Low-Cost Space Shuttle Replacement Proposed

FleaPlus writes "The Washington Times and Space.com has an article on a plan for a low-cost shuttle replacement by t/Space, an organization whose team includes AirLaunch LLC and Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites. Instead of a one-size-fits-all craft, t/Space's plan is to build an air-launched four-person capsule termed the Crew Transfer Vehicle (CXV), specialized for carrying people to and from low-Earth orbit. Once in orbit the CXV would dock with a separately-launched Crew Exploration Vehicle (likely built by Lockheed Martin or Northrop Grumman), which could be optimized for traveling between Earth orbit and the Moon. The CXV would also be able to dock with a space station or serve as a crew lifeboat. The group, which has already received some NASA funding, calculates that it can have the system ready by 2008 for $400 million, with a per-launch cost of $20 million (compared to ~$500 million per shuttle launch). Development would be done under a competitive fixed-price (instead of cost-plus) contract."

Comments

Shuttle Mod Editor

[Anonymous Coward]

I propose that Mr. Carmack Open Sources the plans to his giant bottle rocket and lets the end user create a deep space mod for it.

Re:Shuttle Mod Editor

[wootest]

Me, I just want an iPod shuttle.

Re:Shuttle Mod Editor

[LiquidCoooled]

Carmack's space ship designs suffer from a slight problem.

He keeps building the Nav controls and the window too far apart, you can either fly the ship, or see where your going, but not at the same time ;)

Re:Shuttle Mod Editor

[hawk]

> end user create a deep space mod for it.

I suppose that would be a better idea than the "NASA cratering mars" mod :)

hawk

Re:Shuttle Mod Editor

[Rei]

Carmack's space ship designs suffer from much bigger problems - namely, that he can't even seem to decide on what propellants to use after all this time ;) In general, he keeps repeating the mistakes of the past (vaned thrust deflection, many of his propellant choices,etc).

He seems to be taking a more mature design approach of late, however - regeneratively cooled, LOX as an oxidizer, gimballing instead of vanes, etc. It still won't be easy, and his design still isn't orbital-scalable, but he should be able to at least get somewhere now.

Re:Shuttle Mod Editor

[TigerNut]

Some of his propellant experiments were forced on him by the government not allowing him to use high-grade peroxide, and/or the unwillingness of the vendor(s) of the stuff to ship it to him.

The other thing you have to take into consideration is that he ended up doing some groundbreaking work on deep-throttleable engines. Most rocket engines can't be throttled over any significant thrust range.

Re:Shuttle Mod Editor

[Rei]

But using peroxide itself has been done time and time again. You don't see many peroxide rockets out there these days, do you? There's a reason for that, and it's not just because peroxide monoprops and even biprops have god-awful ISP. :)

As to deep throttlable engines, most of Carmack's engines seem to have had serious problems with chugging when run at any measurable amount of thrust. I.e., he still hasn't had throttlable range. When he can make an engine that has even a mere 300 ISP that can reach its max power, have a significant amount of power for its mass, and *then* be throttled down, then he'll have something at least somewhat relevant.

Getting There, and Costs

[Roland Piguepaille]

STS (the Space [Shuttle] Transportation System) is a flawed system design, with little compromise or tolerance for failures, systemic or political. On that issue alone, STS must be replaced.

A much smaller Shuttle-like orbiter, which can be mated atop a Delta, Titan III or other medium-lift vehicle, is needed. It may look like the Crew Return Vehicle concept that's being rehashed into a shuttle replacement. I think it would have more merit to the old military DynaSoar [astronautix.com] project. Such a vehicle, unlike the Shuttle Orbiters we have, is not a truck...it would be a human taxi, with a small bay for some replacement consumables. For larger payloads and refurbs, use the old Orbiters--unmanned, remote controlled. If we can run robots from millions of miles away, we can surely do the same from low Earth orbit. In fact, the Russians showed it can be done with their own mortibund Shuttle--it's first and only flight was completely unmanned, from launch to landing. [astronautix.com] The old Orbiters would also double as rescue vehicles, along with having additional new Shuttle Taxis ready to go on other pads when a flight is in progress. We can't use single-use rockets for ISS refurbs since the pressurized cargo modules (like the special ones used by Orbiters during an ISS crew and experiment transition) has equipment that must come back. Only our Orbiters have the ability to return large equipment modules safely to Earth.

We should be able to adapt single-use rockets to send new ISS components for assembly. The ISS will need more arms, and a new Orbiter replacement might need something like the current Canadian remote arm.

The main thing I would recommend is (1) just make a reusable human taxi that (1) has an abort mode like the old Apollo spacecraft, where the new Orbiter can rocket away from the booster, as well as (2) a durable crew compartment that, in the case of normal reentry failure, could be separated from the larger body and land by parachute.

Baby steps, please. A Shuttle replacement need not be all things as our current ones tried to be. For LEO, a simple crew vehicle will work. Later, the ISS or a moonbase should be used to create new, true spacecraft that ferry and from the Moon, and can use lunar material to build a Mars vehicle.

When someone says that the cost to go to space is too expensive, I have to emphasize where the money goes to build the spacecraft. It's not like we take millions of dollar bills, smelt them into vehicles or stuff bills in the fuel tanks and set them afire. That money goes to WORKERS who build the space vehicles and COMPANIES that make jobs. That's economically a Good Thing.

Re:Getting There, and Costs

[shmlco]

Baby steps, please. A Shuttle replacement need not be all things as our current ones tried to be...

Here, here! Build the pieces needed to do each part of the job right, and stop trying for a one-size-fits-none solution.

Re:Getting There, and Costs

[promantek]

It only costs $12.74 to launch a ship into space.

I'm so sick of people who think that space travel isn't affordable to the average person.

Re:Getting There, and Costs

[nietsch]

This is a repost from a previous comment (bonus points for the link to it), if you go karma whoring, please be so kind to provide the correct link

The X-20A Dyna-Soar (Dynamic Soarer) was a single-pilot manned reusable spaceplane, really the earliest American manned space project to result in development contracts. It evolved from the German Saenger-Bredt Silverbird intercontinental skip-glide rocket bomber[...]

see more here

here is more on the dynasoar:

The X-20A Dyna-Soar (Dynamic Soarer) was a single-pilot manned reusable spaceplane, really the earliest American manned space project to result in development contracts. It evolved from the German Saenger-Bredt Silverbird intercontinental skip-glide rocket bomber
see here

and something about that Buran shuttle your rip mentions is here:

The Russian Shuttle Buran ("Snowstorm" in Russian) was authorized in 1976 in response to the United States Space Shuttle program. Building of the shuttles began in 1980, with the first full-scale Aero-Buran rolling out in 1984. It was launched by Energia LV. read more here.

As for the cost argument: yes it is true that if you contract all out in your own country, the nett cost for the state is lower than the expended amount. But those are still unproductive workers. If you have your doubts about a third world country doing space research, why use a different standard for first world countries. All those people (working on hyperexpensive spaceprojects) could also develop more and cleaner technologies that might avert the greenhouse runaway that the US seems to want so bad. (In that perspective it is completely logical that the US develops a new space shuttle at twice the cost).

nuff said...

Re:Getting There, and Costs

[PlacidPundit]

When someone says that the cost to go to space is too expensive, I have to emphasize where the money goes to build the spacecraft. It's not like we take millions of dollar bills, smelt them into vehicles or stuff bills in the fuel tanks and set them afire.

Most likely, people who say this are arguing that the benefit is not worth the price.

That money goes to WORKERS who build the space vehicles and COMPANIES that make jobs. That's economically a Good Thing.

Er, yes. But the real argument is not about whether the money will be reinvested. It's a given that the money goes somewhere when the government spends it, just the same as it does when an individual spends it. The question is who will choose where these funds go. If the government decides, the money will almost certainly go to different places than if individuals decide separately. Then supply and demand kicks in and the number and type of goods and services available on the market begin to change.

Re:Getting There, and Costs

[Jaruzel]

I've reported this exploit to Amazon.com

-Jar.

Re:Getting There, and Costs

[mshiltonj]

When someone says that the cost to go to space is too expensive, I have to emphasize where the money goes to build the spacecraft. It's not like we take millions of dollar bills, smelt them into vehicles or stuff bills in the fuel tanks and set them afire. That money goes to WORKERS who build the space vehicles and COMPANIES that make jobs. That's economically a Good Thing.

This is the Broken Window Fallacy. Sloppy thinking.

Re:Getting There, and Costs

[Anonymous Coward]

It's "Hear, hear", not "Here, here". It means, both "Damn right" and "Listen up" at the same time.

Re:Getting There, and Costs

[lgw]

Right, but keep following the argument. Government spending isn't a total waste, but it's inefficient for the reasons you mentioned. Military spending does the least to stimulate the economy, because the weapons we build aren't in turn used within the economy (cynicism aside) the way, say, an automobile is. There is, however, a nice side benefit in that some military spending goes for research, which does pay off occasionally when things like the internet are invented.

Spending on the space program suffers the same downside as military spending, in that it stimulates the economy less than simply not taxing people by that amount, but it has much higher benefits in terms of research driving technology. A lot of good tech has come out of NASA and been adapted for the consumer market, which in turn stimulates the economy nicely.

IMO, space research spending is a push - we probably break even in the long term. It's a jobs program for geeks that tends to pay for itself.

Re:Getting There, and Costs

[Anonymous Coward]

Hear, hear. Too damn many people get this wrong.

Re:Getting There, and Costs

[jafac]

Dinosaur?

Re:Getting There, and Costs

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. Are other people still using "...nuff said" as the the hammer statement in closing arguments? Still? In 2005? Seriously. That's incredibly lame. I am surprised that this is still a technique used by intellectual bullies.

Re:Getting There, and Costs

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes you think they care?

OH NOES someone used our redirect to fool a slashbot SHUT DOWN AMAZON.COM FOR GREAT JUSTICE

Re:Getting There, and Costs

[HangingChad]

It may look like the Crew Return Vehicle concept that's being rehashed into a shuttle replacement.

I think the technical term is "spam can" if I remember right. Wings on a space craft is what you get when ex-pilots are running the space program. We need economical, reliable lift capability, not flying space ships. That's why the Russians are kicking our ass. They're building trucks for space while NASA is still dorking around trying to glue wings on re-entry vehicles.

What's wrong with ballistic re-entry anyway? Wasn't there some talk about refitting one of the old Apollo capsules in the space museum? ROFL! This is one time when going ballistic would be a good thing. lol.

Re:Getting There, and Costs

[charyou-tree]

When someone says that the cost to go to space is too expensive, I have to emphasize where the money goes to build the spacecraft. It's not like we take millions of dollar bills, smelt them into vehicles or stuff bills in the fuel tanks and set them afire. That money goes to WORKERS who build the space vehicles and COMPANIES that make jobs. That's economically a Good Thing.

So when a $10 million project goes over budget and balloons to $50 million, that must be a good thing too, right?

Familiar with the concept of opportunity cost?

Your argument is a terrible justification, because it could be applied to such absurd projects as a 300 ton, hand-carved, gold-plated statue of a cow that get polished daily and re-plated every third Tuesday.

Note I'm not arguing against space exploration, or cow statues for that matter, just your logic.

Re:Getting There, and Costs

[susano_otter]

Another benefit of military spending is security. Military investments are made with the goal of securing other investments in order to guarantee that they pay off and the money spent is not wasted.

Re:Getting There, and Costs

[Atryn]

Your argument is a terrible justification, because it could be applied to such absurd projects as a 300 ton, hand-carved, gold-plated statue of a cow that get polished daily and re-plated every third Tuesday.

Wasn't that type of activity a major part of the Ancient Egyptian economic and stability model? they certainly kept a lot of people 'employed' (even if the standard of living was low)...

Re:Getting There, and Costs

[nietsch]

Well thank you for the term intellectual bully, I really like it. As for the proper use of whatever term, in this case 'nuff said': I am not a native (english)speaker, so I will no doubt use stange grammar or use terms that are out of date. I don't care.
<div name="accent" content="german(einstein)">You may think little of that charm, but it drives the women crazy ;-)"</div>

Re:Getting There, and Costs

[almost-empty]

Try fighting the bureaucrats entrenched at NASA to do that. You will not win. Or how about you come up with a design that does the same as the shuttle?

home vs travel

[mrselfdestrukt]

Why not just build an international space station or something... ?

Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

"The group calculates that it can have the system ready by 2008 for $400 million".

Alright guys, this means we will have it around 2015 for about $750 million.

Re:Hmm

[pe1rxq]

They are offering a fixed-price deal to NASA....

Re:Hmm

[Jarnis]

Actually, considering what Scaled Composites has done so far, and the budget they've used, I have some belief that this might be doable. Of course it would not include funds for running a huge NASA paperpusher army, so it probably won't include costs of extensive certifications and testings to get the failure rate down to minimal. Space is risky business, and spending megabucks for additional 1-2% success rate is just a bad idea. Every astronaut can themselves consider the risks and decide if they are happy with the launch vehicle.

Nobody was out there demanding stacks of paper and testing from the Wright brothers when they experimented. In retrospect their contraption was highly unstable and unsafe. Same should apply for launch system developments. Sure, stuff will blow up, and people will die. People who understood the risks and knew exactly what they were doing. If they run out of people who are willing to hop onboard, they know they must spend time and money on the safety. Today, I doubt they'll have many issues as long as the (test)pilots are involved in the process and know how the tincan they are hopping into ticks.

No need to bog it all down with 100M$s of paperwork and extra safety tests and checks that really won't improve safety. The law of diminishing returns applies - sure, you want to test and make sure the damn thing works, but beyond certain point extra testing and checking is not going to change the safety much - only the pricetag will go up, see NASA :)

Re:Hmm

[acidrain]

Sure, stuff will blow up, and people will die.

Cute. It isn't that we can't find people who will take the risks, it's our safety obsessive culture that cannot tolerate your suggestion. Sure the money would be far better spent on foreign aid, in terms of lives per dollar, but public sentiment isn't rational. And NASA depends on public sentiment for it's cash, not the delivery of a product.

Re:Hmm

[Vo0k]

Actually, if the deal is "fixed price" and there's no nasty backdoors, either they do it for below $400M and get the rest as a profit, or they go above $400M and pay the difference from their pockets. Most probably they would go for it, because before they know they are over budget, they will have spent enought, that it will cost them less to finish the work and get $400M back, losing total minus what they get (say, $500M-$400M=$100M) than all they have invested so far (say, $250M). Not to mention all the "prestige" work for NASA gives.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

They are offering a fixed-price deal to NASA....


Ok, so it will only be 10 years late, ant wont cost more...

Re:Hmm

[Fussen]

It could also go the other way. Being a fixed price, the contractors have a secondary objective of building the vessel as efficiently as possible. If that happens they have the ability to be under-budget, which allows for good times all around with the supplemental cash for bonuses and strong R&D.

Re:Hmm

[Jarnis]

Which is why we need private enterprises taking the initiative.

Business, hiring qualified test pilots to do stuff they are supposed to be doing. Everyone doing it can compare their paycheck to their job description and choose if the want to ride the experimental thingy.

Yes, I can imagine congressional hearings and 'oversight' destroying the whole thing after a crew exits stage left in a fireball. That means US has a problem, and such business should relocate elsewhere...

Odd that nobody seems to raise holy hell over dead military test pilots who have over the years died while testing military hardware. Nobody ever hears of them. People also seem to shrug off accidents during pilot training and military exercises. How is this any different from space exploration? It isn't. Space = risky business, where people can die. Live with it.

I know I'd love to go up there like just about everyone else. I also know that today's hardware for doing so is somewhat unreliable and 'prototype' in many ways, so I'd currently choose not to take the ride. I could take a zero-g ride on a vomit comet (airplanes are petty mature), but betatesting a rocket is not my idea of a fun occupation. At the same time I'm quite sure you'd find immensely qualified takers for the job...

Re:Hmm

[Shadowlore]

Alright guys, this means we will have it around 2015 for about $750 million.

That is still cheap compared to STS.

Re:Hmm

[BerntB]

this means we will have it around 2015 for about $750 million.

So give it to the usual susp.. space contractors. You will get nice papers for that kind of money. :-(

And not for a fixed price contract.

(-: Many places I could have written the same. Lots of people at Boeing etc posting here? :-)

Re:Hmm

[Bohnanza]

Joke or not, you're probably right. I seem to remember that the Space Shuttle was originally proposed as a "low-cost" system.

Re:Hmm

[dajak]

Sure, stuff will blow up, and people will die. People who understood the risks and knew exactly what they were doing. If they run out of people who are willing to hop onboard, they know they must spend time and money on the safety.

Surely there is no way the present 'pro life' US government is going to fund a thinly veiled assisted suicide scheme, unless it can be argued that it is going to bring 'freedom and democracy' to space.

The law of diminishing returns applies - sure, you want to test and make sure the damn thing works, but beyond certain point extra testing and checking is not going to change the safety much - only the pricetag will go up, see NASA :)

This law has been repealed recently; Microsoft and Ford can build cars that can't crash. Let them build the shuttle.

