Slashdot Mirror
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"
Why fly a spacecraft, when you can just take the elevator?
The video and other information make several things quite clear:
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.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
How do you classify something as 10x safer than something else? Do they expect 10x less people to die, 10x less frequent explosive disasters, or are the events themselves 10x less dangerous, meaning astronauts could survive?
Jerry
http://www.syslog.org/
113 shuttle flights, 2 catatrophic failures. A ten-fold improvement means we should only lose the entire crew 1 time in 560.
It looks almost exactly like the Apollo system.
(if we're going back to 1969, can we also drop the war on drugs? thanks.)
What exactly does that mean? Let's say this new spacecraft is 100% safe. does that mean the old one was only 10% safe?
Next they'll be telling us that they plan to have that "powered flight" thing all sewn up by 2040.
where there's fish, there's cats
Obviously it means 1/10th as many deaths per N usages. Of course, this thing will probably be less then 1/10th the cost of shuttle mission, so it will be used more then 10 times as often, meaning more death. Oh well. It will probably have 10x fewer people dying, and 10x fewer explosive disasters.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
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.
No - that is what I was thinking too - the only real difference seems to be the solar panels.
;-)
I suppose with all that 3Ghz computer gear running on it, it'll take more power than the original Apollo command module did.
I'm not impressed. There is nothing here to replace the things the shuttle can do? How do you deal with repair of craft all ready in orbit, etc?
There are simply some missions only a space-shuttle type vehicle can accomplish.
Have you compiled your kernel today??
So NASA's going to be using the latest in 1970's tech? Woo Hoo!
Best Slashdot Co
and 30% cooler, with 200% more wiz-bang factor!
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
I take it they'll be taking advantage of CGI this time, hey we might even see Shrek make an appearance.
Perhaps we've moved a bit beyond this stuff, though NASA hasn't yet gotten the message or is worried about its future funding. For a start it looks as if unmanned missions could achieve the same at far less cost. Second, missions like this are really about the future good of all mankind, unless you're some crazed tycoon who wants to own space, the planets, etc. So perhaps the other major power blocks in the world could be induced to cooperate and to spread the cost. Who knows, they might even come up with some good ideas or tasty new technology. The US is financially overstretched as it is.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
I must say, it is interesting to notice that NASA has, in fact, finally opted to return to the old, well-tried capsule approach, as opposed to reusable reentry vehicles such as Shuttle. Especially when one takes into consideration the significant amount of resistance NASA experts have been offering to the idea for years and years, despite the poor cost-to-results ratio of Shuttles and, apparently, high(er) risks involved in Shuttle flights as compared to capsule flights.
Perhaps it is a bit of me that loves rubbing it in to american 'rocket scientists', but it might be interesting to notice that Russians never fully embraced their shuttles (Buran, http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/rsa/buran.html ) despite it posessing payload and operational capacities superior to those of US Shuttle...
'...computers in the future may have only 1000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons...' Popular Mechanics, 03/49'
That's obvious? I'd think that it'd be far more obviously 1/10th as many mission failures. Any statistic regarding deaths would vary according to the number of people on the flight, which changes per mission on the Shuttle, thus making your "obvious" conclusion anything but.
The point is that at this rate, with exceptions such as the Hubble, it's cheaper to deorbit a broken sat and send up another one ( 200kg of stuff to send upstairs) than to send up a shuttle to service it (20 tons of stuff to send upstairs).
Most of the cost of an earth-orbiting sat is ultimately the launch vehicle.
C'mon this isn't news. BBC was reporting it yesterday FFS, and as other pointed out the Wikipedia page on the CEV has a lot of detailed info on the launchers, mission plans etc.
Took the words right out of my mouth. The briefing and much more all available here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4261522.stm
The funding of the space program continues to be less and less each year (adjusted for inflation). Even those in NASA recognize it depends on the "will of Congress" to fund such an effort at a time when we are spending $180 Billion a year in Iraq, $200 billion on Katrina, Billions upon billions for Homeland Security and we still have other natural disasters to face (Rita is on her way now).
Further, we do not have the motivation that existed in the 60s, when Russia beat the US into space. It was not just American pride, it was a deterrent, to both sides, to show they had the technology to be a leader in the world. Unless we see China, or India on the moon, it is unlikely to be of such importance that NASA would be funded for it. Even if we do see them, the question may be "So what? We were they ~40 years ago."
Talking about precursors, or the technology we would derive from such an effort, will be lost on the "yes, but we have "X" that needs to be paid for first." I wish it were otherwise, but I just do not get the feeling we have the 60s excitement around space. People look at the technology and fail to see it was possible because it was necessary to fulfill the mission. They are thankful for the derivatives, but many believe another Steve Jobs could create the same in IPOD like fashion.
Any comments on the following analyses? Transterrestrial Musings
Space Access Update #112
if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
This is all quite unnecessary. The private sector is already chomping at the bit to invest in manned space. Griffin says $100M over 13 years is going to be spent within the existing NASA budget for this initiative but if that $100M were simply available as incentives, be they prizes, tax credits for manned space transport and habitation, there would be an explosion of alternatives in a highly competitive environment that would yeild results in a short time.
Seastead this.
NASA have needed a heavy lifter ever since they (foolishly) retired the Saturn V. Now they'll finally have one again, and that's good. However, it doesn't seem to me like a big step up from the Saturn V -- unless I'm missing something. How does the payload capacity to LEO compare? Off the top of my head, I thought the Saturn V was rated for 220 tons to LEO, the new rocket only 125 tons. But maybe I am mis-remembering something, or reading something wrong?
:p Anyhow. . . To me it looks adequate (not great) for lunar missions. The idea of sending it to Mars is ludicrous, it would be like sticking Columbus in a rowboat with five other guys and sending him out to find America.
I'm a little disappointed that nobody seems interested in reviving the old Sea Dragon concept from the 1960s. If you were really serious about going to Mars, that would make a good foundation for it.
The CEV and associated launcher look sensible. I'm not sure about the CEV's crew capacity. NASA say it can carry four astronauts to the Moon or potentially six to Mars. Do I sense a problem with their math skills? Maybe another of those pesky metric conversion errors.
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.
Wow, that crew vehicle and lander look familiar. Where have I seen something like that before? Oh yeah - back in 1969! Seriously though, I guess there are only so many simple/cheap solutions to a problem so it is natural that it would look similar - just like modern airplanes dont look that different from ones 40 years ago.
http://www.npr.org/templates/common/image_enlargem ent.php?imageResId=4855288
I'd hate for all of my alien friends to see me driving around in this thing. Give me a deathtrap shuttle anytime!
Has anyone published figures on the cost/kg using these two new launchers.
Also, why use SSMEs? They are wickedly powerful, but they're also the most expensive engines available. Why not develop a less complex engine?
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
Seriously.. Revamping 1970's tech to go to the moon? So for the last damn near 40 years, we've spent billion upon billion for you to revamp 70's tech and go to the moon. When you should of already had a fucking base station there by now.
What NASA needs is someone who knows what the fuck is going on. A forward thinker with some goals to run this goddamn outfit. You know, someone who can say yeah. "It'd probably be a good idea to have a Base Station in outerspace where we could easily launch missions from instead of having to worry about earths atmosphere and large gravitational pull. Ok, lets do it".
