NASA formally unveils lunar exploration architecture

[AA Institute]

NASA today unveiled an ambitious blueprint for returning American
astronauts to the moon by 2018 using new rockets based on shuttle
propulsion technology and a new reusable crew vehicle Administrator
Mike Griffin described as "Apollo on steroids."

Full story:

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0509/19exploration/

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[Joe Strout]

In article . com>,
"AA Institute" > wrote:

> NASA today unveiled an ambitious blueprint

Well, I guess opinions on that may vary.

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[Alex Terrell]

Joe Strout wrote:
> In article . com>,
> "AA Institute" > wrote:
>
> > NASA today unveiled an ambitious blueprint
>
> Well, I guess opinions on that may vary.
>
I thought I was seeing the history channel - except there was no
Kennedy to say by the end of decade - rather, we'll put some men on the
moon, when we get round to it.

With no plans for a moonbase, I'm struggling to see the point of all
this. And the architecture is about 50% more expensive than it ought to
be.

[paris2012@gmail.com]

The bottom line is : let s give back to NASA in 2018 the capabilities
it had in 1972.

[Rene Altena]

"Rand Simberg" > wrote in message
...
> On 19 Sep 2005 14:47:27 -0700, in a place far, far away, "Alex
> Terrell" > made the phosphor on my monitor glow
> in such a way as to indicate that:
>
>>> > NASA today unveiled an ambitious blueprint
>>>
>>> Well, I guess opinions on that may vary.
>>>
>>I thought I was seeing the history channel - except there was no
>>Kennedy to say by the end of decade - rather, we'll put some men on the
>>moon, when we get round to it.
>>
>>With no plans for a moonbase, I'm struggling to see the point of all
>>this. And the architecture is about 50% more expensive than it ought to
>>be.
>
> OK, is anyone other than NASA fanboys here actually excited about this
> plan?

I wonder why it would take until 2018 to get somebody up there. With this
technology (the first rocket looks more like a Saturn rocket and the other
one more like an Ariane 5 !) it should not take that long!

Rene

[Ed Kyle]

Rand Simberg wrote:
> On 19 Sep 2005 14:47:27 -0700, in a place far, far away, "Alex
> Terrell" > made the phosphor on my monitor glow
> in such a way as to indicate that:
>
> >> > NASA today unveiled an ambitious blueprint
> >>
> >> Well, I guess opinions on that may vary.
> >>
> >I thought I was seeing the history channel - except there was no
> >Kennedy to say by the end of decade - rather, we'll put some men on the
> >moon, when we get round to it.
> >
> >With no plans for a moonbase, I'm struggling to see the point of all
> >this. And the architecture is about 50% more expensive than it ought to
> >be.
>
> OK, is anyone other than NASA fanboys here actually excited about this
> plan?

I think it provides a good roadmap for NASA to follow for
the next how-ever-many years. It is a great improvement
to the space shuttle era NASA framework.

This is a plan that could very well, over time, lead to a
smaller, more focused NASA. It is a plan that produces
something useful in the near-term - the CEV and CLV tools
that will replace shuttle and could by themselves, in
concert with commercial launch services and international
space station partners, serve as the framework for a long-
term human space program. It also lays out longer term
plans and goals (the Moon, Mars maybe but not probably) that
could happen, or not, depending on national priorities down
the road.

- Ed Kyle

[Alex Terrell]

wrote:
> The bottom line is : let s give back to NASA in 2018 the capabilities
> it had in 1972.

Not quite. In 1972 NASA could do a moon landing with a single launch.
The new scheme will require two launches of two different, specially
designed rockets.

This should provide good employment opportunities for rocket designers.

[Brian Thorn]

On Mon, 19 Sep 2005 23:58:52 +0200, "Rene Altena"
> wrote:


>I wonder why it would take until 2018 to get somebody up there.

Because for the next five years, the lion's share of the NASA manned
spaceflight budget is going to Shuttle and Station, and for five years
after that, a smaller, but still large chunk goes to Station alone.
Only after 2015 do we get out of the Shuttle/Station funding black
hole.

Brian

[Alex Terrell]

Ed Kyle wrote:
> I think it provides a good roadmap for NASA to follow for
> the next how-ever-many years. It is a great improvement
> to the space shuttle era NASA framework.

In short, it's not as disastrous as the previuos (Shuttle) strategy.

> This is a plan that could very well, over time, lead to a
> smaller, more focused NASA. It is a plan that produces
> something useful in the near-term - the CEV and CLV tools
> that will replace shuttle and could by themselves, in
> concert with commercial launch services and international
> space station partners, serve as the framework for a long-
> term human space program. It also lays out longer term
> plans and goals (the Moon, Mars maybe but not probably) that
> could happen, or not, depending on national priorities down
> the road.

How are the CLV tools useful in near-term?

Even the CEV is gross overkill in the near term, if it's just going to
fly to ISS. So as well as recreating Apollo, NASA's going to recreate
Soyuz.

[dasun]

Well yes I am excited! After 3 decades of inaction and NASA busy work
it finally gets the show on the road - providing the politicians do not
get stuck into it.

Given financial & political realities this is the best we could have
hoped for. See it for what it is - a starting point that gives an
industrial and experience base for grander journeys in the future. As
someone who just remembers Armstrong taking his first step I would love
to have seen a more definitive Mars direction but I am just glad that a
window beyond LEO has finally opened let us hope the politicians do not
close it.

AS for the stick and using shuttle hardware, well why not? At least it
is a known and I have little faith in brand new systems and even
smaller faith in the nascent commercial space industry being able to
deliver on their promises.

[AA Institute]

dasun wrote:
> Well yes I am excited! After 3 decades of inaction and NASA busy work
> it finally gets the show on the road - providing the politicians do not
> get stuck into it.
>
> Given financial & political realities this is the best we could have
> hoped for. See it for what it is - a starting point that gives an
> industrial and experience base for grander journeys in the future. As
> someone who just remembers Armstrong taking his first step I would love
> to have seen a more definitive Mars direction but I am just glad that a
> window beyond LEO has finally opened let us hope the politicians do not
> close it.
>
> AS for the stick and using shuttle hardware, well why not? At least it
> is a known and I have little faith in brand new systems and even
> smaller faith in the nascent commercial space industry being able to
> deliver on their promises.

Hey I am excited that there is *a* plan for going back to the Moon...
and we've just heard it from the horse's mouth!!!

That there is still a *will* and some thoughts around the *means* for
humans going back to the Moon within my lifetime is, in itself, the
most marvellous and most satifying thing I've heard in the past few
years...


AA
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"The ultimate dream adventure awaiting humanity..."
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[Joe Strout]

In article . com>,
"dasun" > wrote:

> Given financial & political realities this is the best we could have
> hoped for.

Since it's what we actually got, this statement is true by tautology,
but that's hardly comforting. I actually hoped for much better.

> See it for what it is - a starting point that gives an
> industrial and experience base for grander journeys in the future.

I think it gives the wrong kind of experience base for any grander
journeys.

> As someone who just remembers Armstrong taking his first step I would love
> to have seen a more definitive Mars direction but I am just glad that a
> window beyond LEO has finally opened let us hope the politicians do not
> close it.

Actually, the lack of any focus on Mars is the one good thing about the
plan; to attempt to put flags and footprints on Mars would have been an
even more colossal waste.

> AS for the stick and using shuttle hardware, well why not?

Because it is far too expensive. It makes any real progress with it
untenable. Yet, supported by taxes, it competes with commercial
providers who could do the same work for much lower real costs, and at
the same time open up space for the rest of us.

> At least it
> is a known and I have little faith in brand new systems and even
> smaller faith in the nascent commercial space industry being able to
> deliver on their promises.

I find your lack of faith... disturbing.

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: |
| http://www.macwebdir.com |
`------------------------------------------------------------------'

[mikharakiri_nospaum@yahoo.com]

dasun wrote:
> Well yes I am excited! After 3 decades of inaction and NASA busy work
> it finally gets the show on the road - providing the politicians do not
> get stuck into it.
>
> Given financial & political realities this is the best we could have
> hoped for. See it for what it is - a starting point that gives an
> industrial and experience base for grander journeys in the future. As
> someone who just remembers Armstrong taking his first step I would love
> to have seen a more definitive Mars direction but I am just glad that a
> window beyond LEO has finally opened let us hope the politicians do not
> close it.
>
> AS for the stick and using shuttle hardware, well why not? At least it
> is a known and I have little faith in brand new systems and even
> smaller faith in the nascent commercial space industry being able to
> deliver on their promises.

So nothing happened in the space exploration area after moon landing?
Apparently, Pioner/Voyager and other space probes, Hubble don't count
to technological and science progress. It is Startrek future vision
that matters, right?

It looks like humans have less and less role in space exploration,
pretty obvious, isn't it? Let's be reasonable and adjust the goals to
conform the reality.

[jonathan]

"Rand Simberg" > wrote in message
...
> On 19 Sep 2005 15:08:09 -0700, in a place far, far away, "Ed Kyle"
> > made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
> way as to indicate that:
>
> >> OK, is anyone other than NASA fanboys here actually excited about this
> >> plan?


The weak link in this plan is the missing data in between the landing
and the blast off.


'Four astronauts then would fly to the moon and descend to the surface
in the lander for a one-week stay, leaving the CEV alone in orbit.

...............[What are they going to do on the Moon?].......

After completing their initial four-to-seven-day mission, the astronauts
would blast off, rendezvous with the CEV and return to a parachute
landing in the western United States."



I find that at best incompetent, and at worst suspicious.
Do they have some unspoken/military reason for doing this???
When a govt agency asks the taxpayers to shell out
a hundred billion, the first and obvious question is
....why. Nasa can't answer that question so the
response should be NO.

And with the next administration facing huge deficits this
plan seems dead-on-arrival to me.











> >
> >I think it provides a good roadmap for NASA to follow for
> >the next how-ever-many years. It is a great improvement
> >to the space shuttle era NASA framework.
> >
> >This is a plan that could very well, over time, lead to a
> >smaller, more focused NASA.
>
> More focused, certainly, but with the increasing budget, and the
> predilection to do more in house and less contracting, how is it
> smaller?
>
> >It is a plan that produces
> >something useful in the near-term - the CEV and CLV tools
> >that will replace shuttle and could by themselves, in
> >concert with commercial launch services and international
> >space station partners, serve as the framework for a long-
> >term human space program.
>
> For exactly the same (or more) cost as the Shuttle program.
>
> http://www.transterrestrial.com/archives/005729.html#005729

[dasun]

Hope all you like but the brutal reality is that space does not rate
much with most politicians and resonates little with the public -
unless they see amazing things. In the real world the budget
environment is very tight thus limiting what can be done, you want Moon
Bases, you want Mars now pony up the cash. If we wait for that sort of
money to materialise from reluctant politicians then manned exploration
beyond LEO is not going to happen. Take what Griffin is offering, I
seriously doubt much better could be proposed given NASA's current and
future budgets.

How in the hell is the experience base of operating in deep space on
another word the wrong kind of experience? After 30 years of LEO
practice and technology development is most certainly needed before we
venture much further.

Shuttle hardware is expensive, so is building whole new systems from
scratch but - I bet - even more so. Use what you know, build only what
you have to that would be my credo. Shuttle hardware provides
well-known systems, as the basis of heavy lift and crew transport and
that has to put the aerospace engineers ahead of the game. Think of
the entire support infrastructure - VAB, crawlers, pads - and it
already exists and just needs modifying. Think of the flight hardware
and it is the same modifying game.

As for commercial exploration beyond LEO, give me a reasonable business
plan that justifies that sort of expenditure, some things belong in the
realm of government - for a time at least. When I see commercial heavy
lift, and I mean 100+ tons, making a profit then I will believe! In
fact when I see a commercial orbital manned system actually working
then I will be much less sceptical of their claims. Space is hard and
expensive.

Finally, give some credit to Bush for enabling this point to be reached
and now the crossing of the Cassandra can now begin....

[paris2012@gmail.com]

When you think of it, after Saturn V, N-1, and Energia, this will be
the fourth giant launcher of humankind...

[paris2012@gmail.com]

Maybe we could do a commercial Skylab ?

Since the launcher exists, why not a single module, 100-ton class
commercial station.. ?

No costly assembly and with a 100 mass maybe you can keep the
consumable servicing to a minimum. Maybe build with ample design
margins and simple construction techniques.

Well : question, with the 125-t class launcher, assuming the Govt
builds two a year for its Moon missions, what else could be done ?

[dasun]

You love robots and I marvel at what unmanned craft have done for solar
system reconnaissance BUT I studied computer science and geology and I
am very aware of robotic limitations. Robots are great for first
looks, but rate a very poor second to actually having trained observers
on the spot.

Take the wonderful mars rovers that have spent near 2 years on the
surface but have covered much less ground than Gene and Jack did in 3
days on Apollo 17. In field geology human observation and intuition
play a critical role, Jack saw some interesting orange soil and decided
to sample, and robots currently - and for a considerable time to come
will - lack the ability to function just this way. Doing science by
remote control is difficult and has some very real limitations.

[VA Buckeye]

So why not stick the CEV atop the heavy lifter and do it all in one
shot? If you're going to emulate Apollo, might as well go all the way...

AA Institute wrote:
> NASA today unveiled an ambitious blueprint for returning American
> astronauts to the moon by 2018 using new rockets based on shuttle
> propulsion technology and a new reusable crew vehicle Administrator
> Mike Griffin described as "Apollo on steroids."
>
> Full story:
>
> http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0509/19exploration/
>
> AA
> ------------------------------**-----------------------------
> http://www.publishedauthors.net/aa_spaceagent/
> "The ultimate dream adventure awaiting humanity..."
> ------------------------------**-----------------------------
>

[dasun]

Science and lots of it, skip the political baloney and stick to the
subject!

[mikharakiri_nospaum@yahoo.com]

If you studied compute science, then you must be pretty much aware of
the Moore's law. And you are certainly aware of predictions that
computer would never play chess well enough. Which means that any
speculation about robot's future limited abilities is groundless.

I see nothing special about your yellow soil example. With digital cams
ever increasing abilities, in 10 years you will have a remote picture
that is indistingusheable from what human is able to see on the spot.
Some obscure geologist sitting in the comfort of his desktop and
watching the transmission over the internet would notice something
interesting. Then you can fund a new mission *for a fraction of manned
mission cost*.

Even more likely, the amount of transmitted data in 10 years from now
would be so huge, that you have to employ a very sophisticated data
mining technique, in order to extract some useful information. No way a
trained Joe Doe geologist could be able to do that on the spot. Yes,
unglorified astronouts are just expensive technicians.

[dasun]

Science is not the reason for going up - that is philosophical -
science is what you do when you are there, along with all the house
keeping chores. Colonisation, if it happens at all, is generally not
what you do when you first arrive on a new world, as the history of
earth exploration will attest, first you look around and then you
decide where to stay and why and that may take decades or centuries.
In short science is a very useful activity to perform if you have
decided to go to new worlds in the first place. Besides, find a
politician that understands science!


Rand Simberg wrote:
> On 19 Sep 2005 16:40:45 -0700, in a place far, far away, "dasun"
> > made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
> such a way as to indicate that:
>
> >Science and lots of it, skip the political baloney and stick to the
> >subject!
>
> Science will never justify the vast amounts of money being spent on
> human spaceflight, for good reason.

[dasun]

Not being a geologist you would not see anything special about "orange"
soil (regolith on planetary bodies)! But to a geologist that could
mean regolith of volcanic origin and there was quite a "hot" debate
about possible lunar volcanism in the 1960's and 70's and that is what
made that observation so important. Take my word for it, for a
geologist there is nothing like being there and being able to get a
feel for the landscape and the forces that have acted upon it and no
high quality data link is ever going to be an effective substitute for
that feeling. Deep-sea geology is a good example, use robots to do
general surveying but send manned submersibles down to look at
interesting features.

Moore's law is great, but can it go on forever? How long before we
can build artificial intelligence as good as our own? What about the
reasons for heading up, after all planetary disasters do happen and
colonising other worlds is the best long-term bet for our species. Do
not let your faith in technology blind you to much as the future seldom
turns out as one expects - just ask the Apollo guys of the 1960's (one
of whom was a geologist - namely Jack Schmidt (spelling?) - and the
rest did extensive geological training and mostly functioned quite
well).

[mikharakiri_nospaum@yahoo.com]

Why geology is so different from other sciences, say, astronomy? You
don't have to climb to the observation dome and spend a cold night
there anymore. You rely on the data collected automatically.

There is number factor as well. Compare a 1000 geologists investigating
phenomenon remotely, versus one of the spot. Given adequate quality of
remote observation, it is more likely that some of those 1000
geologists would find something interesting, that would escape the guy
on the spot.

dasun wrote:
> Moore's law is great, but can it go on forever? How long before we
> can build artificial intelligence as good as our own? What about the

Given the average intelligence of the average Usenet poster, I bet that
within 10 years we'll have Usenet bots indistingusheable of humans.

> What about the
> reasons for heading up, after all planetary disasters do happen and
> colonising other worlds is the best long-term bet for our species.

Yes, but you have to approach it with rational thinking. How much a
trip to mars costs? It will be such for a long time, if we continue
rely on chemical propulsion engines. Wasting $100B on reincarnated moon
landing problem solves nothing.

[Rand Simberg]

On 19 Sep 2005 14:47:27 -0700, in a place far, far away, "Alex
Terrell" > made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

>> > NASA today unveiled an ambitious blueprint
>>
>> Well, I guess opinions on that may vary.
>>
>I thought I was seeing the history channel - except there was no
>Kennedy to say by the end of decade - rather, we'll put some men on the
>moon, when we get round to it.
>
>With no plans for a moonbase, I'm struggling to see the point of all
>this. And the architecture is about 50% more expensive than it ought to
>be.

OK, is anyone other than NASA fanboys here actually excited about this
plan?

[Paul F. Dietz]

wrote:

> There is number factor as well. Compare a 1000 geologists investigating
> phenomenon remotely, versus one of the spot. Given adequate quality of
> remote observation, it is more likely that some of those 1000
> geologists would find something interesting, that would escape the guy
> on the spot.

But of course geologists on the spot are going to win!
That's why oil companies send geologists down into tunnels
in the oil fields, rather than examining information
returned by logging equipment lowered into boreholes.

Not.

Paul

[Rand Simberg]

On 19 Sep 2005 15:08:09 -0700, in a place far, far away, "Ed Kyle"
> made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

>> OK, is anyone other than NASA fanboys here actually excited about this
>> plan?
>
>I think it provides a good roadmap for NASA to follow for
>the next how-ever-many years. It is a great improvement
>to the space shuttle era NASA framework.
>
>This is a plan that could very well, over time, lead to a
>smaller, more focused NASA.

More focused, certainly, but with the increasing budget, and the
predilection to do more in house and less contracting, how is it
smaller?

>It is a plan that produces
>something useful in the near-term - the CEV and CLV tools
>that will replace shuttle and could by themselves, in
>concert with commercial launch services and international
>space station partners, serve as the framework for a long-
>term human space program.

For exactly the same (or more) cost as the Shuttle program.

http://www.transterrestrial.com/archives/005729.html#005729

[Alan Anderson]

wrote:

> dasun wrote:
> > Moore's law is great, but can it go on forever? How long before we
> > can build artificial intelligence as good as our own? What about the
>
> Given the average intelligence of the average Usenet poster, I bet that
> within 10 years we'll have Usenet bots indistingusheable of humans.

Sure, why not? We already have humans indistinguishable from bots (e.g.
Guth and Gerald). Doing that in the other direction should be a piece
of cake.

Usenet bots indistinguishable from Henry Spencer, on the other hand...

[jonathan]

> wrote in message
oups.com...
> Maybe we could do a commercial Skylab ?
>
> Since the launcher exists, why not a single module, 100-ton class
> commercial station.. ?
>
> No costly assembly and with a 100 mass maybe you can keep the
> consumable servicing to a minimum. Maybe build with ample design
> margins and simple construction techniques.
>
> Well : question, with the 125-t class launcher, assuming the Govt
> builds two a year for its Moon missions, what else could be done ?



I'd like to see 'em launching things that will help us down
here on earth. Things like this.

Space Solar Power home.
http://spacesolarpower.nasa.gov/


We'd need the stick and heavy lift, and a large space station
if not several. It's conceivable that the US could someday
become the world's largest energy ....supplier....instead of
the largest importer. Not to mention the positive effects
on global warming that solar power brings. And wars
over oil? Isn't the dependence of fossil fuels the greatest
single threat to our future???

If not now.

Nasa's long term goals should revolve around the most acute
problems on earth. And since energy certainly qualifies ...and...
has it's ultimate solution in space, it's tragic that Nasa decides
that collecting more Moon rocks is the best they can do.

Nasa could do so much more if they only had some 'vision'.
They have a lotta nerve assigning that term to their new
space policy.


Jonathan

s









>

[John Doe]

Rand Simberg wrote:
> More focused, certainly, but with the increasing budget, and the
> predilection to do more in house and less contracting, how is it
> smaller?


More focused is the keyword here. NASA will be an organisation whose
sole capability will be to go to the moon, pick up a few rocks and come
back to the earth. No real advancement in space exploration, and a net
decrease in versatility of manned space programme.

In this announcement, has NASA announced automated docking development ?
Without a shuttle or automated docking, NASA will not be able to build
any structures in space anymore. And to build anything meaningful, they
will want docking ports as big as CBMs. So either automated bertthing
with existing CBMs or develop a docakble CBM size port.

[John Doe]

wrote:


re: geologists


Lets talk about geologists: would they prefer to go to the moon or to go
to Mars ?

Seems to me that Mars has a much more interesting landscape and history.

[Michael Rhino]

"AA Institute" > wrote in message
oups.com...
-NASA today unveiled an ambitious blueprint for returning American
-astronauts to the moon by 2018 using new rockets based on shuttle
-propulsion technology and a new reusable crew vehicle Administrator
-Mike Griffin described as "Apollo on steroids.."

-Full story:

- http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0509/19exploration/

It sounds like the lander docks with CEV, they fly to the moon together, and
then separate. Isn't this docking an extra step that slows things down?
Why not have them fly to the moon separately?

What is the cargo rocket? Is that used for ISS or the moon? If it is for
the moon, why would it be smaller than the manned rocket?

[dasun]

Ever hear of exploration geologists? Mining companies set up camp in
the middle of somewhere - like Timbuktu - and the geologists move in to
map the local geology. To this end they may do field work, seismic
shots, gravity readings, drilling etc. to provide the data they need to
map the subsurface geology. At various points, all the observations,
data and samples are shipped out to an office/lab and a comprehensive
report is written up as pertains the site and its potential for a given
resource. This is just like real planetary geology! Please note,
robots are not doing this job and are most unlikely to be doing so in
any reasonably near future!

This is my last post on the geological side as we are drifting way off
topic now, but believe me there is still much in-situ geology to be
performed on the moon and this job is best handled by on the spot
geologists. Geology is much more than collecting various spectra of em
radiation or sub-atomic particles, as astronomers do, although that can
play a part, it is also about looking at rocks in the field, the form
of the and scape and the layering in deposits. Nothing beats picking
up a rock, whipping out the geological hammer and giving it a whack to
get a nice clean surface to examine and the resultant ideas that spring
forth from that examination - "Oh, a basalt that means volcanic
outflow, are there any volcanic cones in the area?"

