The difference is being able to pay them off in a short period of time. I suppose the same thing happens in business, where eventually if a company (or an individual) keeps borrowing money they can't repay, eventually they become bankrupt.
The problem is when a country goes bankrupt, it screws everybody over. Nobody knows at all what it means for the United States of America to go bankrupt, as it basically takes the entire world financial system down with it. Some might say that is a good thing after a fashion, but I predict that will only be settled through warfare. The last major economic collapse on this magnitude resulted in World War II. I'd hate to see what this one could bring if it became worse.
Personally I believe the president should issue an executive order raising the arbitrary debt ceiling. Section 4 of the 14th amendment requires such drastic action since it states that "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned." In other words, the republicans already authorized this year's debt when they passed the fiscal budget, and they are violating the constitution by refusing to make sure we have enough funds (from both taxes and credit) to meet those obligations.
This is an interesting idea. The "debt ceiling" is however public law and something that Congress put upon themselves as a way for controlling how much the government could spend even in an emergency. Personally, I think the debt ceiling law is working precisely as it was intended all those years ago when the whole concept was created in the first place. In the past, raising the debt ceiling was a rather routine and non-controversial measure that was usually put in with commissioning 2nd Lieutenants, naval Ensigns, and naming local post offices (all of which need congressional authority). What is surprising at the moment is that it isn't a "routine" manner right now.
What is interesting about this idea is the entire notion that perhaps the President can raise this limit on his own. I think that may be unconstitutional since the law setting the debt limit is purely a creation of Congress, and that authorization without congressional support is a violation of the separation of powers doctrine. Still, your point about the 14th Amendment is a valid point and that for some required expenditures such a debt limit may not necessarily apply. Still, "discretionary" spending might have to end such as what happens when a "government shutdown" happens. President Obama is talking like the world will come crashing to an end if the debt limit isn't raised, where it could be argued that isn't really the case.
I'm not sure if you've ever had a discussion with a Tea Party member, most of them are fairly reasonable folks and want a return to a government who's spending and legislative powers are bound by the constitution.
I have many times. They are individuals that may have good intentions but are easily led astray. They arguments have little basis in fact, and their misinterpretations of the constitution is horrifying.
In terms of "Tea Party members" being led astray, my own experience is that many of them are politically immature and really don't understand the system they are trying to get themselves into. Some of them are learning very quickly, and sadly there are also a bunch of people, mainly politicians who see the Tea Party movement as a politically "hip" thing to be involved with, who are involved mainly because it gets them some votes and not because they actually believe anything being said by the "Tea Party leaders". Keep in mind that the "leaders" are all or mostly self-appointed because they were the first ones to get involved, and when they speak in the name of the group, the group itself is usually a hollow shell of a group that mainly represents the spokesman and perhaps his/her spouse if they are lucky.
There is a political sea change happening, and there are people who are ticked off about what is happening in the government at all levels, but turning that into real political force is a trick. Some people are manipulating that resentment to their own political ends, but there are some who are genuinely trying to "represent" their "constituents" and trying to make changes based upon this resentment. The trick is trying to tell the scoundrel from the real McCoy.
There is a huge difference between a small loan that is used for day to day purposes and having loans which will take years, decades, or even generations to be able to pay off. I know many people who are largely out of debt but occasionally do use a credit card for occasional purchases precisely for the same "cash flow" issues you are talking about. Yet they pay those debts off at the end of the month too.
On the other hand, some people get into credit card debt as a source of income.... which it should never be treated as such. That is sort of like what the federal government is doing here, where the debt is so incredibly out of control that it dominates all of the discussions. Even if not a single penny was spent on anything else, it would take years of tax revenue just to pay off the current debt. Yes, it has been that way since practically the foundation of the American Republic, but that doesn't make it any better. At least for previous generations there were some significant attempts to pay off that debt.... which isn't happening at the moment.
What is worse now, servicing the debt is becoming an increasingly huge portion of the federal budget. Between interest on the debt plus "non-discretionary spending" such as Social Security, Medicare, and retirement benefits for federal workers as well as several other "protected programs", over 100% of the federal tax revenue is already accounted for. That means everything beyond those programs like military spending or federal funding for education must come from borrowed money. That is simply an unsustainable situation and I blame both the Democrats and the Republicans for getting us into this situation. There is plenty of blame to both parties and neither is even now trying much of anything to realistically change that situation either.
That was his claim on his resume, and I have little reason to doubt the claim. As for the rest, he has been involved with policy setting issues in regards to spaceflight, and that is all a matter of public record. At least get to know the guy first, and know that stranger things have happened. My point is that Dr. Pournelle was there when many of the key decisions were being made in terms of how the Space Shuttle was being built and what compromises were made along the way because he knew the people who made those decisions and questioned back then why they were being made. In terms of a source for how the SSMEs were originally going to be used, I'd consider this to be a rock solid source.
While he was a little off in the interview in terms of the fact that the SRB are in four segments instead of two, perhaps it is a lapse of memory or more that he was just trying to illustrate that the SRBs had to be brought in pieces to KSC for final assembly before being flown. It would be a much better design had they not come in segments but instead could have been built as one single unit. The whole "O-ring" issue that destroyed the Challenger wouldn't have been a problem if that had been the case.
Since the Challenger explosion, almost all payloads which could be placed upon EELVs (the Delta and Atlas series of rockets) has been pretty much standard practice for some time. Nearly all unmanned flights have been on these other launchers with the Shuttle being used most recently for things which simply require an astronaut.
Yes, back in the early 1980's there was an effort to essentially kill almost all other launchers in favor of just using the Shuttle, under the unrealistic presumption that the Shuttle program was thought to be cheaper than other launch systems. That proved not to be the case and was more wishful thinking on the part of mission planners of the era. It was a huge political empire building exercise that ultimately failed in a big way, and also took a whole bunch of people with it as it killed some efforts to privatize spaceflight back in the 1980s. If your memories are from the propaganda being spread around by NASA from this era, what you are saying was the "conventional wisdom" of the time that the whole of the U.S. civilian (and even military) space program was to use the Shuttle.
Even now, trying to nail down how much it cost to fly the Space Shuttle is so slippery that you can't really get the cost down to within an order of magnitude from multiple sources, and nearly every estimate I've seen is substantially different from the next one. About the only thing I've seen in universal agreement, however, is that flying on the Shuttle proved to be incredibly expensive and much more so than was originally promised.
