly inaccurate to suggest NASA is idle or unsuccessful. Remember, the Space Shuttle is an important, highly visible PR project as much as a serious project. Much of the real scientific and engineering achievement occurs beneath the publics radar by computer controlled machines.
http://www.nuclearspace.com/a_project_prometheus3
HenryJamesFeltus.com