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Will The Next Generation of Spacecraft Land In the Water?
Reservoir Hill writes "Work is progressing on the design of the new Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), the next generation of NASA spacecraft that will take humans to the International Space Station, back to the Moon, and hopefully on to Mars. One major question about the spacecraft has yet to be answered. On returning to Earth, should the CEV land in water or on terra firma? After initial studies, the first assessment by NASA and the contractor for the CEV, Lockheed Martin, was that landing on land was preferred in terms of total life cycle costs for the vehicles. Getting the CEV light enough for the Ares rockets to be able to launch it, and therefore eliminating the 1500 lb airbags for landing has its appeal. A splashdown in water seems to be favored."
Something i used to think of as a kid was: How about using the propulsion you get from the water for initial thrust of the spacecraft? Sort of like the effect you get from releasing a bottle of air under water, couldn't that be utilized in a cheap way of getting that initial upwards thrust, or would it be too cumbersome to make a vessel that is light enhough for it to actually float?
Pure awesomenes
Re: "Getting the CEV light enough for the Ares rockets to be able to launch it," .. the solution is simple .. buy/license/whatever the Energiya booster from the ruskies instead, and you'll have much more weight to play with.... OH sorry, I forgot, the Energiya isnt build in the correct congressional district... my bad.
As someone who worked partially on the CEV, it has been decided. it is in the requirements that Lockheed Martin furnish a vehicle that is capable of both. One of the design limitations now is that it must actually be stable in swells of up to 14 feet, which are not uncommon in the cold North Atlantic - emergency abort scenarios land all launches there during early lift-off stages. There are huge problems with ill-effects of ocean landings for crews and they really are looking to avoid it, but even with parachute and pillow systems, they are looking at potential damage,
"One if by land, two if by sea ..."
Seriously, why not just do the moon mission, then pick up the landing bags as the ISS on the way home. Better yet, why not have a specialized vehicle just for orbit-to-moon-and-back, and transfer to a special-use re-entry vehicle at the ISS?
Kevin Smith on Prince
So... I don't really understand the whole disposable crew idea. It would make sense to reuse the crew rather than feeding them to sharks after re-entry, or did I miss something.
I got a catholic block.
"landing on land was preferred in terms of total life cycle costs for the vehicles."
Landing on land is cheaper, check.
"eliminating the 1500 lb airbags for landing has its appeal"
Landing on land lets it be lighter, check.
"A splashdown in water seems to be favored."
Huh? WTF? Am I supposed to go RTFA or something?
It's much easier to hit the water, and in theory you should be able to get a softer landing on water. However, if you land in the middle of the south pacific, it's a bit more difficult logistically to pick you up from there and get you home, vs. landing on some runway with roads connecting it to the regular highway system of your homeland.
stuff |
Lockheed, the Orion prime contractor, has expressed significant reservations about carrying the heavy airbags to the moon and back -- those 1500 lbs can better be used in other ways. On the other hand, there shouldn't be a problem with the weight on the more common missions to the space station and low-earth orbit, and the ability to reuse the capsule will be far greater if they put it down on land.
The speculation in this week's Aviation Week was that they would have bolt-on airbags for the earth-orbit flights, and would recover those missions on the land, and would recover at sea for the moon-return missions.
The reentry profile for the moon missions is really quite amazing. Recently Aviation Week had an article about it, describing how to get all the capsules to recover to the same spot on Earth. Do you recall way back in the Apollo days, they always described the narrow re-entry corridor? Too steep and you'd burn up, to shallow and you'd skip back into space forever? Well...
For Orion, they plan to use a skip back into space to bleed off some of the speed coming back from the moon, and to align the craft to re-enter at the correct place to land where they want, off the coast of California. It's an incredibly audacious plan, with tolerances that have to be measured in tenths of a degree of entry angle. Very cool.
Thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
To be honest in principle I don't see the downside of a water landing. The craft has to have a sufficiently low density to float, which could increase air resistance, but a certain degree of air resistance will be needed for re-entry anyway, too little of it and the majority of the slowdown will occur in lower ( i.e denser ) parts of the atmosphere. You want to decelerate over as long a distance as possible tor educe the requirements on the heat-shield. I guess you must test the whole thing for water-compatibility, but if it is to deal with vacuum, intense heat, and solar wind, I would imagine it should be able to deal with some water. I suppose there may be investment costs associated with developing new technology for water based landings, but it does seem like it should be the easier and more fault-proof way to do it, so I wouldn't be surprised if it will work out cheaper in the end.
