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:

[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:

[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:

[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:

[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:

[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:

[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?

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?

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?

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?

[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).

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?

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: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.

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?

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.