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

Did You Know?

[distantbody]

Japan intends to build an orbiting solar station by 2040. The planned satellite is to be equipped with two giant solar panels, each being 1*3 km in dimension, and will weigh about 20,000 tonnes, thats impressive

Back to the topic, i wonder how much cold-war flaunting the shuttle represented at the cost of practicality...

Fifty year old technology.. hmmm..

[Dynamoo]

Nasa state an intention to return to the moon by 2018 - by which time some of the underlying Apollo technology will have been around for 50 years. I wonder how the Apollo astronauts would have reacted if the design of parts of their craft has been designed back in 1918?

Old doesn't necessarily mean unreliable in design terms - after all, the Russian's workhorse Soyuz orbiter is based on a 1960s design too, but you'd hope that by 2018 we'd be using something.. a little more high-tech.

Just to give a reminder of how much momentum has been lost in the space program: I was born in the same year the movie 2001 came out - when that film was made it was absolutely believable that the sort of technology portrayed in the film could be in use by 2001. The (admittedly flawed) Shuttle was an obvious step towards this future - but somewhere everything went wrong. This is not the future we were promised. Where are the flying cars?.

Still, it's all progress of a sort, I suppose.

Safer design

[zenst]

Having 1 thruster active with directional nossels is safer than two either side as per the shuttle design. As if one booster/rocket fails on the shuttle you would lose directional control.

If one thuster fails on a standard rocket then you end up without it going anywere.

Now a normal rocket also offerers better stremlining and as such less fuel needs over the larger front surface profile of the shuttle.

Also the possiblities of having the top command capsule capable of having a seperate jetison detach rocket and parachute landing system incase of failure enabling the crew to for all effect eject and and be recovered does seen alot more viable over any modification to the shuttle design.

So basicly it will be cheaper/simpler/safer and for some....sexier.

Now what I would like to see is a way to send all the old space junk into a pile or crashing onto the moon ready for one day when we do eventualy go back and stay there. Scrap metal/floating space junk is afterall probably the bestest concentrated form of resource up there at the moment that is already past the hurdle for getting to the moon with regards to breaking out of earth's gravity.

Re:Mars?

[gilesjuk]

There's those who would go even if it's a one way trip. But sadly it won't be up to the public to decide :)

Could be a new reality TV show :)

Still ignoring Feynman

[threeturn]

Having read Richard Feynman's comments on the Shuttle report I am amazed they chose to use the Shuttle booster and the Shuttle main engine, both of which he specifically comments on. To quote:

On the solid rocket booster: A more reasonable figure for [reliability of] the mature rockets might be 1 in 50. With special care in the selection of parts and in inspection, a figure of below 1 in 100 might be achieved but 1 in 1,000 is probably not attainable with today's technology.

On the main engine: Engineers at Rocketdyne, the manufacturer, estimate the total probability [of shuttle main engine failure] as 1/10,000. Engineers at marshal estimate it as 1/300, while NASA management, to whom these engineers report, claims it is 1/100,000. An independent engineer consulting for NASA thought 1 or 2 per 100 a reasonable estimate

So, how exactly does this make a safe, reliable launch system?

Re:What about the ISS?

[ubernostrum]

The ISS doesn't really serve any useful purpose at this point. It exists as a place for the Space Shuttle to go to, and the Space Shuttle exists as a vehicle that gets us to the ISS. Check out this article for more indo.

Policy failure

[Baldrson]

NASA was given a chance to clean up its act with The Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990 which required them to procure all launch services from commercial sources.

They decided they wanted to continue to try to drive capital away from commercial launch services so they could continue to keep a strangle hold on access to space.

Time was when I would have supported NASA's science missions, supported by a commercial launch infrastructure. However, now its clear they just use their science missions as an excuse to block anyone from competing for their monopoly position.