When they're out in the middle of the Pacific doing exercises. Why not have them pick up some astronauts on their way?
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
What I don't get is the continued use of rockets. Is going straight up (the brute force & ignorance method) really the most efficient method of getting up there ? Isn't an approach like SpaceShipOne uses more efficient in terms of amount of energy needed per kilo of launched mass and thus costs ?
"eliminating the 1500 lb airbags for landing has its appeal"
"Landing on land lets it be lighter, check."
The airbags are used for landing on LAND.
They are not flotation devices. Any thing that can fly is going to light enough float on water if it doesn't leak.
The airbags are to reduce the impact.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Itll make a big splash.......sorry...very very tired.
Giant Ass pool of Gelatin. Its not has hard as ground, not as liquid as water, can give to hungry ppl after landing. If NASA wastes 10% of the cash in parties/lunch/dinners after a job well done why not this?
I'm 111% confident that it cannot land in water.
Because it's water, not land, DUH!
You can't take the sky from me...
For the folks saying "use the ISS!': Won't work. When coming back from the moon, the approach speed is far too high to enter the orbit that the ISS or any other reasonable future space station is in. The braking is done through friction as the spacecraft enters the earth's atmosphere, and provides MUCH more delta-v than would be feasible by using rockets.
To use the ISS, the spacecraft would need to perform a complex aerobraking maneuver (basically, a partial re-entry), then have the fuel needed to circularize its new orbit so that it can rendesvous with the ISS. By the time this is done, the design for the capsule is far heavier than the 1,500lb penalty that airbags impose.
My idea, make the water landing a known 'capsule loss' scenario, the same way it is with the Shuttle. If things go _so wrong_ that a water landing is unavoidable (say, launch failure) then design the capsule for quick-egress after a water landing. Airplanes ditch in water and people have time to get out before they sink. My Piper Cherokee will float long enough for me to climb out onto the wing, and for a real shock look at the survival training that helicopter passengers go through in the military, that's some pretty intense worst case scenario stuff.
With Rogallo steerable parachutes, landfall should be available at all times except the first few minutes of launch. Skip the airbags, make the capsule so it stays afloat just long enough for egress, and train the astronauts on how to get out fast.
I really like the idea of sending people and cargo into space on rockets... I guess it just strikes some sort of nostalgic cord with me, reminding me of the optimism that went into the cold war space race, Kennedy's famous speech, and all of that. My favorite rocket design was the Saturn V, designed by Von Braun. It had the highest payload capacity of any spacecraft, and it was the launch vehicle for many important Apollo missions. I hope they look back to the Saturn V for design clues while making this new vehicle.
The Energia has to be the most laughably inefficient launcher ever created. Can you see that the Ruskies are in no hurry to launch it again. Putting the Russians in the critical path or any project is unwise if you consider the ISS experience.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gus_Grissom
So, we've landed in the ocean before and found at least one problem with the approach.
Spaceship one was good for getting to the 'edge of space' and back. Being in orbit is a different thing. As a general rule, it takes 30 times as much energy to get into orbit as it does to just get up there. ( the number varies with altitude, of course, but 30 is a good back-of-the-envelope approximation ). The energy that has to be bled off when coming down is roughly 30-fold. So spaceshipOne is not even close to being able to do it. It requires new materials and/or a new design. Or stick with the high maintainence and unpleasant failure rate of the shuttle.
Or you can stick to the simple way of doing it with rockets and parachutes.
Maybe they're hoping to find a genie!
Don't be so sure... A lot of other countries are eyeing the moon and beyond now, and the US isn't going to let the final frontier go. It would be a gigantic tactical mistake. Even if Orion doesn't do a lot, it's important to keep our foot in the door in case China makes some serious headway with their own program, which seems likely to me.
We need to all write congress and get them to stop ares I and use direct launcher or and EELV. As for water landings these are historically very unsafe if you go by statistics spacecraft landing like an airplane like the shuttle,X15,and SS1 is the safest way to land with a soyuz type landing being the second safest manner in which to land. During the apollo program the crew was nearly killed twice by fuel reacting with sea water once during apollo 13 and another during the apollo soyuz test project. We need to stop the stick before it kills a crew and it will as one of the most dangerous things one can do in engineering is cut corners trying to make a too tight mass budget.