[Ray]

"Rand Simberg" > wrote in message
...
> On 19 Sep 2005 14:47:27 -0700, in a place far, far away, "Alex
> Terrell" > made the phosphor on my monitor glow
> in such a way as to indicate that:
>
>>> > NASA today unveiled an ambitious blueprint
>>>
>>> Well, I guess opinions on that may vary.
>>>
>>I thought I was seeing the history channel - except there was no
>>Kennedy to say by the end of decade - rather, we'll put some men on the
>>moon, when we get round to it.
>>
>>With no plans for a moonbase, I'm struggling to see the point of all
>>this. And the architecture is about 50% more expensive than it ought to
>>be.
>
> OK, is anyone other than NASA fanboys here actually excited about this
> plan?
I am extremely excited about this plan! I have a question for you.
What else should NASA do? Personally, I rather get rid of NASA instead of
letting it orbit humans around the earth forever wasting our tax money. If
we are going to have manned spaceflight we need to be serious about it and
explore space, moon, mars and beyond, with people not just some dam robots.
Somebody mentioned something on these newsgroups once about NASA working
with energy. That's bull****. We have a dept or energy for that. NASA
exists to do flight in space mostly.
Ray

[Reed Snellenberger]

(Rand Simberg) wrote in
:

>
> More focused, certainly, but with the increasing budget, and the
> predilection to do more in house and less contracting, how is it
> smaller?
>

Increasing budget? Didn't Griffin say this program was designed to fit
into a flat+inflation budget? Where is the increase?

>
> For exactly the same (or more) cost as the Shuttle program.
>

We get something that will initially be (at least) safer than Shuttle and
ultimately be more versatile than the orbiter.

More importantly, it's a plan that finally puts an end-cap (of sorts) on
the shuttle era.


--
I was punching a text message into my | Reed Snellenberger
phone yesterday and thought, "they need | GPG KeyID: 5A978843
to make a phone that you can just talk | rsnellenberger
into." Major Thomb | -at-houston.rr.com

[S. Wand]

Yes, there is a lot to like about this plan.

1) We're finally getting around to developing a Saturn V-class heavy lifter.
This is essential if we're ever to go beyond low earth orbit. And it looks
like they're going with the in-line design, which will have greater growth
potential than Shuttle-Z.
2) I think it is correct to focus on the moon for now. There are several
reasons why the moon could be a better colonization target than Mars - close
to earth in travel time and communications, easier gravity well to escape,
greater solar energy resources, no issues with biological contamination.
If water is present at the poles, then we can practice resource processing
as well.
3) There's no technological risk in the hardware development. Some may
view that as a negative, but we've wasted too much money on X-craft, space
stations, and (yes) the shuttle with very little to show for it. I think
until we get a space elevator, getting to LEO will be an expensive
proposition. Until then, keep it simple. Remember, the most dependable
launcher on earth is the first one - Soyuz.
4) Disappointed that it's too much like Apollo/Saturn? What an idiotic
troll-like complaint - Apollo/Saturn was the pinnacle achievement of the
space age. If we hadn't discarded it 30 years ago, then astronaut Husband
would be walking Husband Hill by now.
5) No mention of international cooperation. Don't get me wrong - I'm a
good old-fashioned globalist. But I'll die of old age before they negotiate
who builds what - and it won't be any cheaper anyway (e.g. ISS).

Two weaknesses in my opinion:
1) The Stick-CEV seems wrong-sized for LEO operations - too large. The
decision is understandable because we're keeping the SRBs for the heavy
lifter. But it would be nice to see private industry step up for operations
less than 250 miles high.
2) The overall price seems high. If the Stick/CEV development is about $10
billion (in itself a high number) and the Heavy is about $8 billion -
where's the rest of the money being spent? NASA needs to trim the
workforce, close some buildings, etc. Cancel ISS, or sell it to Bigelow.
:^)

> OK, is anyone other than NASA fanboys here actually excited about this
> plan?

[John Doe]

VA Buckeye wrote:
>
> So why not stick the CEV atop the heavy lifter and do it all in one
> shot? If you're going to emulate Apollo, might as well go all the way...

Probably for reasons similar to why they made sure Startrek pilot
episodes made use of every key room: they knew that after that, it would
be very diffficult to get budgets to build extra sets.

So, by baselining 2 separate launchers for that silly trip to the moon,
NASA will end up with 2 launchers of usable capacity once the flight to
mooon has been done and they came back with a few rocks.

If they fitted it all into one launcher, NASA would end up with one
giant launcher that wouldn't be much use after the flight to the moon
has been done.

[Ray]

"John Doe" > wrote in message ...
> Rand Simberg wrote:
>> More focused, certainly, but with the increasing budget, and the
>> predilection to do more in house and less contracting, how is it
>> smaller?
>
>
> More focused is the keyword here. NASA will be an organisation whose
> sole capability will be to go to the moon, pick up a few rocks and come
> back to the earth. No real advancement in space exploration, and a net
> decrease in versatility of manned space programme.

Ridiculious comment above. We are going back to the moon to learn to
live their! Not just to pick up a couple of rocks! Just like we have
learned to live in a space station in orbit for 6 months, we will learn to
live on the moon, another planet, and then we will transfer that knowledge
to living on Mars. We will learn to live off the land, and we will become
better humans. What is so wrong with this. We humans are explorers. This
is normal for us. This is well worth the cost.

Ray

>
> In this announcement, has NASA announced automated docking development ?
> Without a shuttle or automated docking, NASA will not be able to build
> any structures in space anymore. And to build anything meaningful, they
> will want docking ports as big as CBMs. So either automated bertthing
> with existing CBMs or develop a docakble CBM size port.

[Alan Anderson]

"Michael Rhino" > wrote:

> It sounds like the lander docks with CEV, they fly to the moon together, and
> then separate. Isn't this docking an extra step that slows things down?
> Why not have them fly to the moon separately?

They'd each need a "departure stage" if it were done that way. They
need to dock in order for people/rocks to move between them anyway. And
there's always the Apollo 13 lesson -- having a lifeboat is a good idea.

[Will McLean]

Rand Simberg wrote:
> On 19 Sep 2005 15:08:09 -0700, in a place far, far away, "Ed Kyle"
> > made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
> way as to indicate that:
>
> >> OK, is anyone other than NASA fanboys here actually excited about this
> >> plan?
> >
> >I think it provides a good roadmap for NASA to follow for
> >the next how-ever-many years. It is a great improvement
> >to the space shuttle era NASA framework.
> >
> >This is a plan that could very well, over time, lead to a
> >smaller, more focused NASA.
>
> More focused, certainly, but with the increasing budget, and the
> predilection to do more in house and less contracting, how is it
> smaller?
>

As I understand it, the budget increases very little in real terms.
Most of the increase is inflation.


> >It is a plan that produces
> >something useful in the near-term - the CEV and CLV tools
> >that will replace shuttle and could by themselves, in
> >concert with commercial launch services and international
> >space station partners, serve as the framework for a long-
> >term human space program.
>
> For exactly the same (or more) cost as the Shuttle program.
>
> http://www.transterrestrial.com/archives/005729.html#005729

If you don't know if the figures you are quoting are full program costs
or fixed costs, how do you know that the CEV/CLV will cost exactly the
same or more?

And what was your source for the quote?

Will McLean

[Jorge R. Frank]

"Michael Rhino" > wrote in
:

> "AA Institute" > wrote in message
> oups.com...
> -NASA today unveiled an ambitious blueprint for returning American
> -astronauts to the moon by 2018 using new rockets based on shuttle
> -propulsion technology and a new reusable crew vehicle Administrator
> -Mike Griffin described as "Apollo on steroids.."
>
> -Full story:
>
> - http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0509/19exploration/
>
> It sounds like the lander docks with CEV,

Other way around. CEV docks with the lander, which is launched into LEO
with the Earth departure stage.

> they fly to the moon
> together, and then separate. Isn't this docking an extra step that
> slows things down?

You've got to dock *somewhere* since the CEV can't land on the moon. Might
as well do it in LEO, where the abort options are much more benign if
something goes wrong.

> Why not have them fly to the moon separately?

Then both the CEV and the lander would need separate Earth departure
stages. Plus, as Alan pointed out, you get the lifeboat benefits.


--
JRF

Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail,
check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and
think one step ahead of IBM.

[Rand Simberg]

On 19 Sep 2005 16:40:45 -0700, in a place far, far away, "dasun"
> made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

>Science and lots of it, skip the political baloney and stick to the
>subject!

Science will never justify the vast amounts of money being spent on
human spaceflight, for good reason.

[Ray]

> wrote in message
oups.com...
> Why geology is so different from other sciences, say, astronomy? You
> don't have to climb to the observation dome and spend a cold night
> there anymore. You rely on the data collected automatically.
>
> There is number factor as well. Compare a 1000 geologists investigating
> phenomenon remotely, versus one of the spot. Given adequate quality of
> remote observation, it is more likely that some of those 1000
> geologists would find something interesting, that would escape the guy
> on the spot.
>
> dasun wrote:
>> Moore's law is great, but can it go on forever? How long before we
>> can build artificial intelligence as good as our own? What about the
>
> Given the average intelligence of the average Usenet poster, I bet that
> within 10 years we'll have Usenet bots indistingusheable of humans.
>
>> What about the
>> reasons for heading up, after all planetary disasters do happen and
>> colonising other worlds is the best long-term bet for our species.
>
> Yes, but you have to approach it with rational thinking. How much a
> trip to mars costs? It will be such for a long time, if we continue
> rely on chemical propulsion engines. Wasting $100B on reincarnated moon
> landing problem solves nothing.
>
The costs are worth it. I think some of these planetary scientists
who are against manned space exploration in favor of unmanned space
exploration because of cost are anti-human because they really don't care
whether humanity lives or dies being limited to one planet in the future.
They care more about the advancement of robots into space instead of the
advancement of humans into space. Maybe because humans are illogical
sometimes and robots are not, so they like robots better, maybe. I care
more for the advancement of humans into space. I think robots should go
before us to explore space but the main goal should be about humanity
learning to live in space and spreading out, not robots.

Ray

[Ray]

I like what you said below, but I actually like a big CEV in orbit. The
astronauts deserve a roomy CEV. By the way, do you know the dimensions of
the CEV or where I could find that information? Will the CEV be as big as
the shuttle crew cabin or smaller?

Ray

"S. Wand" > wrote in message
...
> Yes, there is a lot to like about this plan.
>
> 1) We're finally getting around to developing a Saturn V-class heavy
> lifter.
> This is essential if we're ever to go beyond low earth orbit. And it
> looks
> like they're going with the in-line design, which will have greater growth
> potential than Shuttle-Z.
> 2) I think it is correct to focus on the moon for now. There are several
> reasons why the moon could be a better colonization target than Mars -
> close
> to earth in travel time and communications, easier gravity well to
> escape,
> greater solar energy resources, no issues with biological contamination.
> If water is present at the poles, then we can practice resource processing
> as well.
> 3) There's no technological risk in the hardware development. Some may
> view that as a negative, but we've wasted too much money on X-craft, space
> stations, and (yes) the shuttle with very little to show for it. I think
> until we get a space elevator, getting to LEO will be an expensive
> proposition. Until then, keep it simple. Remember, the most dependable
> launcher on earth is the first one - Soyuz.
> 4) Disappointed that it's too much like Apollo/Saturn? What an idiotic
> troll-like complaint - Apollo/Saturn was the pinnacle achievement of the
> space age. If we hadn't discarded it 30 years ago, then astronaut Husband
> would be walking Husband Hill by now.
> 5) No mention of international cooperation. Don't get me wrong - I'm a
> good old-fashioned globalist. But I'll die of old age before they
> negotiate
> who builds what - and it won't be any cheaper anyway (e.g. ISS).
>
> Two weaknesses in my opinion:
> 1) The Stick-CEV seems wrong-sized for LEO operations - too large. The
> decision is understandable because we're keeping the SRBs for the heavy
> lifter. But it would be nice to see private industry step up for
> operations
> less than 250 miles high.
> 2) The overall price seems high. If the Stick/CEV development is about
> $10
> billion (in itself a high number) and the Heavy is about $8 billion -
> where's the rest of the money being spent? NASA needs to trim the
> workforce, close some buildings, etc. Cancel ISS, or sell it to Bigelow.
> :^)
>
>> OK, is anyone other than NASA fanboys here actually excited about this
>> plan?
>
>

[Will McLean]

Some questions struck me.

The CLV uses a SSME on the upper stage, the HLV a pair of J-2s. Why the
two different engines?

This plan could be expending a dozen (or more) SSMEs a year. At that
production rate, how much less do you pay per engine?

How much would it add to development cost to put some or all of the HLV
engines in recoverable pods?

Will McLean

[Paul F. Dietz]

dasun wrote:
> Ever hear of exploration geologists? Mining companies set up camp in
> the middle of somewhere - like Timbuktu - and the geologists move in to
> map the local geology.

No ****, dasun. The point, which whizzed completely over your
head, is that in some situations geologists are *not* sent
in, because it would be far too expensive to do so. Even
on Earth they use remote techniques when it's sufficiently
cheaper.

Paul

[Paul F. Dietz]

Ray wrote:

> What else should NASA do?

It could cease to exist. Government agencies don't have a right to life.

Paul

[S. Wand]

I think I read that CEV would be 5.5m across the base of the heat shield,
compared to 3.9m for Apollo. I haven't seen any figures on internal volume
yet. I'd guess it'd be a bit smaller per person than the shuttle.

I think a large CEV is fine for the lunar missions - but for ISS rendevous a
Soyuz-class vehicle is sufficient. I'm sure it's too much money for NASA to
have another vehicle - but hopefully they'd consider private industry at
some point for the LEO market. Wishful thinking...

But overall, I really think it's a good plan. If they keep the budget under
control and try to live off the land, then maybe we can have a permanent
lunar presence.



"Ray" > wrote in message
news:22LXe.7296$i86.3182@trndny01...
>
> I like what you said below, but I actually like a big CEV in orbit.
The
> astronauts deserve a roomy CEV. By the way, do you know the dimensions of
> the CEV or where I could find that information? Will the CEV be as big as
> the shuttle crew cabin or smaller?
>
> Ray
>
> "S. Wand" > wrote in message
> ...
> > Yes, there is a lot to like about this plan.
> >
> > 1) We're finally getting around to developing a Saturn V-class heavy
> > lifter.
> > This is essential if we're ever to go beyond low earth orbit. And it
> > looks
> > like they're going with the in-line design, which will have greater
growth
> > potential than Shuttle-Z.
> > 2) I think it is correct to focus on the moon for now. There are
several
> > reasons why the moon could be a better colonization target than Mars -
> > close
> > to earth in travel time and communications, easier gravity well to
> > escape,
> > greater solar energy resources, no issues with biological contamination.
> > If water is present at the poles, then we can practice resource
processing
> > as well.
> > 3) There's no technological risk in the hardware development. Some may
> > view that as a negative, but we've wasted too much money on X-craft,
space
> > stations, and (yes) the shuttle with very little to show for it. I
think
> > until we get a space elevator, getting to LEO will be an expensive
> > proposition. Until then, keep it simple. Remember, the most dependable
> > launcher on earth is the first one - Soyuz.
> > 4) Disappointed that it's too much like Apollo/Saturn? What an idiotic
> > troll-like complaint - Apollo/Saturn was the pinnacle achievement of the
> > space age. If we hadn't discarded it 30 years ago, then astronaut
Husband
> > would be walking Husband Hill by now.
> > 5) No mention of international cooperation. Don't get me wrong - I'm
a
> > good old-fashioned globalist. But I'll die of old age before they
> > negotiate
> > who builds what - and it won't be any cheaper anyway (e.g. ISS).
> >
> > Two weaknesses in my opinion:
> > 1) The Stick-CEV seems wrong-sized for LEO operations - too large. The
> > decision is understandable because we're keeping the SRBs for the heavy
> > lifter. But it would be nice to see private industry step up for
> > operations
> > less than 250 miles high.
> > 2) The overall price seems high. If the Stick/CEV development is about
> > $10
> > billion (in itself a high number) and the Heavy is about $8 billion -
> > where's the rest of the money being spent? NASA needs to trim the
> > workforce, close some buildings, etc. Cancel ISS, or sell it to
Bigelow.
> > :^)
> >
> >> OK, is anyone other than NASA fanboys here actually excited about this
> >> plan?
> >
> >
>
>

[Joe Strout]

In article >,
"S. Wand" > wrote:

> Yes, there is a lot to like about this plan.
>
> 1) We're finally getting around to developing a Saturn V-class heavy lifter.

Again...

> This is essential if we're ever to go beyond low earth orbit.

No, it's not. There are many mission architectures that would work just
fine with smaller launchers -- launchers of the sort, in fact, that are
already commercially available, and which will have even more
cost-reducing competition in the near future.

NASA should be out of the rocket development (and launch) business
altogether. Developing a new rocket is a big mistake, for a lot of
reasons.

> 2) I think it is correct to focus on the moon for now.

Agreed.

> 3) There's no technological risk in the hardware development.

Then what do you call it? Bureaucratic risk? However you label it,
there is substantial risk of schedule slippage, cost overruns, and
underperformance, if past history is any guide.

> I think until we get a space elevator, getting to LEO will be an expensive
> proposition.

Then you've already lost (or else you have a uselessly loose definition
of "expensive"). Rocket launch could be substantially cheaper than it
is now, but it needs a healthy capitalist market, not a massive
socialist space program -- one thing history has shown is clearly is
that socialism is enormously inefficient. (Ironic that Russia now has a
far more capitalist -- and cost-effective -- space program than we do.)

> 4) Disappointed that it's too much like Apollo/Saturn? What an idiotic
> troll-like complaint - Apollo/Saturn was the pinnacle achievement of the
> space age.

And how many times will it continue to be a pinnacle achievement if we
keep redoing it?

Actually, I couldn't care less how much it's like Apollo/Saturn in terms
of the hardware or mission profile. The objection is that it's too much
like it in terms of its cost and sustainability (which are very high and
very low, respectively). Use the same approach, and you'll get the same
outcome -- maybe a half-dozen "missions" ending with no real development
or infrastructure of any kind. That's not progress. Pinnacle
achievements are great, but they don't get me a trip to the lunar Hilton.

> If we hadn't discarded it 30 years ago, then astronaut Husband
> would be walking Husband Hill by now.

But we did, because it was too costly and unsustainable. Why do you
imagine that it will be different this time?

> 5) No mention of international cooperation. Don't get me wrong - I'm a
> good old-fashioned globalist. But I'll die of old age before they negotiate
> who builds what - and it won't be any cheaper anyway (e.g. ISS).

Agreed, the only thing worse than NASA controlling things is NASA
cooperating with a half-dozen other agencies to control things.

> Two weaknesses in my opinion:
> 1) The Stick-CEV seems wrong-sized for LEO operations - too large.

Agreed. And much too governmental.

> The decision is understandable because we're keeping the SRBs for the heavy
> lifter.

That's no reason to make such an important decision! I'm groping for a
suitable analogy... it's like saying, we'll build this new car with a
propellor on the back, because we're going to need propellors for the
boat we also plan to build. (Much better would be to simply buy a car,
never mind that it lacks a propellor.)

> But it would be nice to see private industry step up for operations
> less than 250 miles high.

Now you've hit it. But private industry needs to be given the
opportunity -- nay, the market *demand* -- to step up. This plan does
the opposite.

> 2) The overall price seems high. If the Stick/CEV development is about $10
> billion (in itself a high number) and the Heavy is about $8 billion -
> where's the rest of the money being spent? NASA needs to trim the
> workforce, close some buildings, etc.

Right, which means no shuttle-derived heavy launch vehicle; develop
standard payload interfaces and buy launches for them on the open
market. Retrain all those out-of-work shuttle workers in something more
useful, like interior design.

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: |
| http://www.macwebdir.com |
`------------------------------------------------------------------'

[Michael Rhino]

"Alan Anderson" > wrote in message
...
> "Michael Rhino" > wrote:
>
>> It sounds like the lander docks with CEV, they fly to the moon together,
>> and
>> then separate. Isn't this docking an extra step that slows things down?
>> Why not have them fly to the moon separately?
>
> They'd each need a "departure stage" if it were done that way.

Is there a problem with two departure stages? If they join together, they
are twice as heavy, so you need twice the fuel to get them there.

> They
> need to dock in order for people/rocks to move between them anyway.

The mission profile called for docking twice, once in low Earth orbit and
once in lunar orbit. I was concerned that docking in low Earth orbit would
slow the mission down.

After they leave the moon, they dock with something, but does that something
need any life support systems? They could stick with the life support
system they had on the moon and use that for the entire journey both
directions.

> And
> there's always the Apollo 13 lesson -- having a lifeboat is a good idea.

A lifeboat with no heat shield would have a serious problem. It depends on
which half dies.

[Reed Snellenberger]

(Rand Simberg) wrote in
:

> On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 02:07:37 GMT, in a place far, far away, Reed
> Snellenberger > made the phosphor
> on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:
>
>>
>>Increasing budget? Didn't Griffin say this program was designed to
>>fit into a flat+inflation budget? Where is the increase?
>
> It's in whatever you arbitrarily call "inflation."
>

Oh.

Hoping that you agree that it isn't accurate to compare unadjusted dollar
amounts that occur over a span of years (in the sense that "gas used to
cost $0.23/gal; now it costs five or more times that!" isn't a valid
comparison between a 1972 and a 2005 price), what benchmark, if any,
would *you* accept as "not increasing" in the flat+<annual change in
value of $>" sense?

That's the one I'm talking about...

>>> For exactly the same (or more) cost as the Shuttle program.
>>>
>>
>>We get something that will initially be (at least) safer than Shuttle
>>and ultimately be more versatile than the orbiter.
>
> How can something that only carries six crew to orbit be more
> versatile? Because it can deliver four people to lunar orbit, given a
> sufficiently large and expensive upper stage? Big whoop.
>

Because it can carry more people to orbit than any other craft but the
moribund Shuttle. Because it can deliver four people to lunar orbit, for
another. Because it probably won't have to worry about launch delays
caused by mild breezes over a runway on the other side of the Atlantic.
Because it will likeways not have to worry nearly as much about winds
aloft causing sufficient aerodynamic stress to break off a wing.

>>More importantly, it's a plan that finally puts an end-cap (of sorts)
>>on the shuttle era.
>
> What's the point, if there's no affordability improvement?
>

What's the point of an affordability improvement? There are more
important considerations in a non-commercial venture.


--
I was punching a text message into my | Reed Snellenberger
phone yesterday and thought, "they need | GPG KeyID: 5A978843
to make a phone that you can just talk | rsnellenberger
into." Major Thomb | -at-houston.rr.com

[Joe Strout]

In article om>,
"dasun" > wrote:

> Hope all you like but the brutal reality is that space does not rate
> much with most politicians and resonates little with the public -
> unless they see amazing things. In the real world the budget
> environment is very tight thus limiting what can be done, you want Moon
> Bases, you want Mars now pony up the cash.

No, no, you're making wrong assumptions. I wasn't hoping for NASA to
establish moon bases or visit Mars (the later is especially pointless at
this stage); I was hoping for NASA to change its culture to become more
effective. In particular, it should be willing to lay off its vast
Shuttle support army and get out of the launch business. Instead, it's
doing exactly the opposite: not only developing new uses for the Shuttle
army, but also sizing its CEV just out of the range of any commercial
launcher so that it won't have to explain why it's not following its
mandate to support the commercial launch business.