The one thing that private launchers have going for them now as opposed to a couple of decades ago is the FAA-AST or "Office of Commercial Spaceflight". Simply put, the whole regulatory regime has been pulled completely away from NASA altogether and put under the direct authority of the Department of Transportation through the FAA. All of the "international regulations" and other requirements like insurance (in case the rocket lands on somebody's house) and licensing spaceports is done through this office. Anybody who has received a flight worthiness certificate from this office clearly has their act together and in some ways I think are much better than the vehicles which were designed for NASA. I certainly would trust riding in something certified by the FAA than something "blessed" by the political mess which is NASA.
I don't know the current budget, but some estimates of the NRO (National Reconnaissance Office) may be as high as $40 billion, with more realistic numbers being perhaps closer to $15-$20 billion. Keep in mind that nearly everything that the NRO does is for stuff that goes into space, and that the USAF has other vehicles which goes into space too that is beyond the NRO programs as well. This is "the other space agency" which is seldom talked about. Other federal departments also have their own independent projects in space, like NOAA and their weather satellites.
Also keep in mind that not everything that NASA does goes into space, as there is the aviation research arm and some other activities they perform as well.
The difference is that the US has chosen not to pursue the Shuttle program, so that the money can be spent on never ending social programs.
The money has been there for American crewed spaceflight, and in fact nearly $100 billion have been spent on trying to come up with a successor to the Space Shuttle over the past four decades. Mind you that is on top of Shuttle operations and other parts of the manned spaceflight program. The problem is the lack of leadership to get something built as each new presidential administration seems to have its own idea on how to move on with crewed spaceflight. The list of vehicles that could have been used ought to be legendary and it is a train wreck in terms of getting something done. The American people ought to be screaming with the utter waste of resources and talented engineers spinning their wheels on powerpoint presentations.
The Russian/Soviet space program, on the other hand, pretty much stuck with the old lunar program they had going in the late 1960's and has been doing gradual refinements of the spacecraft design over the years to the point they have a pretty solid design with hundreds of launches to back up their engineering decisions. Rather than trying to come up with the next sexy design, the Russians stuck with something that worked and saved that mountain of money.
Not quite. The reason why trips to the ISS are going to continue to be launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome is because the orbital inclination of the ISS was designed explicitly for vehicles launched from Kazakhstan. For crewed flights leaving from French Guyana, it would actually require even more fuel for the launch than if they left from Baikonur. This is called orbital mechanics, so not all things are equal.
The reason why the Space Shuttle can make it to the ISS is because it has extra fuel that can make the trip, and a whole lot of reserve capacity, not to mention that KSC isn't quite on the equator either. It takes a little extra fuel, but it isn't too bad. BTW, changing the orbital inclination of the ISS at this point would need an act of God or some other divine miracle. The mass of that station alone would preclude any sort of substantial changes of its orbital characteristics. About the only change that I've heard about is to try and boost the ISS to a slightly higher orbit so it can avoid more atmosphere... something that is routinely done anyway at the moment and the Soyuz spacecraft can make it to a slightly higher orbit.
For GEO or equatorial flights, there is a huge benefit for launching from near the equator, not to mention that this move is being done explicitly to allow RKK Energia (the company who makes the Soyuz rockets) the opportunity to go after the international satellite market.... worth several billion per year at the moment.
Adding the extra facilities for crewed launches is comparatively trivial and certainly could be done, and I haven't heard that the idea is being ruled out completely either. The problem would be, where would the ultimate destination be if you launched from there? Perhaps if Robert Bigelow gets his space stations going or there is some increased demand for flights to the Moon (Soyuz spacecraft was originally designed for the Soviet lunar program) you might see some crewed flights from that location. At the moment, you are correct that flights from there will only be unmanned flights.
Almost every locomotive in America is an electric locomotive.... but with one important differences: Most of the locomotives bring their own generator with them. It is called a Diesel-Electric locomotive because the power plant is actually on board the locomotive itself. It turns out that for the scale and power needed for a locomotive, that bringing the generator along makes a whole lot of sense. The generator is roughly the size of a small municipal power plant (really!) and the benefits of the electric motor are that you can apply almost 100% of the torque that the motors can provide right from the moment you start the vehicle. That is particularly important when you need to be pulling hundreds of cars simultaneously like some of the cross-continental freight trains.
Where you see the overhead power lines is when you have high-use and frequent enough traffic that justifies making the additional infrastructure to put in those extra power lines. Keep in mind that you get some power losses simply through transmitting the electricity, and throwing up those overhead lines is incredibly expensive to build and maintain, together with the set of transformers and other infrastructure requirements. Most of the generation is simply "off the grid", although custom built power plants do happen as well. Since there is some improvement in efficiency if you don't have to keep hauling around the power plant with you, once you get past a certain threshold to justify that extra expense as well as having enough locomotives on the route that the efficiency loss due to transmission is negligible, the case for a "pure" electric locomotive is justified.
Such expenses and economies of scale simply aren't justified for major cross-continental rail lines like in the American mid-west. You can and do see that in the north-west urban corridor of America as well as in municipal light rail systems where the extra expense is certainly justified, but it really is a matter of how much traffic is going on the line. Once the line has been built, it gets harder to justify its decommissioning, but I've seen that happen too where the overhead lines are simply turned off and the "electric railways" go back to a Diesel-electric locomotives (which a few are usually kept around just in case of a loss of power even if the overhead lines are available).
Fuel cells can burn JP4 or whatever you want to have it convert to electricity. The fuel energy density is therefor the same for fuel cells as it is for "ordinary" internal combustion engines.... the only difference is how the fuel is burned and how the oxygen is applied to the fuel.
That said, the efficiency of the fuel being burned and being able to supply the motor with sufficient energy given the size of the fuel cell is something to argue about. Fuel cells work fine for astronauts, but then again you wouldn't want to have an ICE in that kind of environment nor are you needing that energy to keep you aloft either.
Unless you have put a whole bunch of effort into creating high power fuel cells, it seems like you would need a whole bank of the things which would add both bulk and mass to the plane.... both of which are things in very short supply on most aircraft. Unless you can improve upon the power plant weight and size of a normal turbofan jet engine, it seems like it would be a waste of effort.
What will be the one little thing that makes the difference?
Considering that the entire Tokamak concept is a blind alley and needs to be abandoned completely in terms of fusion research. There are some interesting scientific discoveries that are happening with that research and it isn't completely going to waste, but I would be completely shocked if somehow a Tokamak-derived fusion reactor ever became a practical device.
