Separate Cargo and Personnel Missions for NASA?

l8f57 writes "Hal Gerham (from the NASA CAIB report) is calling for cargo and people to be separated into different missions. He also goes on about how a re-usable spacecraft may not be the most cost efficient vehicle."

Comments

Re:Is This Wise?

[stratjakt]

I believe this is about minimizing cost and lead times, not risk reduction.

I think the idea is that each type of ship would have different requirements, so you could design each to meet the requirements of its cargo, be it human or stuff.

Ie; a cargo shuttle full of tiny screws to be sorted in space doesnt need fancy atmospheric systems and oxygen recirculators and a seven million dollar toilet, etc.

The Russians did this, all through Mir. They had the Soyuz (sp?) rockets for people, and another kind to send supplies up. Or something like that.

ENTER the space elevator

[Chuck Bucket]

This makes sense, and I'd love to see something like the space elevator that Arthur C. Clarke's brought up in Fountains of Paradise happen. This way, cargo could be brought up, followed by crew if the cargo run was successful.

An article written about the idea, this year:

Space Elevators Maybe Closer To Reality Than Imagined

Much more info here:

The Space Elevator Reference

CB

Should we scrap the shuttle now?

[adeyadey]

Why continue to run the shuttle? Why not just use the money for fast development of new vehicles? Cheaper to buy Soyuz/Progress rockets from the Russians for now..

Now isnt that ironic - The US would end up having to buy what is essentially much the same rocket that Uri Gagarin used in 1961.. :-)

Re:Is This Wise?

[AlecC]

I think this idea is post shuttle, not separate human/cargo shuttle flights. You design a small, safe dedicated people carrier. 4 seats, about the size of a small business jet. Payload - 4 human beings, kept very safe. Allow each human half a ton, including space suit, enough oxygen and water for a couple of days in orbit in case things go wrong. No food - you wont starve in two days - and minimal toilet facilities. Payload two tons. Keep one on standby for rescue duty; can launch unmanned, so can bring back 4 astronauts in a hurry. Don't compromise the design for military reasons, as the shuttle was; the cold war is over and anyway it will only carry people, so secret gismos.

Send the cargo up on disposables - Atlas, Delta, Ariane. We know how to build them, and their 99% reliability is acceptable for cargo whereas it would be totally unacceptable for freight.

The people carrier may be re-usable; it will be relatively light and will carry a lot of expsnsive safety equipment. But let the engineers decide, not the politicians. If disposable is cheaper, for the desired level of safety, go disposable. Probably not all disposable - it might have something like the Saturn's launch escape tower.

Once you have a component, rather than monlithic, system, you can start on other interesting developments like a dedicated Earth Orbit to Lunar Orbit ferry - and so on. You make rational decisions instead of being blinkered by a huge white elephant. The ISS, while (currently) needing the shuttle, also makes it obsolete: it provides a rendezvous point for people and cargo.

Safety and Reusability

[mnmoore]

Agreed, using the same vehicle for crew and cargo clearly compromises safety and capability for both.

I'm a bit perturbed, though, by the idea that we should go back to launching crew in single-use vehicles a-la 1960. Sure, it would probably be safer than the shuttle, but (and I'm getting tired of hearing it) safety should not be NASA's primary goal. If you want safety, stay home already. Safety as an open-ended goal cannot be satisfied; it is both a money sink and a rhetorical ace-up-the-sleeve. Witness the current "safety from terrorism" efforts.

Part of NASA's reason for being is to advance the state of the art for the public benefit; redeploying fourty year old technology won't do that. The purpose of the Mercury and Gemini projects were to make mistakes and learn from them, to eventually culminate in Apollo. The shuttle is the Mercury of reusable ships. Twenty-five years between technology generations is far too long. Let's learn from our mistakes and (with the cargo-carrying requirement dropped as a mistake) build the next generation shuttle already.

Reusable crew vehicles are ultimately preferred, as they have greater inherent capacity for safety than single-use craft. Which flight of an airliner would you rather be on - its 1000th, or its very first?

Launch the cargo on big dumb boosters but develop an elegant, safe way to get people to and from LEO .