Oh, good lord. What Energiya would that be? The prototypes corroding away somewhere, never having been launched? There is no such thing as an Energiya, aside from old photos with a Buran attached, and some blueprints. You'd do better to start from scratch than with Energiya plans.
And of course, you overlook the many domestic alternatives that *actually exist*. Like EELVs (Delta and Atlas). Or those that could be restarted since they just quite making them a few years ago (Titan IV - roughly equivalent to a Saturn 1B).
Brett
don't see why this approach (other than $) is not taken.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
A brain dead simple answer would be to use direct launcher http://www.directlauncher.com/ as the crew launch vehicle. Direct launcher makes use of existing four segment srbs and existing RS68s plus it lifts 50tons in it's most basic form vs 25 for Ares I mass problem solved and 2 billion saved on Constellation. The only answer I can think of right now is the fire Griffin it's the only way to save the project. That or kill Orion outright and give all the budget to COTS type programs. I see no hardware for Orion yet but spacex is now building and testing falcon 9 and Dragon.
I'm sure that after further evaluation they will realise that fluffy soft snow is the safest option. It would be silly to decide on deadly hard terra firma or second worst water, unless some government torpedos the Bali conference and makes snow all but dissapear from the planet. But that would be a silly thought.
> As someone who worked partially on the CEV, it has been decided.
What? What!
What is the USA planning?
What in the hot hell is the USA planning?
Ooh, dear humanity...
How in the WORLD can it be lighter for the vehicle to land on "terra firma" then in the water? Landing gear, tires, hydrolics, electric motors, brakes, etc., etc., all weight a LOT. Certainly more then 1500 lbs that they are stating for the air bags for a water landing.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
While Netcraft may or may not confirm it, the real truth is that this program is in a death spiral and is well on its way to cancellation, just like every major NASA program to replace the shuttle over the past two decades (SEI, NASP, X-30, X-33, X-38, OSP). For the gory insider details, read the recent GAO report, or the forums at nasaspaceflight, or the postings at spacepolitics or the rocketsandsuch blog. To sum it up, Ares I doesn't have enough performance to lift the Orion, so systems are being discarded off Orion to try and get its weight down - including safety and backup systems, and systems critical to containing operational costs such as the airbags for touchdown on land. NASA thinks they have a 65% chance of getting this system operational by late 2015 if they get enough funding, but the congressional GAO is recommending that NASA postpone the program indefinitely until its problems are resolved.
Sadly, NASA already have existing medium lift (Delta IV, Atlas V) and heavy lift systems (STS via DIRECT SDLV) that could be modified for launching crews at a cost that would be a fraction of the Constellation plan. But heckuva job Mikey G at NASA won't budge from his over-budget, behind-schedule, and under-performing vision. In the process, he's going to end NASA's manned space flight program for at least the next decade while we recover from this debacle, and he's throwing away our once in a generation chance for a new launch system that will enable manned exploration of the Moon and Mars.
Check out the directlauncher.com site to see what NASA should be doing, and once you've realized how maddening this situation is, write your congresscritter about it.
MMH or monomethyel hydrazine and saltwater do not play nice together plus the salt can dmaage electronics and you risk drowning the crew if the spacecraft sinks. They might as well go to a lifting body design which also can perform lunar reenties when the skip manoeuvre is used. This is being used by spacedev and planetspace who's craft are reported to be able to perform lunar flybys. Spacedevs' choice of the HL20 over the X34 was due to lunar reentty performance the X34 shape got with in 200C of the failure point of the RCC TPS they wish to use on the leading edges during high speed lunar reentries which wouldn't be safe but also would also impact reusability of the vehicle's heat sheild. But since they wish to use the apollo shape and it's poor mass to volume ratio they also should use an over powered booster for crew launch such as direct launcher which can deal with any unexpected weight increases vs Ares I which has no margin.
If you can't understand a summary of TFuckingA, what makes you think you will understand TFuckingA.
"Altair."
That's the class name . . . I guess the individual ships will get knicknames, the way that the Apollo command modules and LEMs did.
I seem to remember needing little things like a squadron of choppers, and a fleet of ships in the intended splashdown area. These days, we don't have spare aircraft carriers with their support ships hanging around - we've mothballed a lot of them
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
The moon and the ISS are orbiting in planes 45 apart. It would require a prohibitive amount of fuel to get from the moon to the ISS. They'd pretty much need another fuel tank and another pair of solid rocket boosters to get there.Seriously, why not just do the moon mission, then pick up the landing bags as the ISS on the way home.