Re:Hmm

[ScottyUK]

Or more beer for the launch party....

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

or lawyers for when the thing drops a part on launch...

Re:Hmm

[lgw]

Sure the money would be far better spent on foreign aid, in terms of lives per dollar

Did you know: almost all foreign aid provided by the US goverment is in the form of military subsidies (for weapon systems built here, of course, gotta slice that pork). For a government spending choice, one probably shouldn't think of foreign aid in terms of lives per dollar.

Re:Hmm

[Rorschach1]

Pffft. You obviously haven't worked on any government contracts. $400 million by 2008 means $3 billion for a scaled-back, re-purposed vehicle that doesn't meet the original design goals, and MIGHT be ready by 2015.

Keep Lockheed Martin out of it and you might have a chance of producing something for under $1 billion and less than 3 years late.

$20 million sounds awfully low - I think the current expendable, non-manrated Delta II launches cost around $50 million each. Speaking of which, we've got one sitting on the pad right now and I ought to get back to work...

Re:Hmm

[sepal]

I saw Burt Rutan speak at the University of Oregon a couple of weeks ago and, thanks to some of the hints he dropped, have been waiting for an announcement like this. I would tend to believe him on the price. He says that SpaceShip One cost them $25 million, and then they made back $10 million winning the X Prize, and another couple million by putting a sticker that said "Virgin" on the backside of the ship for the second flight. So Scaled Composites' last project got into space for...what's that, net cost of something like $13 million? That's nothing. I mean, nothing. Shoot, folks, we used to watch dot-coms spend $13 million on foosball tables....

Re:Hmm

[rben]

Odd that nobody seems to raise holy hell over dead military test pilots who have over the years died while testing military hardware. Nobody ever hears of them.

Actually, you are exactly right. There are a number of American test pilots who died testing the stealth bombers and fighters. I talked to one woman who didn't find out what happened to her son until five years after she was told he had died in an "accident." He was a test pilot that flew one of the first set of B2 bombers. He flew even though the previous couple of test flights had crashed. At least that's the story I heard. I don't know if a proper investigation into the causes of those accidents was performed.

The fact that people are willing to accept risks does not automatically make it all right to put them into danger. We have a responsibility to insist that our government and our businesses exercise due diligence in it's efforts to develop new equipment.

That doesn't mean that we should refuse to accept the fact that we are dealing with dangerous things and that there will be deaths. It just means that we should continue to insist on competent investigations and believable answers when accidents occur.

Space at any cost doesn't get us what we need. Space as a viable place to do business and develop new products without worrying about things blowing up, that's what we need.

Re:Hmm

[Rei]

There are a lot of fallacies in this post. Lets go down the list:

Actually, considering what Scaled Composites has done so far

Scaled has done almost nothing in terms of sending a craft to orbit.

Of course it would not include funds for running a huge NASA paperpusher army

NASA's "paperpushing" regulations are largely due to the private companies trying to take advantage of them. Trust me, I used to work for one company that did - Rockwell-Collins. They had a Space Shuttle contract, and started charging all of their other projects that were low on budget to the shuttle contract, then simply claimed that the project was running overbudget. Eventually they were caught and smacked down with fines and regulatory penalties, but far down the line.

The regulations are designed to make sure that the net result is A) what they asked for, B) safety corners haven't been cut, and C) . Can they be improved? You bet. Have they been improved already? You bet (as much as O'Keefe has done wrong, most will agree that he made NASA regulations a lot easier to deal with).

Every astronaut can themselves consider the risks and decide if they are happy with the launch vehicle.

I'll agree with that one.

Nobody was out there demanding stacks of paper and testing from the Wright brothers when they experimented.

Experimented on themselves. When they wanted to sell their airplane to the military, the military put it through the works.

In retrospect their contraption was highly unstable and unsafe.

Unstable? Yes. Unsafe? Hardly. Early airplanes flew so low and so slow that even when you crashed, it was rarely a fatal event. The first fatality wasn't until 1908, despite several hundred (yes, hundred) teams around the world building their own airplanes in that time, many with dubious methods. If I recall the number correctly, the first cross-country flight attempt in order to win a cup involved about three dozen crashes *by the same contender*, who each time patched his airplane up and took off again. Even with all of the advances in speed (and increases in flying altitude), and with far more rugged terrain, of the dozen crashes in the first attempt to fly around the world in 1924, none were fatal. The first fatal commercial flight wasn't until two planes in (late 1920s, early 1930s? Don't recall the exact date) collided over the English Channel. I could keep going, but I think you get the picture. Early amateur airplanes were nothing like amateur rockets - their failure modes were far, far more gentle.

No need to bog it all down with 100M$s of paperwork and extra safety tests and checks that really won't improve safety.

You better believe that all of those "extra safety tests" increase safety. Take a look at the history of any rocket development program's tests. Often, you won't find burnthrough fuel/oxidizer leak, or other potentially fatal complication until you've mounted everything on the launch pad to each other and are doing your 20th or so static firing of the engines.

The law of diminishing returns applies - sure, you want to test and make sure the damn thing works, but beyond certain point extra testing and checking is not going to change the safety much

Quite true. But look at all of the public outcry (and even outcry on Slashdot) when a manned spacecraft fails. They have reasons other than pure logic to take into account: public reaction. If t-space wants to step into the public limelight as such, they better be prepared to take that on as well.

Re:Hmm

[Rei]

The problem is, this bid isn't cheap. 20 million dollars per launch, 4-6 people, no cargo (their proposal is to have all cargo launched on unmanned systems) seems to imply a cargo capacity of around 1200 kg at 16,700$/kg. These are Space Shuttle prices. And for such a small craft, 400 million dollars development cost is quite extreme.

They're using an outmodded reentry design (the bell-shaped reentry design wasn't chosen by the US, Russia, and China for no particular reason - they did extensive testing, and it proved to be the most efficient, most reliable shape), and they plan to make reusable capsules out of it when capsules have seldom proven realistic to refurbish for a second flight in the past. Furthermore, they plan to do this on their very first space attempt. Quite doubtful, to be honest.

High recurrant prices, companies with no background in orbital launch and only a background in unscalable suborbital (i.e., "high risk", and an implication of higher costs than predicted), questionable reusability (which generally implies higher costs than predicted), and high capital costs. I would be quite surprised if NASA ends up accepting this.

And before people start up the Rutan hero-worship ("he can do anything!"), Rutan did almost nothing compared to real spaceflight. He built an aircraft around an unscalable purchased rocket engine and a nitrous tank. He made it out of the same sort of materials that he builds all of his aircraft out of (which aren't even close to what you need for reentry, the biggest spaceflight difficulty, and where most of the actual engineering problems lie), and his purchased low-ISP high-tank mass engine isn't going anywhere close to orbit, no matter how it gets tweaked.

The only really major accomplishment that he did was to create the world's first fully-private supersonic aircraft, without supersonic windtunnel testing - an impressive feat, mind you, and one that is quite a testament to the power of modern CFD software. Also, stably dropping a powered craft from another isn't a typical engineering problem for a private builder to address, and while they had stability problems on engine start, they did pull it off successfully.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Odd that nobody seems to raise holy hell over dead military test pilots who have over the years died while testing military hardware. Nobody ever hears of them. People also seem to shrug off accidents during pilot training and military exercises. How is this any different from space exploration? It isn't. Space = risky business, where people can die. Live with it.

The difference with space flight is that everything is pushed to the limit, in an engineering sense. If so much as a single bolt fails, the crew will die.

For that reason, it's necessary to aim for zero failures in space flight, because if you don't, then you'd have a death rate like 50% of the crews.

Besides, considering that 2 shuttle missions have ended in death, I'd be willing to bet that being a shuttle pilot is far more dangerous than being a test pilot.

Re:Hmm

[georgewilliamherbert]

Rei, look, you have been a skeptic on slashdot about alt.space for as long as it's been an active thread that I recall. Healthy skepticism is fine. But a lot of what you keep doing is just ridiculous.

The problem is, this bid isn't cheap. 20 million dollars per launch, 4-6 people, no cargo (their proposal is to have all cargo launched on unmanned systems) seems to imply a cargo capacity of around 1200 kg at 16,700$/kg. These are Space Shuttle prices.

You just admitted that you know that they are saying they'll launch cargo on another vehicle. And yet you go right on in there and do a cost per pound of cargo comparison.

That's a complete nonsequiteur.

They're using an outmodded reentry design (the bell-shaped reentry design wasn't chosen by the US, Russia, and China for no particular reason - they did extensive testing, and it proved to be the most efficient, most reliable shape)

The capsule shape is called the sphere-cone geometry, for the rather obvious reason that it has a nose that's a section of a sphere, and then a conical mid and aft body. It's not bell shaped. Use its proper name.

They are far from the first use of the sphere cone design. As a matter of fact, more sphere-cone reentry vehicles (400 plus) have been used in history than any other shape. More than all other shapes put together, as a matter of fact. The Discoverer film capsules provide plenty of flight history on the geometry.

Nor is t/Space the first company to propose using them for modern manned capsules.

Nor is modern use the first proposed use: the same geometry was proposed for space lifeboat capsules in the 1960s and 1970s. It has always been felt to be a very easy to design, robust, and simple concept.

Sphere-cone requires slightly more thermal protection system mass than a conventional blunt cone shape like Apollo or Gemini, or even the Soyuz or Shenzhou. On the other hand, it has superior characteristics during the touchdown and landing phase of the spacecrafts flight, and is simpler and lower risk in other areas as well. You are trading off ablative heatshield mass for other technical risks being lessened.

Heatshields are among the cheapest components of a spacecraft on a per pound basis. If your objective is to minimize risk and cost, then more heatshield mass is a good thing if it simplifies other problems.

...and they plan to make reusable capsules out of it when capsules have seldom proven realistic to refurbish for a second flight in the past. Furthermore, they plan to do this on their very first space attempt.

Existing capsules were designed to be expendable, not reusable. You don't generally reuse things you designed to throw away.

Despite it being an expendable capsule, a Gemini was flown a second time in an unmanned test flight. So it has been done before.

Re:Hmm

[Rei]

You just admitted that you know that they are saying they'll launch cargo on another vehicle. And yet you go right on in there and do a cost per pound of cargo comparison.

Per kilogram. And that's per kilogram of payload - in this case, the payload is humans. The shuttle carries both human payloads and cargo payloads; would you rather I choose a different craft for comparison?

The capsule shape is called the sphere-cone geometry ... Use its proper name.

A) What percentage of slashdotters would recognize the term "sphere-cone geometry"?

B) What percentage of slashdotters would recognize the term "bell shaped" (which is a reasonably accurate description - in fact, the Mercury capsules were named "Liberty Bell X", where X was a number).

Be realistic here:

1) I'm posting on Slashdot, not alt.space.
2) "sphere-cone" isn't even a widely used term - it isn't even mentioned on places like astronautix.com.
3) You completely misread my post: "Bell shaped" was in reference to later, Mercury/Apollo-style capsules. The key difference in the Corona-style capsules is that the gently sloping sides continue outwards away from the nose, instead of inwards - that is, the nose end is smaller than the aft end.

A little history: The first reentry designs proposed were long needlelike designs, designed to be low drag. These hardly worked at all; they burned up. For the next generation, they widened the capsule, still having a taper, but blunting the nose, thus driving the heat away from the craft (most ICMBs use shapes like this). Later capsules optimized this further by having the capsule itself withdraw inwards further away from the shockwave. I've seen some more recent designs that call for further optimization with a "loaf" shape, in which the top of the cone isn't rounded but truncated; it provides better mass and space ratios. Also, what I described was just for the US; I'm not too familiar with the Soviet development process, but at least the Vostoks took a completely different approach - they had spherical capsules.

In short, they're choosing to use a higher beta capsule than necessary. I'd love to see a justification for this - it's not a warhead that we're talking about here. :P The goal is to be gentle, not rough, and if you go high beta, you have to pay for it in reentry mass.

Sphere-cone requires slightly more thermal protection system mass than a conventional blunt cone shape like Apollo or Gemini

"Slightly"? The difference between a low beta and high beta reentry system is quite significant, not to mention the fact that every extra bit of mass on reentry requires many times more mass (and greater complexity) on liftoff.

On the other hand, it has superior characteristics during the touchdown and landing phase of the spacecrafts flight, and is simpler and lower risk in other areas as well.

Elaborate on "simpler and lower risk" involved on a system that has to deal with much more extreme reentry conditions.

Heatshields are among the cheapest components of a spacecraft on a per pound basis.

Just ignoring that extra heatshield mass involves a lot of other mass and complexity to get it up there, that's simply not true - especially with high beta heatshields. Have you ever looked at the thermal properties of materials at reentry temperatures? It's amazing how quickly most materials become easily pliable.

Yes, we're talking about a small craft here (which helps), but even still, you're going to need a good heat shield. Heat shields are costly (what on Earth made you think that they're cheap? Have you ever checked out RCC prices, for example? Even ablative shields cost a fortune) and are common failure points.

Existing capsules were designed to be expendable, not reusable. You don't generally reuse things you designed to throw away.

They've been expendible because of what reentry does to a cap

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for posting a thoughtful adult response. The typical Slashdot post on space travel is almost always a mix of technical misinformation, NASA bashing, mindless hero worship of Rutan, and a completly niave and deeply ignorant set of assumptions about how business operates in a corporate capitalist society.

Doing anything is space is very risky, both in the techincal and economic sense. For human flight the personal risk is death, for business, the outcome is bankrupcy. The only current non-government space business is communication satellites, and their current cost structure can be supported by the existing government backed launch industry. Right now space is for pioneers, not for making money. When it does become profitable there will be more then enough businesses to make it happen.

Re:Hmm

[susano_otter]

I don't know if a proper investigation into the causes of those accidents was performed.

Hang on a minute.

A test pilot crashes a test plane, and you're not sure a "proper" investigation was made?

You may be a little unclear on the concept of "testing".

Ask yourself this question (answer below): Why does the B2 no longer crash all the time?

==========

Answer: because they investigated all the crashing that happened during their tests.

Re:Hmm

[georgewilliamherbert]

You just admitted that you know that they are saying they'll launch cargo on another vehicle. And yet you go right on in there and do a cost per pound of cargo comparison. Per kilogram. And that's per kilogram of payload - in this case, the payload is humans. The shuttle carries both human payloads and cargo payloads; would you rather I choose a different craft for comparison?

I would rather you not use cargo costs for judging the cost of orbiting people, as they're not the same figure of merit. The Shuttle is the only vehicle which carries both in quantity, and nobody is proposing followons which do that.

Use reasonable methodology.

The capsule shape is called the sphere-cone geometry ... Use its proper name. A) What percentage of slashdotters would recognize the term "sphere-cone geometry"?

Without an introduction? Probably vanishingly few. But you can introduce it and explain it, as I did, and then educate people some about the technical field as you go.

B) What percentage of slashdotters would recognize the term "bell shaped" (which is a reasonably accurate description - in fact, the Mercury capsules were named "Liberty Bell X", where X was a number). Be realistic here: 1) I'm posting on Slashdot, not alt.space. 2) "sphere-cone" isn't even a widely used term - it isn't even mentioned on places like astronautix.com.

Astronautix is a great encyclopedia for the public, but that doesn't make it authoritative in the industry. Everyone at NASA I talk to about capsules, at Bigelow Aerospace, at the FAA AST, the DOD, etc. ... everyone knows and uses sphere-cone routinely. Even in presentations at conferences where most of the audience is nontechnical, it tends to be used as the designator, along with a description of what the word means.

3) You completely misread my post: "Bell shaped" was in reference to later, Mercury/Apollo-style capsules. The key difference in the Corona-style capsules is that the gently sloping sides continue outwards away from the nose, instead of inwards - that is, the nose end is smaller than the aft end.

Then you really have me confused, as Apollo/Gemini/Mercury blunt leading edge capsules look (to me) even less like a bell than sphere-cone geometry capsules.

A little history: The first reentry designs proposed were long needlelike designs, designed to be low drag. These hardly worked at all; they burned up. For the next generation, they widened the capsule, still having a taper, but blunting the nose, thus driving the heat away from the craft (most ICMBs use shapes like this).

US and Russian ICBMs haven't used that shape in 40 years, actually. Using much better thermal protection systems (reinforced carbon-carbon mostly) the current types of ICBM Reentry Vehicle (RV) are very pointy cones, with a roundoff at the nose of less than 10% of the base diameter typically.

See for example: The Nuclear Weapon Archive W-78 warhead / Mk-12A RV webpage.

Later capsules optimized this further by having the capsule itself withdraw inwards further away from the shockwave. I've seen some more recent designs that call for further optimization with a "loaf" shape, in which the top of the cone isn't rounded but truncated; it provides better mass and space ratios.

I've designed several capsules which were generically Apollo shaped but truncated the cone lower down; it has its uses, but it's not really better from a mass or space ratio point of view. You can stick a larger hatch in the nose that way, you can stick cargo outside the pressurized capsule that way; I put pressurized Mars rovers riding outside some big (40 plus foot diameter) capsules of that geometry for one mission design.

