NASA's New Shuttle

j0ugh writes "NASA releases plans for a new spacecraft (Audio stream contains the meat) that would replace the space shuttle. The vehicle is part of a system that will be capable of putting astronauts on the moon by 2018, laying the groundwork for space travel to Mars. NASA says the new system is designed to be 10 times safer than the space shuttle"

Comments

Good Design

[AKAImBatman]

FYI, there's a promotional video of the new rockets here. (flash required)

The video and other information make several things quite clear:

1. There will be two boosters, a Heavy Lifter Vehicle (HLV) and a smaller "man rated" booster for the crew capsule.
   
   
2. Both rockets will be based on Space Shuttle technology.
   
   
3. The CEV rocket appears to be a three stage deal. First stage is an SRB booster. Second stage is a single SSME (Space Shuttle Main Engine). Third stage is a smaller booster for navigation. (It's unclear from what I've seen what type of rocket this will be and what type of fuel it will use.) The ET (external tank) will be inline in the stack. i.e. From bottom to top: SRB, SSME, ET, Nav Booster, Crew Capsule.
   
   
4. There appears to be an Apollo age escape tower on the crew capsule. This doubles as a docking port.
   
   
5. The HLV is five (!) SSMEs fueled by a large ET directly above. The cargo area is inlined above this, with a protective shell and nav rocket. Two SRBs are attached to the side of the rocket. Now the SRBs replace the F-1 engines used in the Saturn V first stage. The SSMEs replace the J-2 engines used in the Saturn V second and third stages. The modern engines are each twice as powerful as their S-V counterparts. One big change from the Sat-V is that ALL engines fire on launch. This gives a total thrust (using the numbers from the Space Shuttle) of (2x3,300,00lbf) + (5x400,000lbf) = 8,600,000 pounds of force! In comparison, the first stage of the Sat-V put out 7,500,000. However, this rocket will continue to put out 2,000,000 pounds of force until orbit is reached. In comparison, the second stage of the S-V put out exactly half that! In other words, this rocket will likely be significantly more powerful than the Saturn V.
   
   
6. The mission plan given is basically the same one used on Apollo. We use big booster to light up millions of tonnes of mass, then bring back a mere 20 or so tonnes from the moon. The only difference is that the crew capsule and the lunar lander will be launched separately. Kind of pathetic, but we need to walk before we can run. And the HLV NASA is building is the PERFECT tool for getting space tugs and moon bases in place.
   
   
7. The crew capsule will do its job of getting people up, but far less expensive than today.
   
   
8. I'm a bit disappointed in the crew capsule. With all the experience we have with winged craft, I was hoping they'd take up Lockheed's capsule design and fit it with a full carbon-carbon heat shield that would never have to be replaced.
   
   
9. The inline configuration of the small rocket ensures that debris from the rocket (such as foam) could never strike any heat shielding on the CEV.
   
   
10. Screw the ISS. With this HLV booster, we could put a brand new space station whereever the hell we want it in just two to three launches! ROCK! :-D

Overall, this looks like good technology to me. Anyone who thinks NASA is taking a step back (except for the capsule configuration, I agree with you there) needs to pull his head out of his rear. This design will be inexpensive (NASA is merely redirecting the shuttle buget plus a little extra), reuse existing components/industry, will be more powerful than any rocket ever designed, and will finally give us back the ability to put USEFUL stuff into space. Good job, NASA!

P.S. On the capsule (again), I'm surprised they didn't even consider the Big Gemini design. The BG would have been a very large capsule (more crew than the Shuttle!) with a parawing for smooth touchdowns on Earth.

SSME complications

[Chairboy]

I expect the SSME on the second stage of the manned launcher will be replaced with a J-20S.

The reason: Restarting.

The SSME has never been restarted in flight, and there's a big cost associated with adding/certifying this capabillity. The J-2, on the other hand, was used by the Saturn V's third stage, and this restart is needed for trans lunar injection.

Re:SSME complications

[orac2]

The fact sheet that accompanied the announcement, here, explictly states they'll be using the J2-S. Astronautix.com notes that "It was estimated by ATK Thiokol in 2005 that restarting the J-2S program, including engine fabrication, design and reliability verification, certification, and production, would require four years." Looks like the ghost of the S-IVB (America's favourite stage!) will live on yet...

It's meaningless blurb

[Rogerborg]

Read Richard Feynman tearing them a new one over exactly that sort of language. It's disheartening that they still apparently have marketdroids doing their press releases.

Re:Why fly...

[It doesn't come easy]

I assume you mean a space elevator stretching from the Moon to the Earth? If you lived on the Moon, you'd see the Earth spinning about once per day, so a given point on the Earth's surface does not stay in the same place from the Moon's perspective.

A Moon based space elevator would reach almost halfway to the Earth since the Moon only rotates once per month. However, it wouldn't help get stuff from the Earth to the Moon, since the boost out of the Earth's gravitational field is 90% or more of the energy required. However, the combination of an Earth elevator, ion propulsion, and a Moon elevator would make it much cheaper. Look for this in about 50 years.

Re:I like it, but I also have questions and doubts

[Ironsides]

According to this site
Saturn C-5 max payload: 127 metric tons
New Booster may payload: 100+ metric tons

May be less payload, but last time I checked we weren't building Saturn 5 components.

For crew capacity, technology has changed. We can take out a lot of mass and replace it with new technology compared to the apollo era. Remember, we were still using vacum tubes then and no solar panels. Adding solar panels (which is in the plans) means fewer batteries are needed. Replacing vacume tubes with solid state decreases power and mass and space.

The good news is that NASA are finally picking up where they left off 30 years ago. The bad news is that NASA are picking up where they left off 30 years ago. . . and we have precious little to show for the decades, lives, and many billions of dollars sacrificed to the Shuttle.

We got some info out of it, just not as much as we could have since we got sidetracked with the original moon missions. I've heard that JFK set the space program back (or held it back) 50 years. However, that does not mean we haven't gotten anything out of the shuttle. Otherwise we wouldn't be using shuttle components in these new lifters.

Re:I like it, but I also have questions and doubts

[wildzer0]

Saturn 5 did 110 tons. Here are some large rockets:

• NASA's new heavy lifter: 125t
• Saturn V: 110t
• Russian Energia: 100t
• Space Shuttle: 29t
• Commercial Falcon 9 S9: 25t
• ESA Ariana 5ECA: 21t
• JAXA H-IIA: 12t

All to LEO (low earth orbit).

Re:I like it, but I also have questions and doubts

[orac2]

we were still using vacum tubes

A nit, but I don't think there were any vacuum tubes in the Apollo/Saturn stack -- transistors were already commonplace, and the Apollo Guidance computer pioneered the use of ICs, albeit not microprocessors. But if you've got a reference that describes tubes, I really would like to see it (I'm not being snarky, I really would!)

A nit

[localroger]

Remember, we were still using vacum tubes then

While "we" were still using a lot of vacuum tubes in 1969, the Apollo program did not. Their computers were solid state; in fact, the onboard flight computers were the first ever built with integrated circuits, and the Apollo program absorbed a significant fraction of all the integrated circuits manufactured in those early years.