NASA Learns Anew From the Apollo Program

solitas writes "NASA isn't just "going back to the drawing boards" to get back to the Moon, they're also going through the museums and archives so that the new engineers can rediscover/learn how it was done the first time." From the article: "Some old Apollo engineers are even being brought back on a contract basis to work with the young folks, some of whom were not even born when the Saturn V was flying lunar missions. The new manned exploration project, called Constellation, is deliberately drawing upon lessons from the past as the space agency works to meet a congressional deadline of flying the Ares rocket ... In fact, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin has described the new program as 'Apollo on steroids.'"

Comments

Why not learn from the russians?

[QuantumFTL]

Seriously, how much would it cost just to get the Russians to fork over some of their old-school-but-reliable technology.

We may have "won" the cold war, but they definitely won the "spacecraft that aren't overly-engineered death traps" war.

Re:Why not learn from the russians?

[peragrin]

and by your numbers alone we have launched three times the number of people into space. So the US has a 6% failure rate. versus the russian 4% And if you don't count apollo one as they died during a training accident on the ground, your down to 5%. either way both countries have roughly the same failure rate. it just goes to show you, you can make numbers mean what ever you want them to mean. it also means the shuttle is more reliable than the russian soyuz as it can handle twice the number of people per trip just as safely.

Now cheaper well no, that it's not. The shuttle failed to live up to that part of it's design.

And yes while Apollo one is a tragic accident of the space agency, they weren't launching that day, it was just a pressure test that went horribly wrong. So can you really classify it as a space failure?

Space Cowboys

[Enderandrew]

The movie doesn't sound so far fetched now, does it?

I'm no expert but two of my best friends are a physicist and a mechanical engineer. Both follow the space program and both say that money and politics have firmly grounded NASA in 1960's science with little to no possibility to explore new options.

Plenty of guys in the X Prize world are saying the same thing. So before I visit a museum, I'd look into varied options from some of today's best minds based upon current or evolving technologies.

Then again, if NASA was scrapped tomorrow, or maybe shelved for a few decades until space flight is cheaper, safer and more feasible, I wouldn't care. We've thrown tens of billions of dollars on a pride issue, and what have we gotten in return? How much more do we know about the universe?

I'd rather throw that money are universities and I bet you money, society will benefit considerably more.

Re:Space Cowboys

[DerekLyons]

I'm no expert but two of my best friends are a physicist and a mechanical engineer. Both follow the space program and both say that money and politics have firmly grounded NASA in 1960's science with little to no possibility to explore new options.

They aren't experts either seemingly. NASA isn't ground in 1960's 'science' (whatever that means) at all. You'll note the use of composites in the structures of the new vehicles. You'll note modern computers (modern by aerospace standards - ancient by geek standards) in use aboard them too... etc... etc... In other things, the state of the art simply hasn't evolved that much. In yet others, decades old solutions are more than adequate and quite well proven. (In the real world with real money and real lives at stake - progress is slow and measured.)
 
 

Plenty of guys in the X Prize world are saying the same thing.

You mean in the X-prize forums? They are bunch of regular joes like you. The guys at the level of Musk/Branson/etc... (I.E. those flying actual performing hardware - everyone else is a wannabee) are largely silent on the issue. (The exception is Rutan - but Rutan hates NASA with a passion. His word on anything about NASA should be taken with a largish grain of salt.)

Re:Space Cowboys

[Enderandrew]

I don't follow the X-prize forums, but I've seen interviews with no less than 3 people who've had successful projects, and all were extremely critical of NASA and their approach. It isn't about the material of the shuttle, but the concept of the shuttle and how it is launched.

We are using the same shuttles, theories and propulsions systems we were using 40 years ago. Considering the exponential rate that this technology rate has evolved, that is plain silly.

But NASA was a huge money-sink, with the promise to Congress that the money involved would last decades and decades. To start over on any level would be unacceptable to those writing the checks.

Re:Space Cowboys

[DerekLyons]

I don't follow the X-prize forums, but I've seen interviews with no less than 3 people who've had successful projects,

Considering that there has only been *one* person with a sucessful X-prize project (Rutan), that's flat-out impossible.
 
 

and all were extremely critical of NASA and their approach. It isn't about the material of the shuttle, but the concept of the shuttle and how it is launched.

