Lockheed Martin unveils Space Shuttle replacement

Vegan Bob writes "Lockheed Martin released its proposal for the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) in a recent Popular Mechanics article. NASA will choose this vehicle scematic or opt for the yet-released Northrop Grumman design in 2008. The CEV will replace the Space Shuttle program, and will eventually go to the moon (between 2015 and 2020)."

Comments

One or two questions related to these articles:

[Skyshadow]

Wait, what?

Why add an orbital rendezvous requirement to all missions? Why use a shape like this which, I presume, requires the use of failure-prone ceramic tiles for reentry protection instead of a tried-and-proven heat sheild when you're planning to use parachutes to land the thing anyhow? What's the advantage to using this thing over just a regular capsule if it's not necessarily reusable?

How does it possibly make sense to use the same vehicle for LEO missions as for moon and Mars missions? What happened to the important ideas behind Mars Direct or Semi-Direct (aka, having a seperate hab module that you can leave for future missions and making your fuel on Mars instead of hauling it with)? Does this signal that NASA is planning for Mars as just a set of "footprints and flagpoles" missions? Why are they planning a fly-by of Mars at all when the most dangerous part of a well-planned mission would be the part in transit rather than the part on the planet?

And perhaps most of all, why is it going to take us fifteen years to get back to the moon when we got there from scratch in less than ten the first time around? Heck, what's our goal in going back to the moon in the first place instead of concentrating on the much-more-promising Mars? Did we miss something the last time around?

In short: Just what, exactly, is going on here?

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[October_30th]

Just what, exactly, is going on here?

Lipservice and political grandstanding? I don't think there will be political will to carry out even a "footprint and flagpoles" Mars mission in the near future.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Anonymous Coward]

requires the use of failure-prone ceramic tiles for reentry protection instead of a tried-and-proven heat sheild when you're planning to use parachutes to land the thing anyhow? What's the advantage to using this thing over just a regular capsule if it's not necessarily reusable?

You seem to be forgetting that the vehicle will be on top of the stack, not bolted to the side.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA

The team scrapped foam insulation in favor of a redundant Thermal Protection System that includes a backed-up carbon-carbon heat shield.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[sTalking_Goat]

Nothing about this impresses me. The design being the biggest disapointment. Maybe its time to take bids from some of the new areospace startups instead of handing it off to old entrenched Boeing. Those dinosaurs look at space and all they see is nails, so of course they'd want to build the same old hammers.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[fbody98]

It seems like the operative word of the day would be 'Budget Constraints'... at least in reference to the time frame under which they're operating. I would suspect that in relative terms the 6.6 billion dollars that they've been allocated over the next several years to accomplish there is substantially less than was spent to reach the moon the first time, hence the extended time frame. I think everyone's gut instinct is that it should be cheaper and easier, but increased complexity and mission objectives means greater potential for failure (anyone ever wonder why the shuttle still used 8086 processors for their main systems and didn't upgrade every cycle?) the increased failure potential can only be aleviated by increased testing, and endlessly self perpetuating cycle that doesn't seem likely to come to any conclusion soon.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[AKAImBatman]

Is it just me, or does that design look a lot like the Big Gemini? I was amazed at how similar the designs looked, and then I saw this line:

The CEV is not designed to glide upon re-entry like the shuttle; rather, it will be equipped with parachutes and airbags to set down on land or water. Interchangeable computer systems will increase adaptability between modules.

I'm thinking it *is* a Big Gemini. In which case...

Way to go Lockheed! Reusing proven technology rocks! (Maybe they actually listened to my comments on reusing the design? ... Nah.)

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Colin Smith]

"In short: Just what, exactly, is going on here?"

NASA have to find some way to spend $16,000,000,000. It's not as if you could find any another way to spend that kind of money on space is it?

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[TheKidWho]

bleh, this is NOT the CEV that is going to the mars. Also, if you didn't notice, the CEV docks to a hab module in the back, so the hab module could in effect be parked nearby the ISS, or somewhere in orbit and reused.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Skyshadow]

The team scrapped foam insulation in favor of a redundant Thermal Protection System that includes a backed-up carbon-carbon heat shield.

I read TFA, trollboy. As far as I can tell, this means that they're using the same sort of tiles that are on the bottom of the current shuttle, except in a double layer.

I admit I could be wrong, but it sure looks like the thing's meant to re-enter on it's belly...

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Joe the Lesser]

No, you see, this time we're going to the moon for real!

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[big-giant-head]

This is just Lockeheed Martin's concept. No one has seen mockups of boeing's yet. I understand thiers is more of an Capsule type configuration, instead of a lifting body.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[macpeep]

The benefit of a lifting body (or winged vehicle) is that you have more cross-track navigation control. Also, the g-loads on people inside the craft are much lower that way, which is good when they are coming back from a two year trip to Mars in zero gravity (or very low gravity while on Mars). Even for a long trip to the moon, it will be very helpful.

Orbital rendezvous is good for a number of things. It allows you to have modularity so you can assembler larger crafts, add special modules later on that you haven't even thought of now (as more advanced technology becomes available 10 years down the road), use it to dock with the International Space Station, use it to dock with possible rescue crafts, etc.

This is a vehicle for carrying people. It's not the full set of technologies needed to get to and land on Mars.

And it's taking 15 years because there's no Soviet Union that's making everyone piss in their pants in fear.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[TheKidWho]

Wow, did you even RTFA!? The design is the lockheed design. Boeing is going for a capsule based design.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[ReverendLoki]

Why use a shape like this which, I presume, requires the use of failure-prone ceramic tiles for reentry protection instead of a tried-and-proven heat sheild when you're planning to use parachutes to land the thing anyhow?

According to the linked Wiki article: "Its airplane-shaped design makes it far easier to navigate during high-speed returns to Earth than the capsule-shaped vehicles of the past, according to Lockheed Martin."

Whether this makes sense or not, I don't know, but there's the answer to one of your questions.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[sTalking_Goat]

I meant Lockheed but typed Boeing.

Either way Boeing seems to be going back to the Apollo with their design. Unless there's some impressive shit going on inside, I'm not impressed with their's either.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Boeing-CEV-Conc ept.jpg

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[JhohannaVH]

RTFA man.... and all you other commenters. Not only does it use a thermal shield instead of tiles, there IS a backup Carbon-Carbon shield.

Also, this is not the final design, this is the one that Lockheed submitted for consideration in the competition. Final one to be chosen in 2008 with manned flights by 2014.

I think that it's 'taking us so long to go go the moon' because the moon is most assuredly dead. It seems that the focus of everything is looking for life, which is great. Either that, or long-term bases on Luna, which is also great. If it's the latter, well, damn skippy it should take more than 15 years!!!! We've never tried to exist on another solar body, let alone one without supportive water or atmosphere.

So, in answer to your question, this design is a stop gap measure to longer-term and better technically advanced systems to further our goal of living, flourishing and colonizing space and other bodies.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Malc]

"what's our goal in going back to the moon in the first place instead of concentrating on the much-more-promising Mars"

Other than even more welfare under a different name and more big government sponsorship of high tech R&D, what is "much-more-promising" about going to Mars? What does it give us other than a hideously expensive pissing competition?

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[stlhawkeye]

And perhaps most of all, why is it going to take us fifteen years to get back to the moon when we got there from scratch in less than ten the first time around? Heck, what's our goal in going back to the moon in the first place instead of concentrating on the much-more-promising Mars? Did we miss something the last time around?

We didn't go to the moon for science and exploration, we went there to give the Reds a big fat middle finger.

Further, NASA was a part of the United States Air Force at the time, not a separate entity with its own (very limited ) budget.

Third, the Apollo project cost over $25 billion. In modern dollars, that's aover $100 billion. And believe or not, government spending was more efficient back then. Environmental impact studies weren't necessary, the cost of doing business was lower, the bidding process was simpler and cheaper. NASA's entire budget for this year is under $17 billion.

You can't just reproduce the Saturn V and fly it. The Saturn V was too big for the launch facilities and it had to be assembled with its own tower and hauled out to the launch site.

The Apollo program was also cut short. We'd made our point: America can reach the moon, and the Soviets can't. Neener neener neener. The last three moon missions were cancelled due to budget cuts.

So why will it takes 15 years to get back there? Because none of our current technology is appropriate for the task, the old technology is not only unavailable (there's no more Saturn V's left that could fly) but updating it to modern standards and safety requirements (not to mention refocusing the moon landing to a science mission more than thumbing our nose at the Eastern Bloc) would probably cost as much or more than just starting from scratch.

What's going on: I have no idea, but I honestly don't think they'll even hit the moon in 15 years unless some thing major changes about how NASA or the government does business.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[StarKruzr]

Right, because Apollo didn't work at all.

We didn't use it to get to the moon, and certainly didn't use it to rendezvous with Skylab or the Russians. It didn't prove itself to be a fabulously versatile spacecraft at all; nope, not one iota.

Has it occurred to anyone that maybe there was NOTHING WRONG with the capsule design in the first place, and that the only reason the Shuttle has wings is so that the Air Force could have warm fuzzies about it?

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Profane MuthaFucka]

No. Carbon-carbon is not ceramic. And backed-up doesn't mean that it's a double layer.

Carbon-carbon is the material that forms the leading edge of the wings, which failed from impact damage on Columbia. By backed-up I presume they mean that the material will be structurally supported underneath, probably by a continuous backing layer. The leading edge of the space shuttle wings were not structurally supported underneath. The interior of the carbon-carbon pieces on the shuttle wings is hollow.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[AKAImBatman]

Orbital rendezvous is good for a number of things. It allows you to have modularity so you can assembler larger crafts, add special modules later on that you haven't even thought of now (as more advanced technology becomes available 10 years down the road), use it to dock with the International Space Station, use it to dock with possible rescue crafts, etc.

I think the big point of it will be to either:

a) Dock with new engines for the trip from LEO to the moon

b) Dock with a specialized moon courier to transfer the passengers.

Isn't it intersting, one of the primary goals of the Gemini program was to develop space docking technology? Then they design a much larger version just before the end of the program. Now we're getting a craft 50 years later that looks like the Big Gemini design but with a new body. Coincidence?

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[big-giant-head]

I think this is more a return to sanity, than a great evolution in space craft. After all the basic tech hasn't changed all that much.

The shuttle was too big and expensive and had to be basically rebuilt after every mission.

What nasa needs is a reliable, relativly cheap modular space craft(s) that can be bolted to gether for different missions. Orbit, Moon Mars .... really all the CEV is a way for folks to get to and from orbit. the lunar and Mars space craft will undoubtly be assembled in orbit from modules, and carry along a CEV docked on the side to the astronauts can return to earth after it's over.

So it probably will be nothing impressive, the big thing will be reliablility and operational costs ( or less of them).

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Something else I forgot. The carbon-carbon they are proposing won't be made from tiles. They can construct it as a single piece heat shield. The original shuttle designs also called for a seamless thermal protection system, but they went to a tiled design when it became apparent that they couldn't fabricate it in larger pieces. The nightmare of maintaining so many fragile and unique tiles on the shuttle wasn't their first choice. Materials and fabrication methods have advanced a lot in 30 years, so I'm sure that they will avoid unique and fragile ceramic tiles at all cost.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[mapmaker]

why is it going to take us fifteen years to get back to the moon when we got there from scratch in less than ten the first time around?

Inflation?

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Ironically, in the nations of the former Soviet Union, they also use the excuse that development is slower now because there's no Soviet Union that's making everyone piss their pants in fear.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[sTalking_Goat]

You're absolutely right. Apollo worked, but so does the turboprop engine. Horses work too.Even coal burning locomotives. So why aren't they still in wide use?

Because someone found something that works better. Its called progress. Better, faster, cheaper.

I've no problem with sticking with what works, but do we just to stop looking when we think we've found it?

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[aklix]

Maybe it's a psychological thing. After all, would you rather be fired out of a cannon or fly on an airplane? The wings make it look likes it's supposed to fly.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[dslbrian]

Has it occurred to anyone that maybe there was NOTHING WRONG with the capsule design in the first place, and that the only reason the Shuttle has wings is so that the Air Force could have warm fuzzies about it?

Mabye people like shuttles because they don't leave a trail of trash from here to the moon. Or mabye because less material resources are expended in recycling something that you know already works. Or perhaps because they don't smash into the ground like a meteor if the parachutes fail.

The various shuttles have flown a LOT more than the Saturn V ever has, so I would venture to say there is nothing wrong with a shuttle design. Perhaps one should try focusing on the real problem with NASA, which is the bureaucracy.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Khyber]

"Also, the g-loads on people inside the craft are much lower that way, which is good when they are coming back from a two year trip to Mars in zero gravity (or very low gravity while on Mars)"

Mars is only a miniscule amount smaller than Earth, maybe by at the maximum (according to calculations done from a 7 year old astronomy book) 7% smaller. Gravity would not be that much of an issue. Now, while they are there on Mars, true, they'll become accustomed to that lower gravity if they stay there longer than a couple of weeks. But, even that tiny amount of gravitational difference would be nearly equivalent to your gravitational pull on the earth, when you're standing on Mt. Everest. There shouldn't be any problem at all with the minor differences in G-force changes, upon leaving earth, or re-entering earth.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[nizo]

Actually I think they see huge piles of $$$ too, which isn't a good basis for new designs.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Anonymous Coward]

You said: The benefit of a lifting body (or winged vehicle) is that you have more cross-track navigation control.

I say: Why do you need in atmosphere cross range?

The vehicle starts of in space and has the ablity to change its velocity through it's reaction control system if you want to land in a specific spot then wait untill the right moment to fire the de-orbit thrusters. There is no need for atmopheric cross range if you make your changes in orbit before firing the de-orbit thrusters.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[dabigpaybackski]

Mars gravity is 38% of Earth's, not an insignificant difference. Explorers visiting the place for the first time will find walking around a bit disorienting, at first, but probably a lot of fun as well.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Infinityis]

Or if there's a follow-up to the X-prize...

The Y-Prize: For the first manned commercial moon landing.

That should be followed up by the Z-prize, which either colonizes the moon continuously for a minimum period of time, or the first manned commercial Mars landing.

Then we move into the Greek letters...

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[homer_ca]

This doesn't sound innovative or cost effective. The shuttle's black nosecone is already a giant carbon-carbon piece, and it's horribly expensive to produce. The closest thing we have to mass produced carbon-carbon parts are brake rotors for aircraft and race cars. On the low end they run about $2500 each.

How hard is it to make a replaceable ablative heat shield anyway?

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Rico_Suave]

With that attitude, why should anyone ever leave their own home?

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[pe1rxq]

Wow, you have one shitty excuse for an astronomy book.... Does it mention the canals?

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Short Circuit]

Everything is failure-prone.

I suspect you're focusing on tiles because of the Columbia incident, which didn't have as much to do with tiles as it did with the insulation they applied to the fuel tanks.

In short, I call "Karma Whore."

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[NaruVonWilkins]

I just have one question for you: You say that the Apollo project cost over $100 billion in today's dollars - but for how many missions?

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[fredrik70]

um, what's so much beter with the shuttle? How ineffective do you think it is to bring all that heavy metal and tiles that build up those wings up into LEO jsut to and then down again, such a waste of energy. A capsule is all we need for space, wings are of no use and risk becoming a hazard when reentering, a lifting body might be cool though

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[flyingsquid]

Lipservice and political grandstanding? I don't think there will be political will to carry out even a "footprint and flagpoles" Mars mission in the near future.

Or the funding. We're in a deep hole with Iraq, and it's just going to get deeper. This year spending will hit 200 billion, and there's no telling where it wil stop. People who study insurgencies say it takes 5-10 years to defeat one. Even if we manage significant decreases in troop strength in the next couple of years, it will still take billions of dollars of aid to the Iraqi government to secure and rebuild that country.

Initial predictions that Iraqi oil revenues could pay for the cost of rebuilding seem to have been too optimistic. At the same time, the income of the government has been reduced by tax cuts, so we've got a massive debt to pay off. I seriously doubt the American people will be willing to pay for a Mars mission: it would demand either large tax increases or significant cuts in government programs, neither of which are popular.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Sebby]

"And perhaps most of all, why is it going to take us fifteen years to get back to the moon when we got there from scratch in less than ten the first time around? "

Well, one consideration is cost. The Apollo program basically cost something like 10% of the yearly national bugdet for 10 years.

That kind of money doesn't come that easily now.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[krogoth]

In short: Just what, exactly, is going on here?

You: ignorant, posting random theories you came up with while high on slashdot.

Them: lots of experience, actually doing this.

That's what's going on here.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[rben]

We'll never get there with Bush's plan. Be patient and I'll explain why I think so.

The current administration is spending money at a rate that should make everyone in the country want to start burying cash in jam jars. The price of oil is rising and will continue to rise. Our current leadership, in both parties, forgets that oil will eventually run out and that unless we find alternative ways to fuel our vehicles, we'll pay the price in rampant inflation. Our SUV culture is already using more gasoline than can be refined. The rising cost of oil is causing inflation, which is logical since transportation is a significant cost for almost any business. The Fed is raising interest rates to try to slow inflation, but that won't work, because this isn't some emotional reaction, it's tied to an actual fundemental force in the economy, rising fuel prices. The rising interest rates are having an effect though, they are putting the brakes on what little economic recovery we were having.

If we keep doing stupid things like this, we're going to wind up in very bad shape and we'll drag the whole world's economy down with us. At that point, very few people will understand why it's so important to continue a manned space program. There will be tremendous pressure on Congress to rein in spending on everything but domestic spending.

What we should be doing is working hard to find economical energy replacements. We should also be aggressively funding space exploration, devleoping the technologies that private companies could use to exploit space. There are resources available in space that could make a difference to every person on this planet. A single large iron-nickel asteroid has enough iron to replace the iron production of the whole planet for five years.

The Moon has large amounts of Helium-three, an isotope of Helium that may be key to producing fusion power. That isotope is extraordinarily rare on Earth. China is already planning to set up a base on the Moon to mine the isotope. A sensible idea since they have little in the way of oil and coal will contribute to the green house warming problems we already face.

Using the resources from the Moon and Near Earth Asteroids, NEAs, we could easily build our capability to explore the rest of the solar system. It seems likely that there is water on the Moon near the north pole. Once we got a base set up on the north rim of Peary Crater and started mining Helium-three, I doubt we'd need to put any more money into the effort. I expect it would be funding itself and paying a hefty return.

We need to stop listening to sweet sounding platitudes from our elected officials and demanding that if they propose lofty goals that they then govern in a manner that will make it possible for us to reach them. That isn't happening now.

My primary hope for our chances of exploiting space no longer rests in our government at all. It rests in the hands of individual like Burt Rutan, Ms. Ansari, and Sir Richard Branson, business people and dreamers who, like me, grew up dreaming that we'd already be in space by now.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Lockjaw]

Looking at the mass of wings (and possibly landing gear) and comparing that to adding the equivalent mass in fuel to a capsule design, the cross-range and lower-g advantages of wings aren't so apparent. The Lockheed people undoubtedly did a trade and found that for their mission assumptions the lifting body gave the best results, but change the assumptions (e.g., use higher ISP engines/fuel in RCS), and a straight capsule may be better.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Darth Yoshi]

That should be followed up by the Z-prize, which either colonizes the moon continuously for a minimum period of time, or the first manned commercial Mars landing.

Jerry Pournelle is way ahead of you.

"I can solve the space access problem with a few sentences.

"Be it enacted by the Congress of the United States:

"The Treasurer of the United States is directed to pay to the first American owned company (if corporate at least 60% of the shares must be held by American citizens) the following sums for the following accomplishments. No monies shall be paid until the goals specified are accomplished and certified by suitable experts from the National Science Foundation or the National Academy of Science:

"1. The sum of $2 billion to be paid for construction of 3 operational spacecraft which have achieved low earth orbit, returned to earth, and flown to orbit again three times in a period of three weeks.

"2. The sum of $5 billion to be paid for construction and maintenance of a space station which has been continuously in orbit with at least 5 Americans aboard for a period of not less than three years and one day. The crew need not be the same persons for the entire time, but at no time shall the station be unoccupied.

"3. The sum of $12 billion to be paid for construction and maintenance of a Lunar base in which no fewer than 31 Americans have continuously resided for a period of not less than four years and one day.

"4. The sum of $10 billion to be paid for construction and maintenance of a solar power satellite system which delivers at least 800 megaWatts of electric power to a receiving station or stations in the United States for a period of at least two years and one day.

"5. The payments made shall be exempt from all US taxes.

"That would do it. Not one cent to be paid until the goals are accomplished. Not a bit of risk, and if it can't be done for those sums, well, no harm done to the treasury.

"Henry Vanderbilt points out that having a prize, say $1 billion, for the second firm to achieve point (1) above will get more into the competition, and produce better results. I agree.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Anonymous Coward]

Not as easy as you might think. Also you have to consider that a carbon-carbon piece is reusable and an ablative heat shield is single-use. Single-use also means more turn-around costs because you have to change it out every time, and you therefore have to design the vehicle to make it easy/easier to change.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[The Big Ugly]

I realize that Slashdot, with its many space afficianados, is the last place I should ask this question...but the more important question: Why are we still wasting money on the space program?

especially going to the moon again. it is a worthless rock. I believe tax payers should not have to finance MORE fruitless moon trips. We beat the commies to the moon, what else do we have to prove? Except that NASA is a drain on taxpayers...

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Profane MuthaFucka]

I agree, it does sound very expensive to me. They could be counting on this vehicle being reusable, and the heat shield being very durable, or they could be proposing a design that is cheaper to produce (exactly what do they mean by a backed-up carbon-carbon head shield), or they could be blowing smoke out their ass. I would not be surprised if it's the last one. Putting wings on the thing is more sexy than Boeing's capsule proposal, and a vague description of a high-tech heat shield promises magical solutions to NASA's current headache with the shuttle's tile system. A manager might have decided to win the contract by promising more than can be delivered.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you think the Shuttle left when it blew up? I would think lots of trash. Not to mention all those lost screwdrivers and wrenchs in space. Flecks of US of A and NASA paint, bubblegum wrappers and cigerette butts out the window.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[OwnedByTwoCats]

Unmanned Test flights

Apollo 7; test of command module
Apollo 8; lunar orbit
Apollo 9: earth-orbit test of Lunar Module and docking
Apollo 10: Full Dress Rehearsal
Apollo 11: First Lunar Landing
Apollo 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17

Apollo-Soyuz, and three Skylab flights.
That's 15.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Khyber]

Nope. This is one of the older Harcourt-Brace science books. We all know those people are religious fanatics, and shouldn't be given credit for anything. BUT, since they're widely used in our Memphis school system (And I think anyone who's lived in Memphis knows how crappy our schools are,) and it was the only book I had (Cuz I never returned it, and never paid the fee for it) I just used it for a reference. Now that I've been corrected (At the size being 38% less than Earth's, which I will admit, unashamedly) I can understand how gravity would be affected. Though, one tiny question, if one of the Mars Rovers got stuck in an environment with approximately 40% less gravity than earth, would not a simple bit of force in the reverse direction not at least move it? I mean, we have to think about equal and opposite reactions here, especially in a different gravity pull.

And no, after ten minutes of looking thru the entire astronomy section of the book, Canals are not mentioned. Maybe this is why the US population (Republicans, Democrats, and morons alike) are getting dumber and dumber each year? Education thru misinformation?

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Flendon]

Maybe its time to take bids from some of the new areospace startups instead of handing it off to old entrenched Boeing.

From TFA: Another announced team is t/Space, a consortium including such groups as Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites, Elon Musk's SpaceX, and Red Whittaker[1] (http://www.redteamracing.org/) of the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute. Some news reports in mid-March 2005, stemming from an interview with New Scientist have reported that t/Space intends to withdraw from the competition, citing a high paperwork burden; however, no announcement of a withdrawal has yet been made by t/Space.

However, as of May 3, it seems that only Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman did submit a bid.

Looks like the startups tried but said, screw it your bureaucracy sucks. We will just do it ourselves again.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[das7282]

The ceramic tiles aren't failure prone by them selves. They are only failure prone when something hits them. But then again, I guess you could say the windshield on your car is failure prone too.

A heat shield isn't "tried and true", it's the "brute force" method of getting through re-entry. You make a shield thick enough that it doesn't burn completely through before the spacecraft slows down enough. A heat shield is a very heavy and expensive way to protect a spacecraft. If they made a heat shield large enough to use on something like a space shuttle it would be so heavy it wouldn't get off the ground. And it would be very expensive because they would have to make a new one every time they wanted to launch because a heat shield can only be used once.

Ceramic tiles are defiantly the way to go. They just need to stop things from hitting them.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[OwnedByTwoCats]

When we go back to the moon, I'd like to see an emphasis on two things: self-sufficiency, and energy production.

I'd like to at least hear talk that the goal was a self-sufficient lunar habitat. Could grow its own food, recycle its own oxygen. Do Biosphere 2 with real science instead of publicity stunts. How much plant life do you need to support one human? What can you do to cut down the 14.5 days of darkness?

And Scientific American had an interesting article a while back; the theme was a solar-powered automated factory that could build a solar-powered automated factory. Set one of those up (with instructions to stop building after a finite time). Then reap all the solar energy...

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[torpor]

ummm ... yeah.

plummeting to earth in the soyuz is a terrifying experience. imagine the worst roller-coaster ride you ever took, with the chance of definite death.

this thing is designed to at least space-flight comfortable, that it may be done relatively frequently, and thus promote the experience to not just a few brave enough, or with balls of steal enough, to strap one on and go from zero-g to .. well, you get the point.

space isn't like you see it on the telly. all that training is for good reason, you know ..

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[josecanuc]

But I thought that in the Soviet Union, it's the piss in the pants that slows the space development?

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Anonymous Coward]

People who study insurgencies say it takes 5-10 years to defeat one.

This is why I find reality more informative than listening to the people who study it...

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[WillAffleckUW]

The current administration is spending money at a rate that should make everyone in the country want to start burying cash in jam jars. The price of oil is rising and will continue to rise. Our current leadership, in both parties, forgets that oil will eventually run out and that unless we find alternative ways to fuel our vehicles, we'll pay the price in rampant inflation. Our SUV culture is already using more gasoline than can be refined. The rising cost of oil is causing inflation, which is logical since transportation is a significant cost for almost any business. The Fed is raising interest rates to try to slow inflation, but that won't work, because this isn't some emotional reaction, it's tied to an actual fundemental force in the economy, rising fuel prices. The rising interest rates are having an effect though, they are putting the brakes on what little economic recovery we were having.

Heck, that's why half my retirement is going into Euro stock funds. At least they don't overpay their CEOs ....

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. You have to remember that a mission to Mars is a much bigger undertaking than a lunar mission. Even considering advances in technology since the 1960s, you're still looking at a multi-decade effort just to get the first human there. And in order to succeed at all, such a mission needs significant financial, and therefore political support for a couple of decades.

It was one thing to race to the moon in the 60s when the US was all caught up in beating the Soviet Union. It's quite another to sustain a much bigger mission when there is no real political impetus to do it, and power will likely change parties several times between now and 2030. Much as I want mankind to ascend to the next level in space exploration, I just don't see much happening in the relatively near future of our lifetimes. Most people are much more concerned with what's happening on our own planet (and perhaps rightfully so?), making the prospect of properly funding this mission difficult if not impossible.

What we really need to reignite the space program is another Soviet Union to compete with. All this new terrorist crap may well threaten us more than the USSR ever did, but we'll never compete with them to get to Mars!

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[zymano]

What rocket is used to lift the CRV ?

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[cmowire]

Helium-3 and, most probably, fusion power in general, is a red herring. It makes for a good excuse to get up to the moon to do things that ought to be done, but it's not our answer.

We don't need fusion any time soon to solve our energy problem.

The problem with fusion is that plasma dynamics are not as easy as we thought they were going to be in the seventies. We have yet to break even. And even the types of fusion that are supposed to be low-temperature and not produce neutrons still produce a lot of neutron radiation. It'll just get worse if we scale it up to power-generation levels.

We can solve our power problem right now, with fission power. The problem isn't that we don't know how to do a proper fuel cycle with reprocessing, stimulated rapid decay with a neutron bombarder, breeder reactors, etc. The problem is, people have been spending money that could be spent on progressivel better and more efficent reactors and an economy based on this... on generally stupid stuff that hasn't shown to be any better of an idea than old fision power.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[sheddd]

The cost per kilogram of payload on the shuttle is much higher than conventional rockets; we could be doing a lot more for a lot less $.

Take the humans out of the program and then you don't need to worry about all sorts've other heavy things like air, food, safety equipment.

We could put thousands of robots on the moon for colleges to play with and mine raw materials, maybe create a habitable base for a lot less money than the shuttle program.

NASA used to be a good agency... now they're an embarrasment.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[91degrees]

The ceramic tiles are more failure prone than a heat shield if something hits them. Heat shields can withstand this sort of thing, especially being hit by a fairly light piece of foam.

To be honest, I think they try to get too much of the shuttle back down again. A disposable mission module would remove the need for a lot of infrastructure that exists purely to get an empty cargo hold back down.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[iocat]

And it's taking 15 years because there's no Soviet Union that's making everyone piss in their pants in fear.

We gotta get bin Laden a space program. The most irritating thing about the war on terror is there are no cool proxy fights like we had with the Soviets -- Image how fun it would be to have our boys grimly staring down Al Qaeda at the Olympics, or a science conference, etc.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[johnny cashed]

And 2 left over Saturn V rockets. One is on display in Huntsville, AL and one in Houston (I think). They are both laying on their sides, the one in Alabama is exposed to the environment. They were both FLIGHT hardware, not mockups, at least up to the service module, I know the one in Huntsville has a mockup Apollo capsule.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Anonymous Coward]

A question and a couple comments come to mind...
Should we really be exploiting space? Shouldn't we be using it productively? Minor Difference, but we've done a lot of harm exploiting stuff here on the planet.
Also, most dreamers are in it for the money and or the glory of doing it, not some far reaching goal.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it just me, or does that design look a lot like the Big Gemini?

I have to wonder: Wikipedia notes that this is done under the Constellation Project. There is a tradition of naming Naval vessel classes after the first of that class to be built. If the first of these were to be named Constellation, could they be considered a Constellation class space vehicle?

-- Random ST Geek.
(Note that since the first US shuttle was named Enterprise, this would make the less than stellar shuttles be designated Enterprise class launch vehicles.)

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[LionMage]

Now that I've been corrected (At the size being 38% less than Earth's, which I will admit, unashamedly) I can understand how gravity would be affected.

Not to pick nits, but you still got it wrong. It's not that Mars' gravity is 38% less than Earth's. It's that Mars' gravity is 38% of Earth's gravity. In other words, Mars' surface gravity is 62% lower than that of Earth.

Just to be clear: if you weigh 100 pounds on Earth, you'd weigh 37.7 pounds on Mars. (There's a spiffy calculator on a JPL/NASA web site.)