It was a very good idea to try out the ideas to see if they worked, and it wasn't a completely poor choice in terms of thinking it could work. But the sad thing is that after billions of dollars have been spend on that approach at the exclusion of any other potential technology or even philosophical concept that might achieve fusion, it needs to be left in the dustbin of history like the airship. Technological progress is filled with stuff like that, and sometimes it is hard to tell when to call it quits on one philosophy and then try to go another direction.
Just what we need.... a multi-billion dollar project that literally flushes away money like there is no tomorrow. It turns out that the Manhattan Project wasn't nearly so desperate either and it would have been interesting to see how World War II might have ended had it not gone one. Certainly it turns out that Germany was so far behind in nuclear physics research that the entire concept of a nuclear bomb was merely an afterthought by the time the Manhattan Project was completed.
The other problem is that once such a mega-project is started... how do you kill the bureaucratic beast that has been created? Sad experience shows that once a bureaucracy is established, it takes something on the order of a political revolution or massive natural disaster to get rid of the thing, even if its purpose for being no longer exists. The Manhattan Project bureaucracy still lives on with Los Alamos National Laboratory. That they still are doing stuff that is productive is perhaps a good thing, but I would say that by 2011 the original project need has long since been accomplished.
To "keep face" and even maintain the letter of the treaty, all you need to do to get out of the Outer Space Treaty is to send a message to all of the signatory parties of the treaty that you intend to leave the standards of that treaty and ignore it.... with one year notification before you do something that would otherwise violate the terms of the treaty.
I don't know if anybody would have the guts to abandon the treaty and that one year clock would be one of the most interesting in the history of mankind if somebody was to start it ticking in an effort to claim extra-terrestrial real estate.
Can we please keep the greed down here on earth, and look at space as something that belongs to our children, not our corporations?
As long as the ability to make a substantial profit from mining the Moon or other extra terrestrial sources can't happen, you will be safe with this assumption. As soon as it becomes profitable to colonize other planets, expect your sentiment to be thrown away like the morning dew.
It is a nice altruistic sentiment and perhaps you might get a bunch of others to agree with you that exploitation of the rest of the Solar System is a bad idea. I just wonder how far you are willing to take this sentiment and if you would be willing to do things like sabotage rocket launches or file legal injunctions against upcoming launches of any kind. In a sense, the genie is out of the bottle and people are already going into space on their own dime and making a profit, so at this point it is mainly a matter of degree.
I warn you, that you will be perceived as a Luddite, and you should in fact embrace that philosophy and attitude with relish admitting that you really don't want mankind going into space. Besides, doing it "for the children" is really a logical fallacy even if rooted in good sentiment. I agree that we need to be concerned about the future, but what happens if they want to go into space and exploit those resources even if you don't? They would be the "children" that you saved it for, isn't it?
It's because of the Cold War. Republicans want a viable space program to stay ahead of the rest of the world for recon and weaponry.
Of all of the possible excuses for Constellation, and for the current SLS program as well, is that something or somebody must try and keep the production facilities going for the Ammonium Perchlorate fuel that goes into the SRB motors. This same rocket fuel is going to be desperately needed in less than a decade when the lifetime of the current ICBM fleet being used by the USAF will finally expire and need to be replaced.
In this sense it is a well placed fear that if NASA stops using this particular fuel type, that when the USAF needs to go buying the next generation of missiles, that they will have to not just pay for the fuel but also to rebuild all of the factories... or worse yet start to buy it from the Chinese.
I think this is perhaps about the only valid argument in favor of these programs, as this is a real national security issue where money spent producing this rocket fuel and keeping the factories running is a valid thing to be considering. What I don't get is why NASA has to keep a program going that is arguably only something the Air Force would really want to be using?
The issue is that solid fueled rockets are wonderful in terms of something that needs to sit in a silo for years and decades with little maintenance and can be "activated" with short notice (from less than a minute to less than an hour) and launched to some destination. Ammonium Perchlorate works very well for that environment, which is why they are being used.
Liquid fueled rockets are much more temperamental and require a crew to be active while they are being filled with fuel. They also have a relatively short window of opportunity for the rocket to be launched after they are fully fueled before the fuel starts to boil off (especially for cryogenic fuels) and at the very least must be drained if the launch is scrubbed. That gives you typically a 24-hour period where the vehicle is down due to a scrub for whatever reason once the tanks are starting to drain. That is bad for an ICBM, but it is just fine for a payload going to orbit where launch windows can be spaced out over several days or even weeks if necessary. Also, stuff going into space will actually fire the vehicle, so in many ways it is a completely different engineering realm instead of having something always on stand-by "just in case".
One other huge difference is just in the way that payloads are delivered to the destination. ICBM designers would rather that the "package" accelerate as quickly as it can to the final destination. Having the payload of an ICBM read 15-20 "G's" of acceleration (about 200 m/s^2) is common and where I've seen some specs as high as 30-40 not being uncommon. Even after the "package" goes ballistic (hence the "B" in ICBM") when the fuel runs out the warhead is doing re-entry with a similar kind of acceleration regime. More to the point, if the velocity is changing rapidly it becomes much harder to hit the thing. You really want to get that warhead to the target almost instantaneously or at least as fast as you possibly can. Launchers to orbit, on the other hand, need to be much more gentle with their payloads and even for "unmanned" and "scientific" instrumentation they try to keep the acceleration more about 4-10 "G's", and many of the newer launchers can keep it more in the range of 3-5. That is about what the Space Shuttle did, and is about the limit of what you want to have especially for crewed vehicles. Any faster and things will break or people will die. Maintaining that more gradual and gentle acceleration requires the liquid fueled rockets for the most part, as that provides the ability to "throttle down" the engines. Solid fueled rockets mostly can't do that without exotic chemical designs in the way that the motor is manufactured.
ICBMs and space launchers are not the same thing, and those who try to equate the two simpl
What amazes me is how Rob Bishop ("the dean of conservative Republicans in the House" and from the 1st district where the ATK facility is at) and Orrin Hatch keep getting a pass on this particular issue by the Tea Party guys and the rank and file of the Republicans in Utah. Even Jason "Tea Party co-founder" Chaffetz (R-3rd district Utah) seems to be strongly in favor of continuing this particular earmark and pork project for the state, and even the lone Democrat from Utah seems to be in favor of "bringing the bacon home to Utah".
Five years ago Orrin Hatch ran on a platform of "brining the bacon home to Utah since 1976", although this year he has finally discovered that no longer works like it used to. Still, on space issues I think I'd agree that this one doesn't seem to be hurting the senior senator from Utah and may even be politically beneficial. I would love to make it an issue in his upcoming re-election campaign. I may even be in a position to make that happen to, so it isn't a complete dream.