Instead we get "Well, shuttle program looks fucked.. Mars had some cool stuff with the robots.. These images are cool. Jupiter might have more moons? Whats this on saturns belt? Cool, cool.. Whats next?? Wanna go back to the moon?? Sweet, good idea, well then the best way to do it? REVAMP EVERYTHING FROM THE 1970'S!!"
Holyyy shit; how bout we fund private companies instead of my taxes going to NASA?
Althought it may be true that $100M in prizes could accomplish what NASA proposes to accomplish with $100B of expenditures -- I really did slip up by saying $100M rather than $100B.
Seastead this.
So, what exactly is the point of going to the moon, staying a week and then coming back? There must be one but I don't know it. America gave up for lack of interest last time 30 years ago, so why is that not going to happen this time? What's different?
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
Given that we went to the moon in less than a decade in the 60s.... why so long to plan and execute in the 2000's?
Well, what does the shuttle really do?
1. Capable of bringing a shitload of material into orbit. Yup, this can do that two.
2. Repair craft in orbit. How often have we used that capability? At max 5 times, and I think I'm being generous...
3. Building the ISS. Well, the ISS have a pretty capable arm and gantry system. Once things are boosted up to it and attached, it can build itself.
The shuttle has served us well, but I see it as a first step and it has outlived its usefulness. What we should do is scour the shuttle for all of it's great ideas, carry them forward and leave the bad ideas behind.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Whether it's seat belts in cars, kids wearing helmets on bikes, or the severe risk-intolerance that afflicts our space program, we've become a society of cowards, insisting on safety above all.
If that trend continues, and I expect it will, soon we won't ever venture into space, underwater, or outside our own fenced in back yard.
Besides, calling something "10 times safer" sets off my B.S. detector. 1/10 as much likelihood of disaster isn't 10 times safer. If (to pick a number) 2 of every 10 shuttle launches ends in a crew loss, then you're already 80% safe. If you determine that you'll have only 2 in 100 flights end in calamity, then you've gone from 80% safe to 98% safe, on 1/10th the risk.
"10 times safer" is meaningless unless your safety record is in the single digit percentage range. "One tenth the risk" would be a lot more accurate, if that's even what they're claiming.
sigs, as if you care.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/20/science/space/20 nasa.html
............. kris
(registration required)
the striking difference between this mission plan and apollo is the earth orbit rendezvous of the excursion module and the exploration module. i guess this is because the heavy-lift vehicle is not man-rated. doesn't matter--separate crew/cargo launches just mean more payload to orbit, and like someone else said, the extra bonus cargo capacity means nasa has greater in-orbit construction capacity.
"I thought I could organize freedom. How Scandinavian of me."
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.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
It's called engineering. You build a reliability model of the system and evaluate it. What's the probability of component X failing and what are the effects if it does fail. NASA already has a comprehensive reliability model for the Space Shuttle.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
This is the worst kept secret in NASA. I've seen details about this over a month ago. What is news is that Congree, the White House, and OMB have now all signed off on it so that it can be officially announced.
"What can a lay man do to make these politicians see the light?"
I have heard that shooting at the White House gets their attention. Maybe you could try that.
PS
Mr. FBI agents, I'm not suggesting it, so don't come kick my door down.
10 times cheaper??
Yeah... Especially since it took about nine years the first time.
My left arm is all scars and I consider that a valid excuse...
a replacement for the space shuttle? It's a system for getting to the moon, and it must have a heavy lift capability to send anything that far but that doesn't make it a reusable spaceplane. But then I suppose the space shuttle wasn't really a credible spaceplane either. I sometimes feel we cheat ourselves by adhering too closely to the definition of 'spacecraft'. Where's my Orion big-lifter? Lunar-base-in-a-box, special delivery. We should build an artificial island spaceport somewhere in the Southern Atlantic for those messy launches.
I bet some fourteen astronauts would disagree with you, were they alive today.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I guess unwilling for radical new designs, Nasa is opting to go back to more trial tested designs in an effort to increase safety in their missions.
The only problem is, I don't see how something that simply falls out of the sky and drops into the ocean as being safer then a shuttle glider configuration. I guess the shuttle pretty much drops out of the sky as well, and has greater surface area which could become damaged, as we have learned.
What I don't get is that the payload section doesn't seem as well conceived on the "new" shuttle and they seem to be focusing mostly on a Moon landing. Is this configuration ideal for general orbital work? The Shuttle has proven to be very versitle once in space, I don't see a capsule offering the same maneuverability and adaptability as a Shuttle with the robotic arm and large payload section.
I think Nasa is on the brink of ruin if this is what they can come up with after 40+ years of innovation. Going back to an old design might improve safety at the cost of being robust and versitile. This is not a step forward. If Nasa's greatest goal is to go the moon after 13 years of preperation (after they have already been there once), one has to start questioning the usefullness of Nasa.
I think ultimatly that while Japan, China, Russia, and possibly Canada (talking about it) having launch capabilites, Nasa will become redundant as enterprises will opt for a more forward thinking and fruitfull space programs. Also, when "amateurs" can build space craft, Nasa's role in space is quickly becoming deprecated if there is an emerging privatization of space.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
I mean, the space shuttle was an experiment in how to screw it up. Expensive, unsafe, you name it.
When we have non-chemical propulsion and somewhat fancier materials it might be time to take another look at the reusable space plane approach. Until then, the basic multi-stage capsule on top design seems to be the best choice in terms of operational cost and safety.
Well, they're still using the SSME's on the heavy lift vehicle and on the second stage of the crew launch vehicle. Only the Earth transfer stage will use the J-2S. The CEV and ascent stage of the lander will used methane-based engines (based on the RL-10 perhaps? Maybe an americanised RD-x, given the Russians have much more recent experience with CH4-based engines), and the descent stage will use a LOX/LH2 engine.
"Just once, I'd like to meet an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets." -- The Brigadier, Dr. Who
>Note to all the Rutan freaks out there: if you can do this was less than $60 billion, feel free to try.
Feh. After seeing what that dude managed with $30M, I'm guessing *he* could do it for $6B (with half the crew made of up paying passengers - "Mr Gates, please stop hogging the windows. These are *mine*.").
>Even better, volunteer to be a test pilot...
Damn skippy.
Nasa method: train about 10 years for grand total of 164 hours in orbit, if program isn't shut down for a couple of years due to freezer burn.
Rutan method: train for a few months, take off on Saturday morning, fly again after dinner.
Ooh! Ooh! 'What is choice number two?', Alex!
I think this post's observation/question is perhaps the answer to why there are still "whole-life" insurance policies and extended service plans sold. "How can you possibly measure risk?" Well, you start by remaining awake in Probability and Statistics class.
I am not a crackpot.
it's just too damn expensive to put men in the sky right now. Like each shuttle launch costing $1.3B instead of the $20M as planned. Instead let's use much cheaper robot craft for now to see if there's actually water in protected craters on moon, see if Helium-3 is abundant on moon and let's do some inital mining with robot craft. If that goes well, let's have robot craft assemble a mars mission -- unmanned for the first round. We'll save tens of billions and a few lives too. Putting men up there right now is just political gee-whiz crap with little or no scientific value.
What I'd like to know is how a trip to the moon can cost $100 Billion when Robert Zubrin can take us directly to Mars for only $20 Billion.