Traveling in space is not like traveling on the ground. On the ground, if you want to go somewhere, you only have to move to its position. In space, getting to a given position is the easy part; it's getting to the right velocity at that position that is hard.
For instance, if you want to go from Earth to the Moon, you can do it with no fuel whatsoever if you don't care about your starting or ending velocity: a Hohmann transfer orbit lets you coast to the Moon and back without any effort at all. The hard part of the journey is that when you're in low Earth orbit, you're not going the right velocity to be on a transfer orbit; and then when your transfer orbit gets to the Moon, you're not going the right velocity to land there. You need a burn at Earth and another one at the Moon to get your velocity right.
This is not like travel on the ground. In general, you can't just accelerate your car, shut off the engine, and coast to your destination. On the ground, travel is dominated by friction and obstacles. Distance is what costs. The fuel required to get up to highway speed is tiny compared with the fuel required to travel even one mile. Because of that, we talk about miles per gallon. If you want to calculate your fuel cost for a trip, you base it on how many miles you'll travel.
In space, there are no friction or obstacles. You get up to the right velocity, coast for some time, then slow down again. The fuel required during the coasting phase is insignificant compared with the fuel required to change velocity. To plan the fuel cost for a chemical rocket trip, you base it on the total "delta V", or total change in velocity. Distance and duration don't figure into the calculation.
Changing the plane of an orbit is one of the most expensive maneuvers there is. With some exceptions (like sun synchronous orbits), there are no shortcuts: you just have to burn enough fuel to cancel your velocity in one direction and gain velocity in the desired direction.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
They will if they'll run Vista...
I wonder why they just don't focus all their research resources on Robots and AI vs playing around, why not send automated units instead of 'live' people? automated units could be just as good if not better then people and save space/energy in the process. Not only that the spin off technologies from robotics and AI will have enormous implications for society here on earth and most likely for the better.
Airplanes ditch in water and people have time to get out before they sink. My Piper Cherokee will float long enough for me to climb out onto the wing
;-)
Just hope you don't flip it over when you ditch. Then you can climb out. Cherokees being ditched have a bad habit of flipping over just as soon as the nosewheel hits the water due to the pilot trying to land it on the water as if on land, with the flaps down which gives that obnoxious nose-down pitching tendancy with the hersheybar wing. There seem to be two schools of thought on how to best ditch one: (1) slow it down as much as possible with full flaps, then stall it from a few feet above the water to try to drop it down as vertically flat as possible and (2)don't use flaps so you can keep the nose high and try to drag the tail down into the water first. Either way, you gotta keep flying the plane all the way thru the ditching process. I don't think either method is especially successful as more than half of all fixed-gear light plane ditchings, both high and low wing, end up fatal. If you do ever have to ditch and are able to keep the plane right side up in the water, immediately after exiting the Cherokee, climb onto the top of the fuselage near the tail and use your weight to balance it and keep the nose from sinking and it'll stay afloat much longer. If you climb onto the wing, you'll help the nose pitch down underwater and it'll sink faster. That's what Doug Ritter, the AOPA expert on ditching once wrote about a guy in a Mooney who did just that and survived both the ditching and escaped the hypothermia from the water afterwards since the plane stayed afloat for quite a long time since he was able to keep the heavy nose from dropping under by straddling the rear fuselage and shifting his weight. Talk about "keep flying the plane" eh? Even when became a liferaft.
BTW, I own a Cherokee too... at least half of one anyway
Do you mean intentionally, or are you using "land on water" in the same sense that airline instructions refer to "water landings"?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Having taken the time to write all that, I'm not sure it's true now. I think it takes about the same fuel to get from the Moon to pretty much any low Earth orbit you want, including the one with the ISS in it.
:-)
Too bad. I thought that was a pretty good explanation, except that it's wrong.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Why do they carry the airbags when they can just cover the Mojave Desert with 10,000 mattresses and land on those?
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Allow me to introduce you to Lake Superior. Just watch out for the gales of November.
Does the entire capsule have to land softly? If not, you could have only the astronaut seats land softly, inside a capsule that slams down hard.
The seats could hang in elastic fixtures that make them move just as far as external landing airbags would, just as softly or probably softer. The seats would be braked all the way through this movement, giving a more regular braking than external airbags.