> If we wait for that sort of
> money to materialise from reluctant politicians then manned exploration
> beyond LEO is not going to happen. Take what Griffin is offering, I
> seriously doubt much better could be proposed given NASA's current and
> future budgets.

Your doubts are unfounded. MUCH better could have been proposed.

> How in the hell is the experience base of operating in deep space on
> another word the wrong kind of experience?

Because it's based on unsustainable practices. You may notice that we
got experience visiting the Moon before, six times. After that, we
stopped, because it was unsustainable. This plan appears the same to
me; overpriced missions on overpriced hardware, with no infrastructure
development, and no way it will be sustained beyond a handful of visits.

> After 30 years of LEO practice and technology development is most
> certainly needed before we venture much further.

No, what's needed is a sustainable approach, making use of commercial
launch providers, and the development of cislunar infrastructure.

> Shuttle hardware is expensive, so is building whole new systems from
> scratch but - I bet - even more so.

Right. Better to use the existing systems (and ones on the near horizon
such as Falcon, plus others that would no doubt arise in the robust
market a good space development program would create).

> Use what you know, build only what you have to that would be my credo.

Would that NASA had the same credo! But they don't. Theirs is: employ
the people you have, build unnecessary hardware to keep them busy and to
keep those commercial launch providers from showing us up.

> Shuttle hardware provides
> well-known systems, as the basis of heavy lift and crew transport and
> that has to put the aerospace engineers ahead of the game. Think of
> the entire support infrastructure - VAB, crawlers, pads - and it
> already exists and just needs modifying.

No, it needs scrapping. Think of all that stuff, and you can see why
NASA's launch costs are so ridiculously high. And that, in turn, will
be the primary reason the program is unsustainable.

> As for commercial exploration beyond LEO, give me a reasonable business
> plan that justifies that sort of expenditure

Sure:

1. NASA develops standard payload interfaces, at a reasonable size that
can be reached by at least 2 commercial launchers (and preferably more).

2. NASA announces a plan to purchase such launches for a robust program
of exploration, from the lowest reliable provider available at each
launch. (Yes, I know determining "reliable" could be a rat's nest if
done poorly, but suppose it's done sensibly.)

3. Launch providers compete to lower their own launch costs, in order to
get those launches and make a tidy profit. New companies arise to get a
piece of the action; launch costs go down, reliability and capability go
up.

It's not tricky. It just requires NASA getting out of the launch
business and setting up a decent system for selecting launch providers,
that encourages competition.

Then of course there's the purely commercial market, supported mainly by
tourism, but that has to go through suborbital and orbital before we
start thinking about beyond-LEO.

> Finally, give some credit to Bush for enabling this point to be reached
> and now the crossing of the Cassandra can now begin....

I give credit to Bush for ending the moon taboo at NASA. But I remain
disappointed with what NASA is doing with it.

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: |
| http://www.macwebdir.com |
`------------------------------------------------------------------'

[dasun]

Dare I point out to sarcastic dunderheads, who would rather insult than
contribute, that people add significant value to the exploration
processes, which is why on Earth exploration geology is performed in
conjunction with remote sensing. Mining companies would never solely
rely on remote sensing to decide to mine an area. General surveys are
done remotely, specific surveys of much smaller areas - identified
remotely - are done in person, and strategic decisions based on all
this information are then made. If we go to the planets or the Moon
then this is the model we should follow. People add cost, but they
also add much value.

[Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)]

"Alan Anderson" > wrote in message
...
> wrote:
>
> > dasun wrote:
> > > Moore's law is great, but can it go on forever? How long before we
> > > can build artificial intelligence as good as our own? What about the
> >
> > Given the average intelligence of the average Usenet poster, I bet that
> > within 10 years we'll have Usenet bots indistingusheable of humans.
>
> Sure, why not? We already have humans indistinguishable from bots (e.g.
> Guth and Gerald). Doing that in the other direction should be a piece
> of cake.

Alan, don't insult the bots like that please.


>
> Usenet bots indistinguishable from Henry Spencer, on the other hand...

[Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)]

"Michael Rhino" > wrote in message
...
> "Alan Anderson" > wrote in message
> ...
> > "Michael Rhino" > wrote:
> >
> >> It sounds like the lander docks with CEV, they fly to the moon
together,
> >> and
> >> then separate. Isn't this docking an extra step that slows things
down?
> >> Why not have them fly to the moon separately?
> >
> > They'd each need a "departure stage" if it were done that way.
>
> Is there a problem with two departure stages? If they join together, they
> are twice as heavy, so you need twice the fuel to get them there.
>
> > They
> > need to dock in order for people/rocks to move between them anyway.
>
> The mission profile called for docking twice, once in low Earth orbit and
> once in lunar orbit. I was concerned that docking in low Earth orbit
would
> slow the mission down.
>
Umm, what's the hurry?

It's not like its going to add days to the mission.

> After they leave the moon, they dock with something, but does that
something
> need any life support systems? They could stick with the life support
> system they had on the moon and use that for the entire journey both
> directions.
>
> > And
> > there's always the Apollo 13 lesson -- having a lifeboat is a good idea.
>
> A lifeboat with no heat shield would have a serious problem. It depends
on
> which half dies.

Not really. You just need the 1/2 with the heatshield to have enough backup
power to last for re-entry. Again, like Apollo 13.

>
>

[Jorge R. Frank]

Reed Snellenberger > wrote in
.119:

> We get something that will initially be (at least) safer than Shuttle

CEV claims to cut the risk of crew loss *during the ascent phase* by a
factor of ten compared to the shuttle, but ascent risk is only about half
the overall risk. And the remaining mission risks for CEV don't
automatically drop just because the ascent risk dropped. So *at best*
you're talking about a 50% risk reduction - and that's only after the
spacecraft has flown enough times to demonstrate the level of design
maturity the shuttle has *now*.

> and ultimately be more versatile than the orbiter.

In the sense that it can go to the moon, yes. For LEO missions, it's way
less versatile than the orbiter. In particular, "ISS assembly complete" is
about to be redefined as "whatever state the station happens to be in
whenever the shuttle stops flying, since there ain't no way CEV is going to
do any meaningful assembly."

That's perfectly alright as long as you don't pretend to have goals in LEO
like ISS and keep the program focused on exploration beyond LEO. But those
who pretend otherwise are going to be disappointed.
--
JRF

Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail,
check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and
think one step ahead of IBM.

[VA Buckeye]

True, but you can still have 2 launchers; the stick for missions to ISS
and LEO, and the heavy lifter for cargo and lunar shots. For the lunar
shots, why not do it Apollo-style and put the CEV atop the heavy lifter
with the lander? This way, you mitigate the risk by only having one
launch and cutting out a docking.

I'm sure we could find some other productive uses for a booster that can
carry 100+ tons to LEO...

John Doe wrote:

> VA Buckeye wrote:
>
>>So why not stick the CEV atop the heavy lifter and do it all in one
>>shot? If you're going to emulate Apollo, might as well go all the way...
>
>
> Probably for reasons similar to why they made sure Startrek pilot
> episodes made use of every key room: they knew that after that, it would
> be very diffficult to get budgets to build extra sets.
>
> So, by baselining 2 separate launchers for that silly trip to the moon,
> NASA will end up with 2 launchers of usable capacity once the flight to
> mooon has been done and they came back with a few rocks.
>
> If they fitted it all into one launcher, NASA would end up with one
> giant launcher that wouldn't be much use after the flight to the moon
> has been done.

[Rand Simberg]

On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 02:07:37 GMT, in a place far, far away, Reed
Snellenberger > made the phosphor
on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

(Rand Simberg) wrote in
:
>
>>
>> More focused, certainly, but with the increasing budget, and the
>> predilection to do more in house and less contracting, how is it
>> smaller?
>>
>
>Increasing budget? Didn't Griffin say this program was designed to fit
>into a flat+inflation budget? Where is the increase?

It's in whatever you arbitrarily call "inflation."

>> For exactly the same (or more) cost as the Shuttle program.
>>
>
>We get something that will initially be (at least) safer than Shuttle and
>ultimately be more versatile than the orbiter.

How can something that only carries six crew to orbit be more
versatile? Because it can deliver four people to lunar orbit, given a
sufficiently large and expensive upper stage? Big whoop.

>More importantly, it's a plan that finally puts an end-cap (of sorts) on
>the shuttle era.

What's the point, if there's no affordability improvement?

[Rand Simberg]

On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 02:04:25 GMT, in a place far, far away, "Ray"
> made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

>> OK, is anyone other than NASA fanboys here actually excited about this
>> plan?
> I am extremely excited about this plan!

You've already demonstrated yourself, prior to this post, to be a
naif. I was asking about people other than NASA fanboys.

> I have a question for you.
>What else should NASA do?

NASA should be working on making space access affordable. But that's
not something in its bureaucratic interest.

[Ed Kyle]

Rand Simberg wrote:
> On 19 Sep 2005 15:08:09 -0700, in a place far, far away, "Ed Kyle"
> > made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
> way as to indicate that:
>
> >> OK, is anyone other than NASA fanboys here actually excited about this
> >> plan?
> >
> >I think it provides a good roadmap for NASA to follow for
> >the next how-ever-many years. It is a great improvement
> >to the space shuttle era NASA framework.
> >
> >This is a plan that could very well, over time, lead to a
> >smaller, more focused NASA.
>
> More focused, certainly, but with the increasing budget, and the
> predilection to do more in house and less contracting, how is it
> smaller?
>
> >It is a plan that produces
> >something useful in the near-term - the CEV and CLV tools
> >that will replace shuttle and could by themselves, in
> >concert with commercial launch services and international
> >space station partners, serve as the framework for a long-
> >term human space program.
>
> For exactly the same (or more) cost as the Shuttle program.
>
> http://www.transterrestrial.com/archives/005729.html#005729

I haven't seen the CEV costs you cite in this article.
I've seen the recent charts put up by nasawatch, but
I don't see how it is possible to sort out development
costs from operating costs in these projections. It
still seems likely to me that a Stick-based program
would cost less annually than a Shuttle-based program
over the long term.

The bottom line is that NASA's budget is not projected
to increase much on an annual basis (adjusted for
inflation) even while it develops two new launch
vehicles and two new human crewed spaceflight vehicles
that will be bound for the moon. This sounds better to
me than the status quo that has NASA spending close to
$4 billion per year trying to keep shuttle flying in
low earth orbit only.

- Ed Kyle

[Russell Wallace]

dasun wrote:
> Dare I point out to sarcastic dunderheads, who would rather insult than
> contribute, that people add significant value to the exploration
> processes, which is why on Earth exploration geology is performed in
> conjunction with remote sensing. Mining companies would never solely
> rely on remote sensing to decide to mine an area.

They would if sending humans cost $50 billion.

> General surveys are
> done remotely, specific surveys of much smaller areas - identified
> remotely - are done in person, and strategic decisions based on all
> this information are then made. If we go to the planets or the Moon
> then this is the model we should follow. People add cost, but they
> also add much value.

Yes, but not $50 billion worth of value. When we have the technology to
send people to other worlds for a halfway sane sum of money, then and
only then will it make sense to do so.

--
"Always look on the bright side of life."
To reply by email, replace no.spam with my last name.

[John Doe]

Ray wrote:
> Ridiculious comment above. We are going back to the moon to learn to
> live their! Not just to pick up a couple of rocks!


You are naive if you think that. Nothing in the announced plan will
develop technology to land "space station" elements on the moon. Nothing
in the announced plan will have technology to sohoot mining equipment to
get some water.

All that is announced is a glorified 4 person LEM capable of staying 1
week instead of 2 days with 2 crewmembers.

Hopefully that glorified LEM will have room for a dune buggy line the
later Apollo missions.

And once they've made the flight to the moon to pickup rock samples, how
much do you bet that the program will be cancelled ?


The shuttle has been to the station far more times than Apollo went to
the moon. And the CEV , if it is ever completed, will have gone more
times to the station than to the moon.

[John Doe]

Ed Kyle wrote:
> The bottom line is that NASA's budget is not projected
> to increase much on an annual basis (adjusted for
> inflation)


Yeah sure....

Didn't they say that for Shuttle, and promise the shuttle would be fully
reusable with little/no maintenance required between flights and fly at
very low costs many times per month ?


Griffin mentioned reusability. In the end, it will be similar to Soyuz
reusability: they'll try to salvage some electronics from the cabin. But
the rest will be crushed and sent to smelters to be turned into beer cans.

One must not believe promises made at this point. And it is dangerous
for NASA to make promises because it may force it to end up making
compromises that will make the vehicle costlier and not as good, just
like it had to compromise with Shuttle.

[Derek Lyons]

"Ray" > wrote:

>We humans are explorers. This is normal for us.

As a race? Not really. The bulk of the race is very solidly
stay-at-home, take-no-risk, eat-only-what-grandpa-ate.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

[Derek Lyons]

"Paul F. Dietz" > wrote:

>dasun wrote:
>> Ever hear of exploration geologists? Mining companies set up camp in
>> the middle of somewhere - like Timbuktu - and the geologists move in to
>> map the local geology.
>
>No ****, dasun. The point, which whizzed completely over your
>head, is that in some situations geologists are *not* sent
>in, because it would be far too expensive to do so. Even
>on Earth they use remote techniques when it's sufficiently
>cheaper.

They use remote techniques because it's more reasonable to do so -
digging a shaft wide enough for a geologist yet deep enough to reach
oil is virtually an impossibility, and remote methods return enough
data to be useful.

OTOH - anywhere it is reasonable to put a set of eyes and hands in
situ, they do so. (Even where it's only semi reasonable - something
like half of Alvin's dives have been geologic in nature.)

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

[Derek Lyons]

"Michael Rhino" > wrote:

>> They'd each need a "departure stage" if it were done that way.
>
>Is there a problem with two departure stages? If they join together, they
>are twice as heavy, so you need twice the fuel to get them there.

For a given weight at TLI, you'll need essentially the same amount of
fuel for the same weight - it doesn't matter if the weight is in two
packages (each having half the payload and half the TLI fuel) or a
single stack. Thus splitting the TLI stage in two doesn't save fuel
(which is cheap anyhow), and increases costs and failure modes.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

[Paul F. Dietz]

dasun wrote:

> that people add significant value to the exploration
> processes, which is why on Earth exploration geology is performed in
> conjunction with remote sensing.

They are used on Earth because on Earth people are *really cheap*.

> Mining companies would never solely
> rely on remote sensing to decide to mine an area.

If there's an area of land on Earth were geologists
can't economically be sent to the surface, then mining companies
will not employ just remote sensing because the area won't
be economical to mine at all.

This application of this observation to the moon should be obvious.
Or are you going to tell me about all the mining companies just
raring to go to open lunar mines?

Paul

[Paul F. Dietz]

Derek Lyons wrote:

> They use remote techniques because it's more reasonable to do so -
> digging a shaft wide enough for a geologist yet deep enough to reach
> oil is virtually an impossibility, and remote methods return enough
> data to be useful.

Reasonable == economical.

Paul

[Douglas Holmes]

"S. Wand" > wrote in message
...
>I think I read that CEV would be 5.5m across the base of the heat shield,
> compared to 3.9m for Apollo. I haven't seen any figures on internal
> volume
> yet. I'd guess it'd be a bit smaller per person than the shuttle.
>
> I think a large CEV is fine for the lunar missions - but for ISS rendevous
> a
> Soyuz-class vehicle is sufficient. I'm sure it's too much money for NASA
> to
> have another vehicle - but hopefully they'd consider private industry at
> some point for the LEO market. Wishful thinking...
>
The capsule appears to be about 18-20 m3 and mass about 9,000 kg.

With appropriate amounts of fuel about 18 mt to ISS, 15mt without escape
system (unmanned).

A little heavy but not as bad as I feared.

[Ray]

"Derek Lyons" > wrote in message
...
> "Ray" > wrote:
>
>>We humans are explorers. This is normal for us.
>
> As a race? Not really. The bulk of the race is very solidly
> stay-at-home, take-no-risk, eat-only-what-grandpa-ate.
>
> D.
> --
> Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.
>
> -Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
> Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

Not true. If that were true, our primitive predecessors would not
have gotten out of Africa. We humans might have become that way over that
last 200 years, but we are explorers by heart, and we need to be inspired
and shown the way.
I think its pathetic how people are against human space exploration. Too
much of this attitude and we will become extinct someday. Another problem
is that people are cheap with tax money. They don't want it wasted, so give
it back in a tax break and watch how they spend it important things like
alcohol, tobacco, drugs and gambling.

Ray

[Paul F. Dietz]

Ray wrote:

> Not true. If that were true, our primitive predecessors would not
> have gotten out of Africa. We humans might have become that way over that
> last 200 years, but we are explorers by heart, and we need to be inspired
> and shown the way.

This is just bull****. The vast majority of humans are not explorers.
They have been born, lived, and died in small geographical areas -- that's
why human racial diversity still exists, after all.

Long distance exploration has been a desperate, dangerous, last-resort
behavior, undertaken by fringe elements or individuals who would otherwise
have been failures. And these elements typically haven't needed megafunding
from megagovernment to do this exploration, so the application to the
current situation in space is tenuous at best.

> I think its pathetic how people are against human space exploration.

I think the transparently foolish arguments used to justify space
exploration are what is truly pathetic.

Paul

[Ray]

"John Doe" > wrote in message ...
> Ray wrote:
>> Ridiculious comment above. We are going back to the moon to learn to
>> live their! Not just to pick up a couple of rocks!
>
>
> You are naive if you think that. Nothing in the announced plan will
> develop technology to land "space station" elements on the moon. Nothing
> in the announced plan will have technology to sohoot mining equipment to
> get some water.
>
> All that is announced is a glorified 4 person LEM capable of staying 1
> week instead of 2 days with 2 crewmembers.
>
> Hopefully that glorified LEM will have room for a dune buggy line the
> later Apollo missions.
>
> And once they've made the flight to the moon to pickup rock samples, how
> much do you bet that the program will be cancelled ?
That makes no sense. You have a spacecraft designed to operate
outside of earth orbit, you make a few flights to the moon and then cancel
the program? No. And do what with the CEV? Operate it in orbit only? No. It
was not designed for that. I dont think any future American President,
Senate or Congress will be that stupid enough to cancel the program with one
exception. The moon program might be cancled eventually for Mars, but to
cancel it and do nothing outside of earth orbit is just stupid. I think the
congress and the senate are dedicated to this program.
Ray
>
> The shuttle has been to the station far more times than Apollo went to
> the moon. And the CEV , if it is ever completed, will have gone more
> times to the station than to the moon.

[Ray]

"Paul F. Dietz" > wrote in message
...
> Ray wrote:
>
>> What else should NASA do?
>
> It could cease to exist. Government agencies don't have a right to life.
>
> Paul

If moon, mars and beyond cannot be justified and its too expensive
then why did the Congress (94%), Senate and President overwhelmingly approve
it? Why couldn't they just stay with the shuttle or developed an orbital
space plane to get to orbit only when we need to or just cancel manned space
exploration? I think we got moon, mars and beyond because the US government
overwhelmingly supports it and a lot of major aerospace corporations support
it.

Ray

[Herb Schaltegger]

On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 07:21:41 -0500, Ray wrote
(in article <p9TXe.8506$i86.1501@trndny01>):

> That makes no sense. You have a spacecraft designed to operate
> outside of earth orbit, you make a few flights to the moon and then cancel
> the program? No. And do what with the CEV? Operate it in orbit only? No. It
> was not designed for that.

It's not designed at all. So far, all you or anyone else has seen are
a bunch of pretty pictures. NASA and its contractors are very fond of
pretty pictures. Do you really believe these are the only pretty
pictures NASA has produced to drum up support for a project? Do you
not realize how few actually come to fruition?

>I dont think any future American President,
> Senate or Congress will be that stupid enough to cancel the program with one
> exception.

Flash back to the late 1960's/early 1970's and consider what was done
with Apollo, then consider what you just wrote.

> The moon program might be cancled eventually for Mars, but to
> cancel it and do nothing outside of earth orbit is just stupid. I think the
> congress and the senate are dedicated to this program.

Based on what? Why do you believe that Congress cares one whit about
this program aside from jobs at the NASA centers and contractors?

--
"Fame may be fleeting but obscurity is forever." ~Anonymous
"I believe as little as possible and know as much as I can."
~Todd Stuart Phillips
<www.angryherb.net>

[Paul F. Dietz]

Ray wrote:

> If moon, mars and beyond cannot be justified and its too expensive
> then why did the Congress (94%), Senate and President overwhelmingly approve
> it?

Because it buys votes?

I do hope you are not proposing that if the government approves something,
that implies the thing is a good idea.

> Why couldn't they just stay with the shuttle or developed an orbital
> space plane to get to orbit only when we need to or just cancel manned space
> exploration? I think we got moon, mars and beyond because the US government
> overwhelmingly supports it and a lot of major aerospace corporations support
> it.

Well, *of course* the pigs feeding at this trough support it.
They support things that send money their way.

They couldn't stay with the shuttle because it's become an embarrassment,
and because the day when they can't fly any more of them is closer
than they thought (at which point the pork stops flowing).

Paul

[Will McLean]

Ed Kyle wrote:
> Rand Simberg wrote:
> > On 19 Sep 2005 15:08:09 -0700, in a place far, far away, "Ed Kyle"
> > > made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
> > way as to indicate that:
> >
> > >> OK, is anyone other than NASA fanboys here actually excited about this
> > >> plan?
> > >
> > >I think it provides a good roadmap for NASA to follow for
> > >the next how-ever-many years. It is a great improvement
> > >to the space shuttle era NASA framework.
> > >
> > >This is a plan that could very well, over time, lead to a
> > >smaller, more focused NASA.
> >
> > More focused, certainly, but with the increasing budget, and the
> > predilection to do more in house and less contracting, how is it
> > smaller?
> >
> > >It is a plan that produces
> > >something useful in the near-term - the CEV and CLV tools
> > >that will replace shuttle and could by themselves, in
> > >concert with commercial launch services and international
> > >space station partners, serve as the framework for a long-
> > >term human space program.
> >
> > For exactly the same (or more) cost as the Shuttle program.
> >
> > http://www.transterrestrial.com/archives/005729.html#005729
>
> I haven't seen the CEV costs you cite in this article.
> I've seen the recent charts put up by nasawatch, but
> I don't see how it is possible to sort out development
> costs from operating costs in these projections.


You can make a stab at by looking at the costs after specific systems
are supposed to become operational. Note, however, that though the
charts were posted recently, they date back to June, and at least some
of the assumptions are obsolete.

> It
> still seems likely to me that a Stick-based program
> would cost less annually than a Shuttle-based program
> over the long term.
>
> The bottom line is that NASA's budget is not projected
> to increase much on an annual basis (adjusted for
> inflation) even while it develops two new launch
> vehicles and two new human crewed spaceflight vehicles
> that will be bound for the moon. This sounds better to
> me than the status quo that has NASA spending close to
> $4 billion per year trying to keep shuttle flying in
> low earth orbit only.
>
> - Ed Kyle

Over $4 billion a year now.

Will McLean

[Jeff Findley]

> wrote in message
ups.com...
> The bottom line is : let s give back to NASA in 2018 the capabilities
> it had in 1972.

