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NASA's New Space Wheels
jvarsoke writes "ABCNEWS.com has an article on proposals for NASA's next generation Space Shuttle. But the replacement for the 1970's era wonder look a bit like a step backward baring one exception. Choices are a splash-down capsule, a"half-cone lifting body" (sounds bumpy), and two aircraft landing types . . . and what's that in the upper left corner. Could it be? The Farscape 1 module?"
... there was going to be some kind of space elevator making all other spacecraft redundant?
I could care less, but not without a lobotomy
"Could it be? The Farscape 1 module?"
Dibs on Aeryn and Chiana! (You can keep Zhaan, she wouldn't shut up: "Oh great Spirit, grant me this orgasm blah blah blah..")
Trolling is a art,
At this rate it'll take years before we make a warp drive.
It always amazes me how science fiction drives innovation in real science. This is certainly not the first occurance of this, and to cite a well known example, the automatic door (like the ones at supermarkets) were un-thought of until Star Trek.
... the country is cutting taxes... is running up huge debts... unemployment is rising... the rich are wasting vast amounts of the country's money on useless trinkets, and now the space pioneer that was NASA has fallen behind Europe's ESA/Russian space programs to the point where it is using 1960s rockets compared with ion engines.
As much as I like(d) Farscape, the upper-left design isn't new. It's actually been around a while, as well as a few variants (like the exact same thing with the wings not turned up). Some designs were bigger - presummably to hold far more cargo - and some were smaller - designed only to carry a few more people than currently possible.
With new pressure on NASA, news ideas are cropping up about using the old Saturn Vs or new variants to carry only cargo and then to taxi people into space using some of the designs here. It may be safer, but will it cost less? Taking a New York taxi a single mile is expensive enough! Imagine the fare on this taxi (and their "luggage" going in a separate one).
Just like quantum computing will make the 9 GHz processor irrelevant.
It's going to take longer to do the elevator than it will be to design a new shuttle, at least with the way NASA works.
Given how long it takes to ready a shuttle for flight and that there was certainly not always one standing by ready to go up, this 3 man limit was just as true before the last shuttle disaster as it is now. Why were there more than 3 people in the ISS crew before but there can only be 3 now?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
...what they really want is a monorail. Oh yeah, and more asbestos. Then they'll show that Space King who's boss.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Honestly if you look at how things are going the space race has been re-born. Instead of the USSR now we are up against earope and China and Russia...Oh well they say competition is a good thing.. I agree. Maybe now we can actually look to the future and travel somewhere other than earth orbit for manned flights. If space is the last frontier why arent we following Horace Greeleys advice (go west young man) and why has a profitable private space business/exploration model been found?
I wonder if they'll get any funding. NASA seems to have a plethora of ideas, but all you hear about is their budget being cut. So far ever Nigeria seems to be having a more solid space program.
Anyone remember X-34?
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome."
In 50 years' time, there will be a space elevator. Carbon nanotubes have just been invented. We can only make them a few milimetres long just now. We'll also need a lot of electrical power. I think you'll see a space elevator not long after the first commercial nuclear fusion power plants.
Stick Men
from the Enterprise intro? Isn't that shuttle-jet craft we see in the intro going to be built? I mean, it's in Star Trek history, so it must eventually happen, otherwise Star Trek's just a bunch of science fiction!
This is rather old news (from before last shuttle broke apart) IIRC.
The point is to get into a program that is more cost effective, and safer at the same time.
Current Shuttle program is expensive, the payloads are small, and relatively unsafe.
NASA needs to remember the 1970's...
K.I.S.S.
;-)
i'm still waiting for the moment i can say: "Beam me up Scotty"
NASA would like to have the Orbital Space Plane flying by 2008. John Junkins thinks it's possible.
"If we can go from the drawing board to the Moon in 10 years, we can do this in five years," he said.
I'm glad to see someone getting aggressive on the topic of a time frame. AFAIK, the ISS won't last forever, so as long as we have problems getting people and things up and back from it, it is going to waste.
It seems to me that NASA has been farting around for decades. It's an embarrasment that in 2003 we don't have a multitude of different vehicles available for all sorts of specialized space missions. NASAs mandate ought to be the development and maintenance of a large fleet of spacefaring vehicles. Systems need to be developed so that a launch can happen anytime of any day so that the problem of how and when to get up there becomes a matter of deciding when your cargo is ready.
And if you don't want NASA do it themselves, then this stuff should all be outsourced to the big Aerospace players.
As much as I support the space program, I can't really see the point of this. If the shuttle isn't going to carry payloads into orbit, what good is it? All it's doing here is servicing the space station, which is more like a space boondoggle.
If conventional rockets are going to be boosting satellites and other payloads into orbit, then the shuttle is just an expensive drain on the American taxpayer. I hate to say it, but NASA needs some big budget cuts. We can get by with out the shuttle program, period.
How much of the space shuttle's "heavy lift" capability is wasted on the airframe and landing gear? A lot. Indeed, the SRB's are a giant fudge factor to get the whole mess off the ground.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
I think NASA should have bared all...
Yes I know this is not true. The disprove(?)
But still it is funny. I watched Jay Leno for a while and he just wouldn't quit with jokes about the space station mir and how it was falling apart. Of course zero jokes about the over a dozen people blown up aboard the space shuttles.
Exactly what is the body count on both sides? And how does the body count stack up to the amount of time spend in space?
So once again the americans are looking to go the high tech way. Sure the russians have proven time and time again that the old pod on a rocket works best, hell the russians have got an escape mechanism, their crews aren't doomed to burn up without at least a chance of escape.
A space plane just for piloting people up? Cause the existing soyuz module is not big enough. Okay here is a bloody simple solution. Add more modules!