The volume of air where the seats move when landing would be used for that only while landing. During flight it would be useful living/working space.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
Seriously, why can't we build an Earth-to-Moon ship that doesn't need to land on a planet/moon at all? We can loft the parts into LEO and snap them together like the Boeing 777 - we've learned how to do that with the ISS, right?
N/T
Wouldn't modern technology allow guiding the capsule with high precision to a specific target? If so, cover a field with suitable large, soft airbags, and have a capsule carrying no airbags land in the center of this field.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
There's an alternative plan to the Ares-I which would solve all of the weight issues associated with the Orion capsule - it's called Nasa DIRECT: http://directlauncher.com/. There's a huge PDF with the proposal done by people from within NASA - it'd be faster, cheaper, and safer. It'd get us back into space by 2012 instead of the 2014/2015 timeframe.
If they want to go to the moon, why don't they just whip out the old blueprints and build a saturn rocket and an apollo capsule and go to the moon. it will be cheaper that way so we don't lose as much when they realize there still isn't shit there but dust and moonrocks. If we wanted to go to the moon and show some sort of progress, and not go back just because China (or pick your favorite space loving country) might go there one day, why don't we try using a vehicle that leaves from and returns to the space station. does that not seem like a good use of a space station? otherwise can we rename it space laboratory? I am no expert, but popular opinion is not about experts, and my thinking is that popular opinion of this new direction by NASA is going to result in politicians cutting all their funding. Watching them try to reproduce the results of 50 years ago (probably with much difficulty) will be agonizing and will not inspire support for the space program in any way. And god help them if something happens to one of the missions...
There was a MythBusters episode about this. They were testing the myth that a construction worker falling off a bridge into water could soften the impact by throwing a hammer to break the surface tension. Their conclusion was that the change in force of impact was neglible.
I don't think it's the surface tension that gets you, it's the inertia. Still, the mobility of water means that you're decellerating from 200 MPH to zero in 0.2 seconds instead of 0.1, so it's a big reduction of force.
Of course we would let it go. The US is slipping behind in many science fields. The cost and the lack of public and political support for manned spaceflight of seemingly dubious returns means we will give that job to other countries. Since it is more a matter of national pride to them, to do that job it's perfect relationship.
I see I was modded to subzero. Which is like saying to me, at any rate that we're going to have hydrogen cell cars any day now, which of course is nonsense. Gasoline would have to be $10/gal before we even considered that. So feel free to mod down the naysayers on manned spaceflight too. In the mean time look around at the actual pace of manned spaceflight in the US. It's at its lowest point since the end of the Apollo program and there is no upside to that in sight anytime in future.
Where they land on Earth, so long as they land on Mars first.
"A splashdown in water seems to be favored."
Where else would it "slashdown"?
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
Ask mark shuttlesworth (and others) about the effectiveness of cutting the russian space program a big enough check ...
1960's technology is only about 10% less to LEO than the newer Ares V (130,000 lbs to LEO). At least they both have Roman numeral five in the names.
..........FULL STOP.
the weight of the ships needed to pick them up.
What?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
That's what only a small bug can support it's weight on waters surface tension. Water is non-compressable and dense, which is what makes hitting it hard. Actually after certain speeds the ground is safer to land on, because dirt is somewhat compressable, and thus gives more of a cushion - but this is around 100 MPH or 160 KPH.
..........FULL STOP.
Can't we simply vote for it to land on Cowboy Neal?
Sorry, had to get that in there. I couldn't help but feel the summary was asking us for our uninformed opinion.
It sounds to me like you're talking about the requirement that has been with the system from the beginning that it be able to ditch in the ocean, regardless of the nominal landing profile. What NASA is trying to decide now is if it should normally land in the ocean and face the added recovery hassle and risk, or on land and need to accomodate the added 1500 pounds of weight plus more complexity (it will either have to discard the heat shield in flight, which may be a falling debris hazard, or have dropout panels for the airbags to deploy through). Water landing is a requirement. Dry landing is an option.
Until just recently, NASA and Lockheed had moved ahead with plans for touchdown on land. However, there's been a lot of discussion over the past two years about the need to keep the weight down. They already reduced the diameter of the capsule by half a meter to keep the capsule within the weight budget. I think also the service module is above its original weight targets, and either the SRB or the second stage performance is below its original goal.
In the discussion section of the article, someone suggested doing an air capture, much like how the Air Force used to retrieve film capsules from the Corona spy satellites by snagging their parachutes and realing them in. However, I don't think he realized that those capsules weighed a few dozen pounds, while Orion will weigh around 8.5 tonnes. NASA also planned to do mid-air capture of the Genesis capsule, which was carrying solar wind particles. Unfortunately, the parachute failed to deploy and it dug a crater in New Mexico.
For comparison, Soyuz lands on dry land in Kazakhstan. Instead of airbags, it has a set of small retrorockets on the bottom that fire just before touchdown to slow from the 24 ft/s rate of the parachute to just 5 ft/s (5.5 km/hr). I'm not sure how they deal with fire through or around the heat shield.
I thought about how hard this would be using normal Earth techniques and came up with an idea.
Blow a bubble out of some material like they do glass.
This could at least give you a living quarter section.
Wonder if NASA will try it?
If you are going to pick old launchers that are not in production and have not been used in more than a decade, well, then I suggest Saturn V. It launched more than Energiya and worked great. Or we could just accelerate the Ares V? Or we could wait for Musk to do the Merlin 2 (1 engine will be capable of doing the entire falcon 9) along with the eagle 9 and eagle 9 heavy of that.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Well, let's not hope it lands in terra firma, or we'll have a hard time explaining that to the astronauts!
Mission sure would end with a bang, though. :-)
If NASA does not come through we need not worry as the private sector will come through where the government has failed. The Spacex BFR the rocket to follow the falcon 9 heavy will be a Saturn V class vehicle except it'll cost a fraction of the Saturn V since it'll be partly reusable and use simple pintle injector engines. Also there are several 12T to 40T private rockets and RLVs in the works and one can do a lunar mission with several cheap medium launches about five to seven of them as well.
The vehicle is landing in water to reduce weight.
The USSR was doing that on a regular basis to save cost.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Ullage rockets. Don't you need ullage rockets?
(that's my favorite word and I never get to use it... Ullage. ulllllllidj. I've gone to Napa wine tastings just so I can use that word: "And about how much ullage is in that barrel?")
If only we had some kind of vehicle with the capabilities for both spaceflight and controlled atmospheric flight. Some sort of orbiting space-plane that could shuttle things to and from orbit. I recall some research in that direction in the 70s and 80s.
For great justice.
Fry: How many atmospheres can this ship withstand?
Professor Farnsworth: Well it's a spaceship, so I'd say anywhere between zero and one.
First, of all, imagining that one guy at the top is bringing the whole enterprise to its knees is just classic populist wishful thinking. It never works that way. Herbert Hoover didn't cause the Depression, Joe Stalin didn't by himself cause the Cold War, Alan Greenspan didn't cause the dot-com bust or the mortgage meltdown, and your Mikey G isn't by himself blocking all future progress in manned spaceflight.
Figuring out exactly how and why a program craps out is a matter for endless debate among historians, but as a general rule, it's probably reasonable to say that any government enterprise that doesn't enjoy phenomenally (and historically aberrent) high levels of public interest and support always craps out sooner or later.
So the first real problem is not who's heading NASA, but the cold ugly fact that most Americans don't give much of a hoot what NASA is doing, would rather watch American Idol than a manned Moon (or Mars) landing, and aren't much interesting in sending their tax dollars to Huntsville for umpty years so that their grandchildren can watch Right Stuffers frolic on the Red Planet. A plain fact, which most folks in the spaceflight industry strenuously try to avoid dealing with by all different types of denial. (Including, incidentally, the paranoid delusion that one single factor -- or man -- stands in the way of the type of broad and deep public support that the space program enjoyed in the brief and historically unique period between 1945 and 1965.)
But the second real problem is that a government program is almost certainly a dead-end nonroute to the kind of massive social and technological change that spaceflight enthusiasts hope spaceflight will produce. There is, actually, no recorded instance whatsoever in history of a government program doing anything more than starting off (at best) something like the colonization of other planets. The voyages of exploration during the 16th and 17th century, and the colonization of the New World in the 18th century, were weakly and inconsistently supported by national goverments: they were, in general, private enterprises, undertaken by individuals for individual dreams of wealth and glory.