Furthermore, it's not the size of a planet that accounts for its gravity; it's the mass. Mars is less dense than Earth and it is physically smaller; the combination explains the significantly lower mass. (OK, gravitational force does diminish as the inverse of the square of the distance between your center of mass and the planet's, so the diameter of the planet does factor into the gravitational equation. Still, the dominant term here is mass when you're talking about a person or other object sitting on the planet's surface.)

And no, after ten minutes of looking thru the entire astronomy section of the book, Canals are not mentioned. Maybe this is why the US population (Republicans, Democrats, and morons alike) are getting dumber and dumber each year? Education thru misinformation?

Um, he was being facetious. There are no canals on Mars. The idea that Mars had canals originated with an Italian astronomer who used an optical telescope to view Mars, and spoke of "canali" (channels) which he sketched in his notebooks. This word was mistranslated as "canals," which implies an artificial origin.

So basically, the person to whom you are responding was making a jest about the quality of your textbook. Presumably, a textbook mentioning canals on Mars is either antiquated or badly written, since the existence of canals on Mars has been disproven.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we should make heat tiles out of the extra apostrophes people put in "its". Those apostrophes sure seem to resist common sense pretty well, why not 6000 degree heat?

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[spuzzzzzzz]

I seriously doubt the American people will be willing to pay for a Mars mission: it would demand either large tax increases or significant cuts in government programs

Pfft, why not just borrow some more money? We don't have to pay it back for 20 years, so none of the voters will care. Just give them all an extra $100 in their tax return and they'll be happy...

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[stealth.c]

If we're going to spend our space exploration energy looking for life, we'd better get something built on the Moon first. The Moon is a far more efficient launch site than the big hulking gravity machine we call the Earth.

I wish NASA would just build some kind of infrastructure (lunar construction facilities? colonies? space elevators?) that would help competitive PRIVATE INDUSTRY get into space to do all that exploring. Then not only will we not need to pay taxes for a government program for it, but progress will happen more quickly.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[flyingsquid]

This is why I find reality more informative than listening to the people who study it...

What the experts are talking about is reality- history. Historically, insurgencies have been long, bloody, and dirty. The US has been involved in them before, for instance El Salvador and the Philippines. Each of those conflicts lasted a decade. The U.S. at some point will probably hand off the war to Iraqis, but the conflict could easily continue on for another decade, and that's gonna take money, and since the U.S. basically went in on its own, guess who's going to be paying for most of that?

On another note, WTF is up with moderating these days- it just seems like a system for ranking how much you agree with a given statement. It just blows my mind how little people have thought out really basic issues of space travel, like how we're going to pay for it. I like reading science fiction and all, but at the end of the day I still have to do mundane stuff like pay the bills and balance my accounts... and so does NASA and so does Congress. Some people really need to take off the Spock ears.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[solios]

Conversely, Soyuz has flown a LOT more than the various shuttles have.

Yeah, it can't haul ass to lunar orbit, but until NASA finally sucks it up and launches Discovery, it's our only way to get a man off this rock. And it's been doing a pretty stellar job of it.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[NaruVonWilkins]

With that in mind, would it really cost that much to get back to the moon? I mean, say we did three missions.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[cosmo7]

Houston doesn't have a very good rocket garden - a Little Joe and a few others. KSC in Florida has a Saturn V beautifully displayed suspended from the ceiling. Huntsville has probably the best rocket garden I've seen (I like rocket gardens) including a real Saturn V on it's side and a dummy standing up.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[georgewilliamherbert]

The various shuttles have flown a LOT more than the Saturn V ever has, so I would venture to say there is nothing wrong with a shuttle design.

I do not know of any aerospace engineer who believes that the Shuttle is not a greatly flawed design.

I also don't know of any engineer who thinks that the Apollo CSM was greatly flawed, though we had a couple of accidents with it (Apollo 1 pad fire, Apollo 13 flight).

There's nothing inherent about reusable vehicles that makes them all bad designs. Shuttle, however, is not a good reusable design. In retrospect, it was not good enough.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[AKAImBatman]

If the first of these were to be named Constellation, could they be considered a Constellation class space vehicle?

In that case the first four ships should be named:

USS Constellation
USS Gettysburg
USS Hathaway
USS Magellan
USS Stargazer
USS Valkyrie
USS Victory

When Picard finally loses his... erm... Crew Exploration Vehicle to the Ferengi, we can give him the new Galaxy class Mars Exploration Vehicle!

Or not.

Here's an interesting factoid: The Space Shuttle Enterprise was slated to be called "Constitution". Which would have made the Space Shuttles "Constitution-class". Just like the USS Enterprise NCC-1701!

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[StarKruzr]

No, the problem is political. People hear the word "nuclear" or "fission" and have wild, asinine, completely out-of-proportion NIMBY reactions.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Anonymous Coward]

...given how much infrastructure you'd need on the moon to do anything useful and it's lack of decent fuel sources (from what I heard) there is no real point in putting things on it. We don't gain anything from a lunar launch base since everything would have to be built on Earth anyway, due to everything from ease of testing, availability of reliable construction machinery, pre-existing private industry, etc.
Also, the only private industry that can survive in space right now is tourism and even that is questionable on anything but a small scale.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Moofie]

"The Moon is a far more efficient launch site than the big hulking gravity machine we call the Earth."

Whatcha gonna use for fuel to launch from the Moon?

Oh, you're going to launch fuel from Earth, land it on the moon, launch from the moon, and go somewhere else.

Wow. That's really efficient.

If you can't do full-up systems integration on Earth (which is the best possible place to do it), the best place to do it is on orbit, not on the moon.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Moofie]

"Mabye people like shuttles because they don't leave a trail of trash from here to the moon"

What are you talking about?

"Or mabye because less material resources are expended in recycling something that you know already works."

Recycling? More like re-manufacturing. Every part of Shuttle gets touched before it's ready to fly again. Might as well build a new one.

"Or perhaps because they don't smash into the ground like a meteor if the parachutes fail."

No, they smash into the upper atmosphere like a meteor if the heat shield systems get hit by foam.

"The various shuttles have flown a LOT more than the Saturn V ever has,so I would venture to say there is nothing wrong with a shuttle design"

Killed more astronauts too, so I don't think it's as cut-and-dried as you make it sound.

"Perhaps one should try focusing on the real problem with NASA, which is the bureaucracy"

Fair enough. Do you think they should make you director?

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Moofie]

If the Shuttle were better, faster, and cheaper, nobody would have a problem with it.

It's currently deadlier, slower, and more expensive.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[khallow]

Why add an orbital rendezvous requirement to all missions? Why use a shape like this which, I presume, requires the use of failure-prone ceramic tiles for reentry protection instead of a tried-and-proven heat sheild when you're planning to use parachutes to land the thing anyhow? What's the advantage to using this thing over just a regular capsule if it's not necessarily reusable?

Apparently, they're using some sort of carbon composite material and avoiding the tiles. Maybe the idea is either that they can control to a limited extent where the vehicle goes when landing, or to provide a sexy profile.

How does it possibly make sense to use the same vehicle for LEO missions as for moon and Mars missions? What happened to the important ideas behind Mars Direct or Semi-Direct (aka, having a seperate hab module that you can leave for future missions and making your fuel on Mars instead of hauling it with)? Does this signal that NASA is planning for Mars as just a set of "footprints and flagpoles" missions? Why are they planning a fly-by of Mars at all when the most dangerous part of a well-planned mission would be the part in transit rather than the part on the planet?

Well, it makes more sense that building two or three types of special purpose vehicles. One of the bigger problems with the Space Shuttle was that they only made five of them. Using the same vehicle for multiple tasks means that you can make a bunch of them and expect them to get used.

As for the various Mars missions you refer to, I'm bothered by your risk assessment of a landing on Mars. We understand the interplanetary environment pretty well. Landing on Mars - with the intention of lifting off at a future time - doesn't sound less risky compared to a flyby. But I supposed we can preinstall a working launch vehicle (along with those supplies and fuel factory) ahead of time. So maybe you're right.

But I'm unclear on why colonizing Mars should be considered more worthwhile than the Moon. The Moon is a mere lightsecond away from the most valuable real estate in the Solar System. It also has decent commercial exploitation potential now. Ie, we can run sample return missions, space tourism, launch material from Moon to Earth orbit, etc. This is in addition to the Moon's scientific value. On the other hand, Mars would for an extended time be dependent on government funding. That has proven to be disastrous in the past with respect to the Saturn program, the Space Shuttle, the ISS, and many a prototype.

I don't see what will substain political will for any sort of extended mission to Mars or the Moon unless we find real economic incentives for private citizens and industry to be in those locations. Ie, if Mars is just a place we send a small number of government employees, then it will eventually be cut. It's flags and footprints unless there's a real economy there. That's the lesson we need to understand from the various failures of NASA's manned space program.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Moofie]

What's NASA's budget? $17 billion/year? That's peanuts.

How much tax revenue does the US get from businesses that wouldn't exist without comm satellites?

Historically, exploration has been the number one long-term economic driver. It's not very expensive, and the potential (and hard to anticipate) benefits are big.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Nerull]

Givin that this is LM's design, probobly the Atlas V.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Anonymous Coward]

With that attitude, why should anyone ever leave their own home?

You miss the point, which is "why should the government pay me to leave my own home?" I'm a firm advocate of space travel, but it's time for the private sector to step up and take command. Governments do a horrible job of it, and they have more important things they should be doing with their money.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[khallow]

Has it occurred to anyone that maybe there was NOTHING WRONG with the capsule design in the first place, and that the only reason the Shuttle has wings is so that the Air Force could have warm fuzzies about it?

The Air Force stopped having warm fuzzies about the Shuttle back in the 80's when NASA benched the entire fleet for a year and a half after the Challenger blew up. NASA could have soldiered on with its design without Air Force support. And from what I heard, the wings were there before the Air Force got involved.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[sconeu]

Are you counting the launch of the Skylab habitat itself? That was an unmanned (modified) Saturn V.

As a side note, Apollo 7, and the three Skylab crew flights were Saturn 1Bs. I don't remember if Apollo/Soyuz was a V or a 1B.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Rei]

If you read TFA, you have a wild imagination to see some of the things in there that you claimed were in there. But to answer your questions specifically:

Why add an orbital rendezvous requirement to all missions?

We don't use the Shuttle for all missions, and the Russians don't use Soyuz for all missions. If we don't need humans or a rendezvou, we use Delta and Atlas rockets. You build to the mission, and this is built to the mission.

Why use a shape like this which, I presume, requires the use of failure-prone ceramic tiles for reentry protection

It says no such thing. In fact, from a reentry standpoint, this craft looks like what the shuttle was *supposed* to be, but wasn't because of budget constraints. It uses a titanium frame - this allows it to run hot on reentry, which means that heat dissipation issues aren't as serious, and damage isn't as threatening. A side advantage is you'll get a far better payload ratio.

With a titanium frame, you generally only need to protect your leading edges, and they're using RCC, which is the best material out there in the present-day for such extremes (and isn't tiles). It's expensive, but it's a one-time production run, barring damage.

Titanium frames also fatigue a *lot* less. In short, you get a safer, much lower maintainence, and longer lifespan craft. The only downside is higher initial cost.

instead of a tried-and-proven heat sheild

RCC is a tried and true heat shield. If you mean "ablatives", don't delude yourself into thinking that they're cheap, either - this will be far cheaper than ablatives when amortized over a few flights. Ablatives are costly and tricky to apply properly (just like other spray-on things, such as foam insulation) - and are very difficult to use around moving parts.

when you're planning to use parachutes to land the thing anyhow?

Parachutes don't slow you from orbital velocity. You might have noticed, if you had read, that it has wings. Do you know why? It's not to meet Buck Rogers Stylistic Guidelines(tm) - wings let you skim the atmosphere longer on reentry, burning off your heat slower. Then, on this craft, a drogue chute will fire, followed by the main chute. It's the best of both worlds - the wings can be smaller and optimized for hypersonic flight only, while they still give you a gentler reentry profile.

it's not necessarily reusable?

What cave are you living in that you didn't learn that the CEV was to be a reusable vehicle? The *launch vehicle* isn't expendible - it will probably be a modified Atlas or Delta, which are very good launch systems. Sure, I'd love to see a fully reusable booster that doesn't cost a fortune (which, by all means, should be possible), but one thing at a time.

Overall, this is a great looking craft, and it will benefit greatly from all of the research that went on from the Shuttle program (and there was a *lot* - cost-reduction and safety-enhancing research was a good portion of the Shuttle's budget). My only real question is that its hypersonic drag profile looks a bit odd. Namely, there's no visible pinch as the wings widen (drag at hypersonic velocities is largely proportional to the maximum cross sectional area, so you typically pinch the fuselage as the wings eat up more cross section). I guess I'd also like to know why they chose ethanol biprop propulsion over, say, kerosene or LOX/propane. Still, great basic design principles on this craft.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Nerull]

Erm, the foam on the shuttle is to keep ice from forming on the ET. (if you watch many cryogenic rockets during liftoff, you can see large chunks of ice falling off the rocket, and those that aren't white (like Soyuz) have a visible layer of ice on them) It has nothing to do with the heat shield, aside from falling off and hitting it (ice would be more dangerous though, i'd imagine). Of course, the CEV will be sitting on top of the launcher, well out of the way of any falling ice or foam.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Rei]

It's not just a psychological thing: wings let you slow your atmospheric reentry, making burning off your orbital energy much easier. This craft is designed to gain that benefit, without having to go all the way and produce a craft that can manage a winged landing.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[khallow]

A heat shield isn't "tried and true", it's the "brute force" method of getting through re-entry. You make a shield thick enough that it doesn't burn completely through before the spacecraft slows down enough. A heat shield is a very heavy and expensive way to protect a spacecraft. If they made a heat shield large enough to use on something like a space shuttle it would be so heavy it wouldn't get off the ground. And it would be very expensive because they would have to make a new one every time they wanted to launch because a heat shield can only be used once.

IMHO, brute force is beautiful. And that heavy heat shield weighs less than that elegant pair of wings. Finally, I think a heat shield is one of those things that can be made on an Earth orbit asteroid or the Moon. It'll be a while before people will rely on winged vehicles made in orbit. Assuming launch costs don't lower so much that they render a lot of this discussion irrelevant.

Ceramic tiles are defiantly the way to go. They just need to stop things from hitting them.

The current generation of heat tiles are too fragile IMHO. Lockheed Martin's design supposedly doesn't use them in the design of its lifting body vehicle.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Rei]

"Again"? You mean there was a first time?

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Rei]

At the very least, "Big G" wasn't a lifting body. I would assume it wasn't a titanium design, nor had RCC, either. These may sound like minor issues, but they majorly affect performance and maintenance.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Rei]

It's not about crossrange. Slower reentry means more time for heat dissipation. You'll notice that the craft only has stubby wings - these are optmized for hypersonic flight, not normal atmospheric flight. It isn't to land, but to parachute down. In short, the wings simply make the thermal protection system simpler.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[pjt48108]

So why will it takes 15 years to get back there? Because none of our current technology is appropriate for the task...

While I agree with the rest of your post, I don't agree that current US technology is inappropriate to the task. Current infrastructure, yes, but not technology.

If anything, I think technology might be leveraged to make better use of current infrastructure until something better comes along. I am surprised NASA doesn't just hang it up and buy into the Klipr concept of the Russians--mentioned elsewhere here--after all, the Klipr is already in production and bound for eventual and actual launch.

If anything, current infrastructure is the hurdle to be overcome, not current technology. I think we have a hell of a lot to say for our technology, still. We're just bound to insufficient infrastructure (and, I'd argue, insufficient will on the part of policy-makers here in the US).

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[J05H]

>Take the humans out of the program and then you don't need to worry about all sorts've other heavy things like air, food, safety equipment.

answer: Robots STILL can't breed.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Khyber]

Understood, but I have a couple of questions....

My grandfather told me that canals don't have to be man-made, nature has made canals before, the only thing you had to worry about was the weather being reliable for making travel possible. Now, my grandfather was in the Marine Corps, but he's been having problems recently with memory and bodily functions (being 70+ years old tends to do that, so I won't take that completely at face value,) but he's mentioned that natural canals are created by the tides, and that old sailors used the tides to figure out when it was safe to enter a channel, harbor, or loch for entry and docking/unloading/resupplying/etc. Makes sense to me, if you check out most oceanic delta areas for how sediment builds up, etc, to create barriers for ships. How could these "canals/rivers/creeks/whatever" be formed on Mars, given that wind erosion is almost surface-oriented whereas water erosion is almost universal on any planet that has any trace of water there?

My next question, given that, as far as we can tell by soil analysis and spectrometer analysis, that Mars is mostly a big ball of iron oxide, and not much else from what I've seen asides from other elements (like carbon, hydrogen, etc., and a few molecules like methane, hexane, etc.,) how could a mass like that, primarily composed of very heavy elements (oxygen is on Mars, but in very, very tiny quantities) have a (supposedly by my old book, which I will be burning, since I learned more about the influences of the textbook authors) mass/gravity less than Earth, when even given (This is just thru my own thoughts on mass/gravity/physics) that most of the elements/total composition of Mars, if true to current scientific fact/analysis, can have a lighter gravity than Earth, when most of it's composition is metals, both on, below, and far underneath the surface of the planet? It would seem, if Mars is truly just a big ball of rust that has semi-solidified in space (plus the addition of the ice caps, etc) how would something with such a high concentration of metallic/ferrous/non-ferrous materials, which has a higher mass/atomic weight/density than most of the materials/elements we have found on Earth,) how is Mars having less gravity than Earth?

I do not want to sound like I am arguing, but I would like at least some extra info/formulas/proof. I like to learn and the more I learn, the better informed I am, and the better prepared I am to deal with real life.

To some point, /. is a learning tool for me, so I to some point (even though I realize it's a news-reposting site, not a true news-brought-to-you-first site) somewhat rely upon this site for insight and information. Could you please give me some extra info and enlightenment on this whole thing, please? I'm not beyond learning new things, at all!

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[sTalking_Goat]

Well I don't ever remember arguing that the Space Shuttle was any of those things. As for deadlier? Well lets see...

I count 16 Apollo missions with 3 deaths.

and 113 Space Shuttle missions with 14 deaths.

so tell me. Which is deadlier?

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Rei]

Then Jerry Pournelle is an idiot.

Orbital Sciences Corp would get 2 billion dollars just for strapping a heat shield to one of their Pegasus rockets instead of a payload - congrats we just wasted 1/3 of a CEV's development cost to accomplish nothing. Or did you not already know that private companies, using private funds, have already launched orbital rockets? It's not a very profitable business - that's why there aren't too many companies doing it.

Number 3 would never be done without subsidy. The costs are way off. I can do a breakdown if you'd like on what construction and supply costs would be during that period.

Number 4 makes no sense - why offer a prize for a *specific* clean power technology? The numbers are also way off on this one. Here, do the math: 1,367 W/m^2 (optimal), 35% conversion efficiency (very good), 5% beaming efficiency (far better than currently available). 800MW = 334 million square meters. Assuming 0.1 kg per square meter (light for high efficiency cells), that's 34 million kilograms (ignoring support eq., such as heliostats, orbit correction, transmission, etc). At a launch price of 7,000$/kg (cheap), that's 233 billion dollars.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Moofie]

You could slice it that way, I concede. I wasn't counting the deaths in the on-the-ground pre-mission test, but I see where you're coming from.

However, Shuttle is not a good space launch system. The "Better Faster Cheaper" mantra didn't actually accomplish any of those goals, and Shuttle certainly didn't.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[AKAImBatman]

Oh, no doubt. The Lockheed design is far more advanced than the Big Gemini. But from the looks of this design, I'd say it captures many of the features that would have made the Big G an attractive proposition. Tack on a bit more modern technology (e.g. lifting body, non-ablative heat shielding, RCC, etc.) and you've got yourself a winner.

At least, that is, I *hope* they haven't screwed up the design. For example, the Big G used a Parawing for mid-air descent and landing control. The Parawing gave the Big G all the advantages of the Shuttle's landing capabilities without the massive wingspan and dangerous landing velocity. The article merely describes the Lockheed system as "a parachute". Given their flight profile, however, I have a hard time believing that they wouldn't use a parawing.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Anonymous Coward]

Hauling a useless reentry vehicle to Mars and back when you could just leave it around Earth and save a massive amount of fuel is insane. Good post otherwise :p

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[bani]

why the fuss about non-ablative heat shielding? ablative heat shielding is tried and true and very reliable, plus it's cheap.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[AKAImBatman]

Slower reentry means more time for heat dissipation.

It also means heavy heat loads for longer periods of time. Faster decent may cause the craft to heat up quicker, but it also causes it to bleed off that heat quicker. IIRC, the Space Shuttle was originally designed with a steeper reentry vector in mind, but was changed when the Military demanded strong crossrange abilities. (One orbit up and down, taking pictures or dropping bombs along the way.)

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[AKAImBatman]

why the fuss about non-ablative heat shielding?

Reusability. With non-ablative shielding, you don't have to refurbish the craft after every flight thus leading to lower costs and faster turnarounds. It also is safer since it can theoretically withstand some error in the reentry vector.

The Shuttle was supposed to have non-ablative shielding, but cost cuts resulted in the current hybrid solution of using non-ablative tiles. These tiles have become a major source of ongoing costs and slow turnaround times.

ablative heat shielding is tried and true and very reliable, plus it's cheap.

There's definitely merit to this line of thinking. But since we have non-ablative shielding today, why not use it? It *has* been tested on several of the shuttle's surfaces, so it's a proven technology.

I think you'll start seeing ablative shielding again if we ever start making drops of mined material from space. A simple container with an ablative shield could make for a *very* inexpensive reentry vehicle. It would drop like a rock, but who cares as long as we don't lose the cargo? :-)

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Rei]

It also means heavy heat loads for a longer period of time

That's a good thing, as long as they're lighter loads. Non-ablative reentry systems radiate heat away; lower heat levels for longer periods are, consequently, exactly what they want.

Steep reentry angles are okay for ablative-shielded craft, because they rely on an eroding surface to heat up and then carry the heat away as it erodes. But when you're radiating your heat, you don't want to get it too quickly.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Anonymous Coward]

"[...] Every part of Shuttle gets touched before it's ready to fly again. Might as well build a new one."

Every part of a Shuttle is checked before it's ready to fly again. Parts are only replaced as necessary.

"Killed more astronauts too"

Carried more astronauts, too.

Let's see...Apollo 1, Apollo 7-17, Three Skylab missions, and Apollo/Soyuz. That's 16 missions. Three people per mission equals 48 people. 6% (ie 3) of those people died.

Shuttles--More than twice as many missions (107 vs. 48). Crew counts as low as 2 and as high as 7. 14 dead. For the same ratio, that would be 224 people. I'm pretty sure the shuttle, in it's almost-25 year history, has taken well over 224 people into orbit.

But let's try to get a vague idea how many, since I'm too lazy to go through all the missions and count up all the people. Let's say the "average" missions carried four people--I'm pretty sure if I added it up, it would be more but I'll low-ball it. Over 107 missions, that's 428 people. 14 dead is 3%--about half of Apollo.

Here's another entertaining statistic: Apollo lost three astronauts in it's lifetime--1967 to 1975. That's 2.67 astronauts per year. The Shuttle has lost 14 astronauts in a 24 year lifetime. That's 1.71 astronauts per year.

I think the Shuttle is still safer.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[StarKruzr]

I did exaggerate a bit, but that was a BIG part of the reason the STS has wings. Other reasons include greater return path flexibility and a way to take the fatigue of "hard-core" re-entry (like in a Soyuz) off the astronauts, but these concerns can be addressed in other ways.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[tokabola]

Making significant changes to the inclination of your orbital plane requires a lot of fuel, often more than de-orbiting. The less fuel a vehicle has to haul up the gravity well, the better. It's just not convenient to have to wait a half dozen (or more) orbits until you're lined up with the re-entry path.

Cross range capability means a vehicle has many more options when trying to come down safely and efficiently. You can even swerve some to get around a storm, even a capsule design travels hundreds of miles through the atmosphere on it's way down. It takes a while to slow down from about 16000 miles per hour.

Tommy

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[bani]

this isnt a reusable craft though. so refurbishing would seem a moot point.

ablative heat shielding is used on all current space probes because it's ultra reliable. it's also able to withstand temperatures that non-ablative simply can't. this would seem to imply ablative shielding has greater margins than non-ablative.

the main advantage i am aware of for non-ablative is its light weight, but the tradeoff is technical complexity, in some cases extreme as well as extreme cost (as in the shuttle tiles).

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Kiryat Malachi]

"1. The sum of $2 billion to be paid for construction of 3 operational spacecraft which have achieved low earth orbit, returned to earth, and flown to orbit again three times in a period of three weeks.

Wake me up when a Pegasus comes back to earth and goes back up once, much less twice. In three weeks. And hey, if they can do it in such a fashion that people can survive the up and down, then we *have* a CEV already, and wouldn't it be nice to know that?

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[hplasm]

Crap.

Let's see...Apollo 1, Apollo 7-17, Three Skylab missions, and Apollo/Soyuz. That's 16 missions. Three people per mission equals 48 people. 6% (ie 3) of those people died.

Apollo1 never left the ground, and never intended to. It wasn't even an Apollo mission- the name was awarded as a mark of respect to the crew. So the 100% flight return record stands.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[AKAImBatman]

this isnt a reusable craft though

Yes it is. Where did you get the idea that it was one shot? The CEV will fly on an expendable booster, but the craft itself needs to have a quick and inexpensive turnaround time. If NASA was going to throw this thing away, they sure as heck wouldn't make it out of Titanium!

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[AKAImBatman]

That's a good thing, as long as they're lighter loads.

It depends upon the reentry technology you use. In this case though, it should be a good thing. :-)

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[WalksOnDirt]

It's hard to answer your questions because most of your suppositions are wrong. For instance, the crust of Mars is mostly silicates, just like Earth's.

You need to either go to a local library and check out a book on elementary planetary science or, if you have decent web access, look at some basic astronomy sites. A quick search with Google yields, for example http://spaceinfo.jaxa.jp/note/tansa/e/tan105_mars_ e.html.

A good place to start is wikipedia. For Mars, that would be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_(planet).

Those may or may not be the best sites for you, but look around, there is a lot of information available.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[demachina]

Dude you are going to drag all the mass of a CEV all the way to Mars and back just so they can use it to reenter the Earth's atmosphere. I dont suppose it occured to you, with all this modularity and docking stuff that if thats all you are using it for you could dock a CEV with the Mars return craft when it gets back to earth orbit and save the mass on the round trip to Mars for something useful on mars?

Anyone using these CEV tin cans for anything beyond getting to LEO or maybe as a command module replacement for going to the Moon is crazy.

In other news, Lockheed and Boeing announced their plans to form a partnership for expendable launch vehicles. With the end of Titan and with this consortium owning Delta and Atlas this signals an end to competition for expendable launch vehicles for NASA and the DOD. They pitch it as elimination of duplication of effort, pooling all the talent on one team, and necessary economicly in a starved expendible launch market in the U.S. especially one facing major competition from Russia and ESA in the commerical sector. It also conveniently deprives the DOD and NASA of competitive bidding for this class of launchers so this new consortium can probably charge as much as they can get away with for a launch, since they will be defacto sole source. Commercial satellites can of course still shop around with the Russians, ESA, China etc but that isn't usually an option for the DOD in partciular.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[flyingsquid]

How much tax revenue does the US get from businesses that wouldn't exist without comm satellites? Historically, exploration has been the number one long-term economic driver. It's not very expensive, and the potential (and hard to anticipate) benefits are big.

The question is how your dollars and engineers can produce the best return. The Shuttle has cost over 100 billion during its lifetime. Would we have gotten more back by spending 100 billion on 100 small unmanned probes during that time? Or doubling the budget of the National Science Foundation (which funds biology, geology, medicine, paleontology, computer science, you name it) for the past 20 years? You can't say these aren't real choices- these choices are already being made: while the NASA budget has been increased for 2005, the National Science Foundation's budget has been cut. Or perhaps 100 billion on development for the world's poorest nations? No one can deny that manned space exploration has its benefits, but no one can deny that it has its costs either. The question is whether the costs are worth the benefits, or whether we can better spend those assets- both in space and on Earth.

The communications satellite example is silly. Arthur C. Clarke outlined the concept in 1945, and the basic rocket technology was already in place by then. It's not as if we wouldn't have communications satellites without the moon shots and the shuttle: Telstar was orbiting just a few months after John Glenn.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Flendon]

Most people I wouldn't even bother responding to such a statement. I respect your posts enough so I will though. You must crawl before you can walk and walk before you can run. I know they didn't make it to orbit, but they have achieved what no private corporation has. They have proven the first step possible and have a platform to be scaled up. They may still fail for full orbit, but they have earned the benefit of the doubt.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[georgewilliamherbert]

I say: Why do you need in atmosphere cross range? The vehicle starts of in space and has the ablity to change its velocity through it's reaction control system if you want to land in a specific spot then wait untill the right moment to fire the de-orbit thrusters. There is no need for atmopheric cross range if you make your changes in orbit before firing the de-orbit thrusters.

You need some lift in the reentry vehicle or else it's a pure ballistic reentry; lift is used to stay higher up for longer. If you can't stay high up, you slow down excessively fast (10+ Gs) and that tends to make the crew unhappy (or dead).

Once you have some lift, you have some crossrange that comes with that. It's coupled together.

You can get lift in capsules. The hypersonic lift to drag ratio of an Apollo capsule was about 0.25, just from flying the reentry tilted a bit. Wings get you better L/D ratios (up to better than 1.0).

Crossrange is also used to land away from the ground track of the orbit. Which is necessary given how narrow the ground track is on usual orbits.

You can get crossrange by changing your orbital plane a bit a quarter orbit before reentry, using rockets. That's not the usual way, but if you work out the numbers, it takes about as much weight as wings do to get you extreme crossrange.

Fuel is cheaper than wings...

In summary: Crossrange good, wings not necessary.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Anonymous Coward]

The Apollo program basically cost something like 10% of the yearly national bugdet for 10 years

Actually, it *peaked* at 4% (in 1965), and was typically rather less. Also, the budget has grown quite a bit in the past 40 years.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[das7282]

1. You have to remember on thing about that "foam" that his Columbia's wing...

a. It was saturated with ice from condensation. That made it a lot heavier and denser.

b. It hit the wing at several hundred miles per hour. Anything traveling at several hundred miles per hour has enough force to do damage to just about anything it hits. To prove my point, not only did that piece of foam damage the ceramic tiles when it hit but it also punched a hole right through the aluminum skin underneath too!

2. The whole purpose of the shuttle was to make space flight cheaper. If you can keep the operating and launch costs down, a reusable spacecraft can be a lot cheaper than a disposable one. Think about how expensive it would be if the airlines had to replace their 747's after every flight!