Masswise, it end

Re:Hmm

[georgewilliamherbert]

Heatshields are among the cheapest components of a spacecraft on a per pound basis.
Just ignoring that extra heatshield mass involves a lot of other mass and complexity to get it up there, that's simply not true - especially with high beta heatshields. Have you ever looked at the thermal properties of materials at reentry temperatures? It's amazing how quickly most materials become easily pliable. Yes, we're talking about a small craft here (which helps), but even still, you're going to need a good heat shield. Heat shields are costly (what on Earth made you think that they're cheap? Have you ever checked out RCC prices, for example? Even ablative shields cost a fortune) and are common failure points.

As I pointed out earlier, your assumption about a high beta reentry is incorrect, or at least unfounded.

RCC is not on my menu; I have priced ablative TPS before, yes, and have talked to the ablative heatshield manufacturers within the last few months about a current project.

The engineering on ablative heatshields is nontrivial, but the actual materials are quite affordable.

Existing capsules were designed to be expendable, not reusable. You don't generally reuse things you designed to throw away.
They've been expendible because of what reentry does to a capsule. The capsule itself corrodes, and the heat (which gets channeled to every part of the skin, usually by copper, to make the nose heat bearable) damages essentially everything that isn't occupied by people. There's risk of warping, weld damage, damaged electronics, and numerous other problems. Unlike a craft like the shuttle where you radiate your heat away before it becomes a problem, a capsule doesn't have that luxury, especially a high beta capsule.

I'm sorry, Rei, but that's a bunch of baloney.

The capsule doesn't corrode; the ablative heatshield material is heated, expands, and ablates away as it is supposed to do.

The metal structure gets heated somewhat, but there's no necessary reason for it to get heated to the point that it suffers any structural damage. The inner capsule with people in it is protected just fine, and the whole rest of the capsule structure other than the ablative skin can be protected equally well if you care about it. And if you're reusing it then you care.

Despite it being an expendable capsule, a Gemini was flown a second time in an unmanned test flight.
Unmanned for a reason. Why do you think it was that we never made a reusable capsule series, given how many capsules we flew? Russia started one (Zarya), but not until the mid 1980s, even with all of their capsule experience, and it got cancelled. Now we have some newcomers who claim that they're going to do what even superpowers with decades of experience couldn't, on their very first try? Please.

Zarya had two technical defects: one, the landing rocket motors were so loud they would damage the crew's hearing, and two, there was no backup landing system if those rockets failed to fire.

It was cancelled because they didn't have missions for it and didn't have money for it.

Prior capsules were made expendable because it is, arugably, just as cheap to do it expendable and it takes less up front research and development cost.

The Gemini flew unmanned the second time not because it was too damaged to fly with people in it, but because they were testing out another, truly risky at the time idea... having a hatch in the middle of the ablative heatshield. It passed the test just fine, fortunately.

Reading your reply in total again, I can't think but that you really don't understand what you know and don't know about spacecraft design. Most of your detailed objections about capsules are incorrect. You're making assumptions about what was hard and what wasn't hard which don't stand up to close inspection.

To be a good skeptic, you have to have good information to start with. You need to ask more questions first.

Re:Hmm

[Kiryat Malachi]

Per kilogram. And that's per kilogram of payload - in this case, the payload is humans. The shuttle carries both human payloads and cargo payloads; would you rather I choose a different craft for comparison?

I would rather you compare the cost per human, as the payload is not cargo, but people, which have much different requirements; we know unmanned cargo is cheaper off Shuttle on expendables; the only suitable comparisons are launch costs per human between t/Space, Shuttle, and Soyuz.

Your comparison is equally valid as comparing the cost/kg for flying 1kg of cargo on a Delta II - i.e., totally ridiculous. If you insist on doing a direct Shuttle payload comparison, compare the cost to launch 6 humans and a full shuttle payload bay as a combination of t/Space's design (for the humans) and an unmanned expendable (for the cargo); there are very few cargos (really, I can only think of a couple large scientific payloads... and most of those could be redesigned) that can't tolerate being launched seperately from the humans.

Re:Hmm

[Rei]

I would rather you not use cargo costs for judging the cost of orbiting people, as they're not the same figure of merit. The Shuttle is the only vehicle which carries both in quantity, and nobody is proposing followons which do that.

Praytell, what vehicle should we compare to? Soyuz, with its half a dozen metric tons of cargo but a crew of 3?

Then you really have me confused, as Apollo/Gemini/Mercury blunt leading edge capsules look (to me) even less like a bell than sphere-cone geometry capsules.

Mercury capsule

Bells

I mean, are you going to seriously claim that they're not similar shapes?

US and Russian ICBMs haven't used that shape in 40 years, actually. Using much better thermal protection systems (reinforced carbon-carbon mostly) the current types of ICBM Reentry Vehicle (RV) are very pointy cones, with a roundoff at the nose of less than 10% of the base diameter typically.

Ahem - they use blunt-tipped cones (the tip is just very small in modern ICBMs). Precisely what I just said.

I've designed several capsules which were generically Apollo shaped but truncated the cone lower down; it has its uses, but it's not really better from a mass or space ratio point of view. You can stick a larger hatch in the nose that way, you can stick cargo outside the pressurized capsule that way

Not truncating the nose; truncating the aft end. For example, the Stardust capsule. You get more space for a given amount of mass (as the shape is a closer approximation to a sphere), and you have a lower beta from the (proportionally) larger blunt area so that you need a slightly less massive TPS. It's also more stable at hypersonic speeds (due to shifting the center of gravity toward the nose, and makes for easy parachute deployment.

Uh, Rei? You just introduced the term beta without explaining it to the slashdotters, and on top of that you made a mistaken assumption about the beta of this capsule design.

In case you hadn't noticed, this isn't exactly a conversation with your average slashdotter any more, now is it?

Rei, however, I regret to inform you that you have goofed again. Capsule shape doesn't change beta automatically.

It is usually associated, however. ICBMs don't have small blunt areas for no particular reason; nor do capsules have large blunt areas for no particular reason. Yes, shape isn't the only factor, but it is a major factor. And you still haven't answered the question I posed: Why choose this design, if their concern wasn't a higher beta? I mean, what is the point then - to shift the center of gravity *back* to make it less stable during reentry? I'm asking a serious question: *why*?

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

real time = projected time*pi
real cost = projected cost*2
engineers use this as posted, marketing work backwards. but the engineers still get the blame. i think i'll go jump of the roof now.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I have priced ablative TPS before, yes

Yeah... About the report -- did you get that memo? It's just that we're putting new coversheets on them now *before* sending them out. So if you could just remember to do that from now on, that'd be great...

Re:Hmm

[georgewilliamherbert]

Not truncating the nose; truncating the aft end.

That's what I said.

Ok, the terminology here is somewhat ambiguous with capsules that tend to launch in one direction and reenter in the other. I meant, take the end away from the heatshield on an Apollo like design, which normally comes to a point, and cut it off flat halfway up the cone section.

Which is what Stardust did, some of my prior capsule designs have done, etc. For different reasons than what you think, though.

You make a big deal out of reducing beta, but in most practical designs, the capsule outer diameter is limited by some other factor such as fitting under a launch vehicle shroud, ground transport concerns, maximum feasible hammerhead on the launch vehicle, etc. If diameter were never an issue, capsules would be a lot larger; to first order approximation, TPS mass doesn't change if you decrease beta/increase surface area, but the reentry happens higher and more gently. Systems mass doesn't increase. The structural mass doesn't necessarily have to increase, though for pressurized volumes with people inside it will to some degree (less than you think, though; much of that mass is dealing with point loads such as hatches and the like, which don't increase at all if the overall volume goes up).

Fluffy capsules are a great thing. If you can actually build, transport, and fly them. Which, is the problem...

For example, the Stardust capsule. You get more space for a given amount of mass (as the shape is a closer approximation to a sphere), and you have a lower beta from the (proportionally) larger blunt area so that you need a slightly less massive TPS. It's also more stable at hypersonic speeds (due to shifting the center of gravity toward the nose, and makes for easy parachute deployment.

Rei, these shapes are less stable at lower speeds (high supersonic, transonic particularly) than at hypersonic speeds. If it's hypersonically marginally stable, it's going to be uncontrollably unstable as it slows down... generally a bad thing.

And you still haven't answered the question I posed:
Why choose this design, if their concern wasn't a higher beta? I mean, what is the point then - to shift the center of gravity *back* to make it less stable during reentry? I'm asking a serious question: *why*?

Well...

• More available volume for same outer diameter (similar to Soyuz shape, but more stable)
• More protection for parachutes and docking hatch area during reentry
• Can be designed to be stable "nose first" only, throughout whole speed regime from subsonic through transonic through supersonic through hypersonic through newtonian flow
• Good hypersonic L/D ratio with moderate angle of attack, and a geometry which doesn't make angle of attack heating changes hard on the capsule's "aft body"
• Geometry is conducive to CG layouts which let you attain enough angle of attack to be useful
• If you use passive energy absorbtion for landing on land, such as shock absorbers, crush structure, or space for seats to move downwards on shock absorbing mounts, the narrow part of the capsule being down at impact means that the least fraction of total usable capsule volume is taken up by the space needed for the impact attenuator.

Like I said... design a few, or look at the designs, in detail. It clarifies tradeoff issues magnificently.

Re:Hmm

[Rei]

If diameter were never an issue, capsules would be a lot larger; to first order approximation, TPS mass doesn't change if you decrease beta/increase surface area, but the reentry happens higher and more gently.

Quite true. That doesn't change the fact that, for a given amount of mass, it will be larger and have a slightly lighter TPS for a truncated design (what I stated since the beginning), diameter increase notwithstanding. And it's hard to discuss diameter constraints when we don't even know what launch vehicle we're talking about here - although, since we're not looking at taking up any payload, I doubt diameter will be an issue.

Rei, these shapes are less stable at lower speeds (high supersonic, transonic particularly) than at hypersonic speeds.

That's why you use a supersonic drogue chute, followed by the main chute(s), ala Apollo.

More available volume for same outer diameter (similar to Soyuz shape, but more stable)

Fair enough if you're correct, although I'll take such a claim with a heavy grain of salt unless you can provide real numbers.

More protection for parachutes and docking hatch area during reentry

A larger area, but I'm not sure where you get "more protection" from. Simply because the center is further from the shocks? The edges are more exposed.

Can be designed to be stable "nose first" only, throughout whole speed regime from subsonic through transonic through supersonic through hypersonic through newtonian flow

Not particularly relevant if you have a drogue chute launched at supersonic speeds. In such a case, you have a more stable hypersonic flight while still having a stable supersonic/transonic flight.

Good hypersonic L/D ratio with moderate angle of attack, and a geometry which doesn't make angle of attack heating changes hard on the capsule's "aft body"

Apollo had a hypersonic L/D of 0.75, according to Astronautix; are you claiming better? Cite for that and heating (comparative), please?

Geometry is conducive to CG layouts which let you attain enough angle of attack to be useful

As opposed to losing your orbital energy higher up from having a larger blunt base in addition to a good L/D?

If you use passive energy absorbtion for landing on land, such as shock absorbers, crush structure, or space for seats to move downwards on shock absorbing mounts, the narrow part of the capsule being down at impact means that the least fraction of total usable capsule volume is taken up by the space needed for the impact attenuator.

At the same time, it gives you the least amount of space for the impact attenuator.

In short, while I will defer to you as you have more experience than myself on this front, I really fail to see how such a design makes sense in this situation.

Re:Hmm

[Rei]

Oh, and not to mention, if you're relying on crush zones (or high impact landing shock in general), odds are your capsule isn't going to be very reusable, now is it? :)

Re:Hmm

[Rei]

RCC is not on my menu; I have priced ablative TPS before, yes, and have talked to the ablative heatshield manufacturers within the last few months about a current project.

And your prices were...? (include labor and inspection costs).

The engineering on ablative heatshields is nontrivial, but the actual materials are quite affordable.

I never said otherwise. It's like applying foam insulation to cryogenic tanks - the foam is cheap, but the consequences of bad application can be dire. Ablatives can be brittle, which makes the problem worse.

I'm sorry, Rei, but that's a bunch of baloney.

Well, it's nice to see that you're being mature here.

The capsule doesn't corrode

First off, essentially all water landings are considered to be corroded, because of what water (especially seawater) does to aluminum alloys (if a military aircraft falls into water, even partly, it is generally scrapped). Just ignoring that (say, if you want a land landing, which tends to be rougher and poses more risks of deformation to the heat shield), metals experience corrosion in the atmosphere during reentry as well. The heat shield isn't the only part of the capsule to experience significant temperature increases (and in fact, you generally try and transfer heat away from the heat shield). Paint and surface treatments, as well as selective alloys reduce the effects, but corrosion poses more strict requirements if you want the craft to be reused.

there's no necessary reason for it to get heated to the point that it suffers any structural damage ... can be protected equally well if you care about it.

And yet, it hasn't been done. Still, a small group plans to do it on their first real experience with a major space project. Pardon my skepticism.

It was cancelled because they didn't have missions for it and didn't have money for it.

True, many projects were cancelled around that time, but many were not. Zarya went. In the entire history of capsules, we see such miniscule work on reuse. There's a reason. Deformation, damage, refurbishing the heat shield, and other such issues tend to prove more expensive than building a new craft. Is it impossible to build a reusable capsule? Certainly not, and I'm sure Zarya would have eventually succeded if enough money had been pumped into it. But it's a very difficult challenge, and watching t-Space claim that they're going to do it with their very first spacecraft is like hearing a home builder tell you that they're going to build a high traffic suspension bridge.

Prior capsules were made expendable because it is, arugably, just as cheap to do it expendable and it takes less up front research and development cost.

Exactly.

The Gemini flew unmanned the second time not because it was too damaged to fly with people in it, but because they were testing out another, truly risky at the time idea... having a hatch in the middle of the ablative heatshield. It passed the test just fine, fortunately.

They very well could have flown a new capsule for MOL-1, however. They didn't. For risky tests, you don't waste money.

(Personal insult snipped)

Re:Hmm

[georgewilliamherbert]

Rei, these shapes are less stable at lower speeds (high supersonic, transonic particularly) than at hypersonic speeds.
That's why you use a supersonic drogue chute, followed by the main chute(s), ala Apollo.

You can also use a ballute to increase your effective reentry diameter, or large extendable drag plates, or all sorts of other things.

Not having to deploy anything to remain stable is a very good design characteristic. Things that are mission critical (such as, vehicle will spin out of control if you don't release it between Mach 4 and Mach 3.5...) need to be very reliable, and get very expensive and heavy as a result. Moving parts that are mission critical and require (for example) pyro deployment are always a weakspot.

If you can do a design which doesn't require any such components, because it's just inherently stable, you win. Your engineering is easier, you don't have to qualify the component to 99.999% including corner operational envelope cases, etc. You don't suffer from potential lingering maintenance or engineering design error issues.

If it's not there, it can't fail.

Good hypersonic L/D ratio with moderate angle of attack, and a geometry which doesn't make angle of attack heating changes hard on the capsule's "aft body" Apollo had a hypersonic L/D of 0.75, according to Astronautix; are you claiming better? Cite for that and heating (comparative), please?

Actually, it had a hypersonic L/D of 0.25 to 0.3, as the Astronautix entry for the Apollo CSM Command Module section indicates.

As for the geometry and heating issues... if you happen to own Human Spaceflight Mission Analysis and Design then you just need to look at the table of comparative L/D at Alpha for Apollo style and sphere-cone style capsules. I don't have it in front of me to give you the page number, but you can see that you can get good L/D at very mild alpha (25-35 degrees gives you 0.25-0.3 L/D).

That's a very simplified table, for one particular sphere-cone, of course. But it shows you the general case.

Geometry is conducive to CG layouts which let you attain enough angle of attack to be useful As opposed to losing your orbital energy higher up from having a larger blunt base in addition to a good L/D?

The overall drag will be similar for a high alpha sphere-cone and a basic blunt capsule. The blunt capsule has higher drag, but incrementally more rather than a large factor.

By the time you dial in enough alpha with either one to get a good enough L/D to get low enough peak entry Gs for easy human tolerance, the differences are very minor. You always want to see what the conditions are for a 3-4 G reentry, with the required lift (and thus L/D, etc). That's what matters.

If you use passive energy absorbtion for landing on land, such as shock absorbers, crush structure, or space for seats to move downwards on shock absorbing mounts, the narrow part of the capsule being down at impact means that the least fraction of total usable capsule volume is taken up by the space needed for the impact attenuator. At the same time, it gives you the least amount of space for the impact attenuator.

Space doesn't really matter. Length of attenuation material does... the G loading depends directly on how much time and space it takes to decellerate you. But the volume is just a question of what impact attenuation material you use. If you have a low energy dissipation density than you use lower density or lighter attenuators or crush structure... light foam, thin sheet metal constructs which are lightly connected, etc. Higher energy density per unit volume just requires denser energy absorbtion, such as heavier foams, thicker structures, denser aluminum foam

Re:Hmm

[FleaPlus]

I just wanted to say that this is quite possibly the most informative slashdot thread ever. Thanks to you both, georgewilliamherbert and Rei.

