Slashdot Mirror
The Return of Apollo?
hpulley writes "Bell bottoms are back, the Stones are still touring and Time has a piece on how NASA's _new_ space vehicle may actually be the return of a very old friend, a highly modified and modernized version of the Apollo Space Capsule. Manned spacecraft might actually leave low earth orbit again! Initially they'd fly with Delta and Atlas but more powerful boosters could be developed. We could go to the Moon again, and perhaps to Mars but I'm getting ahead of myself. Does that mean the last 30 years of space flight have been for naught? Expensive steps backward?"
Basically its the TYPE of shuttle, not the level of technologoy
" a highly modified and modernized version of the Apollo Space Capsule"
I sure dont read that as being 50 year old technology. I see it as being a space capsule style shuttle opposed to the current shuttles.
Which would follow along with the seperation of cargo and passengers of previous recent news releases.
[I can picture a world without war, without hate. I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it]
The Russians have had to do space on the cheap for years, and their response was to stick with the Soyuz capsule, which has now been in service for nearly 40 years, and is one of the most reliable launch vehicles available, and certainly far less expensive than the shuttle.
The last fatal Soyuz accident was in 1971. In 1983, a Soyuz rocket exploded on the pad, but the crew was whisked to safety thanks to an escape rocket, which is lacking on the shuttle. Given the choice, I would fly to space on a Soyuz any day over the shuttle.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
I believe they reused gemini and appollo capsules with minimal retrofitting.
Uh, no. Each Gemini and Apollo (and Mercury) mission flew with a different spacecraft. They were somewhat customized to each mission (eg during the Apollo series, weight reductions were incorporated in successive model series to allow more payload, etc.) Various parts were only meant to be used for one flight -- and a good many such parts never returned to Earth. The modules that did are all in museums now.
As it stands the cost to "re-use" a space shuttle is rediculous because of the area of the heat shield.
Actually, aside from minor problems with being hit by ET foam at 500 mph, the Shuttle heat shield is one of the few parts that pretty well works as advertized. The Apollo era heat shields were an ablative material that worked by burning off (slowly!), the Shuttle "TPS" (thermal protection system) is pretty reuasable.
It's just about everything else on the Shuttle that has to be refurbished or disassembled and inspected before the next flight. (As for the so-called reusable solid boosters, that operation has been described as "more crash-and-salvage rather than recover-and-reuse".
-- Alastair
Here is one of my favorite web sites, which this article reminded me of, and which I thought some of you might enjoy: http://www.astronautix.com.
The place is filled with tons of mad info about programs that are, were, and never got out of blueprint stage. I am sure this will satisy those readers for whom the two paltry links in the story are far from satisfying. Lotsa cool pictures and thingies.
Mmmmmm... Bold, yet refreshing!
Note that this was not during a piloted mission, but rather during a ground exercise and is little more than a simple industrial accident that happens every day in workplaces around the world.
Note further that this was not at the full development of the technology, but in it's very early experimental phases.
The issue was solved by not feeding raw oxygen into the capsule (which was never done, nor even contemplated, during an actual mission and which many had advised against even in ground tests) and by the installation of a simple inside door handle.
Door handles are a functional technology of thousands of years standing that have yet to be overthrown by some doofy modern technological fashion.
They are simple, robust, inexpensive and possess an unmatched functionality.
As does a conventional rocket ( whose technology is now more advanced even than Saturn and Apollo technology).
The shuttle is, and always was, a barbaric kludge of various disparte technologies whose sole purpose was to follow a particular fadish notion that we should have a "space plane."
It is not a space plane. It's a van with stub wings attached to the outside of a cob-jobbed booster system of obvious and fatal failings that "glides" back to earth rather than use a parachute just so that we can pretend it is a space plane.
The X-15 was a space plane.
The "Space Shuttle" is an engineering abomination and what you get when you let a governement agency subvert good engineering principles for political purposes.
In short, it is the proverbial White Tiled Elephant that started out with the specs of a mouse.
KFG
From pp 305, Entry, Splashdown and Recovery table
Mission - Distance to landing target point - Distance to recovery ship
(distances in nautical miles)
Apollo 7 - 1.9 mi - 7.0 mi
Apollo 8 - 1.4 mi - 2.6 mi
Apollo 9 - 2.7 mi - 3.0 mi
Apollo 10 - 1.3 mi - 2.9 mi
Apollo 11 - 1.7 mi - 13 mi
Apollo 12 - 2.0 mi - 3.9 mi
Apollo 13 - 1.0 mi - 3.5 mi
Apollo 14 - 0.6 mi - 3.8 mi
Apollo 15 - 1.0 mi - 5.0 mi
Apollo 16 - 3.0 mi - 2.7 mi
Apollo 17 - 1.0 mi - 3.5 mi
Not one Apollo landed more than 3 miles from its landing target point, including Apollo 13 which had such troubles even getting home safely.
Even if you double that miss distance to 6 miles, there are plenty of bays and lakes in the US which you could safely land in (12 mile diameter or more). San Pablo Bay or San Francisco Bay, any of the Great Lakes, 6 miles offshore basically anywhere, etc.
The precision landing question is validly "Do I land on a runway or do I need a 5-10 mile wide open space?". But that's very different than "needing an ocean full of recovery ships". If it's accurate enough that I can land it in San Francisco Bay and recover it with a coast guard boat or tug, and Apollo was, then there's no big deal at all unless there's an emergency urgent deorbit away from the usual landing zone (a problem which Shuttle shares, and if it lands mid-ocean is SOL).
Simply google for "saturn v blueprints" and you'll find any number of sources debunking that "the Saturn V blueprints were destroyed" nonsence.
The difficulty with reviving the Saturn V is not in the absence of the plans... those are safe and sound; but in the fact that the Saturn V was built with 1960's technology, most of the parts aren't made anymore, and many of the companies that made parts of the Saturn V don't even exist anymore. Furthermore, the production facilities that made said parts have long since been either shut down, or retooled. And NASA's own facilities, including the all-important Launch Complex 39, have long since been modified from Saturn V specs, for use with the shuttle.
With all of the modifications to the design that would be necessary to start production on a new run of Saturn V's, on modern production lines, with modern manufactureing techniques, with modern components and electronics; it'd be easier just keep the basic math, but design an entirely new rocket. Certianly, it'd be a damn sight easier than finding vendors to recreate the '60's era parts to build new examples of the original design.
But not a whit of the Saturn V design or data is "gone".
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...