When was the last time you saw on say a passenger ship just ONE big lifeboat? Multiple small ones are way easier to implement and provide reduncancy.
Oh well no doubt the boys at nasa know better. After all it is not like they haven't learned from past mistakes eh?
The space shuttle was a great idea. It was part of a huge project to go into space and the shuttle would have been the first of a whole fleet of vehicles to allow this to happen. Instead it became the mainstay of american space exploration and it this role it fails. It is like SUV, nice in theory but in its attemps to be all things it fails at being good at anything.
Of course the article points out the reason pretty well. Lack of funding. I guess the americans just made so many jokes about mir that they thought they had the space race won and they no longer had to do anything with it. Pity.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The Orion.
"Stop whining!" - Arnold, as Mr. Kimble
A few weeks ago I was at the 2003 MAPLD (Military and Space Applications of Programmable Logic Devices) conference, and one of the talks was by Roger Launius, chief historian for the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. He talked about the history of NASA, in the context of the Columbia disaster, what he thought lead to the failure, and where NASA could go from here. His outlook was pretty grim, but he made excellent points, which enraged a large portion of those attending the conference, half of whom were NASA employees.
Essentially, he said the Shuttle failed (and he didn't just mean 'crashed', he meant, failed to live up to its hype, to do real scientific work in space, and be cost effective) because it was designed wrong. It was designed to be all things. It was designed to transport people into space. It was designed to transport cargo into space. It was designed to conduct research in space. By trying to do all of these things, it failed to do any of them well. He made a number of other vary salient points about the reasons we should or should not send people into space, and the impact of public opinion and politics.
To keep this OT, I'd have to say, considering the historical perspective I learned from Dr. Launius, I like the capsule approach the best for transporting humans into space. It's cheap, it's effective, and it's less likely to break. I'd like to see NASA design vehicles that are inteded for a specific purpose, and do that purpose well. We have a space station for science that can only be done by humans in space (which there isn't much of...how do you really do microgravity experiments with people on board bumping into stuff, and jarring the place around?), we need a low-cost vehicle for transporting cargo, and a high-safety vehicle for transporting humans.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
You've got it backwards. The Farscape module was based on the (now cancelled) crew return vehicle for the ISS. The vehicle was dubbed the X-38 through its testing-- here's a quick link:
X-38 Stuff
I'm a linux zealot who can't get windows to work properly, yet I feel qualified to spout off about how all the PhD's at NASA don't know as much about rocket science as I do.
I hate getting this kind of thing from network news sites. So I tend to not read them and just look for the link to the horse's mouth. I didn't see a link to the NASA site that might carry this graphic and their own interpretation of it. Does anyone have a link at nasa.gov?
.org registry?!
[Off-topic]
While looking for the above link, I made the terrible mistake of trying nasa.org, which turns out to be a blatantly commercial site with horridly multiplying pop-ups to boot. How did these bums get a
[/Off-topic]
Any technology distinguishable from magic is not sufficiently advanced.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
There must be some kind of commercial incentive to go to space. The moment the private business steps in, there will be many various designs tried, built and flied. The best one will win. /.?
Space needs a race similar to what happened in aviation in 1900-1920s. Everyone got excited, startups were popping up left and right, people WANTED to fly.
Government bureucracy with no incentive to do the thing right is not a way to progress in space. Any congressmen reading
I personally am looking forward to Xprise launches. Maybe then public and business will take notice.
Interesting spin on this -- didn't this already get hashed out in this prior article that the capsule may well be more a "Right tool for the right job" issue?
It basically boiled down to aerodynamic control surfaces allow you to control your landing more precisely, but introduce a *lot* of complexity and weight (increasing your launch cost) as with the present Shuttle. A capsule based approach can be done much more simply but has issues to work out in the landing (ocean landing is probably easy in this day and age -- no need for a Carrier Task Force for every pick up... except when the trajectory is off for some reason and you move a couple of hundred miles... land is also doable).
All that aside -- this isn't the design contest for the USS Discovery. This is for a cheap, stable orbital taxi effectively. If a more "backwards" design gets NASA up and back cheaper, it seems to me that this makes what should be the *next* steps easier (building some type of assembly station in orbit or getting back to the Moon..) and that's where the steps forward should be taken.
If you're launching vertically, the wings give you no extra lift capability. While you're in space, the wings are just dead weight. When you aero-brake in the upper reaches of the atmosphere, the wing edges are where the bulk of the orbital energy gets dumped and has to be dissipated - Columbia's problem obviously was with a wing edge. The only time wings have any advantage is in the final descent stages, where you get much greater maneuverability and a gentler approach and landing - and it looks cool too. But parachutes and retro rockets as used by Soyuz, or just parachutes as used by all the US manned flights before the shuttle, seem to work well enough.
Mass estimates come in at about 3 times higher for a winged vehicle than a capsule; that's from experience with the Shuttle and European, Japanese, and Russian winged vehicle designs. Is the maneuverability advantage and slightly lower G-forces on re-entry sufficient justification for the vastly greater expense?
Energy: time to change the picture.
I hate how the images never link to bigger versions that you can actually make out. So I found this for everyone to look at. I got it here.
It seems like all NASA wants to do is reinvent the wheel, unfortuanatly their wheel is square.
egan.orion@theinquirer.net
because it's a heavily politicized bureaucracy.
the capsule replacement was always intented purely to support a low earth orbit space station. a space station that congress didn't want to build. so the ultimate craft was designed to land like an airplane, and featured some fudged cost-effectiveness numbers so that it would be popular enough to greenlight. the resulting bureaucratic design being the cause of countless safety failures and unnecessary risks.