You need to understand the alt.spacer mindset - part and parcel of it is the rock solid belief that Evil NASA has, with malice aforethought, held back the development of space in the same way oil companies do gas mileage enhancers. They (the alt.spacers) are the Brave and Plucky Lone Heros fighting against great odds to Save Humanity - just like in the Heinlein juveniles they read back in fifth grade. (I'm sympathetic with their goals, but that doesn't blind me.) Worse yet, it's largely rote noise - very few in the alt.space movement actually understand the complex web of politics, technology, and sociology that lead first to Apollo, and then to the Shuttle. (Building a small rocket doesn't make you an expert on all rockets any more than building a bridge of Lego bricks qualifies you to build one of steel and concrete.)
 
 

We are using the same shuttles, theories and propulsions systems we were using 40 years ago. Considering the exponential rate that this technology rate has evolved, that is plain silly.

Here in the real world not all technologies have evolved at an exponential rate - and some simply can't. Take liquid rocket engines for example - by the 60's they were already near their maximum theoretical efficiency, and have made only modest incremental gains since then - they can't do any better without repealing the laws of physics and chemistry. We can make 'em a bit lighter now a days, and bit better in some other areas, but that's about it. In other cases, there simply isn't enough to be worth sinking massive amounts of R&D dollars into research.
 
 

But NASA was a huge money-sink, with the promise to Congress that the money involved would last decades and decades. To start over on any level would be unacceptable to those writing the checks.

I've parsed this about three different ways - and it makes no sense. NASA never promised Congress anything with regards as to how long money would last.

Re:they should patent that idea

[ackthpt]

"learning from past experience" - that has a nice ring to it.

What?!? And break with tradition?

Honestly, when I was a lot younger I thought only new stuff was good, decent quality, reliable, etc. Eventually I learned, after wasting a lot of money, some new stuff is utter crap and some things build in the distant past were done with real craftsmanship and quality.

On another note, there was this great show on Discovery or History Channel or sommat, some years back. Engineers had struggled to figure out how three large stone slabs and been lowered into place in a crypt. No trace of ropes left pinched by the massive slabs, no pole holes, no marks of any kind. How did the bronze age engineers do it, that engineers from the 20th century were left so puzzled by?

Eventually a team of japanese engineering students realised the crypt had been filled with sand and the slabs place upon the top and gently lowered into place as the sand was removed from below.

Heh

[andreyw]

...Idiots. They've basically watched their entire knowledge base die, disintegrate and retire of the past 30 years, and only /NOW/ they're doing something about it.

Bygone era

[humankind]

A few months ago, one of the old Apollo monitoring stations went on sale and we went to look at this unique property. A building in the middle of nowhere up on a mountain, with a six-story-high satellite dish. It was amazing and awe-inspiring to crawl through this rusted dinosaur skeleton of a bygone era. There wasn't much left of the place when I visited, but I felt proud just to be standing on the hallowed ground where great minds plotted of men flying through space and landing on the moon. Now on this site, sits a big obnoxious cell tower. It's kind of sad that kids today don't look up at the stars.

I cannot imagine America having the resources to land on the moon successfully now. Our society was different back then. Science was something to revere. Now we are more concerned with American Idol.

Boy I hope so....

[StressGuy]

Wierd that this comes up. Just today, at my latest gig, I had casually mentioned running some rough computation on engine cowl latching loads that showed we might be a little tight on safety margin. However, I needed to see that Nastran load simulation to cross-check the results.

The response I got stunned me a bit...

One of the most senior structural engineers there told me that the loads within an engine core are far too complex and why was I even bothering with hand computations?

It made me immediately think of two things:

1) We were building jet engines long before there was a Nastran (or a NASA for that matter)

2) Complexity!?...NASA brought Apollo 13 home using slide rules and one hell of a pilot. I'm old enough that I remember that. In fact, it's probably why I'm in the aerospace industry.

I hate to sound like an old man, but sometimes I worry that we rely too much on tools that separate the engineer from the analysis. Don't get me wrong, Nastran is great, but if you have no way to cross validate the results, how do you spot an error?

Ya, know...the method I used to evaluate those loads probably came from around the mid 1940's.

Re:Boy I hope so....