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Anonymous Coward]

government spending was more efficient back then.

Hmmh? Not sure about that: I think they managed to spend 100% of the money they got back then; which is surprisingly exactly the same percentage as it is now. Thay have never failed to use any of money they have collected.

In fact, come to think of it, govt spending is even MORE efficient now: not only is US govt using all of its revenues, but it's also pissing away plenty of loaned money!

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Anonymous Coward]

even more intreresting is that we are finially getting to a loe rendeveous 50 years after Von Braun argued and lost the LEO versus moon rendevous

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[AKAImBatman]

50 years ago, the US government wanted a man on the moon by the most expedient method possible. As a result, the efficient solution (LEO -> Moon transfer) was ignored, and the effort was put into using a superbooster for the task. The result was a rocket the size of a skyscrapper that returned a vehicle about the size of a compact car. Efficient? No. Effective? Yes.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[raptor_87]

Regarding 2: The shuttle is only partially reusable. The external tank is thrown away with each launch, and the orbiter is virtually rebuilt between missions.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Anonymous Coward]

You use statistics the way a drunk uses a lamp post...

For support rather then illumination.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[raptor_87]

In one word: Research

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Rei]

That's the point of my article, though: They *don't* have a platform that can be scaled up. Most of the work in rocketry is in the engines and tanks, and their engine-tank combination is completely unscalable. So is their materials work. Any "orbital" development will be essentially starting from scratch.

And they only achieved "what no private corporation has" if you exclude the fact that it is private corporations that build essentially all of NASA's craft. And even if you look at use of private money only, they did a small unscalable fraction of what SeaLaunch, SpaceX, and Orbital Sciences have done with private money; the only improvement they made was to stick a cockpit on top of it, which is nothing to any private plane builder.

In short, while I admire what they've done, it really has very little to do with real spaceflight. It is most impressive for being a privately developed supersonic craft produced by such a small company - a real testament to the power of modern computational flow dynamics software. The fact that it went up into a vaccuum really means nothing - "up" is the easy part, and scaling of rockets is geometric, based on the ISP of your engine.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[drwho]

The current administration is spending money at a rate that should make everyone in the country want to start burying cash in jam jars.

Actually, yu'd want to do just the opposite: we're entering a period of high inflation (due to oil prices, the budget defecit, the low prime rate, and loss of confidence by third-world cleptocrats in the dollar) and economic doldrums at the same time - the 'stagflation' which was endemic in the late seventies.

A good, conservative investment for the cautious person right now would be something like a coal mine.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[bani]

reusability isnt a requirement of the CEV and none of the proposals say anything about reusability. if the current proposal is intended to be reusable it doesnt say it anywhere.

the talk about titanium is insurance to make sure something like a columbia disaster (eg burn-through) doesnt happen again -- makes sense to me.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Vexar]

Uh, which shuttle design are you talking about? The Challenger, the Columbia, or the one they keep delaying for launch due to growing safety concerns? As for trash, what about the debris and hydrazine scattered throughout several Southern states?

The real problem with the US Government is the bureaucracy, you have that right. There's plenty of waste in every branch of our government. Can't get over the $500 office chairs my city hall has.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Keebler71]

Either way Boeing seems to be going back to the Apollo with their design. Unless there's some impressive shit going on inside, I'm not impressed with their's either.

No offense, but what do you base this on? What exactly are your credentials? What you think a spacecraft should look like based on your vast sci/fi experience? Shouldn't there be a "IANARS" disclaimer in there somewhere? Perhaps these are both sound engineering solutions...

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[AKAImBatman]

reusability isnt a requirement of the CEV and none of the proposals say anything about reusability.

No, but quick turnaround and low cost are part of the proposals. Building a new craft out of Titanium each time would drive the price of flights to levels similar to that of the current shuttle. You see, titanium is not only expensive, it's extremely expensive and difficult to work with.

Trust me, everything about this design screams "reusable". From the non-ablative shielding, to the hull design, to the internal configuration. It *is* a reusable craft.

But don't take my word for it. Go find a rocket scientist and argue the point with him. He could probably use a good laugh. :-)

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[tsotha]

Then Jerry Pournelle is an idiot.

Rei, Jerry Pournelle is most decidedly not an idiot. He's been at this space stuff a long time, and not just in SF. If you're interested in a practical (operational) strategy for CATS, read Getting To Space and The SSX Concept. You may not agree with everything, but I've read enough of your posts to believe you'll agree with most of it, or at least acknowledge the possibilities.

Orbital Sciences Corp would get 2 billion dollars just for strapping a heat shield to one of their Pegasus rockets instead of a payload - congrats we just wasted 1/3 of a CEV's development cost to accomplish nothing. Or did you not already know that private companies, using private funds, have already launched orbital rockets? It's not a very profitable business - that's why there aren't too many companies doing it.

I'm not sure you read the prize specification as intended. By "spacecraft" he's not talking about a missile, but rather a manned ship. Also, assuming you weren't talking about manned craft, if you attached a heat shield to Pegasus you're still a long way from having a spaceship you can land and reuse in two weeks. I don't think two billion dollars is out of line for a manned, reusable, orbital spacecraft. We don't have the capability, and given the past history of NASA projects, you're making quite an assumption to say 2 billion is 1/3 of CEV's development. It'll probably end up being more like 1/20th. The great thing about a prize-type contract is it doesn't cost anything if they don't deliver, and it never goes over budget.

Number 3 would never be done without subsidy. The costs are way off. I can do a breakdown if you'd like on what construction and supply costs would be during that period.

Well then, it wouldn't cost anything to put the prize out there, would it? Even if you and I can't see a way to do it, perhaps it could still be done. I'm not convinced it's impossible if the emphasis was on operational costs.

Number 4 makes no sense - why offer a prize for a *specific* clean power technology? The numbers are also way off on this one. Here, do the math: 1,367 W/m^2 (optimal), 35% conversion efficiency (very good), 5% beaming efficiency (far better than currently available). 800MW = 334 million square meters. Assuming 0.1 kg per square meter (light for high efficiency cells), that's 34 million kilograms (ignoring support eq., such as heliostats, orbit correction, transmission, etc). At a launch price of 7,000$/kg (cheap), that's 233 billion dollars.

The reason for having a specific technology is the power generating capability is only half the goal. The other half is to develop an infrastructure for cheap access to space. There's no reason to assume launch costs of $7000/kg. Yes, that's cheap today because every mission is a one-off. Think about this, though: If the prizes were done in order, you would conceivably have a reusable spacecraft before you went to tackle this one. There's no reason I can see you couldn't build an SSTO craft which could be flown often enough that the major component of the operational cost was fuel.

It's possible you could only get the cost down to $6999/kg, in which case you're right, the numbers won't work. The reality is we just don't know what could be done because nobody's tried it. Fuel is you're only absolute operational cost - the others could conceivably be attacked with great success under the right conditions.

Also, the prize doesn't specify the power station would have to be turned over to the government. So as a potential investor it wouldn't be out of line to consider the post-prize profit from power generation.

p.s. What the hell is a "duelist of Dios?"

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[stealth.c]

We just need a little imagination. Earth needn't be the only source of fuel. I think asteroids are one of the biggest untapped resources we have in the Solar System. The Moon has ice caps, if memory serves. Solar power could separate it into H and O rocket fuel. Even if we do need to take fuel from Earth, imagine being able to get all your other resources for construction in the low-grav environment of open space, and never having to launch any of that stuff from anything more intense than high lunar orbit.

Infrastructure. Mining facilities, both for lunar caps and asteroids. Orbiting scaffolds and an elevator or two. High initial investment, but in the relative long term, I think worth it. Would you rather beach your yacht on the rocks every time you bring it in from sea (slugging spacecraft into and out of earth all day), or have a pier available (lunar bases)?

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[tftp]

the fatigue of "hard-core" re-entry

Most missions land with very moderate deceleration; only ballistic landing is up to 6G, and only for a few minutes at that.

The good part about the capsule is its low-tech design; very little can be broken. Once you are in atmosphere you will land, and even if you land using the worst possible trajectory you still know that it is not dangerous. Basically, once you dive into the atmosphere you are safe. Your only danger is if the parachute fails to open, but it's designed to be simple and reliable too.

But Shuttle is a different story. Once you enter the atmosphere you are committed to a most intricate song and dance through tens of thousands of miles across the planet, at exceptionally supersonic speeds, where your vehicle must maneuver just right at every moment, and it does not even have a permanent power source at this time! And after those tens of thousands of miles in the air you have to land on a strip with precision of meters, and you don't have any propulsion to try a different approach! Talk about risky.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[The Big Ugly]

to find what? we don't the moon is nothing but dust. they proved that in the '60's. we aren't going to live there. it should never come to that. i'm still going with waste on taxpayers money.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[amiliv]

This time it will take 15 years because:

a) there is really nobody to compete against
b) no more unlimited funds like in good old cold war days

The direct consqeunce of a) and b) is that political will to put human life at risk just to stick a flagpole in middle of a desert (before the Russians do it) is way lower than back in '60s and '70s.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[tftp]

Your question is misdirected. This is Slashdot, and /.ters don't leave their homes, ever :-)

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[tftp]

The JP's quote says nothing about occupants, so for all practical purposes the vehicle only has to carry itself to the orbit. There is no specification of how many parts is it allowed to replace after each flight.

As it stands, I take a good sized metal ball and call it a spacecraft. Anyone with a rocket can launch this ball to LEO, and when it falls back - launch it again and again (replacing the whole rocket for each launch.) The fact that the ball has a small engine and a parachute inside will qualify it as "operational".

Basically, a $2B project can not be specified on a back of an envelope.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[jackbird]

Can't get over the $500 office chairs my city hall has.

Have you priced real office furniture lately?

For that matter, if the chairs really extravagent and you're lowballing the number, perhaps they pay for themselves with lower healthcare costs/employee downtime. Ergonomic work environments are good.

I'd follow bigger money trails out of city hall to find waste if I were you. Prominent local real estate developers tend to be a good place to start.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Moofie]

I wouldn't argue for a moment that Shuttle was anything other than horrible cost-plus budget gerrymandering.

However, manned space flight is literally the only important thing that humans can do.

Another $100 billion more for the poor, and there will still be poor. Another $100 billion for space exploration, and we've got another planet to explore and colonize.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Moofie]

You have me confused with an anti-space-travel luddite. Not the case. I just think that going to the moon, again, is a waste of time and money. Been there, done that.

"If you can't do full-up systems integration on Earth (which is the best possible place to do it), the best place to do it is on orbit, not on the moon."

The moon is a dead rock. It may well be useful to mine HE3 there, but let's figure out fusion first.

Mars is the place to be.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[sTalking_Goat]

What the fuck?

Honestly since when are credentials a requirement for expressing an opinion? I don't believe I ever said either were not "sound engineering solutions", Not being an aerospace engineer I wouldn't know that.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Iron Sun]

Dude you are going to drag all the mass of a CEV all the way to Mars and back just so they can use it to reenter the Earth's atmosphere. I dont suppose it occured to you, with all this modularity and docking stuff that if thats all you are using it for you could dock a CEV with the Mars return craft when it gets back to earth orbit and save the mass on the round trip to Mars for something useful on mars?

I don't suppose it occurred to you to compare the weight cost of carrying a CEV modification capable of making a direct reentry into the Earth's atmosphere (like Apollo did) versus the weight of the fuel necessary to brake the returning astronauts into Earth orbit. I bet you'd discover that direct entry works out a lot better.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[d474]

This is what's going on: Space Defense Notice how advanced they are? Their "last update" was January 1, 2006!! They are already time travelling.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Goonie]

The Moon might be a great place to launch spacecraft from, but it's a shitty place to build them because, well, you're missing the massive industrial infrastructure required to build them. Setting that up on the moon would be a hugely costly undertaking.

As for private industry, there's no way that pure scientific exploration is going to be funded by the private sector. Why would they? It's an enormously expensive exercise and it's going to be damn difficult to turn a profit at it. What Virgin Galactic is proposing may or may not be profitable, but it's sure not exploration.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[alienw]

that would help competitive PRIVATE INDUSTRY get into space to do all that exploring.

Yeah, because private companies can make money from pixie dust and love to spend it on projects with zero ROI. Or are you suggesting we give private companies taxpayer money?

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[appleLaserWriter]

The various shuttles have flown a LOT more than the Saturn V ever has, so I would venture to say there is nothing wrong with a shuttle design. Perhaps one should try focusing on the real problem with NASA, which is the bureaucracy.


By my count, there are at least 14 things wrong with the shuttle program.

How do you propose to do away with the bureaucracy?

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Col Bat Guano]

It uses a titanium frame - this allows it to run hot on reentry, which means that heat dissipation issues aren't as serious, and damage isn't as threatening. A side advantage is you'll get a far better payload ratio.

No, apparently titanium and aluminium are about the same for "specific stiffness". Aluminium is easier to work with to build stiff structures - see the last posting from Henry Spencer at... http://groups-beta.google.com/group/sci.space.tech /browse_thread/thread/3d8e2ef67945d1eb/0dd422df731 fdc36?q=titanium+group:sci.space.*&rnum=2&hl=en#0d d422df731fdc36

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[raptor_87]

Okay, at this point in time, basic research. (eg: the moon's history and detailed physical and chemical composition). Sadly, you can never directly defend basic research. It has no immediate goal or payoff beyond knowledge. Although it does have a tendancy to prove useful in the future. (eg: we now know that there's Helium-3 in the lunar soil. Should we get fusion power generation, this will prove immensely useful) Interestingly, just getting people into space pushes some applied science also. (look at velcro and some 'space age composites')

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[dafoomie]

Here's an interesting factoid: The Space Shuttle Enterprise was slated to be called "Constitution". Which would have made the Space Shuttles "Constitution-class". Just like the USS Enterprise NCC-1701!
It was actually going to be named after Richard Nixon, which is ironic because most of the shuttle's drawbacks are his fault. NASA wanted something completely different, Nixon made it cost less in the short term and a ton more in the long term, and wouldn't fund it at all unless it could be used for military applications as well. And all the while, he comes off as a big space guy.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Sirch]

2017: Sea of Tranquility

"Wow. The second people to land on the moon in 40 years... That team from NASA only beat us by a couple of days..."

"Look, there's Neil Armstrong's footprint! Isn't it amazing how, after all these years, it looks like it was only made last week!"

*ahem*

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Anonymous Coward]

Originally it had small wings but the USAF wanted
a high cross range capabilty, so the shuttle had to
add to the wing span (going from stubby to delta)
adding extra mass
thus spending more time in the air than really necessary.
The knock on effects of messing with the quite practical design
turned it into the death trap it is today
this new CEV looks suspiciously like the X20 Dynasoar.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Gonoff]

We could put thousands of robots on the moon

This is supposedly about exploration. Sending robots places is not exploration. It is scientific investigation and as such a brilliant thing. Exploration needs explorers.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Canth7]

Those 3 deaths on the Apollo missions happened on the ground, due to a hatch design problem. There probably isn't enough data to extrapolate which is more deadly to a precise degree, but it seems logical that the more complicated shuttle would be the less safe vehicle.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Anonymous Coward]

Third, the Apollo project cost over $25 billion. In modern dollars, that's aover $100 billion.

You mean we could have afforded two or three Apollo programs if we had forgone Bush's Oil Crusade?

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[CrimsonAvenger]

Conversely, Soyuz has flown a LOT more than the various shuttles have.

A slightly misleading statistic. The Soyuz launch vehicle has had nearly 1700 flights. Note that that launch vehicle is used for pretty much everything launched into space by the Russians (and the Soviets before them).

The manned Soyuz spacecraft, on the other hand, has had about 90 flights.

At three men per Soyuz (though some Soyuz carried fewer), the Soyuz spacecraft has put ~270 people into space.

The Space Shuttle, in 113 flights (at seven per, though some carried fewer), has put close to 800 people into space.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Anonymous Coward]

....um...yeah and *ALL* you folks who post PRETENDING that you know better than NASA with your comments on "they should do this"...or "this is stupid" kind of tone......THANK YOU FOR THE LAUGHS!!!

It truly is a wonder the Internet.....where everyone is the toughest, coolest person on the planet and everyone is the foremost expert in any given topic that is being talked about or debated on a forum -- even more so than the folks who are the real life experienced, educated and professional experts on the subject matter at hand.

Now I'm not saying you are all totally full of shit, just about 99.99% of you are...after all you have to leave some chance, regardless how small, that someone can stumble upon these forums who is a certified and accredited expert in a topic being discussed.

But go ahead all continue to inflate your egos and bang your chests like you know what the hell you are talking about and that the experts don't know it better than you. Like I said its entertaining.

Btw, for two comments in this thread..

Regarding why the shuttle has wings....its not to make the Air Force feel warm and fuzzy....in space you don't need wings --- but when you are FLYING in the earth's atmosphere they tend to be useful just a tad to keep from dropping from the sky. The shuttle does glide and it does "fly" after all.

As for the reason they are canning the shuttle...a very big reason is cost...yes the shuttle works...but it is VERY WELL known that it is a financial hog....extremely expensive to maintain.

So yeah they'll keep the shuttle just find a way to give NASA about $100 billion and then they'll keep it..lol.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[NardofDoom]

I agree that nuclear fuel recycling is one part of our energy solution, but to ignore renewables is insane, especially when you need power to generate hydrogen. The storage and transportation problems with hydrogen mean that the closer you can generate it to the POS (point-of-sale), the better. So put a few dozen solar panels or a windmill at a gas station and have that generate hydrogen through electrolysis.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[confused one]

There are metallic heat shields now, which are more durable. They weren't available at the time the shuttle was designed. It would not have been cost effective to attempt updating the existing shuttle design to use them. They've seen some testing on some of the shuttle replacements that have been cancelled in the past.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[coreman]

The stubby wings are to allow it to auger in more dramatically on failure.

Any doubt of the purpose will be enlightened by the first flights being in 2008, and election year

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[ezavada]

...Not a bit of risk, and if it can't be done for those sums, well, no harm done to the treasury.

I think there is considerable risk in having a private corporation trying deliver power from space to a receiving station in the United States. If you disagree we can site the receiving station next to your house.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[DuckDodgers]

Another $100 billion more for the poor, and there will still be poor. Another $100 billion for space exploration, and we've got another planet to explore and colonize.

That's an easy statement to make, considering you aren't among those that would be helped by the $100 billion.

I assume your main intent is to point out that we can't solve all of our problems on earth and a space presence will bring countless benefits. I do appreciate that. But your choice of words came off as callous, even vicious.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't we just do what we did before, and farm the project out to the Germans? They were the ones developing atmospheric skip technology in the 1930s, and the Apollo project can trace its roots right back to the V2.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[stlhawkeye]

I just have one question for you: You say that the Apollo project cost over $100 billion in today's dollars - but for how many missions?

That's for the whole program, start to finish. For comparison, the total price tag of the space shuttle program is close to $150 billion.

It's also important to understand how much money NASA has relative to the nation's GDP, because a non-relativistic measure of NASA's cash flow is meaningless.

In the 1960's, NASA's budget as a percentage of GDB rose steadily from about 0.20% to over 0.50% of GDB.

From the early 1990's until this year it has declined from from 0.23% to just under 0.15%. NASA's buck doesn't go nearly as far in this economy. Note that I'md not dogging on the economy, I actually think it's doing rather well, but the reality is that it costs more to do business these days. We won't get the moon again for the same price tag (relatively) that we did in the 1960's.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[stlhawkeye]

While I agree with the rest of your post, I don't agree that current US technology is inappropriate to the task. Current infrastructure, yes, but not technology.

Our current space technology is not appropriate for sending people to the moon. We have no rocketry to send a human payload there, no habitable moon orbiters, no landers, no spacesuits build for use on terrain, no rovers, nothing of the sort. The amount of work and research that went into designing the components for the Apollo program was staggering and we're not even close to having that technology available again.

We will have to go back and re-design and re-engineer that technology, we don't have any of it right now. I'm not sure what you mean by the infrastructure being the flaw. What current technology do we have that's going to launch us to the moon, land on it, and bring us back?

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[stlhawkeye]

You mean we could have afforded two or three Apollo programs if we had forgone Bush's Oil Crusade?

As of this moment, the total cost of the Iraq operation or whatever you want to call it is $167.5 billion. The actual cost of Apollo in modern dollars is well over $100 billion, around $110 billion. If the social and political climate was identicle, then yes, we could launch about 1.5 Apollo programs, starting now and finishing up in about 10-15 years. NASA's total budget for the next years, in fact, is likely to end up being (in 2005 constant dollars), about $170 billion, barring major changes in funding priorities in Congress.

But two or three? No way. And the political and social climate isn't the same as it was. I posit that repeating Apollo verbatim would cost almost twice what it did at the time, based on the cost of Apollo relative to the nation's total productivity. And it would also depend who the president was. If Bush tries to do it, it's going to cost a lot, not just in terms of money, but in national ire at how the guy is urinating our dollars on pointless, worthless legislation. What we need is military Democrat like JFK (John F Kennedy, not John Friggen Kerry) to propose it. When Democrats want to spend money on programs of questionable value the nation tends to rally around them. I don't know why, but it seems to generally be the case.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[radtea]

After all the basic tech hasn't changed all that much.

On the contrary, the basic tech has changed enormously in three areas: computing, materials, and computing.

1) Computing: on board computing is vastly lighter than it was in 1975, when the shuttle was designed. More computing power on the spacecraft may enable optimizations that will save weight, improve reliablity, etc.

2) Materials: the late 20th century saw a huge revolution in materials design, to the extent that we can build things that are far stronger and lighter than we could in 1975. Likewise there has been progress in high temperature materials, due in part to the work on the original shuttle.

3) Computing: the original shuttle wasn't exactly lofted on a hanger floor the way the DC-3 was, but the simulation capability that existed in 1975 was tiny and rudimentary compared to what it is today. So we can expect new vehicles to be more strongly optimized, the engines to have higher Isp's, better reliability, etc.

the lunar and Mars space craft will undoubtly be assembled in orbit from modules, and carry along a CEV docked on the side to the astronauts can return to earth after it's over.

Err...wouldn't it make a good deal more sense to leave the CEV in Earth orbit, rather than expending vast amounts of energy to move all that dead weight to and from Mars? Or to pop one up for the return crew when they return?

--Tom
Deut 22:11

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Darth Yoshi]

I think you're quibbling over details.

Orbital Sciences Corp would get 2 billion dollars just for strapping a heat shield to one of their Pegasus rockets instead of a payload - congrats we just wasted 1/3 of a CEV's development cost to accomplish nothing.

Jerry is well known to be a long-time advocate of manned, reusable spacecraft. Anyone who is familiar with his writings would assume "manned, reusable" to be part of point 1.

If I could edit the grand-parent post, I'd add "[manned, reusable]" to clarify the point.

Number 3 would never be done without subsidy.

Maybe. In that case, what's the harm.

You'll notice that the prizes are "exempt from all US taxes", which effectively roughly doubles them. Did you take that into consideration?

I'll note that Jerry's suggestions for prizes are a few years old, perhaps the amounts should be updated.

Number 4 makes no sense - why offer a prize for a *specific* clean power technology?

As tsotha pointed out, the object is to build infrastructure.

At a launch price of 7,000$/kg (cheap), that's 233 billion dollars.

Did you notice how the prizes build on each other? Nobody in their right mind is just going to go after number 4. Clearly they'd need reusable spacecraft to bring down launch costs to a reasonable level. Bingo, any three operational [manned, reusable] spacecraft would qualify for prize number 1.

Clearly there have to be people on-site (as it were) to build a solar power satellite and it will probably take at least 5 people and more than three years just to build it. Bingo, they qualify for prize number 2.

That also applies to number 3. Building and supplying a lunar would clearly benefit from [manned, reusable] spacecraft, and probably benefit from a real space station where material and supplies can be trans-shipped from a earth-going spacecraft to a lunar-going spacecraft (one design to go straight from the earth to the moon and back probably won't do either very well). Bingo, they qualify for prizes 1 and 2.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[The Big Ugly]

You are abosolutely correct. The space race did provide some interesting materials(velcro, tang, jello..). My concern is that it came at such a huge price. For the sake of not dragging this out any longer, let's agree to disagree.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't we just do what we did before, and farm the project out to the Germans?

Germany is on the decline. You'd probably be better off farming it out to a country with an active space program, like India or China.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm. I count 0 deaths during 16 Apollo missions, with 3 deaths during mission prep. I count 14 deaths durring Shuttle missions, with an unknown number (I wouldn't even know where to start the research) of deaths during mission prep.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Anonymous Coward]

As of this moment, the total cost of the Iraq operation or whatever you want to call it is $167.5 billion.

You know the truth yet you dance around it. Common sense says that the 168 Billion is probably only half what the total will be before our troops come home.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[phayes]

Wings bring you cross range & soft landing. Capsules are fine when you can:
- Use throwaway capsules and
- Send a carrier battle group to the south pacific or
- Land on a few thousand square miles of (mostly flat) steppes.

We no longer have the carrier groups free to recover in mid ocean. Recovering in salt water blows the reusable option in any case (The SRB's are DUMB and almost 100% remanufactured). I disagree with much of what Nasa does, but they moved to reusable winged vehicles over a quarter century ago for good reasons.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[ab762]

...NASA was a part of the United States Air Force at the time, not a separate entity with its own (very limited ) budget.
-- Before you vote, get your facts straight!

Crashingly ironic signature, my friend. NASA is and has always been a civilian agency.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Ken Erfourth]

• Why are we still wasting money on the space program?

Which Space program are you talking about?

The one that got us communication, weather (and yes, Spy) satellites? The one that enables you to determine where you are anywhere on the planet using a GPS? The one that got us the Hubble Space Telescope, which is giving us a clear enough view to look back into the origins of our Universe? The one that has Voyager about to leave our Solar System?

That Space program?

How about the Space program that has an international Space Station if orbit, where we can experiment with weightlessness and hard vacuum in manufacturing and medicine? I for one wonder what an alloy of aluminum and lead might allow us to do. Can't perform those experiments on the planet. What if we discover that the vaccine for AIDS or the cure for Cancer is an antibody so complex it can only be grown slowly in a weightless environment? Might that Space Program be worth the money?

Now, pie-in-the-sky ego gratification efforts like a useless trip to the Moon to plant another flag and leave some more footprints--well, you have a point (although those "useless" missions to the Moon allowed us to leave behind some laser reflectors and such that have helped us track continental drift and nail down the speed of light). But I would definitely grant that simply going for the sake of going is not a good use of resources. We have probably already advanced Space Food Sticks and Tang to their theoretical potential.

I agree that we need to question how and why we're trying to move forward in Space, on the ground, and in the Oceans. We should spend our money wisely, to good effect, and with a long term view regarding payoff.

But I think as humans, we need to move forward and expand our horizons. Otherwise, we'll stagnate, and spend our time killing each other and counting down to the Rapture...

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Silburn_Luke]

Why add an orbital rendezvous requirement to all missions?

Because then you only have to man-rate the launch stack for the CEV and can boost the other modules up on non-manrated stacks, which are a hell of a lot cheaper.

Furthermore, given the low throw-weight of current boosters (when compared to Saturn frex), orbital rendezvous is going to be required for pretty much any mission beyond a quick hop to LEO - so what does it hurt to mandate it for every mission? Also, by going with a modular system you get the opportunity to leverage alternative launch systems. NASA may not be entirely enthusiastic about paying ESA, JSA or (heaven forfend!) a private outfit to put some of their payloads into orbit, but if these other players have the launch capacity and it saves NASA having to spend a umpty billion expanding their launch capacity, then it makes a lot of sense.

Regards
Luke

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[stlhawkeye]

You know the truth yet you dance around it. Common sense says that the 168 Billion is probably only half what the total will be before our troops come home.

Speculation is not truth. I don't know the truth and neither do you. We could be out of Iraq in 12 months. We could still be there in 40 years (we're still in Japan and Germany, do the expenses of maintaining those bases qualify as part of the WW2 effort?)

The only truth I know is what the war has cost to this point, and that's what I cited. You can't make a projection about something that might happen, no matter how likely, and claim it's truth.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Anonymous Coward]

I have common sense. You obviously don't. If you believe that tomorrow our troops will be home and not one more cent will be wasted then you are a damned fool. And that is the truth. Making projections is one thing the human brain excels at, at least those of us who have them.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[HuguesT]

You are doing statistics on 3 events, essentially your margin of error is so huge that you can't infer any conclusion.

Both were risky endeavours ; however the parent's point is not completely moot. Apollo 1 was a new design and caused the death of 3 people on the ground. The rest of the missions went OK, even Apollo 13 who had massive systems failures, but enough redundancy built-in to make it back safely. Moreover you are not counting the Apollo predecessors which were somewhat similar in design, but simpler, and which didn't suffer any casualty.

In contrast, the SS exploded twice unexpectedly in the middle of the program. Apparently the SS is a complex system with design flaws no one really knows how to fix.

At any rate the SS is far deadlier than it was designed to be.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[leomaster]

Several reasons exist for financing the space program beyond basic research. 1. Unlimited resource based. The resource base on Earth is limited. Finding a cost-effective way to live, work, mine, etc. in space allows us access to an essentially unlimited resource base. There's no reason in the long term, why the bulk of Earth's manufacturing, research, and maybe even bulk food growth can't be done in orbit once we have developed a cost-effective way to get enough material into orbit. 2. New technologies. The space program to date has stimulated the development of useful versions of thousands of new technologies. Think where you would be today without: Flu, cold, allergy medicines, microwave ovens, tinfoil, satelittes for weather, television, cell phones, microcomputers, new materials, etc. The development of these, and thousands of other technologies has been funded and driven at least in part by the space program. 3. Another basket. A long-term goal of the space program would be colonization of another planet. This wouldn't solve Earth's population/resource issues, but it would ensure the human race continues. Also, not having a space program wouldn't necessarily help solve the population/resource probelms.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[The Big Ugly]

What if we discover that the vaccine for AIDS or the cure for Cancer is an antibody so complex it can only be grown slowly in a weightless environment?

unlikely. besides, i don't have cancer. As for AIDS, i generally avoid sharing fluids with people I don't know or going to 3rd rate medical institutions. As I only have one body, I make a pretty good point about keeping track of what goes into my body.

I agree that we need to question how and why we're trying to move forward in Space, on the ground, and in the Oceans. We should spend our money wisely, to good effect, and with a long term view regarding payoff.

well said.

The one that got us communication, weather (and yes, Spy) satellites? The one that enables you to determine where you are anywhere on the planet using a GPS?

ahh, touche. you are absolutely right. i do enjoy those technologies. i stand corrected.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[The Big Ugly]

1. Unlimited resource based. The resource base on Earth is limited. Finding a cost-effective way to live, work, mine, etc. in space allows us access to an essentially unlimited resource base. There's no reason in the long term, why the bulk of Earth's manufacturing, research, and maybe even bulk food growth can't be done in orbit once we have developed a cost-effective way to get enough material into orbit.