This BS ruined our capability to do much of anything for 20 years while we floundered until the ISS rekindled public interest in its primary function.
We got to the moon in 10 years because the people (and thereby elected officials) were behind it. NASA either has to fix its bureaucratic problems (impossible), privatize the space industry (desireable), or rekindle public interest in beating the Chinese to permanent moon settlement (short sighted, too expensive).
Look at the smaller cheaper autonomous initiative (good idea) at NASA that was popularized with the Mars Rover, and was subsequently killed in its crib by the follow-up failure of the polar lander (tragic).
The true irony is that NASA is organizationally incapable of doing things fast, or cheap, as the polar lander should have shown. All that money, all those procedures, committees, and double-checks - and still a small problem got by and resulted in the loss of a $100 million dollar craft and the priceless research it could have done.
The best solution is for space to become privatized. Public money is best spent elsewhere, and private industry is more suited to rapid expansion, evolution, and reaching cost effectiveness. Look at what the privatized airline industry did in only -50- years after the Wright brothers first flew. From Kitty Hawk to Chuck Yeager in nearly the same amount of time that we've been to the moon and done nothing.
Why should we continue to let Boeing and the like purely profit from programs like the x34 which get cut before they can produce. Why not share risk/reward more?
Consolidate the agencies with control over spacecraft (to make privatization pluasible), set rules regarding space related patents (to ensure that tech falls to the public domain quickly), and set -international- rules for extraplanetary rights and coordination.
I don't want to have to learn mandarin to vacation on Mars.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
many(many, many) years ago i was reading a national geographics issue that showed several purposed designs of a controled land landing of a Gemini capsule using a cross between a parafoil and a hang glider. i'm sure it was dropped because of materials of the age not being strong enough. seems like one of the X-prise entries is using this approach.
why isn't nasa looking at things like this again.
seems like it's the best of both worlds.
The Space Shuttle is a giant screaming space boondoggle whose main justification is the support of the other giant screaming space boondoggle, the Mostly American Space Station. Now that we've gone up into Earth orbit and found it's not a whole lot of fun, there's no use in continuing to put people up there for the sheer sake of putting them up there. It's doubly not worth putting them up there in reusable vehicles that look cool but end up wasting money compared to expendable vehicles unless one uses flight schedules generated by 1975 NASA engineers which expect Shuttles to launch on a manic schedule more characteristic of cocaine-addled weasels with ADD than giant experimental engineering endeavors.
The NASA manned missions office ought to toss the Space Shuttle, toss the Mostly American Space Station, toss all this Orbital Space Plane crap, get the simple capsule, and then concentrate on developing pre-colonization Martian missions. Earth orbit is for robots, and space planes suck.
H4x0r Economist - k33ping d3m0cr4cy l33t 51Nc3 1987
If you want a wing to glide to the ground and land accurately
then why not just use a ram air parachute (like a sport parachute).
They are very steerable and can provide accurate landings at an airport.
Just put a big one on the returning capsule.
That would be a hell of a lot cheaper.
From the article:
... has done everything asked of it -- carry people and carry huge amounts of cargo."
Professor John Junkins says "The Space Shuttle
I guess they forgot to ask it to not explode on launch or break up on reentry. Next time, they need to give better instructions to the spacecraft.
It amazes me that there hasn't been more work for a system that would launch a new vehicle horizontally from an air breathing mothership. I guess Burt Rutan is the only person the get it right since the X-15. They can have a winged shuttle IMO, just push it up to 80000+ feet with an air breathing jet of some sort first.
There is nothing inherently safe about liberty. That's why so many people died protecting it.
Russians:
one in 196?. New experimental craft (soyuz) had problems with chutes / landing systems
three in 1971. Crew of the world's first space station. Valve of the Soyuz landing module opened while they were still in space.
Americans:
Three in 196?. Fire on Apollo 1, still on the pad
Seven on Challenger in 1986
Seven on Columbia in 2003
just use html.
to make a link, use <a href="url">text</a>
Hence the OTHER major problem with the ISS. The notion that it's "America's Space Station". ISS=International Space Station. If it was America's Space Station then you can be damn sure it would've been finished by now. Since it's the "ISS" we had to wait around for other countries to finish their modules while in the mean time single-handedly propping up the Russian space agency with US tax dollars. The ISS is about politics, not exploration or science.
What a pile of crap. As several others have pointed out, the habitation module was cancelled by the US, because of cut backs in the NASA budget. And, even before the Columbia disaster, the ISS-related shuttle launches were way behind the original schedule.
The other countries involved in the ISS might not have all been on time with their modules, etc but neither has the US. In fact, if you wanted to ask whose fault it is that the entire project is way off plan (time-, money- and size-wise) and you wanted to point one finger at one country then that country would have to the the US of A.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
text
NASA has fallen behind Europe's ESA/Russian space programs to the point where it is using 1960s rockets compared with ion engines
Really? Damn--that's pretty impressive specific impulse on the ion engine in that Ariane 5.
Oh wait, apples, oranges and NASA did it first. AGAIN.
It's bad enough when Americans think they invented everything without Euros bettering them by, um, becoming them.
for current info on the space elevator click here
Life is pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something.
Why not indeed go ahead with a small space taxi to ship people to and from the ISS, and launch the cargo in unmanned launchers? The space taxi, I think, would be launched using a reusable launcher system. Also, expand the ISS and make it last much longer than originally planned. And btw, maybe they can develop a new cargo/crew shuttle anyway, if they get the scramjet to work?
Now they're reinventing the wheel in Spaaaaaace, spaaaaace, spaaaaace!