Re:Hmm

[rben]

You are right, that was a silly thing for me to say.

Still, because of the secrecy, there was obviously no public outcry over the deaths of those pilots at the time. When a project is so secret that family members aren't told when a love one dies, what can they do?

I have no reason to believe, like this woman did, that the stealth bomber project was pushed ahead too quickly, but I also don't have anyway to know that she is wrong. Secrecy has been used to cover up quite a few embarassing things in the past. I don't think human nature has changed in that regard.

Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't all the low-cost shuttle replacements so far, once they started trying to build them, turned into high-cost engineering boondoggles that were never finished?

Come to think of it, wasn't the Space Shuttle itself a low-cost replacement for what came before that, once they started to build them, turned into high-cost engineering boondoggles that were never totally finished?

I mean... just checking.

Re:Hmmm

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

Very true and there isn't much Burt Rutan can do about this. The problem is one congressman will hold back support until there is money added to the project to buy "outer space safe" band-aids with special adhesive (for some reason) which of course only someone in his distract can make for about $10,000 per band-aid. Then another will hold back support until money is added to have all instruction manually "speically" printed by someone is his district which of course will cost $1,000 per page.

This will go on-and-on until everyone has a little piece. By time time its done it'll be a few billion for development and of course all these "special" items will need to be replaced for each launch so it'll be back to hundreds of millions for each launch as well.

Based on Scaled Composites history, I have full confidence they could do the job well. However, I have no doubt "pork politics" will drive up the price drastically. Of course, that assumes the congressmen with Boeing, Northrup Grumman, etc in thier districts would ever allow this to go forward which I wouldn't call a given.

Why not?

[mmc]

Why not just give them US$400M? Northrup and the others will spend that kind of money just thinking about it all - then at least they'll have two options at the end of it!

Re:Why not?

[Seumas]

This whole plan will prove miserable when the world discovers the frightening corners that are cut to meet the low-bid necessary to win the contract.

Re:Why not?

[Ham_belony]

They kept the space shuttles in production far too long. After the first shuttle blew into samll pieces they should have started building a new space shuttle with modern technology maybe even improving performance and redesigning the interiour of the craft. With stats and dta from several missions they would have had sufficient data to improve the shuttles instead of refurbishing them all the time.

Re:Why not?

[ceeam]

Uhm, I have this wonderful idea here that needs only $20m(!) to complete. I cannot tell you any more details now (so that others don't steal it, you know), but if you send me this much money now, I promise that in the middle of 2008 we'll rule the world. PS: don't tell anything anyone, just send in the money.

Re:Why not?

[JaredOfEuropa]

Why not just give them US$400M?

$400M buys you a space vehicle. However you'll need another billion or so for all the palm-greasing, bribes, kickbacks, piggyback pet projects, and environmental studies, which are all required for putting that vehicle into space. ;)

Re:Why not?

[Kehvarl]

You have a world-domination scheme that can support multiple rulers for a net cost of $20M US? You sir, are either a more efficient, or more insane future dictator than I am. I salute you and eagerly await your attempt (So I can crush you in your moment of triumph, of course).

Re:Why not?

[Anonymous Coward]

I ruled the world in 2003, and believe me, it is not all what it is cracked up to be. Basically you worry a lot, and in the end all that is left are penguins.

Re:Why not?

[Pseudonym]

Is that you, Dr Robert Umboto, son of the late Nigerian oil minister? I lost your email address. I still need to talk about that financial transaction we were engaged in.

Why not?

[alizard]

It's about time the remaining Shuttles go where they belong, into museums. It's time people who go into space go with the benefit of ships built with modern technology, not 30 year old designs implemented in aging airframes running decades after any sane person would have put them out to pasture.

I want to see NASA successfully put people into space and not have them return as barbecued chunks.

I also like the idea of manned space missions at a fraction of the current costs.

Can someone explain to me...

[Vellmont]

Why it costs $500 million dollars just to put a frickin "re-usable" space-bus into orbit? Is it mostly a lot of variable costs that have to be paid every time we put a shuttle up, or are there just mostly fixed costs, then divide by shuttle missions per year?

Re:Can someone explain to me...

[Vo0k]

The shuttle itself, being reusable, weights so much that putting it in orbit costs a fortune. Normally, in case of rockets like Soyuz, maybe 1% of the original mass is put in the orbit, a tiny, light reentry device, maybe some payload. In case of the shuttle we need to lift a huge, ultra-heavy vehicle into orbit, it requires vastly more fuel. The hydrogen fuel tank is not reusable. Reworking the first-degree rockets is expensive. Because of added mass, extra material properties must be taken into consideration. It's cheaper to send 5 missions, 5-ton each, than one 25-ton one, but you can't take the shuttle apart and launch it in pieces. What originally was thought to be cheaper, seems to be a failed idea.

Re:Can someone explain to me...

[FleaPlus]

If I understand correctly, it's mostly fixed costs, particularly the costs of paying the salaries of the standing army of ~20,000 employees. They're needed to maintain, n-tuple check, and fill out the paperwork for shuttle tiles, volatile fuels, and so on.

Re:Can someone explain to me...

[Vellmont]

I did a little checking of my own, and if you can believe the Australians at: http://www.kids.net.au/encyclopedia-wiki/sp/Space_ Shuttle The costs are all in the re-inspection and certification of the shuttle. This makes a lot more sense to me since the fuel costs certainly can't be all that much. It's a great boondoggle for Florida though.

When originally conceived the shuttle was to operate similar to an airliner. After landing the Orbiter would be checked out and start "mating" to the rest of the system (the ET and SRBs) and be ready for launch in as little as two weeks. Instead this sort of turnaround in fact takes (typically) months. This is due, in turn, to the continued "upgrading" of the inspection process as a result of the Challenger explosion. Even simple tasks now require unbelievable amounts of paperwork.

The result is a massively inflated manpower bill. There are 25,000 workers in shuttle operations (perhaps an older number), so simply multiply any figure that you choose for an average annual salary, divide by six (...launches per year), and there you have it.

Re:Can someone explain to me...

[confused one]

Because, while it is re-usable, it must be thoroughly inspected and re-certified for each flight. With the current inspection regime it takes months to do the inspection, certification and prep for the next flight.

It turns out it isn't as simple as pulling the shuttle into the hanger after a landing and re-mounting it up for the next launch, as originally planned.

Re:Can someone explain to me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the cost of sending one 25 ton payload into space is cheaper than 5 5ton payloads into space. Fuel is cheap whereas engines are expensive. The problem with the shuttle is that it puts far more mass into space than is required. Thats why every launch they add a load of science projects to the mission, in n attempt to persuade themselves that each mission is worth it.

For example each module of te ISS shouldn't need to be launched via the shuttle. In fact if they had built a new HLV for the ISS modules then you would be able to launch more capable modules that would allow you to get some science done.

What is really needed are 3 types of lift vehicle. One small crew vehicle and a medium and a heavy vehicle.

T/spaces proposal might actually be an attempt to get thier entire CEV proposal accepted. None of the other aerospace industries are planning on a short term crew vehicle. If Nasa accepts T/space design, and the design is met on budget, then it will force the other companies to base their design around T/spaces success. They will then probably fail to persuade the public to choose their grossly more expensive, overcomplicated and limited designs when T/space has shown that they can build a capable ship for far less. Result T/space gets the whole contract.

Re:Can someone explain to me...

[georgewilliamherbert]

Actually the cost of sending one 25 ton payload into space is cheaper than 5 5ton payloads into space.

Let's do the math.

List price of a SpaceX Falcon V launch vehicle, with 5.5 ton payload to International Space Station orbit:

$16 million

Estimated / planning price for a Delta IV Heavy launch, with payload of 22 tons or so to space station orbit...

$280 million

4 x $16 million = $64 million
1 x $280 million = $280 million

$64 million is a little bit less than $280 million

The only caveat here is that Falcon V hasn't flown yet and Delta IV Heavy has flown once, with a moderate non-catastrophic failure.

Re:Can someone explain to me...

[p3d0]

Normally, in case of rockets like Soyuz, maybe 1% of the original mass is put in the orbit, a tiny, light reentry device, maybe some payload. In case of the shuttle we need to lift a huge, ultra-heavy vehicle into orbit, it requires vastly more fuel.

Well, this is almost right. The Soyuz, being a 3-stage rocket, has a mass ratio around 34 compared with the Shuttle's 15.6. Hence, the Soyuz gets about 3% of its mass to orbit, while the Shuttle gets around 6.4%. However, this is actually a point in favour of the Shuttle: for a given vehicle mass, a high mass ratio actually means a craft needs more fuel. Therefore, the Soyuz needs twice as much fuel as the Shuttle per vehicle mass.

The difference is that, once in orbit, the Shuttle outweighs the Soyuz 14.5 to 1 (cargo included). Factoring all these things together, the fuel used for one Shuttle launch could supply 7 Soyuz launches.

In his book Entering Space, Robert Zubrin argued that the Space Shuttle got it backward: it made the upper stage reusable while the lower stage is not. Rather, the massive, powerful lower stages should be the reusable one, while the upper stage can be a light disposable craft. He summed it up this way: "In short, the Space Shuttle is so inefficient because it is built upside-down." (Emphasis in original.)

Separation

[roalt]

Instead of a one-size-fits-all craft, t/Space's plan is to build an air-launched four-person capsule termed the Crew Transfer Vehicle (CXV), specialized for carrying people to and from low-Earth orbit. Once in orbit the CXV would dock with a separately-launched Crew Exploration Vehicle

ALL STATIONS: Prepare for saucer separation sequence!

According to star trek producers, this sequence was so expensive in special-effects, that it was hardly performed during the seven seasons of Star Trek: The Next generation... Funny that in real-life it might be cheaper...

Re:Separation

[Jaruzel]

Yeah I recall that also. Shame - it was a good sequence, and (in the early seasons) gave Georgi the jitters ;)

On a similar note, it'd be nice if the new 'shuttle' looked like the one in the ST:Enterprise credits. After all Star-Trek imitates Life imitates Star-Trek ad infinutum ;)

Personally, I want a Phoenix of my very own...

-Jar.

Re:Separation

[CrackedButter]

It was time consuming which made it useless during a space battle, it killed the pacing of the scene. It wasn't because it was expensive.

Cost

[ArbiterOne]

400 million? It costs 2 billion (taxpayer) dollars to build ONE stealth bomber. One.
This is cheap.
If we can get back into space for 400 million, call it a bargain and GO!

Re:Cost

[Vo0k]

If we can get back into space for 400 million, call it a bargain, secretly poison 90% of the military decision makers and GO!
Otherwise, they will say "Going into space? What a waste of money! That's almost 1/5 of a stealth bomber! No way!"

Re:Cost

[StratoChief66]

Yeah, I read that once, I shrugged it off as a typo at the time. How many stealth bombers does the US have for that price and how useful are they, can they really justify such a cost? Guess they don't have to, but it makes me wonder why the space program is so underfunded compared to the military.

Re:Cost

[FleaPlus]

do you have a refrence, or did you pull that out of your mother's peed-in-vagina?

Assuming you're referring to the stealth bomber:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-2_Spirit

The B-2 is the most expensive plane built to date, costing approximately $2.2 billion USD per plane. [1] (http://www.fas.org/man/gao/gao94217.htm) Some writers have suggested that the huge program cost may actually include costs for other black projects that remain classified. The high per-unit cost may also be partially explained by the small number of planes produced coupled with a large research overhead in the B-2 program (see below).

Re:Cost

[Infinite Entropy]

The B-2 bomber is a relic of the Cold War. We may use them to drop conventional bombs but that is just for show really. They were meant all along to penetrate the Soviet airspace to drob the bomb on moscow and other things. This is why cost was no object. The original order was for 132! Right now we have 21. It really is an incredible airplane. If whe had that kind of innovation the space program it would be completly different.

Re:Cost

[flyingsquid]

Guess they don't have to, but it makes me wonder why the space program is so underfunded compared to the military.

This situation may not get better soon. 80 billion in spending was just approved for Iraq. We're currently spending about 1 billion a week, and there's no telling how much longer we're going to be there: historically, insurgencies have taken 5-10 years to defeat. At some point the Iraqi government will presumably begin to take up more of the burden, but it's still going to require a substantial American investment in troops and funds for a while. Meanwhile, we've got that lil' ol' budget deficit.

In this situation, the "space on a shoestring" approach sounds like the best hope. I don't know if the government is going to be able to afford much else.

Re:Cost

[Ham_belony]

Who knows what projects have been funded during the stealth bomber development. New chemical weapons? New nucleair missiles? Improved Nucleair subs? The UK is planning on replacing its current submarines with new ones. Can you imagine the US already having the same subs in action?

Re:Cost

[WIAKywbfatw]

But ask yourself this: who needs a stealth bomber?

Certainly not the US, with its huge arsenal of cruise missiles at its disposal.

Re:Cost

[EvilTwinSkippy]

There are a good deal of missions that the Stealth Bomber can do that a cruise missile can't. Mainly bombing a moving column of tanks. For all it's expense, it does allow a single two person bomber to do the job of an entire air wing when you factor in escorts, refuelers, escorts for the refuelers, and so forth.

Re:Cost

[Anonymous Coward]

a stealth bomber has much better range than a cruise missile (even without refueling). it carries a shitload more ordnance.

anyway, its real mission -- as with the Trident submarine and the Peacekeeper ICBM -- was to deliver an unstoppable retaliation to a nuclear first-strike.

this mission is mostly, though not totally, obsolete. that's why only a few B-2s were ever built, and why the last of the Peacekeeper missiles are going to be retired by the end of this year.

icbms can be repurposed as orbital launch vehicles. bombers don't have a lot of peaceful purposes, but if the prez decides to bomb some people, as clinton did during 1998-1999 and bush did during 2001-2005, well then the b-2 comes in handy for that.

Re:Cost

[lgw]

These are good points. As long as someone else has nuclear weapons, we use the B2s every day. Deterence worked through the cold war, and moving a few B2s close to Korea worked wonders for the day or two they were engaging in nuclear brinksmanship last year.

MAD was a bit nuts, but "assured destruction, and only for you" is simply the best deterrent available.

The cost per each B2 is really pretty meaningless, since the cost is all for R&D anyway. The total cost for "enough" B2s was actually pretty small by cold war standards. While there was a legitimate argument once that the B2s would become less stealthy over time (relative to other tech), and become a waste, that argument has fallen through given the change in world politics. We're now concernd about enemies for whom the B2 will always be completely stealthy.

Re:Cost

[smithmc]

The UK is planning on replacing its current submarines with new ones. Can you imagine the US already having the same subs in action?

What's your point? That the UK might have some newer subs than ours? Are you worried about a submarine attack from the UK?

We should applaud the nations of Europe when they decide to invest in modern military hardware. Every dime they spend is a dime we don't have to.

Re:Cost

[tenchiken]

Exactly, but for the record, we are in the middle of a generational change in our sub fleet (688 to Seawolf and Virgina) as well.

Re:Cost

[Profane MuthaFucka]

That mission would also be performed easily with a B-52, for a lower cost. The US has mastered the art of air superiority, so the B-52's a pretty safe over the battlefield. In those cases where there is no air-superiority, the B-2 would have an application. For that reason it makes sense to have a few of them around.

When our current B-52's wear out, I'm in favor of starting up the assembly line for more of them. Of course, better engines and avionics would be a part of the new ones, but there's nothing at all wrong with the basic airframe, and it should be kept.

Re:Cost

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Don't take our last 2 wars as "typical" applications of strategic bombing. Afganistan had not air power to speak of, and Saddam's we had destroyed in Gulf War I.

China, North Korea, Pakistan, and the Former Soviet Union all field massive air forces coupled with complex anti-aircraft defense systems. If WWI and Korea are any measure, we don't often get a whole lot of warning about who our adversaries are going to be 10 or 20 years out. Korea was fought with WWII leftovers, and we didn't know until several years into the conflict which side we were going to fight on.

Having a fleet of stealth bombers in our back pocket gives everyone pause. Allies know we can bring those weapons to bear to watch their back. Foes know we can pile on a whole lot of hurt if provoked.

The fact that they can deliver a nuclear payload, relatively undetected, is just icing on the cake.

Re:Cost

[Salgak1]

There's a LOT wrong with the B-52 airframe: I know, I flew them. Not that it couldn't be fixed, but I'd suggest, instead, an upgrade of B-52-proven technologies for the 21st Century. No, I'm not talking a Dale-Brown-esque XB-52Z Megafortress. .

But updating the basic airframe, changing the wing and main wing spar for bigger, more efficient engines (modern CFM56's would tear themselves right off the jet, just as the turbofans on the B-52 H also are prohibited from more than roughly 80% of rated thrust. . .). Increased use of composite materials, and at least SOME stealthing.

And then a total re-do of aircraft avionics and ECM gear. Replace the tip tanks with additional fighter-type radars, and give the plane some counter-air capability (we once speculated that a B-52, loaded with AIM-54C Phoenix missiles, and perhaps a means of launching more of them from the bomb bay. . . could make a single B-52 into a flying SAM site. . .).