[Zackbass]

Umm, that engineer was right, you don't check computation with more computation, whether it be by hand or computer. You check ALL computation with testing. Are you telling me that you'll make any progress checking even remotely complex structures by hand? Any analysis should be assumed faulty in critical cases and on low FOS. All your analysis is worthless until you apply the actual loads with actual instrumentation.

Blueprints should still be around somewhere

[starseeker]

See, for example - http://www.space.com/news/spacehistory/saturn_five _000313.html There are most likely microfiche archives in a number of locations (NASA, National Archives are probable starting points for hunting them up) but they are of limited utility unless you want to machine up the entire support structure required to make all of those parts again. I think most of the "the government destroyed the Saturn V blueprints" comments trace back to some claims made by John Lewis in "Mining the Sky" in 1996 - I haven't seen too many others making that claim that sound authorative.

That said, it would be one heck of a project to get ahold of them, as being buried in government archives is sometimes very much like sticking a needle in a haystack (insofar as the public is concerned, at least.) I would very much like to see the full blueprints to all parts and aspects of the Saturn rockets made available, modernized, and released to the world. In many respects the Saturn V represents a social and technological milestone the likes of which we probably still don't fully appreciate - it is an achievement unique to mankind, a tremendous triumpth of science, technology, and exploration. I think the full details of how this was achieved should be stored online and made available as widely as possible. I don't know what it takes to convert microfiche to svg or some other modern vector graphics/blueprint ready files (I'm sure it's nothing trivial) but why not make it a community project online? Scan the buggers, and gradually make them into modern blueprints. Then we can publish them far and wide, which is always the best way to preserve knowledge over long historical timespans.

Re:they should patent that idea

[mangu]

Eventually a team of japanese engineering students realised the crypt had been filled with sand and the slabs place upon the top and gently lowered into place as the sand was removed from below.

Rather obvious, to anyone who works with engineering. I have seen so many reports on how "smart" those ancient people must have been to think of those masterful methods... Only problem is that, if you work in solving that kind of problem day to day, you eventually come to think of new ways to do it, all by yourself, only to find out other people have thought the same way before.

My favorite problem is the "original straight edge". When I was 12 I asked my dad, who was a mechanical engineer, how could one create a straight edge without anything to compare it with. He showed me a book, "Engineering Tools and Processes" by Herman C. Hesse (not *the* Herman Hesse, but another guy by the same name) published in 1941. To create a straight edge from scratch, you use three pieces, a, b, and c. You make a as straight as you can by eye. Then you make b fit a exactly, and make c fit a exactly. Make b fit c. Since both b and c fit against a, the only way b and c can match is if all three are perfectly straight, so start over, each step will get you closer to a perfect straight edge.

This method has been known for many centuries, there are references to that in ancient Egypt, yet it has been patented a few times in the last hundred years.

Back of the Envelope

[StressGuy]

Search Wikipedia again for "The Buckingham Pi Theorem". Sir Taylor, considered by many to be one of the greatest physicist of the 20th century, was invited to witness the first US ground test of an atomic blast. Moments before the blast, he pulls an old envelope out of his coat and starts scribbling some computations on it. Just before the blast, he tore the envelope up into small fragments and tossed them in the air as the shock wave went by. He then paces off the distance they flew through the air and made of rough estimate of their time of flight. Based upon that, he makes an estimate of the blast energy that was almost in exact agreement with what US would determine several weeks later using the best computational methods of the day.

By the way, what he came up with on "the back of that envelope" is now known as "Taylor's equation".

This is my understanding of the origin of that expression.

Re:Back of the Envelope

[dcam]

In the article I referenced in Wikipedia attributes that (the bits of paper) to Fermi not Taylor. A quick googling would seem to confirm this.

According to the wikipedia article on the Buckingham Pi Theorem, Taylor is commended for his calculations on the energy from the atomic bomb based on the videos. This is a similar story to the Fermi one, but there appear to be two distinct stories here.

I will give you the secret.....

[StressGuy]

You ready? Here it is:

Mathematics in not a science, it is a language

Let me explain....

Many people think in terms of using mathematics to figure out how nature behaves. What I propose is a slight change of philosophy. All your life, you've experienced and observed nature in action. Let your instincts and understanding of nature guide you to what you think is going on first, then use math to describe it.