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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."
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.
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.
Why not just build an international space station or something... ?
"I used to have that really cool,funny sig
"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.
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.
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!
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?
AccountKiller
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...
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!
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...
The future will take care of itself.. It has in the past
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.
Frylock: "We should have cloned twenties, Jackson wouldn't have given a fuck."
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.
...was mastered long ago by the Chinese official, Wan Hu. He clearly has prior art.
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.
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.
$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?
...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...
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Rockets are bulky and inefficient.
We need to switch to trebuchets.
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.
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
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
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.
Tech Public Policy stuff
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.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Too cheap, hence too little pork to slice.
Won't fly.
This is not a signature.
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.
Frylock: "We should have cloned twenties, Jackson wouldn't have given a fuck."
I keep reading Lost-Cow Space Shuttle Replacement
Ah, arrogance and stupidity, all in the same package. How efficient of you. -- Londo Mollari
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.
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
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?
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
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?
-All that is gold does not glitter - Tolkien
www.ra
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
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?
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.
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
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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.
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.
Tech Public Policy stuff
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.
Tech Public Policy stuff
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.