KFG
Actually, the design in the upper lefthand corner is actually a ripoff of the BOR-4, a Soviet era-launch developed in the 1970s. NASA's Vehicle Analysis Branch thought the design (which maximizes lift) looked promising, and began studying it in the 1980s. NASA engineers now working at Orbital are pushing for its construction as a shuttle alternative.
From a post I did about 3 weeks ago:
/.ers and other have been saying - it is a "capsule" so it is more efficient in space and it is a Single Stage to Orbit vehicle with the safety of completely powered landing and flight in the atmosphere. I would expect that Macdonnell Douglas could have a prototype built and flying again in 6 months and that, with enough engineering and money, a production model could be built in 2 to 3 years.
I don't know why NASA or an areospace company (Macdonnell Douglas, are you listening?) is not considering revitalizing the Delta Clipper. It was a capsule shaped Single Stage to Orbit (SSO), re-useable space vehicle that was actually built and was flying throughout the 1990's until an unfortunate accident destroyed it. Apart from the strut breaking that caused it's destruction (an engineering problem that is likely easily fixed), it performed exceptionally.
Consider the costs of revitalizing this "existing" project compared to re-designing and re-creating a new shuttle from scatch. Which do you think is cheaper? The Delta Clipper allowed for totally controlled flight to and from orbit, a lot safer it seems, than an uncontrolled glider.
This idea seems to have the best of apects of what
Can the other four say that?
Hell, strap on a new areospike engine and NASA might actually enjoy a few years of spacefaring success, like they used to in the 60's.
Just a thought...
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
The first thing I noticed in the page was the top left image with the 4 shutles and the middle image with a Toyota. Disturbing ...
E V_300 x250.gif
This advert changes each time so if you can't obtain it the link to the image is:
http://m2.doubleclick.net/756693/04PR_STARTR
No, a space elevator makes all other surface-to-orbit spacecraft not redundant, but useful only for specialized purposes. Orbit transfer vehicles will of course still be necessary, and landers for planets that don't have space elevators yet.
From what I hear NASA is just going to start using rockets again.
That lifting body shuttle design concept predates Farscape by decades, dating back to the 1950s (see A history of lifting bodies). I even remember a traveling road show of these things in early 1970s. And for those that remember the 6-Million Dollar Man TV series, the crash footage in the title sequences is of a lifting body accident.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
NASA will want to visit the bars on every planet, to make sure there aren't any missions available.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
In A Case For Mars, Robert Zubrin describes the Shuttle Z...a modification of the Shuttle that dispenses with the orbiter, and replaces it with an upper stage that doesn't return to Earth. Result: 120 tons lift capacity, almost as much as the Saturn V, and much more than the shuttle. Or, you can send 40 tons on a direct trajectory to Mars. And it wouldn't cost much to develop, either.
You shoot down the current boondoggles only to propose one of your own, and *colonization* no less.
Actually, NASA is playing in the right area for now (Earth orbit). They just aren't doing it very well.
Think stepping stones. Some solid near-Earth stepping stones could eventually support that Mars mission you want.
If there was more money to be made from going into space, more people would be willing to take greater risks in order to do so. I can't help wondering if there will eventually be a "wagon train to the stars" (to crib from Gene Roddenberry [usrbingeek.com]) where ordinary men and women put their lives on the line in simple, inexpensive rockets in order to reap the rewards of space. What were the odds of an early settler heading across the US in one of those original wagon trains, bound for new lands and most importantly new money? Personally I'd probably strap into a rocket if the odds were 50%, just to get into space; and I know I'd do it if the odds were up around 70% without a second thought.
The only real hope I see for space is the X-Prize [xprize.org], which of course gets heavy coverage here. However I'd like to include a snippet from their factsheet [xprize.org] which has particular relavence here: We can only hope that the space industry sees such a revolution take place. Although the The Dawn of the Space Age [nasa.gov] began October 4, 1957 with the launch of Sputnik I, the sun still hasn't moved that far from the horizon in all those years.
Jonah Hex
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
Yeah , it is , apart of course from the solar array , the escape pod , the living module and the control module. Which are russian.
Oh and theres some japanese science modules too. Oh and training is currently done at Baikonaur (thats not in the good ole US-of-A incidentaly).
Oh and you can only get there on a russian rocket at the moment. Apart from that its a 100% american effort!
Insular prat.
Who wants to bet it'll get billions in funding and then cancelled after 10 years?
Good article on a NASA-funded research project, Laser Propulsion Group is studying what may become a new type of rocket engine. They use powerful lasers firing pulses that last only tenths of nanoseconds -- tenths of billionths of a second -- at a wide range of target materials.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/laser-02a.html
It's missing one vertical stabilier, but it definitely resembles the lifting body Col. Austin was testing before he got cyborged
Here's a thought, let's imagine how much more money there would be for building a new shuttle if we weren't invading other countries...
Choices are a splash-down capsule, a"half-cone lifting body" (sounds bumpy), and two aircraft landing types . . . and what's that in the upper left corner. Could it be? The Farscape 1 module?"
Nope.. its the 6-million dollar man's space craft.
"I drank what?" - Socrates
Oh good lord. Farscape???? Listen. In a week, if you put it all in a jar, how much JIZZ would you have from jacking in front of a mirror? THAT MUCH? Jesus.
Actually, if you think about it, a space elevator only makes sense once you are lifting a HUGE amount of cargo. The "cable" weighs on the order of a billion tons (assuming really good carbon fiber, other assumptions don't change things too much). That means you must lift a BILLION ton object into orbit, and then you get subsequent launches at a steep discount.
How many shuttle launches is a billion tons? A couple hundred thousand, at least...
BTW: Why does everyone keep using the ultimate strength for these cables, anyway? I think a saftey factor of 2 would be required, given the expense of building the thing!
