Re: What if the shuttle had never existed?

[uray]

"Hallerb" > wrote in message
...
> After the moon program ended Apollo spacecraft had been the workhorse of
NASA?
>
> Skylab could of been continued and the second one flown:)
>
> What science did the Shuttle do in all these years that was unlikely
onboard
> apollo craft?
>
> Where would we be today?

On the Moon possibly.

uray

[Charleston]

"Hallerb" > wrote in message
...

> After the moon program ended Apollo spacecraft had been the workhorse of
NASA?
>
> Skylab could of been continued and the second one flown:)
>
> What science did the Shuttle do in all these years that was unlikely
onboard
> apollo craft?
>
> Where would we be today?

I think you could write a book on the subject Bob, but very few people would
read a tome of that nature. Most people barely notice the real space
program so you can imagine their inabilty to fathom what *might have
happened*, when they don't care enough to learn *what did happen* or *what
is happening now*. Our space program has been reduced by the major TV
networks to an occasional news flash or an hour with Charlie Gibson making
dramatic ABC discoveries. Over on s.s.history they spend a little more time
doing the "what ifs" with Apollo because, well Apollo is history. I read a
book from the library that reviewed a lot of Von Braun's future plans if he
had gotten his way. We'd still be on the moon and gone to Mars by now, but
Bob, it would not have been with the Saturn V.

If you accept the Shuttle as a grandly underfunded research and development
vehicle, it will go down in history for a lot of neat firsts that it
accomplished despite the fact that we did not give it our best effort. For
all of its failings, the Shuttle has demonstrated the great things humankind
can do if only we dare to invest a little more of our wealth in the future
through research instead of mortgaging it in the form of tax cuts made with
borrowed money today (end political rant).

1. First reusable orbiter.
2. First reusable main engine
3. First reusable thermal protection system (for all of its flaws it is
still an engineering marvel)
4. First regular 14,7 psi earth atmosphere onboard a space vehicle.
5. First ability to repair and modify satellites on station in low earth
orbit.
6. The first deployment, repair, and ongoing maintenance of the Hubble Space
telescope and deployment of Chandra.
7. The first deployment and construction of a low earth space station.

There are many more but the ones above stick in my head as particularly
advancing humankind's presence in space. Don't underestimate the importance
of these accomplishments. For all of its amazing power, the Apollo/Saturn
was a gigantic throwaway vehicle.

Daniel

[Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)]

"Charleston" > wrote in message
news:ZxlQa.13470$zy.4175@fed1read06...
> 4. First regular 14,7 psi earth atmosphere onboard a space vehicle.

Actually that's not true. Soviet designs had that from day one.


> 5. First ability to repair and modify satellites on station in low earth
> orbit.
> 6. The first deployment, repair, and ongoing maintenance of the Hubble
Space
> telescope and deployment of Chandra.
> 7. The first deployment and construction of a low earth space station.

Again, I think the Soviets might disagree.


>
> There are many more but the ones above stick in my head as particularly
> advancing humankind's presence in space. Don't underestimate the
importance
> of these accomplishments. For all of its amazing power, the Apollo/Saturn
> was a gigantic throwaway vehicle.
>
> Daniel
>
>

[Charleston]

"Greg D. Moore (Strider)" > wrote in message
...
>
> "Charleston" > wrote in message
> news:ZxlQa.13470$zy.4175@fed1read06...

> > 4. First regular 14.7 psi earth atmosphere onboard a space vehicle.

> Actually that's not true. Soviet designs had that from day one.

Including the oxygen/nitrogen mix? If yes I stand corrected. Please
elaborate if you don't mind.

> > 5. First ability to repair and modify satellites on station in low earth
> > orbit.

> > 6. The first deployment, repair, and ongoing maintenance of the Hubble
> Space telescope and deployment of Chandra.

> > 7. The first deployment and construction of a low earth space station.
>
> Again, I think the Soviets might disagree.

Damn Soviets, and I have even read "Star Crossed Orbits". I am interested
in what the Soviets deployed and maintained in the way of space telescopes.
I was thinking in terms of deployment from the orbiter which itself is
reusable. Going down that road I got stuck in the relative uniqueness of
reusability forgetting the dumb boosters.

Daniel

[Hallerb]

>
>hallerb,
>
>What if you never existed on sss?
>

Well I have Florida Today supporting me by daily reports.

You dont get it NASA is in serious trouble. Bad decisions today dont just risk
astronaut lives but the future of manned space and the agency itself.