And cost more money and time to do it. :-(

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

[Jeff Findley]

> wrote in message
oups.com...
> Maybe we could do a commercial Skylab ?
>
> Since the launcher exists, why not a single module, 100-ton class
> commercial station.. ?
>
> No costly assembly and with a 100 mass maybe you can keep the
> consumable servicing to a minimum. Maybe build with ample design
> margins and simple construction techniques.
>
> Well : question, with the 125-t class launcher, assuming the Govt
> builds two a year for its Moon missions, what else could be done ?

Sorry, but with NASA controlling both Satay (The Stick) and the SDHLV, I'd
say that the chances are zero that it will ever be used commercially.

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

[Jeff Findley]

"dasun" > wrote in message
oups.com...
> Science is not the reason for going up - that is philosophical -
> science is what you do when you are there, along with all the house
> keeping chores. Colonisation, if it happens at all, is generally not
> what you do when you first arrive on a new world, as the history of
> earth exploration will attest, first you look around and then you
> decide where to stay and why and that may take decades or centuries.
> In short science is a very useful activity to perform if you have
> decided to go to new worlds in the first place. Besides, find a
> politician that understands science!

None of that will happen with the high cost that NASA is building into the
program. I agree with Rand's blog that NASA is likely to have four or less
flights per year to the Moon. This is nowhere near a colony, and at a cost
of $7 billion per year, you're not going to find anyone who would want to
pay to scale that up to colony size.

What's holding us back is high launch costs. NASA's exploration plan does
nothing to address this issue.

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

[Jeff Findley]

"John Doe" > wrote in message ...
> In this announcement, has NASA announced automated docking development ?
> Without a shuttle or automated docking, NASA will not be able to build
> any structures in space anymore. And to build anything meaningful, they
> will want docking ports as big as CBMs. So either automated bertthing
> with existing CBMs or develop a docakble CBM size port.

Actually, I think they did, but they did so in an indirect way. The
articles I read said the CEV would be able to fly unmanned cargo missions to
ISS. That implies automated rendezvous and docking (or berthing).

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

[Jeff Findley]

"Ray" > wrote in message
news:GlKXe.6343$N35.5605@trndny09...
> Ridiculious comment above. We are going back to the moon to learn to
> live their! Not just to pick up a couple of rocks! Just like we have
> learned to live in a space station in orbit for 6 months, we will learn to
> live on the moon, another planet, and then we will transfer that knowledge
> to living on Mars. We will learn to live off the land, and we will become
> better humans. What is so wrong with this. We humans are explorers.
This
> is normal for us. This is well worth the cost.

Then you're not understanding NASA's announcement very well. From the looks
of the plan, about all they could sustain is about four lunar missions per
year. In other words, this is only a bit bigger than Apollo. It's nowhere
near the capability to build a sustainable lunar base of the size you seem
to be thinking of.

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

[Jeff Findley]

"Ray" > wrote in message
news:p9TXe.8506$i86.1501@trndny01...
> That makes no sense. You have a spacecraft designed to operate
> outside of earth orbit, you make a few flights to the moon and then cancel
> the program? No. And do what with the CEV? Operate it in orbit only? No.
It
> was not designed for that. I dont think any future American President,
> Senate or Congress will be that stupid enough to cancel the program with
one
> exception. The moon program might be cancled eventually for Mars, but to
> cancel it and do nothing outside of earth orbit is just stupid. I think
the
> congress and the senate are dedicated to this program.

Yet that's exactly what's happening to ISS. NASA needs to severely cut back
on the number of planned shuttle flights to ISS in order to end the shuttle
program by 2010. Furthermore, NASA has yet to develop the crew return
vehicle that it agreed to develop and deploy in order to increase the ISS
crew size beyond three. Maybe we'll see CEV flying to ISS by 2012, but
that's many years beyond the initial plan and many years beyond the date
that Russia agreed to fly US astronauts to and from ISS on Soyuz.

What makes you think that this next program will be any different than how
NASA has run ISS? What will they cut from the lunar exploration program
when they run into cost overruns like they did on ISS and congress and the
administration tell them to redesign the program? Have you learned nothing
from the shuttle/ISS programs?

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

[genedigennaro@hotmail.com]

Alex Terrell wrote:
> In short, it's not as disastrous as the previuos (Shuttle) strategy.
>
>
> Even the CEV is gross overkill in the near term, if it's just going to
> fly to ISS. So as well as recreating Apollo, NASA's going to recreate
> Soyuz.


CEV recreates Apollo and Soyuz but bear in mind that Soyuz was the
Russian equivalent to Apollo. Also understand that back in the early
60's Apollo was to be more than just a moon vehicle. It was meant to be
the standard taxi to take astronauts to work. Think of AAP,
unfortunately it morphed into the single program Skylab, but NASA had
alot of plans for the CSM back in the mid 60's. In a sense the Apollo
CSM was also meant to be a shuttle too, albeit a non reusable one with
no cargo capability. Like Big Gemini, however, I'm sure there were
designs for later generation Apollo based spacecraft that had cargo
capability.

As far as CEV, Stick, and Big Rocket goes, we have come full circle
back to an Apollo CSM, Saturn 1b and Saturn V. These were vehicles we
should have never discarded and abandoned in the first place.

Hey man the new Mustang looks like it should, Pontiac makes a GTO again
and Chrysler makes Hemis once more, why shouldn't NASA join the retro
trend!

Gene DiGennaro
Baltimore, Md.

[Jeff Findley]

"Ray" > wrote in message
news:J6KXe.15619$Zg5.1847@trndny05...
>
> I am extremely excited about this plan! I have a question for
you.
> What else should NASA do? Personally, I rather get rid of NASA instead of
> letting it orbit humans around the earth forever wasting our tax money.
If
> we are going to have manned spaceflight we need to be serious about it and
> explore space, moon, mars and beyond, with people not just some dam
robots.
> Somebody mentioned something on these newsgroups once about NASA working
> with energy. That's bull****. We have a dept or energy for that. NASA
> exists to do flight in space mostly.

NASA could focus on the real problem, which is high launch costs. For the
$7 billion a year this program is going to cost, they could fund dozens of
X-vehicle programs, each aimed at one aspect of lowering launch costs. The
results of these programs would be public knowledge, useable by both the
established launch companies, and the startups.

Certainly this would delay our return to the moon, but it would make the
return to the moon far more affordable and sustainable. Apollo wasn't
sustainable due to high costs. Shuttle wasn't sustainable in part due to
high costs. What makes anyone think that the Stick and the SDHLV will be
sustainable?

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

[Jeff Findley]

"S. Wand" > wrote in message
...
> Yes, there is a lot to like about this plan.
>
> 1) We're finally getting around to developing a Saturn V-class heavy
lifter.
> This is essential if we're ever to go beyond low earth orbit. And it
looks
> like they're going with the in-line design, which will have greater growth
> potential than Shuttle-Z.

Heavy lift isn't required for missions beyond LEO. It's a desire on NASA's
part. There isn't any reason you can't launch all the pieces separately and
assemble them in LEO. The biggest mass to launch for a Moon mission is the
fuel and oxidizer to get you there and back. It's far easier to launch fuel
and oxidizer on multiple launches to LEO than NASA would like you to think.

> 2) I think it is correct to focus on the moon for now. There are several
> reasons why the moon could be a better colonization target than Mars -
close
> to earth in travel time and communications, easier gravity well to
escape,
> greater solar energy resources, no issues with biological contamination.
> If water is present at the poles, then we can practice resource processing
> as well.

But the plan isn't to colonize the moon. The plan is to have maybe four
NASA missions per year to the moon with maybe a dozen or two *NASA*
astronauts making that trip. This won't open up the moon to colonization in
any real sense of the word.

> 3) There's no technological risk in the hardware development. Some may
> view that as a negative, but we've wasted too much money on X-craft, space
> stations, and (yes) the shuttle with very little to show for it. I think
> until we get a space elevator, getting to LEO will be an expensive
> proposition. Until then, keep it simple. Remember, the most dependable
> launcher on earth is the first one - Soyuz.

The risk may be low (in your opinion), but the cost is definately high. $10
to $15 billion, just to develop the stick and the SDHLV. That's $10 to $15
billion that could be better spent.

> 4) Disappointed that it's too much like Apollo/Saturn? What an idiotic
> troll-like complaint - Apollo/Saturn was the pinnacle achievement of the
> space age. If we hadn't discarded it 30 years ago, then astronaut Husband
> would be walking Husband Hill by now.

Yet it wasn't economically sustainable. NASA had plenty of plans to keep
using Saturns to launch all sorts of space stations and lunar missions. But
it was too expensive to do so and the entire program was scrapped, even
before the Apollo lunar landing missions ended. Skylab and ASTP flew only
because of the surplus Apollo hardware that remained after the last lunar
landing missions were cancelled.

What makes you think that the stick and the SDHLV will be more sustainable
over the long term? What happens when the US public gets bored of landing a
few astronauts on the moon every year?

> Two weaknesses in my opinion:
> 1) The Stick-CEV seems wrong-sized for LEO operations - too large. The
> decision is understandable because we're keeping the SRBs for the heavy
> lifter. But it would be nice to see private industry step up for
operations
> less than 250 miles high.

That's clearly a problem with the SDHLLV as well. The size and cost is too
big.

> 2) The overall price seems high. If the Stick/CEV development is about
$10
> billion (in itself a high number) and the Heavy is about $8 billion -
> where's the rest of the money being spent? NASA needs to trim the
> workforce, close some buildings, etc. Cancel ISS, or sell it to Bigelow.

Work on ISS will slow to a near stand still. It will certainly be a
destination of the CEV, if only to give it a meaningful place to go in LEO
(for testing), but beyond that, I don't see NASA spending much money to keep
ISS going after it declares ISS "assembly complete" (which really means the
end of shuttle flights).

NASA is continuing to jump from mega program to mega program, providing us
with nothing in the way of sustainable, economic, access to space.

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

[Jeff Findley]

"Ray" > wrote in message
news:22LXe.7296$i86.3182@trndny01...
>
> I like what you said below, but I actually like a big CEV in orbit.
The
> astronauts deserve a roomy CEV. By the way, do you know the dimensions of
> the CEV or where I could find that information? Will the CEV be as big as
> the shuttle crew cabin or smaller?

The astronauts deserve it? That's hardly justification to spend about $10
billion to develop the CEV and the stick.

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

[Jeff Findley]

> wrote in message
oups.com...
>
> As far as CEV, Stick, and Big Rocket goes, we have come full circle
> back to an Apollo CSM, Saturn 1b and Saturn V. These were vehicles we
> should have never discarded and abandoned in the first place.

They were discarded because of the high cost. What makes you think the same
won't happen again? We are, after all, presented with a plan to spend more
time and money than Apollo, but end up with only a small improvement in
capability.

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

[Rand Simberg]

On 19 Sep 2005 19:31:47 -0700, in a place far, far away, "Will McLean"
> made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

>> >It is a plan that produces
>> >something useful in the near-term - the CEV and CLV tools
>> >that will replace shuttle and could by themselves, in
>> >concert with commercial launch services and international
>> >space station partners, serve as the framework for a long-
>> >term human space program.
>>
>> For exactly the same (or more) cost as the Shuttle program.
>>
>> http://www.transterrestrial.com/archives/005729.html#005729
>
>If you don't know if the figures you are quoting are full program costs
>or fixed costs, how do you know that the CEV/CLV will cost exactly the
>same or more?

If they're fixed costs, then it will cost more. My numbers applied to
full program costs.

>And what was your source for the quote?

Not a great one. A posting here, I think.

[Rand Simberg]

On Mon, 19 Sep 2005 22:06:56 -0600, in a place far, far away, Joe
Strout > made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

>> If we wait for that sort of
>> money to materialise from reluctant politicians then manned exploration
>> beyond LEO is not going to happen. Take what Griffin is offering, I
>> seriously doubt much better could be proposed given NASA's current and
>> future budgets.
>
>Your doubts are unfounded. MUCH better could have been proposed.

In the sense that the money could be better spent, yes, but it's
possible that this is the only kind of plan that would be politically
acceptable (those jobs have to be maintained).

[Joe Strout]

In article <p9TXe.8506$i86.1501@trndny01>, "Ray" >
wrote:

> That makes no sense. You have a spacecraft designed to operate
> outside of earth orbit, you make a few flights to the moon and then cancel
> the program? No.

If you can't be bothered to read history, at least watch it on the
History Channel. You're embarrassing yourself.

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: |
| http://www.macwebdir.com |
`------------------------------------------------------------------'

[Rand Simberg]

On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 12:21:41 GMT, in a place far, far away, "Ray"
> made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

>> And once they've made the flight to the moon to pickup rock samples, how
>> much do you bet that the program will be cancelled ?
> That makes no sense. You have a spacecraft designed to operate
>outside of earth orbit, you make a few flights to the moon and then cancel
>the program?

You mean exactly the way we did in the 1960s?

>I dont think any future American President,
>Senate or Congress will be that stupid enough to cancel the program with one
>exception.

It happened once, and it's likely to happen again.

[Cardman]

On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 10:42:27 -0400, "Jeff Findley"
> wrote:

>Heavy lift isn't required for missions beyond LEO. It's a desire on NASA's
>part. There isn't any reason you can't launch all the pieces separately and
>assemble them in LEO. The biggest mass to launch for a Moon mission is the
>fuel and oxidizer to get you there and back. It's far easier to launch fuel
>and oxidizer on multiple launches to LEO than NASA would like you to think.

Sounds true enough to me. It would also be helpful to get more
economical use of their chosen launcher. Keep those people working on
the launcher working longer and harder, while the vastly larger
workforce for the SDHLV could all be fired (nothing personal!).

This large cut out their workforce alone would make more efficient use
of their budget. However, the best aspect is that at these lower
launch masses, then the commercial side can start to get in on the
action. This will allow NASA to both reduce their launch costs, and to
get out of the launch business for good.

The last I heard was that their SDHLV could put 14 tons directly on
the Moon. They could easily put much more mass into LEO, then to
launch the required fuel on a second launch.

The only issue here is in trying to cram things like a bulldozer into
the smaller payload fairing. Still, they could always send up the
parts to have this later assembled on the Moon.

Seems like a good idea to me for NASA to build a fuel station in LEO,
on the right orbit to later head on to the Moon. As then this fuel
would be already waiting before they launched their main missions,
where they can top up their fuel reserves as needed.

You can include some simple life support here to keep things flexible
and safe.

A cargo delivery CEV to operate between Earth and Lunar orbit is also
an idea, when to minimise costs and complexity, then you do not want
to launch more than big dumb cargo canisters.

The only issue is in servicing your CEV, where avoiding bringing this
back to Earth saves the heat shield mass. And to allow for the
lifeboat option, then you can just use two CEVs end to end.

Better yet remove the human aspect fully and just have an automated
system do this round trip, again, and again, and again. That way you
can just have your humans working on either end, with the more rare
trip between the two.

This plan would mostly swap the SDHLV for a LEO Fuel Station. So the
cost would be slightly cheaper to build, and a lot cheaper to operate.

I think you have to face the fact that NASA's whole plan is to
maximise their own budget. I would even go as far to say that the mass
of their CEV could be a direct lie in order to make it slightly above
the more commercial options. Not that their is any suitably good
commercial launcher yet available that is.

>But the plan isn't to colonize the moon. The plan is to have maybe four
>NASA missions per year to the moon with maybe a dozen or two *NASA*
>astronauts making that trip. This won't open up the moon to colonization in
>any real sense of the word.

Seems more like a case of having NASA appear to do something useful in
order to justify their human space launch budget.

From what I see they plan to do two human Moon visits per year,
starting with four people per trip. Later on they will build
themselves a base and to swap over the crew each six months.

If they actually do something useful here remains to be seen, but we
can certainly moan like hell until they do. What I would most like to
see is a mining operation that is turned into a large base. Fit a
airlock, seal the walls, then to pressurize.

Growing food on the Moon would also be important. As when you have
food to eat, water to drink, a place to live, power generation, and
air to breath, then you have the minimum required to maintain a
colony.

Even NASA could do that. They just need to work on a mostly self
supporting system, and to stop bringing their people and equipment
back. That alone is a miracle for them though, where you can see the
wonderful greenery on the ISS for proof.

Cardman.

[Jeff Findley]

"Cardman" > wrote in message
...
> A cargo delivery CEV to operate between Earth and Lunar orbit is also
> an idea, when to minimise costs and complexity, then you do not want
> to launch more than big dumb cargo canisters.
>
> The only issue is in servicing your CEV, where avoiding bringing this
> back to Earth saves the heat shield mass. And to allow for the
> lifeboat option, then you can just use two CEVs end to end.

The mass of fuel and oxidizer needed to brake your CEV into LEO would be far
higher than your heat shield mass. That's why people who look into this
start considering the use of aerobraking to reduce the mass of the fuel and
oxidizer needed.

> From what I see they plan to do two human Moon visits per year,
> starting with four people per trip. Later on they will build
> themselves a base and to swap over the crew each six months.

Sounds a lot like ISS doesn't it? It started out with man tended visits,
then switched over to crews of three (or two) that switch out every six
months.

> If they actually do something useful here remains to be seen, but we
> can certainly moan like hell until they do.

> What I would most like to
> see is a mining operation that is turned into a large base. Fit a
> airlock, seal the walls, then to pressurize.

NASA most certainly isn't planning on anything this large very soon. Given
the budget isn't much bigger than shuttle/ISS, I don't expect results to be
much beyond what we're currently seeing on ISS.

> Growing food on the Moon would also be important. As when you have
> food to eat, water to drink, a place to live, power generation, and
> air to breath, then you have the minimum required to maintain a
> colony.

Again, I doubt this will happen. For the money they've got to spend, I'd
expect to see a lunar base about the size of ISS. Anything bigger would
require fundamental changes in the ways that NASA does business, and the
stick, SDHLLV, and CEV are specifically designed to *not* require
fundamental changes to NASA's infrastructure (and costs).

> Even NASA could do that. They just need to work on a mostly self
> supporting system, and to stop bringing their people and equipment
> back. That alone is a miracle for them though, where you can see the
> wonderful greenery on the ISS for proof.

That's not going to happen the way that NASA is running things.

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

[Rand Simberg]

On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 10:12:21 -0400, in a place far, far away, "Jeff
Findley" > made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

>
> wrote in message
oups.com...
>> Maybe we could do a commercial Skylab ?
>>
>> Since the launcher exists, why not a single module, 100-ton class
>> commercial station.. ?
>>
>> No costly assembly and with a 100 mass maybe you can keep the
>> consumable servicing to a minimum. Maybe build with ample design
>> margins and simple construction techniques.
>>
>> Well : question, with the 125-t class launcher, assuming the Govt
>> builds two a year for its Moon missions, what else could be done ?
>
>Sorry, but with NASA controlling both Satay (The Stick) and the SDHLV, I'd
>say that the chances are zero that it will ever be used commercially.

Not to mention the fact that only NASA would be able (or willing) to
afford it.

[Rand Simberg]

On 20 Sep 2005 07:29:33 -0700, in a place far, far away,
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such
a way as to indicate that:

>As far as CEV, Stick, and Big Rocket goes, we have come full circle
>back to an Apollo CSM, Saturn 1b and Saturn V. These were vehicles we
>should have never discarded and abandoned in the first place.

They were abandoned for good reason.

>Hey man the new Mustang looks like it should, Pontiac makes a GTO again
>and Chrysler makes Hemis once more, why shouldn't NASA join the retro
>trend!

Because it's ridiculously expensive.

[Reed Snellenberger]

"Jorge R. Frank" > wrote in
:

> Reed Snellenberger > wrote in
> .119:
>
>> We get something that will initially be (at least) safer than Shuttle
>
> CEV claims to cut the risk of crew loss *during the ascent phase* by a
> factor of ten compared to the shuttle, but ascent risk is only about
> half the overall risk. And the remaining mission risks for CEV don't
> automatically drop just because the ascent risk dropped. So *at best*
> you're talking about a 50% risk reduction - and that's only after the
> spacecraft has flown enough times to demonstrate the level of design
> maturity the shuttle has *now*.
>

Risk at re-entry should also be reduced quite a bit, since a capsule
doesn't have the requirement to perform aerodynamic maneuvers during
entry and should be inherently stable as well.


>> and ultimately be more versatile than the orbiter.
>
> In the sense that it can go to the moon, yes. For LEO missions, it's
> way less versatile than the orbiter. In particular, "ISS assembly
> complete" is about to be redefined as "whatever state the station
> happens to be in whenever the shuttle stops flying, since there ain't
> no way CEV is going to do any meaningful assembly."
>
> That's perfectly alright as long as you don't pretend to have goals in
> LEO like ISS and keep the program focused on exploration beyond LEO.
> But those who pretend otherwise are going to be disappointed.

I'll grant that it won't be versatile enough to carry up ISS modules that
were specifically designed to be launched in the back of the shuttle.
However, we've already made the decision to end the Shuttle by 2010, so
saying that CEV is less versatile than shuttle because it can't install
modules that were specifically designed for the shuttle is a lot like
saying that Shuttle isn't as versatile as Apollo since it can't make it
to the moon. Different missions, different capabilities.

If a need arises to extend the station after Shuttle is retired, that
will be another mission. If someone wants to do that, they will just
have to develop (and fund) the tools to get the piece delivered and
installed.


--
I was punching a text message into my | Reed Snellenberger
phone yesterday and thought, "they need | GPG KeyID: 5A978843
to make a phone that you can just talk | rsnellenberger
into." Major Thomb | -at-houston.rr.com

[Will]

Rand Simberg wrote:
> On 19 Sep 2005 15:08:09 -0700, in a place far, far away, "Ed Kyle"
> > made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
> way as to indicate that:
>
> >> OK, is anyone other than NASA fanboys here actually excited about this
> >> plan?
> >
> >I think it provides a good roadmap for NASA to follow for
> >the next how-ever-many years. It is a great improvement
> >to the space shuttle era NASA framework.
> >
> >This is a plan that could very well, over time, lead to a
> >smaller, more focused NASA.
>
> More focused, certainly, but with the increasing budget, and the
> predilection to do more in house and less contracting, how is it
> smaller?
>
> >It is a plan that produces
> >something useful in the near-term - the CEV and CLV tools
> >that will replace shuttle and could by themselves, in
> >concert with commercial launch services and international
> >space station partners, serve as the framework for a long-
> >term human space program.
>
> For exactly the same (or more) cost as the Shuttle program.
>
> http://www.transterrestrial.com/archives/005729.html#005729

I don't see how that follows from your figures. Two manned CEV launches
can handle ISS crew rotation, and four unmanned, with payload instead
of the capsule, can deliver more payload to ISS than the same number of
shuttle launches. If your figure of $3 billion is for annual program
cost, that's more than a billion less than what the shuttle costs to do
the same job.

Will McLean

[Jeff Findley]

"Reed Snellenberger" > wrote in message
.121...
> "Jorge R. Frank" > wrote in
> :
> > CEV claims to cut the risk of crew loss *during the ascent phase* by a
> > factor of ten compared to the shuttle, but ascent risk is only about
> > half the overall risk. And the remaining mission risks for CEV don't
> > automatically drop just because the ascent risk dropped. So *at best*
> > you're talking about a 50% risk reduction - and that's only after the
> > spacecraft has flown enough times to demonstrate the level of design
> > maturity the shuttle has *now*.
>
> Risk at re-entry should also be reduced quite a bit, since a capsule
> doesn't have the requirement to perform aerodynamic maneuvers during
> entry and should be inherently stable as well.