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
note that lifting bodies have been around for a while; that the X-38 was a lifting body craft intended to serve as the ISS lifeboat; that after X-38 cancellation, the OSP project was started; and that the Farscape module looks an awful lot like the X-38. I got a chance to see the X-38 test article at Johnson Space Center in Houston a few years ago (before it was cancelled) and it looked just like Farscape-1.
NASA isn't building a Delta Clipper style SSTO because when they did fund an SSTO prototype they picked the one (X-33) with the most fancy untested technologies (linear aerospike engine, multilobed composite fuel tanks, lifting body VTHL design), and so it ran over budget and over schedule and failed to even produce a flying half scale prototype.
American aerospace companies aren't building a Delta Clipper style SSTO because mergers have left us with only two large firms, space launcher development is too expensive for any new competition to break into, and the existing companies are often working for "cost plus" contracts, a zany system in which your profit is a fixed percentage of your costs and so if you build a cheaper launcher you actually make a little less money instead of much more.
It also doesn't help that SSTO designs have paper thin weight margins, so not everyone agrees that getting one to orbit is possible even with modern materials. Personally, I'd like to see someone build a siamese TSTO (two nearly identical stages, mated horizontally, with one of them pumping fuel into the other during liftoff so the "upper stage" still has full fuel tanks when they separate) to mitigate that risk, and then if the finished product comes out light enough you can launch just one half of it alone to put smaller payloads in orbit or to fly suborbital.
not if the elevator climbs the cable... you only need to pick up the car, the cable remains stationary
That that is is not that that is not. That that is not is not that that is.
Actually, science tends to drive science fiction - it's just that the general population is exposed to science fiction more than science fact, and the fact side of science spends a long time in the "Will it even work?" stage, where science fiction just skips to the "It works and it's really cool" phase before science gets to the "It works, but it sorta blows up on us most of the time" phase.
Sure, Jules Verne had submarines and spacecraft in his books, but there were actual ideas about space travel and submarine travel years ahead of him, and even a few working submarines. Even Star Trek and Star Wars' faster-than-light technologies were based on speculation on the subject (Star Trek's warp drive was based on the idea that you could somehow shorten the distance between two points, and Star Wars' hyperdrive was based on the idea that space has some underlying level in which distances are compressed, allowing you to travel between two points in real space in fairly short times by jumping back and forth between space and hyperspace)
As for lifting body craft, they're a fairly old idea. People have already mentioned that there were one or two X-plane lifting bodies, and Farscape isn't the only science fiction to have them. Star Trek Enterprise has one in their "history of travel" thing during the theme song.
Back in the 70's, there was a movie loosely inspired by the Apollo 13 mission (although definitely not based on it). In it, an Apollo craft was stranded in orbit, and there were several attempts to rescue the crew. One of them involved a four man lifting-body spacecraft that NASA managed to design, test, and build in a week thanks to the Mystical Magic of Cinema. (If I remember correctly, it was a Soviet Soyuz mission that finally succeeded, though). Can anybody remember the name of the movie? AMC or TCM or some old movie channel played it a few times when the Apollo 13 movie came out, but I haven't seen it since.
This story (and that pic) are so old they have Alzheimer's. And the story is blatantly wrong, the OSP is not a shuttle *replacement*.
Mix the failings of Usenet with the shortcomings of the World Wide Web and the result is slashdot.
from everything I have ever heard about the current space shuttle, it was in the end more expensive to operate than some of the previous systems. It did however look cool and did include more gadgets. I wouldn't say it was a step back, but certainly NASA could have done MUCH better. (many aspects of the shuttle were a step back, but not the whole shuttle)
FUNNAY!
For those of you who wondered...
Here are some ideas that have already been turned over and rejected (and might have to be revisited!):
There are variations of the Apollo
Rescue plans/variations
The original Alpha lifeboat
And Alpha lifeboat's replacement
And, of course, the Saturn V variants
Happy surfing!
Mmmmmm... Bold, yet refreshing!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Sorry, you misunderstood me. What I am saying is that the cable needs to be taken into orbit when it is errected. I realize that the cable is motionless after that, but that first launch to build the first cable is required to lift more to orbit (through conventional means) than the combined sum of all launches ever made / will be made for the foreseeable future.
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
is a great idea. Modern shuttles require massive amounts of fuel to get into space because they have to "slow down" for the crew. Humans can only take about 10 G's for prolonged times and still be able to control the shuttle. The shuttle has to stay within that acceleration, spending a huge amount of time in earth's gravity. An unmanned cargo ship can accelerate at 20 G's and even more, spending a fraction of the time fighting gravity. More cargo can be shipped with less fuel, less risk, and cutting costs. The manned shuttle will only have to carry the weight of life support, fragiles, and astronauts.
;)
(Just be sure not to put all your oxygen tanks and scrubbers in the cargo shuttle. The astronauts need some too.)
I'd like to know where the number "a BILLION tons" came from.
Most of the idea about these cables is that they are constructed in orbit and lowered to earth
Why the need for a vertical take-off?
Any Harrier Jump Jet pilot in the Royal Navy will tell you that a heavier load can be lifted with the same amount of fuel if you take off horizintally and with a bit f help from the 'ski-jump' that was added to British Invincible-class aircraft carriers many years ago. A design for a horizontally launching/landing unmanned launcher called HOTOL was proposed to ESA by British Aerospace in the '80s but didn't get off the drawing board. There's another article here that describes the air-breathing ascent and the take-off trolley that would support it on the runway. Sounds a bit like Fireball XL5!
