Article: "The End of US Manned Spaceflight is Looming Closer"

[aero_engineer]

This article appeared to have some good points, but more than its fair
share of inaccuracies, hype, and bias:

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/rocketscience-03zj1.html

[Peterson, David]

> This article appeared to have some good points, but more than its fair
> share of inaccuracies, hype, and bias:
>
> http://www.spacedaily.com/news/rocketscience-03zj1.html


Spacedaily often has a lot of hype. Last year I think they said it was
very unlikely the mars rovers would be launched until 2008.

[Jorge R. Frank]

(aero_engineer) wrote in
om:

> This article appeared to have some good points, but more than its fair
> share of inaccuracies, hype, and bias:
>
> http://www.spacedaily.com/news/rocketscience-03zj1.html

That's an understatement.

<quote>
The basic problem is that the OSP, as currently defined, must carry such
heavy mass penalties in the form of wings, wheels...
</quote>

The OSP definition allows for capsules, which have neither wings nor
wheels.

<quote>
The original OSP concept envisioned a 7-seat vehicle which could rescue or
exchange the entire ISS crew in one sortie. (NASA's proposed Budget
Amendment of 14 November '02 said "as many as 10".) The Level I requirement
document reduced this to "at least 4" persons.

However, a later NASA document "interpreting" the Level I requirements
(online reference) has gone mostly unnoticed. In this 'interpretation" the
requirement for "at least 4" seats in OSP has been changed to a "system
requirement" that can be reached using multiple spacecraft instead of only
one! Presumably, proposals for 2-seat or even 1-seat spacecraft would be
now considered acceptable under this bizarre "interpretation" of the "at
least 4" requirement.
</quote>

This is a feature, not a bug! It allows for medevac of a sick/injured ISS
crewmember without having to bring the whole crew home. It decreases the
probability that the entire crew would be cut off from a single escape
vehicle. Finally, it opens the field for commercial startups to bid smaller
vehicles.

I didn't bother reading the article much past this.

--
JRF

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