[MasterShrink]

>
>After the moon program ended Apollo spacecraft had been the workhorse of
>NASA?
>
>Skylab could of been continued and the second one flown:)
>
>What science did the Shuttle do in all these years that was unlikely onboard
>apollo craft?
>
>Where would we be today?

Well, some of the science conducted aboard the shuttle certainly was not
capable aboard the Apollo spacecraft. The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission
strikes me as one.

Where would we be? Probably still on the moon. Maybe the extended lunar surface
plans would have gone into affect and things like the LEM Shelters would have
been developed.

Of course using Apollo doesn't mean we'd still be flying Saturn V's. For all we
know NASA would only have the money to maintain Earth orbit operations
supported by Saturn IB's.

-A.L.

[Hallerb]

>
>The same paper that pre-Columbia disaster had very little that was
>negative to say about NASA. It must be a wonderful source of unbiased
>news...
>

I think they didnt want to upset their readers....

But NOW they realize NASA is like a old person with one foot on a banana peal
and the other ready to step in a grave.

One misstep now and many of their readers will be unemployeed. Either directly
PAD RATS or indirectly SELL STUFF TO NASA WORKERS.

Ignoring the issues beuing raised now puts the entire program at risk.

[Eric Pederson]

MasterShrink wrote:
>
> >
> >After the moon program ended Apollo spacecraft had been the workhorse of
> >NASA?
> >
> >Skylab could of been continued and the second one flown:)
> >
> >What science did the Shuttle do in all these years that was unlikely onboard
> >apollo craft?
> >
> >Where would we be today?
>
> Well, some of the science conducted aboard the shuttle certainly was not
> capable aboard the Apollo spacecraft. The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission
> strikes me as one.
>
> Where would we be? Probably still on the moon. Maybe the extended lunar surface
> plans would have gone into affect and things like the LEM Shelters would have
> been developed.
>
> Of course using Apollo doesn't mean we'd still be flying Saturn V's. For all we
> know NASA would only have the money to maintain Earth orbit operations
> supported by Saturn IB's.
>
> -A.L.

The critical difference between a shuttle mission and an Apollo type
mission (with the mission payload carried in the S-IVB to SM fairing)
is down mass/volume. The shuttle can bring the payload back, with an
Apollo derivation, it would be a one-way trip. Things like the long
exposure experiment, and spacelab with large return payloads would
have been difficult for an Apollo derived system.

[Charleston]

"Hallerb" > wrote in message
...

> Ignoring the issues beuing raised now puts the entire program at risk.

The entire program is at risk.

[OM]

On Mon, 14 Jul 2003 23:12:10 GMT, Eric Pederson
deZ to respond> wrote:

>The critical difference between a shuttle mission and an Apollo type
>mission (with the mission payload carried in the S-IVB to SM fairing)
>is down mass/volume. The shuttle can bring the payload back, with an
>Apollo derivation, it would be a one-way trip. Things like the long
>exposure experiment, and spacelab with large return payloads would
>have been difficult for an Apollo derived system.

....Difficult, but not impossible. LDEF could have been easily launched
by itself, but designed so that its sample segments could have been
easily removed during an EVA. If you take an LDEF, break it down into
individual sides and lay them on top of one another, then break them
down smaller, you'd be able to fit a stack of one side into a CM
designed specifically for cargo only.

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

[Hallerb]

>
>> Ignoring the issues beuing raised now puts the entire program at risk.
>
>The entire program is at risk.
>
>

Very true, but another screw up can kill manned space.

The public will not like watching another crew die, but will be out or blood if
it was preventable.

So the chicken littles could save the backsides and jobs of the LETS FLY SOON
NASA crowd here.

[Charleston]

"Hallerb" > wrote in message
...
> >
> >> Ignoring the issues beuing raised now puts the entire program at risk.
> >
> >The entire program is at risk.
> >
> >
>
> Very true, but another screw up can kill manned space.

My point was this one may have done very serious harm to our civilain space
program that compromises the near term and perhaps long term goals of U.S.
manned space flight. We have not gotten past this disaster yet, Bob.

> The public will not like watching another crew die, but will be out or
blood if
> it was preventable.

Well I hope the public does not like it. Although with reality TV evolving
you have to wonder.
It makes for great drama and TV ratings. Something akin to rubber neckling
on the freeway after a fatal car accident.

[Hallerb]

>We have not gotten past this disaster yet, Bob.
>

If you hang out here you would be lead to believe were ready to fly really
soon.

This rush to fly scares me.I fear we will miss some critical problems while
hurrying to support ISS.

[Kaido Kert]

"Charleston" > wrote in message
news:ZxlQa.13470$zy.4175@fed1read06...
> "Hallerb" > wrote in message
> ...
>
> > After the moon program ended Apollo spacecraft had been the workhorse
of
> NASA?
> >
> > Skylab could of been continued and the second one flown:)
> >
> > What science did the Shuttle do in all these years that was unlikely
> onboard
> > apollo craft?
> >
> > Where would we be today?
Hm .. lets see. Maybe the program would have turned away from that false
"for sake of science and humankind" premise and actually tried to turn space
into economic benefit. Maybe we would have solar power stations on orbit,
giving fission plants a serious competition ?
Or maybe NASA would be a purely deep space research and science agency
instead, supported by strong commercial near-earth space industries ?

-kert

[jeff findley]

Eric Pederson deZ to respond> writes:
> The critical difference between a shuttle mission and an Apollo type
> mission (with the mission payload carried in the S-IVB to SM fairing)
> is down mass/volume. The shuttle can bring the payload back, with an
> Apollo derivation, it would be a one-way trip. Things like the long
> exposure experiment, and spacelab with large return payloads would
> have been difficult for an Apollo derived system.

First point. It's not at all clear that significant downmass is all
that important. What large objects has the shuttle brought back that
has been worth the price of a shuttle flight? Such objects are few
and far between. The shuttle pays for this "feature" in reduced
upmass. A two stage Saturn V had significantly more upmass capability
than the shuttle (e.g. Skylab).

Second point. If significant downmass is important, an unmanned CM
has some downmass. The diameter of a CM is 3.9m, but who's to say
that's the limit for a LEO capsule? If you scale up a CM to the
diameter of an S-IVB (seems like a logical choice if you're launching
on a Saturn IB), you get a capsule that's 6.6m in diameter (the
diameter of Skylab's main workshop).

If you launch on a two stage Saturn V (e.g. just like a Skylab
launch), you can scale up to a whopping diameter of 10.1m! I'd
imagine you could design a capsule launched in this manner to have a
very large downmass.

When you're designing something this big, I wouldn't assume that it's
expendable. Nor would I assume that the Saturn launch vehicles would
remain completely expendable. Reusable first stages would be a
logical step that was studied. Reusable upper stages would be more of
a challenge, but would not necessarily need to pay the performance
penalty of carrying large wings to orbit and back like the shuttle
does.

If we'd evolved the Saturn launch vehicles instead of going with the
shuttle, they would bear little resemblance to the originals, now
that it's over 30 years later.

Jeff
--
Remove "no" and "spam" from email address to reply.
If it says "This is not spam!", it's surely a lie.

[starman]

jeff findley wrote:
>
> Eric Pederson deZ to respond> writes:
> > The critical difference between a shuttle mission and an Apollo type
> > mission (with the mission payload carried in the S-IVB to SM fairing)
> > is down mass/volume. The shuttle can bring the payload back, with an
> > Apollo derivation, it would be a one-way trip. Things like the long
> > exposure experiment, and spacelab with large return payloads would
> > have been difficult for an Apollo derived system.
>
> First point. It's not at all clear that significant downmass is all
> that important. What large objects has the shuttle brought back that
> has been worth the price of a shuttle flight? Such objects are few
> and far between. The shuttle pays for this "feature" in reduced
> upmass. A two stage Saturn V had significantly more upmass capability
> than the shuttle (e.g. Skylab).
>
> Second point. If significant downmass is important, an unmanned CM
> has some downmass. The diameter of a CM is 3.9m, but who's to say
> that's the limit for a LEO capsule? If you scale up a CM to the
> diameter of an S-IVB (seems like a logical choice if you're launching
> on a Saturn IB), you get a capsule that's 6.6m in diameter (the
> diameter of Skylab's main workshop).
>
> If you launch on a two stage Saturn V (e.g. just like a Skylab
> launch), you can scale up to a whopping diameter of 10.1m! I'd
> imagine you could design a capsule launched in this manner to have a
> very large downmass.
>
> When you're designing something this big, I wouldn't assume that it's
> expendable. Nor would I assume that the Saturn launch vehicles would
> remain completely expendable. Reusable first stages would be a
> logical step that was studied. Reusable upper stages would be more of
> a challenge, but would not necessarily need to pay the performance
> penalty of carrying large wings to orbit and back like the shuttle
> does.
>
> If we'd evolved the Saturn launch vehicles instead of going with the
> shuttle, they would bear little resemblance to the originals, now
> that it's over 30 years later.

In hindsight, it probably would have been a good idea to refine the
Saturn-V with at least a reusable first stage. This concept was called
the 'big dumb booster' at the time.
BTW- The name 'Saturn-V' was supposed to refer only to the first stage
but later came to mean the entire stack.


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[jeff findley]

starman > writes:
> In hindsight, it probably would have been a good idea to refine the
> Saturn-V with at least a reusable first stage. This concept was called
> the 'big dumb booster' at the time.

I've never heard "big dumb booster" used in this manner. Reusable
S-IC stages would certainly be big, but not dumb. Really large,
pressure fed launch vehicles are big dumb boosters. Perhaps you were
thinking of something like Sea Dragon?

> BTW- The name 'Saturn-V' was supposed to refer only to the first stage
> but later came to mean the entire stack.

Say what? I've always seen the first stage of the Saturn V referred
to as Saturn IC. The second stage as Saturn II, and the third stage
as Saturn IVB (also used on Saturn IB, with minor changes).

Jeff
--
Remove "no" and "spam" from email address to reply.
If it says "This is not spam!", it's surely a lie.

[Charleston]

"Sean Conolly" > wrote in message
. ..
> "Charleston" > wrote in message
news:ZxlQa.13470$zy.4175@fed1read06...
> > "Hallerb" > wrote in message
...
> >
> > > After the moon program ended Apollo spacecraft had been the workhorse
> of
> > NASA?
> > >
> > > Skylab could of been continued and the second one flown:)
> > >
> > > What science did the Shuttle do in all these years that was unlikely
> > onboard
>
> >
> > 1. First reusable orbiter.
> > 2. First reusable main engine
> > 3. First reusable thermal protection system (for all of its flaws it is
> > still an engineering marvel)
>
> Here's the rub in my mind: the Shuttle was partially sold to the public as
a
> reusable vehicle to replace a disposable vehicle, *to save money*. That
> aspect of the program was a miserable failure since it takes more money to
> prep and launch a shuttle than it cost for a complete Saturn V system, and
> along the way we lost the capacity to reach beyond low Earth orbit.

We have talked about how it was sold here in the past but what I was saying
was:

"If you accept the Shuttle as a grandly underfunded research and development
vehicle,"

The Shuttle/orbiter did not live up to its original billing. I accept that
fact.

> Another aspect of the origins of the shuttle (as I understand it) was that
> it was needed to build a space station, which in turn was needed to build
> the manned vehicles for missions to Mars. Even with the space station
> returning from the budget cut grave of the late '70s, we still have an
> overall program that seems incomplete. The main purpose for the shuttle
now
> is to build and support the ISS, but the purpose of the ISS is still
> research only, or possibly in the future as a support base for injured
> shuttles.

Of all the choices Richard Nixon had, he picked a part of the cheapest
choice. The Space Station and Space tug were both deferred. The Space
Station was renamed, redesigned, realigned, Internationalized (if that is a
word) and mismanaged as a project. It has defied all efforts to kill it and
could use a few more windows Is it worth it? I hope so.

> Don't get me wrong, I fully believe a manned space program is an important
> business that the country and the world should stay involved with, which
> will pay off in ways that we can't see from here as the decades pass. The
> problem is that the public that funds these programs don't see where this
is
> all going, which is why Congress is always under pressure to reduce or
even
> scrap the program. The space program today reminds me of the early days of
> flight, with people watching the early planes and saying "Gee, that's
> amazing, but what's it good for?"

"If you accept the Shuttle as a grandly underfunded research and development
vehicle". Add the Space Station as part of a demonstration project please.

Daniel

[Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)]

"Jorge R. Frank" > wrote in message
...
> "Charleston" > wrote in
> news:TqnQa.14292$zy.9058@fed1read06:

> >> > 6. The first deployment, repair, and ongoing maintenance of the
> >> > Hubble
> >> Space telescope and deployment of Chandra.
> >
> >> > 7. The first deployment and construction of a low earth space
> >> > station.
> >>
> >> Again, I think the Soviets might disagree.
> >
> > Damn Soviets, and I have even read "Star Crossed Orbits". I am
> > interested in what the Soviets deployed and maintained in the way of
> > space telescopes.
>
> I think Greg was referring specifically only to #7. I'm not aware of any
> Soviet space telescopes, at least not any remotely in the same league as
> HST.

I was. Sorry for the confusion.

>
> I do recall the Soviets attaching a TKS ferry to either Salyut 6 or 7,
thus
> qualifying as the first space station "assembly". Mir took the concept to
> the next level, of course.