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Seriously. Who gives a crap about what NASA's next "space plane" is. And NO this is not trolling. As I sit here eating my brownie I am forced to ponder the meaning of NASA's existence. (Brownies do that to me) I try and I try to see the good they have done in the last 10 years and I'm not to sure that I see it. These guys spend and spend my money and I have failed to see and dividends. I don't know about the rest of you, but I prefer to invest in something that shows a return. I do not like to throw my money away just because something sounds neat. Lets think about this. NASA will spend several Billion and a replacement for the shuttle which is should have been replaced 10 years ago. Plus we are talking several years to come up with then build a replacement. Now look at the X-price guys. They are spending a fraction of both the time and the money and send a rocket up to "almost space" and doing it again within two weeks. Whats the turn around on the shuttle? 2 months? Granted I would concede that getting into real space takes much more power and therefore would be much harder, but still, it just goes to show that a huge, MASSIVE governmental agency is not able to do things as cheap or as fast and someone who stands to profit. Then again...it may be the brownie talking.
Ah yes - got it... Not enough coffee...
There's no need to assume that the cable would be manufactured on Earth...
If you can get the material you're going to make the cable from out of an asteroid, all you'd need to do is launch whatever would create the cable.
Moving the asteroid into geosynchronous orbit would be cheaper than launching an equilivant mass from Earth.
Then, start the cable on the asteroid and drop it as you go.
The atmosphere might get in the way, but I'm sure someone else can figure out the physics...
That that is is not that that is not. That that is not is not that that is.
farscape.com links to http://www.farscapegame.com - for a new farscape game (Tried to follow it because I don't even know what Farscape is exactly, except that it seems some tv show - guess I outed myself as a non-teevee owning european geek :)
However, the linked site seems quite strange, a typing tutor? Huh?
I like the point you are trying to make however I believe that NASA would feel safer using an upgraded Saturn V rocket for launching Astronauts and using new technology, Such as one shot V1 type Launch systems (see pulse detonation/rocket hybred) and other "innovative technologies" used expressly for Cargo missions. This new generation of unmanned cargo craft will require a number of new technologies being developed by NASA in the area of automated AI navigation.
--"Sorry for the inconvience." Gods Last Words to his Creation
DNA, So Long and Thanks for all the Fish
The capsule is in the plans for two reasons. One it's easier... NASA can make the 2008 deadline. (Even though "fast" deadlines were frowned upon by the Columbia report) Second, a capsule can be used to go to the moon; a "plane" version cannot. Cool and cutting edge in space equals problems and disaster.
Yes, I agree that is probably the sane way to build it. You still have to be moving a lot of mass through space, which I submit means that must already have advanced communities in space. I still beleive that the construction of a Earth to Geo-Sync cable/structure is a long ways off. I would be suprised to see it in our lifetimes. It may never happen, if rockets progress to the point where you are only paying a small multiple of orbital energy.
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
If the mission is to get people and cargo into and out of orbit safely and routinely, I'd opt for the capsule-like approach. Odds are, it will be operational years before a lifting body. NASA has spent billions on lifting bodies, and not one of them bore fruit. Gotta be a reason.
So, go with the capsule. Meanwhile, keep working on building a large (think 747-size) winged vehicle that can take off from a runway, fly to orbit, and land on the same runway.
By the way, this article, lke most on this subject, didn't mention that a capsule can be just as resuable as any other approach.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Assuming that we had been launching three Saturn V rockets every year since 1970, we could have put a space station into orbit that would boggle the mind. Skylab was boosted on a Saturn V, was a perfectly useful piece of hardware, and was allowed to burn up because of politics. Imagine having 80 skylabs linked together floating around up there. And before anyone else says it: a beowulf cluster of skylabs indeed. Seriously though, the Shuttle and the ISS are a disaster. I love having people in space, and I actually believe we should keep sending people there just because its important not to lose our toehold. On the other hand, the way we're going about the space program, and manned space exploration in particular, is insane. We should fire every manager in NASA, hire a bunch of Russian engineers, and bring in a consulting team from Japan to run the thing. Now THAT would be a testament to American diversity (and would probably get something accomplished for once). All this talk about building new technology to do things the Russians can do with spit and bailing wire just boggles the mind. Hell, give the X-Prize guys 100 million dollars a pop and see what they come up with. I promise you one of them will come up with a cheap launch system to safely put people anywhere in LEO you want them. And if the ISS can't stay in orbit without the shuttle... why not just launch a shuttle permanently into orbit and periodically refuel it from Progress cargo delivery rockets? -Mike
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
Antartica may have more to offer than the Artic, an equally inhospitable place. We're not in Antartica because we've signed treaties saying we'll leave it alone. Mount Erebus, a volcano in Antartica, is the only place I know of where you can breathe fumes that contain gold.
I got rather bored with that after 2 weeks. I think that arcade shootem-ups just don't do it for me anymore.
While a shuttle replacement is obviously needed (including a launch to orbit vehicle and a separate orbital meneuver vehicle) I find the DARPA RASCAL initiative much more intriguing in terms of innovative, potentially viable approaches. See: http://www.darpa.mil/tto/programs/rascal.html and the September 22 issue of AW&ST.
-Bob-
Oh, this isn't software and that isn't DoD... nevermind! On second thought, perhaps NASA could clue in the DoD and its contractors on requirements management outside of buzz compliance.
I have witnessed elitism and arrogance that refused to go outside "traditional" boundries even when those ideas were later (even if only months) announced by a startup and the company made millions. (and even when the elitists were incompetent and incapable of recognizing genuine business opportunities due to emotional zeal).
There's a google article that calculates the inflation adjusted budget.