Since they are reusing shuttle components they have safety ratings for individual shuttle components. Safety analysis - both fatal and near fatal - are well known and well documented procedures. All they have to do is plug the individual safety ratings of known components into their spreadsheets and make intelligent guesses on the new hardware (which isn't difficult - the CEV is similar to capsules from the apollo-era).
I've seen the analysis. I like what I see. This is a definite step in the right direction.
-everphilski-
Foolishly? Last time I checked, money didn't grow on trees. The Saturn V was very expensive to build and launch. That was a major reason why it was retired, NASA couldn't afford to operate it after its budget was slashed.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
It's not the Enterprise or the Galactica or even the Jupiter 2, but it has the potential to get humans back on the moon, maybe Mars. That's grandure. Good for the soul. Might even get some good science in. That's good for everyone. And if it's cheap enough we might have $$ left over for robotic unmanned massions farther out.
Not bad.
r
how many NASA engineers and others secretly cheered when Bush and Co. announced the end of the shuttle?
For too long we spent out time focused on the Shuttle instead of space itself. Everything other than a few probes was centered around the space shuttle. How much of the ISS was compromised because of the shuttle? Perhaps the original glamour of a flying space plane helped NASA but it sure turned into a Spruce Goose pretty damn quickly.
I really like this new direction. Getting the moon is the first step. While we might not reach Mars from there we never will have any chance if we just putz around in Earth orbit.
Perhaps the next habitation in space can be built on the moon. That can put the glamour back into the space age in a more practical method than a space plane.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
If the topic is how best to go about space exploration -- again -- the question is why should the public interested in funding space exploration at all? Well, there are answers to that question that are a lot more rational than putting $100B of taxpayer money through government managed investments. For instance the US Geodedic Survy of the western States used a bounty system where private barnstormers could take aerial photographs of uncharted regions. One can argue that this was a mal investment of taxpayer funds but really it is a lot better investment than 99% of the public investments that are being made. Likewise, a space data purchase system could be set up similar to the Geodedic survey which would obviate the need for other incentives. The public gets just what it needs for a fair price and the ancillary systems, be they manned or robotic, get developed appropriately.
Seastead this.
While this may seem superficial, I think this design may be a step backward for NASA in terms of both design and public image. This seems to be nearly identical to the design we used to land on the moon almost 40 years ago. With all the designs being submitted by Lockheed Martin and Boeing for next-generation spaceflight, it makes me wonder why they chose the same route for technology they used before.
In addition, the space shuttle had the wow-factor for the public: it was a step right direction on the long road to Star Wars/Star Trek technology. I hope the public doesn't look at this design and begin to lose interest in the space program, if only because it looks like 40-year-old technology.
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.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
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.
If I recall, the biggest bitch people had at the time of the Saturn V was how MUCH it cost to put stuff into orbit. The result was the shuttle was supposed to reduce this cost.
But, instead of using boosters WITHOUT gaskets (which could be built down the road) someone decided they needed pork. So the boosters had to be built in sections. Which required gaskets. Which resulted in the first big boom.
I remember when Grissom, White, and Chaffee died in the Apollo fire. I remember Apollo 13 (another near disaster). Don't tell me that this is a safer design. Heck, let's just start using statistics to lie with while we're at it.
And yes, it is a step back. NASA, as far as I'm concerned, is dead. It was supposed to be civilian, but has been slowly sucked into being part of the military.
This is nothing but bad news....
IANAL, but I've seen actors play them on TV
Which parts are complicated? Some googling suggested this page
http://www.astronautix.com/engines/rd0120.htm
which mentions the nozzle cooling system and two turbopumps as complexities. What others are there?
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
Because of the difference in cost and risk, you can do vastly more exploration with robots than with people. I think sending people is the real conceit, and one that costs lives.
If followed to the point of a permanent presence on the Moon we would probably also have an expanded presence in orbit.
Now the shuttle was mostly to return scientific instruments it took itself into space as well as the odd satellite. If you in space more of less permanent whats to return that would be bulky? Also the costs of returning something large, say a satellite, only to put it back need to weighed against fixing it in orbit or just replacing it.
As for resources taken from the moon, that will be an even longer period of time away that I hope someone will find a good method. it might even mean only using the mined resources in space. A lot of the knowledge we gain will either be conveyed back by transmission of the data involved or small enough to drop with any returning crew.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
- 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).Return to the Moon with fancy new ships: 2018
Retire Shuttle Fleet: 2010
Ok... we have a projected 8 year gap (probably longer since these projects always go over) in which the United States will have NO ability to get into space. We're already in the position where we have to beg and plead with Russia to get help bringing supplies to our guys on the ISS (or to bring them down). What sort of bind are we going to be in when they know we simply don't even have the ships to do it (as opposed to having the ships but being afraid to use them)?
We are setting ourselves up for a big cock-up. Who's to say that in 2011, once the fleet is retired, that some genius in Congress wouldn't get a thing going to pull funding for the moon program, thus completely shutting down our space program?
Never discontinue a vehicle or service until you have something ready to go to replace it.
NASA say it can carry four astronauts to the Moon or potentially six to Mars. Do I sense a problem with their math skills? Maybe another of those pesky metric conversion errors. :p Anyhow
:-D
Metric humans, like the ones in europe, are smaller than the imperial humans here in the US. So you can fit more of them in the capsule.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
With five SSMEs and strap-ons I wonder what the acceleration profile would be like on the HLV. Disregarding man-rating issues, would it even be safe to fly a human on one of them?
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
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!)
"Just once, I'd like to meet an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets." -- The Brigadier, Dr. Who
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.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Can anyone explain why we are constantly still using friggin solar panels?
I understand they're renewable energy and I think they make great backup generators.
But umm how about a nuclear reactor instead please? Something to make some serious power.
Also if you're sending a lunar lander thats going to leave part of itself behind why not design it in a modular fashion to become part of the lunar base?
Nasa needs a better lego's set, if supplies can be autonomously launched to the moon why not send everything you could ever need there to try to build a base? "maybe one day make methane" on the moon... ok so send every possible way of making methane up there and have one of the astronaunts test the idea
Drop off a lunar rover etc..., how about dropping off something to grow plants in to make some food? Something to make oxygen? I mean really quick, cheap, dirty concept works great... who cares if we litter the moon with stuff? Nobody's been there in 30 years, if some stuff breaks on landing well we'll scavange from it, fire up the replacements scotty.
10 times safer means going (roughly) from 2 failures in 100 to 2 failures in 1000 - an order of magnitude - which happen to coincide pretty well with the numbers they were proposing at the AIAA Joint Propulsion Conference in July.
-everphilski-
Does NASA plan to re-use any of the launching vehicles in Space? For example the shielding around the main capsule appears to just fall way to burn up in the atmosphere. At the cost to get things into orbit why not keep those clam shells around to use as a raw material for building things in space or on the moon. I am sure some creative design could be developed to re-use them in a meaning full way.
My Sig indicates the end of the comment I posted.
Except for the fact that the heavy lift component has higher tonnage. And that all this technology is directly derivative of the Shuttle Technology. (SSME = Space Shuttle Main Engine) (SRB = Solid Rocket Booster). Basically, they took the good stuff from the Shuttle (the rockets) and dumped the bad parts (the Shuttle).
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
THAT's exactly the problem - it IS broken. STS is more than twice as expensive as Apollo/Saturn was, despite Apollo/Saturn being expendable. STS carries less than half the payload, was at best launched only about as frequently as Apollo/Saturn (remember, Apollo's man-rated flights only spanned 4 years: 1968-1972), and STS has killed an average of 1 astronaut per 7 flights. Counting Apollo 1, Apollo/Saturn killed 1 astronaut every 4 flights, but if you only count actual SPACEFLIGHTS, Apollo had 11 man-rated flights with no fatalities. This from a non-reusable program that was cheaper despite requiring 4x as many personnel. Maybe a lot of that was due to the difference in NASA culture between 1960 and 1975 (when final design on the two systems was underway). No matter how you cut it, though, STS has serious issues - it never worked as advertised, the crew vehicle is in the path of shedding debris from other parts of the craft, mission objectives are not separated (crew SHOULD be separate from cargo - it's more economic. Cargo doesn't need life support and its associated weight), the list goes on and on. The design of the CEV addresses a number of those problems, and hopefully fixes it.
-Mod how you like, we'll make more
Zubrin makes a lot of speculation. Not to mention the stuff he proposes to do hasn't been done before meaning it has to go through a development cycle which he generally doesn't account for. Not to mention some of his engineering decisions make may of us who are engineers for a living cringe.
Don't get me wrong - I own two of his books ("Case for Mars" and "Entering Space". Both are good reads). But he oversimplifies the situation. The lift vehicle he wants to use was a thought project - never designed or produced. The habitat modules have no current production facility (much larger than space station modules). Et cetera.
-everphilski-
As far as I can tell, the SSME has to be the most complicated rocket engine ever designed. Using the older and simplier J-2S should significantly reduce costs and improve reliability.
I'd agree. The SSME has the design constraint of operating from sea level pressure to vacuum. Thus it runs at a very high pressure, which complicates things. Rocket motors designed to operate at altitude can be made simpler and more reliable.
If its not on the first stage it doesn't need to be a SSME, and it probably shouldn't be.
Actually, I've heard about studies stating that the main driver for launch cost is neither the total payload nor the technology but the launch rate. That is, for the same payload weight, a light booster that flies a hundred times a year will probably be cheaper than a heavy lifter that flies only a few times a year. It doesn't really matter if they are expendable, reusable, cryogenic or whatever.
See for example this 1994 study ("This indicates a potential paradox in the commercial space transportation market. High flight rates appear to be necessary to reduce the price per flight. However, reduced prices per flight reduces the revenue per flight, and consequently the cash flow available for investment payback.") or A Rocket a Day Keeps the High Costs Away.
Sure, a lower payload capacity means more orbital assembly required, more modular systems, which will make them heavier. But they will be more versatile, possibly cheaper, and the lower launch cost will offset the added weight.
OTOH, developing a heavy lifter starts from the opposite premise: a launch has to be expensive, so their number has to be minimized, with more payload per launch. This makes low flight rate a self-fulfilling prophecy and almost calls for a high cost.
The funny thing is that NASA arbitrarily set the CEV weight at 25 tonnes, just above the LEO capability of the heaviest rocket currently available (Delta 4 Heavy). Almost as if they wanted to need a new launcher, which then could be developed from Shuttle parts, keeping the existing workforce with a job, maybe even the very same job...
There is nothing here to replace the things the shuttle can do?
Except for that whole "going to the moon" thing. Which is the point of these craft. The shuttle cannot make it to the moon. It's a matter of weight/fuel. AFAIK, it cannot carry enough fuel to completely escape Earth's gravity to enter orbit around the moon. I don't think it can even carry enough for even a burn-everything-we-got-ballistic type orbit around the moon - plus they then need fuel to escape the moon's gravity and get back to earth.
"This calls for a very special blend of psychology and extreme violence" - Vyvyan "The Young Ones"
What a shame, and a huge waste of my taxpayer dollars. And this is the best they can do, rehash ancient technology, and put a new sticker on it? Bullshit!
I'd like to see more useful methods of leaving this atmosphere, and hauling thigns into space, like construction materials, and small factories, stored foods, etc. Going to the moon is nice and all -- in the 1920's! We've been there, done that, and there are more important things at stake.
Who makes these decisions, and who allows them the authority? It certainly wasn't me...
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
You mean the graph that shows NASA's current budget at aroun 3.2%, while in 169 it was 3.3%? THAT graph?
Damn man, read your own link, (or learn to read a graph) before you stick your foot in your mouth.
I nominate you for the "posted a link to prove someone wrong, but looked like an ass myself award."
The good news is you won't win, because 100 other people will do the same thing this week.
My bad. Forgot that transistors were in use back then. Still, the same principles apply. ICs today will use less power and less mass/volume.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
It's akin to saying "We need $100B to spend on this, and to do that inside our existing budgets will take a little longer." Having another manned program in the works lets them shut down the Shuttle without saying "We give up now, space is hard!" and "We're firing our army of Shuttle workers now; thanks for the ride!"
I mean, I'd like it to happen, but we all know it won't, right?
It'll happen (the Moon shots, at least), it'll just be "Apollo II: The Unimaginative Sequel". The "Not Invented Here" philosophy means that all our plans will again depend on one huge government cargo rocket, to give Congress a single Saturnesque target for budget cuts when we get bored of flags and footprints and want to stall the space program for another 50 years. The major difference is that this time we don't think we can keep body counts down without putting the crew launches on a separate smaller booster. Fortunately there will be a single government rocket for those, too, so we can keep the market for private launch vehicles starved and stop the evil capitalists from stealing our central planning mojo.
The funny thing is that NASA arbitrarily set the CEV weight at 25 tonnes, just above the LEO capability of the heaviest rocket currently available (Delta 4 Heavy).
The Delta 4 is not rated for human spaceflight, and probably cannot be without huge changes in technology and redesign.
So they needed a new rocket anyway, and one might as well set your capacity high so you can get more done in orbit and on the moon.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
Well written and informative summary, by the way. Thanks.
I'm very excited about the greater space capability this system will give our country. I like separating the man rated systems from the heavy lifting capability. This seems safer, more flexible and in the end more economical. I wonder about the SRBs on the crew launcher though.
We've lost two shuttles so far, one due to flaws in the SRBs, the other to debris hitting the orbitter. The inline design gets rid of that problem. So, the one thing remaining in the new design that has killed people are the SRBs.
I wonder -- are the SRBs the safest way to do this, or are they just cheap, available and made in the right congressional districts? Wouldn't a rocket engine be safer because the fuel and oxidizer are separate, and the engine can shut down? Or does any kind of problem during this phase translate to instant death anyway?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
> Is it just me, or does the artist's conception up there look like the Apollo command module and lander?
Maybe they're recycling the artwork along with the basic plan.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The Russians keep sending capsule after capsule, after Progress, after capsule up to the ISS in a way that was hoped would be routine with the shuttle.
Sure, it takes $20mil per launch, but that's a fixed cost. I think this more than proves that a disposable booster/capsule/ablative re-entry return vehicle is the friggin' way to go.
If we ever need to return things, I'm sure we could build a module for the HLV that would take up a re-entry vehicle that you could stick your cargo into and hurl it back to earth without it getting all burned up. Send up the CEV with a crew to maneuver the cargo into the module, press the button, and send it back to earth.
I remember when Grissom, White, and Chaffee died in the Apollo fire.
Surely a tragedy, especially since this was not a space mission but rather a checklist routine training. But this one does not count as a point against the overall design of the launch system. The main reasons were the design of the hatch and the pressurised pure oxygen atmosphere inside Apollo 1.
This shows once more that tragedies like this one can be caused by seemingly minor design decisions. Maybe NASA could benefit from making the whole detailed design process public so outsiders could raise concerns.
617B3B7F7E7C7D7F00EOF
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/history/apollo/apollo_ mission.html
(Sorry about not being able to link it with a _blank window of the proper size. If that's a problem, go to spaceflight.nasa.gov and it's currently linked in the bottom right corner of the main page.)
I had never known what that tower thingy on top of the Saturn V stack was. It was a small rocket to launch the Command Module off of the rest of the rocket in case of an emergency before reaching Earth orbit. And it's a part of the new design as well.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
The vehicle is part of a system that will be capable of putting astronauts on the moon by 2018
I knew that was all a hoax. See, they just admitted it, Neil Armstrong filmed that shit in the Arizona desert!!!!
My software never has bugs.
It just develops random features.
Don't forget (1.a) Capable of bringing a shitload of material back from orbit, something that the new system definitely can't do.
And to head off other grammar Nazis, it's "too", not "two".
Is there any fundamental reason they are limited to two SRBs for the HLV unit?
SRBs have a lot of residual thrust for fairly cheap. Once you have a rotationally-symmetric stack, eliminating the balance considerations of the SSTS, it would seem you could significantly increase your maximum lift capability by putting four or six SRBs around your central unit. More lift with very little redesign requirements.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
If you're looking for drama, go join a theatre company. It's not ethical to waste astronaut's lives solely for our entertainment.
So this is might be a great craft to get men to the moon, however, this is not a "replacement" of the shuttle. The shuttle is an orbiting craft that can deploy cargo from it's bay. This craft is nothing more than a souped up version of the old apolo crafts. I don't see anything really revolutionary about this.
The Delta 2 and the Ariane 4 were not man-rated either. The Shuttle and Ariane 5 are/were supposed to be. Given their failure rates, which would you rather be on? With an escape tower-equipped capsule?
More cynically, when a company designs a rocket, are they going to take more precautions to safeguard a billion-dollar satellite, or a few astronauts (with no shortage of volunteers)?
But it's great for NASA bureaucrats. They can just idle along, issuing press releases, running their "centers", and promoting their "education" programs, without actually building anything flyable. And they get to blame Congress for not providing more money.
You can see this already. NASA just converted their home page to Flash.
The next people on the moon will be Chinese. They have such a strong manufacturing economy that it won't be a stretch to build a big booster. The "China price" on a booster should be low. Maybe the US will buy some.
Actually it would be the Secret Service...
Do you think taht by 2018 CmdrTaco will know the difference between "to" and "too"?
"from the stuff-to-listen-too dept"
Scientists predict that Taco's spelling will be 10 times more accurate, with sufficient funding from Congress.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
I know there will be some out there that will yell big time at the suggestion of having other nations help out with this.
The Russians still have decent space capacity, and the Europeans have the technology to help as well.
Why not ask for help?
It looks like the 60's all over again!
FYI, tubes are still in use today. For high power radio-frequency amplifiers, tubes are still the way to go. At the microwave frequencies used in space communications, solid-state amplifiers only reach about 100 watts or so.
... in his book Voyage But in reality, we didn't need the alternate history! Fact following Fiction.
Geez...
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
I always wanted "mushrooms from God"!
.. truly be re-used.
.. back to rocketships:], bouncy mcDonalds 'orbital waystations' deployments in and around the L-points, every rockets got its own webserver.
.. i don't want a machine that i throw away, i want a ship.
i mean, cripes. for crying out loud. we're making rockets, expensive ones, which we just junk.
i want a machine that will lift, fall back, survive, get re-fueled again, and get re-used to get off the planet, and around the universe in general.
i believe we have the rocket scientists. we need fewer zombies. way more captain crunch space-suits floating in ice-fields, loads more mercedes-benz lifesystem engineering controlled habitats, tons more help for the poor [*-make a tax on space use; put the tax in a global superfund, use it to solve humanitarian crises like dafur, put an accountable governing body in charge of it, oh, never mind
oh, and yeah. re-usable -everything-
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
That's what I thought too from that picture. It's 1968 all over again!
There are 10 kinds of people: Those who think in binary, and those who don't.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
still used them. The RF power amplifiers for communications, the klystrons/magnetrons for landing/docking radar, TWTs in the telemetry transponders, and the vidicon and image dissector tubes used in the TV cameras. I believe there was also a CRT used for one of the cockpit displays (radar?).
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
Note to all the Rutan freaks out there: if you can do this was less than $60 billion, feel free to try. Even better, volunteer to be a test pilot...
I'm sure he could.
http://transformspace.com/
By putting the CEVs permanently in orbit, and putting permanent tankers in orbit, you reduce overall cost. You put the infrastructure up ONCE, and reuse. The rest is crew and supplies, and extra goodies like moon base infrastructure.
This is really the most unimaginative proposal NASA could come up with. $104 billion for Apollo II? Come on.
It had worked for NASCAR all these years. Maybe we could even get sponsors. Just imagine, The Tide #2 launch vehicle, or better yet, the Viagra Space Launch Vehicle (VSLV). A big white rocket says nothing at all.
While the current NASA design for the CEV will most certainly take us to the moon as a similar technology did in the late 60's - early 70's where do we go from there? How will this design be a platform for future exploration? The answer is that it won't. I agree that the HLV is an excellent platform to have around and should be built as a sort of "Space Truck" for heavy cargo but the return to capsule technology is simply a politically charged exodus toward proven technology for the appearance of reliability and acceptance.
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"
China announced it is launching its second manned orbit the first week of October, just after the National Day holiday (Oct 1). This one may orbit five days. They used a an "improved" Soyez type vehicle. China has also announced a manned moon program for the 2010s.
There was a ~170ton Energia variant that never flew. There were also some crazily huge Nova designs, though they were never even built.
Me (Blog)
Those Dell on site tech support visits to the crew while in orbit are going to suck. Imagine, its next to impossible to get an english speaking tech support rep from the USA.. imagine your odds while not on the planet!
0.07 people will die every year in the new shuttle. To guarantee this, NASA are believed to be working on ways to surgically remove arms and legs in flight.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The Delta 2 and the Ariane 4 were not man-rated either. The Shuttle and Ariane 5 are/were supposed to be. Given their failure rates, which would you rather be on?
Well, on Soyuz. On a man-rated Soyuz, which hasn't had an accident in a long time.
Cynically, a rocket developed in a non-commercially oriented socialist environment beats them all on market these days.
"I've got it - Let's take an SRB, put the fuel tank on top, and put a bigger Apollo capsule on top of that... And it will only cost $100B!"
My wife doesn't listen to me either...
It's sad that this is the kind of post that passes for infomative.
First of all, for those who actually read rather than just look at pictures, there's a lot more information at the NASA site than what the OP writes here, and, unlike that post, it is correct.
Now...
>> There appears to be an Apollo age escape tower on the crew capsule. This doubles as a docking port.
No. That's part of the abort apparatus. it is jettisoned during the trip to orbit. It has nothing to do with docking.
>> The mission plan given is basically the same one used on Apollo.
Wrong. There are significant differences with Apollo, including flight profile, length of stay, size of crew, and the ability to land anywhere on the Moon (Apollo was confined to equatorial regions).
>> We use big booster to light up millions of tonnes of mass... Kind of pathetic,
It is not pathetic. That's how rockets work. Almost all the mass in a rocket is propellant.
>> I'm surprised they didn't even consider the Big Gemini design...
Probably because it is essentially the same design: a blunt conical object with a heatshield. We've seen more than 40 years worth of avionics and electronic advances since Gemini. There's no reason to resurrect the dead. Remember, too, the CEV is supposed to bulk up for the Mars trip. Gemini couldn't survive more than a few weeks. (It barely made it through the two-week endurance mission.)
>> Anyone who thinks NASA is taking a step back (except for the capsule...
The capsule is not a backward step. That's equivalent to lamenting the lack of innovation in aircraft design because they all have wings. If you design a spacecraft to be launched by rocket from and to return to a planetary surface, that's the vehicle shape you'll have: conical for aerodynamic purposes during launch, with a blunt heat shield on the other end. So long as we launch such vehicles via rockets, that's what they're going to look like. (Remember, we don't have the technology to protect leading wing entries at escape veleocity speed, which a returning lunar mission will see. A returning Mars mission will reenter at higher speed.)
>> With this HLV booster, we could put a brand new space station whereever the hell we want it...
Why?
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Sure, this whole CEV and heavy lift rocket for large payloads thing makes sense... 25 years ago.
The only really innovative space ideas are what people like scaled composites are doing (spaceship one and soon two).
Nasa should be doing what only they could do: nuclear (because I dont think any independant company is going to be allowed to do it). A nuclear rocket would be completely reusable, more reliable, safer (especialy on re-entry), and probably cheaper.
Sadly, all the anti-nuclear idiots would probably never let it happen. They can barely contain themselves when we launch a little tiny space probe with a little tiny nuculear engine on it..
Scratch the subject up there.. make it, "People suck"..
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
NASA may be shooting for 2012 to launch the first CEV, but they set the hard date at 2014. In government work, that means something like 2018 just to get to Earth orbit, certainly not 2012.
This appears to be shaping up to be a race between NASA and private enterprise. SpaceX has stated intentions to pursue manned flight with their Falcon 9. Interestingly, the fairing size on the Falcon 9 is 5.2 meters, just .3 meters shy of the capsule size that NASA is planning. Don't know what NASA's planned weight it though. The Falcon 9 is only shooting for 12 tons. The Falcon 9 is scheduled for first launch in the 2007 time frame. They appear to have a solid, realistic plan and will likely be able to offer cargo ferrying to the ISS at a price level competitive with or even under the Russians in the 2008 time frame. That could easily put them on track to develop a crew capsule capability by 2014.
And SpaceX isn't the only team looking at putting crews into orbit in the 2010-2015 time frame. A true race seems to be developing and NASA may not even be in it.
Yes, and was developed a long time ago too, and flies often because it has a lot in common with the unmanned Molniya.
Actually, NASA has been called the most socialist agency in the US government (see e.g. here, here, or here).
One could say that a socialist centrally-planned development plan is more efficient in the short run (and NASA's goal was to beat the Russians fast) but much worse on the long run (and NASA is struggling to do as well as in the 1960s, while the Russian space agency has become much more aggressive, capitalist-like, and operates on a shoestring budget...)
I read the other slashdot article a few days ago... what is the deal with this? The first time, its exploration, discovery... and we discovered that there is nothing there. The article the other /. story linked to doesn't mention why they are doing it.
The Admin and the Engineer
Eventually mankind (or at least American civilization) will evolve to a state where they are immortal brains in a titanium enclosure in concrete underground bunkers and control all their bodies remotely. This will prevent any accidents from happening to anyone in our civilization...
Of course this will put a crimp on space exploration and going on dates, but that is what the Playsation 8 and Xbox720 neural interaface will be for.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I'm guessing here, but surely the "heavy lift vehicle" can ship a deorbiter of some sort - not needing to be man-rated, it could be quite crude, little more than a flat packed box for in orbit assembly, containing a chute, a heat shield, and a lot of cargo space.
The quicktime video is here . Fair warning, 26 MB. Couldn't figure out the one from within flash. Anybody?
Thank you, Buckminster Fuller.
It become a giant vacuum inside.
Great, I'm tired of vacuuming the carpet! So how are you going to get inside this ginormous soap bubble?
This is being done TODAY, the only need would be to expand the "ovens" that are currently pressing out tiny 4 carrot rocks.
Mmmmm... carrots. Yummy. Anyhow, it's a long step from 3-inch sheets to a one-kilometer sphere. And just because diamond is hard doesn't mean it won't be brittle in thin sheets. People who live in diamond sheet bubbles shouldn't throw meteorites.
P.S. UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of this IMPORTANT Information is ENCOURAGED, ESPECIALLY to COMPUTER BULLETIN BOARDS. - McElwaine
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
Actually, the shuttle system is one hell of a heavy lifter. What is the weight of that thing - 50 tons?
Oh well, what the hell...
Actually, NASA has been called the most socialist agency in the US government (see e.g. here, here, or here). ;)
.. wait, Concorde went out of business ;)
Still, it doesn't beat the ex-Soviet Korolev Design Bureau
One could say that a socialist centrally-planned development plan is more efficient in the short run (and NASA's goal was to beat the Russians fast) but much worse on the long run (and NASA is struggling to do as well as in the 1960s, while the Russian space agency has become much more aggressive, capitalist-like, and operates on a shoestring budget...)
One Could... but then Soyuz is, as you have said, so reliable because it was based on old design, which in turn was based on an even older design going back to the R-4. I wouldn't say central planning is only better short-term (for national projects), it is better long-term because it doesnt abruptly change direction. just think about Soyuz, the rockets AND the spaceships, MIR, then about Russian vacuum tubes etc.
RSA operates on a small budget (now), but on a large legacy. NASA operates on a large budget, and on a large legacy. Concorde operates
I guess it doesn't hurt to use what has worked in the past....the photo reminds me of the Apollo setup that they used to go to the moon originally.
You're messin' with my Zen Thing, man.....
The design flaw that killed the Apollo 1 crew had nothing to do with the fact that it was a rocket-shaped rocket.
NASA has issues aplenty, yes. This, however, seems to be a good step towards inexpensive, reliable systems.
You'll never get any argument from me regarding the idiocy of government hardware procurement programs. However, thus far, private industry is only making baby steps.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
CNN wrote:
> Clinton: Bush should raise taxes to pay for Katrina
Bill Clinton is going to dictate fiscal policy for many years. Until Bill Clinton echos George W.'s moon speech, expect welfare programs and disaster relief to be the top priority and forget about any moon program. NASA will phase out the shuttle in 2015 and in 2030 resume human spaceflight in the form of a low Earth orbit capsule. China will be contracted for moon flights much like Russia is for space station flights.
America's Amazing People Distracting Machine!
this may or may not happen. it doesn't matter, really. we all know it's going to happen soon enough. but why the hell, with the shitty economy, the deficit, all the trillions on this rediculous war, would he want to start a huge and incredibly expensive undertaking that would only make things much worse? because talking about it and even starting one (what the hell does bush care? he can do whatever he wants at this point) keeps us distracted from what is going on NOW.
hell, with all of the money they've spent and plan to spend on destroying and occupying iraq so bush's oil company buddies can take all their oil, we could have been to the moon a few times, or made a decent down payment on a suitable spacecraft from aeronautics MegaCorp Lockheed.
there are other really important things going on. we should be less concerned with what will probably happen, and with what is happening.
The best reason for going into space now is scientific, and making it more dangerous and expensive than it need be jeopardizes the whole program. Gotta use our brains, not our balls.
Well, if *I* were spending 5000 bucks a pound to put something in orbit, the last thing *I'd* do is bring it back if I could help it. Forget SpaceLabs. Spend an extra 10% and make them a permanent addition to a space station. For things you need to bring back, it wouldn't be too hard to design it so you could return it in a capsule (make something like the Long Duration Exposure Facility so it folds up, etc.).
Unfortunately mergers keep reducing their numbers - for large payloads it's down to Lockheed and Boeing now, with SpaceX planning to enter the fray soon.
Of course this is a chicken and egg problem: when your largest potential customers swear they're going to create their own product from scratch and have billions of dollars a year to spend on it, investors tend to be wary about jumping into the market.
Getting to LEO is hard, and there are now only three countries who have ever gotten a manned craft into orbit: China (the newest club member), Russia/USSR, and the US. No private venture has gotten even close. Ever.
Private ventures send large payloads into LEO and further all the time. The reason they're all unmanned isn't because life support is an insurmountable problem, it's because comsats are automatable.
I don't care how disposable the rockets are to get payloads off the earth. Have rockets within rockets.
The only way to have robust interplanetary missions with larger crews is to build your spacecraft piece by piece at the ISS.
You just want the heavy lifter to be able to launch a reasonably large module into orbit. The Space Shuttle really wasn't able to launch comfortably large modules.
Then you could have a spacecraft that is designed to ferry back and forth between the earth or the moon that could be refuelled in orbit. You could send dozens of crew members to help establish colonies.
29Ts, which makes it very small.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I was comparing comparable things... the first to land on an extraterrestrial surface.
Wrong, wrong, wrong...
Russia's Mars 6 in 1973 and America's Viking landers a few years later both landed on Mars quite successfully, thank you very much, an entire generation before Spirit and Opportunity.
Learn a little history, kids. It didn't all happen in the last few years. Seriously. Or, barring that, maybe you could be bothered to take thirty seconds to google a few things before you post?
I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.
Haven't you gotten the memo? They gave up on dismantling the government. The plan now is to run it into bankruptcy so all tax revenue is used to provide a steady stream of income to bondholders. Moon and Mars mission are *perfect* for helping that happen, especially if you own aerospace company stock.
This is the same NASA that promised the Space Shuttle would make the cost of putting stuff into orbit 10x cheaper than Apollo. Mindful of this track record, I hope the astronaut corps has its life insurance paid up.
If NASA's administrators say this is 10 times safer, and they haven't changed their criteria since Feynman's days, it's probably about 1/100 as safe. Count me out.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
The Shuttle's problems are indeed design flaws. It appears that with today's rocket technologies we cannot build a booster that will not shed debris during launch. Couple that with an exposed reentry vehicle and you have a LCAS event waiting to happen. All to make the pilots happy that they can "land" their brick on a runway.
Imagine if instead of the shuttle we had focused on a reusable crew vehicle to put on top of a constantly evolving Saturn IB, while using the occasional Saturn V to loft things like space stations into orbit. I think it is safe to say that we would have far more hours in orbit than we do today. Nixon's decision to kill Apollo and replace it with the Shuttle to reward his campaign contributors set us back decades.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
Shuttle + payload must be about 50t.
Oh well, what the hell...
From an story in Defense Industry Daily [defenseindustrydaily.com], mentioned on slashdot a few days ago:
SpaceX initially intended to follow its first vehicle development, Falcon 1, with the intermediate class Falcon 5 launch vehicle. However, in response to customer requirements for low cost enhanced launch capability, SpaceX accelerated development of an EELV-class vehicle, upgrading Falcon 5 to Falcon 9. SpaceX has sold a Falcon 9 launch to a US government customer, and still plans to make Falcon 5 available in late 2007. Their efforts are worth watching, and could affect the military satellite launch market.
With up to a 17 ft (5.2 m) diameter fairing, Falcon 9 is capable of launching approximately 21,000 lbs (9,500 kg) to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) in its medium configuration and 55,000 lbs (25,000 kg) to LEO in its heavy configuration, a lift capacity greater than any other launch vehicle. In the medium configuration, Falcon 9 is priced at $27 million per flight with a 12 ft (3.6 m) fairing and $35 million with a 17 ft fairing. Prices include all launch range and third party insurance costs, and SpaceX claims that this makes Falcon 9 the most cost efficient vehicle in its class worldwide.
So, Boeing's Delta IV Heavy lifts 25,000 kg for $254 million. The SpaceX Falcon 9 S9 will be able to lift the same amount for a starting price of $78 million. Wow.
Since it's based on the Falcon 5, the Falcon 9 will probably also be man-rated.
From here [spaceref.com]:
A recent study performed by the Futron Corporation, concluded that Falcon 5 was superior in design reliability to other vehicles in its class, due to engine redundancy. Falcon 9, by extension, has even higher reliability with increased propulsion redundancy.
Falcon 5 and Falcon 9 will be the world's first launch vehicles where all stages are designed for reuse. The Falcon 1 has a reusable first stage, but an expendable upper stage. Reuse is not factored into launch prices. When the economics of stage recovery and checkout are fully understood, SpaceX will make further reductions in launch prices.
Meanwhile, in the parent article, NASA has announced that it will be spending $5.5 billion on developing the Crew Exploration Vehicle, $4.5 billion on the Crew Launch Vehicle, and between $5 and $10 billion on a new heavy-lift vehicle. Who wants to bet that by the time NASA's new rockets are ready, SpaceX will already have a similar rocket available at a tiny fraction of the price?
Granted, SpaceX still needs to pull off a successful launch of the Falcon I, scheduled for later this year. I wish them the best of luck.
"There are simply some missions only a space-shuttle type vehicle can accomplish."
You are right. The Shuttle alone can do such things as:
- Collect the garbage (but it's a bit expensive for that, is it not?)
- Repair the Hubble (but that's not going to happen, because Shuttle launches aren't safe enough)
And then there are the military missions that the Shuttle was originally designed for, but that was for USAF use. A civilian organization such as NASA is not supposed to drop bombs. At least not that I am aware of.
From the not-quite-an-article, the next gen shuttle is reputedly 10 times safer than the space shuttle. I know next to nothing about safety standards..but could anyone tell me how safety is quantified???
... amazing how much bulk lifts off from Earth, and how little returns (see the video here). Can anyone explain why we shouldn't invest all this money into basic science research that might result in better propulsion, stronger & lighter materials, and similar useful advancements? Personally I think it's a shame that the US is cutting so much research funding and linking grants to military and national security needs in our effort to pay for wars, hurricanes, moon shots, debt servicing, and the like. Seems like nanotech, nuclear fusion research, and even the Superconducting Supercollider would make much better investments with much more potential ROI than upgrading 40-year old solid rocket tech and going to the moon again.
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
>> There appears to be an Apollo age escape tower on the crew capsule. This doubles as a docking port.
> No. That's part of the abort apparatus. it is jettisoned during the trip to orbit. It has nothing to do with docking.
