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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?"
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).
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.
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."
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.
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?"
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