Now, the national budget has grown over the years, and NASAs budget hasn't; but quite frankly if they could get to the moon in 10 years, they've had 30 years and not done anything even vaguely similar since then and with about half the yearly budget.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"What I wanted was the history of Star Trek... cowboys in space basically, where it was rough and chaotic and you had to fight your way through it all. What I got was warmed over Next Gen PC crap with embarrasing and obvious holes in the technological and social framework as if to have the character turn to the screen and say like in the 50's shows, "No, T'Pal I don't believe our current sensors and shields are up to par with what the galaxy has to throw at us. What we need is Ionizer brand Tachyon distribution nodes to allow us to throw in Technobabble at an unprecedented rate."
So, maybe I had head trauma was a child and have this all wrong, but I thought the Humans and Romulans fought this very nasty war that killed billions and drug in all sorts of other species and led to the formation of the Federation and the Neutral Zone. I also thought that Klingons weren't stumbled upon till later and it was not a pleasant first contact, leading up to the skirmish based "warm war" that followed through all the series incarnations. I also thought that Transporters were relatively new as far as being a regular and reliable form of transportation in the original series. Maybe drinking in college formed these memories, but they seem so real!
Maybe, maybe not. I was just wondering how stable the elevator would be against damage. That is, suppose we build one 50 or 100 years from now, but we haven't completely solved terrorism. Anything as big and impressive as a space elevator would be a magnet for terrorists. So, if it can be cut, it has to be able to be repaired, or it's not worth building. So, efficient launch vehicles may have a future even if we do gain "elevator" tech.
With a rocket and a capsule, man got to the moon. With a "state of the art" space plane, man can barely get above the earth's atmosphere.
The shuttle was a horrific, bureaucratic failure that tried to design a vehicle to move payloads and people into space. It sucks at both of those, because technology then (and now) cannot accomplish both tasks economically.
NASA must be plowing 80% of their budget on a vehicle that cannot get anywhere. And now they want to plow that budget into a vehicle that can do the job slightly more competently, but not more reliably or economically.
Space exploration and colonization is not accomplished by getting to LEO. NASA wants to focus most of their budget on a vehicle that will only get to LEO. Am I the only person who sees the incredible stupidity of doing this???
Of course, NASA on the managerial level, is not comprised of people with a dream of space exploration or colonization. Its comprised of bright people who know if they want to keep their jobs, they have to make politicians happy who are bribed by defense contractors to throw make-work engineering projects their way. This is why NASA focuses most of its budget on the shuttle.
The key to a sucessful space program is setting achievable goals that actually result in increased ability to do space research or commercialization. Making a better boondoggle doesn't accomplish that. Set a goal. Put a man on Mars. Put a man on an asteroid. Put a prospecting base on the moon. Don't keep sinking money and effort on failure. Why piss away money on a space shuttle when it can be pissed away on a space elevator that would significantly increase the amount of payload that can be cheaply delivered to GEO? Even if it doesn't save billions of dollars in space launches, AT LEAST you would have a proof of concept.
The only chance of ensuring the US will continue to sink money on space exploration in the future is for all geeks bright enough to understand the shuttle's failure to threaten NASA's existence and force it to focus on useful endeavors.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
It will be cheaper, faster to develop since it needs less parts. It will carry more given the same launch rocket. It will be safer because it is easier to make a capsule with a continuous intact abort feature (i.e. you can evac the crew any step of the flight).
Just think about it. A top mounted capsule can be ejected upwards in case there is a problem with the booster, afterwards it safely lands using a parachute.
If there is a problem with the shuttle booster or other side mounted vehicle, you can probably kiss your ass goodbye.
The wings are a nuisance while taking off. That is the reason why the Shuttle is mounted sideways on the rocket instead of at the top. The original X-20 Dynasoar space plane was planned to be top mounted until someone figured out that having wings on the nose of a rocket isn't a good thing because it makes the whole thing unstable. There is a reason arrows have the feathers on the tail instead of the opposite.
So you carry wings, a reinforced hull to support the structural stresses wings provove, wheels, etc. All just for landing?
A parachute is much simpler, cheaper, and doesn't use all that space and weight! You could also use landing rockets like the DC-X used, or a parafoil (a sort of a cross between a parachute and a wing) with some skids like the X-38, etc.
Why must a space vehicle look like an airplane? An airplane does not look like a train, a train does not look like a boat either.
The main medium is different, the vehicle is supposed to fit to the medium, not the other way around. In space wings are just as useless as wheels on a boat at sea.
For more info on all I talked above, just check out the excellent site Encyclopedia Astronautica.
No one was forced to buy those trinkets. However, I noticed that you used the phrase "...of the country's money..." and was curious what you meant. Are you suggesting that these rich are somehow stealing from others and using it to line their mansions with anything from the used underwear of Elvis to 1200 foot dog houses stocked full of steak for their little barking rats they call dogs? Perhaps they are using tax money for this somehow? If so, then by all means that should be pursued and prosecuted with the upmost vigilence.
This is most unsettling so please let us all know how the US's money is being wasted on useless trinkets. I am sure that all here are thoughtful folk who understand that the best way to limit that theft and spending is to limit the powers that allow it to exist in the first place. Instead of writing laws or consitutions that say, "And congress shall have the power to buy things that are cool and hip with the public" perhaps we should look into something that is better engineered and learns from the successes and mistakes of history. Those lessons teach us that the very power we use to control others is the same power used to control us. Thus the idea of limited government was formed to preserve a healthy country founded upon liberty, not on class hatred that is self mutilating. One only has to go as far back as the 16th amendment and the events/environment leading up to its ratification to see that something borne of hatred and lust burns only us and not the ones we lash out against. Before it was even through both houses, the uber-rich of the time had already created various engines that allowed exemptions and exceptions to their lifestyles that were just not possible to the average, much less poor citizen.