But it has the option to do so. Just as Apollo did, you simply offset the
CG a bit to give you a bit of lift. Then all you do is roll the spacecraft
so that the lift vector is in the desired direction. This was primarily
used to perform a lifting reentry, which reduces the g-loads experienced,
which is important when your reentry is being performed at lunar return
velocities. This can also improve landing accuracy quite a bit.

Note that Soyuz does the same thing. If something fails, Soyuz performs a
continuous roll, resulting in a ballistic trajectory, with significantly
higher g loads than with a nominal lifting trajectory. While far more
uncomfortable than a lifting trajectory, crews have lived through ballistic
reentries of Soyuz.

> > In the sense that it can go to the moon, yes. For LEO missions, it's
> > way less versatile than the orbiter. In particular, "ISS assembly
> > complete" is about to be redefined as "whatever state the station
> > happens to be in whenever the shuttle stops flying, since there ain't
> > no way CEV is going to do any meaningful assembly."
> >
> > That's perfectly alright as long as you don't pretend to have goals in
> > LEO like ISS and keep the program focused on exploration beyond LEO.
> > But those who pretend otherwise are going to be disappointed.
>
> I'll grant that it won't be versatile enough to carry up ISS modules that
> were specifically designed to be launched in the back of the shuttle.
> However, we've already made the decision to end the Shuttle by 2010, so
> saying that CEV is less versatile than shuttle because it can't install
> modules that were specifically designed for the shuttle is a lot like
> saying that Shuttle isn't as versatile as Apollo since it can't make it
> to the moon. Different missions, different capabilities.
>
> If a need arises to extend the station after Shuttle is retired, that
> will be another mission. If someone wants to do that, they will just
> have to develop (and fund) the tools to get the piece delivered and
> installed.

Griffin mentioned this in his talk. While he's personally against launching
ISS modules on "the stick", he did say it would be possible, but it would
take time and money. You'd have to develop a strongback to mimic the
shuttle's payload bay attach points, and would likely have to requalify the
module being launched for launch on "the stick". That only gets the payload
to LEO.

I'm guessing here, but the two ways you could get from your initial orbit to
ISS would be the way Pirs was delivered (take a CEV service module and use
that to maneuver and dock or grapple the module to ISS or the SSRMS) or you
launch a CEV on a separate launch and have it dock with and deliver the
strong back/ISS module to ISS.

Again, that would take funds and additional development beyond the CEV
requirements, so naturally it's going to cost you more money to do such a
thing. Lastly, if you were to do such a thing, why limit yourself to the
stick and CEV? Why not launch on Ariane V and use the ATV's propulsion
module to do this mission? Perhaps even launch on Proton and use a TKS
derived service module to do the mission. The answer there is the same,
cost.

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

[Cardman]

On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 13:19:44 -0400, "Jeff Findley"
> wrote:

>"Cardman" > wrote in message
...
>> A cargo delivery CEV to operate between Earth and Lunar orbit is also
>> an idea, when to minimise costs and complexity, then you do not want
>> to launch more than big dumb cargo canisters.
>>
>> The only issue is in servicing your CEV, where avoiding bringing this
>> back to Earth saves the heat shield mass. And to allow for the
>> lifeboat option, then you can just use two CEVs end to end.
>
>The mass of fuel and oxidizer needed to brake your CEV into LEO would be far
>higher than your heat shield mass. That's why people who look into this
>start considering the use of aerobraking to reduce the mass of the fuel and
>oxidizer needed.

Yes, that is correct. Although this is not my area of knowledge, but I
am quite sure that a returning CEV can do a path involving
aero-breaking within the Earth's atmosphere, before coming back out
and doing the orbital burn.

This would also allow the option of a direct reentry.

I see that one NASA's greatest crimes at the moment is to not store
fuel in orbit. That first step is a huge one, where the less mass you
need to launch the better. So it is quite insane to build a monster
rocket like the SDHLV to just put 14 tons on the Moon.

You could say that NASA is currently like the tourist who plans an
around world trip, in their family car, by taking all their fuel with
them. Space is exactly like here on Earth, when the more refueling
points you have the better off you are.

With a fuel station in orbit, then your upper stage during launch can
be reused to do your TLI burn. This one step automatically removes the
need for the SDHLV, the ~$8 billion build cost, and the army of people
needed to work on it.

So within the ideal future one of NASA's main points of business would
be just to launch fuel into LEO to dock with their fuel station. And
it seems like a very good idea to me to have the commercial people
work on exactly this aspect.

And so since I doubt that NASA could justify that their current plan
is better than this one, then that is why I would question just why
they should be allowed to do it?

>> From what I see they plan to do two human Moon visits per year,
>> starting with four people per trip. Later on they will build
>> themselves a base and to swap over the crew each six months.
>
>Sounds a lot like ISS doesn't it? It started out with man tended visits,
>then switched over to crews of three (or two) that switch out every six
>months.

Their whole Moon and beyond plan can often sound like an ISS on the
Moon, and an ISS flying through space. And considering the disaster of
the current ISS, then I am quite sure that they should be banned from
trying to do that again.

So this is time for NASA to be creative and efficient. Their plan to
use the SDHLV does not provide much faith.

>> What I would most like to
>> see is a mining operation that is turned into a large base. Fit a
>> airlock, seal the walls, then to pressurize.
>
>NASA most certainly isn't planning on anything this large very soon. Given
>the budget isn't much bigger than shuttle/ISS, I don't expect results to be
>much beyond what we're currently seeing on ISS.

I do not see that this is seriously hard thing to do. It would be a
strange idea to think that despite all of NASA's advanced technology
that they could not even make a hole in the ground.

Since this technology already exists on Earth, then reworking it for
Moon use should not be too hard. Best of all is that if you pressurize
early, then it is almost exactly like it is done on Earth.

The bigger your mine the bigger your living space could be. This can
certainly include entire crops of fruit and vegetables grown under
artificial lighting. You could even have a dairy farm.

>Again, I doubt this will happen. For the money they've got to spend, I'd
>expect to see a lunar base about the size of ISS.

This I would more term NASA's caravan.

The mine base seems a better idea to me, when only by moving Moon dirt
and rocks you can build your living structure without having to
require much from Earth.

This you could say is part of the "living off the land" concept.

>Anything bigger would require fundamental changes in the ways that NASA
>does business,

NASA could contract a mining company to do the work. Train their best
and brightest to be astronauts, then set them to work on some suitable
hill side.

Just given time they could provide you with far more space than you
would ever need in the short term.

>and the
>stick, SDHLLV, and CEV are specifically designed to *not* require
>fundamental changes to NASA's infrastructure (and costs).

That is exactly the problem. It is about time that NASA off loaded all
their jobs to the commercial companies. As I said this is all NASA's
attempt to keep the money and jobs at home.

This is exactly why they try to keep it commercial free.

>> Even NASA could do that. They just need to work on a mostly self
>> supporting system, and to stop bringing their people and equipment
>> back. That alone is a miracle for them though, where you can see the
>> wonderful greenery on the ISS for proof.
>
>That's not going to happen the way that NASA is running things.

Then NASA should change or to make way for some organization who
would. As if NASA's fails to do well, then say the Chinese won't aim
to do as badly.

NASA's only job on the Moon should be to build a self-sustaining
colony that can grow and evolve. And when they reach that vital point,
then so should they start shipping in your common engineers,
scientists, doctors, farmers, etc.

The more skilled people that they have at their base the more that
they could then do. And since this is self-sustaining, then it costs
NASA nothing beyond a higher common wage and the ticket to the Moon
and back again.

Start shipping in entire families later on, then you would be close to
making your first Lunar City. A nice dream sure, but it is certainly
possible to do this.

NASA can then get to work on their Mars colony.

Cardman.

[Derek Lyons]

wrote:
>CEV recreates Apollo and Soyuz but bear in mind that Soyuz was the
>Russian equivalent to Apollo.

Not really - Soyuz started out as an independent orbiter and became a
dedicated space taxi. Apollo started as a space taxi/general purpose
orbiter and became a dedicated long range/long duration lunar craft.

>Also understand that back in the early 60's Apollo was to be more than
>just a moon vehicle. It was meant to be the standard taxi to take
>astronauts to work.

You've got that quite backwards - it started as a standard taxi but
became an optimized lunar vehicle.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

[Derek Lyons]

"Ray" > wrote:

>
>"Derek Lyons" > wrote in message
...
>> "Ray" > wrote:
>>
>>>We humans are explorers. This is normal for us.
>>
>> As a race? Not really. The bulk of the race is very solidly
>> stay-at-home, take-no-risk, eat-only-what-grandpa-ate.
>
> Not true. If that were true, our primitive predecessors would not
>have gotten out of Africa. We humans might have become that way over that
>last 200 years, but we are explorers by heart, and we need to be inspired
>and shown the way.

Demonstrably true - all you need is a tiny percentage of pathfinders
and explorers to blaze the trail and drive back enough nasties to make
the slightly less adventurous follow them, which eventually further
reduces the danger and even less adventurous follow them... Lather,
rinse, repeat.

Furthermore, one doesn't need to be a brave adventurer to cross
continents on a span of decades or centuries - if each generation
settles half a days walk from the previous, you can cross vast spans
without actually being that bold.

>I think its pathetic how people are against human space exploration.

Few here are against exploration - most are against stunts disguised
as exploration.

>Another problem is that people are cheap with tax money. They don't want
>it wasted, so give it back in a tax break and watch how they spend it
>important things like alcohol, tobacco, drugs and gambling.

You must live in a very interesting universe - one that bears little
relationship to the one the rest of us inhabit.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

[Derek Lyons]

"Paul F. Dietz" > wrote:

>Long distance exploration has been a desperate, dangerous, last-resort
>behavior, undertaken by fringe elements or individuals who would otherwise
>have been failures.

Nit: A lack of resources can drive a population mobile - but that's
the exception that proves the rule.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

[Derek Lyons]

John Doe > wrote:

>Didn't they say that for Shuttle, and promise the shuttle would be fully
>reusable with little/no maintenance required between flights and fly at
>very low costs many times per month ?

They also promised great things for Apollo - but they get a pass for
failing there. (Failing for much the same reasons as Shuttle failed.)

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

[Derek Lyons]

Joe Strout > wrote:

>Then you've already lost (or else you have a uselessly loose definition
>of "expensive"). Rocket launch could be substantially cheaper than it
>is now, but it needs a healthy capitalist market, not a massive
>socialist space program --

We have a healthy capitalist market, (far more launches are commercial
than NASA). Prices haven't come down much.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

[George Evans]

in article . com, Ed Kyle at
wrote on 9/19/05 3:08 PM:

> Rand Simberg wrote:
>
>> On 19 Sep 2005 14:47:27 -0700, in a place far, far away, "Alex Terrell"
>> > made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as
>> to indicate that:
>>
>>>>> NASA today unveiled an ambitious blueprint
>>>>>
>>>> Well, I guess opinions on that may vary.
>>>>
>>> I thought I was seeing the history channel - except there was no Kennedy to
>>> say by the end of decade - rather, we'll put some men on the moon, when we
>>> get round to it.
>>>
>>> With no plans for a moonbase, I'm struggling to see the point of all this.
>>> And the architecture is about 50% more expensive than it ought to be.
>>>
>> OK, is anyone other than NASA fanboys here actually excited about this plan?
>>
> I think it provides a good roadmap for NASA to follow for the next
> how-ever-many years. It is a great improvement to the space shuttle era NASA
> framework.
>
> This is a plan that could very well, over time, lead to a smaller, more
> focused NASA. It is a plan that produces something useful in the near-term -
> the CEV and CLV tools that will replace shuttle and could by themselves, in
> concert with commercial launch services and international space station
> partners, serve as the framework for a long- term human space program. It
> also lays out longer term plans and goals (the Moon, Mars maybe but not
> probably) that could happen, or not, depending on national priorities down the
> road.

I like the emphasis on the Moon. As a science teacher in the US, I am
dismayed that some college aged students don't think we ever got there. I
know this is fantasy, but I would love to see some type of activity on the
Moon, maybe a large mining operation, that would be visible in amateur
telescopes. What a visual aid!

Probably a bit more realistic would be pictures of Earth-rises in which
weather patterns are identifiable.

George Evans

[John Doe]

Ray wrote:
> That makes no sense. You have a spacecraft designed to operate
> outside of earth orbit, you make a few flights to the moon and then cancel
> the program? No.

Hint: what did they do with Apollo ?

> And do what with the CEV? Operate it in orbit only? No.

Where else do you want it to go ? Jupiter ? The CEV is just a glorified
Apollo with more people in it. Nothing more. It is unsuitable to go to
Mars. In fact, if there isn't room for proper exercise equipment, I
wonder if it is suitable for 2 weeks trips. They put the exercise
equipment in the shuttle for a good reason.


> exception. The moon program might be cancled eventually for Mars, but to
> cancel it and do nothing outside of earth orbit is just stupid.

But going to Mars requires something akin to the space station, not some
glorified Apollo (although the space styation might have one or two CEVs
to land people on mars, assuming some escape rocket has already landed
there before and couldn't carry people).

> I think the
> congress and the senate are dedicated to this program.

They are not dedicated. Once cost overruns start to make the news, that
program may be cancelled. What may be left is the LEO version ov CEV and
launcher. And if someones makes calculation that it would be cheaper to
simply recertify the shuttles, then all of CEV may be cancelled.

[Dave O'Neill]

Jeff Findley wrote:
> "dasun" > wrote in message
> oups.com...
> > Science is not the reason for going up - that is philosophical -
> > science is what you do when you are there, along with all the house
> > keeping chores. Colonisation, if it happens at all, is generally not
> > what you do when you first arrive on a new world, as the history of
> > earth exploration will attest, first you look around and then you
> > decide where to stay and why and that may take decades or centuries.
> > In short science is a very useful activity to perform if you have
> > decided to go to new worlds in the first place. Besides, find a
> > politician that understands science!
>
> None of that will happen with the high cost that NASA is building into the
> program. I agree with Rand's blog that NASA is likely to have four or less
> flights per year to the Moon. This is nowhere near a colony, and at a cost
> of $7 billion per year, you're not going to find anyone who would want to
> pay to scale that up to colony size.
>
> What's holding us back is high launch costs. NASA's exploration plan does
> nothing to address this issue.

Nope, this is Antartica 21st century style. The saddest thing is you
could have done this for less money years ago with a couple more EORs
and off the shelf equipment.

Dave

[George Evans]

in article , Joe Strout at
wrote on 9/19/05 3:50 PM:

> In article . com>,
> "dasun" > wrote:
>
>> Given financial & political realities this is the best we could have
>> hoped for.
>
> Since it's what we actually got, this statement is true by tautology,
> but that's hardly comforting. I actually hoped for much better.
>
>> See it for what it is - a starting point that gives an
>> industrial and experience base for grander journeys in the future.
>
> I think it gives the wrong kind of experience base for any grander
> journeys.

It's a perfect near term solution to getting big things built and sent to
Solar System destinations. Sending manageable pieces into orbit, putting
them together with crews moved in smaller, more reliable, vehicles, and then
manning them when they are complete. What flexibility. When a new propulsion
system is ready just substitute it for the older propulsion unit.
Conceivably we will never need anything larger than the CLV again. This plan
has good balance in the area of payloads.

<snip>

>> AS for the stick and using shuttle hardware, well why not?
>
> Because it is far too expensive. It makes any real progress with it
> untenable. Yet, supported by taxes, it competes with commercial
> providers who could do the same work for much lower real costs, and at
> the same time open up space for the rest of us.

What *real* evidence do you have for this claim that commercial providers
could do the same for less? What commercial provider has produced a man
rated launcher?

<snip>

George Evans

[John Doe]

George Evans wrote:

> I like the emphasis on the Moon. As a science teacher in the US, I am
> dismayed that some college aged students don't think we ever got there. I
> know this is fantasy, but I would love to see some type of activity on the
> Moon, maybe a large mining operation, that would be visible in amateur
> telescopes. What a visual aid!


What is more likely is that McDonalds, Coke or Pepsi will fund a flight
to Moon whose purpose will be to unfurl a HUGE banner with their logo on
it, so all kids who look at the moon with a telescope will be able to
see that logo FOREVER.


Since very litle of what will be done to go to Moon will be of use to go
to mars, the trips to the moon are a diversion. If mankind is to advance
exploration of space, it should be working on a mars mission. Unless you
work on it, you won't develop what is needed to get there and back.

[Joe Strout]

In article >, John Doe > wrote:

> What is more likely is that McDonalds, Coke or Pepsi will fund a flight
> to Moon whose purpose will be to unfurl a HUGE banner with their logo on
> it, so all kids who look at the moon with a telescope will be able to
> see that logo FOREVER.

One can hope, anyway.

> Since very litle of what will be done to go to Moon will be of use to go
> to mars, the trips to the moon are a diversion. If mankind is to advance
> exploration of space, it should be working on a mars mission.

Nonsense. Mars is not particularly important for mankind's development
of space; it is too far away and has a steep gravity well. The Moon,
OTOH, is vitally important, a gift from the cosmos that gives us a
stepping-stone to the rest of the universe, by virtue of being only a
couple days away and with a convenient gravity well.

The focus on the Moon is quite right. It's just a shame that NASA is
developing a new launcher as part of getting there.

Best,
- Joe

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: |
| http://www.macwebdir.com |
`------------------------------------------------------------------'

[George Evans]

in article wWHXe.87154$Zp.56329@lakeread04, VA Buckeye at
wrote on 9/19/05 4:34 PM:

> AA Institute wrote:
>
>> NASA today unveiled an ambitious blueprint for returning American
>> astronauts to the moon by 2018 using new rockets based on shuttle
>> propulsion technology and a new reusable crew vehicle Administrator
>> Mike Griffin described as "Apollo on steroids."
>>
>> Full story:
>>
>> http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0509/19exploration/
>>
>> AA
>> ------------------------------**-----------------------------
>> http://www.publishedauthors.net/aa_spaceagent/
>> "The ultimate dream adventure awaiting humanity..."
>> ------------------------------**-----------------------------

> So why not stick the CEV atop the heavy lifter and do it all in one
> shot? If you're going to emulate Apollo, might as well go all the way...

I think this is NASA learning from the Apollo experience. They are going
back to the split plan they wanted to follow Apollo. Practically, this way
you probably don't have to man rate the huge launch vehicles.

George Evans

[George Evans]

in article . com,
at wrote on
9/19/05 4:50 PM:

> If you studied compute science, then you must be pretty much aware of
> the Moore's law. And you are certainly aware of predictions that
> computer would never play chess well enough. Which means that any
> speculation about robot's future limited abilities is groundless.
>
> I see nothing special about your yellow soil example. With digital cams
> ever increasing abilities, in 10 years you will have a remote picture
> that is indistingusheable from what human is able to see on the spot.
> Some obscure geologist sitting in the comfort of his desktop and
> watching the transmission over the internet would notice something
> interesting. Then you can fund a new mission *for a fraction of manned
> mission cost*.
>
> Even more likely, the amount of transmitted data in 10 years from now
> would be so huge, that you have to employ a very sophisticated data
> mining technique, in order to extract some useful information. No way a
> trained Joe Doe geologist could be able to do that on the spot. Yes,
> unglorified astronouts are just expensive technicians.

Possibly NASA is planning a crew of *four* based on the experience with the
shuttle in which some of the crew flew the plane and some were
*specialists*. Let's say the first mission had room for two geologists. Are
you telling me that every top notch geologist in the world would still
rather just sit home watching monitors?

George Evans

[Jeff Findley]

"George Evans" > wrote in message
...
> I think this is NASA learning from the Apollo experience. They are going
> back to the split plan they wanted to follow Apollo. Practically, this way
> you probably don't have to man rate the huge launch vehicles.

Assume that the stick will have a "loss of crew" rate of 1 in 2000 and that
the CEV escape system is 90% successful. That means that the stick has to
have a failure rate of something like 1 in 200, right?

Now assume you don't "man rate" the SDHLV. It's likely to be carrying
billions of dollars of hardware as payload on each flight and that payload
won't have a launch escape system (since it's not "man rated"). What's its
acceptable failure rate? Is it then o.k. to deliberately design it such
that it has a higher failure rate than the stick?

Let's put it another way. When NASA has expendable SSME's built for the
SDHLV, can they build them in such a way that they will have a higher
failure rate than the single expendable SSME on the upper stage of the
stick? Say they used a LH2 turbopump that was 20% cheaper, but had a
predicted failure rate that was 20% higher. Would they accept that, given
the expensive payload on top? I think not.

The reality is that no one is going to consciously design a "non man rated"
launch vehicle to fail more often just because there aren't people on top.
The payloads on top are far too valuable for NASA to tolerate that.

All that man rating really seems to mean is that you incorporate elaborate
health monitoring hardware on the vehicle so the manned vehicle on top can
use it's escape system, and declare the thing "man rated" as a stamp of
approval.

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

[George Evans]

in article . com,
at wrote on
9/19/05 5:53 PM:

<snip>

> There is number factor as well. Compare a 1000 geologists investigating
> phenomenon remotely, versus one of the spot. Given adequate quality of
> remote observation, it is more likely that some of those 1000
> geologists would find something interesting, that would escape the guy
> on the spot.

But think of the possibilities of 1000 geologists looking through the
crystal clear helmet cam of one of our best geologist, able to discuss with
him real time (minus a few seconds) what they are looking at and suggesting
further courses of action. "John, could you break off a hand specimen of
that that so we can see..."

George Evans

[George Evans]

in article , S. Wand at
wrote on 9/19/05 7:10 PM:

<snip>

> 1) The Stick-CEV seems wrong-sized for LEO operations - too large. The
> decision is understandable because we're keeping the SRBs for the heavy
> lifter. But it would be nice to see private industry step up for operations
> less than 250 miles high.

I don't see any reason why NASA wouldn't welcome private industry for
transporting astronauts to and from various stations and construction
projects in LEO. They don't manufacture there own T-38's do they?

George Evans

[Alex Terrell]

John Doe wrote:
> Ray wrote:
> > That makes no sense. You have a spacecraft designed to operate
> > outside of earth orbit, you make a few flights to the moon and then cancel
> > the program? No.
>
> Hint: what did they do with Apollo ?
>
> > And do what with the CEV? Operate it in orbit only? No.
>
> Where else do you want it to go ? Jupiter ? The CEV is just a glorified
> Apollo with more people in it. Nothing more. It is unsuitable to go to
> Mars. In fact, if there isn't room for proper exercise equipment, I
> wonder if it is suitable for 2 weeks trips. They put the exercise
> equipment in the shuttle for a good reason.
>
If the program is "Apollo on steroids", then the Low Earth Orbit
version of the CEV is just "Soyuz on Viagra" - delivers a bit more and
can reenter a few times.

[Jorge R. Frank]

Reed Snellenberger > wrote in
.121:

> "Jorge R. Frank" > wrote in
> :
>
>> Reed Snellenberger > wrote in
>> .119:
>>
>>> We get something that will initially be (at least) safer than
>>> Shuttle
>>
>> CEV claims to cut the risk of crew loss *during the ascent phase* by
>> a factor of ten compared to the shuttle, but ascent risk is only
>> about half the overall risk. And the remaining mission risks for CEV
>> don't automatically drop just because the ascent risk dropped. So *at
>> best* you're talking about a 50% risk reduction - and that's only
>> after the spacecraft has flown enough times to demonstrate the level
>> of design maturity the shuttle has *now*.
>>
>
> Risk at re-entry should also be reduced quite a bit, since a capsule
> doesn't have the requirement to perform aerodynamic maneuvers during
> entry and should be inherently stable as well.

Offset by the design vulnerability of jettisoning critical components
during dynamic flight (in the case of the CEV, the service module and the
heat shield).

>>> and ultimately be more versatile than the orbiter.
>>
>> In the sense that it can go to the moon, yes. For LEO missions, it's
>> way less versatile than the orbiter. In particular, "ISS assembly
>> complete" is about to be redefined as "whatever state the station
>> happens to be in whenever the shuttle stops flying, since there ain't
>> no way CEV is going to do any meaningful assembly."
>>
>> That's perfectly alright as long as you don't pretend to have goals
>> in LEO like ISS and keep the program focused on exploration beyond
>> LEO. But those who pretend otherwise are going to be disappointed.
>
> I'll grant that it won't be versatile enough to carry up ISS modules
> that were specifically designed to be launched in the back of the
> shuttle. However, we've already made the decision to end the Shuttle
> by 2010, so saying that CEV is less versatile than shuttle because it
> can't install modules that were specifically designed for the shuttle
> is a lot like saying that Shuttle isn't as versatile as Apollo since
> it can't make it to the moon. Different missions, different
> capabilities.

Again, that's fine as long as people don't pretend otherwise.

--
JRF

Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail,
check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and
think one step ahead of IBM.

[Rand Simberg]

On 20 Sep 2005 11:33:52 -0700, in a place far, far away, "Will"
> made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

>> >It is a plan that produces
>> >something useful in the near-term - the CEV and CLV tools
>> >that will replace shuttle and could by themselves, in
>> >concert with commercial launch services and international
>> >space station partners, serve as the framework for a long-
>> >term human space program.
>>
>> For exactly the same (or more) cost as the Shuttle program.
>>
>> http://www.transterrestrial.com/archives/005729.html#005729
>
>I don't see how that follows from your figures. Two manned CEV launches
>can handle ISS crew rotation, and four unmanned, with payload instead
>of the capsule, can deliver more payload to ISS than the same number of
>shuttle launches. If your figure of $3 billion is for annual program
>cost, that's more than a billion less than what the shuttle costs to do
>the same job.

If crews are rotated twice a year--I thought there was a desire for
ninety days. But it comes down to a) if the $3B number is correct and
b) it represents total costs for the flights, rather than simply fixed
annual costs. If the latter, then one has to add the marginal costs
as well. Also factor in whatever costs are associated with the lack
of ability to return large payloads.

We can't really compare the program costs, though, until we see more
detailed estimates. My point is that it doesn't look like a bargain,
compared to Shuttle.

[Jorge R. Frank]

"Jeff Findley" > wrote in
:

> "Reed Snellenberger" > wrote in
> message .121...
>> "Jorge R. Frank" > wrote in
>
>> > In the sense that it can go to the moon, yes. For LEO missions,
>> > it's way less versatile than the orbiter. In particular, "ISS
>> > assembly complete" is about to be redefined as "whatever state the
>> > station happens to be in whenever the shuttle stops flying, since
>> > there ain't no way CEV is going to do any meaningful assembly."
>> >
>> > That's perfectly alright as long as you don't pretend to have goals
>> > in LEO like ISS and keep the program focused on exploration beyond
>> > LEO. But those who pretend otherwise are going to be disappointed.
>>
>> I'll grant that it won't be versatile enough to carry up ISS modules
>> that were specifically designed to be launched in the back of the
>> shuttle. However, we've already made the decision to end the Shuttle
>> by 2010, so saying that CEV is less versatile than shuttle because it
>> can't install modules that were specifically designed for the shuttle
>> is a lot like saying that Shuttle isn't as versatile as Apollo since
>> it can't make it to the moon. Different missions, different
>> capabilities.
>>
>> If a need arises to extend the station after Shuttle is retired,
>> that will be another mission. If someone wants to do that, they will
>> just have to develop (and fund) the tools to get the piece delivered
>> and installed.
>
> Griffin mentioned this in his talk. While he's personally against
> launching ISS modules on "the stick", he did say it would be possible,
> but it would take time and money. You'd have to develop a strongback
> to mimic the shuttle's payload bay attach points, and would likely
> have to requalify the module being launched for launch on "the stick".
> That only gets the payload to LEO.

That requalification will, for most of the modules, involve power and
thermal issues as well. Won't be cheap.

> I'm guessing here, but the two ways you could get from your initial
> orbit to ISS would be the way Pirs was delivered (take a CEV service
> module and use that to maneuver and dock or grapple the module to ISS
> or the SSRMS) or you launch a CEV on a separate launch and have it
> dock with and deliver the strong back/ISS module to ISS.
>
> Again, that would take funds and additional development beyond the CEV
> requirements, so naturally it's going to cost you more money to do
> such a thing.

I'm guessing it will be expensive enough that it won't even be attempted.
CEV development may not break the bank at NASA, but it will be expensive
enough that any semblance of requirements creep will have to be
vigorously stamped out.

--
JRF

Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail,
check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and
think one step ahead of IBM.

[Rand Simberg]

On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 19:40:06 GMT, in a place far, far away,
(Derek Lyons) made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

>Joe Strout > wrote:
>
>>Then you've already lost (or else you have a uselessly loose definition
>>of "expensive"). Rocket launch could be substantially cheaper than it
>>is now, but it needs a healthy capitalist market, not a massive
>>socialist space program --
>
>We have a healthy capitalist market, (far more launches are commercial
>than NASA). Prices haven't come down much.

Because the market is not, in fact, healthy. It is trivially small.

[Rand Simberg]

On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 20:20:06 GMT, in a place far, far away, George
Evans > made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:


>What *real* evidence do you have for this claim that commercial providers
>could do the same for less? What commercial provider has produced a man
>rated launcher?

What government provider has, recently? Do you even know what the
phrase "man rating" means?

[Brad Guth]

Dear Joe Strout, other mainstream rusemasters and otherwise on behalf
of so many damn fools on the money grubbing hill,
You folks need to get a grip upon another life that doesn't suck and
blow so much intellectual crapolla that we stand a darn good chance of
imploding ourselves from all of your artificial 2H2O2.

This topic was recently offered by "bryan"; PING: brad guth
>what do reckon to this, brad?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4261522.stm

I reckon the terrific graphics that were quite spendy and of the
authorised infomercial script that was published where-is as-is so as
to continually snooker thy humanity is exactly what it is. Another
smoke and mirror MI6/NSA~NASA effort as to keeping their brown-nosed
media as happy campers that otherwise couldn't manage to tie their own
shoe laces.

All of the sudden there's an actual honest to God need for that of an
actual working fly-by-rocket lander, and above all a lander capable of
shielding those astronauts from otherwise getting summarily nailed
(physically as well as TBI) to a fairlywell. I've calculated that
roughly a 30 tonne lander should do the trick. Screw whatever hundreds
of billions it'll cost by then, I'm wondering how much fuel it'll
require as to de-orbit and safely down-range such a substantial lander
along with all of the crew and of their applied technology as having a
viable return ticket to ride is going to take?

BTW; why are they having to utilize such spendy artistic
representations when supposedly we have the real thing to look at?
Although, at least mother Earth looks about right for it's size and
albedo in a somewhat correct relationship to the relatively dark
(nearly coal/basalt like) albedo of the moon, neither of which showed
up within any such proper perspectives as within any of their previous
Apollo missions.

Need-to-know and/or taboo/nondisclosure of the ruse/sting of the
century continues until them Apollo cows come home. Thus all other
related and/or of independent research and of whatever's derived as
objectively hard-science or even of sufficiently subjective notions as
having been honestly interpreted is sequestered indefinitely regardless
of the consequences. Mention God, morals, remorse or anything that's
the least bit anti-mainstream (such as the perpetrated cold-war) and
you're worse off than DOA, and that's even if you've located the holy
grail. Dare to question authority or religion and it open season of
your getting summarily pulverised by as much topic/author stalking,
bashing and/or banishment as they (the mainstream status quo bad guys)
can muster.

Radiation physics as based upon the square of the distance being
representative of what being sufficiently near to the moon has to offer
is certainly bad enough if the terrestrial satellite that's roughly 400
km above Earth takes in sample readings that are worthy of one microrem
per day because, that'll get you into an environment of an average 35
rem/day while cruising at 94 km above the moon. However, make that a
terrestrial millirem/day and you've got 35,000 rem/day or 1458 rem/hr
to deal with.

Of course, if the sun wasn't providing any nasty amount of influx to
start off with, as must have been the case with those supposedly manned
Apollo missions, as then you've got next to nothing to defend your self
from (especially if you don't bother with going down onto the otherwise
sufficiently radioactive as well as reactive surface that has
insufficient atmosphere as to moderated not only the incoming flux of
whatever has reacted itself into being hard-X-rays as well as per
secondary/recoil rays coming from all the surrounding lunar terrain
that you can see, from such having easily nailed your naked moonsuit
butt, which also would have to somehow coincide with the extremely
slight (inconceivably scant) amount of TBI dosage as having been
officially recorded and published as being the case.

The reported 12~76 mr/day while having a shield density of not much
better off than 5 g/cm2 within their Apollo CM (roughly twice that much
density available in the direction of their forward and aft ends) and
otherwise next to nothing while situated upon the surface is absurdly
physics-101 impossible for even an earthshine/nighttime lunar
environment.

I believe that the Apollo record of 12~76 mr/day is only off by a good
factor of 100:1 for that their surviving an extremely mild solar day
while cruising external to the Van Allen expanse and so close to such a
nicely reactive moon, and perhaps a thousand fold under the mark of
what a somewhat nasty solar day has to provide. However, a truly bad
solar event day would have been a matter of terminating all crew
regardless of their 5~10 g/cm2 worth of shielding, and certainly
getting nearly 100% through the aluminum foil utilized while upon the
lunar surface that should have been perfectly good for defending from
the sorts of deep-UV (down to 10 nm) but otherwise invisible to the
likes of the available hard-X-rays plus the unfiltered naked incomings
of solar and cosmic whatever, not to mention of whatever's of micro
meteorites or just incoming dust at 30+km/s and/or of the solar
submicron flak arriving at 300+km/s. A truly bad solar day upon the
moon might incorporate a solar wind that packing 10 picogram/m3 as
arriving at 2400 km/s and of a TBI dosage factor that's so far off the
charts that we haven't even developed the sorts of instruments capable
of going that high.

Realistically, 100 fold greater than the NASA/Apollo reported TBI
dosage would have been survivable without involving banked bone marrow,
although obviously their Kodak moment's wouldn't have gone unscaved and
there should have been more than a few white hairs to boot, however
1000 fold would have required the usage of banked bone marrow being
that so much short-term TBI dosage would have far exceeded our
biological ability of surviving so much DNA/RNA damage. The amounts of
radiation dosage as having been managed on our side of the Van Allen
expanse is at least 100 fold lesser than being external, with many
having suggested as great as a 1000 fold lesser dosage depending upon a
given spectrum of the sorts of TBI dosage made available, however the
aspects getting yourself closer to the reactive moon is exactly like
getting yourself closer to a pile of radioactive substances, whereas
the closer you manage to get by the square of the distance is where
things sort of go to hell very quickly. It's also well established that
in order to diminish one's own TBI dosage by a factor of 50% or 2:1
requires a density that's worth .7" of lead. Thereby it'll require
roughly 0.7" of lead or of whatever greater thickness of other
substance as situated between yourself and the source(s) of those
hard-X-rays in order to cut whatever raw dosage in half. Thus 2.8" or
71 mm of solid lead (80+g/cm2) will get you a 16:1 reduction, or 4.9"
(124.5 mm) that'll amount to 141 g/cm2 will get you a fairly
respectable 128:1 shield (somewhat equal to what the Van Allen expanse
provides) from the vast bulk of what's otherwise DNA/RNA nasty.
Unfortunately, there's still no viable way of launching a habitat of 80
g/cm2, much less of 141 g/cm2, thus cutting your time of exposure is
about all that's humanly doable and, even then having that cryogenic
cash of your banked bone marrow just in case would be the sort of
insurance/plan-B that you'd want at your disposal.

Actually lead is not as good as UHMW or water, since the atomic number
of lead is so much greater than water is why lead produces
substantially more of it's own secondary/recoil dosage of those TBI
worthy hard-X-rays, which is clearly counter productive. However, the
draw back to utilizing UHMW and/or water is that it'll require a great
deal more depth or thickness in order to achieve the desired benefit.
Thus you're somewhat damned if you do and damned if you don't.

BTW; none of this is of my science or that of my physics, as it's
entirely based upon the regular laws of physics and of the hard-science
that's been quite well documented and even indirectly if not directly
NASA certified. Go figure. Even the 32~64 w/m2 of what's UV spectrum
worthy is insurmountable if honestly respecting the unfiltered Kodak
physics of photographic standards and accountability that you and I can
take to the bank.
~

Life upon Venus, a township w/Bridge & ET/UFO Park-n-Ride Tarmac:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-town.htm
The Russian/China LSE-CM/ISS (Lunar Space Elevator)
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/lunar-space-elevator.htm
Venus ETs, plus the updated sub-topics; Brad Guth / GASA-IEIS
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-topics.htm
War is war, thus "in war there are no rules" - In fact, war has been
the very reason of having to deal with the likes of others that haven't
been playing by whatever rules, such as GW Bush.

[George Evans]

in article , Joe Strout at
wrote on 9/19/05 8:49 PM:

> In article >,
> "S. Wand" > wrote:
>
>> Yes, there is a lot to like about this plan.
>>
>> 1) We're finally getting around to developing a Saturn V-class heavy lifter.
>
> Again...
>
>> This is essential if we're ever to go beyond low earth orbit.
>
> No, it's not. There are many mission architectures that would work just
> fine with smaller launchers -- launchers of the sort, in fact, that are
> already commercially available, and which will have even more
> cost-reducing competition in the near future.

Could you provide examples of these alternatives?=

<snip>

>> I think until we get a space elevator, getting to LEO will be an expensive
>> proposition.
>
> Then you've already lost (or else you have a uselessly loose definition
> of "expensive"). Rocket launch could be substantially cheaper than it
> is now, but it needs a healthy capitalist market, not a massive
> socialist space program -- one thing history has shown is clearly is
> that socialism is enormously inefficient. (Ironic that Russia now has a
> far more capitalist -- and cost-effective -- space program than we do.)

Then make LEO cheaper. What's stopping private industry from developing
this. As soon as it's ready there's no reason NASA and others wouldn't use
it, like they use other commercial vehicles to move astronauts around.

<snip>

>> But it would be nice to see private industry step up for operations
>> less than 250 miles high.
>
> Now you've hit it. But private industry needs to be given the
> opportunity -- nay, the market *demand* -- to step up. This plan does
> the opposite.

Needs to be "given" the market demand? I would have thought you understood
free markets better.

<snip>

George Evans

[Ray]

"Jeff Findley" > wrote in message
...
>
> > wrote in message
> ups.com...
>> The bottom line is : let s give back to NASA in 2018 the capabilities
>> it had in 1972.
>
> And cost more money and time to do it. :-(
>
> Jeff
> --
> Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.
>

It doesn't cost more money than Apollo. This will cost 55% of
Apollo, and well worth it.
Ray

[Brad Guth]

Cardman,
Before we or them dirty rotten Russians ever manage to accomplish the
moon, we'd best have our LSE-CM/ISS established before it's a Chinese
LSE that we'll have to pay a hefty toll to utilize, or else.
~

Life upon Venus, a township w/Bridge & ET/UFO Park-n-Ride Tarmac:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-town.htm
The Russian/China LSE-CM/ISS (Lunar Space Elevator)
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/lunar-space-elevator.htm
Venus ETs, plus the updated sub-topics; Brad Guth / GASA-IEIS
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-topics.htm
War is war, thus "in war there are no rules" - In fact, war has been
the very reason of having to deal with the likes of others that haven't
been playing by whatever rules, such as GW Bush.

[Ray]

"Jeff Findley" > wrote in message
...
>
> > wrote in message
> oups.com...
>>
>> As far as CEV, Stick, and Big Rocket goes, we have come full circle
>> back to an Apollo CSM, Saturn 1b and Saturn V. These were vehicles we
>> should have never discarded and abandoned in the first place.
>
> They were discarded because of the high cost. What makes you think the
> same
> won't happen again? We are, after all, presented with a plan to spend
> more
> time and money than Apollo, but end up with only a small improvement in
> capability.
>
> Jeff
> --
> Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.
>
Not true, we have more capability. The shuttle was limited to earth
orbit. The CEV is capable of going to space station, any orbit around the
earth, orbit the moon, mars and beyond and it costs half as much as Apollo.
I think we could have developed the CEV with shuttle derived hardware after
apollo and it would have cut moon costs then in half and we could have
continued to goto the moon and colonize it then.
Ray

[Ray]

"Herb Schaltegger" > wrote in
message .com...
> On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 07:21:41 -0500, Ray wrote
> (in article <p9TXe.8506$i86.1501@trndny01>):
>
>> That makes no sense. You have a spacecraft designed to operate
>> outside of earth orbit, you make a few flights to the moon and then
>> cancel
>> the program? No. And do what with the CEV? Operate it in orbit only? No.
>> It
>> was not designed for that.
>
> It's not designed at all. So far, all you or anyone else has seen are
> a bunch of pretty pictures. NASA and its contractors are very fond of
> pretty pictures. Do you really believe these are the only pretty
> pictures NASA has produced to drum up support for a project? Do you
> not realize how few actually come to fruition?
The US government has no choice. It will replace the space shuttle
with CEV. Their is even talk of retireing the shuttle early, like 2007.

>
>>I dont think any future American President,
>> Senate or Congress will be that stupid enough to cancel the program with
>> one
>> exception.
>
> Flash back to the late 1960's/early 1970's and consider what was done
> with Apollo, then consider what you just wrote.
Apollo was canceled after 8 missions to the moon, and because NASA
had a idea about making a spacecraft with wings that could land at an
airport, but now that we found out this is the wrong way to fly into space,
we will not make that mistake again. Going to the moon today and in the
future will be a lot cheaper than in the 60s because shuttle hardware is
cheaper.

>
>> The moon program might be cancled eventually for Mars, but to
>> cancel it and do nothing outside of earth orbit is just stupid. I think
>> the
>> congress and the senate are dedicated to this program.
>
> Based on what? Why do you believe that Congress cares one whit about
> this program aside from jobs at the NASA centers and contractors?

because something like 96 people in the congress pleaged to support
it in the NASA authorization act that was passed this past July, I believe.
I also belive that US government is TIRED of endlessly circleing the earth
forever.

>
> --
> "Fame may be fleeting but obscurity is forever." ~Anonymous
> "I believe as little as possible and know as much as I can."
> ~Todd Stuart Phillips
> <www.angryherb.net>
>

[Ray]

"Jeff Findley" > wrote in message
...
>
> "Ray" > wrote in message
> news:p9TXe.8506$i86.1501@trndny01...
>> That makes no sense. You have a spacecraft designed to operate
>> outside of earth orbit, you make a few flights to the moon and then
>> cancel
>> the program? No. And do what with the CEV? Operate it in orbit only? No.
> It
>> was not designed for that. I dont think any future American President,
>> Senate or Congress will be that stupid enough to cancel the program with
> one
>> exception. The moon program might be cancled eventually for Mars, but to
>> cancel it and do nothing outside of earth orbit is just stupid. I think
> the
>> congress and the senate are dedicated to this program.
>
> Yet that's exactly what's happening to ISS. NASA needs to severely cut
> back
> on the number of planned shuttle flights to ISS in order to end the
> shuttle
> program by 2010. Furthermore, NASA has yet to develop the crew return
> vehicle that it agreed to develop and deploy in order to increase the ISS
> crew size beyond three. Maybe we'll see CEV flying to ISS by 2012, but
> that's many years beyond the initial plan and many years beyond the date
> that Russia agreed to fly US astronauts to and from ISS on Soyuz.
>
> What makes you think that this next program will be any different than how
> NASA has run ISS? What will they cut from the lunar exploration program
> when they run into cost overruns like they did on ISS and congress and the
> administration tell them to redesign the program? Have you learned
> nothing
> from the shuttle/ISS programs?
>
> Jeff
> --
> Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

I think the congress and the senate have learned a lesson with the
shuttle and will continue to have more of an eye on NASA and how they spend
money in the future. According to Mike Griffen, moon, mars and beyond is a
pay-as-you go program, if we don't have the money, we dont go, but I think
NASA will have all the money it needs in the future. I think NASA and the
US government have learned a lot from the shuttle and ISS program.
Ray

[Ray]

"Joe Strout" > wrote in message
...
> In article <p9TXe.8506$i86.1501@trndny01>, "Ray" >
> wrote:
>
>> That makes no sense. You have a spacecraft designed to operate
>> outside of earth orbit, you make a few flights to the moon and then
>> cancel
>> the program? No.
>
> If you can't be bothered to read history, at least watch it on the
> History Channel. You're embarrassing yourself.
>
> ,------------------------------------------------------------------.
> | Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: |
> | http://www.macwebdir.com |
> `------------------------------------------------------------------'

Its different now. The democrats are not in control of the congress
like they were during apollo and in the 70's

Ray

[George Evans]

in article , Joe Strout at
wrote on 9/19/05 9:06 PM:

> In article om>,
> "dasun" > wrote:

<snip>

>> As for commercial exploration beyond LEO, give me a reasonable business
>> plan that justifies that sort of expenditure
>
> Sure:
>
> 1. NASA develops standard payload interfaces, at a reasonable size that
> can be reached by at least 2 commercial launchers (and preferably more).
>
> 2. NASA announces a plan to purchase such launches for a robust program
> of exploration, from the lowest reliable provider available at each
> launch. (Yes, I know determining "reliable" could be a rat's nest if
> done poorly, but suppose it's done sensibly.)
>
> 3. Launch providers compete to lower their own launch costs, in order to
> get those launches and make a tidy profit. New companies arise to get a
> piece of the action; launch costs go down, reliability and capability go
> up.

Two of the three points in your business plan are not about your business.
You need to cut the apron strings with NASA. If NASA is as bloated as you
say it is, you should be able to "Fedex" them out of the way in LEO
deliveries.

<snip>

George Evans

[George Evans]

in article , Jorge R. Frank at
wrote on 9/19/05 9:43 PM:

> Reed Snellenberger > wrote in
> .119:

<snip>

>> and ultimately be more versatile than the orbiter.
>
> In the sense that it can go to the moon, yes. For LEO missions, it's way
> less versatile than the orbiter. In particular, "ISS assembly complete" is
> about to be redefined as "whatever state the station happens to be in
> whenever the shuttle stops flying, since there ain't no way CEV is going to
> do any meaningful assembly."

Isn't it possible for ISS to do some unassisted assembly now that it has its
own remote manipulator?

