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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?"
Um... automatic doors were marketed by Horton Automatics back in 1960... and were invented in the 1950s. Well before Star Trek.
The original plans for the ISS called for a permanent (or was it maximum - sorry don't have the info handy) crew of 7 once the ISS was finished. However, until the habitation module was built it would be limited to a crew of three (like it is now). NASA/US govt cancelled the habitation module during the budget overruns/cuts problems a year or so ago so the permanent crew is now three.
I'm not sure what the standy safety measures were for a crew of 7 - I seem to remember multiple Soyuz, but I'm really not sure. Hopefully someone else can fill in the blanks.
"Because it's there." - George Mallory, when asked why he wanted to climb Mt Everest, March 18, 1923 (New York Times)
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
Automatic doors were invented by Dee Horton and Lew Hewitt in 1954, and lifting body aerodynamics (like the shape of Farscape-1) were invented by Dr. Alfred J. Eggers Jr. at NASA Dryden in 1957.
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.
Hate to break it to you, but 'get by with out the shuttle' is excatly what this is supposed to do.
Todays shuttle is a halfway house between very different requirements; It was to carry people, it was to carry cargo, it was to be reusable and it was to be cheap. Managing one, two or possible even four of these is possible, but all four at the same time is very, very difficult to do. This new generation spacecraft removes one of the original requirements - as it's not supposed to be a cargocarrier - and thus makes it much easier to make a reuseable personellcarreing spacecraft thats reasonable cheap to operate (cheaper than the shuttle at any rate).
And as long as the US goverment has decided that a permanent base in space is needed - even if I think the ISS is a far cry from what it should have been - then some way of launcing and recovering the astronauts are needed. Yes, there is the russian Soyuz, but while arguable the most successfull spacecraft of all time with more than 230 missions flown, it's also the oldest spacecraft in operation (the design streach back to the late fifties) and it's not reusable. Or you can try to hitch a ride with the chinese, allthought I have doubts they'll let americans ride with them... all those little differences you know. And the ESA are playing with manned spacecraft too, allthought only on the drawingboards right now. So, all in all, grounding the shuttle and not replacing it with a better, more up to date manned spacecraft will leave the US in the mercy of others as far as manned access to space goes.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
NASA's orginal plan was for a fulltime 7 man crew, who could all use one, single escape vechicle called the X-38. I'm not real sure what the status of this vehicle is now though. There were some test flights.
Urban Legend
We know how to make the rocket, the only problem is finding vendors for the vacuum tubes and ferrite cores nad other pieces of late 1950's-1960's technology. By the time we re-did the designs to use modern components, we'd have spent as much as designing a rocket from scratch. I still think a cluster using the Russian engines on the new Atlas in the first stage and SSMEs in a recoverable second and third stage would be able to heft a lot of mass to high orbit.
Of course, we could start with the F-1 plans and build a truly monstrous rocket engine. Problem is it probably wouldn't pay for itself. We rarely need to lift huge masses, unless we're bound for the Moon.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
Actually, I beleive in at least one test flight it got to a couple thousand feet and turned about 85 degrees left then right without an issue. All by remote control too.
My point is, why spend billions on a brand new design, when you can take an already proven design that might need some tweaks and use it. Sure 6 months to go from nothing to the prototype and 2 to 3 years to go from there to the production version might be an exageration, but NASA and the US went a great deal further with spacecraft in the 60's - essentially 0 to the moon in ten years. How hard can it be to go from a working design and prototype to a working production model in this case...even with upgrades?
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha