Interesting about the bed thing... but even so, would peasants have been able to afford an elaborate four-poster bed with drapes on the top? I doubt it; they would have slept on their straw mattresses in the corner of their hovel. So it still may have signified wealth.
To reply to myself, I should have said that the British rule would actually leave out the punctuation even it if were in the original quote, for consistency. That's just how I think of it...
Actually, no. There are two schools of thought on this, and I myself incline towards the one that says that if you are quoting something, don't include anything inside the quote marks that wasn't actually there to begin with. If there was no punctuation, don't include it. Seems more logical to me, personally!
But it's a vexed issue, and yet another of those differences between British and American English (although in this case, apparently it's the British who changed).
How many other reusable space transports have a comparable record? How many times have you done something as easy and simple as flying on an international aircraft? It seems the only comparisions you don't consider absurd are the ones you make.
I see, so it's more sensible to compare the shuttle to car maintenance tasks,
than to other spacecraft, actual or possible? The only other non-spacecraft comparisons I made
were both following in your own footsteps (aircraft and cars),
and I wouldn't have made them if you hadn't gone there first. I've been
trying to stick to facts and figures, but you seem to think in analogies.
And let's ignore the bit where you admitted it would likely take several missions/launches to do the job of one shuttle mission. This is getting old and repetitive.
Firstly - you've still ignored the fact that I compared the Shuttle's costs
to other heavy lift systems, so contrary to your assertion I did define what I meant by cheap. You could at least own up to that. Secondly, I did not "admit" that it would take several mission/launches to do the job of one Shuttle mission. As Saturn V can lift three times as much as Shuttle, you only need a third as many launches. Even assuming one Saturn V launch required one manned launch for assembly (which as I said would not necessarily be true, just as it wasn't quite true for ISS), that's only 2/3 as many launches as you would need for Shuttle! It would be twice as many launches
as a shuttle of equivalent payload capacity to Saturn V. Of which none exists or has exists, or is planned to.
No kidding about the Saturn? Really????!!!!11 Do you think there weren't misgivings and doubts? Funding is limited, even for NASA. Again, where is your alternative to the shuttle that fits into the entire design with a space station that was on the table at the time?
The design of the space station obviously depends on the capability of
the launch system and service vehicles. If NASA had been using some alternative system
instead of the Shuttle, they would have designed it differently. Bigger modules, for
one thing, with Saturn V... And there were no firm space station plans in
the 1970s (excepting the temporary Skylab, of course). That didn't start
until well into the Reagan years, and of course we didn't actually get the
space station until Shuttle was two decades old. So you've got it the
wrong way around here: the Shuttle was not tailored around the required space station design.
It's good to see that you realize the cost of running two programs (including keeping the Saturn alive) would be far greater than developing two programs, even if you didn't take it to the conclusion.
Welcome to the world of budget constraints instead of ivory towers.
Err... no, I didn't conclude that, because it's hard to do so on
the available evidence. Shuttle launches are a billion apiece. Saturn V
was twice that - for three times the payload and based on a very small
production run. So Saturn V alone would have been at least a third
cheaper than Shuttle and probably a bit more. You could have used those
savings to run a small, manned spacecraft. It might
have turned out more expensive, as it wasn't done we can't be sure, but you haven't made any case for that.
I never said it was an "unqualified" success, nor that the objectives couldn't be completed in another way, and you probably are already aware of that if your reading comprehension is as great as you think.
Well now, what criticisms would you make of the Shuttle? Every one I've made just makes you angry, so if you don't think it was an unqualified success, then just what criticisms would you make? Ditto for the alternative methods.
Once again, I consider it a successful experiment (I know that just irritates you no end, so I had to repeat it).
Not at all, you are entitled to your own opinion. It's your continual lack of understan
No scientist wants to admit that his understand of the universe isn't complete.
Gee, they must be shattered every time they come up with a new research result. I mean, how galling it must be for astronomers to discover a new class of galaxy, for example. One wonders why they bother looking in the first place.
You can just about stop the list right there. Once the characters are allowed to have FTL travel, almost any other crazy invention looks plausible by comparison.
Personally I wouldn't go that far - there's some good hard sf that uses ftl. As long as it's rigorously handled, it can be ok. (And ftl is not completely disreputable, scientifically speaking.) But there can't be too many such superscientific plot devices in the story, one or two at the most, or else it becomes E. E. Doc Smith...
Once again, they introduced a capability which would break their storylines if followed to it's logical conclusion. Given teleportation, why bother carrying around guns and torpedos for combat? Just transport bombs or just raw energy into the targets.
Exactly, you can tell how corrosive this idea is from the number of times they have to come up with spurious reasons why they can't use the teleporter, like "magnetic radiation" or "subspace anomalies" or whatever. Otherwise, the plot would be resolved in the first 5 minutes. Conversely, there's an equally large number of episodes where the transporter is used to resolve the episode in the last 5 minutes. It's a blessing and curse, like all technologies:)
It was routine. I provided figures. 111 freakin' times. That's more often than I've had my tires rotated in my lifetime, which is a lot longer than the shuttle's.
I told you, I'm not interested in your opinion. 111 times? That's less posts than I've made to slashdot! What do such absurd comparisons prove? I provided objective criteria, ie the original NASA goals for the number of flights per year right up until Challenger and even after. The Shuttle has failed to even come close to these goals.
You still have not defined "cheap" other than to say the shuttle isn't it.
Right, so just ignore the bit in the previous post where I explicitly compared
the Shuttle's costs to other heavy lift systems. I'm sure to let that slip by.
No straw man; it was an attempt to get you to look at the different purposes for the different craft. Ineffective, as usual.
What on Earth are you talking about? I never mentioned Apollo; you asked how long it would take to launch ISS components in Apollo capsules; I then pointed out how silly this was. Why did I need to "look at the different purposes for the different craft" [Shuttle and Apollo] when you were the one who brought up Apollo out of nowhere? And what exactly was your point anyway?
Yes, of course. Running two programs instead of one would be far *cheaper*. Do you realize how much of NASA's funds get spent on the planning and support for different vehicles? Same thing for your possible assembly platform. It all costs money (apparently cheaper money than shuttle money?).
Do you realise that Saturn V had already been developed? That the factories and infrastructure were already in place? Anyway, the development cost
of the Shuttle was small compared to the operating cost (less than a tenth). Spend a bit more up front to get a more efficient system and you'll save money in the longer term.
Oh, and it's worth noting that again I'm not claiming to be original here.
After Shuttle, NASA won't be launching payloads inside manned spacecraft
anymore. CEV will only have room for a few astronauts and supplies - no
payload bay for 25000 kg satellites, they'll be going up on top of
unmanned boosters. Likely won't be a reuseable spaceplane either. So you better hope that NASA has more imagination than you do when it comes to overcoming these oh-so-insurmountable obstacles you see. (I could turn this around and ask if the Shuttle has been such an unqualified success as you seem to think, why is NASA ditching the whole concept for something completely different, instead of going for an improved Shuttle design? Might it be that... gasp... Shuttle isn't as perfect as you think?)
I shouldn't think it's that hard to follow. You've been claiming ad nauseam that the shuttle isn't "cheap". Once again, in comparison to WHAT? All I'm claiming is that it is the only one of its kind and costs what Congress has allocated for it.
And once again, in comparison to OTHER LAUNCH SYSTEMS. You know, the ones that are launching everything that the Shuttle doesn't? Yes, Shuttle is the only reuseable spaceplane (if you ignore Buran, which I'm happy to do). But why use a reuseable spaceplane if it's not cheaper/more reliable/more regular than other ways of getting people and payloads into space? You are obsessed with the Shuttle to the exclusion of other ways of doing the same job.
My mistake. I thought the topic had something to do with your thesis and that you would be interested in the truth. But, since you're apparently a Brit, it wouldn't work anyway. My bad.
Ah, so we're resorting to puerile national slurs, are we now? How delightful. By the way, you're wrong yet again - I'm Australian. (The.au in my email and URL is a bit of a giveaway.)
Remember, you were the one who brought the fact that you were a Piled Higher and Deeper candidate into this discussion - otherwise I wouldn't have made
Best argument for euthanasia/compulsory birth control on the planet.
Hey do you remember ST:TNG epsiode #113 where Worf is injured and wants to commit suicide because hes so useless! Its just like that!!! Man Troi is hot isnt she.
Firstly, thanks to Slashdot for eating my first attempt at this post...
So? NASA proposes, and Congress disposes. The projects selected for continuation are done via the Congressional budget appropriation.
What's a non sequitur? How does this change the fact that - whoever is responsible - the Shuttle was originally supposed to be routine and cheap?
As I recall, the shuttle was a keystone in the proposed space station (to eventually become the ISS). How much would it have cost to get the ISS building materials into orbit aboard an Apollo capsule?
Straw man. Why would you use a tiny Apollo capsule to launch ISS components? They don't have to go to the Moon and back.
You presumably remember Skylab; that was launched on top of a single Saturn
V booster with the top stage replaced by the payload. One launch. 77,000 kg.
That's three times the payload of the Shuttle, so you'd only need a third as
many launches. (Admittedly Saturn V cost twice as much in 2005 dollars per
launch as Shuttle - though with a longer production run unit costs would have come down - but that's still cheaper overall.)
So does the rest of the world these days. You still haven't remembered the Columbia press coverage?
I'll discuss the Columbia press coverage when you tell me why I should care
about press articles written in 2003 when I am talking about the 1970s and
1980s! I don't see why you keep going on about this.
So use two missions in the place of one where you need to assemble the stuff you're lifting, as in the case of the ISS?
Why not? It's no more risky for the astronauts because there are still
the same number of manned flights. Plus several unmanned launches could
be sent up for every unmanned one, and perhaps assembly could be partly
automated. Anyway, this method has already been used for the ISS. Not all
elements have been delivered by the Shuttle: the control and service modules
and the docking compartment were all delivered by unmanned Russian rockets.
And how are you going to get a platform for that mobile robotic arm?
I'm not an aerospace engineer, but I doubt there is no way to get the
same functionality other than the Shuttle's arm. You could build a
specialised, permanent platform for this, for one thing (just as the ISS
has its own arm, this could be useful after construction too). The
current way of doing things is not necessarily the only way or even
the best way. Use your imagination.
You still haven't shown that it isn't cheap in relation to the other shuttle program.
What other shuttle program? Are you saying that because there is
no other shuttle to compare it to, by definition it must be cheap?
What absurd Panglossian logic.
Anyway, the proper comparison is with other heavy lift systems. Ariane V
is about $7k/kg to LEO (Saturn V would be about the same), and Proton is about $3k/kg. The Shuttle is $11k/kg.
This is not cheap. And I assume I don't need to explain to you how important
lowering this cost is for opening access to space and getting real space
development kickstarted.
Costs are a major concern for any US federal agency. There are laws (designed to protect the taxpayers) that may require an agency to select the lowest bidder against the agency's better judgement. I've posted a number of times about this in the past. If you need some (basic, totally non-secret) information about how government agency contracts work, we can take this offline.
I'm well aware that costs are
a "major concern", and that's as it should be. (Although the cost-plus system
used hardly ensures cost-effectiveness.) But if you'll go back and
read what I actually said, the Rogers commission's criticism was that cost was
the primary concern; that is, more important than performance and
safety. You'd also have to show that this legislation
applied to NASA contracts during the Shuttle development phase. Plus - again - even if s
Yeah, mine too - some friends made me watch Firefly (because that's what friends are for!), and when I saw that scene I knew I was going to like this show.
I remember watching the coverage of Shepard's first flight...
OK, well, you've got me beat there! I'm jealous, I was just a baby when man last landed on the moon. The Shuttle was all I had.
Yes, I remember it being advertised as reusable, which could translate into savings over things like Apollo. If there was a big marketing campaign, it sure didn't make much of an impression on me, or perhaps I was sold already.
Well, it's pretty clear from that NASA bibliography that this is exactly how it was being sold. Not just in the press, but to Congress. You can find this in any standard history of the space program, eg in McDougall's... The Heavens and the Earth, pp. 422-3: "The only major new program still in the running [in 1971] was a space shuttle meant to provide routine access to earth orbit at a much lower cost-per-pound than expendable rockets."
For someone claiming to be so well-versed in the program's history, you suffer remarkable tunnel vision. I guess you must have missed all the accusations that the Columbia's crew died because NASA put budget concerns and cost-savings over the safety of the astronauts. This is why it's not a good idea to put the words NASA and cheap in the same sentence.
I'm not sure what we are arguing about here. You seem to equate cheap with unsafe. Maybe that's so - but in that case, it seems rather foolish to use a manned spacecraft as a heavy lifter. Use a manned spacecraft to put people into space and nothing else. Use an unmanned spacecraft for payloads so you can get them up there cheaply. Cheap is good if you want get real space development going. But - I wasn't even saying Shuttle should be cheap (it shouldn't, if it's then going to be unsafe). I'm saying Shuttle was supposed to be cheap. It's not. That's all.
Anyway, the very fact that such accusations were made suggests that there was a period when NASA and cheap did go together - and that period was the 1970s, which is what I am talking about here. I'm not saying safety was not a concern back then, but you know, there's a reason why both the Rogers commission and the CAIB were able to make safety recommendations - because safety was not the primary concern when the Shuttle was originally designed and built. In fact, the Rogers commission report noted: "Costs were the primary concern of NASA's selection board [for Shuttle contractors], particularly those incurred early in the program." (vol 1 chapter 6 p 120).
I'd suggest you check the survival rate of the early test pilots (and planes) for military aircraft. Your comparison is invalid. The shuttle was the first American spacecraft that was not only reusable but also made controlled landings (not to mention the other features). It was the first of its kind, not a slightly larger or slightly faster improvement of an existing aircraft. (Compare the two - the shuttle doesn't bear any resemblance to an Apollo capsule.) Two failures in 113 missions is far better than Apollo's record of one disaster and one near-disaster scrubbed mission. The fatality ratio for the shuttle is also less.
This is all irrelevent - to my point, anyway. All I am trying to get across is that Shuttle has not performed as initially advertised - nowhere near it. In science, when you perform an experiment, you make your predictions in advance. You don't perform the experiment first and then decide if it was successful or not. In those terms, the Shuttle was a failure, because it did not perform as it was supposed to. This does not mean it's a useless spacecraft. It still has a fine record. But as an experiment in cheap, reliable, regular access to orbit, it's a failure.
Perhaps there was some hype it didn't live up to. My car doesn't really get 36 MPG either, despite the government figures. 113 missions in about 20 years is pretty regular. The missions were so regular that I was one of the very fe
Well then, slashdot is a forum. How many people come here for the discussion without actually reading the article it's loosely related to? I know I rarely do. And the "blog entries" themselves are brief and not very interesting. No, slashdot is all about the discussion. It's a forum.
It's not hindsight - I'm actually (well, as of next month) a history PhD student who will be studying contemporary perceptions of precisely those early airplanes and LTA craft you mention. So I'm not into projecting current views backwards. Instead I'm talking about what Shuttle was supposedly going to be when it was proposed. I dunno how old you are, but I'm old enough to remember Columbia's first flight, and I still have all the newspaper articles about it I cut out about it at the time, as a major little space geek. Cheap, reliable and regular is what we were promised.
Cheap? Yes, it was supposed to be cheap. Have a look through this annotated bibliography and search for "cost" - you'll see that in the 1970s it was often claimed that Shuttle would provide cheaper access to space (a "quantum leap" according to one article). I don't know what you are talking about with regard to cutting corners and so forth - in the 1970s this was not a public issue. After the massively costly Apollo and in such an economically uncertain period, space travel had to be done cheaply or not at all. At least it had be sold as cheap.
Reliable? Not sure what early aircraft you are thinking of. Sure, it's much more reliable than the first generation or two of aircraft - Wright, Bleriot, Farman, Zeppelin. But those are the equivalent of Mercury, Gemini, Apollo. The proper comparison should be with the 1920s and 1930s, when you had breakthrough aircraft like the DC3, say, or the Empire class flying boats. These were far more reliable than the Shuttle in any terms you can think of. That's what we were promised. Something you could depend upon to get you up into space when you needed to go, not getting endlessly delayed because of maintenance or weather issues. (Safety is another reliability issue too - the DC3 sure didn't have a 3% flight failure rate.)
Regular? I don't mean the grounding after the accidents, I mean the fact it was supposed to fly on the order of weekly, with a turnaround time of a month or so. Never happened. In fact originally it was claimed that the cost-effectiveness depended upon launching at the optimal (high) rate, but the Shuttle clearly requires far too much maintenance than was originally planned for this to work. (And who mentioned anything about the astronauts? I'm not having a go at them.)
These factors were all part of the original justification for the Space Shuttle. You are the one who is employing hindsight to redefine its purpose - it wasn't meant to be an experimental vehicle at all, but a rugged, practical, cost-effective workhorse. If you are saying the original goals have been superseded, well, that's another argument.
Hang about, what do you mean by "militarized" NASA? NASA was a civilian agency right from the get go, though of course there's always been a strong military influence. Not a flame, I'm genuinely curious what you're referring to.
Mis-edit. Scaled composites developed SpaceShipOne for $20 million... and the capacity of the shuttle is not greator and its capabilities are a little better (it can get into low earth orbit, but not geosync orbit) the costs are massively higher.
Er... what? The capacity of Shuttle is enough to get Hubble - that's 10000kg - into orbit, SS1 has a payload capacity of 3 people... for a sub-orbital hop! That's not just "a little better", it's a completely different ballgame. SS1 did not and cannot, repeat cannot reach any sort of orbit so you cannot compare it to Shuttle like this. For all its problems, Shuttle is far superior to SS1 in every way that matters - because, like, it can actually get to orbit and SS1 can't.
The U.S. did not enter the war until the Nazis had conquered all of Europe except the very weakned UK. Without U.S. entry into the war, the Nazis would have most likely blockaded the UK before invading it, and occupied the Middle East to ensure their oil supply. They would then have been able to concentrate on the USSR without fearing an invasion in the West.
Er, slight problem - Germany had already invaded the USSR before the US entered. So your scenario is moot.
In 1945, a number of Americans and Europeans argued that the wartime alliance with the USSR was no longer necessary and that the Allied troops should have continued east from Berlin to Moscow. In retrospect, one can only imagine how pleasantly different are world would be if that turn of events had actually taken place.
If you think the Soviets ruling Western Europe for the rest of the cold war is pleasant, that is... the Soviets would have steamrollered over the Western Allies, only stopping at the Atlantic.
Gack! You said "The only thing that saved Europe..." (emphasis added). That kind of excludes any other factor contributing in any significant way. Maybe you didn't mean that "only" to be taken literally, but then you could at least admit that.
I don't think it's "most likely" that the Germans would have captured Moscow in the absence of an Allied "threat" to invade Western Europe. The numbers of divisions the Germans had in the west to counter the other Allies were trivial compared to the amount they had fighting the Soviets (my books are at home, but according to this, there were only 38 out of 209 German divisions in Western Europe in June 1941, probably not their best ones either) - especially in 1941, the only time Germany had a decent chance of capturing Moscow. There was no chance of an Allied invasion in 1941 - Britain was straining mightily to hold off a mere two German divisions (plus Italians) in North Africa. 1942 was much the same, only now there was the Far East to worry about as well. A few more divisions here and there would not have changed the result of the war in Russia. Also, capturing Moscow quite possibly wouldn't have ended the war - it didn't for Napoleon.
As for there not being a US presence in the war following a Soviet collapse, I'm not sure why - perhaps Japan would have attacked the Soviets then, which would have delayed the war with America, but the US would have been drawn in eventually. But certainly if the Soviet collapse was delayed until 1942 then the US would have been in the war already.
Well, this is what Lucas claims now, I don't know that I believe him:) Anyway, the great-grandparent claimed that it was always called ANH even in the original crawl of the original 1977 release and this just isn't so. That's enough to lose them their geek privileges if you ask me!
Yes, but those 114 fatalities result from millions of individual car trips. When you drive to work there is only a tiny chance that you will be involved in a fatal accident, and you can decrease that chance by driving sensibly. If you were on the crew of Orion, you'd have to live with the knowledge that no matter what you do, you'll kill 1-10 innocent people every time it lifted off. Could you live with that? I couldn't. It would do my head in very quickly.
Perhaps on a cost-benefit analysis, a case could be made that those deaths were worth it, just as (basically implicitly) the same is done for any other sort of risky activity, including car travel. But that ignores human psychology. While 1 trip = 1+ deaths, Orion won't fly, not from Earth's surface anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting about the bed thing ... but even so, would peasants have been able to afford an elaborate four-poster bed with drapes on the top? I doubt it; they would have slept on their straw mattresses in the corner of their hovel. So it still may have signified wealth.
To reply to myself, I should have said that the British rule would actually leave out the punctuation even it if were in the original quote, for consistency. That's just how I think of it ...
But it's a vexed issue, and yet another of those differences between British and American English (although in this case, apparently it's the British who changed).
I see, so it's more sensible to compare the shuttle to car maintenance tasks, than to other spacecraft, actual or possible? The only other non-spacecraft comparisons I made were both following in your own footsteps (aircraft and cars), and I wouldn't have made them if you hadn't gone there first. I've been trying to stick to facts and figures, but you seem to think in analogies.
And let's ignore the bit where you admitted it would likely take several missions/launches to do the job of one shuttle mission. This is getting old and repetitive.
Firstly - you've still ignored the fact that I compared the Shuttle's costs to other heavy lift systems, so contrary to your assertion I did define what I meant by cheap. You could at least own up to that. Secondly, I did not "admit" that it would take several mission/launches to do the job of one Shuttle mission. As Saturn V can lift three times as much as Shuttle, you only need a third as many launches. Even assuming one Saturn V launch required one manned launch for assembly (which as I said would not necessarily be true, just as it wasn't quite true for ISS), that's only 2/3 as many launches as you would need for Shuttle! It would be twice as many launches as a shuttle of equivalent payload capacity to Saturn V. Of which none exists or has exists, or is planned to.
No kidding about the Saturn? Really????!!!!11 Do you think there weren't misgivings and doubts? Funding is limited, even for NASA. Again, where is your alternative to the shuttle that fits into the entire design with a space station that was on the table at the time?
The design of the space station obviously depends on the capability of the launch system and service vehicles. If NASA had been using some alternative system instead of the Shuttle, they would have designed it differently. Bigger modules, for one thing, with Saturn V ... And there were no firm space station plans in
the 1970s (excepting the temporary Skylab, of course). That didn't start
until well into the Reagan years, and of course we didn't actually get the
space station until Shuttle was two decades old. So you've got it the
wrong way around here: the Shuttle was not tailored around the required space station design.
It's good to see that you realize the cost of running two programs (including keeping the Saturn alive) would be far greater than developing two programs, even if you didn't take it to the conclusion. Welcome to the world of budget constraints instead of ivory towers.
Err ... no, I didn't conclude that, because it's hard to do so on
the available evidence. Shuttle launches are a billion apiece. Saturn V
was twice that - for three times the payload and based on a very small
production run. So Saturn V alone would have been at least a third
cheaper than Shuttle and probably a bit more. You could have used those
savings to run a small, manned spacecraft. It might
have turned out more expensive, as it wasn't done we can't be sure, but you haven't made any case for that.
I never said it was an "unqualified" success, nor that the objectives couldn't be completed in another way, and you probably are already aware of that if your reading comprehension is as great as you think.
Well now, what criticisms would you make of the Shuttle? Every one I've made just makes you angry, so if you don't think it was an unqualified success, then just what criticisms would you make? Ditto for the alternative methods.
Once again, I consider it a successful experiment (I know that just irritates you no end, so I had to repeat it).
Not at all, you are entitled to your own opinion. It's your continual lack of understan
Gee, they must be shattered every time they come up with a new research result. I mean, how galling it must be for astronomers to discover a new class of galaxy, for example. One wonders why they bother looking in the first place.
Personally I wouldn't go that far - there's some good hard sf that uses ftl. As long as it's rigorously handled, it can be ok. (And ftl is not completely disreputable, scientifically speaking.) But there can't be too many such superscientific plot devices in the story, one or two at the most, or else it becomes E. E. Doc Smith ...
Once again, they introduced a capability which would break their storylines if followed to it's logical conclusion. Given teleportation, why bother carrying around guns and torpedos for combat? Just transport bombs or just raw energy into the targets.
Exactly, you can tell how corrosive this idea is from the number of times they have to come up with spurious reasons why they can't use the teleporter, like "magnetic radiation" or "subspace anomalies" or whatever. Otherwise, the plot would be resolved in the first 5 minutes. Conversely, there's an equally large number of episodes where the transporter is used to resolve the episode in the last 5 minutes. It's a blessing and curse, like all technologies :)
I told you, I'm not interested in your opinion. 111 times? That's less posts than I've made to slashdot! What do such absurd comparisons prove? I provided objective criteria, ie the original NASA goals for the number of flights per year right up until Challenger and even after. The Shuttle has failed to even come close to these goals.
You still have not defined "cheap" other than to say the shuttle isn't it.
Right, so just ignore the bit in the previous post where I explicitly compared the Shuttle's costs to other heavy lift systems. I'm sure to let that slip by.
No straw man; it was an attempt to get you to look at the different purposes for the different craft. Ineffective, as usual.
What on Earth are you talking about? I never mentioned Apollo; you asked how long it would take to launch ISS components in Apollo capsules; I then pointed out how silly this was. Why did I need to "look at the different purposes for the different craft" [Shuttle and Apollo] when you were the one who brought up Apollo out of nowhere? And what exactly was your point anyway?
Yes, of course. Running two programs instead of one would be far *cheaper*. Do you realize how much of NASA's funds get spent on the planning and support for different vehicles? Same thing for your possible assembly platform. It all costs money (apparently cheaper money than shuttle money?).
Do you realise that Saturn V had already been developed? That the factories and infrastructure were already in place? Anyway, the development cost of the Shuttle was small compared to the operating cost (less than a tenth). Spend a bit more up front to get a more efficient system and you'll save money in the longer term.
Oh, and it's worth noting that again I'm not claiming to be original here. After Shuttle, NASA won't be launching payloads inside manned spacecraft anymore. CEV will only have room for a few astronauts and supplies - no payload bay for 25000 kg satellites, they'll be going up on top of unmanned boosters. Likely won't be a reuseable spaceplane either. So you better hope that NASA has more imagination than you do when it comes to overcoming these oh-so-insurmountable obstacles you see. (I could turn this around and ask if the Shuttle has been such an unqualified success as you seem to think, why is NASA ditching the whole concept for something completely different, instead of going for an improved Shuttle design? Might it be that ... gasp ... Shuttle isn't as perfect as you think?)
I shouldn't think it's that hard to follow. You've been claiming ad nauseam that the shuttle isn't "cheap". Once again, in comparison to WHAT? All I'm claiming is that it is the only one of its kind and costs what Congress has allocated for it.
And once again, in comparison to OTHER LAUNCH SYSTEMS. You know, the ones that are launching everything that the Shuttle doesn't? Yes, Shuttle is the only reuseable spaceplane (if you ignore Buran, which I'm happy to do). But why use a reuseable spaceplane if it's not cheaper/more reliable/more regular than other ways of getting people and payloads into space? You are obsessed with the Shuttle to the exclusion of other ways of doing the same job.
My mistake. I thought the topic had something to do with your thesis and that you would be interested in the truth. But, since you're apparently a Brit, it wouldn't work anyway. My bad.
Ah, so we're resorting to puerile national slurs, are we now? How delightful. By the way, you're wrong yet again - I'm Australian. (The .au in my email and URL is a bit of a giveaway.)
Remember, you were the one who brought the fact that you were a Piled Higher and Deeper candidate into this discussion - otherwise I wouldn't have made
Hey do you remember ST:TNG epsiode #113 where Worf is injured and wants to commit suicide because hes so useless! Its just like that!!! Man Troi is hot isnt she.
So? NASA proposes, and Congress disposes. The projects selected for continuation are done via the Congressional budget appropriation.
What's a non sequitur? How does this change the fact that - whoever is responsible - the Shuttle was originally supposed to be routine and cheap?
As I recall, the shuttle was a keystone in the proposed space station (to eventually become the ISS). How much would it have cost to get the ISS building materials into orbit aboard an Apollo capsule?
Straw man. Why would you use a tiny Apollo capsule to launch ISS components? They don't have to go to the Moon and back. You presumably remember Skylab; that was launched on top of a single Saturn V booster with the top stage replaced by the payload. One launch. 77,000 kg. That's three times the payload of the Shuttle, so you'd only need a third as many launches. (Admittedly Saturn V cost twice as much in 2005 dollars per launch as Shuttle - though with a longer production run unit costs would have come down - but that's still cheaper overall.)