<snip>

George Evans

[Ray]

"Derek Lyons" > wrote in message
...
> John Doe > wrote:
>
>>Didn't they say that for Shuttle, and promise the shuttle would be fully
>>reusable with little/no maintenance required between flights and fly at
>>very low costs many times per month ?
>
> They also promised great things for Apollo - but they get a pass for
> failing there. (Failing for much the same reasons as Shuttle failed.)
>
> D.
> --
> Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.
>
> -Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
> Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

Maybe NASA could be cut some slack here. Apollo was the first
spacecraft of its kind to goto the moon and shuttle was the first hybrid
spacecraft of its kind to fly through the atmosphere and land on a runway,
both experiments. NASA can learn from these other spacecraft and design a
better spacecraft. I think you are all too hard on NASA.

Ray

[Ray]

I have question about all this. Many you seem to be anti-NASA and
anti moon, mars and beyond because you suspect its all bull ****. NASA did
a study on moon, mars and beyond before they presented it to the President
and Congress. If moon, mars and beyond was not workable with the budget
they receive, I don't think they would have presented to the President and
Congress, and I don't think the government would have agreed to it. What
makes you right about all this and them wrong?
Ray

"Paul F. Dietz" > wrote in message
...
> Ray wrote:
>
>> If moon, mars and beyond cannot be justified and its too
>> expensive then why did the Congress (94%), Senate and President
>> overwhelmingly approve it?
>
> Because it buys votes?
>
> I do hope you are not proposing that if the government approves something,
> that implies the thing is a good idea.
>
> > Why couldn't they just stay with the shuttle or developed an orbital
>> space plane to get to orbit only when we need to or just cancel manned
>> space exploration? I think we got moon, mars and beyond because the US
>> government overwhelmingly supports it and a lot of major aerospace
>> corporations support it.
>
> Well, *of course* the pigs feeding at this trough support it.
> They support things that send money their way.
>
> They couldn't stay with the shuttle because it's become an embarrassment,
> and because the day when they can't fly any more of them is closer
> than they thought (at which point the pork stops flowing).
>
> Paul

[Ray]

"Jeff Findley" > wrote in message
...
>
> "Ray" > wrote in message
> news:J6KXe.15619$Zg5.1847@trndny05...
>>
>> I am extremely excited about this plan! I have a question for
> you.
>> What else should NASA do? Personally, I rather get rid of NASA instead
>> of
>> letting it orbit humans around the earth forever wasting our tax money.
> If
>> we are going to have manned spaceflight we need to be serious about it
>> and
>> explore space, moon, mars and beyond, with people not just some dam
> robots.
>> Somebody mentioned something on these newsgroups once about NASA working
>> with energy. That's bull****. We have a dept or energy for that. NASA
>> exists to do flight in space mostly.
>
> NASA could focus on the real problem, which is high launch costs. For the
> $7 billion a year this program is going to cost, they could fund dozens of
> X-vehicle programs, each aimed at one aspect of lowering launch costs.
> The
> results of these programs would be public knowledge, useable by both the
> established launch companies, and the startups.
>
> Certainly this would delay our return to the moon, but it would make the
> return to the moon far more affordable and sustainable. Apollo wasn't
> sustainable due to high costs. Shuttle wasn't sustainable in part due to
> high costs. What makes anyone think that the Stick and the SDHLV will be
> sustainable?
>
> Jeff
> --
> Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.
>
I really don't think its NASA's job to concentrate on lowering
launch costs really. That's private industries job. NASA's job is to goto
the moon and beyond

Ray

[Ray]

"Jeff Findley" > wrote in message
...
>
> "Ray" > wrote in message
> news:22LXe.7296$i86.3182@trndny01...
>>
>> I like what you said below, but I actually like a big CEV in orbit.
> The
>> astronauts deserve a roomy CEV. By the way, do you know the dimensions
>> of
>> the CEV or where I could find that information? Will the CEV be as big
>> as
>> the shuttle crew cabin or smaller?
>
> The astronauts deserve it? That's hardly justification to spend about $10
> billion to develop the CEV and the stick.
>
> Jeff
> --
> Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.
>
For space exploration, its worth it.
Ray

[Jorge R. Frank]

George Evans > wrote in
:

> in article , Jorge R. Frank at
> wrote on 9/19/05 9:43 PM:
>
>> Reed Snellenberger > wrote in
>> .119:
>
> <snip>
>
>>> and ultimately be more versatile than the orbiter.
>>
>> In the sense that it can go to the moon, yes. For LEO missions, it's
>> way less versatile than the orbiter. In particular, "ISS assembly
>> complete" is about to be redefined as "whatever state the station
>> happens to be in whenever the shuttle stops flying, since there ain't
>> no way CEV is going to do any meaningful assembly."
>
> Isn't it possible for ISS to do some unassisted assembly now that it
> has its own remote manipulator?

No. You have to perform rendezvous and prox ops to get the modules within
the capture envelope of the manipulator. ISS can't do that, and neither can
the modules. So you have to have some sort of third vehicle - either a
modified CEV or a space tug launched with the modules - to perform that go-
between function.

As it is, CEV won't be available until 2012, and the baseline design won't
be capable of carrying modules to ISS.


--
JRF

Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail,
check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and
think one step ahead of IBM.

[Paul F. Dietz]

Ray wrote:
> I have question about all this. Many you seem to be anti-NASA and
> anti moon, mars and beyond because you suspect its all bull ****. NASA did
> a study on moon, mars and beyond before they presented it to the President
> and Congress. If moon, mars and beyond was not workable with the budget
> they receive, I don't think they would have presented to the President and
> Congress, and I don't think the government would have agreed to it. What
> makes you right about all this and them wrong?

You misrepresent what I'm saying. I'm not claiming it's not *workable*
(in the sense it can be accomplished). I'm claiming it's not *wise*
(in the sense the goals, even if accomplished, are not worth the expense.)

Your naivete' about the behavior of government is touching, btw.
What makes you think their idea of the utility of these programs
matches your own? Government operates by a kind of legalized
corruption, using your money to buy votes of special interest
groups. Where did you get the idea that this leads to an outcome
that reflects the common good?

Paul

[Ray]

"Paul F. Dietz" > wrote in message
...
> Ray wrote:
>> I have question about all this. Many you seem to be anti-NASA and
>> anti moon, mars and beyond because you suspect its all bull ****. NASA
>> did a study on moon, mars and beyond before they presented it to the
>> President and Congress. If moon, mars and beyond was not workable with
>> the budget they receive, I don't think they would have presented to the
>> President and Congress, and I don't think the government would have
>> agreed to it. What makes you right about all this and them wrong?
>
> You misrepresent what I'm saying. I'm not claiming it's not *workable*
> (in the sense it can be accomplished). I'm claiming it's not *wise*
> (in the sense the goals, even if accomplished, are not worth the expense.)

I think the goals are worth the expense. This is probably the best we
can do it at this time. Remember, this is a pay-as-we-go program. Atleast
we will have the infrstructure, and I think the appeal of the program will
become more popular as time goes by.

Ray

> Your naivete' about the behavior of government is touching, btw.
> What makes you think their idea of the utility of these programs
> matches your own? Government operates by a kind of legalized
> corruption, using your money to buy votes of special interest
> groups. Where did you get the idea that this leads to an outcome
> that reflects the common good?
>
> Paul

[Paul F. Dietz]

Ray wrote:

> I think the goals are worth the expense. This is probably the best we
> can do it at this time.

The latter does not imply the former.

> Remember, this is a pay-as-we-go program.

Nor does that.

> Atleast
> we will have the infrstructure, and I think the appeal of the program will
> become more popular as time goes by.

Infrastructure that is useful for... what? It's too expensive to show
a net return on any activity you might imagine conducting with it.
Like the shuttle, it's going to be a dead end.

History shows manned space programs decline in popularity with time, btw.
It happened to Apollo, and Shuttle, and ISS, and to the Russian space
program.

Paul

[Ray]

"Paul F. Dietz" > wrote in message
...
> Ray wrote:
>
>> I think the goals are worth the expense. This is probably the best
>> we can do it at this time.
>
> The latter does not imply the former.
>
> > Remember, this is a pay-as-we-go program.
>
> Nor does that.
>
> > Atleast
> > we will have the infrstructure, and I think the appeal of the program
> > will
> > become more popular as time goes by.
>
> Infrastructure that is useful for... what? It's too expensive to show
> a net return on any activity you might imagine conducting with it.
> Like the shuttle, it's going to be a dead end.

Infrastructure to goto the planets. I think many of you are too
focused on money here.

>
> History shows manned space programs decline in popularity with time, btw.
> It happened to Apollo, and Shuttle, and ISS, and to the Russian space
> program.

I dont think Russia is declining. They are developing Klipper.
>
> Paul
>

[Brad Guth]

Joe Strout,
Why not allow the more than decade old LUNAR-A mission that has been
bought and paid for many times over simply nail the moon?

What the heck are these incest cloned borgs and brown-nosed minions
afraid of discovering?
~

Life upon Venus, a township w/Bridge & ET/UFO Park-n-Ride Tarmac:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-town.htm
The Russian/China LSE-CM/ISS (Lunar Space Elevator)
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/lunar-space-elevator.htm
Venus ETs, plus the updated sub-topics; Brad Guth / GASA-IEIS
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-topics.htm
War is war, thus "in war there are no rules" - In fact, war has been
the very reason of having to deal with the likes of others that haven't
been playing by whatever rules, such as GW Bush.

[Joe Strout]

In article <4d3Ye.8545$T55.1030@trndny06>, "Ray" >
wrote:

> I have question about all this. Many you seem to be anti-NASA and
> anti moon, mars and beyond because you suspect its all bull ****. NASA did
> a study on moon, mars and beyond before they presented it to the President
> and Congress. If moon, mars and beyond was not workable with the budget
> they receive, I don't think they would have presented to the President and
> Congress, and I don't think the government would have agreed to it.

You're new, aren't you? Missed out on previous experience with Apollo,
Shuttle, and ISS, to name a few?

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: |
| http://www.macwebdir.com |
`------------------------------------------------------------------'

[Joe Strout]

In article <Nt3Ye.8934$i86.232@trndny01>, "Ray" >
wrote:

> I think the goals are worth the expense. This is probably the best we
> can do it at this time. Remember, this is a pay-as-we-go program. Atleast
> we will have the infrstructure, and I think the appeal of the program will
> become more popular as time goes by.

This plan doesn't develop any useful infrastructure. That's one of the
major problems with it.

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: |
| http://www.macwebdir.com |
`------------------------------------------------------------------'

[Paul F. Dietz]

Ray wrote:

>>Infrastructure that is useful for... what? It's too expensive to show
>>a net return on any activity you might imagine conducting with it.
>>Like the shuttle, it's going to be a dead end.
>
> Infrastructure to goto the planets. I think many of you are too
> focused on money here.

Too focused on money? Absolutely not. You are far too *unfocused*
on the economics of the situation. This is not untypical when
trying to cloud economically dubious policies.

Money is a placeholder for human effort and other resources.
These cannot be ignored when judging the worth of a course of
action. They cannot be ignored when judging the sustainability
of policies, or the consequences of following the policies.


>>History shows manned space programs decline in popularity with time, btw.
>>It happened to Apollo, and Shuttle, and ISS, and to the Russian space
>>program.
>
> I dont think Russia is declining. They are developing Klipper.

The space program in Russia became very unpopular, to the point
that to survive it turned into a profit-making enterprise. Darn,
it's that money stuff again.

Paul

[Joe Strout]

In article >,
George Evans > wrote:

> > 1. NASA develops standard payload interfaces, at a reasonable size that
> > can be reached by at least 2 commercial launchers (and preferably more).
> >
> > 2. NASA announces a plan to purchase such launches for a robust program
> > of exploration, from the lowest reliable provider available at each
> > launch. (Yes, I know determining "reliable" could be a rat's nest if
> > done poorly, but suppose it's done sensibly.)
> >
> > 3. Launch providers compete to lower their own launch costs, in order to
> > get those launches and make a tidy profit. New companies arise to get a
> > piece of the action; launch costs go down, reliability and capability go
> > up.
>
> Two of the three points in your business plan are not about your business.

Sure they are. It's about the market, which is a key element of any
business plan.

> You need to cut the apron strings with NASA. If NASA is as bloated as you
> say it is, you should be able to "Fedex" them out of the way in LEO
> deliveries.

If they'll buy from "Fedex", sure. If not, then it may still be doable
eventually, but it's much harder, as there are no other customers with
pockets as deep as NASA's. That's why, to provide the healthy
commercial environment we so dearly need, NASA should get out of the
launch business and commit to buying ground-to-LEO transportation on the
open market.

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: |
| http://www.macwebdir.com |
`------------------------------------------------------------------'

[S. Wand]

"Joe Strout" > wrote in message
...
> In article >,
> "S. Wand" > wrote:
>
....
> No, it's not. There are many mission architectures that would work just
> fine with smaller launchers -- launchers of the sort, in fact, that are
> already commercially available, and which will have even more
> cost-reducing competition in the near future.

Really? What existing launchers would be cheaper than SDHLV? $500 mil /
250Klb gets you $2000/lb to LEO. That's more than competitive with every
launcher out there with the possible exception of the Dnepr at about $1300 /
lb. Delta IV Heavy is at least $150 mil / 48K lb for $3125/ lb. And SDHLV
gives you a much larger payload fairing, less in-orbit construction, etc.
And if we ever go back to nuclear propulsion for Mars missions, then we have
to hoist a well shielded (meaning heavy) payload.

>
> NASA should be out of the rocket development (and launch) business
> altogether. Developing a new rocket is a big mistake, for a lot of
> reasons.

I certainly wish NASA could subcontract. But to face the facts - where's
the market going to be? Companies like Beal and Roton were counting on the
large volume orbital constellations like Iridium and Teledesic.
Unfortunately, that didn't materialize. Ditto with space-based
manufacturing. So we've got a worldwide market of about 30-40 launches per
year for a motley collection of commercial, science, and military launches.
Can it be proven that launch prices of even $1000 / lb will open up the
final frontier? My fat butt would still take $200K to lift up to orbit!

>
> > 3) There's no technological risk in the hardware development.
>
> Then what do you call it? Bureaucratic risk? However you label it,
> there is substantial risk of schedule slippage, cost overruns, and
> underperformance, if past history is any guide.

I'd hate to underestimate NASA's ability to overestimate price and schedule.
But at least the big ticket expenditures like engines, tankage, and heat
shielding are pretty much done deals. Better this than the recent
X-programs that have amounted to little more than teases.

>
> > I think until we get a space elevator, getting to LEO will be an
expensive
> > proposition.
>
> Then you've already lost (or else you have a uselessly loose definition
> of "expensive"). Rocket launch could be substantially cheaper than it
> is now, but it needs a healthy capitalist market, not a massive
> socialist space program -- one thing history has shown is clearly is
> that socialism is enormously inefficient. (Ironic that Russia now has a
> far more capitalist -- and cost-effective -- space program than we do.)

See my point above. Is there a commercial market to exploit? Would we
have twice the weather satellites, DirecTV satellites? Tourism may someday
make the market. But not before 2018.

So why do this plan? Because I think as a nation we can sustain an annual
$5-10 billion investment in the human exploration of space ( a pretty small
percentage of the federal budget). It buys us a capability to establish a
small but hopefully self-sufficient outpost on the moon. If water exists,
then the moon could become our refueling station. It places us in a much
better position to exploit future opportunities like helium-3 mining or the
long-shot of solar powered satellites. Hell, it keeps us looking outward -
instead of just contemplating our navels.

>
>
> Actually, I couldn't care less how much it's like Apollo/Saturn in terms
> of the hardware or mission profile. The objection is that it's too much
> like it in terms of its cost and sustainability (which are very high and
> very low, respectively). Use the same approach, and you'll get the same
> outcome -- maybe a half-dozen "missions" ending with no real development
> or infrastructure of any kind. That's not progress. Pinnacle
> achievements are great, but they don't get me a trip to the lunar Hilton.

I agree with you - if all we get out of this is another 6 lunar photo
opportunities, then don't do it at all!!! But if we keep chipping away
for $5 billion a year (easily within the range of shuttle/ISS spending), we
could incrementally expand our capabilities to use the moon's resources.
I would make this point - I hope this program does not interfere with
private industry's attempts to develop cheap access to LEO. The shuttle
certainly did - but I don't see how the SDHLV really competes. If anything,
the big lift capacity may inspire an entrepreneur to loft a small hotel as a
destination for private tourist flights.

>
> > If we hadn't discarded it 30 years ago, then astronaut Husband
> > would be walking Husband Hill by now.
>
> But we did, because it was too costly and unsustainable. Why do you
> imagine that it will be different this time?

Apollo/Saturn after 1972 wouldn't have been as costly as the shuttle/ISS.
Imagine if we had taken the money spent on the Shuttle and the ISS and
invested in follow-on Apollo applications.

>

> > Two weaknesses in my opinion:
> > 1) The Stick-CEV seems wrong-sized for LEO operations - too large.
>
> Agreed. And much too governmental.
>
> > The decision is understandable because we're keeping the SRBs for the
heavy
> > lifter.
>
> That's no reason to make such an important decision! I'm groping for a
> suitable analogy... it's like saying, we'll build this new car with a
> propellor on the back, because we're going to need propellors for the
> boat we also plan to build. (Much better would be to simply buy a car,
> never mind that it lacks a propellor.)

Nice analogy. The Stick/CEV is the weak link in the architecture - I
suppose chosen as the most expedient way to get Americans in orbit by the
year 2012. My hope is that NASA will specify the CEV parameters - 5.5 meter
heat shield base, launch escape tower, etc., and grant the launch business
to any company that can step forward.

>
> > But it would be nice to see private industry step up for operations
> > less than 250 miles high.
>
> Now you've hit it. But private industry needs to be given the
> opportunity -- nay, the market *demand* -- to step up. This plan does
> the opposite.

Again, back to demand. How many CEV missions are required per year? 4-5
including ISS, less when they de-orbit the thing. But sure, give it to
Space-X if they can man-rate the Falcon!

>
> > 2) The overall price seems high. If the Stick/CEV development is about
$10
> > billion (in itself a high number) and the Heavy is about $8 billion -
> > where's the rest of the money being spent? NASA needs to trim the
> > workforce, close some buildings, etc.
>
> Right, which means no shuttle-derived heavy launch vehicle; develop
> standard payload interfaces and buy launches for them on the open
> market. Retrain all those out-of-work shuttle workers in something more
> useful, like interior design.
>
> ,------------------------------------------------------------------.
> | Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: |
> | http://www.macwebdir.com |
> `------------------------------------------------------------------'

[George Evans]

in article , Russell Wallace at
wrote on 9/20/05 12:30 AM:

> dasun wrote:
>
>> Dare I point out to sarcastic dunderheads, who would rather insult than
>> contribute, that people add significant value to the exploration processes,
>> which is why on Earth exploration geology is performed in conjunction with
>> remote sensing. Mining companies would never solely rely on remote sensing
>> to decide to mine an area.
>>
> They would if sending humans cost $50 billion.
>
>> General surveys are done remotely, specific surveys of much smaller areas -
>> identified remotely - are done in person, and strategic decisions based on
>> all this information are then made. If we go to the planets or the Moon then
>> this is the model we should follow. People add cost, but they also add much
>> value.
>>
> Yes, but not $50 billion worth of value. When we have the technology to send
> people to other worlds for a halfway sane sum of money, then and only then
> will it make sense to do so.

So, what percentage of a country's GNP would it be worth spending to claim
an island the size of the Moon?

George Evans

[Michael Rhino]

"Derek Lyons" > wrote in message
...
> "Michael Rhino" > wrote:
>
>>> They'd each need a "departure stage" if it were done that way.
>>
>>Is there a problem with two departure stages? If they join together, they
>>are twice as heavy, so you need twice the fuel to get them there.
>
> For a given weight at TLI, you'll need essentially the same amount of
> fuel for the same weight - it doesn't matter if the weight is in two
> packages (each having half the payload and half the TLI fuel) or a
> single stack. Thus splitting the TLI stage in two doesn't save fuel
> (which is cheap anyhow), and increases costs and failure modes.

If one of the stacks is unmanned, then failure there wouldn't be lethal. A
spare command module could be stored in low Earth orbit.

I don't know how fast they plan to get to habitats. At some point there
will be long gaps between when they land on the moon and when they leave.
If it was up to me, I would get some habitats up there before the 2nd manned
flight.

[Michael Rhino]

"Jeff Findley" > wrote in message
...
>
>
> NASA could focus on the real problem, which is high launch costs. For the
> $7 billion a year this program is going to cost, they could fund dozens of
> X-vehicle programs, each aimed at one aspect of lowering launch costs.
> The
> results of these programs would be public knowledge, useable by both the
> established launch companies, and the startups.
>
> Certainly this would delay our return to the moon, but it would make the
> return to the moon far more affordable and sustainable. Apollo wasn't
> sustainable due to high costs.

Apollo was sustainable, but someone chose not to. Apollo was replaced by
the Shuttle which was also expensive. The shuttle was sustained for 20
years which is a fairly long time. One shouldn't expect programs to be
sustained forever.

> Shuttle wasn't sustainable in part due to
> high costs.

[George Evans]

in article , Paul F. Dietz at
wrote on 9/20/05 4:17 AM:

> dasun wrote:
>
>> that people add significant value to the exploration
>> processes, which is why on Earth exploration geology is performed in
>> conjunction with remote sensing.
>
> They are used on Earth because on Earth people are *really cheap*.
>
>> Mining companies would never solely
>> rely on remote sensing to decide to mine an area.
>
> If there's an area of land on Earth were geologists
> can't economically be sent to the surface, then mining companies
> will not employ just remote sensing because the area won't
> be economical to mine at all.
>
> This application of this observation to the moon should be obvious.
> Or are you going to tell me about all the mining companies just
> raring to go to open lunar mines?

It had often fallen on governments to find ways to get men and equipment
into new remote areas by building roads. That's what NASA is doing, building
a road to the Moon.

George Evans

[Alex Terrell]

Derek Lyons wrote:
> wrote:
> >CEV recreates Apollo and Soyuz but bear in mind that Soyuz was the
> >Russian equivalent to Apollo.
>
> Not really - Soyuz started out as an independent orbiter and became a
> dedicated space taxi. Apollo started as a space taxi/general purpose
> orbiter and became a dedicated long range/long duration lunar craft.
>
That's it! What's needed for ISS is a Space Taxi. The CEV is cruise
ship, and is an inherently expensive way to reach ISS.

[Alex Terrell]

wrote:
> Alex Terrell wrote:
> > In short, it's not as disastrous as the previuos (Shuttle) strategy.
>
>
> As far as CEV, Stick, and Big Rocket goes, we have come full circle
> back to an Apollo CSM, Saturn 1b and Saturn V. These were vehicles we
> should have never discarded and abandoned in the first place.
>
If one aim is to minimise LEO operations, the Apollo 18 architecture is
somewhat behind Apollo 17's. It will now require two dedicated
launchers to put men on the moon.

> Hey man the new Mustang looks like it should, Pontiac makes a GTO again
> and Chrysler makes Hemis once more, why shouldn't NASA join the retro
> trend!
>
Because retro cars cost more and offer less.

[Derek Lyons]

"Ray" > wrote:
>
>"Jeff Findley" > wrote in message
...
>>We are, after all, presented with a plan to spend more time and money
>>than Apollo, but end up with only a small improvement in
>>capability.
>>
> Not true, we have more capability. The shuttle was limited to earth
>orbit. The CEV is capable of going to space station, any orbit around the
>earth, orbit the moon, mars and beyond and it costs half as much as Apollo.

