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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?"
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.
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
Dont think taxi, think 747 vs Freight train. When a freight train crashes, it usually doesnt make the news unless there was something toxic on board or somone gets hurt. Theres a much lower margin of safety on a freight train so cargo can be hauled much more cheaply on a freight train than on a 747. You can also haul alot more freight on a freight train. But freight trains are slow, so people want to go by plane instead of train. In the case of space transportation, anything that humans have to fly on has to be tested more and has to have higher margins of safety than something thats only going to be rated for freight. More testing and more engineering means more expensive. And the bigger and more xcomplex the vehicle the more expensive it gets. So the space shuttle costs hundreds of millions to refurbish. What makes the news: Space shuttle blowing up or unmanned rocket blowing up? Unmanned rockets blow up alot more often than the space shuttle does, but they are cheaper to launch. So if you launch cargo along with humans you essentially have to certify the whole vehicle, including the cargo for human spaceflight (you cant have thse stuff in your cargo bay blowing up either) If you seperate out the two, even if you use expendible boosters, you can launch more cargo for less cost than if you launch both together. You wouldnt try to move a piano with a taxi, but if you want to get crosstown in a hurry you take one.
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.