So does the rest of the world these days. You still haven't remembered the Columbia press coverage?
I'll discuss the Columbia press coverage when you tell me why I should care about press articles written in 2003 when I am talking about the 1970s and 1980s! I don't see why you keep going on about this.
So use two missions in the place of one where you need to assemble the stuff you're lifting, as in the case of the ISS?
Why not? It's no more risky for the astronauts because there are still the same number of manned flights. Plus several unmanned launches could be sent up for every unmanned one, and perhaps assembly could be partly automated. Anyway, this method has already been used for the ISS. Not all elements have been delivered by the Shuttle: the control and service modules and the docking compartment were all delivered by unmanned Russian rockets.
And how are you going to get a platform for that mobile robotic arm?
I'm not an aerospace engineer, but I doubt there is no way to get the same functionality other than the Shuttle's arm. You could build a specialised, permanent platform for this, for one thing (just as the ISS has its own arm, this could be useful after construction too). The current way of doing things is not necessarily the only way or even the best way. Use your imagination.
You still haven't shown that it isn't cheap in relation to the other shuttle program.
What other shuttle program? Are you saying that because there is no other shuttle to compare it to, by definition it must be cheap? What absurd Panglossian logic.
Anyway, the proper comparison is with other heavy lift systems. Ariane V is about $7k/kg to LEO (Saturn V would be about the same), and Proton is about $3k/kg. The Shuttle is $11k/kg. This is not cheap. And I assume I don't need to explain to you how important lowering this cost is for opening access to space and getting real space development kickstarted.
Costs are a major concern for any US federal agency. There are laws (designed to protect the taxpayers) that may require an agency to select the lowest bidder against the agency's better judgement. I've posted a number of times about this in the past. If you need some (basic, totally non-secret) information about how government agency contracts work, we can take this offline.
I'm well aware that costs are a "major concern", and that's as it should be. (Although the cost-plus system used hardly ensures cost-effectiveness.) But if you'll go back and read what I actually said, the Rogers commission's criticism was that cost was the primary concern; that is, more important than performance and safety. You'd also have to show that this legislation applied to NASA contracts during the Shuttle development phase. Plus - again - even if s
Yeah, mine too - some friends made me watch Firefly (because that's what friends are for!), and when I saw that scene I knew I was going to like this show.
OK, well, you've got me beat there! I'm jealous, I was just a baby when man last landed on the moon. The Shuttle was all I had.
Yes, I remember it being advertised as reusable, which could translate into savings over things like Apollo. If there was a big marketing campaign, it sure didn't make much of an impression on me, or perhaps I was sold already.
Well, it's pretty clear from that NASA bibliography that this is exactly how it was being sold. Not just in the press, but to Congress. You can find this in any standard history of the space program, eg in McDougall's ... The Heavens and the Earth, pp. 422-3: "The only major new program still in the running [in 1971] was a space shuttle meant to provide routine access to earth orbit at a much lower cost-per-pound than expendable rockets."
For someone claiming to be so well-versed in the program's history, you suffer remarkable tunnel vision. I guess you must have missed all the accusations that the Columbia's crew died because NASA put budget concerns and cost-savings over the safety of the astronauts. This is why it's not a good idea to put the words NASA and cheap in the same sentence.
I'm not sure what we are arguing about here. You seem to equate cheap with unsafe. Maybe that's so - but in that case, it seems rather foolish to use a manned spacecraft as a heavy lifter. Use a manned spacecraft to put people into space and nothing else. Use an unmanned spacecraft for payloads so you can get them up there cheaply. Cheap is good if you want get real space development going. But - I wasn't even saying Shuttle should be cheap (it shouldn't, if it's then going to be unsafe). I'm saying Shuttle was supposed to be cheap. It's not. That's all.
Anyway, the very fact that such accusations were made suggests that there was a period when NASA and cheap did go together - and that period was the 1970s, which is what I am talking about here. I'm not saying safety was not a concern back then, but you know, there's a reason why both the Rogers commission and the CAIB were able to make safety recommendations - because safety was not the primary concern when the Shuttle was originally designed and built. In fact, the Rogers commission report noted: "Costs were the primary concern of NASA's selection board [for Shuttle contractors], particularly those incurred early in the program." (vol 1 chapter 6 p 120).
I'd suggest you check the survival rate of the early test pilots (and planes) for military aircraft. Your comparison is invalid. The shuttle was the first American spacecraft that was not only reusable but also made controlled landings (not to mention the other features). It was the first of its kind, not a slightly larger or slightly faster improvement of an existing aircraft. (Compare the two - the shuttle doesn't bear any resemblance to an Apollo capsule.) Two failures in 113 missions is far better than Apollo's record of one disaster and one near-disaster scrubbed mission. The fatality ratio for the shuttle is also less.
