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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."
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.
To confirm you're not a script, please piss in my ear.
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.
They are offering a fixed-price deal to NASA....
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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).
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.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
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.
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.
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.
The gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking.
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
Too cheap, hence too little pork to slice.
Won't fly.
This is not a signature.
AccountKiller
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.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
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%.
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.
an ill wind that blows no good
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.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
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.
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.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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.
I'm you from the future! We have to finish our time machine before the Angels of Destruction find the portal!