Right. Same idea, different terms. Hey what's that thing where the "abort apparatus" used to be? Oh yeah that's a docking port...
>> The mission plan given is basically the same one used on Apollo.
> Wrong. There are significant differences with Apollo, including flight profile, length of stay, size of crew, and the ability to land anywhere on the Moon (Apollo was confined to equatorial regions).
Those differences aren't that significant. In the end it's still "basically the same one used on Apollo". Understated, but not wrong.
>> We use big booster to light up millions of tonnes of mass... Kind of pathetic,
> It is not pathetic. That's how rockets work. Almost all the mass in a rocket is propellant.
Way to quote him out of context so you can try to make him look stupid.
>> I'm surprised they didn't even consider the Big Gemini design...
> Probably because it is essentially the same design: a blunt conical object with a heatshield. We've seen more than 40 years worth of avionics and electronic advances since Gemini. There's no reason to resurrect the dead. Remember, too, the CEV is supposed to bulk up for the Mars trip. Gemini couldn't survive more than a few weeks. (It barely made it through the two-week endurance mission.)
He's talking about the capsule form, not digging up the old plans and building that. And is it quite a bit different than what they propose, moreso than, say, the differences between the new mission plan and the Apollo mission plan.
>> Anyone who thinks NASA is taking a step back (except for the capsule...
> The capsule is not a backward step. That's equivalent to lamenting the lack of innovation in aircraft design because they all have wings...
Except that there are newer, innovative capsule designs which did not get used. That's what he's lamenting, not the lack of innovation.
>> With this HLV booster, we could put a brand new space station whereever the hell we want it...
> Why?
Why not?
You could have added to this thread, but instead you've given us so much more...
______-___--_-__-_---_-----__-_-___-_-_---_-----_
Could someone explain to me why thousands of my hard-earned dollars should be spent so that a couple guys I'll never meet can walk on the moon for a week?
This is a serious question. NASA claims that returning to the moon will cost $108 billion. I personally paid 8.5 ppb of the federal government's tax revenues last year (a bit over $15,000, in case you're wondering). Let's do some math: Suppose this moon-doggle ends up costing $200 billion (that's being very generous -- usually NASA manned missions cost 4-6 times their initial estimate). My part of that bill will be $1,700.
Any NASA folks around? What am I getting for my $1,700? Because honestly, I'd rather drop it in my wife's IRA, or save it for my daughter's college education. At what point did it become ok to seize another person's hard-earned money at gunpoint and blow it on something you think might be "fun"?
Dear President Bush: Stop being such a socialist and get with the conservative program. Shut down NASA, please.
The Space Shuttle weighs about 120 tons, which is oddly enough the approximate capacity of the new NASA heavy lift vehicle. It has a payload capacity of 29 tons, which is just over half of the new NASA crew lifter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_shuttle
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Apollo was confined to equatorial regions
I think this had more to do with safety concerns than with limitations of the spacecraft. It wouldn't take all that much of a course correction to go into a polar orbit around the moon compared to an equatorial orbit.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
This Man-rated argument is a red herring intended to cast the EELV's in a bad light primarily because they represent a threat to a lot of rice bowls. Bottom line reliability is maximized on a simple vehicle like the Atlas 402 (which can place a 10t capsule right at the ISS without any need for a secondary propulsion system). Elon Musk did his own analysis and showed this. His Falcon follows the same principles.
The reliability of the CaLV especially is going to suck. The catastrophic failure fraction of the SSME's alone is going to eat their lunch. They only chose them because that is all they could think of with their very limited imaginations. God forbid they should entertain something not invented there.
Right now, between the ESA and us, there are 4 different EELV class boosters. All of them are throttle-able, minimally staged (I believe all two stage), and are all pretty cheap. The Ariane 5, the Delta 4, the Atlas V and the SpaceX Falcon 9. Then there's the russian's stuff.
My question is this: why do we need to build a new "space program"? Why can't we build new rockets, and capsules for those rockets, allowing us to switch capsules when better capsule tech comes about, and better rockets when better rocket tech comes about? Keep competition going, it'll be good for the industry.
Mercury flew on different rockets. So did Apollo. Soyuz flew on various forms of the Soyuz booster, and a handful of times on Protons in the (never got past the testing phase) Zond program. CEV should be the same way.
-twb
Suppose that the next time man set foot on the moon is in the year 2018.
Does it bother anyone else that that would mean that it took us 46 years to make it back to the moon?
Doesn't that seem like a horribly long time considering all of the technical advances of the past 2 decades?
I would think private industry will reach the moon before NASA gets there again.
How is this a step back? I guess the obvious escapes some people. The Apollo fire was caused by bad wiring and the unfortunate use of a pure oxygen atmosphere, not the booster. No, it was caused by the SAME BAD REASONING. The same reasoning that argues that "testing for success" is what Q/A is about (sigh). The Apollo 13 near disaster was again not a design flaw, but a miscommunication over a changed configuration when a service module was mishandled by North American. That IS a design flaw (communication is required for design). Worse, the problems they had with oxygen had to do with scrubbers being of two different shapes (round vs. not quite so round). The Shuttle's problems are indeed design flaws. It appears that with today's rocket technologies we cannot build a booster that will not shed debris during launch. Couple that with an exposed reentry vehicle and you have a LCAS event waiting to happen. All to make the pilots happy that they can "land" their brick on a runway. And yet everyone held their breath during the Gemini and Apollo reentry during the blackouts. Why? Because the fear of a catastrophe. Everyone seems to either a) not remember or b) not have been born to recall that those were not the days of "safe space travel". A helluva LOT OF MONEY went into NASA back them (adjusted for inflation). Imagine if instead of the shuttle we had focused on a reusable crew vehicle to put on top of a constantly evolving Saturn IB, while using the occasional Saturn V to loft things like space stations into orbit. Imagine that we continued to slash NASA's budget in the same way -- how many of those Saturn V's would have blown up on the pad? Or finally said "kill NASA -- it is too expensive". The point of the shuttle was to REDUCE costs. I think it is safe to say that we would have far more hours in orbit than we do today. I think you are drawing conclusions based on fantasy.
IANAL, but I've seen actors play them on TV
I have to pay for everyones kid to go to school but i don't get any tax breaks because i don't have any kids. How fair is that?
Colonizing the moon is a conservative program. Fighting over who dominates Earth is a socialist program.
Research is the study of things known. Search is the study for things unknown.
And every nation that did not pursue the flyboy fantasy of winged spacecraft with an exposed heatshield launches cheaper than we do today. The Shuttle was an overly ambitious failure -- an attempt to completely revolutionize space travel when we were still figuring out how to do it the old way. If we had stuck with what we knew, and perhaps developed first a reusable capsule to put on top of those Saturns, then moved to a reclaimable first stage, then started talking about SSTO we'd have been better off. Doing it all at once and from scratch was too much.
This is one case where the Russians had it right -- big dumb boosters were the right choice for the late 20th century.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
Moderation -1
100% Troll
TrollMods have become so deep in denial that if you just mention Shuttle failures, even complimentarily, rather than describe them euphamistically in terms of "increased safety", TrollMods run scared. I say test new Shuttles with one-way TrollMods.
--
make install -not war
Thanks... I was thinking the same thing. How often has this been used? The only thing I can think of is the space labratory that fit into the cargo hold.... That was on columbia...
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.