Oh, I completely agree that the gall of the folks on capitol hill in Washington DC thinking they know more about aerospace engineering than the good folks in Huntsville speaks of an arrogance on their part that sends chills through my spine. Congress certainly can specific requirements so far as it must be a launcher capable of sending 100 metric tons to LEO and be capable of launching a 20 metric ton vehicle to Mars (or something like that). Broad requirements targeting what Congress is looking for would be a good thing. Specifying individual serial numbers of engines that are going to be used and in what order they will be used together with nuts, bolts, chemicals used, and the entire parts supply tree is way over the top. I wish I was kidding on this, but stuff is being specified to that level and it makes my blood boil.
If ATK can make the Liberty rocket work in some manner that is competitive to other companies like SpaceX, Orbital, and even Boeing and Lockheed-Martin, I would commend them for that effort. Sadly, it seems like the only reason they came up with the Liberty vehicle was hoping to rain some pork upon their Promontory, Utah plant, thinking that the same treadmill of cost-plus contracts was going to continue but merely under a new name.
All current debts to the U.S. government are in U.S. dollar denominated funds. In other words, all that the U.S. government owes is dollars, which can simply be created by Ben Bernanke with a couple of keystrokes on his laptop if he cared (or by Congress with similar results). Defaulting payments isn't the problem, but rather hyperinflation if somehow out of control spending doesn't get put under control.
The U.S. Dollar may become worthless, and $20 billion might just be enough to buy a loaf of bread. The money will be there, but the question is what will it buy?
While I agree with much of the sentiment made here, this is going a bit over the top. The ISS was an evolutionary design change from the original Space Station Freedom concept, which was mostly NASA-produced hardware. Even now, there are clear differences between the Russian segment vs. the American segment, where the "Unity" node is the only thing holding them together. That the Russian section went up first has a whole bunch of factors but it wasn't for the lack of ability on the part of America to build a space station of their own (like Skylab).
I should point out that ESA has been doing some of their own resupply missions to the ISS too, with their ATV spacecraft. That is on top of the Dragon and Cygnus spacecraft which will also be acting as resupply vehicles. It isn't exclusively just the Russians who have been supplying the ISS.
Still, Constellation and now the SLS program are an utter and complete waste of tax dollars. If the SLS ever flies at all, I will consider that to be an amazing bureaucratic achievement by itself, even if the cost per flight makes it painfully obvious that it should never be used afterward.
I've seen designs and plans for launchers that blow SpaceX out of the water. What SpaceX has is that they are an early mover and have actually demonstrated with real flight tests some actual hardware to prove they can do what they are claiming.
The engine I'm excited about coming from SpaceX, however, is the "F1-class" engine they are naming the "Merlin-2" engine. If what I'm reading is correct, it will have more rated thrust capacity than the F1 engine on the Saturn V, and in theory only one of these engines will be necessary on the Falcon 9 if used in that capacity. If they ever get around to building this engine together with clusters like they've done with the original "Merlin" engine, that will be one serious piece of launching apparatus moving stuff into space. The Falcon XX project (the preliminary design has already been developed) will eventually have the lift capacity to put a fully loaded 747 into orbit.
It makes you wonder why another $15 billion is going to be dumped on the SLS system.
Here's an idea: why not do that AFTER commercial interests have the technology to do what NASA does now
I'm curious what "technology" that NASA currently has which "private spaceflight companies" don't have right now? The only thing that private companies... or for that matter even NASA itself won't have now that the Shuttle is retired... is the ability to bring back large bulky items that weigh (mass?) more than several metric tons and bring them from LEO to the Earth. That isn't really technology as it is a capability.
All of the interesting advances in spaceflight technology are happening in private industry right now, not with NASA. NASA has stagnated and instead is going to be flying the SSMEs for one last time each on a "new" rocket that will likely be canceled shortly after its initial test launch... if it even makes it that far. I admire the SSMEs as a jewel of American spaceflight technology, but I think that we can do better than 40 year old technology too.
Seriously... give me just one thing that you can't right now go and pick up the phone and order from a private company today (given a large enough budget to buy it) that NASA has been working on. I dare you! I'm talking something that with enough money and sweet talking because of something other than commercial back orders that you can't be using and/or flying within a year.
While his memory is failing a bit and does make a few factual errors, I think this interview of Jerry Pournelle does a pretty good job of being a source for this little fact:
Dr. Pournelle was involved with much of the planning and policy setting at some level or another since the end of the Apollo program (he was the lead science planner for the Apollo 20 mission) and also chaired the "Citizens' Advisory Council on National Space Policy" during the Reagan administration. He has forgotten more about space policy than the entire readership of Slashdot has ever learned.
The point is that had the SSMEs not been pushed beyond 100%, that they certainly wouldn't need the extensive repairs needed after each flight. Even now, the SSMEs used by Atlantis are being overhauled for the next flight. It sort of disgusts me that they are going to be dumped into the middle of the Pacific Ocean on their next flight rather than being kept in a museum. What a wonderful way to dispose of re-usable hardware.
There were multiple reasons for this, most importantly the SSMEs were routinely used well past their rated thrust efficiency (you hear shuttle pilots being ordered to go to "104%" or higher on most launches) which essentially requires the engines to be completely overhauled and rebuilt after every flight. The original thrust target was about 70% of the rated capacity for those engines, which if done could have taken a simple inspection of the re-entry tiles, swapping out the cargo bay, and placing the thing on a launch pad when it was all done.
The "turn around time" might be a bit longer than a week, but the Shuttle was supposed to be launching on nearly a weekly basis between multiple spacecraft. The best that NASA ever got was to launch on a roughly monthly basis, right before the Challenger exploded. The Shuttle also wasn't nearly as robust as the Saturn V in terms of having more abort requirements due to weather (Apollo 12 flew during a thunder storm and was struck by lightning).
The ghost of Constellation keeps on marching on like a zombie that has to be killed multiple times. It has morphed into SLS and will likely morph again into something else, while the Ares I has now morphed into the "Liberty" spacecraft.
Keep in mind that the Ares I was mainly supposed to be a Shuttle SRB that flew on its own, but since it didn't have enough "umph" to make it to orbit, they had to add an extra section.... which added far more complications to the design than anybody who started the idea was willing to admit.
Now if NASA could only design a rocket system that actually flew. NASA has a dismal record of one launcher program after another getting cancelled, of which the Constellation program is merely the last of a long line of bureaucratic failures. Fancy dreams do eventually have to face the ugly truth called physics, and the results often aren't pretty.