Make the ECM roughly equivalent to the ALQ-161 used in the B-1. And add some protection to the crew compartment . . .)

It'd be lovely to have, a B-52I or J model. . .

Re:Cost

[Profane MuthaFucka]

You basically described what I had in mind, though I don't agree that stealthing is useful (requires changes to the airframe shape that means you won't have a B-52, but a completely different plane) or that AA capability is useful. If AA is needed, then you need to keep an F-15 or two around for that.

In the wars we're fighting now, we had great need for a "bomb truck" and I don't see that ever going away.

Re:Cost

[Profane MuthaFucka]

I'm not saying that the B-52 is a strategic bomber. It's a tactical bomber now, with a hell of a big payload. Dumping an assload of bombs on a troop formation is just about as good as artillery. Even in a different kind of war, that role will continue for the B-52.

Re:Cost

[WIAKywbfatw]

I think most experts would agree that a stealth bomber is not a retaliatory strike platform, it's a first strike one.

Re:Cost

[Salgak1]

I was thinking along the lines of reducing the truly HUGE radar cross-section of the B-52, which, depending on aspect, ranges anywhere from 1000 to 100,000 square meters. Composite skin would drop it to under a few thousand at max.

As for the missiles. . . a few AMRAAMS and Sidewinders on the wingtip will do wonders for replacing the Guns we retired after the Gulf War. . .

The point being, the bomb truck ALSO has some sharp teeth. . .

Re:Cost

[WIAKywbfatw]

I doubt that anywhere is SAC's remit for the B2 there is anything about tank-busting.

That's a job that the USAF leaves to more mobile aircraft, aircraft better suited to the modern-day battlefield such as the F-15 and the F-16. Or which is left to the US Army itself, with its tank-busting A-10s and AH-64A/Ds perfect for the job.

In fact, I'd challenge you to find a single B2 mission that's been carried out so far that has involved tank-busting, or any one that's been against a target that couldn't be just as effectively hit by a volley of cruise missile strikes.

Re:Cost

[sexylicious]

If you read up on Iraq's capabilities, you'll find that they had a LOT of capability for air defense. They just didn't use it properly, and those that were used were easily wiped out because their buddies didn't support them. On top of that, the US has done a very good job of keeping up on how to take down air defense networks.

A lot of what Iraq could have done, their army just didn't do. I think 10 years of blowing the hell out of anything that even thought of irradiating an allied aircraft would have an effect on the crews manning those defenses. Even if Saddam was able to provide new equipment, the fear associated with pushing the button to acquire a target - knowing that your radar will be destroyed - would still have a huge impact on your performance.

Re:Cost

[EvilTwinSkippy]

There's an old joke about how to dig a swimming pool in Iraq, somewhat along those lines.

Re:Cost

[LWATCDR]

Actually the US has two new classes subs in service. The Seawolf and the new cheaper Virgina class. New Chemical weapons? Not really likely chemical weapons really suck compared to nukes. They are almost as dangerous to your troops as they are the enemy. The US has no need for them.
New nuclear missiles? Nuclear armed missiles are pretty easy and we have enough.

Re:Cost

[Ham_belony]

Me being stupid.

Space Exploration

[zoloback]

Space exploration suffers from the lack of investment coming from major industries worldwide.
The times when a whole country like the US started a program to put a man on the moon are long since past, now, it's up to the corporations to take over, but they have nothing to gain from this except for the publicity and the somewhat useless benefits of zero-gravity research (don't get me wrong, i think z-g research is important, but the benefits are seldom).
What would happen if there was a legislation that allowed a company to claim a part of another planet, provided that (1) they can get there first and (2), they actively use it for a purpose (like mining, among many others). Such legislation would surely have to have many different conditions and establish a common ground for all corporations in the world, and i cannot see the entire universe of implications, but i can't stop thinking that this would push space exploration projects and would put us on other planets.
Now, whether we should be destroying other planets aside from "ours", that's an entirely different matter...

Re:Space Exploration

[PlacidPundit]

While I think you're on the right track, I'm not sure that there's a whole lot of profitability out there right now. We have so many cheap mineral resources here on Earth that an expensive extra-terrestrial mining operation makes no economic sense. Tourism is about the best we can do for the moment, I think.

Re:Space Exploration

[EvilTwinSkippy]

You have to process 250 tons of rock to produce 1 carat of diamond. There are asteroids out there that are made of diamond. Huge crystals at that.

You also have to consider the possibility that we will find some radical new material out there that will completely revolutionize technology, or at the very least make something that is prohibitively expensive today cheap tomarrow.

Re:Space Exploration

[Vo0k]

Actually with getting transport costs down enough, and some extra research, the orbit could be a great place for some ultra-precise manufacturing. Want a perfect sphere from your material? Just release it in freefal and let the viscosity forces hold it in that shape. Want cleanroom? Just open the airlock. Want superconductivity? Just shield the wall from the side of the Sun and you're in temperatures of supeconductivity. Stepper motors don't have to lift the weight of the robotic arms, you can concentrate on precision or load the extra power into speed. Storage? Whole cubic miles of free storage space, no weather problems. There's a whole range of problems with manufacturing that are present only Earth. The only serious problem with the space is transport. Sure, cars or such aren't what could be produced in space. But electronics? Chips? Medical devices? Optics? Just think of a perfect lens that could be achieved by spinning some molten glass at specific speed in freefall. And of course finally getting some reasonable superconductor-based processing power, where 0K is dirt-cheap.

Re:Space Exploration

[Mr2cents]

I think we should build a polar moon base like a mix between a HAM field day and a linux beer hike. Yeah!

• A landing site with beacons,
  
• A solar power station (don't forget power cables :)),
  
• A dish for communicating to earth,
  
• A LAN with a linux server ;),
  
• Some rovers for moving stuff around

and you're in business.

This could be a great international camp site, one could just land machine after machine over there. Gas chromatograph, solar furnace, melting pots, ... With all these instruments and robots close to each other, the teams will be able to ask help from each other, and there could be private companies offering their services at the lunar camp site (like a milling machine or a 3D plotter, or a junkyard).

Oh, and if the landers have some fuel left, they could go and pick up a scout with some interesting samples. Or they could use (sell?) the hydrogen to reduce oxides on site, producing oxigen and silicium or metals.

How many cities haven't started as a nice campsite?

Re:Space Exploration

[deimtee]

You've been reading too much fiction. There are no diamond asteroids, and even if there were, diamonds aren't worth much.
There are no radical new minerals out there either.
There are large amounts of various materials in the asteroids that could be useful, but it would take a lot of infrastructure lifted into orbit to even begin processing them. I think it is worth doing, and would eventually be profitable, but more through energy generation (SPS & microwave farm) and the removal of mining from earth than from directly selling exotic minerals.

Re:Space Exploration

[cybercuzco]

Now, whether we should be destroying other planets aside from "ours", that's an entirely different matter...

If we lived on them, then they would be "ours" too then wouldnt they. Besides that, there isnt really a whole lot to destroy. The surface of most of the celestial bodies in the solar system look like they were strip mined for the last billion years or so. There is no "environment" there to destroy, in fact we would be bringing an environment with us, and creating one where there was noe before, which might make up for the one were destroying down here.

Re:Space Exploration

[jerde]

>where 0K is dirt-cheap.

Well, 3K anyway. Still gotta do some work to get below that. :)

Re:Space Exploration

[lgw]

If we found an asteroid made of solid platinum in an orbit cheap to get to, it still wouldn't be worth the cost to safely transport te platinum to the surface. Orbital solar power is also pretty points for Earth - you lose enough efficiency in tranmitting the power that there's no advantage to having your solar power in space.

However, there is a huge win available here in the long term. If all the raw materials for a manufacturing process could be located in quantity in space, and only the end products had to be shipped down to Earth, the nearly free raw materials and power could let you come out ahead, for products with a high value per pound.

Mining is space is basicaly pointless except to use the ore in space. A fab in space, however, if we didn't need to ship raw materials up to feed it, makes a lot of sense. You can come out ahead on the cost of de-orbiting a ton of processors.

Re:Space Exploration

[sznupi]

When you would want to move robotic arm in space in a speedy fasion, inertial mass is still there (but of course such arm could be lighter than on earth, so less mass, so quick movement; but it would tend to cancel out if you want to move it really quickly). Storage: problem with radiation and collisions with junk. Cleanroom - in case of microbes we have more reliable methods...as for dust I can imagine its share of problems And producing perfect spheres/etc. can encounter problems from microgravity from spacecraft itself...other than that many uses you mention could be viable of course.

Re:Space Exploration

[homer_ca]

Gem diamonds are basically worthless. Debeers is sitting on whole shitload of diamonds in their vaults and only releases just enough to keep the price high. There's no resale market for diamonds, and they advertise like crazy to convince people to buy new diamonds.

Re:Space Exploration

[karstux]

I really wouldn't like to see other planets (or even parts of them) claimed or owned by a corporation, and there should be legislation to prevent such a thing.

Corporations are, by definition, non-moral entities. Whatever they own they will employ for one sole purpose: the maximization of their own profit. That's nothing evil per se, it's just their modus vivendi.

However - and you may cide me a romantic if you will - I think the celestial bodies should not be primarily employed as means of financial profit. I think the path for the betterment of mankind is amongst the stars. If humans will ever stand united, not as Americans, Europeans, Chinese, African... but as members of the human species, cooperating in the rational endeavor to improve life for everyone, progressing in the sciences and philosophies... then this will happen upon leaving this cradle of a planet.

But we had best leave behind our childish, petty squabbles and archaic egoistical motives, and start out there with - don't laugh - a pure heart.

Re:Space Exploration

[Shotgun]

Or you can walk over to Harbor Freight and grab some off of one of their $5 saw blades. Or just make it in a large, hot press. They call it cubic zirconium. I've also heard rumors that there are also places in Russia where you can walk around and pick it up off the ground. Diamond scarcity it a con job propagated by the jewellery business.

Radically new materials. I think the periodic table has just about all of them covered.

Re:Space Exploration

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Actually, I'm referring to the carbon asteroids that are leftovers from the formation of our solar system. They may contain single crystals that are meters in size. Large crystals requires a very slow cooling time, and our solar system cooled over a period of billions of years.

It's not just gem stones. A large crystal of metal would be very strong and very heat resistant with no grain boundaries in the material. Conditions to form monocrystals like that are not economically feasable here on Earth.

Re:Space Exploration

[Vo0k]

In current production it's impurities of the gas filling the cleanrooms that is the problem, not dust or microbes (these were maybe 5-10 years ago...). Collisions with junk are a problem, but shielding with stuff like aerogel can prevent most of them. Radiation... Yes, a problem, but I don't think it would be a "blocker". I wouldn't worry about the craft microgravity - after all, 1) it would be really minimal, 2) the mass still can be laid out in such a way that the microgravity would null-out itself. (the actual production taking place in the centre of mass)

Re:Space Exploration

[sznupi]

Than I'm not sure that the metod would resolve impurities (of course pure speculation; feel free to prove mo wrong). Collisions...I thought also about this "cubic km", suggesting large objects...which would "drove" bigger "projectiles" to them (but of course many factors would have to be considered - how it's dangerous for given mass/area of "target", how easy it is to "shut it down"; so ultimately I'd opt for no jumping to conclusions either (terrifiying - I'm realising that not much can be said without some research on the matter :/ )). Microgravity - yes, of course, but it would make the cost higher.

Re:Space Exploration

[Vo0k]

It wouldn't resolve impurities in the materials. Contaminations to the wafer or the chemistry used in production would still be a problem - but as they are a small problem compared to the particles in the atmosphere now, they would remain the same small problem, while the big one would vanish. (I'm not in the industry but I read some "pro" magazines from the domain and know what problems are currently addressed most. Gas contamination is #1 far ahead from all the rest.)
As for cubic kilometers, I rather thought of storage of resources for production (so single unit damage isn't all that big loss) - more of number than size... No problem about "driving bigger projectiles" - you still seem to miss how huge the mass has to be to create noticable gravity - gravity of 1 cubic kilometer of steel won't be noticable by anything but extremely precise devices. So, most of slower junk caught by aerogel pillow, bigger one either shot down by some missiles or laser cannons upon detection, or just the storage moved around a bit to make a passage for the piece of junk. The fastest small ones would still hit, but even then passing through 1% of the store volume would destroy maybe 5% of the stored products, not 60% like what is currently discarded because of failures caused by impurities in gasses.

Re:Space Exploration

[sznupi]

That's why I've put driving in "" - I only meant the effect that larger object will be statistically more likely to get hits (you don't have to teach me about such things, I am/was physics kind of person). And what you say later is mostly speculation, I gather?...that's why I said some research has to be made.
Oh, and about impurities...what I've meant is...I'm simply not sure that "vacuum cleaning" is so great...I could imagine some problems. It is so great? The problems are small compared to what we have?

Re:Space Exploration

[sznupi]

Oh, and 1km^2 of steel is little on the edge regarding your argument :p I'd had to do some calculations to be sure of course, but I think such mass would have clearly noticeable effect on orbits of nearby satellites.

Re:Space Exploration

[Teancum]

The "legislation" that currently governs the territorial claims of extra-terrestrial objects is currently the "Moon Treaty". This specifically restricts the ability of governments of the Earth from claiming territory, however private individuals are excempted from this requirement. There are a number of legal consequences to this that will have an interesting effect on the future of mankind in outerspace.

Most importantly, you will have to actually go to the place you want to claim as your territory and physically occupy it, and use it before you can claim ownership, the Lunar Embassy not withstanding. Earth nations will retain, however, soverignty over the actual vehicles and any personnel sent up by that nation. That means criminal acts can be prosecuted under the laws of the country that owns and operates a given space colony... and especially applies to governance of artificial constructs like the ISS or an L-5 habitat.

What is not covered, however, is a method of resolving territorial disputes, or resolving the status of state-less persons in space (people who don't claim a nationality of any kind, or are not recognized by any "nation" on the Earth).

Re:Space Exploration

[deimtee]

The cost of de-orbiting material would come down a lot with industrialization of space. Cheap ablative heat shields and foamsteel wings and you can safely, cheaply and relatively gently land proverbial shitloads.
Getting to space and building a manufacturing infrastructure is the expensive part.

Good Old Boys

[StratoChief66]

What about when the backers are brought before Dubya and he asks them how much of the 400 million initial and 20 million per launch goes to helping the good old boys and the backers look at each other and groan? I've never been accused of having much faith in the US administration but I just figure the men in charge of our dear sweet US of A will just say thank you for the fine offer but we've already got a team on the problem. I've never seem the government interest peaked by cost savings unless that savings goes to their friends/screws the general public or both of the above.

Re:Good Old Boys

[Anonymous Coward]

Blah blah blah Dubya blah blah blah blah special interests blah blah blah blah screwing the public blah blah blah blah.

Seriously, how did Yet Another Bush Tirade get modded up?

Re:Good Old Boys

[Anonymous Coward]

1 - Bush just happens to be in office. Based on the statement made, the parent poster would have picked whoever was in the chair to reference.

2 - Little sensitive aren'tcha? Must really suck to have to keep supporting someone you know is bad for the country, its citizens and in fact the entire freakin planet. But then again, at least you are true to form. Sticking your fingers in your ears to any criticism and lashing out at those criticizing are the true hallmarks of a neo-con-artist after all.

Re:Good Old Boys

[StratoChief66]

I would have indeed said the same thing about a Democrat president if he had made as bad of decisions as I believe Bush has made. I do not like to see my neighbors to the south funding an unjust war on terror and corporate welfare when very few of them voted. Just because they had a 'choice' doesn't mean it isn't taxation without representation. People have gotten too comfortable having political types funded by special interests groups running the country. I would like to see a normal guy run for office and win, someone willing to resist the power of bribery.

The future

[promantek]

Trinity: what do you need?

Neo: estes rockets. lots of estes rockets. and big rubber bands.

Trinity: nobody has ever tried anything like this before.

Neo: that's why it's going to work.

Re:The future

[eclectro]

No, it's going to be more like this if they go with fixed contract amounts.

Trinity: What do you need?

Neo: Some ducting and tape.

Trinity: Ok, I'll run down to Home Depot and grab you some. Shouldn't this stuff be space-rated??

Neo: Nah, get the cheap stuff, we'll be lucky to break even on this project as it is. Love you honey.

Trinity: Be right back.

MOD PARENT DOWN

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the wrong way to think.

Lower costs will greatly expand what people view as possible with space exploration. Richard Branson's space tourism proposal hinges completely on Rutan's low cost technology. Other applications (space mining, space based astronomy, etc...) will follow if we can get into space cheaply.

Resting with the status quo is silly and short sighted.

Cheap space travel...

[The Jabberwock]

...was mastered long ago by the Chinese official, Wan Hu. He clearly has prior art.

Re:Cheap space travel...

[Mindwarp]

mastered long ago by the Chinese official, Wan Hu. He clearly has prior art.

According to these guys it's more likely that he had third degree burns rather than prior art.

Re:Cheap space travel...

[The Jabberwock]

Or at least a loud ringing in his ears...though as Side Show Bob once put to Bart, "Fortunately, you'll be nowhere near them."