Starcraft is a GAME. besides, in the event we find these unlimited revolutionary resources, the chances of developing a "cost-effective way to get enough material into orbit"is slim. seriously, we are still using a oil based combustion engine on earth. we can't even develope a more efficient/safer/cleaner means of an engine.

2. "New technologies. The space program to date has stimulated the development of useful versions of thousands of new technologies. Think where you would be today without: Flu, cold, allergy medicines, microwave ovens, tinfoil, satelittes for weather, television, cell phones, microcomputers, new materials, etc. The development of these, and thousands of other technologies has been funded and driven at least in part by the space program."

yes, we've covered the development of new tech - espeicallly Tang. THe intial space race did provide a few great techs. i find it difficult to believe that without the space race that the "...Flu, cold, allergy medicines..." would not have been discovered.

3. "Also, not having a space program wouldn't necessarily help solve the population/resource probelms."

perhaps a more important question is why is teh earth on a track to overpopulation. maybe we should control earth's pop. before we colonize and overpopulate another. if we cant afford to feed and house earth's pop, why should we repeat our mistakes on another planet? "Also, not having a space program wouldn't necessarily help solve the population/resource probelms." -you're right. perhaps we should take those billions of $ allocated for space to fixing this problem.

iknow you only had 3 points, but let me add of 4th: why is the US shouldering the bulk of the bill? If overpopulation is a katalyst for researching space exploration, shouldn't the countries with the huge populations be footing the bill? How about it China & India?

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[demachina]

Well the best scenario I've seen for Mars trips don't throw the rather large and expensive ship away after each flight which seems to be what you are suggesting. It is a pretty good place for a reusable vehicle especially since it isn't trashed by any reentry effects. If its a big nuclear ship of one form or another that also speaks to not throwing it away.

Of course I'm not sure why I'm even argueing the point. Round tripping people to Mars tends to be kind of stupid in the first place. They should be going to stay, it dramaticly simplifies the mission and increases its value, stupid Apollo style trips (wander around a while then come back) will never justify the cost, while a permanent colony would. Only problem is it requires that you commit to sending them enough cargo to sustain a permanent colony. A round trip is way harder than one way and its seriously open to debate if the astronauts will be able to readapt to 1G without major leaps in providing gravity on the the trip or in getting people to tolerate long periods in zero and 1/3 G and returning to 1G.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[fredrik70]

THey moved to wings because the military insisted on it.
What's the point of having a reusable vehicle if it's far more expensive to operate than a one-time-use capsule?? The effort in going through the shuttle inbetween launches cost an enormous amount of money! Mind you, *cheap* reusable vehicles would be good (and nothing stops a capsule from being reusable, russia was building one until lack of cash stopped them)
You can actually land a capsule fairly accurate, within 5 - 10 km^2 IIRC. I assume you think of the soyuz capsule a while ago wich deviated far from it's landing zone. The reason for this was a computer error which stopped the capsule from trying to 'glide' (yes you can steer them a bit!) and it then automatically went for the safest option which was a ballistic trajectory. Lots of G's for the crew, but they were unharmed in the end.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Vexar]

Fine, I'll leave the chair alone. How about the city council members paid $140,000 a year? That's only a few G's shy of our Governor. I hate corruption, but it seems rampant. People aren't about integrity here, they are always about the Benjamins, as it were.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[rben]

One of the problems is that water can also be a greenhouse gas, so hydrogen might not be such a wonderful idea as a replacement for gasoline. It might make more sense to work on developing better battery technology so that electricity generated by pebble-bed nuclear reactors can be used to power automobiles directly. Both areas need more research.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[khallow]

Whatcha gonna use for fuel to launch from the Moon?

Poor question. We don't need fuel, but rather energy and reaction mass, both which can easily be found on the Moon. For example, we can use sunlight for energy, and the Moon for reaction mass. We need no fuel. Eg, some sort of magnetic propulsion or tether slingshot would work. And if this He3 fusion can work, then that's another energy source. However, if you want something along the lines of a traditional fuel/oxidizer propulsion system, a liquid lithium/oxygen engine is feasible. If you can't do full-up systems integration on Earth (which is the best possible place to do it), the best place to do it is on orbit, not on the moon.

I don't see Earth being a good place to do systems integration. Maybe if lifting stuff to orbit gets incredibly cheap (say no more than $100 per kg in today's dollar). Orbit is probably the best place for that.

But as a supplier of raw materials, I simply don't see Earth competing with the Moon except for the supply of volatiles and organics. My take is that high value things like people or electronics will be lifted from Earth's surface, while bulk will come from asteroids, comets, the Moon, or possibly scooping Earth's upper atmosphere.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Moofie]

All of that Buck Rogers technology is great, and provides zero justification for why we should be concentrating on the moon rather than Mars.

"except for the supply of volatiles and organics"

Yeah, except for fuel and stuff to breathe, the Moon is great.

Mars has everything we need for sustained human colonization. The Moon doesn't.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[khallow]

Yeah, except for fuel and stuff to breathe, the Moon is great.

The Moon has plenty of oxygen and a little water. And I still don't understand your emphasis on "fuel".

Mars has everything we need for sustained human colonization. The Moon doesn't.

Mars isn't a light-second from Earth, If a lunar colony has an emergency, Earth is only a few days away. And we're ignoring economic considerations here. The Moon has some things of potential economic value (eg, moon rocks for collectors, a tourist destination, a huge potential population of teleoperators a mere light second away, a lower gravity well than Earth (meaning they can feed raw materials to Earth Orbit a whole lot easier than Earth can), and some interesting elements/isotopes like He3, lithium, and titanium). This is in addition to some very cool scientific projects (like telescopes and SETI observatories) that can be built on the Moon.

In comparison, science is the only thing that can drive a Mars mission at this time. Ie, the economics of being on Mars are less viable than for the Moon. IMHO, that means expeditions to Mars would be far more vulnerable to political whim than lunar activities.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Moofie]

My emphasis on "fuel" comes from the fact that, today, that's what we use to make stuff go. That may well change in the future, but I'm talking about NOW.

I'm not willing to wait 50-100 years to colonize the solar system. We need to get started tomorrow, and that means we need to start with technology we have today.

That's why I think Mars is a better target than Luna.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Rei]

Spencer is making a critical mistake: he's citing stiffness at room temperature. Aluminum will be molten at temperatures that titanium has barely changed in material properties. NASA did calculations for the shuttle being made using titanium - the ratios were 40-70% better, if I recall correctly.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Col Bat Guano]

Have a look at... http://groups-beta.google.com/group/sci.space.tech /browse_thread/thread/3d8e2ef67945d1eb/445327d74a0 10674?q=titanium+group:sci.space.*+author:henry+au thor:spencer&rnum=1&hl=en#445327d74a010674

There's a long discussion about this. Some of it is "aluminium is a better heatsink than titanium". I don't think it's as clear cut as you suggest.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Kiryat Malachi]

So update the spec to be "manned spacecraft" and specify that the only parts allowed to be changed out are X. It really isn't that hard.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[phayes]

Occupants of Zarya were dead meat if anything went wrong with the landing rockets, so it's not like crew capsules don't have their own problems. I like the idea of winged soft landings & reusable crew modules as long as they are not using thousands of people to remanufacture them each time (as they do with the shuttle).

Personally, I was a Delta-Clipper fan (Until Nasa Borged it), but if you RTFA, you may note that they look to be simplifying the crew return vehicle to a minimum. It's a reusable crew return module, not another shuttle: There is no cargo bay. Engines & much on orbit infrastructure are behind the module much as they were in the Apollo CM. This may actually be a good compromise between shuttle complexity & modules.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[khallow]

Ok, I can understand the need for urgency. My concern is that we go somewhere like Mars now, and the abandon it a few decades down the road, much as what is happening to the Shuttle and ISS. In other words, we can put colonies on Mars, even perhaps make them mostly self-sufficient (in terms of day to day needs) in a few years, but will they be viable over long periods of time?

The Moon is harder to make self-sufficient in a number of ways, but it has the key advantage that it's right next to Earth. That means there's a number of economic possibilities (as I mentioned before) that can substain long term development of the Moon. So even if political will (or funding) crumbles, there will still be economic forces that have incentive to continue a presence on the Moon.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Rei]

Being a heatsink is not particularly relevant. Being sturdy at high temperatures is.

You can't soak up the heat of reentry; it's essentially impossible unless you have a spacecraft the size of a mountain. Lets do some math, shall we?

E=1/2*m*v^2. v=~7800m/s, so for every kilogram, you have 30MJ of potential energy to soak up. Specific heat of aluminum is 0.902 J/gC, so 902 J/kg per degree celcius. That equals a temperature of 33,260 degrees celcius. Not going to happen.

Reentry is managable due to several factors. The first is the fact that you don't absorb all of the heat of reentry into your craft; most of it is directly transferred to the air. It is important to keep as much laminar flow as possible (because turbulent flow transfers about twice as much heat to the surface as laminar), so you want to keep your craft very smooth, especially near the leading edges. Some theoretical concepts for assisting with reentry call for trying to restore laminar flow with plasma or gas injection.

The other major factor on non-ablative craft is radiation of energy. The hotter the craft gets, the more energy it radiates away in a given amount of time. The shuttle's tiles are not to insulate, but to radiate; you may have seen the demonstration of where they put a blowtorch up to a tile for a minute, take it away, and then touch it with their fingers a second or two later; the tiles radiate heat that effectively. Insulation in spacecraft is to keep the heat on the outer, radiative layers.

Soaking up heat is not how you reenter. Your craft reaches a steady state where influx of heat equals outflux of heat energy relatively quickly. The key difference in structural materials, as a consequence, is what temperatures you can operate at. Aluminum alloys become worthless pretty quickly as temperature rises (sorry, I can't give you the numbers because my main server is down, but I've gathered various physical coeffs for various materials during work on a rocket simulation program - if you want, in a week or so, I can get them for you). Titanium doesn't. Consequently, aluminum needs heat to be radiated away much more quickly, and that is where tiles come in. Titanium can operate at much higher temperatures without weakening significantly, and so you can use its natural heat-radiating ability. You still need RCC on the leading edges, however.

By the way, you don't have to trust me about titanium: NASA wanted to use titanium for the shuttle, not aluminium, in the first place, for precisely the reasons I'm talking about.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Anonymous Coward]

(blah, I forgot to proofread: "a spacecraft the size of a mountain, in which case you only dissipate your energy on impact ;)")

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[NardofDoom]

Water is a greenhouse gas, yes, but it's a greenhouse gas that condenses and out of our atmosphere, unlike CO2.

Re:One or two questions related to these articles:

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, any spaceship that is returning from lunar mission will have to be a lifting body otherwise the vehicle will be subjected to up to 20g during a purely ballistic reentry. The Apollo and Soyuze (originally designed for lunar missions) are both lifting bodies, though not particularly good ones, but enough to lesson the g forces to around 6g I believe. Lockheed also went with a more efficient lifting body to allow for land recovery.

I think lifting body with parachutes is a good compromise between dangerous high speed runway landings and expensive ocean recoveries (It would also kinda suck to have a crew come all the way back from the moon or mars and drown in the middle of the ocean like Gus Grissom almost did!).

The Lockheed CEV does not use ceramic tiles. I believe they are using a titanium hot structure and carbon insulation. Between the titanium, the carbon heat shield and the lower heating generated by a lifting body Lockheed says that the ship should survive reentry even if the primary heat shield is damaged.

Couple LocMart Links

[stoolpigeon]

A few links right to locmart:

Main CEV Page Has the graphics shown in the other articles, etc.

Couple Page PDF Early on stuff about CEV

Interesting.... This page doesn't say much but what it does say is this, "The Space Exploration Vision Center is now open in Washington D.C. This facility showcases the latest developments in space exploration, concepts and technologies for NASA's Crew Exploration Vehicle program, including a full-scale cockpit simulator. Government tours and meetings are available five days a week." I want on one of those tours.

Re:first

[Stryyp]

failed ;_;

Re:But...

[PenguinBoyDave]

No. The new shuttle replacement will go back to an older, more stable system: Commodore 64

curious...

[wcitech]

are there any obvious oppurtunities for advancement here? There are going to be billions in production costs, so we can -=go to the moon=- in 2015-2020. I'm going to be a little more than upset if we spend this much money to accomplish something that will have happene already almost 70 years prior. Can we at least shoot to that red one next door?

Re:curious...

[stinkyfingers]

// begin conspiracy

Maybe we have to get to the moon to put footprints and flag up before some other country finds out the truth. We can always *make* more money.

// end conspiracy

Re:curious...

[TheKidWho]

Yeah there definetly should be. The design being shown in the article is a Re Entry Vehicle with a small habitation module + propulsion module. A Mars version would probablly have a large Propulsion module and Habitation module. As far as landing on the moon goes, I dunno how lockmart wants to do it.

Re:curious...

[pilgrim23]

Obviously this supports its primary design specification: The Pencil Pusher Pension Preservation Program. Now as to REAL space advancement, I would advice taking the one giant leap of.....Learning Chinese...

Re:curious...

[Anonymous Coward]

You've been watching Capricorn One again havn't you :D

Sa y hello to the new kid, same as the old kid

[Watersharer]

Since the early days of the space program, lives have been wasted and money shoveled down the gaping maw of the 'status-quo' machine.

We should/could have been out there by now. There are overwhelming reasons, political and economic, to get this freaking horse to run already.

So now they give us a 'new and improved' assbox that has limited mission goals, is incapable of leaving orbit, and cant get itself to space. Whats new in that?

Re:Sa y hello to the new kid, same as the old kid

[deglr6328]

assbox!? best. word. ever!!

Shields!

[Lugor]

3 Micro-Meteoroid and Orbital Debris protection shield

One step closer to Ionized Hullplates, then real Shields!!

Before everyone goes crazy

[TheKidWho]

This is a lifting body, it does NOT have wings like the shuttle's. Where the "wings" are on the LM CEV,LOX/Fuel Cells/and other avionics equipment is stored there.

Also, this is NOT the CEV that is going to be going to Mars. The Mars mission isn't until past 2020 and when that happens, the CEV will have been updated quite a bit.

So now, lets have a Capsule vs Lifting body debate!

Re:Before everyone goes crazy

[orderb13]

Also, this is NOT the CEV that is going to be going to Mars. The Mars mission isn't until past 2020 and when that happens, the CEV will have been updated quite a bit. And you believe this because the shuttles have been updated so much during their life spans?

Re:Before everyone goes crazy

[SuperBigGulp]

the CEV will have been updated quite a bit.

Bet me it won't. We were supposed to use the shuttle to get to Skylab, but we were a little late there. We're currently not using the shuttle to get to Hubble and fix it/push it around.

No reason to think anything will be different now

Re:Before everyone goes crazy

[kabloie]

It's not the spacecraft that's landing on the moon either. I don't know if the submitter recognizes the difference between cruising the strip around the moon and parking this CEV there, but there is going to be a lot more hardware involved than this doodad.

Re:Before everyone goes crazy

[cosmo7]

Updates to Space Shuttle since inception:

1978: Name changed from 'Death Sled' to 'Space Shuttle'.

1981: Rear gun turret deleted.

1984: Smoking banned during take-off and landing.

1986: Voice-activated autodestruct disconnected.

1990: Power windows replace crank handles.

1994: Shield button discovered. All-time high score achieved.

1997: Headrest video players installed to reduce boredom.

2002: Computer no longer allowed to kill crewmembers.

2005: Burning skull emblem reconsidered.

Imagine that ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine that. Man on the moon. I can hardly wait. Wow!

Re:Imagine that ...

[Anonymous Coward]

first time for everything !

Where's the CRV?

[wiredlogic]

Now if we can get a Crew Return Vehicle turned back back on we have a chance of fully populating the ISS. It would be a nice bonus if such a vehicle was a striped down (toilet-less, stowable) CEV that could use the same launch system.

Re:Where's the CRV?

[hoka]

I don't see why any return vehicle should be specialized to be "stripped down", if anything goes up there it should be able to work independantly and be lived in if it was isolated. That sort of redundancy is really necessary up there, where if something goes wrong (think Apollo 13) the crew can manage to utilize another system to live and return safely.

Re:Where's the CRV?

[wiredlogic]

The CRV was designed to be a Soyuz replacement and needs to be able to stay attached to the ISS for months at a time. This requires a vehicle that is designed for extended stays in space. CRV systems need better radiation hardening and need added reliability for sitting in low power, cold storage until the vehicle is needed. The shuttle can't do this since if is only designed for ~2 week missons and all critical systems are kept running all the time. As it is, the Soyuz escape craft docked to ISS have to be replaced periodically during long missions because they have a limited service life (I think the batteries die out).

Re:Where's the CRV?

[FleaPlus]

Now if we can get a Crew Return Vehicle turned back back on we have a chance of fully populating the ISS. It would be a nice bonus if such a vehicle was a striped down (toilet-less, stowable) CEV that could use the same launch system.

You mean something like the X-38 (which was coincidentally constructed by Scaled Composites, Burt Rutan's company)?

Re:Where's the CRV?

[Anonymous Coward]

The CRV is already designed and built

Re:Where's the CRV?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now if we can get a Crew Return Vehicle turned back back on we have a chance of fully populating the ISS. It would be a nice bonus if such a vehicle was a striped down (toilet-less, stowable) CEV that could use the same launch system.

Space station commander: "Okay now, everyone remember to use the bathroom before we leave!"

Not again!

[Baldrson]

Oh God, not again!

Hasn't the space shuttle program done enough damage to the pioneering heritage of the US already?

First, NASA delivers a space transportation system with a cost per lb to leo that is an order of magnitude higher than it promised.

Then, NASA stomps out private investment in launch service companies because it would dilute the monopoly value of the bad technology NASA produced.

Then when grassroots space enthusiasts try to get NASA to stop stomping out privately financed space transportation companies, and passed legislation requiring NASA to follow the Reagan policy of purchasing commercial launch services whenever possible, NASA thumbs its nose at the taxpayers most interested in space and launches the Advanced Communications Technology Satellite via the Shuttle.

Then when grassroots space enthusiasts, totally fed up with NASA's lawlessness and detemination to destroy the pioneering spirit of the US, start offering their own launch technology prizes, NASA waits until one of them embarrasses it before providing even lip-service to the prize award concept.

Finally, a private entrepreneur is offering $50 million of his own money as an incentive for other private investors to create a de facto replacement for the Space Shuttle* and NASA responds by trying to pump taxpayer money into the same good old boy network that has so effectively destroyed hope among pioneering peoples that they can embark on a new age of exploration to escape the burgeoning bureaucracies that proclaim themselves the hope of mankind while destroying its spirit.

Kill NASA before it kills the human spirit.

*An exploding myth.

Re:Not again!

[TheKidWho]

...

you're being completely illogical here.

Also Let's not forget the CEV is designed to go to the moon and mars, not just LEO.

Re:Not again!

[Joe the Lesser]

Indeed, when all is lost and humanity buckles under it's own weight, and we listlissly go through the motions of our meaningless lives, the blame will lie on NASA.

Re:Not again!

[jdgeorge]

Well, I'm really not comfortable with encouraging corporations to develop and launch what are, in essence ICBMs, outside of the strict regulation of the government.

I'm not comfortable with development of ICBMs under the auspices of governments either, but that is, to me, preferable to the "grassroots" weapons development that is being marketed as "private space exploration".

Re:Not again!

[Androk]

the delta clipper http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/x-33/dc- xa.htm would have been a great replacement for the shuttle. It took a ground crew of 6 and demonstrated quick turn-aroud launches (on the 1/3 scale prototype). McDonnall Douglas made many successful test launches, Nasa crashed it the first time, and the project was cancelled. Androk

Re:Not again!

[Wyatt Earp]

Huh?

How are systems like what the X-Prize is meant to encourage "ICBMs"?

Nothing thats on the horizon from what I've seen of the X-Prize participants has anything near the range of an ICBM.

Current US ICBM - LGM-30G Minuteman III
700 miles up she goes on three stages with a 6,000-plus mile range

Re:Not again!

[dabigpaybackski]

Baldrson, I agree that NASA is full of shit. Like all bureaucracies, it is a wasteful entity that places self-preservation above it's stated purpose. But there is no danger of NASA killing the human spirit; only irresolute citzens can accomplish that.

While NASA pisses money away having meetings, commissioning "studies," and colluding with de-facto state industries like Boeing, the private sector is taking its first baby steps into the heavens. We have, what, three different outfits in the U.S. now who have serious plans and financial backing, one of whom has already achieved manned suborbital flight at a cost per pound NASA has never come close to achieving. Basically what I'm saying is that private space is developing in tandem with the public sector, and though it is in it's infancy, it will prove superior and ultimately supplant the government space programs. Just my opinion.

Re:Not again!

[khallow]

Well, I'm really not comfortable with encouraging corporations to develop and launch what are, in essence ICBMs, outside of the strict regulation of the government.

Frankly, what's the problem? Let's suppose that a terrorist group steals the plans for a big rocket and turns it into an ICBM. Here's still the little problems. They need to build launch infrastructure. That launch infrastructure can easily be bombed and destroyed. For that kind of money they can buy military surplus or fund a bunch of suicide bombers. And of course, these assets would be harder to take out with a few cruise missiles. Your worries make no sense.

I'm not comfortable with development of ICBMs under the auspices of governments either, but that is, to me, preferable to the "grassroots" weapons development that is being marketed as "private space exploration".

Why do you think there's a problem here? These launch systems are heavily regulated. They make terrible weapons systems. Seriously, I think you should think about who would be using ICBMs as weapons. Even the US and Russia (the only two countries with true worldwide ICBM capability as far as I know) don't use their ICBMs except as a threat. No one has fired off an ICBM on a target.

The last war in which this sort of rocket played a credible role was the Second World War. In recent times, Iraq under Saddam Hussein launched Scuds at neighbors during the Persian Gulf War (targets in Israel and Saudi Arabia), but the rockets were worthless as a military tool. More recently, Hamas has launched rather small rockets into Israel, again ineffectually. This incidentally is the only case I know of where a non-government organization (and frankly, they are the de facto government in the West Bank) has made their own rockets for use against an enemy.

Re:Not again!

[khallow]

you're being completely illogical here.

Typical slashdot fire and forget comment.

Also Let's not forget the CEV is designed to go to the moon and mars, not just LEO.

Still Baldrson's concerns are justified. NASA (or whatever part makes these political decisions) has a long history of protecting its investments even if that means sabotaging US development of space.

I think we have reason to be concerned that a couple of decades from now, NASA will use regulation or it's market power to thwart private competitors to the CEV. After all, it's happened before. My hope here is that NASA or an eager US Congress won't stifle private development, and that later on when private enterprise can present a superior rival to the CEV that NASA will fold gently on the matter. But we should be realistic. These programs attain a great deal of political power and the administrators won't let go without some sort of struggle.

Re:Not again!

[Anonymous Coward]

No American Citizen has been killed by a foreign ICBM for over 50 years. Thousands of American citizen's have been killed by people violating US immigration regulations. If you want to regulate something, regulate immigration/tourism.

ICBMs are not necessary to deliver biological, chemical or nuclear weapons. Also the type of ICBM's developed for orbital purposes are _not_ like what the military uses.

That Old Rock

[Anonymous Coward]

They better get it right this time. Pick one system. Metrics would be better.

On another note, why are we beating the hell out of Mars? haven't tests come back inconclusive already for any life forms?

I can see it all now...

[StuffJustHappens]

I haven't RTFA (hey, this is Slashdot!), but based on my observations of the shuttle landings - ie: like a 'regular' passenger plane, I can see how this all pans out:

1. Moonbase 1 is built with a modern, high-tech arrivals terminal for the new craft.

2. First craft arrives and personnel enter the arrivals lounge.

3. Crew awaits baggage only to discover it's been sent to Mars.

Re:What does "yet-released" mean?

[fallendove]

I don't know what a "scematic" is, but if it can take us to the moon, I'm all for it.

LockMart?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they win the contract, I hope they have their budget firmly in place before they build anything.

They are notorious for delivering under spec'ed products many millions above budget.

Re:LockMart?

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be a bitch to find out a screw is missing from the flatpack at the most critical point wouldnt it.

Re:LockMart?

[Anonymous Coward]

I second that one. Look at the F/A-22. $350m+ for each plane..

Re:LockMart?

[bleckywelcky]

While it might be easy to bash LM, this is common among the entire Aerospace industry. Especially the big system integrators (LM, Boeing, NG, ATK, OS, etc). Because, as a system integrator, if 1 sub-contractor increases their cost by 1%, not only do you have to increase your cost my 1%, but then you have to increase it by another 1% to cover the additional costs of handling and reviewing the sub-contractor's extra 1%.

IE a sub-contractor decides that a series of bolts were not up to specifications, so they have to spend money on the re-design of the bolts, re-testing of the bolts, and re-manufacturing of the bolts. They pass this increased cost onto the system integrator.

Then the system integrator has to spend money to review they new bolt design, the new testing procedures, and the new manufacturing processes. And on top of that, they have to spend additional money to ensure that the new bolt design works with the rest of the current system design, add to that all the increased overhead involved with this new design, and you double the original cost increase.

So if the sub-contractors modify their cost by 15%, the total cost will probably increase by another 15%. And then if the system integrator makes their own modifications that result in their own 15% increase, that ends up being a 45% increase - while only 15% is truly the system integrator's responsibility and the other 30% is a result of the sub-contractors modifications.

So at least 1/3 (the original 15%) of your blame should be on the sub-contractors, perhaps up to 2/3 (the original 15% and the extra 15% system cost).

Lockheed vs. Boeing

[stoolpigeon]

Grumman is teamed up with Boeing on theirs. So if this goes anything like the JSF contest Lockheed will win over the pregnant space guppy.

Re:Lockheed vs. Boeing

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for Boeing. I would probably be working on JSF right now if we had won it. A small part of me is glad LM won, 'cause ours was just fugly. :D

Re:Lockheed vs. Boeing

[stoolpigeon]

Yeah - I've got family that work for both companies. Neither worked on JSF stuff but we talked it over a lot. We all agree-- Don't try to sell the military an ugly fighter.

Re:Lockheed vs. Boeing

[dabigpaybackski]

Why? They bought the Thunderchief and the A-10. I wouldn't call those ridiculous F-22s beautiful, either.

Re:Lockheed vs. Boeing

[torpor]

so hows' it feel to be a war child, anyway, mr. AC?

Re:Lockheed vs. Boeing

[DustyShadow]

Northrop Grumman has a substantial part of the JSF contract. http://www.irconnect.com/noc/press/pages/news_rele ases.mhtml?d=76986

Re:Lockheed vs. Boeing

[stoolpigeon]

Tangled little web those boys weeve. I was shooting more for humor than anything but this whole thing brings up interesting facets of the defense contracting industry.

Re:Lockheed vs. Boeing

[bleckywelcky]

Huh? The Thunderchief wasn't a terribly ugly aircraft, although it wasn't beautiful.

And the A-10? That is a gorgeous aircraft. Sure, its profile is not like that of a streamlined barracuda. But its design is elegant and striking.

I think 99% of the aircraft engineers out there would agree that the pregnant guppy looked very odd. While the A-10 would probably bring cheers from all around.

Re:Lockheed vs. Boeing

[Anonymous Coward]

If the A-10 isn't ugly, then why do they call it the Warthog?

Great plane though. If you want to kill tanks and not be killed yourself, it's the only way to fly.

Of course the USAF always hated the air-to-mud role. Wonderful excuse they used to reduce the number of planes they ordered: it was more reliable than anticipated, hence more planes in the air and fewer in the shop. Therefore the USAF decides it can buy fewer of them.

What an incentive.

Well

[StarKruzr]

I don't understand the orbital rendezvous thing either. If I was to guess, I'd say I think it might make the vehicle as a whole more flexible in terms of fuel and cargo space requirements.

The craft does not appear to use ceramic tiles. They mention a carbon-carbon heat shield. Also, it would appear to be reusable. Capsules are limited in terms of maneuverability - this design appears to have some control over its descent into the atmosphere.

And it makes sense to use the same craft for LEO as well as Moon and Mars for the same reason it makes sense to use the orbital rendezvous requirement - modularity.

This craft is clearly intended to be a general-purpose "mission operations and habitat" spacecraft.

I actually really like this design - it reminds me of the equally sensible Russian Kliper design.

As for the lunar timeline, I expect this time around we will be establishing something closer to a permanent presence on the Moon.

Watch for international squabbles over Lunar resources like He-III to start cropping up.

Re:Well

[Zeussy]

Start to go out and buy those 'i own an acre of the moon' certificate in bulk. Declare a new state. The Peoples republic of The Sea of Tranquility. PRoTSoT hmmm maybe not such a good acronym.

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

Protoss?

OMG ZERG RUSH KEKEKEKE.

(Incidentally, how do the Protoss eat, and how do they make babies?)

old design, made new again?

[mbancsu]

this design isn't new!? these are images from shuttle prototype designs that were made back in 1991. Maybe the technology is finally available, hence the release of this material/info to the public/media?

Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[__aaclcg7560]

Why don't we just re-use an updated version of the Saturn rocket and capsule design if we're going back to the moon? It won't have the sex appeal of a new sports space shuttle but it would work.

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[Ironsides]

You mean Like This?

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[stoolpigeon]

Takes me back to the first time I read Rocketship Galileo

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[As Seen On TV]

From that article of yours:

Those hotels could be shielded by enormous masses of material from a captured asteroid.

That sound you hear is the author's credibility flying right out the window. "Captured asteroid?" Is this guy out of his mind? Does he have the foggiest idea of the delta vees involved in such a fantasy?

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[__aaclcg7560]

Does he have the foggiest idea of the delta vees involved in such a fantasy?

Nah... it's just your standard sci-fi fantasy. Put a captured asteriod in a stable Earth orbit, mine the core out, and build condos on the interior. The real trick (besides getting it and mining it) will be putting enough spin on it to produce artifical gravity and making sure it doesn't land in Australia.

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[dabigpaybackski]

Why don't we just re-use an updated version of the Saturn rocket and capsule design if we're going back to the moon? It won't have the sex appeal of a new sports space shuttle but it would work.

Well, as I recall, someone on a previous thread said that all of the Saturn V blueprints were destroyed as part of the deal that lead to the creation of the original Space Shuttle (doesn't make a lot of sense, does it?) But, as the guy above me suggests, an updated Saturn V-scale rocket is the form-factor for their notion of nuclear-powered lift vehicle and boy, is it a doozy.

Two obstacles stand in the way of this glorious technology:

One, the aerospace oligopoly, who stand to lose money from the retirement of costly, inefficient, and dangerous chemical rockets.