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The difference is being able to pay them off in a short period of time. I suppose the same thing happens in business, where eventually if a company (or an individual) keeps borrowing money they can't repay, eventually they become bankrupt.
The problem is when a country goes bankrupt, it screws everybody over. Nobody knows at all what it means for the United States of America to go bankrupt, as it basically takes the entire world financial system down with it. Some might say that is a good thing after a fashion, but I predict that will only be settled through warfare. The last major economic collapse on this magnitude resulted in World War II. I'd hate to see what this one could bring if it became worse.
Personally I believe the president should issue an executive order raising the arbitrary debt ceiling. Section 4 of the 14th amendment requires such drastic action since it states that "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned." In other words, the republicans already authorized this year's debt when they passed the fiscal budget, and they are violating the constitution by refusing to make sure we have enough funds (from both taxes and credit) to meet those obligations.
This is an interesting idea. The "debt ceiling" is however public law and something that Congress put upon themselves as a way for controlling how much the government could spend even in an emergency. Personally, I think the debt ceiling law is working precisely as it was intended all those years ago when the whole concept was created in the first place. In the past, raising the debt ceiling was a rather routine and non-controversial measure that was usually put in with commissioning 2nd Lieutenants, naval Ensigns, and naming local post offices (all of which need congressional authority). What is surprising at the moment is that it isn't a "routine" manner right now.
What is interesting about this idea is the entire notion that perhaps the President can raise this limit on his own. I think that may be unconstitutional since the law setting the debt limit is purely a creation of Congress, and that authorization without congressional support is a violation of the separation of powers doctrine. Still, your point about the 14th Amendment is a valid point and that for some required expenditures such a debt limit may not necessarily apply. Still, "discretionary" spending might have to end such as what happens when a "government shutdown" happens. President Obama is talking like the world will come crashing to an end if the debt limit isn't raised, where it could be argued that isn't really the case.
I have many times. They are individuals that may have good intentions but are easily led astray. They arguments have little basis in fact, and their misinterpretations of the constitution is horrifying.
In terms of "Tea Party members" being led astray, my own experience is that many of them are politically immature and really don't understand the system they are trying to get themselves into. Some of them are learning very quickly, and sadly there are also a bunch of people, mainly politicians who see the Tea Party movement as a politically "hip" thing to be involved with, who are involved mainly because it gets them some votes and not because they actually believe anything being said by the "Tea Party leaders". Keep in mind that the "leaders" are all or mostly self-appointed because they were the first ones to get involved, and when they speak in the name of the group, the group itself is usually a hollow shell of a group that mainly represents the spokesman and perhaps his/her spouse if they are lucky.
There is a political sea change happening, and there are people who are ticked off about what is happening in the government at all levels, but turning that into real political force is a trick. Some people are manipulating that resentment to their own political ends, but there are some who are genuinely trying to "represent" their "constituents" and trying to make changes based upon this resentment. The trick is trying to tell the scoundrel from the real McCoy.
There is a huge difference between a small loan that is used for day to day purposes and having loans which will take years, decades, or even generations to be able to pay off. I know many people who are largely out of debt but occasionally do use a credit card for occasional purchases precisely for the same "cash flow" issues you are talking about. Yet they pay those debts off at the end of the month too.
On the other hand, some people get into credit card debt as a source of income.... which it should never be treated as such. That is sort of like what the federal government is doing here, where the debt is so incredibly out of control that it dominates all of the discussions. Even if not a single penny was spent on anything else, it would take years of tax revenue just to pay off the current debt. Yes, it has been that way since practically the foundation of the American Republic, but that doesn't make it any better. At least for previous generations there were some significant attempts to pay off that debt.... which isn't happening at the moment.
What is worse now, servicing the debt is becoming an increasingly huge portion of the federal budget. Between interest on the debt plus "non-discretionary spending" such as Social Security, Medicare, and retirement benefits for federal workers as well as several other "protected programs", over 100% of the federal tax revenue is already accounted for. That means everything beyond those programs like military spending or federal funding for education must come from borrowed money. That is simply an unsustainable situation and I blame both the Democrats and the Republicans for getting us into this situation. There is plenty of blame to both parties and neither is even now trying much of anything to realistically change that situation either.
That was his claim on his resume, and I have little reason to doubt the claim. As for the rest, he has been involved with policy setting issues in regards to spaceflight, and that is all a matter of public record. At least get to know the guy first, and know that stranger things have happened. My point is that Dr. Pournelle was there when many of the key decisions were being made in terms of how the Space Shuttle was being built and what compromises were made along the way because he knew the people who made those decisions and questioned back then why they were being made. In terms of a source for how the SSMEs were originally going to be used, I'd consider this to be a rock solid source.
While he was a little off in the interview in terms of the fact that the SRB are in four segments instead of two, perhaps it is a lapse of memory or more that he was just trying to illustrate that the SRBs had to be brought in pieces to KSC for final assembly before being flown. It would be a much better design had they not come in segments but instead could have been built as one single unit. The whole "O-ring" issue that destroyed the Challenger wouldn't have been a problem if that had been the case.
Wake me up when we have more than a gram of anti-matter to make that possible.
I've pondered that very same question myself :)
Since the Challenger explosion, almost all payloads which could be placed upon EELVs (the Delta and Atlas series of rockets) has been pretty much standard practice for some time. Nearly all unmanned flights have been on these other launchers with the Shuttle being used most recently for things which simply require an astronaut.
Yes, back in the early 1980's there was an effort to essentially kill almost all other launchers in favor of just using the Shuttle, under the unrealistic presumption that the Shuttle program was thought to be cheaper than other launch systems. That proved not to be the case and was more wishful thinking on the part of mission planners of the era. It was a huge political empire building exercise that ultimately failed in a big way, and also took a whole bunch of people with it as it killed some efforts to privatize spaceflight back in the 1980s. If your memories are from the propaganda being spread around by NASA from this era, what you are saying was the "conventional wisdom" of the time that the whole of the U.S. civilian (and even military) space program was to use the Shuttle.
Even now, trying to nail down how much it cost to fly the Space Shuttle is so slippery that you can't really get the cost down to within an order of magnitude from multiple sources, and nearly every estimate I've seen is substantially different from the next one. About the only thing I've seen in universal agreement, however, is that flying on the Shuttle proved to be incredibly expensive and much more so than was originally promised.
The one thing that private launchers have going for them now as opposed to a couple of decades ago is the FAA-AST or "Office of Commercial Spaceflight". Simply put, the whole regulatory regime has been pulled completely away from NASA altogether and put under the direct authority of the Department of Transportation through the FAA. All of the "international regulations" and other requirements like insurance (in case the rocket lands on somebody's house) and licensing spaceports is done through this office. Anybody who has received a flight worthiness certificate from this office clearly has their act together and in some ways I think are much better than the vehicles which were designed for NASA. I certainly would trust riding in something certified by the FAA than something "blessed" by the political mess which is NASA.
I don't know the current budget, but some estimates of the NRO (National Reconnaissance Office) may be as high as $40 billion, with more realistic numbers being perhaps closer to $15-$20 billion. Keep in mind that nearly everything that the NRO does is for stuff that goes into space, and that the USAF has other vehicles which goes into space too that is beyond the NRO programs as well. This is "the other space agency" which is seldom talked about. Other federal departments also have their own independent projects in space, like NOAA and their weather satellites.
Also keep in mind that not everything that NASA does goes into space, as there is the aviation research arm and some other activities they perform as well.
The difference is that the US has chosen not to pursue the Shuttle program, so that the money can be spent on never ending social programs.
The money has been there for American crewed spaceflight, and in fact nearly $100 billion have been spent on trying to come up with a successor to the Space Shuttle over the past four decades. Mind you that is on top of Shuttle operations and other parts of the manned spaceflight program. The problem is the lack of leadership to get something built as each new presidential administration seems to have its own idea on how to move on with crewed spaceflight. The list of vehicles that could have been used ought to be legendary and it is a train wreck in terms of getting something done. The American people ought to be screaming with the utter waste of resources and talented engineers spinning their wheels on powerpoint presentations.
The Russian/Soviet space program, on the other hand, pretty much stuck with the old lunar program they had going in the late 1960's and has been doing gradual refinements of the spacecraft design over the years to the point they have a pretty solid design with hundreds of launches to back up their engineering decisions. Rather than trying to come up with the next sexy design, the Russians stuck with something that worked and saved that mountain of money.
Not quite. The reason why trips to the ISS are going to continue to be launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome is because the orbital inclination of the ISS was designed explicitly for vehicles launched from Kazakhstan. For crewed flights leaving from French Guyana, it would actually require even more fuel for the launch than if they left from Baikonur. This is called orbital mechanics, so not all things are equal.
The reason why the Space Shuttle can make it to the ISS is because it has extra fuel that can make the trip, and a whole lot of reserve capacity, not to mention that KSC isn't quite on the equator either. It takes a little extra fuel, but it isn't too bad. BTW, changing the orbital inclination of the ISS at this point would need an act of God or some other divine miracle. The mass of that station alone would preclude any sort of substantial changes of its orbital characteristics. About the only change that I've heard about is to try and boost the ISS to a slightly higher orbit so it can avoid more atmosphere... something that is routinely done anyway at the moment and the Soyuz spacecraft can make it to a slightly higher orbit.
For GEO or equatorial flights, there is a huge benefit for launching from near the equator, not to mention that this move is being done explicitly to allow RKK Energia (the company who makes the Soyuz rockets) the opportunity to go after the international satellite market.... worth several billion per year at the moment.
Adding the extra facilities for crewed launches is comparatively trivial and certainly could be done, and I haven't heard that the idea is being ruled out completely either. The problem would be, where would the ultimate destination be if you launched from there? Perhaps if Robert Bigelow gets his space stations going or there is some increased demand for flights to the Moon (Soyuz spacecraft was originally designed for the Soviet lunar program) you might see some crewed flights from that location. At the moment, you are correct that flights from there will only be unmanned flights.
Almost every locomotive in America is an electric locomotive.... but with one important differences: Most of the locomotives bring their own generator with them. It is called a Diesel-Electric locomotive because the power plant is actually on board the locomotive itself. It turns out that for the scale and power needed for a locomotive, that bringing the generator along makes a whole lot of sense. The generator is roughly the size of a small municipal power plant (really!) and the benefits of the electric motor are that you can apply almost 100% of the torque that the motors can provide right from the moment you start the vehicle. That is particularly important when you need to be pulling hundreds of cars simultaneously like some of the cross-continental freight trains.
Where you see the overhead power lines is when you have high-use and frequent enough traffic that justifies making the additional infrastructure to put in those extra power lines. Keep in mind that you get some power losses simply through transmitting the electricity, and throwing up those overhead lines is incredibly expensive to build and maintain, together with the set of transformers and other infrastructure requirements. Most of the generation is simply "off the grid", although custom built power plants do happen as well. Since there is some improvement in efficiency if you don't have to keep hauling around the power plant with you, once you get past a certain threshold to justify that extra expense as well as having enough locomotives on the route that the efficiency loss due to transmission is negligible, the case for a "pure" electric locomotive is justified.
Such expenses and economies of scale simply aren't justified for major cross-continental rail lines like in the American mid-west. You can and do see that in the north-west urban corridor of America as well as in municipal light rail systems where the extra expense is certainly justified, but it really is a matter of how much traffic is going on the line. Once the line has been built, it gets harder to justify its decommissioning, but I've seen that happen too where the overhead lines are simply turned off and the "electric railways" go back to a Diesel-electric locomotives (which a few are usually kept around just in case of a loss of power even if the overhead lines are available).
Fuel cells can burn JP4 or whatever you want to have it convert to electricity. The fuel energy density is therefor the same for fuel cells as it is for "ordinary" internal combustion engines.... the only difference is how the fuel is burned and how the oxygen is applied to the fuel.
That said, the efficiency of the fuel being burned and being able to supply the motor with sufficient energy given the size of the fuel cell is something to argue about. Fuel cells work fine for astronauts, but then again you wouldn't want to have an ICE in that kind of environment nor are you needing that energy to keep you aloft either.
Unless you have put a whole bunch of effort into creating high power fuel cells, it seems like you would need a whole bank of the things which would add both bulk and mass to the plane.... both of which are things in very short supply on most aircraft. Unless you can improve upon the power plant weight and size of a normal turbofan jet engine, it seems like it would be a waste of effort.
What will be the one little thing that makes the difference?
Considering that the entire Tokamak concept is a blind alley and needs to be abandoned completely in terms of fusion research. There are some interesting scientific discoveries that are happening with that research and it isn't completely going to waste, but I would be completely shocked if somehow a Tokamak-derived fusion reactor ever became a practical device.
It was a very good idea to try out the ideas to see if they worked, and it wasn't a completely poor choice in terms of thinking it could work. But the sad thing is that after billions of dollars have been spend on that approach at the exclusion of any other potential technology or even philosophical concept that might achieve fusion, it needs to be left in the dustbin of history like the airship. Technological progress is filled with stuff like that, and sometimes it is hard to tell when to call it quits on one philosophy and then try to go another direction.
