NASA Scraps Shuttle And Returns to Rockets

nathanh writes "NASA is building a launch system that they've informally dubbed Apollo On Steroids. It's a hybrid design of the Apollo capsules and the Shuttle's booster rockets and engines. Crew and cargo are lifted by two different rockets: the crew use a single-booster/single-engine rocket and the cargo is lifted by an awe-inspiring two-booster/five-engine rocket. NASA reckons this craft will take humanity back to the Moon and then to Mars. Has NASA realised that the old designs were better? Or is this all a ploy to recapture the hearts of the public?"

Comments

Re:More like a ploy...

[Ariane 6]

Umm...NASA's budget has actually increased with respect to inflation for the first time in recent memory.

Scraping Shuttle? Old capsules? Nope!

[Saggi]

The shuttle was never build for lunar travel. It is important to understand that different spaceships are used for different tasks. The shuttle is used to bring cargo up to (low) altitude, while escaping the earth gravity completely and going to the moon (or mars) is a completely different story.

You might carry a Luna space ship into orbit with the shuttle, but then you will just be carrying a spaceship within a spaceship. That would be a waste of fuel.

The shuttle is only good if you wish to bring stuff back down with you. In that regard you might have used it on returning to the earth. The returning spaceship could dock with the space station and transfer men and cargo to the shuttle for safe landing. But that's only saves the weight of a single heat shield.

So dropping the shuttle for a Luna and mars mission is the obvious choice. A lot of comments will be made in regard to "return to the old capsules". But this is not really relevant. The "old" capsules were a good design. The engineers for the first Luna expedition did a lot of thinking and testing before going there, so it's a good design. To come up with something new, just for the case of "making something new" would be stupid.

But these new capsules are not old! They use a new propellant, to prepare them for the mars expedition. And as the old Luna Lander had computer power equivalent to a modern average car, I'll expect the new ones will be far more advanced.

This is the same case in regards to the boosters. These are actually based on the Shuttle engines and lifters. So the engines are the same, even thou the exterior is not. And these boosters are far more advanced than the old ones as well.

So scraping the Shuttle and returning to the old capsules?
Not true.

Not a ploy... for once

[benjamindees]

As much as I'd like to think "ploy", they probably are onto something.

If you think about automobiles, for instance, the most efficient configuration seems to be a combination of small passenger cars and large semi-trucks. The shuttle was basically an SUV: high maintenance, high cost, low gas mileage and range, and not big enough for truly heavy lifting. It was popular because it fit into the American one-size-fits-all independent mentality.

But the shuttle was also part of a natural evolution. We started out driving a Pinto. We had newfound freedom, but little useful to do with it. To take the next step required a vehicle capable of doing some serious work. But we couldn't afford to go from a Pinto to a Mack Truck. That would've been too expensive, and risky. Instead, we got a Suburban, and used it as a daily-driver, as well as for some backyard projects. The insurance was less than having two autos. There was some maintenance, but we could do it ourselves, without an expensive mechanic.

Now, though, we can afford both the Mercedes and the F-350 flatbed. We have a legitimate use for each. Eventually, we may need the equivalent of a subway car, and a Greyhound bus, and a bullet train. But even here on Earth we have lots of different ways to get around, each optimized for a specific task. We shouldn't be surprised that space is no different.

Re:Mars?

[hankwang]

You need a spinning ring to provide artificial gravity

It can be done much simpler: split the spacecraft in two and connect them with a long steel cable. That way the two halves can rotate around their center of mass and create artificial gravity without the trouble of getting a huge construction into space. Also it is easier to make a large diameter for which a low angular velocity will be sufficient to create 1 g, thus reducing disturbing Coriolis forces.

What about the ISS?

[hobotron]

Seriously, every one of the comments above did not mention it. The Space Shuttle is the ONLY way to lift the new sections and the only way for America to send/get back astronauts (Though we can hitch a ride with the russians like we already have)

There is a gap between where the Space Shuttle will be retired (if it isnt taken out of service or has another catastrophic failure before that) and when the new CEV and Heavy Lifting vehicles hopefully come online.

There are 15-20 trips required of the Space Shuttle just to finish the ISS, can it make all these trips before 2010 when it has to be recertified and will probably be decommisioned altogether?

What will be done in the 4 year gap to 2014 when the new vehicles are due?

Re:Pray It's All Cancelled.

[WindBourne]

They're appalling polluters, unconscionably expensive, and fragile.

Well, they are polluters, but I suspect that even if we moved to 1 a day, that we would not make too big an impact.

As too expensive, that is not accurate. The solid fuel is slightly more expensive than liquid O2/H2 systems. However, it does not require the cost infrastructure that does liquid systems. In addition, this is being used primarily to launch crew, not cargo (I suspect that the airforce will probably keep a few hanging around to launch spy sats. on a moments notice). When it comes to life, we should be (and are) willing to spend a bit more to get a better saftey record.

Now as to fragile, it is one of the most stable since it can not blow up. Now, I am sure that somebody is going to mention challenger. The solid booster did NOT blow up. It was the main liquid tank that did due to the O-ring leaking a plume into it. if we had this system in place, the leakage would have meant that those 2 segments would have had a hole and they would have been unuseable. If the hole actually got big enough, it would have meant that the capsule would have been jetisoned for crew ecscape, and everbody lives. This would have been a fraction of the costs of the challenger/columbia incidents.

At this point, the solid units are one of the best approachs at getting man into space, quickly. Long term, we will almost certainly change. In fact, I am in hopes that t/space will be a big winner.

Re:Did You Know?

[SillyNickName4me]

And how do we know they didn't try progressively larger stone buildings?

What is know from documentation (Egyptians did write, and tho not everythign has been preserved, they did also write about their technology and history) as well as found evidence is that pyramids were not the first substantial stone structures they built, and they did not start out building the big pyramid from scratch.

There are examples of failed pyramids, and there is very good reason to believe that first of all, the attempted as well as the finished pyramids were substantially bigger then anything built before them (and actually, only in recent times humans built anything that would match them in size), and were pushing the limits of building technology at the time (they would have done that untill about 150-200 years ago and maybe even more recently).

So, while they did not start building them without any previous experience in stone building in general, the known number of failures, documentation and archeological evidence seem to suggest that pyramids were pretty much developed with trial and error, over a relatively short time (a few generations), and by attempting to build soemthing way beyond the known possibilities of technology at the time.

I've got'em

[JetScootr]

I've worked at NASA JSC since 1979. There was a history archive building (or actually, several). I worked in one of them on a very slow second shift, watching data reduction programs design the leading edge of the shuttle wing, among other things. I browsed the library for reading material while I waited for tapes to spin and printers to print. (And card readers to read, too!)
All the plans were there. When they shut down the office, they dumped boxes and boxes of duplicate records, books, etc, that had been collected as the various parts of Apollo, Apollo-Soyuz, Skylab, etc shutdown. I got a chronology of Skylab. Another coworker got books on Apollo and Gemini, along with drafts of the first space shuttle - the one called Dynasoar, and its descendents, from back in the 1950's.
"Systematic destruction" is complete baloney.