Two, an uninformed public who instinctively fears anything nuclear. Environmental groups will go ballistic when a nuclear launch vehicle is announced. Watch for an ugly, ugly fight when this happens. And it will happen. Nuclear space launch is indispensible.

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[As Seen On TV]

I wouldn't even know where to begin to do the math on that one. To transfer even a tiny space capsule the size of a Volkswagen from Earth-orbital velocity to Solar-orbital velocity requires a huge expenditure of energy. I can't imagine what it would take to change the orbit of an object the size of a geographical feature.

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[John Harrison]

Actually they are looking at using the ASRB from the shuttle as the primary booster. This makes a lot of sense. I wrote the editor for the documentation system for the ASRBs. The amount of documentation needed for stuff that is man-rated is immense. Given that the ASRBs are all we've got that is man rated, it makes sense to continue using them.

Here's an article that goes into detail on the subject.

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[Short Circuit]

Or fly apart. I read recently that astroids are essentially gravity-collected gravel. Try putting spin on that!

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[As Seen On Slashdot]

The leading theory right now is that you are a technical writer at Apple. Would you care to comment on that, ASOT?

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[Anonymous Coward]

Are the SRBs man-rated because they are part of a larger system? If a shuttle launch experiences problems with a single SRB, both could be jettisoned and the orbiter could land by itself - saving the crew, thus obtaining the man-rating. Also, they tend not to blow up on their own. That is always a good thing.

Would they still be man-rated if launched alone (or with a second stage)?

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you going to pretend to be a Lockheed employee now, troll?

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[Anonymous Coward]

The author is proposing giant launchers powered by high efficiency nuclear-thermal engines. You would use those to haul large ion drives or electromagnetic mass drivers to the asteroid, powered by a sizable nuclear plant and/or truely massive solar arrays. You would then use those engines to slowly push the asteroid into a capture trajectory.

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[As Seen On TV]

Why, yes, I would. My comment is: "Hey, cute. Swimfans."

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[cmowire]

Nope, the Saturn V blueprints are still safely stored away.

It would just be dumb to make them, because it was built with 60s metallurgy, 60s electronics, etc. By the time you upgraded it to work with modern parts, you might as well start from scratch.

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[As Seen On TV]

Sounds like a great plot for a science-fiction novel. Terrible science, though.

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[Anonymous Coward]

Environmental groups will go ballistic when a nuclear launch vehicle is announced.

It's all in the Marketing. What we need is a new green name for "nuclear". Something like "Natural Essence Of Split Particles."

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[HermanAB]

The only way to get a nuclear fired rocket approved, is to first build a coal fired rocket. The resulting cloud of smoke covering half the planet, will convince people that nuclear is better.

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[John Harrison]

My understanding is that each component of the system needs to be man-rated. It requires more process control in assembly, better tolerances, and more QA. It also requires mountains of documentation. There were other, similar rockets being assembled at Thiokol while I was there that didn't go through this process and were therefore not man-rated.

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[stvartak]

The blueprints for the Saturn V were not destroyed it is merely infeasable to build a 40 year old rocket design out of what we have availible today in terms of parts. A better article on the subject: http://www.space.com/news/spacehistory/saturn_five _000313.html

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[pjt48108]

I think we are more likely to see a Soyuz launch from Kennedy than we are a 'new' Saturn V. I have many reasons for saying this, but basic economics pretty much underscores them all.

Now, I am no rocket scientist, physicist, engineer or whatnot. I am just a very curious person with a penchant for sites like astronautix.com (BTW, I recommend a visit there to all and sundry). But that is beside the point...

First, the Soyuz line is still in production. But I can dream, too, so let's assume the Saturn concept is an option...

Could we launch a Saturn? Well...

Second, American space launch infrastructure has been down-graded from the Saturn days. What wasn't downgraded (or cross-graded, or otherwise euphemistically condensed and compacted) was left to rot-in-place. It was more cost effective to let it rot and rust--after all, we had the shuttle, and everything rebuilt to its associated scales.

Therefore, any sort of similar shift to "ramp-up" to Saturn V levels would carry multiplier costs, what with the need to chop out the walls again at the Vehicle Assembly Building, upgrade or newly-design and construct Saturn-rated launch platforms and support structures, yada yada yada. This paints a very unfortunate situation. Bleak, I must confess, as I am a Saturn baby, born in 1968. Ah, the days of the TRUE boosters--I get sentimental for Skylab, sometimes...

Finally, current capability trumps the theoretical capability of as-yet unrealized systems, ANY DAY OF THE WEEK, if you are a bean-counter (and there are a few out there, I understand.... Bean-counters, I mean). Soyuz beats US Brand 'X' launcher with what I feel is an INHERENT advantage to them: they are (in my opinion) overbuilt in order to compensate for launching, historically, from facilities further from the equator. It isn't a big shocker, then, to read that Russian rockets will soon actually be launching from South American bases, where this translates into larger load capabilities, or higher orbits, being closer to the equator.

So, it would seem easier and more cost-effective, in my fantasy/opinion, to recycle current American facilities for Soyuz launch business: in the end, Soyuz is a well-proven product with a good number more launches on its resume, and an arguable launch advantage, to anything in current production inside or outside of Shuttle-Land, USA.

So, sorry. As much as I'd like to see more Saturns launch, I think it is more likely I'll get a chance to see a Soyuz launch without ever leaving the USA. ...Of course, I still argue that Micro$oft will soon dump everything and pull a Steve Jobs (again), by gutting Windows in favor of some *nix. And I also voted for Kerry. So take it all with a grain of salt, I guess. ;)

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi Twirlip.

You're not fooling anyone. Well, ok, you are. Well done. Well done indeed.

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[dabigpaybackski]

Sorry, I presumed that the Slashdotter I cited had his facts in order, and to clarify with respect to the nuclearspace.org people, "Saturn V form factor" meant "Saturn V shape and dimensions," not Saturn V technology. Modern metals and composites would accomplish dazzling things in conjunction with truly efficient power plants.

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[__aaclcg7560]

So, it would seem easier and more cost-effective, in my fantasy/opinion, to recycle current American facilities for Soyuz launch business: in the end, Soyuz is a well-proven product with a good number more launches on its resume, and an arguable launch advantage, to anything in current production inside or outside of Shuttle-Land, USA.

That might so. However, if we are going to have new technology or even re-use old technology to launch stuff into orbit, new facilities will be needed. If we limit ourselves to re-using what we currently got on the ground, we limit the potential to do something innovative since we will be wearing our shuttle-approved blinders.

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[Anonymous Coward]

He's not Twirlip. He's Leo McGarry.

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[Anonymous Coward]

He's Twirlip. Whether he's "Leo McGarry" depends on who Twirlip is.

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[Blacken00100]

Nuclear power lift vehicles will not happen for quite some time. Nuclear explosions are verboten in space, sayeth a couple of various treaties.

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhmm - we're not talking about Orion here. We're talking about Prometheus. Nothing goes boom.

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, Leo McGarry is not Twirlip, and Leo McGarry definitely is ASOT, so he's not Twirlip. QED.

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[tftp]

I can't imagine what it would take to change the orbit of an object the size of a geographical feature.

I can. Use a solar sail with size proportional to the mass of your geographical feature. Allow the asteroid to swing by the Sun, and by the time it's back it's as tame as a pet mouse. Some formulas are involved, of course, but nothing more complex than Isaac Newton could do.

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[tftp]

You are much more likely to see Soyuz launch from Kourou than from KSC. That launch site is better positioned, and French food is better too :-) Russia already signed several agreements with ESA, as I understand, and will begin construction of the Soyuz launch complex there.

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[As Seen On TV]

Use a solar sail with size proportional to the mass of your geographical feature.

What proportion, exactly? Given that we're talking about a body in an orbit considerably outside that of the Earth, it would first have to be slowed to fall in toward the sun. Doing that would require a massive amount of energy. Then, once it intersects Earth's orbit, it would be necessary to slow the body again, dumping all the kinetic energy it accumulated during its long fall toward the sun, and then again during its translation toward Earth. That would require an even greater amount of energy, but more importantly, it would have to be delivered in a relatively short amount of time -- hours at the very most.

Sorry, but a "solar sail" could never do the job, even it were possible to manufacture and erect one, say, ten million miles across.

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[tftp]

it would have to be delivered in a relatively short amount of time -- hours at the very most

Don't choose asteroids that fly too fast. Earth is 7 light-seconds from the Sun, IIRC, it's plenty of distance by all standards.

Otherwise you'd be claiming that the Deep Impact mission is impossible since it has to be completed "within hours". But obviously it is possible; there are plenty of asteroids that are well studied (at least because we don't want to be hit by them), so you only need to choose the one that you can slow down as needed.

Also, with regard to speed, the asteroid does not have to stand still relative to Earth - it will fall onto the planet then. What you want is to guide it onto some orbit around the Earth, and its speed will translate into the height of the orbit. That speed will have to be considerable - several kilometers per second. So you need that speed.

Besides, Earth's own orbital speed is 30 km/s, and it can be used since asteroid is not linked into Earth's gravity yet. In other words, if your asteroid is flying at 40 km/s it can be nicely parked in an orbit just as it is.

Sorry, but a "solar sail" could never do the job, even it were possible to manufacture and erect one, say, ten million miles across.

I must go and drown myself then, since in 1950s it was absolutely obvious that nobody can or will make more than a few transistors on one silicon crystal. Before that it was ridiculous to even suggest that one can talk to someone else over large distances. Before that nobody doubted that Earth was flat.

A solar sail is perfectly doable as long as you have a plan and you know what you are doing. Sure it would be stupid to unfold one blanket and think that it will work. But you can unfold a million of them, staggered or whatever, and any single failure will be irrelevant. Open your mind.

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[As Seen On TV]

It sounds like you didn't quite understand my point.

What we're talking about here is a minimum-energy or Hohmann transfer orbit. To enter a transfer orbit from outside the Earth's orbit, you'd apply a retrograde acceleration to slow down, causing your orbit to bend inward toward the sun. Along the way, you accelerate because you're heading "downhill," gravitationally speaking. When you intersect Earth's orbit you're just ahead of the planet (because you timed it that way), so you have to conduct another retrograde acceleration, reducing your speed to Earth-orbital velocity.

The first application of acceleration can be applied slowly if necessary. It makes the math more complicated, but it can be done, especially if you have the ability to correct your orbit as the acceleration happens. But the second acceleration has to be applied quickly, because you're basically transiting Earth at that point. You're on a hyperbolic path around the Earth, so you need to slow down, and quickly, like as in hours. Changing a body's motion in a short amount of time requires more force than changing a body's motion in a long amount of time. That's why a solar sail could never be used for something like this. It can only apply a constant amount of force, and the amount of force applied could never be sufficient to change an asteroid's motion so drastically in such a short time.

It's not just impractical, though it is impractical. It's also mathematically impossible because the force per unit time you get out of a solar sail is constant.

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[tftp]

I understand what you mean, but there is a solution; it is described here and when I read it it seemed logical enough to me. It depends, of course, on the initial orbit of the asteroid, and if it is not aligned with Earth orbit plane then it's just too bad, get another one.

It's also mathematically impossible because the force per unit time you get out of a solar sail is constant.

Unless, of course, you can control your solar sail - like, say, its surface :-)

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[archivis]

Someone should really tell the Sun.

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[Anonymous Coward]

Earth is 7 light-seconds from the Sun, IIRC

8 minutes or so.

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[Paradise Pete]

since in 1950s it was absolutely obvious that nobody can or will make more than a few transistors on one silicon crystal. Before that it was ridiculous to even suggest that one can talk to someone else over large distances. Before that nobody doubted that Earth was flat.

A specious argument. By that logic you can do *anything* you want.

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[NardofDoom]

Saturn V plans weren't destroyed. They're still on microfiche at NASA somewhere. The blueprints (dead-tree format) were donated to a Boy Scout Paper Drive.

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[As Seen On TV]

You're absolutely right. I should have been more clear. The force per unit time you get out of a solar sail is bounded. Once the "sail" is perpendicular to the sun, the force is as high as it's going to get. And it's not high enough.

As for citing a science-fiction novel as a source of actual science ...I dunno, dude. I probably wouldn't have gone down that path. Because now, you know, you've got me laughing uproariously and all that.

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[MyLongNickName]

Not all asteroids are the same. Some are, as you say, loosely collected dust. Some are thought to be near-solid iron or other heavier metals.

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately that would probably just convince people that no rocket at all is better.

Re:Bring back the Saturn rockets!

[Mark of THE CITY]

Also, as I've said before in other contexts: What company and what people would build this 1960s technology? Many supplier companies don't exist and the knowledge that exists only in people's heads is badly eroded.

50 years is bad enough

[benhocking]

The first lunar landing was July 20, 1969, so that will make this almost 50 years after the original (not 70), which is bad enough. No need to exaggerate the problem. ;)

Crappy Name

[Anonymous Coward]

So we're exploring the crew now?

Re:Crappy Name

[TrippTDF]

Kind of... NASA is raising funds by producing space porn. You'd be amazed what silicon implants look like in zero grav. (Actually, they look just the same).

Too many technical details!

[Locke2005]

The most anticipated--if least glamorous--advancements will include a means to generate power for long-duration stays in space and a diagnostic safety system to troubleshoot problems.
Wow, that's way to complicated... could you please explain that in layman's terms?

Re:Too many technical details!

[t_allardyce]

A backup hampster wheel and a colour instruction manual with space to write notes.

Re:Too many technical details!

[JohnsonWax]

Technical translation:

means to generate power: rowing machine
diagnostic safety system: Longhorn

Going OTS will save billions on the budget.

windows

[sreid]

it has windows, not a good sign

Re:windows

[Anonymous Coward]

see here instead

Tin moon syndrome

[Anonymous Coward]

"and will eventually go to the moon (between 2015 and 2020)."

(carefully puts on tin-foil hat and laughs ominously, if not a bit hysterically and says)

"So they -say-! SO THEY SAY!!"

Isn't the mission module tiny?

[hey!]

Compared to the shuttle, I mean.

So -- I'm guessing this means a whole new operational strategy, reliying on the presence of large permanent space station for orbital research facilities and unmanned launches to get big stuff up there?

Re:Isn't the mission module tiny?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, that was just a drawing. The real module is going to be much bigger!

Re:Isn't the mission module tiny?

[Richard_at_work]

The CEV would contain the living quarters and facilities for the crew, the mission module would be catered specifically to the mission, so you dont have to cater to the crew too much.

Uh, cargo space?

[kc01]

While the drawings look interesting, it has nowhere near the amount of cargo space that the space shuttle has. There's no way the vehicle in the drawing could launch a satellite of any size. Perhaps they plan on a family of these things?

Re:Uh, cargo space?

[AKAImBatman]

That's because shipping cargo on the Space Shuttle was a dumb idea. Humans have very special needs (e.g. safety, atmosphere, low G tolerance, etc.) that cargo doesn't usually have. As a result, it's usually more cost effective to split manned missions and cargo missions into two seperate craft.

With that in mind, we've already got the cargo craft in the form of the Delta, Atlas, and Titan rockets. Now all we need is a human capable craft that doesn't haul 80 metric tons of (mostly) useless material into orbit.

Re:Uh, cargo space?

[Richard_at_work]

Thats the whole point, the cargo is sent up seperately, maybe in a mission pod designed to be a cargo launcher. This way, if anything goes wrong, you jetison the CEV and leave the cargo to be destroyed. On missions that dont have heavy payloads like satillites, you arent carrying all that weight of a largely empty cargo bay up. The shuttle couldnt really be reconfigured to save weight, the CEV will be.

Re:Uh, cargo space?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't a large cargo requirement required by the armed forces one of the reasons the shuttle failed so spectacularly at being cost effective? Satellites get launched on rockets all the time and for far less than the shuttle can do it.

Re:Uh, cargo space?

[SylvesterTheCat]

How is this insightful?

I do not see anywhere in the referenced articles that it is stated that this will be used to launch satellites.

I believe that it is agreed that the shuttle is a very expensive way to launch satellites and that non-reusable rockets are cheaper.

Titanium?!

[Ironsides]

I'm just curious if anyone else noticed this one element that kept comming up.

The titanium crew module

Thats some really expensive material. But now NASA can have that titanium shuttle they always wanted. Maybe they can just melt down some old russian subs for salvage?

Re:Titanium?!

[ciroknight]

I think there are plenty SR-71's out there that are no longer in service which could commit a few tonnes of raw titanium to the project.

Secondly, who the fuck cares? Wouldn't it be cheaper to use carbon fiber composites and stronger steal alloys where needed. Sure it'll be heavier, but it's definitely a lot more cost effective. Unless NASA has the power to make the government turn over a few decommissioned SR's to them.

Re:Titanium?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure it'll be heavier, but it's definitely a lot more cost effective.

In the context of launching things into space, that's a very silly thing to say.

Re:Titanium?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Titanium itself is not that expensive - melting a sub wouldn't help; heck, the pigment in white paint is titanium dioxide. The problem with titanium is that it is so hard to work with/machine (like stainless steel).

Considering how launch costs per pound are around something's weight in gold, they're willing to spend quite a bit to bring the weight down.

Re:Titanium?!

[cmowire]

No, still makes sense.

First, thanks to Titanium drivers for golfers and a wide variety of other relatively stupid "space age" products, as well as being used all kinds of aircraft parts, it's getting much cheaper. Economies of scale. All of the surprises that made the SR-71 such a pain in the butt to build are known about.

Second, the cost per pound for launch is going to mean that the reduced weight for titanium instead of aluminum is going to pay off.

Really, part of the shuttle's problem was that it was supposed to use Titanium, not Aluminum and therefore was much heavier, requiring design changes to save weight.

Really, it's probably composites or titanum. They are both hard to work with. Titanium just handles heat better.

Re:Titanium?!

[TopSpin]

Thats some really expensive material.

The element itself is rather common; over .5% of the mass of the Earth is titanium. The high cost is due to the chemically intensive refining process. Due to incremental improvements titanium prices are relatively low and stable. Titanium has only been available in commercial quantity for about 60 years. Our ability to produce it has improved rapidly.

As such, it is no longer thought of as an exotic SR-71 class material by engineers. The A380 is 9% titanium by weight; that's just under 30 short tons of titanium per aircraft.

New processes are being developed that should help drive the cost of processing ores down substantially. There also happens to be large titanium content in moon rocks.

Re:Titanium?!

[Skal Tura]

You are forgetting something very important here... I mean something VERY VERY important.

It's just what you said weight. More weight, the costier it is to send to orbit, and i'm sure they've done their mathematics on which is cheaper solution.
And they use whatever is the cheapest method of getting titanium for sure, whether it be recycling SR-71s, or getting freshly mined :)

Oh yeah, weight in every form is problematic on space missions.
Reduced acceleration(=more fuel usage).
You need more propulsion get by on space(=more fuel usage).
When getting back: deceleration is slower(=less reliability, safety, and steerability).

Do i need to continue on? :)

about carbon fiber then.:
It's uasge is different, titanium as a metal you can weld(or atleast so i think), etc. other methods of handling it.

I think it will be cheaper on the production phase to use titanium, as with carbon fiber you cannot as easily mass produce, if i'd remember the name of that TV series about combat fighter production, some euro fighter or something it would help for you to watch it.
It contains a little bit of footage on carbon fiber "massproduction".
They laser cut the every piece, and have very complicated software to calculate what will give the most strength etc., how you need to form it and lay the pieces to get the strength out of it.

They have it robotically automated, but it still seems quite slow to produce the pieces.

And as an material? Yes, carbon fiber is VERY strong also, and it flexes, but i think in this usage they need very stiff materials.
Note that i do not know how much carbon fiber flexes, but i got into thinking it is somewhat flexing material, as in it flexes before it breaks. (ie. opposite to aluminium, which breaks rather than flexes, while indeed aluminium is quite soft metal).

read the article about it at wikipedia at Wikipedia

As you can see, Lockheed martin is an expert at producing fiber stuff already, and it is hard & difficult to mass produce.
Which means higher manufacturement costs.

Yes, i know that manufacturement costs are just one factor for NASA.

reading the wikipedia article about titanium, it somehow gives the image that titanium would be even just slightly lighter than carbon fiber, a quote: "One of titanium's most notable characteristics is that it is as strong as steel but is less than half its weight.", while in the carbon fiber article there is a statement that half the weight compared to steel.
Not very precise comparison tho.
Wikipedia Titanium Article

The bottomline is that there might be not much difference in would they use carbon fibre or titanium in the inner shell, but titanium is just slightly more suitable for it.

Do your own conclusions of what i wrote here :)

Re:Titanium?!

[NidStyles]

Large amount in moon rocks, huh? Then it makes sense as to why they would want to go to the moon, it's for materials to build space fleets, and veritech fighters. Isn't it.

Re:Titanium?!

[dspacemonkey]

Aerospace companies aren't generally worried about the initial costs (titanium being an example), but they are worried about operating costs (fuel, maintenance etc). This is because over a system's life cycle the operating costs add up to much more than the initial building cost. Put simply, it's cheaper to use an expensive material if that material allows you to save weight (and therefore fuel) or requires less maintenance.

Of course, that doesn't apply to systems you use only once.

Size Matters

[AviLazar]

So they say it could be used for longer missions - but is it big enough. From the diagram it looks like the crew has a place to sit. For any missions, especially long term, the crew really needs a place to move around.

Re:Size Matters

[Richard_at_work]

Spaces have a way of suddenly getting a lot bigger when you arent confined to standing on one single surface. Plus the entire rear of the CEV is crew space too, not jsut the seating area at the front, tho it doesnt make that clear on the images.

Re:Size Matters

[Anonymous Coward]

the crew really needs a place to move around

And not to forget the HAL 9000.

8086 processors

[StarKruzr]

It's actually 5 6502s, 4 of which operate in parallel and 1 as a backup or tie-breaker.

Re:8086 processors

[Zeussy]

and they used to have a 6th in kit form.

Space capsule with show wings

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesnt glide down, it comes down with parachutes. What is reusable? Sounds like an Apollo capsule with some pretty wings. Crew size is bested, but Apollo didn't take multiple flights to get all the pieces in orbit. What the fuck have we improved on given the last couple of decades?

Everyone is missing the obvious here.

[pair-a-noyd]

This thing looks like it can't carry much of a payload.

What about schoolbus sized satellites?

This looks like a simple space taxi, not a space truck...

Waste of money..

I think we need to go back to basics and use the simple rockets to lift huge payloads, like the Russian Energia.

The Russians space program is pretty basic and could be very effective..

First step is to keep meddling politicians out of it all...

Re:Everyone is missing the obvious here.

[Manhigh]

Its not the space shuttle, nor is it intended to be.

The space shuttle can launch 20ish tons to LEO. But what if youre just going to the space station for a crew transfer? Its about as economical as taking a semi-truck down to the drugstore instead of a 4-cylinder coupe.

We dont always needs huge payloads. The other interesting idea with this concept is that this vehicle is being designed to be launch from current launch vehicles. Given the current budgetary situation, doing more with less is vital.

Re:Everyone is missing the obvious here.

[twostar]

You should NOT launch space equipment on manned launch vehicles. The safety requirements drive the cost through the roof. There is no argument for launching satellites on the same vehicle as people, all that ends up happening is you drive the costs of both up.

It's much cheaper to launch equipment on Expendable Launch Vehicles (ELVs) and people on a small system designed to get just people up. In orbit rendezvous is easy for us now and this way you don't have to launch wasted mass in the form of quadruple safety redundancy.

Re:Everyone is missing the obvious here.

[Thu25245]

Why on earth (or in space) would you want a manned spacecraft like this to carry a payload? If you try to build a manned craft that can carry "schoolbus sized satellites" you'll end up with something like the space shuttle, only even more expensive and even less reliable.

This is a "space compact car" to carry humans up. The shuttle is a "space SUV" that is horribly inefficient as a cargo platform or a people-mover. "Space trucks" should be (and are) unmanned.

Re:Everyone is missing the obvious here.

[zippthorne]

I believe you misspelled "Proton" as "Energia." No point in using the russian hypothetical shuttle-copy to do what the shuttle already does. The russians cancelled that project for a reason.

Re:Everyone is missing the obvious here.

[clean_stoner]

This thing looks like a taxi and not a truck because that's exactly what it is. It's not designed to carry huge payloads like satellites, as an earlier poster already pointed out. This is exactly what it says it is: a crew vehicle. It's also designed to be moduler, so if they need a lot of space, say for food and excercise room for a 9 month trip to Mars, the launch into low earth orbit and rendezvous with other modules that have been put there by other heavy-lifting rockets.

Re:Everyone is missing the obvious here.

[tftp]

Energiya probably still can be built if needed, it's a relatively recent design and it flew already. But here is the reason that you hinted at: there is no need.

Re:Everyone is missing the obvious here.

[archipunk]

As a number of other people have pointed out already, cargo doesn't have the same needs as a human crew, and there are already boosters that can serve the "space truck" role and do so effectively.

This vehicle is meant for moving crew (i.e. humans) to LEO. It's not trying to be a space SUV that tries to be all things for all purposes.

Schoolbus sized satellites can be lifted directly by existing boosters, and don't need a shuttle to carry them.

It's not a waste of money; and it is back to basics.

NOS!

[HepCatA]

This thing has got to work. I mean, according the pic they have in the PM article, it has NOS! (see Nitrous-oxide mono-propulsion system)

Put a Type R sticker on it and I'll bet it'll get another 15hp at the rear, uh, wheels!

Re:NOS!

[StratoChief66]

Boy, a whole 15 horsepower improvement over the thousands it already generates? Also, does this sticker contain state of the art nanotechnology in order to improve power without, well, doing anything?

One small step for man...

[part_of_you]

One giant leap for the fuel overlords. This appears to be one of those things that fills the space for our belief in our system, all the while serving it's purpose to perpetuate it's existance.

I say this because we already have a way of using hydrogen as fuel. We just don't. And with all the inovations in the car industry, why would we want to?

Re:One small step for man...

[mmkkbb]

I say this because we already have a way of using hydrogen as fuel. We just don't

Hydrogen ICEs currently have too little range. There is also no efficient way to produce hydrogen (yet).

Re:One small step for man...

[part_of_you]

You are correct. There is much to be done with hydrogen. We just are not dependant of hydrogen for fuel (yet). Why are we waiting?

I mean, I know why America is waiting, but why all the other countries too?

Re:One small step for man...

[mmkkbb]

American car companies are doing research with hydrogen vehicles. GM and Ford both have experimental Hydrogen ICEs and/or fuel cells.

BMW got a hydrogen-powered race car up to 186 MPH. Not really where the issue is, since hydrogen ICEs aren't all that different from gasoline engines, last I checked.

The CEV is a step back

[Bruha]

If the device cannot land like a plane it has no hopes of recovering anything from space.

Still has to survive re-entry so losing the ability to land like a plane is a great loss. While it makes it possible to land anywhere I dont believe our money is best put to use in this fashion.

Re:The CEV is a step back

[Richard_at_work]

How many times has the Shuttle been used to return large payloads from space - from what I can tell, never! It was sold on that idea (stealing enemy sats) but never used.

Re:The CEV is a step back

[AKAImBatman]

If the device cannot land like a plane it has no hopes of recovering anything from space.

The Big Gemini (upon which this design appears to be based) used a parawing. This gave it the best of both parachute and landing gear systems. i.e. Slow rate of descent and horizontal flight path.

Parawing Video
Big Gemini

Re:The CEV is a step back

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because if the shuttle WAS used to steal enemy sats we would know all about it right? Because that's the kind of thing they put in the press release.

Re:The CEV is a step back

[Schaffner]

Actually, the shuttle was used to recover a few satellites that had either gone to the wrong orbit or that had broken down after being on orbit.

Re:The CEV is a step back

[Wyatt Earp]

The Long Duration Exposure Facility and a handful of satellites before Challenger was lost.

Re:The CEV is a step back

[rebelcool]

The shuttle was originally sold on the idea of being able to retrieve broken sats and have them brought to earth for fixing, then relaunched.

However, shuttle flight costs exceeded projections enough that it cost less to simply put a new sat up into space, and put the malfunctioning one into the ocean.

Re:The CEV is a step back

[cmowire]

Not entirely true, and most certainly temporarily true.

Often times, it's better to do an experiment in space and ship the results down to earth for better analysis. Stuff like scanning tunneling microsocopes, x-ray machines, MRI machines, etc. are all too heavy for space.

Still, this CEV's design awful, knowing that. If they really want to work on downmass without a seperate expendable capsule landing, they can probably launch it with a skeleton crew and land it with as much downmass as it can safely land with. And if they get the launch costs down, they'll probably end up with a new fleet of crewed vehicles anyway.

Re:The CEV is a step back

[waveclaw]

If the device cannot land like a plane it has no hopes of recovering anything from space.

Anything? Like people? I appears that Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo (not to mention today's Russian Soyuz) provide strong counter-evidence.

Still has to survive re-entry so losing the ability to land like a plane is a great loss.

Why? How? Last time I checked, meteorites didn't come with Easy Land Brand(tm) wings built by the lowest bidder. Anything with sufficient heat sheilding will survive re-entry, even rocks. For soft things like people and sample containers, you just need cushions and/or parachutes. (If you've flown economy class recently, a wing-assisted landing can feel a lot like slaming into the ground from orbit.)

The wings on the last shuttle flight burned off over Texas. The capsule-like crew comparment survived quite longer than the wings and their tiles did. In fact, the greater surface area of a wing, a useless part in the near-perfect vacuum of Earth orbit, increases the risk of collision with a micrometeor or space junk.

I still don't understand this fetish of Airplane^H^H^HAerospace Engineers to put wings on spacecraft. Yes, if you need to fly in air an airfoil will generate lift. But, almost nowhere in space has air, excepting near some of these nifty things called planets. Once we're away from the planets and exploring space, wings are dead weight holding us back.

I, for one, welcome our new wingless Crew Vehicle Overloads.

Re:The CEV is a step back

[Anonymous Coward]

If you try to reenter Earth's atmosphere from lunar mission or further in a purely ballistic capsule (like a Mercury, Vostock, or Corona capsule) you will experience up to 20g of deceleration--kinda hard on a human body. The Apollo capsule (as well as the Soyuze which was designed for lunar missions) are actually lifting bodies. They don't generate much lift, but enough to bring the g-forces down to a tolerable 6g.

Any vehicle that is returning to Earth from further than LEO will have to generate some lift. I think a lifting body (either airplane-ish shaped or saucer shaped like the Japanese are designing) with parachutes (parafoils, Rogallo wings) for the final landing is a good compromise. You have the range and accuracy to avoid an expensive and dangerous ocean recovery (remember Gus Grissom?) and also avoid dangerous high-speed, dead-stick runway landings.

Holy crap -- that's MY LEGO set!

[IronChefMorimoto]

I swear to God that photo on the Popular Mechanics website and Wikipedia article looks like a damned LEGO set.

At least NASA won't have to put much engineering into future spacesuits, what with the limited arm/leg mobility of LEGO peeps.

