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.

From the illustration...

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks almost exactly like the Apollo system.

(if we're going back to 1969, can we also drop the war on drugs? thanks.)

Re:Why fly...

[minginqunt]

When you put a date of '2018' on something, being at least two US administrations away, isn't that akin to basically saying "maybe, one day, but I wouldn't count on it"?

I wish we could be honest. Nobody really can be bothered to put a man on the Moon or Mars. It's faster, cheaper and easier to have a little wheeled avatar nipping around for us, searching out prime real estate and letting us know that the nightlife in these places isn't a patch on Vauxhall, daahling.

I mean, I'd like it to happen, but we all know it won't, right?

Martin

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.

yeah, 10 times safer...

[RelliK]

and 30% cooler, with 200% more wiz-bang factor!

Back to where they begun?

[Andr0s]

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...

Re:Great.

[American AC in Paris]

Well, that's only like, 20 times more dangerous than a car. Pretty good considering you're basically riding a bomb to orbit.

...which makes one wonder why NASA doesn't just use cars...

I wonder

[Shivetya]

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.

I, explorer

[rumblin'rabbit]

Robots are all well and good, but contrary to the popular conceit, you can't explore with telescopes and probes. To do anything truly worth the effort, you need to send people there, and there'll never be a shortage of willing souls, so why not go for it?

Actually, robots have been great explorers, and will only get better. What's more, they are an order of magnitude cheaper than humans because they don't require food, water, or air, they don't defecate, you don't have to return them to earth (astronauts are picky about that one), and they eat sunshine. As well, they don't mind being sent on multi-year missions (being far more patient than us apes) and if things go horribly wrong, it's a disappointment but not a tragedy.

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.

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).

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.