Re:Cheap space travel...

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is actually mentioned in the OP's Wikipedia link, if you'd read it.

Not jazzy... but it gets you there

[tkcom]

Remember the old VW Beetle ad?

Re:Not jazzy... but it gets you there

[Anonymous Coward]

no, no I don't

Reading TFA (semi OT)

[PingXao]

Let's see....

Space.com = a trustworthy news source
Washington Times = put that in your litter box and your cat won't shit there.

50-50 split. My time is limited as it is. Pass.

Use for space tourism?

[FleaPlus]

This might be a silly question, but if they do get the NASA contract and develop a 4-person capsule with a per-launch cost of $20 million, would they be allowed to also use the same capsule design for commercial uses, like space tourism? We've already seen a number of people eager to shell out $20 million for an orbital flight, so I can imagine that the number eager to spend $5 million for the same flight would be much higher.

Hmm... I wonder if this would be able to dock with a Bigelow inflatable habitat.

Re:Use for space tourism?

[Vo0k]

Number eager to spend $30 million. Count the interest and insurance.

Russia's Kliper makes this project meaningless

[Anonymous Coward]

The russian Clipper (Kliper) lifting body space capsule is already being built. There is no need for the yankee to reinvent the wheel.

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/kliper.html

By the way, air launch is one of the most dangerous methods. In-flight collision is invariably fatal. Remember the drone that killed the SR-71 motherplane? The idea is silly.

Re:Russia's Kliper makes this project meaningless

[TheKidWho]

Please enlighten me why?

Is the US supposed to rely on Russia for getting into space now?

Re:Russia's Kliper makes this project meaningless

[Vo0k]

If the separation procedure is safe enough (e.g. the shuttle is detached - dropped from the bottom of the plane and falls at least 100m before launching its own engine), it may be one of the safer methods. If the top of the carrier plane is used as a launch pad, that's a different matter. I haven't heard of a bomber plane destroyed by colliding with its own bomb midair.

Re:Russia's Kliper makes this project meaningless

[Vo0k]

Heh, where's the old hacker spirit?
Why develop the same thing twice and compete, when you can cooperate? I don't know the costs of the russian development, but if it's comparable, why should both parties separately pay $400M for a new design from scratch, each, if you can share the costs and pay $300M each to have a common design and two identical shuttles built.
Is the word "cooperation" so dead? Cold war rages on?

Re:Russia's Kliper makes this project meaningless

[FleaPlus]

Why develop the same thing twice and compete, when you can cooperate?

Yeah, that international cooperation thing worked really well on the space station, didn't it?

Seriously, cooperation sounds really nice, but in reality all it means is that you have to deal with the red tape of two countries instead of one. Plus, the Kliper and CXV proposals are really quite different from each other; insights from both projects and which parts work best will make the following generation of spacecraft even better.

Re:Russia's Kliper makes this project meaningless

[SupaMegaBuffalo]

Is the US supposed to rely on Russia for getting into space now?

News flash: It already does for manned space flights.

Re:Russia's Kliper makes this project meaningless

[TheKidWho]

Yes, and it's a pain in the ass, the US shouldn't really on them after the shuttle.

Re:Russia's Kliper makes this project meaningless

[dcavens]

e.g. the shuttle is detached - dropped from the bottom of the plane and falls at least 100m before launching its own engine

According to the article, they want to use a modified 747. Can't imagine them being able to modify one so much that they can hold something below the fuselage- it would be very hard to take off.

You'd need a specially built aircraft for that, similar to the one that launched StarShipOne.

Re:Russia's Kliper makes this project meaningless

[filipncs]

From the Space.com article:

The CXV would be attached to its booster and carried aloft under the belly of a large carrier aircraft to an altitude of 7,600 meters for release and launch - an approach t/Space thinks has significant safety advantages over a pad launch in the event of a booster failure.

Re:Russia's Kliper makes this project meaningless

[TheStupidOne]

Problem is, NASA would never, EVER, use foreign technology in their beloved space program. They'd rather spend billions to develop the wheel inhouse than get it from another country.

Personally I think it's politics more than anything that's prevented a true space-shuttle replacement from ever getting off the ground. The only reason I can think of keeping around the Space Shuttle for so long was for their ego. By replacing the shuttle, it admits that "Hey, we failed at creating a cheap reusable craft."

I think what we need more than a new space shuttle is a new space program, one that doesn't suffer from groupthink and petty power politics.

Re:Russia's Kliper makes this project meaningless

[dabigpaybackski]

Problem is, NASA would never, EVER, use foreign technology in their beloved space program. They'd rather spend billions to develop the wheel inhouse than get it from another country.

Precisely. Our legion of subsidized aerospace contractors would never tolerate NASA's purchase of a fully-functioning design from a foreign manufacturer. Rest assured that NASA's new vehicle will be a gold-plated turkey of the sort the Pentagon favors, not a simple, robust vehicle like Soyuz or Klipper.

Re:Russia's Kliper makes this project meaningless

[0123456]

"Remember the drone that killed the SR-71 motherplane?"

Yes. They were seperating while flying _AT MACH 3_. Air-dropping a rocket at more conventional speeds is trivial in comparison, and has been done many times before.

Re:Russia's Kliper makes this project meaningless

[TheKidWho]

You're an idiot.

No, really you are.

Re:Russia's Kliper makes this project meaningless

[sznupi]

Well, I'd argue the cooperation went really well: if US had it's own station, it would be abondoned by now.

Re:Russia's Kliper makes this project meaningless

[sznupi]

Oh, and of course current delays aren't bacause of cooperation. But the opposite is true.

Re:Russia's Kliper makes this project meaningless

[ceejayoz]

By the way, air launch is one of the most dangerous methods. In-flight collision is invariably fatal. Remember the drone that killed the SR-71 motherplane? The idea is silly.

So we're ignoring all the ground launch disasters because you've a single example of an aircraft being hit by a drone?

Good thing you don't run NASA - Apollo 1 would've doomed the lunar missions.

Accepting Investments/Donations?

[Anonymous Coward]

$400 million seems like an awfully low price to start up a viable (ie. not a slowly dying legacy) space program. Put in perspective, the population of a mid-sized town could easily fund that and provide something to give the whole world (or for the more cynical, at least Americans) some hope in what people can accomplish.

Are they accepting investments/donations?

What I wonder...

[Vo0k]

...is, whether NASA will retain exclusive rights to the vehicle.
$400mln to develop, probably below $100mln to build next, once first one has been built, ground infrastructure of some $50mln required... I guess there would be quite a few companies willing to invest some $200mln to provide orbital tours, maybe later build "orbital hotel" etc. The investment would probably pay back in 20 or so flights, maybe a year...

Re:What I wonder...

[StratoChief66]

Interesting thought. It would be interesting if they did what Microsoft did with DOS to IBM. Sure, we'll let you pay us for the use of our product but we have to be free to market it to other customers. You might have to do some intense titty-twisting to get NASA to agree to that one.

Meh. Time to end rockets

[91degrees]

Rockets are bulky and inefficient.

We need to switch to trebuchets.

You're Just a Copy of an Imitation

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't there enough Roland trolls already? Ah well, troll on you crazy diamond. ~242

But seriously...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you REALLY want to go to space with a 0% chance of dying for only a thousand bucks, here is your chance.

Modular design

[Timberwolf0122]

Lets just hope that the STS can support upgrades easier than the shuttle can, as I recall there was a story not so long ago about NASA having to scrounge off e-bay to find replacement 8086 chips that are no longer made.

Re: Aerial launch ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

The russians already built a mini-shuttle, called the MAKS. It was to launch atop the giant six-jet cargoplane AN-225. The project was cancelled. Probably the risks.

http://www.buran.ru/images/jpg/maxokb2.jpg

http://www.buran.ru/htm/molniya6.htm

I wouldn't be too concerned

[alizard]

the tech has improved so much in the 30 years since the Shuttle was designed that almost anything Bert Rutan is likely to come up with will be a hell of a lot safer. Reentry from orbit is the most stressful thing anyone does with anything that flies, and any current construction isn't going to have 30 years of accumulated material fatigue in it. The other point was that the design of the Shuttle was dictated largely by political considerations which partitioned the design components to put as many military contracts in the districts of politically powerful Congressmen as possible. While the same may not be true of the regular aerospace contractor building the other part of the system, AFAIK, the only priority Rutan's got is safe, profitable flight, and things that fall out of the sky will put him out of business. He hasn't been around enough to have the kind of political connections the big aerospace companies do, he isn't going to get financially rewarded for failure.

WRONG!!!

[alizard]

Unless you know of an environmentally cleaner way to get enough power to put "clean coal" out of business than a solar power satellite network.

Re:WRONG!!!

[shimmin]

Yes. Putting things in orbit is expensive. But you can get most of the advantages of LEO by merely going to the stratosphere.

A large solar collector stationed at 30 km up would be above the weather, and while it would still have day and night, and least day would be a few percent longer, and by allowing the collector to follow the sun, you could have noon-like light for most of the day.

You would want the lift gas to be hydrogen rather than helium. Reason 1 is that it's cheaper, but reason 2 is that the installation would need some propulsive abilities for station-keeping against wind. What I envision is electric engines powered by hydrogen fuel cells, so that the lift gas and fuel are the same. During the night, you consume hydrogen to remain on-station. During the day, you have electrical power to re-hydrolyze the water to regenerate lift and fuel. And, at 30 km, the pressure is too low for hydrogen and air to support combustion, so the flammability issues you'd have at lower altitudes are moot.

Another aspect of this design, or solar satellites, is that at 30 km up, you can see a few hundred km in any direction. At LEO, you have a horizon of about 1000 km, if I recall. This allows you to beam power to any antenna in this radius, so in order to be economical, this design need not compete with the price of power produced by large coal, nuclear, or hydro installations, but rather, with the price of power on the spot market. A high-altitude power plant could put power wherever it is needed (and by corollary, wherever it is most valuable.)

Re:WRONG!!!

[lgw]

There are 3 problems with solar power collectors in orbit.

• It's *really* expensive.
• Beaming power via microwave isn't efficient. You lose about as much in transmission as you gain from being above the atmosphere.
• It's an orbital weapons platform (OK, maybe that's an advantage after all, as long as only we can have them and not them, for some value of them).

Re:WRONG!!!

[karstux]

Wouldn't you have huge diffusion issues with hydrogen at this altitude? Also, it seems to me that such a contraption would be severely payload-limited. You need to lift not only the hull, but also the solar collectors, the tracking mechanism, some propulsion to counter the winds, fuel cells, and the electrolyzation equipment.

It would seem to me that, in the long run, going into orbit (and staying there) would be actually easier and more economical. An orbiting satellite is just going to stay where you put it, without worries about wind drift, solar power availability or leakage. The payload is only limited by your lifting capability.

Your concept may be more ecological, however, and it has the big bonus of not producing any space debris. But does it outweigh the limitations? Hell if I know...

Re:WRONG!!!

[Rei]

Until power beaming efficiency goes up to anywhere close to the atmospheric loss of solar, there's no way anyone will pay even 7,000$/kg (Proton, Long March) to put up a space-based solar power station. The most efficient system that Dr. Bradley Edwards (the space elevator guy) could find in his research was around 2% efficient. It's getting better, but has a *long* way to go. For example, diode lasers can be quite efficient, but not only are they low power, but they also have poor coherence.

Re:WRONG!!!

[ducomputergeek]

Actually, you should look at all the hazardous and eviromentally damanaging chemicals and processes it takes to produce solar cells.

Re:WRONG!!!

[FleaPlus]

Personally, I suspect solar-power satellites won't be competitive until there's enough infrastructure to build them from in-space resources.

Re:WRONG!!!

[newpath4comVersion2]

I know of several ways. I've been showing people on the Internet for over 2 years. You all just have specialized tastes because you think "Power" is HARD. And it isn't. The simpler the engine the better. But all of you want the engine to be so damn complex it weighs too much, loses efficiency. Just like coal, just like crude oil, just like the Shuttle. The correct engine has to be simple, fluid, and lightweight. (Sort of like Bruce Li... remember him? Muhammed Ali?) I have both. One for the planet, one for leaving the planet. So far telling anyone has been a total waste of time because everyone has the "Power is Hard" blinders on... so my stuff gets shoved to the rear of the bus. If you're any different, you're the exception, and very special. http://www.newpath4.com/NNINDEX/nnindex.htm and http://www.newpath4.com/forsalespacecraftenginecon stantpowertheory.htm . That is, when you grow beyond the training pants and get old enough (secure enough) to contemplate the simple answers.

Launch Different

[Captain Irreverence]

STS (the Space [Shuttle] Transportation System) is a flawed system design

That's why Apple is planning on releasing the new iShuttle! Initial iShuttles will come in "Bondi Blue" but other colors are planned. These new Apple space shuttles will be superior to the existing NASA design in just about every way...except for the fact that the cockpit control panel only has one button. Of course, you can purchase a third-party control panel with multiple buttons but NASA aficionados are extremely skeptical...

Re:Launch Different

[StratoChief66]

Screw Bondi Blue, I want the hip limited release U2 cover!

Back on topic.

[ehack]

Too cheap, hence too little pork to slice.
Won't fly.

what about blimps?

[alizard]

Check out the blimp-to-orbit project here. Not to say that I wouldn't rather see $400M of funding put into that project, but we're at the point now where it makes sense to try multiple ways to get into space to find out what's most cost-effective, and JP Aerospace has a $70M USAF contract to build ultra-high altitude blimps at this point.

It won't work

[JustOK]

They don't seem to have included equipment to read the astronaut's RealID before the flight.

Re:Meh. Time to end rockets

[StratoChief66]

This is for human launching, buddy. Isn't the earth escape velocity something in the order of 11 km/s? I don't know if this factors in air resistance on the way up but I suppose at that speed you are not in the atmosphere for long. Wouldn't a trebuchet have to give the 'cargo' a velocity in this order to put them in orbit if not to escape earth's gravity?

I say cargo instead of crew because I think they would be more of a paste if accelerated by a trebuchet to this speed in the small time they would be in contact. Plus I'd like to see how you are planning to store and deliver the energy required to fire the aformentioned human 'cargo'.

Ignoring these minor difficulties I would love to be present at the event. I wonder what kind of sound the trebuchet would make upon releasing so much tension, would it sound like a standard trebuchet but louder? God, some days I wish I had money and diplomatic immunity.

Low-Cost

[Cow Jones]

I keep reading Lost-Cow Space Shuttle Replacement
... must wake up ... need coffee ...

Red Whittaker

[vectra14]

So t/Space sounds cool and all of that.. but does anyone know what Red is doing on t/Space? The company doesnt have a web site so I can't check.

It was weird seeing his name there as I was under the impression that he was 100% committed to CMU's Red Team DARPA GC efforts. Is Red Team giving up on desert vehicles and going into the aerospace industry? (joke.. or is it?)

Re:Red Whittaker

[PhaseChange]

See http://www.transformspace.com/.

Re:Meh. Time to end rockets

[Anonymous Coward]

My thoughts exactly.

My add-on is multi-stage trebuchets - the first really big trebuchet fires the second trebuchet. When the second trebuchet gets to the peak of its ascent, it fires the third trebuchet...

You probably want to give the astronauts a couple of pillows in case it gets rough.

Space debri

[Anonymous Coward]

This should be an important design criteria, low or no space debri resulting from operation, there is way too much debri in orbit as it is, why add more.

Re:Space debri

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop trolling for a grammar nazi, won't'cha?

Because they are still useful

[WindBourne]

At this moment, the shuttle has the largest capacity of any craft that America has. But it has really 2 main issues.

1. It was designed to haul up ppl and cargo. One vehicle with 2 very differing targets. Big mistake.
2. The Braun has bigger capacity by moving the main engines to the fuel tank rather than on the shuttle. It allows them to drop the shuttle and just lift cargo.

What is needed is to re-use the shuttle as a remote control cargo carrier. By removing the cockpit and increasing the size of the cargo area, it should be possible to carry a good amount more cargo up and down.

Re:Because they are still useful

[Vo0k]

1) Buran, not Braun.
2) You need very little to haul cargo into space, and most of it is so cheap that it simply doesn't pay to care about its safe return to Earth - let it burn in the atmosphere.
3) There's still one advantage a shuttle has over any other solutions - it's able to haul bigger things not designed for reentry back to earth. But one hardly ever needs that.

Re:Meh. Time to end rockets

[Anonymous Coward]

Yours and parent post reminds me of the silly Car and Driver article of many years ago which documented their quest to launch an East German Trabant automobile by means of a giant trebuchet some lunatic had constructed in the English countryside. The thing was monstrous. Their trial run involved launching a pig carcass for maximum distance--not a pretty sight. Nor was the Trabant particularly recognizable when their project was over.

Seriously though

[kf6auf]

If you used a giant rail gun or gauss cannon (hey, it can double as an ICBM launcher so that NASA won't need to pay for it) before the rockets fired you could probably save some cash in the long run. And as long as you fired it slowly at first you could withstand the forces. Not to mention, you could use it to almost completely launch satellites into orbit but just giving them a heat shield and a couple of rockets to move into position.