IronChefMorimoto

Re:Holy crap -- that's MY LEGO set!

[natrius]

It's all about tradeoffs. Who needs artificial gravity when the spacesuit feet stick to the ground?

who cares??

[eestar]

why do we care?? I mean seriously why do i care what we are going to do in space? Why are we geeks and why do all geeks have interests in the same geeky stuff? Lets make slashdot cool together. Lets talk about American Idol... I cant, do it. I like space more than pretty pop singers. whats wrong with us??

Re:who cares??

[drxenos]

I don't feel there is anything wrong with us. It's the rest of the world. I LOVE being a geek.

Re:who cares??

[Nevenmrgan]

Here's an apostrophe:

'

Maybe that'll help.

X-33!?!? VentureStar!?!?

[jzarling]

What about the X-33 and the VentureStar? Couldn't we just restart that program? The design is already worked out and the protoype of the X-33 was well on it way to completion.

Re:But...

[StarKruzr]

The current shuttle runs on the equivalent of 5 C64s.

Articles missing something

[zymano]

Where is the lifting rocket for the CEV ? Can't find images.

Re:Articles missing something

[cmowire]

The intention is that it be launchable on any man-rated expendable booster... either Atlas, Delta, Ariane, or maybe even one of the Russian boosters...

Which is really not the world's worst idea. Part of the problem with changing the shuttle is that you had to fly a manned mission with a quite irreplacable shuttle on top if you wanted to try something.

NEWFLASH

[Nerd Cooties]

In response to the shuttle replacement design, the DOD is announcing retirement all of its jets and replacement with biplanes.

For the Nth time

[Ars-Fartsica]

How many times have we seen "shuttle replacements"??? And Popular Mechanics/Science has just turned into military industrial porn. Do even 1% of their "artist renderings" of nuclear fighter aircraft or nanotube-hulled destroyers or hypersonic submarines (yes, all improbable/impossible, that is my point) ever make it even into the clay mockup phase?

New Shuttle = Small!

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks kinda cramped.

soyuz ripoff

[wes33]

Have a look here and tell me this design isn't just a prettier soyuz system ...

If we can put a man on the moon....

[slapout]

....why can't we build a website to survive a slashdotting?

Re:If we can put a man on the moon....

[Short Circuit]

We can. This site does it, constantly.

Re:If we can put a man on the moon....

[Short Circuit]

Well, it's true!

And they even use Perl, which I often hear is unscalable as a dynamic-content technology. Add that to database connectivity, another potential bottleneck, and you have to admit they decent job, in most respects.

Now, if only they wouldn't keep pushing beta code at us, we'd be all set...We seem to be the proving ground. When was the last time Slashcode had a "release", anyway?

To the moon by 2015?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, deam on. The US economy will suffer a comprehensive meltdown much earlier than that.

The real history of the Delta Clipper

[Baldrson]

Truax's Sea Dragon would have been a better replacement.

My experience with Truax was to get him to cross the street (literally) and meet with Ron Packard -- the congressman who sponsored the Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990. The LSPA was signed into law. I testified before Congress on follow-up legislation for commercial incentives. While in Washington DC, I met with Dana Rohrabacher and told him of Truax's desire to do a trans-Pacific rocket-delivery system for over-night "FedEx" type services based on a scaled down version of the Sea Dragon -- and indicated the commercial incentives legislation could clear the way for private funding by removing the threat of government competition. Rohrabacher then initiated the DC-X program within his district, which was government funded. I happened to be present at a meeting between a group of investors and a private launch service company (intending on commercializing the MX-missile's production lines for launch services) the day the DC-X funding was announced. The investors decided not to bother competing with the government's deep pockets and terminated the meeting upon hearing the announcement. The potential of DC-X to create new "FedEx-like" services across the Pacific was mentioned in the press.

I'm gunna build a shuttle..

[Mynorrrr]

Great!!! Now where's my old mindstorms kit and the rest of the kids Lego... What are these Bionicle things? Hey, I can build a space suit as well!!

But the Chinese are using a rehashed Soyuz

[tjstork]

The Chinese are using essentially a modified Soyuz design for their manned space program. For the USA to pull the plug on the shuttle and do more of what it did with Gemini and Apollo makes a great deal of sense.

Don't go to the moon, blow it up

[Is0m0rph]

Like Arnold Schwarzenegger was saying on Howard Stern a couple weeks ago. The moon is not good for anything. The tides are a nuisance, most crime is committed during a full moon, female cycles follow the moon, no need for moonlight when we have fire and electricity. He said if he can't get government backing to blow up the moon he would go up there using his own money and blow it up himself.

Re:Don't go to the moon, blow it up

[Anonymous Coward]

How would he blow up a sphere of rock the size of the moon? Use his ego?

Re:Don't go to the moon, blow it up

[Anonymous Coward]

ARNOLD SMASH!

Re:Don't go to the moon, blow it up

[Anonymous Coward]

IMOA, is that you?

Eeeewwww! Why??

[rsax]

They're using Windows!!

Duct tape?

[loconet]

Is it just me or does this image of the model look like the Propultion Stage is being held together by duct tape? I mean, I know duct tape can achieve some unbelievable things but this might be pushing it just a bit no?

Space taxi makes sense

[jabber01]

The problem with a jack-of-all-trades vehive is that it is a master of none. We can already get heavy payloads up into space with more conventional rockets, like the Energia you mention. What we need is a way to effectively get people up there too. It seems that this is the primary goal of this CEV. The payload will get there one way, and the crew another. Then, they don't have to bring the truck back home empty all the time.

A reusable crew vehicle beats a capsule any day, no?

And what sense is there in using a payload lifting rocket to throw a crew into orbit? Now THAT is a waste of money.

nixon canned it, inflation killed it.

[cheekyboy]

1. nixon canned it because he let the gold standard
come back, ie gold was legal again and free for market finance.

2. this caused uber inflation, etc.. etc..

3. the soviets made a secret deal for usa to go, and soviets didnt need to go there, as they alredy did with robotic rovers FIRST!!

Listen guys, if us wont release ALL SECRETS re JFK, then darn, do you really think they will ever release any ww2 secrets, moon secrets etc...? These guys in charge dont care for history and keeping things open, they are greedy pricks that just want stuff for their own sake no matter how it ruins humanity because to them, "if your not with us, your against us"

Shuttle Replacement

[lateralus_1024]

I hope it's smaller and runs cooler than my Dell Desktop Replacement

Oh God, not another conspiracy theorist

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it would be useful to read some news now and again. The X-Prize is akin to taking a go-kart to an F1 race. Sure, you can go around the track, but you're going to get smoked by the big boys. Let's not have any delusions about what Scaled Composites has done. The were suborbital and very low speed. They need another 17,000 times more energy to get into the big leagues.

Secondly, NASA is working with Bigelow. Last time I checked all his materials were directly transfered from NASA. He's taking that work and commercializing it since some senators didn't think NASA should spend their money on it.

Thirdly, you cite one example of NASA using the shuttle to launch a satellite and there are more, I am sure. However, that completely ignores the tens of other satellites launched using ordinary commerical launchers! Turn off your selective memory please.

Re:Oh God, not another conspiracy theorist

[khallow]

I think it would be useful to read some news now and again. The X-Prize is akin to taking a go-kart to an F1 race. Sure, you can go around the track, but you're going to get smoked by the big boys. Let's not have any delusions about what Scaled Composites has done. The were suborbital and very low speed. They need another 17,000 times more energy to get into the big leagues.

Actually, they need roughly 20 times as much energy. It's not easy and the current design doesn't scale, but you exaggerate grossly. The "big boys" aren't making manned vehicles. Instead, they're mooching government contracts since after all that is their business model. Commercially, the Space Shuttle (the only current manned vehicle design) couldn't compete with Scale Composites proposed "go-kart", Spaceship Two. It's too expensive and too complex for what you get out of it.

Secondly, NASA is working with Bigelow. Last time I checked all his materials were directly transfered from NASA. He's taking that work and commercializing it since some senators didn't think NASA should spend their money on it.

Uh huh. A lot of NASA ideas have been recycled by Bieglow, Scaled Composites, and others. But you can't just "directly transfer" a NASA idea and make money. They need a lot of work to become usable. And I happen to agree with those senators. Bigelow can commericalize whatever he got from NASA. NASA and its clique of core contractors (Boeing, Lockheed Martin, etc) have shown themselves to be incapable of that sort of developement. If Bigelow can take NASA ideas, which otherwise would disappear down the wastebasket like they normally do, and make money off of it, then he actually is doing something that justifies NASA's technology programs. I think you should be more respectful.

Thirdly, you cite one example of NASA using the shuttle to launch a satellite and there are more, I am sure. However, that completely ignores the tens of other satellites launched using ordinary commerical launchers! Turn off your selective memory please.

You ignore NASA's role in setting up the decades old oligopoly in commercial launch services. Surely it's not healthy to have one or two US competitors for a particular category of launch vehicle (based on weight to orbit mostly), but NASA was quite happy with that ever since the 70's or so.

Re:X-33!?!? VentureStar!?!?

[CompressedAir]

The relevant phrase here is: "Don't throw good money after bad."

The X-33 is an example of how NOT to design a good spacecraft. If your design relies on not one, but several totally unproven systems (the main two being a composite fuel tank and Aerospike engines) it should not surprise you when it doesn't pan out.

My personal jury is still out on this Lockheed design, but remember: just because it has a lifting body does not mean it has anythin design-wise in common with the Shuttle.

Well no.

[tjstork]

NASA's failures with the Space Shuttle were because the system was never fully funded. The original Shuttle as envisioned would have a 15 billion dollar development cost and would have been completely re-usable. There would have been seven shuttles, multiple assembly buildings and launch pads. At that scale, yes, the shuttle could have hit its original targets. But, they didn't get the money, some things slipped.

Shuttle

Re:Well no.

[khallow]

And what would these shuttles be doing? I think a good part of the reason that the Shuttles never were fully funded is because the program never had a real goal.

Re:Well no.

[tjstork]

The shuttles would have been a commercial spacelift operation, in addition to building a space station, the giant mars colonization mission orbiting space craft, etc.

The idea was that if you had a cheap, re-usable space system, you could do a lot more with it. Unfortunately for the Shuttle managers, they didn't get the money that they really needed to develop the thing, and, various administrations along the way found it more politically expedient to shift development costs to operating costs.

Of course, NASA did make some mistakes. I think everyone has roundly criticized them for putting the shuttle on the side of the boosters. They also couldn't actually develop the heat shield the way they wanted, so they settled for the tiles instead. But, believe it or not, the Shuttle actually came in only 4% or so over budget.

It's easy to look at past NASA endeavors in light of the gigantic clusterfuck that is ISS, but the guys that did the Shuttle design were your Apollo Veterans and X-15 veterans. They knew what they were doing.

Re:Well no.

[khallow]

The shuttles would have been a commercial spacelift operation, in addition to building a space station, the giant mars colonization mission orbiting space craft, etc.

This is the problem with the Shuttle. There simply isn't enough current business to justify three shuttles much less seven operating at 40-50 launches per year. So you would need to create new codependent programs. Frankly, I suspect that's exactly why NASA was so ambitious with the Shuttle. Who would shirk NASA funds for these additional projects since they would be necessary to keep NASA constituencies happy?

But NASA's gamble failed and we've been paying the price for the last thirty years.

Better than the Shuttle

[JJ]

Because the costs of getting into space hasn't changed much, this is really just a reusable capsule which will be launched on a disposable rocket. The other components will be launched on seperate disposable rockets (or one day, built in space.) It's more efficent than the shuttle, much cheaper and safer. Splashdowns used to be my most favorite part of the space mission and it looks like we'll be having them again. Probably not nationally televised though.

Leaked CEV Photos

[s-orbital]

I am privy to some leaked images of Lockheed's CEV prototype. The images are posted on this website: http://www.uline.com/Browse_Listing_409.asp
If someone asks, you didn't hear about this from me.

Out-of-flight-path military requirements again

[Anonymous Coward]

They need high cross-tracking ability because, once again, this is going to be used by the US military.

Exactly as happened with the old shuttle, same bollocks in the requirements, same bollocks in the design, repeated.

Poor guy

[ggvaidya]

Relax, it's called geek burn-out, and it happens to all of us. Take a few days off to enjoy the unspoilt beauty of the Real World, nature, life and people. Make new friends, explore new places, find out new stuff.

When you're once again secure in your geekiness, come back to us, cleansed and pure.

"Nitrous-oxide mono-propulsion system"....

[Anonymous Coward]

"Nitrous-oxide mono-propulsion system"....

Propulsion... riiiight. We all know what's going on here. Soon there will be a NASA proposal for studying the inflation of party baloons in microgravity environments and you'll be hearing techno music blasting on NASA tv during the missions.

ok..n/m...bad joke ;)

Ahhh, the words I love hear ...

[SengirV]

Low Earth orbit - Nothing gets hunaity excited like knowing the jets we fly are only a couple dozen miles away from our manned space missions. YAWN!!!!!

CEV link

[Jodka]

Here is mirror.

Oh, God, not another ethically bankrupt jerk

[Baldrson]

Malcolm Baldridge established the Office of Commercial Space in response to difficulties he had with NASA accepting private overtures at a Commercially Developed Space Facility (CDSF) aka the Industrial Space Facility (ISF) -- a man-tended orbital laboratory, entirely financed by private capital -- which would have been in orbit in the late 1980s if NASA had merely signed on as an "anchor tenant" -- procuring space on the laboratory as a customer -- as would have been allowed by Reagan policy and later law.

NASA won't let anyone else develop privately created technologies so how do you think Bigelow was supposed to get his hands on the inflatable space station technology?

NASA has to give token support to companies like Bigelowe's and companies like Bigelowe's have to maintain a friendly relationship with NASA. But when NASA gets a chance to stab them in the back due to widespread corrupt views such as you espouse here -- eg: characterizing those who point out ethical conflicts of interest and actual lapses among the powerful and unaccountable as "conspiracy theorists" (connotation: insane) -- they very likely do it. You don't understand that the effect of this likelihood is to drive private capital out since it is already dealing with enough technical risk and any addition political risk renders the investment nonviable. Or perhaps you do understand and you are working for NASA.

More images here!!

[IdJit]

NASA Space Exploration Timeline

Re:More images here!!

[The Cisco Kid]

Cool information, but what a horridly and awkwardly designed site. Instead of text for the *text*, it has to be embedded in flash, which makes it too small and hard to read.

It boggles me as to exactly what failure of understanding leads to web 'sites' entirely embedded in flash. (Or java, a other closed proprietary and ill-suited platforms)

Where to get the images

[diegoq]

I was excited to hear about this new satellite imaging source. After some digging, I found that Space Imaging will be marketing the resulting images:

Space Imaging announced today it will soon offer satellite ground station access and sell imagery from Indian Space Research Organization's (ISRO) newest satellite CARTOSAT-1 (P-5).

From Space Imaging Press Release. There's also a high-res image of the launch site.

Anyone notice?

[Anonymous Coward]

...that one of the members of a bidding team listed on the Wiki site was ARES Corporation? Does this scare any other Shadowrunners??

This would work well with space elevators

[WillAffleckUW]

The SEV is put into orbit - once.

The space elevators bring up the fuel mass (split by solar cells in orbit), the solar cells, and the supplies, which are then transferred from the space elevator orbital end to the space station (or the spacecraft going to Mars to find Oil).

But what will they do with the military space shuttle?

Where's my sexy space craft?

[Pitr]

I know it's not actually relavent to the space program, but I honestly thought the next space craft after the shuttle would be more... asthetically pleasing.

Then again I also thought it would be much better, completely re-useable, one piece... maybe have some phasers or something...

C'mon, you all thought the same thing!

Latest episode of the story...

[jeti]

As it turns out, Burt Rutan is still fighting for the right to even present the design of the SpaceShip II to Virgin. He's blocked by export regulations, because his joyride shuttles are now considered to have military relevance.

Re:Latest episode of the story...

[randall_burns]

And the US government wonders why the US has a $600 Billion annual trade deficit.

Lack of creativity

[0xABADC0DA]

So the new shuttle will look like the top of the old shuttle and sit on a giant disposable rocket. How completely lame.

There is a huge waste of fuel right at the ground, since the gravity is much stronger and it is starting at a standstill. So why are we still wasting all this fuel that is in the rocket to get it moving? Why haven't we come up with something better, such as a freakin' launchpad that springs upward to give extra momentum? Or a fuel hose or something. Okay those wouldn't really work, but there has to be something better than just using vast amounts of fuel.

NASA has always been a separate civilian agency:

[McSpew]

Further, NASA was a part of the United States Air Force at the time, not a separate entity with its own (very limited ) budget.

Erm, what?!?

NASA has always been a separate, civilian agency. It grew out of the old National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), itself a civilian organization.

The Air Force did have its own space program during the late 1950s and early 1960s (around the same time as the creation of NASA), which centered around the X-20 Dyna-Soar and the Manned Orbiting Laboratory. The USAF even built an astronaut school at Edwards Air Force Base, and Chuck Yeager was the commandant. However, that whole program lost steam in the mid 1960s and was abandoned by 1969. This led the USAF to send its best remaining astronaut pilots to NASA, and convert the school into a test pilot school.

Even so, many of the most famous astronauts from the Apollo days were not USAF pilots. Neil Armstrong was a civilian (he worked for NACA in the X-15 program), and Buzz Aldrin, Jim Lovell and Alan Shepard were US Navy pilots.

The difference between then and now, in terms of budgets is this: First, the entire nation was deathly afraid of the Red Menace and national pride was on the line (nobody wanted go to sleep by the light of a Commie moon); Second, a very charismatic US President had staked his legacy on the US getting to the moon before the end of the 1960s (this at a time when the US had only put one man in space, and briefly, at that) before being assassinated and leaving the entire nation in shock.

Congress voted big dollars to the space program because it helped fight the blasted Commies, and because Lyndon Johnson, among others, helped spread the pork to important states (California, Texas, Missouri, New York, Florida, etc.). It also helped the nation pay its final respects to JFK. By the early 1970s, however, Americans began to question the investment in the space program, regularly saying things such as, "I don't think it makes sense to spend so much money to send people to the moon when we have so many problems here on Earth that we need to deal with first, such as hunger, pollution, disease, poverty, etc."

You made some valid points in the rest of your piece, but your glaring fallacy about NASA's status kind of undermines your credibility, don'tcha think?

Modern Safety Requirements?

[reality-bytes]

Do modern safety requirements = Shuttle?

One glaring safety issue that I can see is that the Shuttle lacks the crew-saving 'abort modes' that Saturn V and even Gemini / Mecury had ie: The Launch Escape Tower.

If anything had gone wrong ie: vehicle exploded on pad / during initial climb, the Launch Escape System would drag the capsule clear of the rocket and then land using the normal parachute system.

The Shuttle has very limited launch abort modes and very optimistic ideas about how the crew could leave the vehicle. Ultimately, if the Shuttle's main tank burnt fast / exploded on the pad, that would be curtains for the crew. As Challenger demonstrated, the Shuttle is vulnerable during ascent too where a catastrophic failure of the SRBs would destroy the entire vehicle and crew.

If you search around, you can find the NASA descriptions of both Shuttle and Saturn V abort modes and just in the way they read, you can see that the Saturn V escape system was a *serious* concept whereas the Shuttle abort modes are no more than lip-service to any significant malfunction.

Although the NASA launch escape systems were never tested on an exploding rocket, the Russian space program did demonstrate on a couple of occasions that the escape towers (I think on N1 boosters) worked. This is the same launch escape system used on manned Soyuz flights to this day.

If someone told me I had to ride in a rocket to LEO tommorow, I would choose a Soyuz flight over a Shuttle flight purely for the ammount of 'options' provided throughout the flight.

Re:Modern Safety Requirements?

[cmowire]

Ah, well do remember that the capsules were designed when it was frighteningly likely that the booster would blow up.

Stuff has gotten more reliable. Remember, airliners have no parachutes or ejection seats.

It's just that the shuttle isn't reliable enough to have made the transition right now....

Re:Modern Safety Requirements?

[reality-bytes]

I know its nit-picking but most air-liners don't launch vertically or re-enter the atmosphere at 15-17,000mph ;-)

Re:Modern Safety Requirements?

[Inominate]

Maybe I'm missing your point but
How would any kind of abort system have saved EITHER space shuttle? These aren't boosters that start burning on the pad, there was no way to know that an abort was even needed before it was too late.

Re:Modern Safety Requirements?

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember, airliners have no parachutes or ejection seats.

They could easily have ones for the crew, but obviously that'd be of little benefit to passengers. They are not left out because there wouldn't be potential use for them, but since the amount of people to save is too big for those approaches to be practical. So while safety has improved, airplanes are much safer than rockets/shuttle, it's much more practical and useful to have personal escape mechanisms for spacecrafts.

Re:Modern Safety Requirements?

[tftp]

Airliners have other safety requirements. For example, a four-engine airplane can fly on two engines and survivably land on one. You are much better off inside an airliner than outside.

Re:Modern Safety Requirements?

[tftp]

The escape tower is jettisoned when it is no longer needed - such as when the vehicle is high enough so that just a release of the capsule is sufficient to move it away from the stack. The capsule will land on its own, so no further action is needed.

Were the Shuttle equipped with a life support capsule where all the people are to stay during launch and landing, they all would have survived:

Challenger explosion would simply throw the capsule away from the stack. Being rugged enough to survive even a ballistic landing, it would sustain no damage whatsoever and could land normally, using its own parachutes. We know that some astronauts survived even within Challenger's cabin until they hit the water. They'd all survive in a capsule; probably they'd be just bruised by the seat belts.

Columbia breakdown would simply release the capsule from the rest of the debris, and it would have landed normally; people inside would not be even inconvenienced.

Re:Modern Safety Requirements?

[nolesrule]

The momentum of an out of control spin and descent on a Columbia pod would have caused huge amounts of g-forces. Would the astronauts have been able to survice that? What about the heat from re-entry? How much heat was still there? Would there havve been a need for an extra heat shield around this emergency pod? Would a system be needed to stabilize the pod if the spin was so high that parachutes would be torn to shreds?

Actually, that would apply to Challenger as well, since there was debris all over the place with the capability of destroying parachutes.

Re:Modern Safety Requirements?

[tftp]

The momentum of an out of control spin and descent on a Columbia pod would have caused huge amounts of g-forces. Would the astronauts have been able to survice that?

This is a non-problem because the same G-forces would have destroyed the aluminum framework of the Shuttle by then, and the debris then could spin all they want, and the capsule would aerostabilize itself within seconds (note that capsules are not spheres, this is exactly for stabilization purposes.)

What about the heat from re-entry? How much heat was still there? Would there havve been a need for an extra heat shield around this emergency pod?

Depends on how much shielding you put on. All US and Russian capsules were/are designed for full thermal profile, from the orbit to the ground and for worst possible path. The heat shield does not seem to be a large factor as long as you don't want it to be reusable.

Would a system be needed to stabilize the pod if the spin was so high that parachutes would be torn to shreds?

No, because the parachute won't open until close to the ground. Practically speaking, the parachute can be safely deployed from anywhere higher than 300 feet. Note that capsules use SRB assist at the moment of landing, so they can take a higher landing speed than your normal skydiver can afford.

In case of Columbia, it fell apart at 10 miles and Mach 18. The capsule would be merrily falling through the atmosphere for minutes before even considering to open the parachute. It would cross several states in doing so. There would be absolutely no danger to the parachute - it is folded inside the capsule (and protected as well as astronauts themselves) until it is deployed.

In case of Challenger, the force of explosion would push the capsule miles away, and it would be falling into the ocean also for minutes (as debris did) and quite far from the main debris field. Of course if the emergency escape tower is still attached it would be activated, and then the capsule would be taken to safety, really far away (tens of miles) from the debris cloud.

So in both cases the failure of the vehicle is very far, time-wise and distance-wise, from the moment of deployment of the main parachute. And you are free to deploy at the last possible moment, thus minimizing its exposure to falling debris. In any case it beats being contained to a crew cabin with no escape.

"go to the moon"...no, no it won't

[GnuPooh]

It will be mired it cost over-runs and evaluately be cancelled. There's a small chance it may get to orbit, but it will NEVER get to the moon. There's just not the political will to make it happen. Most likely it will never make it out of the design phase.

In 50 years, after 12 revisions and cancelations the U.S. will return to space.

More about nuclear rockets

[serutan]

Here is a GREAT article detailing a hypothetical design for a fully resuable, non-polluting nuclear powered rocket based on the Saturn-V form factor. The rocket would carry 1000 TONS of cargo to orbit and return intact to a powered landing.

Briefly, the nuclear rocket would use a gaseous core reactor called a "nuclear lightbulb" -- a quartz bulb containing a cloud of uranium gas, which would self-heat by fission to about 25000 C, glowing intensely in ultraviolet. Liquid hydrogen propellant pumped around the outside of the bulb would absorb the UV and become a superheated gas that shoots out of the rocket nozzle.

This is not a mere lifting body, it's a complete vehicle, a true rocket ship right out of the golden age of sci-fi, with enough power to lift an entire space hotel in one shot, or a hugely equipped interplanetary mission. Great stuff.

What it looks like

[ThePlague]

It looks like the PT Cruiser version of an Apollo capsule; slick stylings with a Geo Metro frame.

t/Space still in the competition?

[FleaPlus]

NASA will choose this vehicle scematic or opt for the yet-released Northrop Grumman design in 2008.

Another company competing for NASA's contract to build the CEV is t/Space, which includes a number of notable members of the commercial spaceflight community, such as Burt Rutan, Elon Musk, Gary Hudson, and others. Their approach is expectedly much more market-oriented than Lockheed or Northrop-Grumman's, with the goal of constructing a self-sustaining commercial space infrastructure (like we have for aviation).

For the curious, midterm and final reports from the various competitors to NASA on their space exploration designs are available here. T/Space's midterm report is a particularly insightful read, detailing their plan for how commercial ventures and NASA can best cooperate to foster our access to space.

However, from the wiki article: "Some news reports in mid-March 2005, stemming from an interview with New Scientist, have reported that t/Space intends to withdraw from the competition, citing a high paperwork burden; however, no announcement of a withdrawal has yet been made by t/Space."

Personally, I really hope they're still in the running.

Re:X-33!?!? VentureStar!?!?

[cmowire]

Indeed. I had to be reminded of this.

Really, the only shame about the X-33 is that we really ought to sit down and answer the question of if the whole mach-performance-problem in an aerospike engine is going to be a problem or not.

Darn Lesdixia

[Anonymous Coward]

IMAO, is that you?

You have to be kidding me?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Saturn V was more advanced than this thing, Blah! Goverment should not be in charge of anything that requires innovation. Because when the are things seem to go backwards in time, as we can plainly see.

Evil Man

"Canals" on Mars

[LionMage]

Oh, and here is a link to a brief article about the so-called canals on Mars. It mentions Lowell, the U.S. astronomer who spent much of his life looking for these canals, but it also credits Schiaparelli with starting the furor over canals on Mars in the first place. (My first exposure to this issue was Carl Sagan's TV series Cosmos -- I think it's discussed in the episode entitled "Blues for a Red Planet." There's a companion book also called Cosmos which gives even more detail about the history of astronomical observation of Mars.)

Re:"Canals" on Mars

[CaptainAvatar]

Cosmos was probably my first introduction to the canals too - I always loved the (admittedly slightly cheesy) panning shot over the dusty, dry canal and dead Martian city, to the strains of Holst's Mars. I literally cried like a child when I heard of Sagan's death, he was a childhood hero of mine. But anyway - the best accounts of the canals controversy that I have read were in Michael J. Crowe, The Extraterrestrial Life Debate, 1750-1900 (New York: Dover, 1999) and especially Stephen J. Dick, The Biological Universe: The Twentieth Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate and the Limits of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). If you like electronic books (and I don't!), this is less scholarly but very good, and of course there's Percival Lowell's 1895 classic, Mars .

Well, in any case

[StarKruzr]

this is neither a winged vehicle nor a capsule, it's a lifting body (presumably one which does not create enough lift to glide to a landing). I'd say this is progress just in terms of spaceframe because you drop the added dead weight of wings while retaining atmospheric maneuverability.

So we're both wrong. :)

Re:Well, in any case

[uberdave]

I'd like to see them use a parawing. This gives them the glide-ability, and steerability with only a fraction of the weight of solid wings.

Re:Maybe roll them in a ball

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe if you knew how to spell "meant", that egg wouldn't be running down your face right now.

Holy shit. That's genius.

[StarKruzr]

Very sad that it'll never happen.

The difference is...

[CarpetShark]

The difference is that this still looks a little like a shuttle, so they can pretend that it's actually a spaceship, and therefore:

1. This is a progression of the space shuttle program, rather than an abandonment of it.
2. They really are ahead of the russians etc. with their primitive rockets.

Re:The difference is...

[Nerull]

Well, the russians are working on a lifting body-style capsule as well, called 'klipper'. It looks even less like a shuttle than this though.

What LM's concept does remind me of is the Hermes design.

Re:The difference is...

[LiquidCoooled]

Heres a really good run down of the kliper.

Looks like the nose cone section of the shuttle without any wings or tail

Doesn't that fucking kill you?

[StarKruzr]

The one in Houston is exposed to the environment as well. I found myself staring at her and thinking "holy shit, what a waste." There was grass growing between the sections of the ship. Sucks.

ugh - where are the sexy ships?

[Drunken_Jackass]

I think it's great we're replacing the shuttle. It was great design to turn the corner from rockets and capsules to something else. But the new concepts lack something, i don't know...sexy. We need another leap like there was from rockets to the shuttle that not only provides significant techincal and safety benefits, but also inspires and reinvigorrates the public to back NASA.

Re:ugh - where are the sexy ships?

[FleaPlus]

But the new concepts lack something, i don't know...sexy.

You were expecting racing stripes and low-riding wheels, perhaps?

Re:ugh - where are the sexy ships?

[Drunken_Jackass]

No, something more along these lines:

SpaceShipOne

Re:Holy shit. That's genius.

[Moofie]

Even sadder that the reason it won't happen, is because the plan was endorsed by Newt Gingrich.

The real world of space launches

[Anonymous Coward]

The Slashdot crowd never seems to be aware of what is happening in the real world. The preference is to spout off and pretend to be experts when they have no grasp of any facts.

For example, this week Boeing and Lockheed, the two main rocket booster builders in the US, decided to merge their efforts and build a joint production facility. See http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0505/01eelv/

Although this article dosen't say so, the reason they are merging is that the space launch business is in a masive slump. (There was an article in the LA Times that talked about this, but I couldn't find it online.) In the 90s everyone though that there would be a boom because of space communications, but it didn't happen. The Europeans, Russians and Chinese all went commercial, and now there are too many rockets and not enough payloads.