This is all irrelevent - to my point, anyway. All I am trying to get across is that Shuttle has not performed as initially advertised - nowhere near it. In science, when you perform an experiment, you make your predictions in advance. You don't perform the experiment first and then decide if it was successful or not. In those terms, the Shuttle was a failure, because it did not perform as it was supposed to. This does not mean it's a useless spacecraft. It still has a fine record. But as an experiment in cheap, reliable, regular access to orbit, it's a failure.
Perhaps there was some hype it didn't live up to. My car doesn't really get 36 MPG either, despite the government figures. 113 missions in about 20 years is pretty regular. The missions were so regular that I was one of the very fe
Well then, slashdot is a forum. How many people come here for the discussion without actually reading the article it's loosely related to? I know I rarely do. And the "blog entries" themselves are brief and not very interesting. No, slashdot is all about the discussion. It's a forum.
Cool! You've got four readers now!
Cheap? Yes, it was supposed to be cheap. Have a look through this annotated bibliography and search for "cost" - you'll see that in the 1970s it was often claimed that Shuttle would provide cheaper access to space (a "quantum leap" according to one article). I don't know what you are talking about with regard to cutting corners and so forth - in the 1970s this was not a public issue. After the massively costly Apollo and in such an economically uncertain period, space travel had to be done cheaply or not at all. At least it had be sold as cheap.
Reliable? Not sure what early aircraft you are thinking of. Sure, it's much more reliable than the first generation or two of aircraft - Wright, Bleriot, Farman, Zeppelin. But those are the equivalent of Mercury, Gemini, Apollo. The proper comparison should be with the 1920s and 1930s, when you had breakthrough aircraft like the DC3, say, or the Empire class flying boats. These were far more reliable than the Shuttle in any terms you can think of. That's what we were promised. Something you could depend upon to get you up into space when you needed to go, not getting endlessly delayed because of maintenance or weather issues. (Safety is another reliability issue too - the DC3 sure didn't have a 3% flight failure rate.)
Regular? I don't mean the grounding after the accidents, I mean the fact it was supposed to fly on the order of weekly, with a turnaround time of a month or so. Never happened. In fact originally it was claimed that the cost-effectiveness depended upon launching at the optimal (high) rate, but the Shuttle clearly requires far too much maintenance than was originally planned for this to work. (And who mentioned anything about the astronauts? I'm not having a go at them.)
These factors were all part of the original justification for the Space Shuttle. You are the one who is employing hindsight to redefine its purpose - it wasn't meant to be an experimental vehicle at all, but a rugged, practical, cost-effective workhorse. If you are saying the original goals have been superseded, well, that's another argument.
Hang about, what do you mean by "militarized" NASA? NASA was a civilian agency right from the get go, though of course there's always been a strong military influence. Not a flame, I'm genuinely curious what you're referring to.
Er ... what? The capacity of Shuttle is enough to get Hubble - that's 10000kg - into orbit, SS1 has a payload capacity of 3 people ... for a sub-orbital hop! That's not just "a little better", it's a completely different ballgame. SS1 did not and cannot, repeat cannot reach any sort of orbit so you cannot compare it to Shuttle like this. For all its problems, Shuttle is far superior to SS1 in every way that matters - because, like, it can actually get to orbit and SS1 can't.
Fine then, as an experiment in cheap, reliable, regular transport to space, Shuttle was a failure.
I bet poor old Shirl was wishing for a skyhook to come along in his last moments ...
Er, slight problem - Germany had already invaded the USSR before the US entered. So your scenario is moot.
In 1945, a number of Americans and Europeans argued that the wartime alliance with the USSR was no longer necessary and that the Allied troops should have continued east from Berlin to Moscow. In retrospect, one can only imagine how pleasantly different are world would be if that turn of events had actually taken place.
If you think the Soviets ruling Western Europe for the rest of the cold war is pleasant, that is ... the Soviets would have steamrollered over the Western Allies, only stopping at the Atlantic.
Gack! You said "The only thing that saved Europe ..." (emphasis added). That kind of excludes any other factor contributing in any significant way. Maybe you didn't mean that "only" to be taken literally, but then you could at least admit that.
As for there not being a US presence in the war following a Soviet collapse, I'm not sure why - perhaps Japan would have attacked the Soviets then, which would have delayed the war with America, but the US would have been drawn in eventually. But certainly if the Soviet collapse was delayed until 1942 then the US would have been in the war already.
Well, this is what Lucas claims now, I don't know that I believe him :) Anyway, the great-grandparent claimed that it was always called ANH even in the original crawl of the original 1977 release and this just isn't so. That's enough to lose them their geek privileges if you ask me!
Surely, in this context "marketing droids" is appropriate ...
Yes, I know, I'm deliberately obtuse.
Perhaps on a cost-benefit analysis, a case could be made that those deaths were worth it, just as (basically implicitly) the same is done for any other sort of risky activity, including car travel. But that ignores human psychology. While 1 trip = 1+ deaths, Orion won't fly, not from Earth's surface anyway.