Re:Seriously though

[lgw]

A rocket needs about 25000 fps of delta-V to get into low Earth orbit (you probably need a higher muzzle velocity from your gauss gun, as a roacket never actually goes 25000 fps, but let's ignore that for now). You'd need about 4 minutes of acceleration at 3Gs to reach that speed. That's pretty rough, but Astronaughts are in peak condition, so maybe.

D=(at^2)/2, a=100f/s, t=255s, so d=3125000f

Your gauss gun would be about 600 miles long. Just something to keep in mind.

CXV?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Crew Transfer Vehicle (CXV)"

Something does not compute! Ahem CTV Ahem.

Re:CXV?

[Motherfucking Shit]

Something does not compute! Ahem CTV Ahem.

Have you heard of localization (l10n)? Internationalization (i18n)? Whereas we geeks often use numbers to shorten words, in aviation, the letter X is the shortcut.

It seems to have started with the "ics" words, likely because of the "ix" sound. Mechanics became MX, logistics became LX, avionics became AX. It branched out from there; maintenance is now often abbreviated to MX (and is somewhat interchangeable with mechanics), and weather is WX. Not positive whether or not - pun intended - WX originated in aviation.

Got a long word, but not enough paint? Enter the X. In this case, at least, it actually makes sense. Transfer is often shortened to Xfer in any number of industries.

Reverend Moon

[rbanffy]

Isn't the Washington Times something far less than serious owned by Reverend Moon?

Whoa . . .

[Selanit]

For a moment I read that story title as "Lost Cow Space Shuttle Replacement Proposed." And I was like -- wait, when did we build a cow spaceship? Was it built from cows or for cows? How'd we lose it? Is there now a cow family wandering the vast black reaches of the galaxy looking for a way home, with a cow-robot that keeps saying "Danger, Bessy Cowbinson, Danger!" . . . ? o.O

Re:Whoa . . .

[trongey]

There is effective treatment available for your reading disorder.

Re:Whoa . . .

[Selanit]

Yes; it's called "sleep." I'd been awake for roughly eighteen hours when that happened. I appreciate the impulse, though.

Safety and Security

[omb]

One thing that really shows up these days is
the deeply irrational way organizations approach
safety and security, safety is an aspect of
engineering design, so that if an event will
kill someone it must be the combination of
multiple, very un-likely events to occur so
it has to do with design and penetration review,
but almost nothing to do with paperwork.

Similarly security is about threat assesment.

The CUA aproach at NASA requires a complete management
replacement to put engineers not politicised beaurocrats in charge.

If you want to see what happens when the tail wags
the dog look no further than the existing shuttle design.

Subs are already aerodynamic...

[Beefslaya]

They should turn the retired submarines into space shuttles. Kinda like they are going to turn old military bases into oil refineries.

Why does the shuttle not have a fuel line?

[bobbis.u]

A genuine question: why doesn't the shuttle have a fuel line so that fuel can be pumped from the ground for the first 30m or so of liftoff? The pipe could then disconnect as the shuttle moved clear of the tower and transfer to its main fuel tank.

I read somewhere (no ref. to hand) that 1/3 of the fuel is used just to clear the tower. Wouldn't it be much more efficient to pump fuel from the tower until the shuttle is at least a few meters off the ground?

Re:Why does the shuttle not have a fuel line?

[Vo0k]

1) Prevent explosion of the line upon disconnect.
2) 1/3 of the fuel is A LOT. Actually, 1/3 of the solid state fuel in the helper rockets. Not pumpable and even if it was, way too much to be pumped in such a short time.
3) They are disconnected really fast after, so that's not much of the problem anyway.

The suggested solution is much more radical: get the shuttle some 10 miles up by a jet plane and then launch it from there.

Re:Why does the shuttle not have a fuel line?

[EvilTwinSkippy]

The Saturn V burned 30% of it's fuel to get off the ground. Try not to think of it in terms of height, but in terms of speed. In that 30m the craft is accellerating all that mass, and as it burns fuel it gets lighter.

The Space Shuttle uses solid rocket boosters to get started moving.

Your idea for a 30 meter "snorkel" is too dangerous. Most rocket fuel is cryogenic, i.e. WAY cold, and under extreme pressure. You can't use flexible piping with that. Rubber and plastic would shatter. A steel or copper tube would add a tremendous amount of weight to the spacecraft, because it too would have to be accellerated.

Re:Why does the shuttle not have a fuel line?

[Ancient_Hacker]

I count about 15 seconds on the Apollo 11 blastoff from ignition to tower clear. The first stage burns for about 150 seconds total. That would make the fuel burnoff about 10%, not 30%.

Re:Why does the shuttle not have a fuel line?

[LiquidCoooled]

Do it the other way round then.

Put the ship inside a hole and torch the fuel in the bottom of the hole (barrel of a gun style).

Once its clear of the tower, it will already have upwards momentum, and the other rockets can continue to propel it into the sky.

It doesn't actually matter where the explosive force is coming from, as long as the ship is part of the equation.

Re:Why does the shuttle not have a fuel line?

[Anonymous Coward]

The goal is to get the cargo and crew into space alive and not shattered into tiny pieces as would happen if they were launched barrel-of-a-gun-style.

Re:Why does the shuttle not have a fuel line?

[oni]

"Wouldn't it be much more efficient to pump fuel from the tower until the shuttle is at least a few meters off the ground?"

The major problem as another poster pointed out is that the fuel is liquid oxygen, and will tend to break flexible hoses.

The concept though, that you can save a lot of fuel mass at lauch, is valid. Another idea along those same lines is to mount the launch vehicle on rails and use magnets to give it that initial kick. That was how the Orion space plane was launched in A.C.Clarke's book, 2001.

Re:Why does the shuttle not have a fuel line?

[sznupi]

And that is how ESA Hopper will be launched (if ever...)

Re:Meh. Time to end rockets

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Maybe not trebuchets. How about rail guns? You can make the barrel a couple of miles long to spread the accelleration out a bit.

Getting back to basics...

[vrmlguy]

Finally, an idea that makes sense. The shuttle has failed because it serves too many masters. The Soviets had big budget constraints (at least compared to NASA), so they designed their spacecraft sensibly. Allow me to quote from http://www.astronautix.com/articles/wastolen.htm:

The Russian Soyuz spacecraft has been the longest-lived, most adaptable, and most successful manned spacecraft design. In production for over thirty years, more than 220 have been built and flown on a wide range of missions. The design will remain in use with the international space station well into the next century.

So, how should a man-rated system be designed? Let's see:

Put all systems and space not necessary for re-entry and recovery outside of the re-entry vehicle, into a separate jettisonable 'mission module', joined to the re-entry vehicle by a hatch. Every gram saved in this way saves two or more grams in overall spacecraft mass - for it does not need to be protected by heat shields, supported by parachutes, or braked on landing.

Obviously, using seperate man-rated and non-man-rated launchers for the service and mission modules can save even more money. But what should the spacecraft look like:

Use a re-entry vehicle of the highest possible volumetric efficiency (internal volume divided by hull area). Theoretically this would be a sphere. But re-entry from lunar distances required that the capsule be able to bank a little, to generate lift and 'fly' a bit. This was needed to reduce the G forces on the crew to tolerable levels. Such a manoeuvre is impossible with a spherical capsule. After considerable study, the optimum shape was found to be the Soyuz 'headlight' shape - a hemispherical forward area joined by a barely angled cone (7 degrees) to a classic spherical section heat shield.

OK, so the Soyuz was designed for use with lunar missions. But is the overall design usable for other missions?

By changing the fuel load in the service module, and the type of equipment in the mission module, a wide variety of missions could be performed. The superiority of this approach is clear to see: the Soyuz remains in use 30 years later, while the Apollo was quickly abandoned.

Re:Getting back to basics...

[p3d0]

Hey, I like Wikipedia as much as the next guy, but you ought to find at least one reiable source to back up your claim that the Soyuz is the best thing since sliced bread. Quoting Wikipedia (without citation, no less) only demonstrates that someone who edits Wikipedia likes Soyuz, and that nobody who came after him has been able to refute any of the statements made.

Re:Getting back to basics...

[vrmlguy]

Are you sure you replied to the correct post?

• I didn't quote Wikipedia.
• I did cite my source, it was www.astronautix.com.
• Which "claims" do you take issue with? Has the Soyuz been in production for less than thirty years? Have less than 220 have been built? (I concede that Wikipedia lists "only" 100 manned Souyz flights. OTOH, the same design has been used for the Chinese manned space program.)

Re:Getting back to basics...

[p3d0]

Sorry, I don't know what I was smoking when I wrote that.

Flying the MoonBus

[rben]

I think the sensible way to travel between the Earth and the Moon is to set up a space station, we'll call it the MoonBus, that flies a figure-eight orbit between the Earth and Moon. (It could use ion-engines and solar panels to keep it on the unstable orbit.)

By building a stable platform in the Earth-Moon orbit, we could provide safe and comfortable transportation. Once the station is in place, it would require only a minimal amount of fuel to get people to the station and from the station to the Moon. Over time, we could continue to add to the station itself, building our capabilities.

I got this idea from a book that Buzz Aldrin published a number of years ago. In his book, he proposed a somewhat similar scheme for moving people between Earth and Mars. Once the fixed assets are in place, the cost for moving additional people goes way down.

The main point is that we need to be building our capabilities for doing things in space, not reducing them. We need to establish goals that help us develop a space industry that might help reignite our economy. We shouldn't be giving over the exploration of space to the Chinese or anyone else.

Since we face some unknown risk of extinction from asteroids, perhaps we should have a set of prizes designed to develop an ability to move asteroids. Why not set up prizes for things like building structures in space? For establishing a mining base for water on the Moon? For creating a simple habitat that makes a figure-eight path around the Earth and Moon?

Re:Flying the MoonBus

[great om]

Sounds like a good idea, but I'm curious.... why a figure eight? is there a particular reason for this flight pattern?

Re:Flying the MoonBus

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, this doesn't work at all. In order to transfer into the moonbus, you've got to match speeds - but having done so, you'd be going fast enough to get to the moon all by yourself!

I can't believe that a real astronaut could have come up with such a scheme. Unless maybe they really are just monkeys along for the ride...

Re:Flying the MoonBus

[lgw]

Not to mention the sillyness of "mining water on the moon". Teh moon doesn't have water, it has some rock that's not completely anhydrous. It would take more energy to extract that water than to launch it from Earth.

Re:Flying the MoonBus

[pato101]

sure, at the "8" node the gravity of the earth would be cancelled with the gravity of the moon, so I guess the orbit can be controlled easier and it can go closer to both the moon and the earth; it is not a symmetric 8 but one which is bigger around the earth and smaller around the moon and the node is closer to the moon rather than to the earth as well.

Re:Flying the MoonBus

[rben]

The point is that once you've set up the facilities in a permanent orbit that circles both the Earth and Moon, you can reuse them. So elements like life support and living quarters are left in place in the same orbit, to be used over and over again.

That way, while it's true you'd have to exert just as much energy to transfer people to the MoonBus as it would take to transfer them to the Moon, you wouldn't have to boost as much in the way of life support systems or other ancillary systems, because those would already be in orbit.

The MoonBus could also be constructed so that it provides artificial gravity through counter-rotating tori. Since it's mass matters very little, except for the initial boost into the orbit, you could keep adding shielding so you would not have to worry about solar flares hurting anyone on their way to or from the Moon.

This is not a one-shot deal. It's meant to provide a long lasting platform that will make it easy to move people back and forth from the Moon in support of a permanent colony.

Re:Flying the MoonBus

[rben]

Not to mention the sillyness of "mining water on the moon". Teh moon doesn't have water, it has some rock that's not completely anhydrous. It would take more energy to extract that water than to launch it from Earth.

Actually there is evidence that there is water ice in dark crevices and craters that are permanently dark near the north and south poles of the Moon. It's quite possible that the water trapped in these locations is enough to make it much easier to colonize space.

Look at http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/ice/ice_moon. html

Re:Flying the MoonBus

[Big_Breaker]

You can also match speed with the bus through the use of a rotating habitat in earth orbit.

Small transfer capsuls can be exchanged between the "bus" and the earth station with near zero net delta V.

Re:Flying the MoonBus

[podperson]

To get a person onto the bus you need to match orbits... so what are you getting? Hotel accommodations, I guess.

Re:Flying the MoonBus

[ceejayoz]

You slingshot around the two large objects, using their gravity for speed. The Apollo missions used figure-eight patterns, too.

Not a shuttle replacement

[amightywind]

The submitter should RTFA. tSpace is not proposing a shuttle replacement. They have apparently ceeded that to Boeing or Lockmart. They are proposing a lunar transfer vehicle. They are trying to get in on the CEV bidding without going through the formal review process. These earth LEO rendezvous achitectures are dumb. It is all because bidders seem to believe that the only booster vehicles are EELV's (Delta 4, Atlas V), which are too small for the job. This is foolish. A shuttle derived unmanned launcher could be easily developed from existing hardware and deliver 250,000 lbs to LEO. The manned CEV might then launch on an EELV.

Re:Not a shuttle replacement

[FleaPlus]

The submitter should RTFA. tSpace is not proposing a shuttle replacement. They have apparently ceeded that to Boeing or Lockmart. They are proposing a lunar transfer vehicle. They are trying to get in on the CEV bidding without going through the formal review process.

Huh? While it is true that t/Space has submitted a proposal for a CEV lunar transfer vehicle, these articles are about their CXV plans. The CXV, as an earth-to-LEO vehicle, is definitely what I'd consider a shuttle replacement, particularly in its potential role in ISS crew transfer.

A shuttle derived unmanned launcher could be easily developed from existing hardware and deliver 250,000 lbs to LEO.

I'm personally rather mixed on the possibility of shuttle-derived heavy-lift.

Spending money on space is a *BAD* idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I read that we are spending $1B USD PER DAY to keep a military presence in Iraq.

If we start buying this kind of crap, we may have to pull out of Iraq a day early. Then where would we be?

Yep, this would be (conservative/fascist) moonies

[ianscot]

The Washington Times, you ask. Why,

• it's Washington's second-largest newspaper;
• it was founded, and is still owned and controlled, by investors "associated with" the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church;
• it's consistently ultra-conservative in outlook;
• it was endorsed by then-President Reagan;
• and continue with the queasying bedfellows angle...

The FAIR site has a nice quote from "Former top UC official Steve Hassan" to the effect that the paper's a Trojan Horse -- "Conservative politics is glad to have a voice through the Times, but ultimately it has nothing to do with conservatism. It has to do with fascism." (As if today's conservatives would know the difference, given the people they elect and their own fundie-authoritarian leanings.)

As far as space stories go, the WT op/ed page reads like a throwback to Sputnik, which I guess isn't much of a surprise. (Of Chinese moon plans and our apparent lack of response: "'Space dominance is a 21st-century challenge we dare not refuse.")

return to moon by 2020?

[CrazyTalk]

funny - 15 years to return to the moon, when we did it the first time in 10 - over 35 years ago!

But watch out for...

[Anonymous Coward]

But watch out for that B-17 above you.

No, it isn't.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Broken Window Fallacy is used to justify some destructive, entropic event. That's what makes it a fallacy. Because in the end, even though fixing the window keeps people employed, the owner of the window is only as well off as he was before the window was broken, whereas he could've spent the same amount of money and been better off had the window not been broken in the first place.

But investing in spacecraft isn't like investing in a broken window. (Or at least, it isn't any more *necessarily* that way than any other human endeavor.) You are investing money to create something new that does all the work of employing others but also gives us something new in return, abilities we didn't have before.

You can have a discussion about whether the benefits of low-cost space travel are worth more or less in real terms than, say, the benefits of a war, or a prescription drug benefit, but if you categorically dismiss it as a Broken Window, then the sloppy thinking is on your end.

Re:No, it isn't.

[Retric]

You can have a discussion about whether the benefits of low-cost space travel are worth more or less in real terms than, say, the benefits of a war, or a prescription drug benefit, but if you categorically dismiss it as a Broken Window, then the sloppy thinking is on your end.

You can have a discussion about whether the benefits of low-cost space travel are worth more or less in real terms than, say, the benefits of a war, or a prescription drug benefit, but if you categorically dismiss it as a Broken Window, then the sloppy thinking is on your end.

I want to point out that that was one of the best counter arguments I have ever seen on /. However, by posting this as an AC you're preventing others from seeing it. I mean as long as your going to be so insightful you might as well log in.

Re:No, it isn't.

[mshiltonj]

But investing in spacecraft isn't like investing in a broken window. (Or at least, it isn't any more *necessarily* that way than any other human endeavor.) You are investing money to create something new that does all the work of employing others but also gives us something new in return, abilities we didn't have before.

The argument the poster used was an instance of the Broken Window Fallacy. If the justification of space program funding is because "that money goes to WORKERS" as the poster said, then it is what it is.

I'm not arguing against a space program. What I'm saying is,arguing that a space program is good because it employs workers is sloppy thinking.