So all you whiners who blame NASA for blocking space flight, shut you holes. You are ignorant and just plane wrong. You want free enterprize to blast us into space, you got it and it DOSEN'T WORK! (Except for stuff like DirectTV.)

The way we are going into space for real is through government programs. It may be the US or India or China or Japan, but it will be a government. And don't whine about Rutan and the X-Prize. It was a great effort, but it is ultimatly an aircraft/spaceplane, not a orbital vehicle. That is a whole lot harder.

There will eventually be non-government space efforts, but the time is not now. For proof, just look at what happened when Rutan won the X-Prize. Everyone else gave up. If there was a viable place to make money in space, at least some of these efforts would be continuing. So far, only Rutan and Branson have any idea how to make any money (outside of communications) and they are still non-orbital. We have a lot more research to do before there will be a self supporting non-government space effort.

Re:X-33!?!? VentureStar!?!?

[JohnnyCannuk]

Or go back to the MacDonell Douglas Delta Clipper. it actually had a prototype that flew. Easily fixed by the looks of it.

Answers To Questions Founded on Ignorance

[reallocate]

1. The orginal submission demonstrates the problem with relying on unvetted reader submissions. First, this is yesterday's story. Second, the CEV is not a Shuttle replacement. The Shuttle will be cancelled and grounded as soon as the CEV flies to ISS, but it is only one component of an entirely new program.

2. Orbital rendevous, of Earth, the Moon, or Mars, makes these destinations possible. The likelihood of that a booster capable of sending even a minimal mission to Mars (on the order of 500-800 tons) from a single Earth launch is ludicrous. All real space travel should begin in Earth orbit.

3. The Lockheed proposal is a lifting body, not an airframe with wings like the Shuttle. It does not not use tiles. Lockheed argues that a lifting body will increase safety by providing greater crossrange capability than is available in a capsule.

3. Boeing's proposal will almost certainly involve a capsule.

4. The CEV shown in Lockheed's proposal is a vehicle intended for relatively short trips to LEO and the Moon. Travel to Mars and asteroids will obviously require considerably more hardware.

5. Apollo was a crash program funded at levels that have been politically untenable since the 1970's. If NASA is going to go to the Moon and Mars, it is going to do so without major increases n its annual budget. Therefore, it is trading time for money.

6. We missed almost everything on the Moon. We made only six very short trips there. If we can't pull off repeated Lunar visits in conjunction with sustained human presence there, we have no business being confident that we can successfully pull off multi-year missions to Mars. If we can't keep people alive on a body that is 3 days away, how can we keep them alive on a body this is almost a year away?

7. What's going on here is that this proposal is only the first piece of an extensive effort to extend humanity's presence into the inner Solar System.

USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[reallocate]

>> ...All this new terrorist crap may well threaten us more than the USSR ever did...

Not until they have 10,000 or so nuclear warheads aimed at us.

The terror threat is real, but it doesn't threaten to wipe out the species.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[Catbeller]

"The terror threat is real"

Please, everyone, stop a moment and think about this .

Who is "terror", and have they been threatening us? Utterly unexamined assumption.

We got hit by a few dozen nutters a few years ago, and now we are under a "terror threat".

Firstly, a threat is a statement of intent -- a SPECIFIC statement -- that someone is coming to hurt or kill you.

Secondly, what the hell is "terror"? Bush has slapped the label on so many disparate factions and actions so as to make the term meaningless. Someone shoots at someone in the Phillipines? Terror. Someone kidnaps someone for ransom? A terrorist act. We invade a country, kill tens of thousands and mutilate far more -- those who shoot back are branded "terrorists" of the same stripe who blow up trains in Spain. Teacher's unions have been labelled terrorists by a Congresscritter.

The word "terrorist" is a simple cognate coined and maintained as a substitute for the old Red/Communist/Russian/Soviet monolithic "they" that we were told was intent on killing or subverting us for over fifty years. It turned out that the original threat estimate for the Soviets were based on "information" offered up by ex-Nazis in the same manner information is "offered" by people in Guantanamo. The prisoners tell the torturer what they want to hear: The Soviets are mighty and mad; Al Queda has cells EVERYWHERE and is planning to kill again soon, please, not the electrodes again...

Terrorism. What is shock and awe, but terror? What is slaugtering your way into a country, but terror? What was what we did, invading and killing to capture Noriega, but terror? Terror is an emotion, not a tactic. It is felt by us, not inflicted on us. We've become flaming cowards, afraid of everything and everyone, condoning torture and kidnap and murder of "terrorists", which is nothing but an label slapped onto any damned one that Bush wants to eliminate. The Partiot Act has created a dictator who has declared that human rights and treaties don't apply to "terrorists", as Bushie said just yesterday. Since "terror" is defined as "anything that makes us uneasy or afraid", and a "terrorist" can be declared secretly by the Bush team, Bush has declared "war" on no particular person, has no timetable for the "war" to be ended, has no definition of the terms of its ending.

By ceding this terminology to Bush's whim, we've created an uncheckable police state that recognizes no national boundaries and strips human rights, in holes in the ground, from people snatched from their homes in the middle of the night.

The most telling point to be made is that when Bush's Justice Department takes the few cases it has made to the court system, they have convicted NO ONE on the evidence; on the contrary, they have consistently lost every case they have had to make.

Terror? Threat? The terror is the fear instilled in you by national hysteria fed by a pack of radicals intent on a revolution in our way of life and law. The threat is pathetic; a few dozen wackos who barely have had enough juice to make video tapes. They got lucky once, and they got what they wanted: an America attacking the oil rich countries, just as they predicted. We've made far, far more enemies killing -- quite illegally -- the Iraqis than we had before 9/11. We've made the nonexistent enemy a reality by our own terror and yes, racism and confusion, and by an elect few, greedy for power and riches beyond count.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[Andy Gardner]

Catbeller is witch! burn him!

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that's debatable. Ask this question: how willing would the USSR have been to launch all their nukes at us on a moment's notice? See, we had pretty good protection due to M.A.D. (mutually assured destruction). They were, for the most part, sane human beings. They didn't want to die. So they never launched at us, knowing that we'd launch right back.

With the terrorists, M.A.D. is no deterrent. They actually want to die in the act of killing us. I believe their psychotic frame of mind actually makes them more dangerous than the USSR ever was. If they get ahold of just one old nuke (and face it, the security for old missiles in parts of the former Soviet Union is downright scary), they wouldn't hesitate to use it.

As far as wiping out the species, all they need is one good biological weapon that spreads faster than a cure can be found. New advances in biotech are pretty awesome, but sometimes you gotta wonder if we're just opening the door to destruction. All it could take is one idiot madman to take us all with him.

(Brought to you by the "Make George Bush Dictator For Life Because He's The Only Guy Who Will Protect You" campaign) :)

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[hplasm]

Thanks.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[reallocate]

What the hell nonsense are you spouting?

Are you asserting that there are no people who wish to kill Americans and other Westerners simply because they are not radicalized Islamists? If not, then you are merely arguing, ineptly, about the scale of the threat, not its reality.

I fear, like the people you claim are nonexistent, you have allowed your own irrational and unsupportable beliefs to cloud your rational mind.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[RobinH]

He seems to be saying that the actual terror events that have happened over the last few years (the ones that Americans actually care about) are being used by people to manipulate Americans into being afraid of more than the "real" threat, whatever that is. Using the label "terror" loosely, you can now subtly compare anything you think threatens the government, even civil disobedience, to al qaeda. It's not that big of a stretch.

That doesn't mean there aren't real terrorist organizations out there - obviously there are. But when's the last time you heard about the hunt for Osama? Did we find him in Iraq yet, with all the other rebels^H^H^H^H^H^H^H terrorists who keep car bombing the U.S. troops?

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[Nazgul_Cro]

Nah...
I'm a Croat, and we are not radicalized Islamists. We're Roman Catholic.
I can assure you that no mad arab Islamists want to kill us. Perhaps it is a different situation about USA, but that happened only because of US politics and warmongery.
So far, radical Muslims only struck on countries which invaded or helped invade Iraq, Afganistan or other countries.

As a matter of fact, my uncle works in the Croatian oil company, INA. He worked on drills in many countries, including Russia (in Syberia, to be precise), USA, Canada, and most recently Syria, which is of course "full of radicalized Islamists".

Guess what? Of all those countries, he was best received in Syria. Although he was a westener, people were kind to him and treated him with respect. They only could not stand Americans.

Catbeller is right. You brought this upon yourselves, mostly by listening to such propaganda. If you were to quit such tactics, you would find terrorist threat to be *much* lower.

And about US soldiers in Iraq, and what they are doing, here's a nice link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_an d_prisoner_abuse

This is not a flaming attempt. This is a wake-up call.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[Sviams]

Well put sir.
I believe this is something along the lines of something I heard about in school...what's it called again...oh right, learning from history and past mistakes.
Too bad only the ones in power learned that fearmongering is the most powerful way any government can do whatever they want.
Too bad there aren't too many like you around.

Sviams - cynic since day one

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[reallocate]

I have no way of knowing what he's saying except by reading his words.

A government's cynical use of a real threat doesn't remove that threat from reality. The poster and others like him would have us believe that terror simply does not exist.

No one ever expected to find Osama in Iraq. Regimes like Saddam's -- which are immune to internal overthrow -- are precisely the kind of environment that fosters and nourishes radical fundamentalist terror. As much as I disagree with Bush on almost everything, he did argue that his intent was to bring democracy to the Arab Middle East in order to eliminate the cultures that breed terrorism. He's right about that. Other than Iraq, no current Arab regime is democratic; therefore, no current Arab regime is legitimate. I'd rather have seen the UN given the authority and the troops to eliminate Saddam, but there you go.

Finally, pay more attention: Car bombs Iraq typically target Iraqis. Not "other Iraqis" because most of the people doing the killing are non-Iraqis who have entered that country for the express purpose of spreading terror.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[Anonymous Coward]

The Emperor's New Clothes
by Hans Christian Anderson

Once upon a time there lived a vain Emperor whose only worry in life was to dress in elegant clothes. He changed clothes almost every hour and loved to show them off to his people.

Word of the Emperor's refined habits spread over his kingdom and beyond. Two scoundrels who had heard of the Emperor's vanity decided to take advantage of it. They introduced themselves at the gates of the palace with a scheme in mind.

"We are two very good tailors and after many years of research we have invented an extraordinary method to weave a cloth so light and fine that it looks invisible. As a matter of fact it is invisible to anyone who is too stupid and incompetent to appreciate its quality."

The chief of the guards heard the scoundrel's strange story and sent for the court chamberlain. The chamberlain notified the prime minister, who ran to the Emperor and disclosed the incredible news. The Emperor's curiosity got the better of him and he decided to see the two scoundrels.

"Besides being invisible, your Highness, this cloth will be woven in colors and patterns created especially for you." The emperor gave the two men a bag of gold coins in exchange for their promise to begin working on the fabric immediately.

"Just tell us what you need to get started and we'll give it to you." The two scoundrels asked for a loom, silk, gold thread and then pretended to begin working. The Emperor thought he had spent his money quite well: in addition to getting a new extraordinary suit, he would discover which of his subjects were ignorant and incompetent. A few days later, he called the old and wise prime minister, who was considered by everyone as a man with common sense.

"Go and see how the work is proceeding," the Emperor told him, "and come back to let me know."

The prime minister was welcomed by the two scoundrels.

"We're almost finished, but we need a lot more gold thread. Here, Excellency! Admire the colors, feel the softness!" The old man bent over the loom and tried to see the fabric that was not there. He felt cold sweat on his forehead.

"I can't see anything," he thought. "If I see nothing, that means I'm stupid! Or, worse, incompetent!" If the prime minister admitted that he didn't see anything, he would be discharged from his office.

"What a marvelous fabric, he said then. "I'll certainly tell the Emperor." The two scoundrels rubbed their hands gleefully. They had almost made it. More thread was requested to finish the work.

Finally, the Emperor received the announcement that the two tailors had come to take all the measurements needed to sew his new suit.

"Come in," the Emperor ordered. Even as they bowed, the two scoundrels pretended to be holding large roll of fabric.

"Here it is your Highness, the result of our labour," the scoundrels said. "We have worked night and day but, at last, the most beautiful fabric in the world is ready for you. Look at the colors and feel how fine it is." Of course the Emperor did not see any colors and could not feel any cloth between his fingers. He panicked and felt like fainting. But luckily the throne was right behind him and he sat down. But when he realized that no one could know that he did not see the fabric, he felt better. Nobody could find out he was stupid and incompetent. And the Emperor didn't know that everybody else around him thought and did the very same thing.

The farce continued as the two scoundrels had foreseen it. Once they had taken the measurements, the two began cutting the air with scissors while sewing with their needles an invisible cloth.

"Your Highness, you'll have to take off your clothes to try on your new ones." The two scoundrels draped the new clothes on him and then held up a mirror. The Emperor was embarrassed but since none of his bystanders were, he felt relieved.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[Anonymous Coward]

A government's cynical use of a real threat doesn't remove that threat from reality. The poster and others like him would have us believe that terror simply does not exist.

Sure. But threat is always risk i.e. liklihood times consequence. So far you've lost ca 3000 people in one event. Compare that to the number of people killed on the roads, by violence, or even in hospitals due to mistakes. You don't see the media full of that. And you don't see the government spending nearly as much on any of those issues as it is on invading Iraq.

So who's the FUD meister? And who should we really be worried about. I'm just asking.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[reallocate]

Don't I remember a little something about ethnic cleansing in your part of the world a few years ago?

Your anecdote about your uncle in Syria is irrelevant. I've lived -- not visited -- the Arab Middle East, more than a decade ago. I was greeted with warmth and hospitality everywhere. Yet, terror existed. Movie theaters were bombed for showing Bollywood films. Westerners and Westernized locals were frequent targets of attack in the central business areas of cities. Fathers murdered their daughters for speaking with the wrong boys.

Note, too, that no one has said Syria is ""full of radicalized Islamists". Syria has been governed for decades by regimes that support finance and direct terror. Its citizens could all be pacifist monks and Syria would still be on the wrong side.

It's been my experience that statements like yours are really disguised condemnations of democracy. Like many mistaken Arabs, you won't be satisfied until the U.S. stops supporting democracy and the spread of democracy and joins with fat and happy Europeans who happily suck up to tyrants and miscreants for oil. It seems many of you would trade the misery of the Arab world for your own warm beds.

The U.S. was attacked on 9/11 because there are people in the world who believe that the Western way of life, including yours, is evil. They believe they have a duty to kill all Westerners. They must be eliminated. No, almost all Arabs are nothing like that. Yes, placating existing Arab regimes (all illegitimate because they are undemocratic) will do nothing to eliminate them. The terrorists exist because those Arab regimes exists, not because the U.S. exists.

Frankly, having survived living under the yoke of Communist thugs, I'd think a Croatian would know better. Sadly, your remarks are just further evidence of the cynical and corrupted world view typical of so many Europeans these days. Remember, we're still cleaning up the mess Europe created in the 20th century. All those corrupt Arab regimes nurturing death, repression, ignorance and terror? Your fault. All those bogus illogically bordered African countries wallowing in misery and death? Your fault. All those billions who slaved, and still suffer, under Communism? Your fault.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[Anonymous Coward]

I am going to post as an AC, because this will get moderated down, as the following evidence shows...

Lets just be honest here- You can discuss politics here- but know that if you are a Liberal, or anti- American, you will get moderated higher. The posts and their points bear this out. Seems like anything anti-Bush, no matter how irrational, gets a +5. Anything pro American seems to get +1 or even -1.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[CastrTroy]

I was watching an episode of Growing Pains last night and it dealt with the issue of fear. Someone broke into the Seaver's house, and stolen stuff. They all couldn't sleep the next night. Seems the theif had done exactly what they wanted. To steal their sense of security. Terrorist did the same thing to the US. They stole their sense of security. It was quite easy. It only took 1 attack. They haven't done much since. And all the Americans have been running around like chickens with their heads cut off, in fear, for the last 3 years. Stop being so afraid. You aren't living in a dangerous country. If you want to see a dangerous country, go to Israel, or Iraq, or some other nation where people actually have a reason to live in fear.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[Nazgul_Cro]

> Don't I remember a little something about ethnic cleansing in your part of the world a few years ago?

Yes. It happened throughout the entire Croatia. Try searching for Vukovar destruction on Google.

> It's been my experience that statements like yours are really disguised condemnations of democracy.

Erm... How did you get to that conclusion? I do not condemn democracy.
However, I feel strongly about sovereignity, and condemn attempts to disrupt that sovereignity by another country.

> Like many mistaken Arabs, you won't be satisfied until the U.S. stops supporting democracy and the spread
> of democracy and joins with fat and happy Europeans who happily suck up to tyrants and miscreants for oil.

Are you implying that Europe is un-democratic? And I thought Americans would at least not criticize goverments who are sucking up to THEM for oil.

> It seems many of you would trade the misery of the Arab world for your own warm beds.

Well, better that than invade them, confiscate their oil reserves and slay half of their population. And bring them even greater misery.

> The U.S. was attacked on 9/11 because there are people in the world who believe that the Western way of life, including yours, is evil.

Then why did they not attack us? Not once?
We did not strike at them... Never. And never they struck at us. They struck only against countries which attacked Arabs, or supported those attacks. It's your fault. Not their religious zeal.

> They believe they have a duty to kill all Westerners. They must be eliminated.

Urm.... Who is civilized now?
So we should kill all Arabs? Is that it?

> No, almost all Arabs are nothing like that.

Well, *finally* :)))))

> Yes, placating existing Arab regimes (all illegitimate because they are undemocratic) will do nothing to eliminate them.

Then why do you do that if you don't know it doesn't help?
And if those regimes are undemocratic, check out Belarus and North Korea. They are much less democratic than Arab countries. The problem is, they have no oil.

> Frankly, having survived living under the yoke of Communist thugs, I'd think a Croatian would know better.

Actually, communism in former Yugoslavia was pretty lightweight. The first transition years (until 2000.) were much worse. "Survived" is not a word I would use here.
Actually, many good things from communism remained in our highly social system (like Sweden has). Free health insurance, education, care for poor people...

There are very few homeless people in Croatia. Those that are homeless sleep in organized shelters, eat free food and such. No one sleeps on streets. We take care of our own.
Yet Croatia throughout its 1400-year-long history never invaded another country.

> Sadly, your remarks are just further evidence of the cynical and corrupted world view typical of so many Europeans these days.

Perhaps you should bomb Europe as well?

> Remember, we're still cleaning up the mess Europe created in the 20th century.

Uhm... What mess did we create?

> All those corrupt Arab regimes nurturing death, repression, ignorance and terror? Your fault.

Actually, if I remember correctly, they started making problems after US shipped mass quantities of weapons to Israel.
Gulf War probably had nothing to do with it either.

> All those bogus illogically bordered African countries wallowing in misery and death? Your fault.

How?
OK, there was some fighting down there during WW2, but i do not see how did we cause their misery.
It probably has something to do with the fact that most of the African soil is not really fertile. And that most natives still live in their tribes and by their old traditions, not willing to accept our way of life.

> All those billions who slaved, and still suffer, und

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[reallocate]

Who cares what "the media" say about anything? What's that got to do with this?

Are you proposing that we should not seek to eliminate people who want to kill us simply because we also have auto accidents?

Come back when you've learned to make sense.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[Carbon Blob]

Stop being so afraid. You aren't living in a dangerous country.

Have you ever been to Detroit?

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[orim]

Let me explain: it's an outlet for people. Not too many people (beyond AirAmerica radio, the Daily Show and the like) actually point out how ridiculous this administration is. Stewart is right - the big media has let us all down by not questioning anything. (abolishment of the inheritance tax? HELLO!!!)

On last night's show, Stewart showed six clips, three from England and three from the US, and how the President/Prime Minister are treated by the public during a town-hall debate.
Wow. The Pres gets thankyous instead of questions. I swear the audience in the Kerry-Bush debate looked fearful. The PM, on the other hand, gets called a liar TO HIS FACE! And he listens politely, and has a response to that. Now that's how a free society is supposed to work.
In the US, the people feel they have no proper channel to voice their objections. There might be an official "phone", but nobody's picking up on the other side.

To use one of Bush's favorite phrases: In other words, when you feel nobody is talking for you, you will usually open your own mouth.

And BTW, I would not mod you for what you just said. It's not histerical, it's a reasonable question/statement. Calling somebody you're responding to an idiot, or intentionally picking a fight, now that's a diff. story.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[mike2R]

....until the U.S. stops supporting democracy and the spread of democracy and joins with fat and happy Europeans who happily suck up to tyrants and miscreants for oil. It seems many of you would trade the misery of the Arab world for your own warm beds.

The huge sea change in US policy post 9/11 makes this statement somewhat fair today, but the US has been a leading appeaser of Arab dictatorships for decades, which makes your holyer than thou attitude somewhat ridiculous.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[reallocate]

The freedom of the people counts for everything; the freedom of the state counts for nothing. Sovereignity cannot be used as a shield for tyranny. It is immoral to allow dictatorships and totalitarian regimes to exist simply because they control sovereign states. It is immoral to excuse the tyranny of your own state simply because that state is free and soverign. Nazi Germany was sovereign. So were fascist Italy and Japan. So was the USSR. Would you have excused their crimes? Africa and the Middle East are afflicted with peope who, justifiably, take pride in the soverignity of their nations. But they have also been suckered into trading their personal freedom for the freedom of the state. Of what value is my state's soverignty if my state oppresses me?

I'm asserting that many Europeans and European governments argue that understanding and accommodating the radical demands of terrorists and placating the regimes that produce and nourish them is the way to go. In other words, be nice to them so we can maintain our lifestyle. Unfortunately, being nice to people who want you dead doesn't work. Ask the Dutch.

It seems that you, at least, would prefer that Saddam eould have been let to oppress and kill Iraqis so long as your country could by his oil. Precisely my point. (BTW, no one has consfiscated any Iraqi oilfields and no one has slain "half" their people.)

I presume you weren't attacked on 9/11 because, frankly, no one cares. If a Croatian city was the center of world commerce with giant symbolic buildings, perhaps you would have been attacked.

But, if you can't understand that the 9/11 attacks were an attack on the Western way of life, not just on a single country, then you are guilty of the same medieval provincialism that fuels European bigotry and division.

Did I say all Arabs are terrorists? Far from it. Terror is a form of behavior. The IRA are terrorists, but that doesn't make all the Irish terrorists. ETA are terrorists, but not all Basques are terrorists.

I don't recall that the U.S. is friendly to Belarus and the DPRK. Are you suggesting that if the U.S. failed to invade every undemocratic nation it should have stayed out of Iraq? No logical connection exists there.

Communism allowed no freedom to vote the regime out of power. Sounds like you are willing to trade creature comforts for your own freedom. Exactly what's wrong with Europe.

Europe's mess: Imperialism and exploited colonies across the globe; World War One; World War Two; fascism; Nazism; the Holecaust; Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Milosevich; Soviet tyranny, death camps, and the Cold War. Or, don't they teach those things in European schools anymore?

Israel, a European creation in a region ruined by European imperialism, is democratic. It deserves support. The Arab regimes that attack it are tyrannies that deserve no support. Simple as that.

The current maps of the Middle East and Africa exist because they were drawn by ignorant, racist, European colonialists. Those borders and those nations have little or no relatioship with the demographic realities of the continent. Europe deliberately refused to prepare is Arab and African dependencies for democracy. After WW2, when Europe could no longer get away with, or afford, to exploit and repress these regions, it simply packed up and left. This meant that corrupt and incompetent European rulers were replaced by corrupt and incompetent local rulers. (I lived in southern Africa for a few years prior to Mandela's release. The South Africans who opposed apartheid, rather logically, said they were still colonized, but their masters lived in Pretoria and Cape Town.)

>>"..most natives still live in their tribes..."

Nice bit of ignorant racism.

Russia, last I looked, is European. I know that bothers the rest of Europe, bt, then, they still can't admit that Turkey is also part of the continent. (All those Muslims probably hs something to do with it, eh?)

Yes, Communism did replace the czars. Pity. Look what it got us.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[Retric]

OOver the last 5 years " terrorists " have killed around 00.002% of Americans. Which is right up there with bee stings. Yet people think of them a "major" threat.

That's stupid. We are spending far more to fight terror than the damage they have caused so calling them an economic threat is a little overblown. If we really wanted to make America safer let's spend that money on automated highways. I mean cars are a much larger danger to my health and safety than "terror" but I still drive a car every day.

At this point we can kill every man woman a child in the Middle East inside of an hour. That's a threat. Even if they where to have hundreds of nukes they can't stop that threat. So they can't use nukes or anything to nasty or we kill them their families there friends and everyone they have ever met.

You might think of strapping a bomb to your chest is an act of insanity but the people behind the scene are far more rational. So let's deal with real problems and drop this circus down to a reasonable level.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[reallocate]

That was then, this is now. The USSR was the threat, then. We sided with Arab despots for the same reason we sided with Stalin against the Nazis. Once the Nazis were defeated, the Soviets grew into an equal threat. Now that the Soviets are gone, a new threat has been bred in those Arab despotisms. Would you have us forego defending ourselves today because the attacker was our ally in the past? There is no moral requirement for the kind of consistency you are suggesting.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[mike2R]

No, but the tone of your original post was unlikely to convince a European - preaching like that from an American makes non-Americans remember your foreign policy failings, rather than concentrate on our own (which I assume was the intention of your post).

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[cybpunks3]

Oh come on. Don't you know that the terrorists have TRIED to hit us again? No, they just wanted to do one attack and end it at that. Yeah, sure. The only reason we haven't had another major tragedy like that has been because of our vigilance.

That's exactly why they started going after 'soft targets' in other countries like Bali and now Iraq, or hitting our allies instead of us directly.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[reallocate]

>> ...people think of them a "major" threat.

I haven't stated the degree of threat I think terror represents. I've merely stated that the threat is real.

>> I mean cars are a much larger danger to my health and safety than "terror" but I still drive a car every day.

Your car is no threat. Your car does not want to kill you. You become the threat when you drive inappropriately. Without you, your car is immobile.

>> At this point we can kill every man woman a child in the Middle East inside of an hour. That's a threat.

We are not threatening the people of the Middle East. Possession of weaponry is not a threat. But, yes, if someone attacks us with any kind of weapons, we are obligated to fight back.

>> ...let's deal with real problems...

Fine, but the U.S. is not the problem.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[reallocate]

I feel no reason to refrain from preaching to a European, since that s all they do to us.

In any case, if Europeans want to describe statements of reality as "preaching" then they've got even more problems that I thought. They cannot respond correctly to today's issues if they fail to understand their own responsibility for their creation.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[HuguesT]

The terrorists have been hitting Western targets in their home countries for decades. It's actually much easier for them, nothing new here.

I doubt OBL and his friends had the resources to carry out two attacks of the magnitude of 9/11 anyway. Perhaps others have tried and failed, but somehow I believe that if a vast conspiracy of the same size as that attack had been foiled by US services everyone would have heard about it.

This is not to say that the US effort was for nothing, but rather that so far they have caught relatively small fry.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[hesiod]

> no current Arab regime is democratic; therefore, no current Arab regime is legitimate.

So the only way a government/leader is "legitimate" is if they used your preferred method of getting into power? That's a pretty ignorant statement.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[hesiod]

> All those corrupt Arab regimes nurturing death, repression, ignorance and terror?

As opposed to the American regime that loves its enemies, doesn't send its own citizens to be tortured in another country, spreads the truth (fuck evolution!), and does everything it can to make its citizens warm and happy -- you know, like the constant, ambiguous warnings that someone, somewhere, in America will die soon (even though it never happens). Then making a whole new level of beurocracy to make sure everyone knows how scared they should be at a given moment...

Both "sides" (assuming, incorrectly, that there are only 2) are using lies and terror to do what they want.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[reallocate]

Yes, the only way any government can be legitimate is to be elected by the people it governs.

Any government or leader in power as a result of anything else is not legitimate.

It is impossible to believe in democracy and not believe otherwise. People have an absolute right to govern themselves.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[reallocate]

And, you, apparently, are on the side of those who have not yet learned to make sense.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[Retric]

When I said "cars" and "people" was not specifying "my car" or "you". Driving at high speed surrounded by other cars moving at high speeds is a dangerous to hang out. Many things from driver error to mechanical failure could result in my death, but I consider it a lower risk environment than say a shuttlecraft during takeoff.

Your car does not want to kill you.
Now we could get into a semantic argument about what threat means but there is an implication of a level of danger beyond say the random chance that all the oxygen in the room will just happen to be somewhere else long enough for you to suffocate. However, you seem to imply that things like earthquakes and floods are not threats because they're not actively trying to kill you. Which is fine but what would you call the danger from says a 5km wide rock falling from the sky and why not use the word threat?

Anyway, I think it's clear that the level of response to the rather ill defined "terror threat" is well above the relative response to the risk of me being killed in a car accident.

PS: "the U.S. is not the problem." Says what? Much of the world wants us dead because of our past actions. Actions such as the CIA fucking over many elected governments might not seem like a big deal to you there are many people that get uptight over such tings. Granted the U.S. is not the only entity involved in said threats but are past actions is part of why we have a target over our heads.

I love living in the US but a large part of this is my preference to being part of the evil empire than in its path. I am starting a business to become so I can become one of the upper class so I get to take an active role in way the US is run. Working 80 hour weeks for low pay sucks but I know of no better place to get ahead than the US. When you include SS your % of your income that is taxed goes down when you move from 90k a year to 300k and after that you can pay someone to look into the loop holes.

PPS: Heh, one of my aunts got audited by the IRS and ended up getting a check for over 2.7 million in taxes she had over paid in the last 4 years. Now is that a great country or what.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[hesiod]

> Seems the theif had done exactly what they wanted. To steal their sense of security.

What a stupid premise! A thief doesn't care about their sense of security, he just wants money or stuff he can sell to get money! He wasn't trying to instill fear. A professional thief couldn't care less what his victims thought, as long as he gets away with it.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[CastrTroy]

Maybe not, but it is an added bonus.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[reallocate]

>> I think it's clear that the level of response to the rather ill defined "terror threat" is well above the relative response to the risk of me being killed in a car accident.

No, it isn't clear. Even acknowledging that it is government's responsibility to make it safe for you to drive (not a given we all accept), a considerable amount of tax revenue has been spent in the last century to improve the quality of our highways and streets and to improve and enforce safety regulations. Your essential argument is that we should not spend billions to fight terror because we are not spending an equal amount to keep ourselves from killing each other on the roads. That's probably an acceptable argument in some sophomore debate class, where expectations are already rather low, but it is also patently absurd.

In point of fact, there is a threat posed by an indeterminant number of terrorists who intend to kill as many Americans as they can. Debating the scale of that threat is one thing, but dismissing it altogther nonsense.

>> Much of the world wants us dead because of our past actions.