So, from someone who wishes to see his area grow in prosperity and the country's poor to prosper I would ask that you find another vent for your hatred and malice as it will only do the poor harm.
The ONLY problem I have with the rich and their extravagencies is when such spending overtakes their good sense and they allow hypocrisy to control their outward activities and movements. Next thing you know, we are all told it is our duty under the flag to support various special interests with our own hard earned cash. Can't these pampered, priveledged brats use their own money instead? What happened to voluntary contributions? Hint: If spending is justified as being "what the people" want and yet falls within the area of what people can do themselves, then why is that spending necessary? Should Congress pass laws that pay government workers to bath you and feed you? If you have an itch on your leg, should you call the government to send a social worker to scratch it for you?
In the time of the 16th amendment the saying was "soak the rich." I wonder what stupid, self harming catch-phrase will be used these days? "For the Children" seems to no longer be the vogue thing to say, so it will be interesting to see what logic-trumping chant pops up next.
I seek not only to follow in the footsteps of the men of old, I seek the things they sought.
The space program seems to suffer from a lack of long term planning among other things. It would most likely have been much cheaper if after the first few lunar landings, the US focused more on building up a space station rather than in merely giving it lip service (since that gains more sci-fi points). Like a good investment it is expensive and slow at first, but then you begin to see great rewards if you do a good job.
Perhaps by setting up more in orbit, it will make it easier and cheaper in the long run to send up individuals and setup individual experiements and missions. As for things like Steel Foam and its more efficient and effective creation in space, that would likely add to and itself (manufacturing industry) reap grand rewards. Many fantastic innovations await the right environment and interest. Space would allow much of this to happen today, but until people get out of the chicken-and-egg mentality and realize it is investing, then we will get nowhere. All hail the X-Prize!
I'm going to guess that you're talking about Marooned (1969).
Right time period, but I've never seen the movie (and I didn't come up with any other matches).
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
Lets say the unthinkable happened and an SRB started shearing on the Shuttle just as it left the pad; the whole Shuttle / SRB / lox assembly heeling over and heading back to earth from less than 500feet.
There is no abort mode from this situation. - You just hold tight and wait to find out if it really is painless.
At least with a Saturn V which has the potential (as does the shuttle) to do a good impression of a small hydrogen bomb on the pad, you have a chance of survival with the escape tower trying to drag you clear.
I notice that the Russians in the 60s managed to save their unmanned capsules from launch pad destuction using escape towers when their enourmous N1 rockets exploded - The technology works.
I believe that any Astronaut brave enough to strap themselves to a huge potential bomb (any rocket) and 'just hold on' should be given every chance of survival - The general asthetics of the vehicle should be the last priority!
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
Capsules also come with less mass, therefore less inertia for re-entry.
I would have thought that less inertia to keep you tearing along in the upper atmosphere at high speeds and temperatures would be a good thing?
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
A small capsule makes sense and ought to be easy for them to design and drive the flaws and gremlins out of. Manned space travel should be done on the cheap, especially now, if at all.
"So, if it can be cut, it has to be able to be repaired, or it's not worth building."
Perhaps the thing is never done. It just keeps growing downward and crews trim it as it decends. The cable is thickest at the top and thinnest at the bottom, so the outer layers (possibly damaged by small impacts) would be trimmed away as the cable descended. Over time, the cable would be completely replaced.
If some knucklehead in a plane chops off the bottom few kilometers. Well, we clean up the mess on the ground and then wait a few months for the elevator to grow back down and then hook it back up to the terminal. No big deal.
Just an idea. I'm sure my patent on it will have expired by the year 4000 when they build the thing. That is, unless, Disney can do for patents what they've already been done for copyrights!
Iz
I really like the concept of a space elevator it will be possible in a couple of years. The problem is that once this thing is build just think of what will happen if that thing break or if some one decide to ride a plane on it. That thing will fall on earth killing thousands of peoples. Anyway I still hope there is a way to build this safely.
Yahh, hiii haaaaa! -Major Kong, from Dr. Strangelove
Or catapult the materials or components from the Lunar production sites. Including blocks of stone and girders for making the weights.
A plane will only be sliced up by the cable. A fragile plane impacting is nothing compared to the other forces involved. Even if the plane is carrying a cargo of tanks.
Obviously one ZC was before the intrusion by the time warp, which affected ZC.
You build a very very thin cable first, unspooling it from orbit. Anchor it to the planet, and then send up robots to spin another layer of cable (climbers)
http://www.isr.us/SEConcept.asp?m=2
" Climbers (230) are sent up the initial ribbon (one every 3 to 4 days) adding small ribbons alongside the first to increase its strength. After 2.3 years a ribbon capable of supporting 20,000 kg cargo climbers would be complete"
The us had a space probe with an ion engine before the ESA did, it was called deep space one.
Please see:
l
http://yarchive.net/space/exotic/carbon_fiber.htm
for an in depth analysis.
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But how much does that first cable weigh? It's awfully long, and the width at the ends is exponential with the length!
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That discussion is from 1995, though. They are not talking about using carbon nanotubes to make the elevator. Their cable is much thicker than the ones being discussed now.
All it takes is nukes and nerves.
Sea Launch is a joint venture of companies in the US, Ukraine, Russia, and Norway. This has caused some US export control problems, but they seem to be past that. The booster used is the Zenit, the most modern Soviet design. It really is a privately funded operation. The aerospace companies with public funding hate that, but SeaLaunch works.
The elevator will likely be held in tension by its centripetal force. If the center of mass is traveling faster than the required orbital velocity for its altitude then the whole system will be held in tension.
Thusly if a mad man were to cut the base the whole elevator would float away into space.