Just what we need.... a multi-billion dollar project that literally flushes away money like there is no tomorrow. It turns out that the Manhattan Project wasn't nearly so desperate either and it would have been interesting to see how World War II might have ended had it not gone one. Certainly it turns out that Germany was so far behind in nuclear physics research that the entire concept of a nuclear bomb was merely an afterthought by the time the Manhattan Project was completed.
The other problem is that once such a mega-project is started... how do you kill the bureaucratic beast that has been created? Sad experience shows that once a bureaucracy is established, it takes something on the order of a political revolution or massive natural disaster to get rid of the thing, even if its purpose for being no longer exists. The Manhattan Project bureaucracy still lives on with Los Alamos National Laboratory. That they still are doing stuff that is productive is perhaps a good thing, but I would say that by 2011 the original project need has long since been accomplished.
Why were you using dial-up Internet? ;)
Because it is faster than trying to use Comcast.
To "keep face" and even maintain the letter of the treaty, all you need to do to get out of the Outer Space Treaty is to send a message to all of the signatory parties of the treaty that you intend to leave the standards of that treaty and ignore it.... with one year notification before you do something that would otherwise violate the terms of the treaty.
I don't know if anybody would have the guts to abandon the treaty and that one year clock would be one of the most interesting in the history of mankind if somebody was to start it ticking in an effort to claim extra-terrestrial real estate.
Can we please keep the greed down here on earth, and look at space as something that belongs to our children, not our corporations?
As long as the ability to make a substantial profit from mining the Moon or other extra terrestrial sources can't happen, you will be safe with this assumption. As soon as it becomes profitable to colonize other planets, expect your sentiment to be thrown away like the morning dew.
It is a nice altruistic sentiment and perhaps you might get a bunch of others to agree with you that exploitation of the rest of the Solar System is a bad idea. I just wonder how far you are willing to take this sentiment and if you would be willing to do things like sabotage rocket launches or file legal injunctions against upcoming launches of any kind. In a sense, the genie is out of the bottle and people are already going into space on their own dime and making a profit, so at this point it is mainly a matter of degree.
I warn you, that you will be perceived as a Luddite, and you should in fact embrace that philosophy and attitude with relish admitting that you really don't want mankind going into space. Besides, doing it "for the children" is really a logical fallacy even if rooted in good sentiment. I agree that we need to be concerned about the future, but what happens if they want to go into space and exploit those resources even if you don't? They would be the "children" that you saved it for, isn't it?
It's because of the Cold War. Republicans want a viable space program to stay ahead of the rest of the world for recon and weaponry.
Of all of the possible excuses for Constellation, and for the current SLS program as well, is that something or somebody must try and keep the production facilities going for the Ammonium Perchlorate fuel that goes into the SRB motors. This same rocket fuel is going to be desperately needed in less than a decade when the lifetime of the current ICBM fleet being used by the USAF will finally expire and need to be replaced.
In this sense it is a well placed fear that if NASA stops using this particular fuel type, that when the USAF needs to go buying the next generation of missiles, that they will have to not just pay for the fuel but also to rebuild all of the factories... or worse yet start to buy it from the Chinese.
I think this is perhaps about the only valid argument in favor of these programs, as this is a real national security issue where money spent producing this rocket fuel and keeping the factories running is a valid thing to be considering. What I don't get is why NASA has to keep a program going that is arguably only something the Air Force would really want to be using?
The issue is that solid fueled rockets are wonderful in terms of something that needs to sit in a silo for years and decades with little maintenance and can be "activated" with short notice (from less than a minute to less than an hour) and launched to some destination. Ammonium Perchlorate works very well for that environment, which is why they are being used.
Liquid fueled rockets are much more temperamental and require a crew to be active while they are being filled with fuel. They also have a relatively short window of opportunity for the rocket to be launched after they are fully fueled before the fuel starts to boil off (especially for cryogenic fuels) and at the very least must be drained if the launch is scrubbed. That gives you typically a 24-hour period where the vehicle is down due to a scrub for whatever reason once the tanks are starting to drain. That is bad for an ICBM, but it is just fine for a payload going to orbit where launch windows can be spaced out over several days or even weeks if necessary. Also, stuff going into space will actually fire the vehicle, so in many ways it is a completely different engineering realm instead of having something always on stand-by "just in case".
One other huge difference is just in the way that payloads are delivered to the destination. ICBM designers would rather that the "package" accelerate as quickly as it can to the final destination. Having the payload of an ICBM read 15-20 "G's" of acceleration (about 200 m/s^2) is common and where I've seen some specs as high as 30-40 not being uncommon. Even after the "package" goes ballistic (hence the "B" in ICBM") when the fuel runs out the warhead is doing re-entry with a similar kind of acceleration regime. More to the point, if the velocity is changing rapidly it becomes much harder to hit the thing. You really want to get that warhead to the target almost instantaneously or at least as fast as you possibly can. Launchers to orbit, on the other hand, need to be much more gentle with their payloads and even for "unmanned" and "scientific" instrumentation they try to keep the acceleration more about 4-10 "G's", and many of the newer launchers can keep it more in the range of 3-5. That is about what the Space Shuttle did, and is about the limit of what you want to have especially for crewed vehicles. Any faster and things will break or people will die. Maintaining that more gradual and gentle acceleration requires the liquid fueled rockets for the most part, as that provides the ability to "throttle down" the engines. Solid fueled rockets mostly can't do that without exotic chemical designs in the way that the motor is manufactured.
ICBMs and space launchers are not the same thing, and those who try to equate the two simpl
What amazes me is how Rob Bishop ("the dean of conservative Republicans in the House" and from the 1st district where the ATK facility is at) and Orrin Hatch keep getting a pass on this particular issue by the Tea Party guys and the rank and file of the Republicans in Utah. Even Jason "Tea Party co-founder" Chaffetz (R-3rd district Utah) seems to be strongly in favor of continuing this particular earmark and pork project for the state, and even the lone Democrat from Utah seems to be in favor of "bringing the bacon home to Utah".
Five years ago Orrin Hatch ran on a platform of "brining the bacon home to Utah since 1976", although this year he has finally discovered that no longer works like it used to. Still, on space issues I think I'd agree that this one doesn't seem to be hurting the senior senator from Utah and may even be politically beneficial. I would love to make it an issue in his upcoming re-election campaign. I may even be in a position to make that happen to, so it isn't a complete dream.