Much of the world believes the lies fed to them by their controlled unfree media. It is not the fault of the U.S. that Arabs are governed by corrupt, incompentent despots. Or that most of Africa is, as well. It is not an attempt to whitewash history to argue that these people, and you, are blaming their own failures on the U.S.

If someone wants to target us because they believe those lies, then so be it: We will target them.

Good luck with your dreams of riches. Learning to spell and write might be something to consider.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[hesiod]

If you actually try comprehending it, it makes perfect sense. My sense is not limited by your inability to read, thank you.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[hesiod]

> It is impossible to believe in democracy and not believe otherwise

That is not correct. Your statement contains a logical fallacy: "if you think X is best for you, it must be best for everyone." That is not true. I believe democracy, as it should be, is the best form of government for the U.S. But that does not mean I think everyone else i nthe world would be best off with it. They probably would (my opinion), but for either of us to say so explicitly would be either ignorant, or would require omnipotence, which I am guessing you do not have.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[hesiod]

Fair enough. Perhaps it would be a feeling of superiority to think he's terrified them. I've never stolen from someone's home.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[Retric]

Good luck with your dreams of riches.

Thanks.

"Learning to spell and write might be something to consider."

Yep, but I have finite time and the relative advantage gained vs. lost does not pan out well. I can make ~300$/hour writing good software but I have nowhere near the level of innate talent to make that much writing.

If someone wants to target us because they believe those lies, then so be it

Yes some of them are lies but many of them are half-truths. The US get's involved in areas that increase our risks which is fine with me but if you ignore the reasons behind some ones actions the you can't control them. Now I think the most effective method of control would be to inundate there society with cheep satellite TV's and fast food. You can make hand radio's that are powered by simple hand cranks move this into the realm of extremely cheep PSP's with access to 5 or so channels of western style TV and I think we can effectively destroy there culture.

PS: I am not saying there is no threat but if say there is a 99% chance that cars will kill 50x as many Americans as terrorists will then we should spend 10 - 50 times as much on making cars safer vs. what we spend making us safer from terrorists. I am talking about creating automated highways which are safe as an example. Once your taking billions of $ a year you could be spending that money on large projects like retrofitting airbags on cars or mandatory free defensive driving classes or whatever. Just because something might make us safer does not mean it's worth spending that kind of money.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[reallocate]

Your post lacks sense because it is merely a stream of unsubsantiated and biased assertions.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[ultranova]

That was then, this is now. The USSR was the threat, then. We sided with Arab despots for the same reason we sided with Stalin against the Nazis. Once the Nazis were defeated, the Soviets grew into an equal threat. Now that the Soviets are gone, a new threat has been bred in those Arab despotisms.

Isn't the US still supporting those Arab despotisms - Saudi-Arabia, for example ?

In any case, I can't help but notice a pattern here, of helping people you know very well will be problems later on. That is just plain stupid.

Would you have us forego defending ourselves today because the attacker was our ally in the past?

Neither Saddam nor Taliban have attacked the US. Osama has, but he's still alive, free, and undoubtedly busy training all those new recruits that have drawn the conclusion that the US is evil - after all, they hadn't done anything to it, but it attacked them anyway. What other conclusion could they possibly draw ? They didn't want war, but now they have no choice but to defend themselves.

Osama won this round - he managed to provoke the US into lashing out and thereby proving its evil nature to any muslims that might not have cared about it one way or another previously.

There is no moral requirement for the kind of consistency you are suggesting.

If you consistently side with evil (examples of which you gave above), don't be surprised if people call you the Devil.

If you preach democracy but help tyrants keep their power, don't be surprised if people call you a hypocrat.

If you side with someone and then turn against him the second it becomes convenient, don't be surprised if people call you a treacherous swine.

In short, if you want to pursue your own interests without caring who gets hurt in the process, go ahead. But don't be surprised that everyone hates you.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[reallocate]

My point is not that democracy is the best government. It is that people have an absolute right to choose their own government and that, therefore, any government that is not chosen by the people it governs is illegitimate.

If a people democratically choose to put in power a regime that quashes their demoractic rights, that is a mistake but it remains their right. It also remains ther right to change their minds and remove that regime.

I neither know nor am I concerned with whether or nor everyone on the planet would be "best off" with democracy. I do not know how to determine "best off". My lack of omnipotence does not prevent me from making judgments. To repeat, I am simply stating that any government not chosen by the people it governs is illegitimate.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[reallocate]

Regimes like Saddam's breed the despair that breed terror. The Taliban were financed and essentially controlled by al-Qaeda. The Taliban supported and provided a host country for al-Qaeda. Given the option of expelling al-Qaeda, the Taliban failed to respond. If you open your home to murderers, take their money, do their bidding, and refuse to expel them when families of their victims demand that, why should you not also be considered a murdererer?

This isn't about getting people to like us, no more than WW2 was about getting Nazis and fascists to like us. It is a matter of eliminating terrorists and the regimes that breed them. If that means making use of ugly regimes until it suits our larger purposes to turn elsewhere, so be it. Those regimes can withdraw their ammbassadors from Washington anytime they wish.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[Nazgul_Cro]

To repeat myself again: We're buying oil mostly from US. Nothing of Croatian oil comes from Iraq. Other sources of our oil include Canada, Syberia and Syria. So we're buying US oil almost exclusevely. And damn it's expensive! About $1.40 per litre. That's some $5.30 per gallon.

In Vukovar, more people died then on 9/11 and Pearl Harbor combined. Yet those two are only significant attacks on American soil since the US Civil War. And Americans took it personally.

Like in the war we had recently... US troops stood by when Serbs were killing Croats. Then one day, Serbs took down one US plane. Soon, US troops struck their positions heavily with air strikes and cruising missiles.

There is a great difference between liberation and vengeance. Bush once clearly stated he was going for Saddam "because he tried to kill his father". Plus, lots of news I've seen from the time after Baghdad siege were about US taking oil from their fields.

Add to that all that fuss about "weapons of mass destruction". If lack of democracy is a valid reason to start a war, why did Bush state all those other things?

I mentioned Belarus and DPRK because they are much less democratic than Iraq ever was.

Democracy is all about choice. And don't underestimate the power of the people, and late 80s/early 90s, when communist countries of the Europe threw down their regime support and elected a democratic one.

While you are talking about holocausts, death camps etc. I shall once again mention Abu Ghraib.

Communism did not fail because it was a bad system. It failed because it got corrupt and twisted, much removed from its original spirit and meaning. It was economically positive in the short run; yet quite damaging in the long run.

Russia is most definetely European, I agree. But it is unlikely to enter EU due to its population, size and politics.

Turkey has some territories in Europe, but most of its population and teritorry is in Asia. It is a part of the continent in geography, but not culture, except in some parts of Bosnia, Serbia and Albania, yet their effects go as far to north as Germany.

My point is, you cannot act as a world cop... Don't judge other cultures.

If I met you in the street, I'd drag you to a bar, buy you a beer or five, and then we'd discuss freedoms =)
This is kinda pointless, if you'd agree.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[hesiod]

> Your post lacks sense because it is merely a stream of unsubsantiated and biased assertions.

Okay, let's go back and look at my post:

> loves its enemies

No one loves their enemies. If they love them, they aren't enemies, they are friends.

> send its own citizens to be tortured in another country

Guantanamo bay is in Cuba. Cuba is another country. American citizens are being held there without access to lawyers, family, etc. Supposedly, some aren't even told what they are accused of.

> spreads the truth

Okay, I don't know George Bush's personal opinion on ID vs. Evolution, but I DO know that the large majority of people who think ID is science and Evolution is a crackpot theory voted for George Bush because he "represents them."

> constant, ambiguous warnings that someone, somewhere, in America will die soon (even though it never happens)

Witness the terror alert level changed all the time without a single attack ever occurring.

> Then making a whole new level of beurocracy to make sure everyone knows how scared they should be at a given moment...

Department of Homeland Security, who set that up

Since I have quite easily proven you have no interest in spreading the truth, but only your bullshit (or you are attempting to troll), this conversation is done.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[mike2R]

I feel no reason to refrain from preaching to a European, since that s all they do to us

I obviously misunderstood your intentions. I thought you were actually trying to convince someone of your point of view. If you were just trying to vent some spleen against uppity Europeans you're doing fine as you are.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[reallocate]

I'm never particuarly interested in convincing anyone of my position, just explaining it and countering the falsehoods and scarecrow arguments commonly used in rebuttals around here.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[iminplaya]

As much as I disagree with Bush on almost everything, he did argue that his intent was to bring democracy to the Arab Middle East in order to eliminate the cultures that breed terrorism. He's right about that.

I honestly don't believe that the American gov't is any more interested in bringing democracy to the region now than they were back in the 40s, 50s, and 60s when they were overthrowiing democratically elected governments of Syria, Iran, and Jordan, etc. What is happening there is just a another sordid chapter of the violence and mayhem that's been going on since Cain killed Able. This time, like throughout the 20th century, it's just Europe(more recently the US/UK) trying to re-colonize the area. Our actions and hypocrisy over their are doing more to breed this culture of terrorism than anything they could do by themselves. This will not diminish until we are kicked out completely.

Other than Iraq, no current Arab regime is democratic; therefore, no current Arab regime is legitimate.

That's too bad that you believe that Iraq's election was anything more than a show for the TV. With only USG approved candidates. Effectively, it will be a "new and improved" Saddam. One that likes America and Europe...for now. And the cycle will repeat. Just like with all the other "Saddams" of the region. Also, legitimacy does not require simple majority rule. It can be derived from other methods. A dictatorship of the majority is no more legitimate than a dictatorship of one. If these people had their "stuff" together, they would quit fighting each other and unite to kick out all the outsiders. That's something I would really like to see.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[iminplaya]

People have an absolute right to govern themselves.

That would make democracy illegitimate for the minority who are being governed by the majority. True legitimacy can only be achieved through unanimous consensus.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[iminplaya]

If that means making use of ugly regimes until it suits our larger purposes to turn elsewhere, so be it.

So, are you saying that the ends justify the means? I'm don't think that would go over too well with most people. Apparently it works ok for our rulers.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[reallocate]

I don't believe the U.S. government is interested in spreading democracy simply because it is the "right" thing to do. I believe that they believe democratic regimes are less hostile and more stable than undemocratic regimes, and that democratic regimes are more likely to seek peaceful resolution of conflicts and work toward common goals. agree with that perspective.

I believe, rather strongly, that terrorism and fanaticism take root where other avenues of expression and growth are blocked. That, in one degree or another, is the situation in all the Arab regimes.

For the record, most of the terrorists currently killing Iraqis are not Iraqis, they're outsiders who've come in with the express purpose of committing murder.

Legitimacy absoutely requires democracy. The majority must respect the rights of minorities, bthere is no democracy if a minority takes precedence over a majority.

Re:USSR Threat Worse Than Terror

[iminplaya]

Legitimacy absoutely requires democracy...

At the very least. To me it requires unanimity.

...The majority must respect the rights of minorities...

When the majority fails to respect those rights of the minority, it loses all legitimacy.

...bthere is no democracy if a minority takes precedence over a majority.

Absolutely. I'm not saying there would be. For me the reverse is true also. Neither should have precedence over the other. To assure legitimacy the protection must be equal.

Hey! aren't we s'pposed to be talking about the new space jalopy that's going to replace that old contraption that we being using for way to long? :-) Still looks like 1930s Flash Gordon to me. Another pointy tin can on top of a giant sparkler. Doesn't seem to offer much of a view outside either. Our progress on the subject of inertia and energy is so painfully slow, mostly due to all the stupid politics and fat egos.

Good quote from a man I really don't care for that much. I "stole" it from sombody's sig:
"It's amazing what you can accomplish when you don't care who gets the credit." - Harry S. Truman

x-33

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a safe , efficient and cost driven technology , i.e. boring , not really pushing the boundaries, they should look for $ for the X-33 and the aerospike to work. Doesn't make sense to spend billions in a space station if it isn't easy and cheap to get there in the first place, they are building the house form the roof.

Deja vu

[FleaPlus]

* LockMart CEV proposal

* Big Gemini

* X-20A Dynasoar

* Russian Kliper

Of course, reusing good ideas is a good idea, IMHO. Still, even though the sexiness of wings certainly looks nicer, I'm thinking that the capsule-based proposals by Boeing/Northrop-Grumman and t/Space will be more cost-effective and reliable. Spacecraft need wings about as much as an aircraft needs to float.

Re:Deja vu

[Luminary Crush]

This vehicle does not have wings as the shuttle per se, but has a lifting body.

That has some advantages:
1) lower G-loading during re-entry makes it easier on passengers and equipment

2) better yaw control and directional stability during re-entry and high-atmospheric glide prior to parachute deployment

This has to be traded off versus many other factors (weight, packaging complexity) but is far from completely useless.

Re:Deja vu

[FleaPlus]

Good points.

What are they thinking?

[amightywind]

We can all see the result of the drastic consolidation in the aerospace industry in the past few decades. Mediocrity. The Lockmart design seems to be very conservative and very small. It looks like a very scaled down X33 with a slightly upsized Centaur upper stage. What use the tiny mission module is I can't guess. It looks weird. I'm sure this is all sized to be compatible with a Lockmart Atlas V. Pathetic. I expect more from a clean sheet design. I am rapidly losing faith in the clods working for these giant space consortia. Hopefully Northrup/Boeing with produce better design, but I doubt it. It honestly might be a good idea to give Burt Rutan a few billion with no strings and see what he can produce.

Re:What are they thinking?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your ignorance is astounding. Why does everyone who knows nothing about aerospace design insist on giving Burt a billion bucks as if he can magically be smarter than many trained, experienced Lockheed Martin engineers?

Yes I work for LMT and yes I am a rocket engineer.

Re:Lack of creativity, up against physics?

[Anonymous Coward]

A catapult first stage? You're right, it's not too practical. Bear in mind the final speed for orbit is (I think) 17,000 mph. A better idea is launching from an aircraft at altitude, White Knight-style. That does not get you much speed, but saves a lot of atmospheric drag on the vehicle in the early stages. Of course, the mothership for something this size (and it's booster rocket) would need to be very, very big!

Space Shuttle?

[Anonymous Coward]

DID YOU SEE THE NEW HOTTIE ON AMERICAN IDOL???!!! OH. MY . GOD!!!!!

I don't know what I will do now, since I don't want to end up like on DESPERATE HOUSEWIFES...

But, like, I totally have to marry him now! SERIOUSLY!! Who cares about a f&cking SPACE SHUTTLE??? TEE-HEE!!

This is a good design...

[vanyel]

...for a follow-on to Apollo 30 years ago.

I hope Boeing and Northrup come up with something a helluva lot better than this though --- it's probably the evolutionary step that *should* have been done back when they developed the shuttle a bit ahead of its time, but we should be able to do a vastly improved version of *that* now as an evolutionary step forward, not taking a giant leap back 30 years in technology.

Exactly

[shmlco]

This is exactly the sort of thing the US government should be promoting. The US needs to maintain its high technology edge somewhere, and we've already invested trillions on space and missle technologies.

I'd much rather be the world's leader in space technology than, as it looks now, simply becoming the world's wheat farmers...

You're 25% right.

[Baldrson]

there is no danger of NASA killing the human spirit; only irresolute citzens can accomplish that.

You're half wrong because of the fact that government regulation can kill even the most resolute investment in private space launch capability.

As to the other half, I'll say that at the end of my political activism, I held your belief -- that NASA had demonstrated so clearly its incompetence that there really was no problem with NASA competing with the private sector. The question then became:

Why is private capital so "irresolute"?

to use your qualifier.

Its then that I came to understand the structural problem with modern capitalism: capital welfare.

Basically, capital concentrations are given free protection by the government while capital creation is taxed. That's when I wrote up my last legislative proposal, a net asset tax with citizen's dividend to replace other taxes and government programs -- passing it around for a feedback from various interest groups.

The reaction convinced me that there was no hope, short of the collapse of civilization, or pioneering escape from socioeconomic ossification, of correcting the character flaw of investors created by capital welfare. That left just one option: Try to get NASA to stop scaring off character-flawed capital concentrations created by entrenched economic policy.

The fact that there are capital concentrations such as Paul Allen, Jeff Bezos, et al, now providing funding for private spece activities is significant consolation but it is far from enough to counter the damage caused by capital welfare. We're way behind the curve.

Exposed Insulation (Was Re: Duct tape?)

[whitis]

What concerns me in that picture is what looks like exposed superinsulation material with no aluminum shell covering it around the propulsion stage. Seems rather susceptible to ice damage. Now that insulation is probably covering a tank that is strong but if you lose the insulation your fuel could boil off rather quickly. And if you can afford to have less fuel, you wouldn't be carrying it in the first place. And what about all the wires and plumbing on the outside of the tank that are not as strong as the tank itself.

Also, from what I can see from other pictures, it looks like the crew module is lacking an airlock. It would appear you have to use the entire back half of the crew module as an airlock. Or, in airline terms, the cockpit would remain pressurized while the passenger compartment would be depressurized. There does appear to be a full airlock between the two halves of the crew module. Also, it looks like the rear hatch is used to couple with the mission module which means that you can't even use back half of the crew module as an airlock when you have a mission module - the mission module itself needs to be used as an airlock if you wan't to go EVA. Or else you need to depressurize the cockpit when you want to step outside to fix something. Personallly, I would like to be able to step outside to fix something without wasting that much oxegen or having everyone have to change compartments or put their helmets on everytime I came back in for a different size wrench :-)

It never happened...

[Anonymous Coward]

2015 - 2020 - First moon landing by astronauts in lunar spacecraft.

I saw this in the Wikipedia and I was shocked.
Haven't we been to the moon before?
How did this slip by?

We've been punk'd by the feds!

Wow.

[StarKruzr]

I'm a liberal, and that shocks the shit out of me.

$10bn is such a small part of the budget (when you take into account that the "expenditure" would be effectively spread out over the years that the r&d was done) - and to have GUARANTEED results from the appropriation... Jesus. I really hate my own party sometimes.

Re:Wow.

[Darth Yoshi]

I think Moofie is being sarcastic. When he was first elected, Gingrich was a standard, conservative Republican (not like Bush who's a country-club "Republican") and Pournelle was one of his informal advisors so he had an "in" with him.

I remember reading Pournelle about how Gingrich started to succumb to the Beltway Unreality Field, which makes Washington politicians start believing in their own importance. Pournelle lost his "in" with him about then. Gingrich self-destructed after that and he'll always be remembered for being a self-centered SOB.

Re:Wow.

[Moofie]

Nothing sarcastic at all. I know that, whatever his politics may REALLY have been, Gingrich was painted as the fucking anti-Christ in the media, and no idea that he ever touched will ever happen, because by virtue of the fact that they crossed his lips they're the work of the Deveel.

Congress invented "Not Invented Here".

Re:Wow.

[Darth Yoshi]

Nothing sarcastic at all. I know that, whatever his politics may REALLY have been, Gingrich was painted as the fucking anti-Christ in the media, and no idea that he ever touched will ever happen, because by virtue of the fact that they crossed his lips they're the work of the Deveel.

And we all know how accurate the media is.

LawnDart One

[chiph]

Uhhh, LawnDart One, you are cleared for reentry.

Mindnumbing groupthink

[amightywind]

Yes I work for LMT and yes I am a rocket engineer.

I also work for a large aerospace company and feel I am qualified to judge. What Rutan does is not magic, his genious and resourcefulness are simply not constrained by mindnumbing group think. Lockheed was like that in the 50's and 60's. I wonder what Kelly Johnson would think today about pace of innovation in aerospace engineering? I don't blame you engineers. No, you are not dumber than the people of your glorious past. But at Lockmart, the engineers definitely do not run the place. A rocket engineer, huh? You guys let the Russians design the engines! I guess you make good fuel tanks and are a good system integrator.

nice concept..

[armed ahmed]

I like these proposals that the companies come up with from time to time. They always look like an intern had been forced to play with a 3D program and told to 'come up with something new'. This one even has a 'Potable Water Disinfectant' in it, according to the PM article.

I honestly do like the design, but can't help thinking that it would have been easy to make a lot of improvements here and there. Even the stick dudes of the concept seem to be uncomfortable in their chairs...

Some similar designs...

[simonbp]

The first that comes to mind is the Russian Kliper; similar idea with lifting body crew cabin and orbital module behind... Kliper

Of course, there are obvious comparisons to Lookheed's LS-200 "Starclipper" proposal of the 1960's: LS-200

But the best analog is probably Dyna-Soar, the USAF spaceplane of the 1960's: picture, site...

The Death of Dyna-Soar

Ah, distinctly I remember, it was early last December;
It was felt that very shortly, we would be employed no more;
Every day we feared the morrow; vainly we had sought to borrow;
Funds to budget us tomorrow, for our work on Dyna-Soar...
On the sleek and winged spacecraft we called Dyna-Soar...
Cancelled now, forever more.

From off the duct I pulled the shutter, when, whith many flirt and flutter,
Out there flew a stately raven, of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But with mien of Lord or Lady, perched beside my office door...
Upon a bust of Eugen Sänger, on the bookcase by the door...
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

"Prophet !" said I, "Thing of evil !, tell me, agent of the devil,
Whether McNamara axed the program, or just cut us back some more ?
Will he make a presentation, to Congress for appropriation ?
Does he plan continuation, after Fiscal 64 ?
Is the funding in the budget ? Tell me, tell me, I implore..."
Quoth the Raven, "Never more".

Oh, the sleek and winged spacecraft we called Dyna-Soar,
Cancelled now, forever more.

(hopefully not a future statement of the CEV!)

Simon ;)

Why moon?

[guacamole]

Can someone exlain me why we spending tens of billions of dollars, the amount comparable to GDPs of many smaller countries, on this project? Does it have any science value that's worth the money being spent? Why not work on projects like space telescopes or exploration robots ala Mars rovers both of which had created a real research value that dwarfs that of the ~100B ISS. Is this just to maintain all the burocracy at NASA as well as contractors like Lockhead?

War

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, well, we the rest of the world told you not to go to war, but y'all just didn't listen.

uh...

[Anonymous Coward]

not sexy at all - and if it's not sexy, it won't get funding. In this case it's "no buck rogers, no bucks"

Re:X-33!?!? VentureStar!?!?

[Vexar]

The epitath of this project answers your question: "It was just too hard, we give up!" Save your pennies for nuclear fission power and let the private industries settle space on their own, I say.

Why are we piddling? Just launch Michael.

[TellarHK]

I mean, a nice launching of the Michael from someplace in Washington State (Redmond, perhaps?) would probably do the trick of getting a nice payload into orbit. Of course, without the baby elephants... but we'd still get to nuke Redmond!

WHY are we going to the moon, a second time?

[zoogies]

The Apollo missions served one purpose primarily - to win a title. So it was a heated race, and the Soviet rocket exploded towards the end and we took the trophy and coveted title of 'First country whose man stepped on the moon.'

Big deal? It was then. But it's been done. Why do it again? I suppose there's some merit in being the 'Second country whose man stepped on the moon,' but if we're already the First country, we can't exactly be the second country also.

UNLESS! Unless we change our name. Like add the word 'Uber,' or at least a few umlauts.

But anyways, since then, we've sent probes to the moon and we can still send probes to the moon. If we have to explore something, or sample something, probes are considerably cheaper, are they not? Probes get the job done, don't they? The only thing that manned flights could do was get back rocks of such a size that probes couldn't handle. What do we need large lunar rocks for? I see no immediate requisite, and even then, there has got to be better alternatives than a manned flight.

I think we're playing the PR trump card again...and I think it's going to fail. Face it, ther'es more important things to do with our money than to do something we've done before.

Re:WHY are we going to the moon, a second time?

[vcjim]

Because Rice played Texas, you bastard!

Re:NASA has always been a separate civilian agency

[Anonymous Coward]

From your own link
http://www.aerospaceguide.net/dynasoar.html

The USAF and NACA (now NASA) merged hypersonic aircraft studies into one research program.

So the blatant separation you pruport arent really all that clear, are they?

It's not about Mars anymore...

[d474]

It's about Space Based Weapons systems. Read it for yourself from our friends down at the CFR (Council on Foregin Relations).

Here's a sample:

"And I am here to tell you that there is not going to be any other nation on Earth that's going to accept the U.S. developing something they see as the death star. It's not going to happen. And people are going to find ways to target it and it's going to create a huge problem. I don't think the United States would find it very comforting if China were to develop a death star, a 24/7 on-orbit weapon that could strike at targets on the ground anywhere in 90 minutes."

Enjoy.

Re:X-33!?!? VentureStar!?!?

[TheKidWho]

Well, AFAIK the Aerospike engines were not a problem with the X-33 and they were tested quite a bit before NASA pulled the plug.

The problem was the composite fuel tanks, BUT! In 2003, northrop actually developed a composite fuel tank to store LH2. Also, the Venturestar was supposed to use metallic fuel tanks but the X-33 couldn't because of it's size.

Re:NASA has always been a separate civilian agency

[WhiteBandit]

From your own link
http://www.aerospaceguide.net/dynasoar.html/

The USAF and NACA (now NASA) merged hypersonic aircraft studies into one research program.

So the blatant separation you pruport arent really all that clear, are they?

What on Earth? They merged a research program to work together! How the hell does that imply that two separate agencies suddenly became one agency?

NASA works with other agencies all the time. In this project, they are working with the NOAA and the USGS. That doesn't mean that the USGS is our space agency.

better late than never

[maxpublic]

and will eventually go to the moon (between 2015 and 2020).

Whereupon they'll be given a warm welcome by Mike Melville and the crew of Tycho Station, who'll present them with their very own "Welcome to the Moon, Inc." wings.

Max

Re:X-33!?!? VentureStar!?!?

[Lumpy]

HUH???

the X33 was vaporware when it was accepted, hell they NEVER got the engines to even test fire and you extrapolate "the design already worked" out of it??

Now the DC-X that was a complete working prototype that flew several test flights and was still working perfectly except for a problem with 1 landing gear not extending and they had no provisions to deal with it.

their funding had been cut, NASA chose the vaporware over the DC-X, so they really did not care about continuing the testing of the prototype.

the X33 was a body without anything to power it. Hell I can build the Millinium Falcon in the Lockheed facilities, it just will not take off or have any working flight systems because "they do not exist yet" exactly like the X-33 engines and other systems.

Re:But...

[Anonymous Coward]

YIKES! so mission disks will load SLOWER than the Tape drives on a CoCo or TI99-4a?

Jenkins! hurry and load the collision avoidance system disk!

I cant! the drive is making that funny noise again!

SLAM it on the desk!"

Ok It's reading, but because it's a 64K program written by microsoft it will take 2 minutes to load.... dammit the clippy has poped up and I can not see the control panel!

go to manual! Arrrrgghhhh........

then nothing on the flight recorder.... nobody is sure what really happened to the crew on that fateful day.

So they admit it!!

[JohnPM]

From NASA's published schedule:

2015 - 2020 - First moon landing by astronauts in lunar spacecraft.


So they finally admit it never happened in the 1960s!

The foam did what??

[Anonymous Coward]

The Chunk of foam that brought Columbia down didn't even hit the ceramic tiles. It impacted with the Carbon/Carbon leading edge of the wing, and cracked it.

The foam didn't do any damage at all to the aluminum airframe underneath, since it disintegrated on impact with the leading edge of the wing.

What brought Columbia down was superheated plasma entering through the crack in the Carbon/Carbon leading edge. That superheated plasma melted through the electronics in the wing, and melted the aluminum airframe in that wing, leading to the structural failure of that wing and the breakup of the entire shuttle.

Don't need the shuttle...

[Anonymous Coward]

We need an operational space elevator.

http://www.liftport.com/

Not so fast mty friend!!!

[big-giant-head]

yes you are correct in part HOWEVER, Nasa would require any space craft to carry a way to get back to earth.. What happens if the lunar or Mars mission limps back to earth orbit crippled Ala Apollo 13?? They would not have the resources to manuver and dock with a waiting CEV or the Spacestation.

NASA will requre any lunar Mission or Mars mission to have an escape route, thats why a soyuez (spelling) capsule hangs off the ISS at all times.

Read My Lips

[Kris Magnusson]

No plutonium economy. Signed, Jimmy Carter.

In my humble opinion, this has been the biggest setback to nuclear power since Three-Mile Island.

....... kris

Re:X-33!?!? VentureStar!?!?

[khallow]

As I understand it, that's typical of prototype design under NASA. What surprises me is how little emphasis seems to be played on things actually working. Ie, toss in a large number of experimental design features, put some effort into it, maybe make a few test flights, project gets cancelled and research shelved, everyone pats themselves on the back, and the cycle restarts. What's disturbing is that a lot of this research doesn't appear to be reused. I'm not clear on what these projects are supposed to do, if the research isn't being used.

Why NASA really is to blame...

[Teancum]

I am going to continue to "whine" and complain that it is indeed NASA that is continuing to block access to space for us mere mortals.

The #1 blame about the current sad shape of the space industry is primarily from how poorly the International Space Station has been managed from the beginning. As it is right now, Skylab had almost as much working space for a substantial fraction of the cost of what it has taken to get the ISS going. And requiring manned spaceflight for the lanuch of each piece of the ISS has also further added to the problems of that project, not to mention the absolutely huge cost overruns and near constant delays in trying to get anything sent up.

There is no way that I or any of my kids are going to go into space using government-owned spacecraft (unless it is a minor miracle which I'm not counting on). And the U.S. Congress simply does not have the will to expand NASA to become a major manned space exploration agency to be spending at least proportionally what was spent back in the 1960's. Shy of a bunch of Vulcans landing in Montana, I don't see that changing either.

It will only be by permitting ordinary folks to take their own risks to go into space that this will become a reality. The situation for spacecraft construction is at a similar level of technological competance as trans-oceanic shipbuilding was back in the 17th Century. And survival to travel to the Moon or Mars is much more reliable than it was for those old ship to travel between London and Boston. In about the same amount of time to travel to Mars with current technology as well.

Funny, not Troll

[Morosoph]

Just meta-modded 'Funny'. If you're meta-modding the 'Troll' mod, here is the intended link.

Nutjobs

[ShagratTheTitleless]

Which nutjob rated the parent nutjob insightfull? That was the same old tired and hate based factless dribble. Almost everything presented as a fact above is NOT a fact. It almost doesn't deserve rebuttal so I will restrict myself to one point: helping define terrorist. A terrorist is someone who INTENTIONALLY attacks CIVILIANS to cause political changes out of FEAR that would not happen otherwise. I bet you don't see a difference between the U.S. invading Afghanistan to destroy the Taliban and the Train bombings in Spain to throw an election, huh? But just repeat the manta. It is more comforting than critical thought.

Re:Nutjobs

[Anonymous Coward]

A terrorist is someone who INTENTIONALLY attacks CIVILIANS to cause political changes out of FEAR that would not happen otherwise.

Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki. All the territory Israel took in 1967.