More money for contractors who will never deliver

[elrous0]

Wow, hard to believe NASA is once again throwing a bunch of cash at contractors who will never deliver on the promised product. It would be even harder to believe if they hadn't spent the last 30 years doing it over and over again.

NASA Engineer: Hey do you think we should do something original this decade?
NASA Boss: Well, we haven't done anything original since the Viking Lander. Why spoil a good thing?
NASA Engineer: Good point. Doing something new might require actual work.
NASA Boss: Yeah. Hey, let's throw some money at Lockeed, Boeing, or Northrop. They'll give us cool animations and huge promises
NASA Engineer: Will they actually deliver the product?
NASA Boss: No, but the public will have forgotten about all our original promises long before realizing they never delivered. And we'll have a whole new batch of cool animations and promises to distract them by then.
NASA Engineer: Sounds like a plan. I'm going to go take a nap. Wake me up when our funding is renewed
NASA Boss: You got it!

-Eric

erm.

[Anonymous Coward]

Again?

Cheaper. Faster.

[JohnPerkins]

Deader.

going to leo

[Anonymous Coward]

it seems some smarty pants are at work.
i think it's really a good idea to have a small
safe and reliable leo capable cessna first. i mean
trowing all that heavy iss junk up there doesn't
really need any baby-sitters flying along with it.
also i am positivly surprised that da americans
are seriously thinking about a spaceship (a "zero
gravity only reall spaceship). in the past it was
this "we did it, we're done mentality". i see we
are on the way to building bridges and "bases"
and "modules". the all in one approach is much
more unreliable and expensive in the long run.
anyway ... if i recall correct, the more surface
you have da more friction you get; now looking at
the space shuttle with external fuel tank and
booster and calculating exposed surface to
friction ... well it's alot more then the scaled
up to same size say WW2 A2 rocket ...
and still it seems everybody is forgetting the
superconductors in space/launch applications (yeah
i know there's a sound barrier) ...
simple stay with 1) reusable 2) magnetism 3) water
and we should be on our way to neptune before
everyone on slashdot now has died :P
and ... uhm ... where are the russians on this?

Earth Orbit Rendezvous

[1967mustangman]

What is most amusing about this is that it is essentially the plan that Werner von Braun was championing for the Apollo program before it was realized that Lunar Orbit Rendexvous was the only realistic way to go at taht time.

No diamond, but plenty of precious metals...

[Goonie]

I think you might be taking Arthur Clarke's 2061 a wee bit too seriously. Remember, he had to blow up Jupiter to get at the supposed diamonds in the core (I'm not even sure whether that hypothesis has been ruled out or not since the book's publication).

What there *is* known to be in great quantity is platinum group metals, mixed in with a bunch of other metals which are commercially useful but probably not viable to ship back to Earth on their own. Platinum, however, is very expensive stuff because it's both rare and incredibly useful; it's used in anti-pollution gear on cars right now, and is a key component of fuel cells (and its cost is a major barrier to their commercial viability). To make space platinum mining viable you need much cheaper launch costs than we have to today, but proposals like these are going a long way to those cheaper launch costs.

Re:No diamond, but plenty of precious metals...

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Fortunately an ore is more or less a bulk cargo. You can drop it from orbit, just make sure you aim for a relatively uninhabited spot.

Re:No diamond, but plenty of precious metals...

[ediron2]

ETS;

Am sure you know that 'dropping' stuff from space is an oxymoron. I dislike the term because it sounds so cheap when in fact decellerating stuff into a decaying orbit requires almost as much energy as launching stuff (the difference between 'em is air drag counts against you going up vs. air drag being useful to decellerate coming down.)

And then there's the problem of finding an ideal uninhabited spot. Aim for the ocean? Oops, it sank. And there'll be a steam cloud and waves and other side effects. Aiming for dry land? Dust, impact craters, angry locals (natives, tourists, whatever).

And then there's all the *other* unintended side effects: does burning stuff off on reentry create pollution, or reduce greenhouse gasses by binding up atmospheric carbon or other unwanteds? Does whatever is burned off cause unpleasant side effects like acid rain, or do areas under flight-paths get a thin coating of ash worth $5 a pound for the metals content (pixie dust!). Is modifying stuff to enable a graceful orbital decay going to cost more than the material being spun down from orbit?

That said, they're engineerable risks. Spray-coating a re-entry covering of optimum material is possible. A mechanism to 'eat' the recoil energy needed to bring some object to a screeching/controlled halt in orbit (thus, letting it fall to earth) isn't implausible: think solar-wound clockworks, slingshots or the likes, for starters.

I do think that my handwavy suggestions and yours constitute jack-zip compared to the gazillion bucks of research effort expended so far by others... they've likely already been-there, tried-that. And for each easy answer, they've probably researched the hard followup questions and high price tags. There's a world of difference between CAN and CAN AFFORD TO.

I've heard this before - 30 years ago

[DonWallace]

The Space Shuttle was supposed to usher in an era of inexpensive, airliner-like space flight because of reusability. Schoolkids in the 1970s read about shuttles flying every week and catering to teams of civilian scientists and researchers.

Instead the shuttle transmogrified into an overengineered, over-budget and expensive flying bomb. Disposable space capsules and rockets of the Mercury to Apollo era were far cheaper, safer and simpler. The budgetary goals expressed for the shuttle could have been met with 1960s space technology - although it would not have had the "cool" factor.

The shuttle is a key example of mediocrity and groupthink by engineers working really hard to burn a budget. In my mind it is a testament to the nascent power of really brilliant people to argue for and build exactly the wrong thing.

So I'll believe THIS when I see it.

Re:I've heard this before - 30 years ago

[Anonymous Coward]

You are one of the vast pool of Slashdot idiots. You clearly have no factual information about the history of the Shuttle program and your overinflated ego becomes a subsitue for actual knowledge.

The Shuttle fleet was supposed to have a civilian and a military side. When the Shuttle was designed it was supposed to be used by the Air Force as well as NASA. The design included features specifically demanded by the Air Force and not needed by NASA. The Air Force then bailed from the project, leaving a system that was much less useful to NASA and much more expensive to run. See http://www.worldspaceflight.com/america/shuttles/o verview.htm

Many of the problems with the Shuttle result from a misguided attempt to combine military and civilian space programs. NASA was left with the resulting mess and expense. Don't blame NASA for a situation it was forced into.

Re:Getting There, and Costs (TITAN III??)

[Anonymous Coward]

Titan III?

uh welcome to the 70's. The Titan IVB has one to go in Vandenberg...there are no more Titans.

Re:Meh. Time to end rockets

[lgw]

But is was the fastest a Traubant had ever moved. And probably the farthest. And it was every bit as useful a vehicle after "landing". Wave of the future, I tell you!

modded funny but true

[zogger]

The dollar continues to tank. The demand for petroleum globally compared to actual production realities are hitting home. Russia will be pricing it's oil in Euro's soon, and perhaps some other major oil nations like Iran and Venezuela. Several large US industries are in medium critical shape financially, GM and Ford got reduced to "junk bond" status last week. The major airlines are in trouble for day to day, let alone their pensions. And we are daily staring at geopolitical unpredictable wildcards like further expansion of the war in the middle east or perhaps some crisis in north korea, etc.

Space is cool, but within a year or so (this is my SWAG on it anyway) you will see some serious restructuring of the US economy in both the private and governmental sectors, it's inevitable now. You simply cannot keep borrowing money to run government (i.e. prinitng up IOUs like FRNs and T bills) and running trade deficits like we have been forever, the rest of the planet is getting tired of it. So this space project could very well have a numerical upwards trend, doubling or tripling if it even gets funded now.

I would expect the military to keep up an interest in space flight (they probably do in the black budgets as well someplace), but I think "civvie" human space flight will be "downsized" in importance as compared to much cheaper normal robotic missions.

This is all speculation, but it's based in economic reality.

Re:modded funny but true

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy fuck, you have absolutely NO idea what you're talking about.

Just so we're clear, saying it's so doesn't make it so, especially when you ignore just about every conceivable factor in your 'analysis'.

Re:modded funny but true

[zogger]

login with a user name and we can debate point by point. All that I mentioned other than my conclusion is googleable data, so if you want to try and dispute it go right ahead.

"Low Cost" scares me

[PenguinBoyDave]

I agree 110% that the Shuttle programs needs to be overhauled, and that it is WAY over-due. However, if I was going up in one of those things, I'd want them to spend as much as humanly necessary to ensure I was going to come back in one piece. I feel that way was a business traveler on airplanes. How much more for an Astronaut.

Passing from one Era to another.

[lionchild]

While I recognize that the STS has issues, most of which stem from politics, it's very important to note that anything that replaces the STS, be it the CXV or something else, won't really be any safer.

These are very, -very- large rockets, filled the "fuel" that's thousands of times more potent than TNT. We're trying to control an explosion to get us into space. Granted, we've done it very successfully a number of times. Look at all of the times we've had major failures and loss of life.

How many were done because we placed politics over safety, or simply became lax with safety? A new vehicle will be just the same. It'll be just as safe as the STS, until we place politics over safety or simply become lax, resting on our past success.

I'll miss the Shuttle program. It's expensive, and if we can get something cheaper that does the same thing, I'm good with that. It'll never really be the same for some of us, but it's like growing up: Sometimes you have to graduate from one thing to the next, because that's how life is.

I hope it works well, because I like to think that the US has 'The Right Stuff' when it comes to space. (Then again, I've always been a dreamer!)

Re:Passing from one Era to another.

[tsotha]

While I recognize that the STS has issues, most of which stem from politics, it's very important to note that anything that replaces the STS, be it the CXV or something else, won't really be any safer.

I think you could pretty convincingly make the point a vertical stack is much safer than the STS design. A vertical stack would definitely have prevented the Columbia's destruction and would have given Challenger a fighting chance.

Re:Passing from one Era to another.

[lionchild]

To some degree, the vertical stack does have a bit more "safety" built into it, but only until we start being lax about it. Challenger was 100% preventable, if we'd been more alert to a couple of things reguarding safety. But, there was political pressure to launch, and political pressure to save money by shaving a little bit more of the protective lining down...

As for Columbia, ..well, that was preventable too. The STS's used to go up with materials to repair tiles, and the necessary resources for a walk to look at that stuff. But, it too up space and weight, so they were pulled to make room for cargo. Thus, they became unneccessary safety items.

I'd be very curious to see how many successful uses of the escape tower there have been. I don't believe we actually had to use the escape tower during any manned space mission previously.

I don't want to sound like I'm dogging the CXV. It's new, it's different, it might be better! It's just not the STS system I grew up with, so like most change, it takes some of us 'old folks' to warm up to it. :-)

Re:Passing from one Era to another.

[Teancum]

While I know there were no manned launch escape tower flights (unless you count the tower ejection points of the Apollo flights to get rid of the thing after it was no longer needed), there were a number of unmanned test flights that did prove its capability.

In addition, there were several (fortuntately unmanned) Mercury flights that proved the necessity of the system... where the rockets blew up right on the launch pad. Sometimes going up only a foot or two before the explosion.

I have no doubt that had a "launch escape tower" system, or something like it, had been available or even possible for the Challenger incident that the crew would have been saved. As it was, the Shuttle simple doesn't even have that as a possibility.

Totally OT, Zogger, but...

[the_rajah]

What happened to technocrat.net?? That whole server seems to be offline including some of Bruce Perens other sites.

Re:Totally OT, Zogger, but...

[zogger]

I don't know. I sent him an email about it but as of this morning I haven't heard back. I was thinking of doing a temp mini-technocrat in my user journal here, what ya think, good idea?

My suggestion would be...

[the_rajah]

To at least make a journal entry here because people know you from here.. In the meantime, I could set up an interim "technocrat" forum over at one of my sites here and you could direct folks over there. You can reach me by e-mail through a form there, if you want. I'm guessing he had a server HW problem.

Re:My suggestion would be...

[zogger]

I've seen the slashcode mess up before, too. I know hre's almost done with the rewrite of the software he is going to switch to, maybe that is what's going on. I'll give it one more day, see what happens. And thanks for the offer.

try 40G acceleration

[alizard]

The size of the launcher becomes a lot more workable that way.

While it's a ride an astronaut wouldn't be happy about taking, most items we'd want to put into orbit can either handle the trip or can be disassembled into chunks that can.

Re:try 40G acceleration

[lgw]

You are correct, of course. The thing is, the cost of launching cargo is already a small fraction of the cost of launching something in the shuttle. ~$10000 per pound still isn't cheap, of course, but you'd have to launch a whole heck of a lot of cargo to beat that price with the billions (trillions?) in up-front costs the gauss gun approach would run.

It would still be to long to fit well in FL at 40Gs, but I suspect there's room in Texas.

IMO, the best strategy is a re-usable piloted first stage that can lift a heavy load to 100Km/8000fps and seperate. The fule/payload ratio is good for 8000fps with modern materials (and it would need to be, to carry the rest of the rocket), and that first stage wouldn't have much reentry stress, could count on atmospheric O2 and control surfaces for most of the flight, etc.

There's a lot of economy available for a vehicle that can remain suborbital: a rocket plane that would need far less heat shielding and have far more tolerance for failure than the SSTO ideas, and yet contribute a meaningful percentage of the total delta-V required (should be over 90% of the needed fuel to get to LEO).

well..

[alizard]

a one shot expenditure of resources to make solar cells vs how many gigatons of CO2 will be dumped into the atmosphere by the "clean coal" burning electric plants you would prefer to see built?

Re:well..

[ducomputergeek]

Actually did I ever mention that I like clean coal in my post, so on what rational basis are you proposing that I support clean coal? I was merely pointing out that the production of solar cells takes some pretty cuastic stuff to create.

Ok, the offer stands any time...

[the_rajah]

My concern is that the server is offline and it's not just technocrat, it seems to be all his sites at that location. Doing a rewrite of a script usually doesn't require a shutdown.

Anyway, I'm enjoying participation over on technocrat and hope it's back up soon. You now know how to reach me if you want.

Re:More money for contractors who will never deliv

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck You. I worked for NASA, at JPL, and not one person there was in it for a free ride. Everone there was extremely well educated and could have made a lot more money in the private sector. We were all there because we believed that space exploration was important for the human race.

You make me sick. You are mentally and morally deficient. You have no idea what it means to be personally dedicated to an important cause. When you are exposed to people and organizations with a higher vision, all you can do is try and drag them down to your level. I can only assume that your 'depiction' of people at NASA is a descripton of yourself. Go crawl back under a rock. Along with the other morons who modded 'Funny'.

Good and bad points...

[TomRC]

I'm happy to see the separate CXV (crew transport vehicle) - I've long said that was the way to get the safest manned launch for the lowest cost, simply because you don't end up compromising with other goals.

I'm less enthused with them trying to use the same system to transport fuel into orbit. I counted something like 50 flights needed to fill the two tankers and two CEVs, each flight taking 3 rockets. (Read the PDF describing their concept of operations.)

I can see where they're coming from - if you do lots of flights, you spread your fixed costs over every flight, which gets the cost per flight way down, making any one flight look like a bargain. That's a great way to make manned flight cheap as well as safer.

But I suspect NASA experts will consider that a weak point - lots of launches means launching lots of redundant tanker payload to orbit and bringing it back down to Earth. They tend to think of efficiency in terms of a single rocket, ignoring fixed costs. It's just going to "feel wrong" to them.

I also wonder if you couldn't build a CEV out of CXVs and S1 tankers, and then just land CXVs and S1 cargo ships individually on the moon. If you had to strip rockets from some of the tankers to keep mass down, just leave those tanks empty in orbit around the moon. You'd have to buy a lot more S1 vehicles, but don't have to develop and launch a separate CEV.

to really make space industrialization go...

[alizard]

we need tens of dollars a pound for shipping freight to orbit, not thousands or even hundreds. What's the price point where we can start putting semiconductor growing facilities in orbit cost-effectively? I think silicon wafers the size of basketballs might do some interesting things to semiconductor pricing.

Rockets aren't good enough.

That leaves rail/coilguns, JP Aerospace (BTW, I've heard there are other blimp-to-orbit projects), and the Space Elevator.

I think that to save costs

[wwphx]

we should outsource all production and programming for this project to India.

"Yes, this is Launch Control. Apu speaking, what product are you trying to launch?"

Interesting, but wrong.

[WindBourne]

When NASA was told to kill off Kennedy's Lunar shots, it was decided to develop a new low cost launch system. They originally came up with a similar design to Burt Rutan's last work. IOW, a multi staged approach, but with the bottom piece being a Jet (they wanted super sonic as the base though). Nixon nixed it. He told them to cut the development cost to 1/2. In addition, he put a number of constraints on it, which were basically, the militaries input. NASA did what they were told. The shuttle it Nixon's contribution to the Space program.

MOD UP DISCUSSION

[BerntB]

I just wish you weren't so outspoken that it's a bad idea before you ask those questions, if you aren't really actively involved enough to have done the analysies and tradeoffs.

This was a wonderful thread. I have to disagree -- and thank Rei for wasting your time. :-)

A bit late to mod up this discussion, though. Sigh.

(Used to follow sci.space.tech when I had some time.)