That is what is missing in space exploration. There is no individual -- or small entrepreneurial organization -- path to space, and not much private, materialistic, "greedy" and "selfish" motivation for people to risk their fortunes, lives and honor getting into space. If such a thing were to emerge, then humans would naturally get off the planet, not only without any need for massive government programs, but probably in spite of government efforts to stop them. (It would be like MP3 file sharing. Notice no government program was required to get that going? Because it's intrinsically easy? Or because people really want to do it? I'm guessing the latter.)
But until that kind of broad interest emerges, I don't think any amount of government exploration is going to be anything more than expensive entertainment. (Mind you, I don't object to the entertainment, but that's because I personally would, weirdly, rather watch a manned Moon or Mars landing than every first-class gee-whiz movie that will be made from now to the end of time.)
It's worth asking whether government can prime the pump, so to speak, and make it easier for private enterprise and individual ambitions to get into space, so that people can start to get turned on to the whole business, and a broad and deep urge to go can emerge. Maybe it can. Unfortunately, probably step #1 is to back off the goofy noble selfless we came in peace for all mankind aura that clings to the endeavour nowadays, which merely serves to cut it off from the range of activities normal, non-selfless, non-noble people do everyday and think about doing tomorrow.
Why the frack does the airbag system weigh 3/4 ton? The whole Mercury spacecraft didn't weigh much more than that (about 1100 kg). It's just a bunch of balloons.
;-)
Are they trying to make the airbags reusable? Make them disposable, there's a weight saving. Heck, the "Aviva 20' Inflatable Floating Trampoline" from Target has a ship weight of just over 400 lbs, the 15' version is only 257 pounds. Add 100 pounds for the inflation system. There, I just shaved 1100+ pounds off the design.
Or just pave the landing area with bubble wrap
-- Alastair
This plan is so they can hijack a spaceship and have a space program all their own.
I bet the parent poster is a Canadian. Do you understand the reentry vehicle isn't enough to fly again? You can't use beer as fuel?
the idea of a pipe down into the ocean as a launch vehicle sounds suspiciously like a perpetual motion machine ;-)
/.
sorry folks, tain't no such kritter, there ain't no free lunch
where else but
Wouldn't it be cheaper to simply use something akin to a steam catapult design that they currently use on aircraft carriers. If you wanted to use it in a piston environment. You'd need to compress it and heat it so that when you realeased it you'd get a controllable force. Then you'd need the multiple parallel series equivalent of several small flame throwers to keep the steam expanding in order to shoot the shuttle or whatever out of the long tube. Probably costs nothing less than about 300-700 million dollars. Also, the tube would require the ability to withstand rocket burn as it's pushing the device up. Which bumps it over a billion. however, so long as you use clean freshwater in the system you should be able to get quite a bit of use out of it.
So, they are going to mars, but haven't quite worked out the details of how to land back on Earth ? This sounds like a bunch of bullsh*t. Maybe they should figure out how to go to space and back and land on earth first, then, attempt something like going to mars. But hey, wasn't that what the space shuttle was supposed to do ??? WTF ????
This is one of my favorite sci-fi ideas. It gives you that freedom of mind. The ships in Macross II, Cowboy Bebop, and the Star Wars animated series Clone wars all land in large bodies of water....I would like to know what other work has this sort of thing.
Will The Next Generation of Spacecraft Land In the Water?
You mean like the first generation did?
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
...only forgotten. The Late Great Molly Ivins states that journalists today are sooo ahistorical.
This idea actually work rather well in the 60's. A bit expensive, but it worked.
if the accuracy can be improved they could land in the great lakes. That at least stops the salt water corrosion. The capsule can be designed for crew survival on land, and capsule survival in fresh water, if you miss you just lose the capsule and some of the internal systems, if you hit the lake all of it gets used. If problem is detected early, just aim for the ocean. in every case crew should survive.
Rod
Isn't landing in water what the previous generation of spacecraft did?
The next generation of spaceship should not carry humans, food, water or diapers. That stuff is so LAST GENERATION.
The NEXT generation of spaceship should be 100% robotic, with no intention of returning to Earth. And if you simply MUST have souvenir rocks for your earthbound collection, (although this too is utterly ridiculous), you can shoot them back to near-earth orbit as a dead payload and capture them with other robotic vehicles.
Honestly, the old guard at NASA cannot retire early enough! Time for some new thinking. Hold a massive celebration for all the past glories, close the books on manned travel, and get on with the science of robotic exploration. It will benefit us on earth much more quickly to develop robotics and nanotech for the space program.