Oh, I completely agree that the gall of the folks on capitol hill in Washington DC thinking they know more about aerospace engineering than the good folks in Huntsville speaks of an arrogance on their part that sends chills through my spine. Congress certainly can specific requirements so far as it must be a launcher capable of sending 100 metric tons to LEO and be capable of launching a 20 metric ton vehicle to Mars (or something like that). Broad requirements targeting what Congress is looking for would be a good thing. Specifying individual serial numbers of engines that are going to be used and in what order they will be used together with nuts, bolts, chemicals used, and the entire parts supply tree is way over the top. I wish I was kidding on this, but stuff is being specified to that level and it makes my blood boil.
If ATK can make the Liberty rocket work in some manner that is competitive to other companies like SpaceX, Orbital, and even Boeing and Lockheed-Martin, I would commend them for that effort. Sadly, it seems like the only reason they came up with the Liberty vehicle was hoping to rain some pork upon their Promontory, Utah plant, thinking that the same treadmill of cost-plus contracts was going to continue but merely under a new name.
All current debts to the U.S. government are in U.S. dollar denominated funds. In other words, all that the U.S. government owes is dollars, which can simply be created by Ben Bernanke with a couple of keystrokes on his laptop if he cared (or by Congress with similar results). Defaulting payments isn't the problem, but rather hyperinflation if somehow out of control spending doesn't get put under control.
The U.S. Dollar may become worthless, and $20 billion might just be enough to buy a loaf of bread. The money will be there, but the question is what will it buy?
While I agree with much of the sentiment made here, this is going a bit over the top. The ISS was an evolutionary design change from the original Space Station Freedom concept, which was mostly NASA-produced hardware. Even now, there are clear differences between the Russian segment vs. the American segment, where the "Unity" node is the only thing holding them together. That the Russian section went up first has a whole bunch of factors but it wasn't for the lack of ability on the part of America to build a space station of their own (like Skylab).
I should point out that ESA has been doing some of their own resupply missions to the ISS too, with their ATV spacecraft. That is on top of the Dragon and Cygnus spacecraft which will also be acting as resupply vehicles. It isn't exclusively just the Russians who have been supplying the ISS.
Still, Constellation and now the SLS program are an utter and complete waste of tax dollars. If the SLS ever flies at all, I will consider that to be an amazing bureaucratic achievement by itself, even if the cost per flight makes it painfully obvious that it should never be used afterward.
I've seen designs and plans for launchers that blow SpaceX out of the water. What SpaceX has is that they are an early mover and have actually demonstrated with real flight tests some actual hardware to prove they can do what they are claiming.
The engine I'm excited about coming from SpaceX, however, is the "F1-class" engine they are naming the "Merlin-2" engine. If what I'm reading is correct, it will have more rated thrust capacity than the F1 engine on the Saturn V, and in theory only one of these engines will be necessary on the Falcon 9 if used in that capacity. If they ever get around to building this engine together with clusters like they've done with the original "Merlin" engine, that will be one serious piece of launching apparatus moving stuff into space. The Falcon XX project (the preliminary design has already been developed) will eventually have the lift capacity to put a fully loaded 747 into orbit.
It makes you wonder why another $15 billion is going to be dumped on the SLS system.
Here's an idea: why not do that AFTER commercial interests have the technology to do what NASA does now
I'm curious what "technology" that NASA currently has which "private spaceflight companies" don't have right now? The only thing that private companies... or for that matter even NASA itself won't have now that the Shuttle is retired... is the ability to bring back large bulky items that weigh (mass?) more than several metric tons and bring them from LEO to the Earth. That isn't really technology as it is a capability.
All of the interesting advances in spaceflight technology are happening in private industry right now, not with NASA. NASA has stagnated and instead is going to be flying the SSMEs for one last time each on a "new" rocket that will likely be canceled shortly after its initial test launch... if it even makes it that far. I admire the SSMEs as a jewel of American spaceflight technology, but I think that we can do better than 40 year old technology too.
Seriously... give me just one thing that you can't right now go and pick up the phone and order from a private company today (given a large enough budget to buy it) that NASA has been working on. I dare you! I'm talking something that with enough money and sweet talking because of something other than commercial back orders that you can't be using and/or flying within a year.
While his memory is failing a bit and does make a few factual errors, I think this interview of Jerry Pournelle does a pretty good job of being a source for this little fact:
http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=mpg&mpid=86&load=5745
Dr. Pournelle was involved with much of the planning and policy setting at some level or another since the end of the Apollo program (he was the lead science planner for the Apollo 20 mission) and also chaired the "Citizens' Advisory Council on National Space Policy" during the Reagan administration. He has forgotten more about space policy than the entire readership of Slashdot has ever learned.
The point is that had the SSMEs not been pushed beyond 100%, that they certainly wouldn't need the extensive repairs needed after each flight. Even now, the SSMEs used by Atlantis are being overhauled for the next flight. It sort of disgusts me that they are going to be dumped into the middle of the Pacific Ocean on their next flight rather than being kept in a museum. What a wonderful way to dispose of re-usable hardware.
There were multiple reasons for this, most importantly the SSMEs were routinely used well past their rated thrust efficiency (you hear shuttle pilots being ordered to go to "104%" or higher on most launches) which essentially requires the engines to be completely overhauled and rebuilt after every flight. The original thrust target was about 70% of the rated capacity for those engines, which if done could have taken a simple inspection of the re-entry tiles, swapping out the cargo bay, and placing the thing on a launch pad when it was all done.
The "turn around time" might be a bit longer than a week, but the Shuttle was supposed to be launching on nearly a weekly basis between multiple spacecraft. The best that NASA ever got was to launch on a roughly monthly basis, right before the Challenger exploded. The Shuttle also wasn't nearly as robust as the Saturn V in terms of having more abort requirements due to weather (Apollo 12 flew during a thunder storm and was struck by lightning).
The ghost of Constellation keeps on marching on like a zombie that has to be killed multiple times. It has morphed into SLS and will likely morph again into something else, while the Ares I has now morphed into the "Liberty" spacecraft.
Keep in mind that the Ares I was mainly supposed to be a Shuttle SRB that flew on its own, but since it didn't have enough "umph" to make it to orbit, they had to add an extra section.... which added far more complications to the design than anybody who started the idea was willing to admit.
Now if NASA could only design a rocket system that actually flew. NASA has a dismal record of one launcher program after another getting cancelled, of which the Constellation program is merely the last of a long line of bureaucratic failures. Fancy dreams do eventually have to face the ugly truth called physics, and the results often aren't pretty.