And it a dessert topping and a floor wax!

Anything is possible in Powerpoints. You act as if those bits and
bytes represent finished hardware.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

[Derek Lyons]

George Evans > wrote:

>As a science teacher in the US, I am dismayed that some college
>aged students don't think we ever got there.

That speaks to the failures of the US educational system more than it
does anything else.

What really horrifies me is that you are no better than those college
students.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

[Derek Lyons]

(Rand Simberg) wrote:

>On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 19:40:06 GMT, in a place far, far away,
(Derek Lyons) made the phosphor on my monitor glow
>in such a way as to indicate that:
>
>>Joe Strout > wrote:
>>
>>>Then you've already lost (or else you have a uselessly loose definition
>>>of "expensive"). Rocket launch could be substantially cheaper than it
>>>is now, but it needs a healthy capitalist market, not a massive
>>>socialist space program --
>>
>>We have a healthy capitalist market, (far more launches are commercial
>>than NASA). Prices haven't come down much.
>
>Because the market is not, in fact, healthy. It is trivially small.

Doesn't change the fact that the forces that should nominally lead to
a reduction in price (competition between vendors and buyers seeking
bang for buck) - yet it hasn't happened.

For an interesting example - look at the VLCC shipbuilding market.
Despite it's small size, there has been ongoing competition between
the vendors, tending to reduce costs. Ditto the cruise ship market.
Heck, the sea going heavy lift market is about as small as ut gets -
yet competition is yielding reduced costs and increased capability.

Size has nothing to do with the health of the market.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

[Paul F. Dietz]

George Evans wrote:

> So, what percentage of a country's GNP would it be worth spending to claim
> an island the size of the Moon?

You mean, an airless, arid, inhospitable island that costs roughly
$100,000/lb to send anything to, and which we are bound by treaty to not
claim as sovreign territory?

Paul

[Sander Vesik]

In sci.space.policy Ray > wrote:
>
> "Joe Strout" > wrote in message
> ...
> > In article <p9TXe.8506$i86.1501@trndny01>, "Ray" >
> > wrote:
> >
> >> That makes no sense. You have a spacecraft designed to operate
> >> outside of earth orbit, you make a few flights to the moon and then
> >> cancel
> >> the program? No.
> >
> > If you can't be bothered to read history, at least watch it on the
> > History Channel. You're embarrassing yourself.
> >
> > ,------------------------------------------------------------------.
> > | Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: |
> > | http://www.macwebdir.com |
> > `------------------------------------------------------------------'
>
> Its different now. The democrats are not in control of the congress
> like they were during apollo and in the 70's

Which doesn't change anything (especially not as things are).

>
> Ray
>

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

[Paul F. Dietz]

George Evans wrote:

> It had often fallen on governments to find ways to get men and equipment
> into new remote areas by building roads. That's what NASA is doing, building
> a road to the Moon.

No, they aren't. Their 'road' is useless for exploitation; it's
far too expensive.

Paul

[Ray]

"Alex Terrell" > wrote in message
oups.com...
>
> Derek Lyons wrote:
>> wrote:
>> >CEV recreates Apollo and Soyuz but bear in mind that Soyuz was the
>> >Russian equivalent to Apollo.
>>
>> Not really - Soyuz started out as an independent orbiter and became a
>> dedicated space taxi. Apollo started as a space taxi/general purpose
>> orbiter and became a dedicated long range/long duration lunar craft.
>>
> That's it! What's needed for ISS is a Space Taxi. The CEV is cruise
> ship, and is an inherently expensive way to reach ISS.
>

A space taxi? Why so we can spend the next 30 years circling the
earth, circling the earth, circling the earth like we spent the previous 30
years. I think that will get the program canceled out of boredom. No, its
time to push ahead to moon, mars and beyond. If we can spend 84 billion
dollars for one year in Iraq and Afghanistan then we can spend 100 billion
dollars over 12 years getting ready to goto the moon..

Ray

[Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)]

"Ray" > wrote in message
news:Kg3Ye.8546$T55.1554@trndny06...
>> >
> I really don't think its NASA's job to concentrate on lowering
> launch costs really.

Actually that's quite debatable. Take a look at the NACA model and the
current aeronautics side of NASA.

Researching new technologies that private industry can take advantage is
arguably a decent job for NASA.


> That's private industries job. NASA's job is to goto
> the moon and beyond
>
> Ray
>
>

[Ray]

"Paul F. Dietz" > wrote in message
...
> George Evans wrote:
>
>> It had often fallen on governments to find ways to get men and equipment
>> into new remote areas by building roads. That's what NASA is doing,
>> building
>> a road to the Moon.
>
> No, they aren't. Their 'road' is useless for exploitation; it's
> far too expensive.
>
> Paul
You are too obsessed with money and cost of space exploration. This
was probably one of the reasons why Apollo was canceled because their were
many people who believed this in the US government at the time and look what
we got instead. Nixon implied once in the early 70s that the future shuttle
would take the astronautical price out of astronautics. I am not against
the price of rocket launches coming down greatly. I support the price
coming down, but its not really NASA's job the bring launch prices down.
That's private industry's job. If we can spend billions of dollars for the
military, why cant we spend billions of dollars to open the frontier for
humanity? I think its worth it. Stop being so cheap I don't think NASA's
future plans are all bull**** like the past.

Ray

[Paul F. Dietz]

Ray wrote:

> You are too obsessed with money and cost of space exploration.

You're living in a fantasyland where you imagine money can be
made to not matter. Grow up, Ray. In the real world, where
the money is taken from real taxpayers, and competed for with
thousands of other special interest groups, money is not
only significant, it's dominant.

And it always will be.

> I think its worth it. Stop being so cheap

Stop imagining that your opinion is the only one that matters.
Most taxpayers disagree with you, judging by the polling results.
Most investors disagree with you, judging by where they put
their money (not into space-related investments).

You are projecting your own fringe beliefs onto society
as a whole.

Paul

[Ray]

"George Evans" > wrote in message
...
> in article wWHXe.87154$Zp.56329@lakeread04, VA Buckeye at
> wrote on 9/19/05 4:34 PM:
>
>> AA Institute wrote:
>>
>>> NASA today unveiled an ambitious blueprint for returning American
>>> astronauts to the moon by 2018 using new rockets based on shuttle
>>> propulsion technology and a new reusable crew vehicle Administrator
>>> Mike Griffin described as "Apollo on steroids."
>>>
>>> Full story:
>>>
>>> http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0509/19exploration/
>>>
>>> AA
>>> ------------------------------**-----------------------------
>>> http://www.publishedauthors.net/aa_spaceagent/
>>> "The ultimate dream adventure awaiting humanity..."
>>> ------------------------------**-----------------------------
>
>> So why not stick the CEV atop the heavy lifter and do it all in one
>> shot? If you're going to emulate Apollo, might as well go all the way...

If NASA has one big rocket(HLV) to do everything and something
happens and they cant launch the CEV or anything into space, but if they
have two rockets, stick and hlv, they can still use the stick to lauch
CEV/payload into orbit and not loose the capability to put people or cargo
into space. NASA has learned not to put all of its eggs into one basket
here.
Ray

> I think this is NASA learning from the Apollo experience. They are going
> back to the split plan they wanted to follow Apollo. Practically, this way
> you probably don't have to man rate the huge launch vehicles.
>
> George Evans

[Ray]

"Paul F. Dietz" > wrote in message
...
> Ray wrote:
>
>> You are too obsessed with money and cost of space exploration.
>
> You're living in a fantasyland where you imagine money can be
> made to not matter. Grow up, Ray. In the real world, where
> the money is taken from real taxpayers, and competed for with
> thousands of other special interest groups, money is not
> only significant, it's dominant.
>
> And it always will be.
>
> > I think its worth it. Stop being so cheap
>
> Stop imagining that your opinion is the only one that matters.
> Most taxpayers disagree with you, judging by the polling results.
> Most investors disagree with you, judging by where they put
> their money (not into space-related investments).
>
> You are projecting your own fringe beliefs onto society
> as a whole.
>
> Paul

The majority of Americans support manned space exploration and when
they see Americans walking on the moon again, there will be more support for
it.

Ray

[Paul F. Dietz]

Ray wrote:

> The majority of Americans support manned space exploration and when
> they see Americans walking on the moon again, there will be more support for
> it.

No they don't, Ray. When asked to rank space spending vs. just about
any other federal government outlay, polls have shown that the public
ranks space spending near the bottom -- even below crop subsidies!

The last time the public saw Americans walking on the moon,
there was no great upsurge in support. Why are you imagining
there will be this time? More baseless wishful thinking.

Paul

[Ray]

"Rand Simberg" > wrote in message
.. .
> On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 01:14:03 GMT, in a place far, far away, "Ray"
> > made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
> way as to indicate that:
>
>> Apollo was canceled after 8 missions to the moon, and because NASA
>>had a idea about making a spacecraft with wings that could land at an
>>airport, but now that we found out this is the wrong way to fly into
>>space,
>
> We didn't find that out. It's hard to "find things out" that aren't
> true.

I think we found out so far that modular spacecraft, capsule, are
superior to winged spacecraft, shuttle, when going to space and coming back
from space. I think NASA found this to be true. Maybe Burt Rutan and
spaceship 1 can disprove this someday, but I believe the former stands true
so far.

Ray

[Ray]

"Paul F. Dietz" > wrote in message
...
> Ray wrote:
>
>> The majority of Americans support manned space exploration and when they
>> see Americans walking on the moon again, there will be more support for
>> it.
>
> No they don't, Ray. When asked to rank space spending vs. just about
> any other federal government outlay, polls have shown that the public
> ranks space spending near the bottom -- even below crop subsidies!
Of course space spending is near the bottom, but a majority still
support manned space exploration and not getting rid of it.
Ray

> The last time the public saw Americans walking on the moon,
> there was no great upsurge in support. Why are you imagining
> there will be this time? More baseless wishful thinking.
>
> Paul

[Paul F. Dietz]

Ray wrote:

>>No they don't, Ray. When asked to rank space spending vs. just about
>>any other federal government outlay, polls have shown that the public
>>ranks space spending near the bottom -- even below crop subsidies!
>
> Of course space spending is near the bottom, but a majority still
> support manned space exploration and not getting rid of it.
> Ray

Ah, so you're for larger and ever-increasing budget deficits
and/or taxes? If even one of the least popular budget areas
cannot be cut, then federal government spending will be hopelessly
out of control.

What you are probably refering to are polls that ask 'do you support
the space program' or 'should spend spending be increased, decreased,
or maintained at current levels'? Answers to those kinds of
polls, taken in aggregate, would imply that US taxpayers also want
enormous, ever-growing government, but that that would contradict
other polls expressing concern about taxes and the deficit.

The most logical conclusion is that single-issue questions of
the kind I suspect you're refering to are biased. This hypothesis
is supported by the loss of support that occurs when the question
is modified to include something like '... even if it would mean
raising taxes?'

Paul

[Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)]

"Ray" > wrote in message
news:0BbYe.17667$zG1.10481@trnddc05...
>
> "Paul F. Dietz" > wrote in message
> ...
> > George Evans wrote:
> >
> >> It had often fallen on governments to find ways to get men and
equipment
> >> into new remote areas by building roads. That's what NASA is doing,
> >> building
> >> a road to the Moon.
> >
> > No, they aren't. Their 'road' is useless for exploitation; it's
> > far too expensive.
> >
> > Paul
> You are too obsessed with money and cost of space exploration.

Fine. Then YOU pay for it.

Oh wait, can't afford to? Why not?

Someone has to pay for it, and as long as its my tax dollars, I would prefer
it to be done as cost-effectively as possible.

>This
> was probably one of the reasons why Apollo was canceled because their were
> many people who believed this in the US government at the time and look
what
> we got instead. Nixon implied once in the early 70s that the future
shuttle
> would take the astronautical price out of astronautics. I am not against
> the price of rocket launches coming down greatly. I support the price
> coming down, but its not really NASA's job the bring launch prices down.
> That's private industry's job. If we can spend billions of dollars for
the
> military, why cant we spend billions of dollars to open the frontier for
> humanity? I think its worth it. Stop being so cheap I don't think
NASA's
> future plans are all bull**** like the past.

Why, because this time they said, "we really mean it. We really really do!"


>
> Ray
>
>

[Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)]

"Ray" > wrote in message
news:KacYe.17674$zG1.16981@trnddc05...
>
>
> The majority of Americans support manned space exploration and
when
> they see Americans walking on the moon again, there will be more support
for
> it.

Yes, just like last time.

I mean the support was so overwhelming that NASA was forced to fly the
already paid for hardware for Apollo 18 and 19.

Oh wait.. no I've seen those rockets rotting on the ground. Guess it wasn't
all that great support.


>
> Ray
>
>

[genedigennaro@hotmail.com]

Give me some good reasons for abandoning the Saturns. Bear in mind that
in the late '60s NASA was hoping to have the both the Saturn system and
Space Shuttle as operational vehicles through the 70's and 80's.

I'm still not sure why everyone is griping and moaning on this NG about
the new plan. After 30+ years of Earth orbit operations, NASA finally
has the marching orders to continue human lunar exploration. Yes it
seems like Apollo redux, but is that necessarily a bad thing? I don't
think so.

The biggest danger is that NASA's plan won't survive. The proposed (
STG 1969) Mars missions for the 80's got cut, SEI was killed in the
early 90's. I'm hoping that VSE has legs. The Spacereview's website has
a good article on how to keep VSE alive and I am in agreement with it.

Gene DiGennaro
Baltimore, Md.

[Herb Schaltegger]

On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 06:36:28 -0500, Ray wrote
(in article <0BbYe.17667$zG1.10481@trnddc05>):

> If we can spend billions of dollars for the
> military, why cant we spend billions of dollars to open the frontier for
> humanity? I think its worth it. Stop being so cheap I don't think NASA's
> future plans are all bull**** like the past.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/21/national/nationalspecial/21cong.htm>
So much for your claimed Congressional support for the Moon-Mars
program. And you'll note (presuming you bother to read the article)
that these are conservative Republicans pushing this, the backbone of
Dubya's political power base.

--
"Fame may be fleeting but obscurity is forever." ~Anonymous
"I believe as little as possible and know as much as I can."
~Todd Stuart Phillips
<www.angryherb.net>

[Herb Schaltegger]

On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 08:01:15 -0500, wrote
(in article om>):

> I'm hoping that VSE has legs.

Not in the face of massive government overspending (wars, rumors of
wars, and natural disasters you know . . .)

"WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 - Conservative House Republicans plan to
recommend on Wednesday more than $500 billion in savings over 10 years
to compensate for the costs of Hurricane Katrina as lawmakers continue
to struggle to develop a consensus on the fiscal approach to the
disaster.

"At the top of a partial list of the potential cuts being circulated on
Tuesday were previously suggested ideas like delaying the start of the
new Medicare prescription drug coverage for one year to save $31
billion and eliminating $25 billion in projects from the newly enacted
transportation measure.

"The list also proposed eliminating the Moon-Mars initiative that NASA
announced on Monday, for $44 billion in savings; ending support for the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting, $4 billion; cutting taxpayer
payments for the national political conventions and the presidential
election campaign fund, $600 million; and charging federal employees
for parking, $1.54 billion."

<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/21/national/nationalspecial/21cong.htm>
****, if they're going to worry about a billion and a half "saved"
(e.g., charged to employees) for parking, Moon-Mars doesn't have much
of a shot, folks.

--
"Fame may be fleeting but obscurity is forever." ~Anonymous
"I believe as little as possible and know as much as I can."
~Todd Stuart Phillips
<www.angryherb.net>

[Cardman]

On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 16:54:42 GMT, (Rand
Simberg) wrote:

>On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 08:24:01 -0500, in a place far, far away, Herb
>Schaltegger > made the
>phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:
>
>>"The list also proposed eliminating the Moon-Mars initiative that NASA
>>announced on Monday, for $44 billion in savings;
>
>So where does this number come from? It seems to me that it would
>represent $104B in savings, if NASA's to be believed...

The CEV has to be build. The stick as well no doubt. The SDHLV would
be the one to go though, along with the other Moon plans.

Cardman.

[Rand Simberg]

On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 01:14:03 GMT, in a place far, far away, "Ray"
> made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

> Apollo was canceled after 8 missions to the moon, and because NASA
>had a idea about making a spacecraft with wings that could land at an
>airport, but now that we found out this is the wrong way to fly into space,

We didn't find that out. It's hard to "find things out" that aren't
true.

[Rand Simberg]

On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 07:49:22 GMT, in a place far, far away,
(Derek Lyons) made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

>>>>Then you've already lost (or else you have a uselessly loose definition
>>>>of "expensive"). Rocket launch could be substantially cheaper than it
>>>>is now, but it needs a healthy capitalist market, not a massive
>>>>socialist space program --
>>>
>>>We have a healthy capitalist market, (far more launches are commercial
>>>than NASA). Prices haven't come down much.
>>
>>Because the market is not, in fact, healthy. It is trivially small.
>
>Doesn't change the fact that the forces that should nominally lead to
>a reduction in price (competition between vendors and buyers seeking
>bang for buck) - yet it hasn't happened.

Of course it has (e.g., Sea Launch). Is it your claim that commercial
launches have been getting *more* expensive? The price has been
coming down, albeit too slowly.

[Rand Simberg]

On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 23:17:30 -0400, in a place far, far away, "S.
Wand" > made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

>
>"Joe Strout" > wrote in message
...
>> In article >,
>> "S. Wand" > wrote:
>>
>...
>> No, it's not. There are many mission architectures that would work just
>> fine with smaller launchers -- launchers of the sort, in fact, that are
>> already commercially available, and which will have even more
>> cost-reducing competition in the near future.
>
>Really? What existing launchers would be cheaper than SDHLV? $500 mil /
>250Klb gets you $2000/lb to LEO.

Where do you get half a billion per flight?

[Joe Strout]

In article <0BbYe.17667$zG1.10481@trnddc05>,
"Ray" > wrote:

> You are too obsessed with money and cost of space exploration.

That's because this is the primary issue, the reason we aren't all
having this discussion around a table at the Lunar Hilton conference
room right now.

> This was probably one of the reasons why Apollo was canceled because their were
> many people who believed this in the US government at the time and look what
> we got instead.

Wow, it's amazing how you can look at an event and get the
interpretation exactly backwards. Apollo was cancelled and left us with
little to show for it exactly because it *was* too expensive; this
demonstrates that cost is a legitimate concern in how sustainable a
program is. From this, you should conclude that if Apollo 2.0 is also
too expensive, it will also be cancelled before we have much to show for
it. That is exactly the problem being pointed out by those of us who
have followed space policy for a while.

Instead, you're saying that we should have simply denied that Apollo was
too expensive, and that things will go better this time because you're
in denial about 2.0 being too expensive. If only everyone else would
join you in your denial, then life would be fine. But everyone else
WON'T join you in that denial. You and I may agree that it's well worth
the expense, but it's not up to us; the opinions that matter are those
of the policy-makers.

Sticking your head in the sand with regard to politics and economics is
no way to make progress. I appreciate your youthful optimism, but if
you want to do any good, you'll need to let it go, and work on
understanding (and accepting) the political realities. Only then can
you see what must be done to make any progress in the real world.

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: |
| http://www.macwebdir.com |
`------------------------------------------------------------------'

[Rand Simberg]

On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 12:22:29 GMT, in a place far, far away, "Ray"
> made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

>>> Apollo was canceled after 8 missions to the moon, and because NASA
>>>had a idea about making a spacecraft with wings that could land at an
>>>airport, but now that we found out this is the wrong way to fly into
>>>space,
>>
>> We didn't find that out. It's hard to "find things out" that aren't
>> true.
>
> I think we found out so far that modular spacecraft, capsule, are
>superior to winged spacecraft, shuttle, when going to space and coming back
>from space.

No, we didn't find that out, at least those of us capable of employing
logic. We only found out that one particular modular spacecraft had a
better safety record than one particular winged spacecraft.

It is nonsense to draw any more conclusions than that from these two
data points.

[Rand Simberg]

On 21 Sep 2005 06:01:15 -0700, in a place far, far away,
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such
a way as to indicate that:

>Give me some good reasons for abandoning the Saturns.

They cost too much.

[Rand Simberg]

On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 08:24:01 -0500, in a place far, far away, Herb
Schaltegger > made the
phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

>"The list also proposed eliminating the Moon-Mars initiative that NASA
>announced on Monday, for $44 billion in savings;

So where does this number come from? It seems to me that it would
represent $104B in savings, if NASA's to be believed...

[Jeff Findley]

"Ray" > wrote in message
news:vt2Ye.6634$N35.4411@trndny09...
>
> Apollo was canceled after 8 missions to the moon, and because NASA
> had a idea about making a spacecraft with wings that could land at an
> airport, but now that we found out this is the wrong way to fly into
space,
> we will not make that mistake again. Going to the moon today and in the
> future will be a lot cheaper than in the 60s because shuttle hardware is
> cheaper.

Actually Apollo was cancelled before the final landing missions, because the
production of Saturn V launch vehicles was capped and the later Apollo
missions that were planned were cancelled. NASA actually fought hard to
keep Saturn V (to compliment a space shuttle intended to *service* Saturn V
launched stations), but lost. The cost was deemed too high by those that
pay the bills (i.e. the legislative branch).

Your statement is a blatent attempt to rewrite history.

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

[Jeff Findley]

"Ray" > wrote in message
news:sE2Ye.8542$T55.5663@trndny06...
> I think the congress and the senate have learned a lesson with the
> shuttle and will continue to have more of an eye on NASA and how they
spend
> money in the future. According to Mike Griffen, moon, mars and beyond is
a
> pay-as-you go program, if we don't have the money, we dont go, but I
think
> NASA will have all the money it needs in the future. I think NASA and the
> US government have learned a lot from the shuttle and ISS program.

Griffin is doing a great job of selling this program as "pay as you go", but
those that know better can see that the high fixed costs will dominate the
program. Any cost overruns will quickly eat up all of the "pay as you go"
parts (i.e. the cost of building the expendable hardware to launch) and
we'll be left paying extremely high overhead for few, if any launches.

Note how little money the shuttle program saves by canceling all shuttle
flights for a year. Most of your costs are for salaries, and you can't fire
the people needed to run the program if you ever intend to launch again.
You pay these people the same salary if there are 6 shuttle launches per
year or zero. Nearly all of the costs of that program are fixed, just as
the stick and SDHLV will have high fixed costs.

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

[Jeff Findley]

"Ray" > wrote in message
news:CZ2Ye.8856$i86.5@trndny01...
> Maybe NASA could be cut some slack here. Apollo was the first
> spacecraft of its kind to goto the moon and shuttle was the first hybrid
> spacecraft of its kind to fly through the atmosphere and land on a runway,
> both experiments. NASA can learn from these other spacecraft and design a
> better spacecraft. I think you are all too hard on NASA.

Again, you attempt to rewrite history. Look at how NASA sold the shuttle to
the government. Look at their projected flight rate. Look at the fact that
they were selling (highly subsidized) commercial launches on the shuttle
(until the Challenger disaster reversed that policy).

If anything, I think that people here aren't hard enough on NASA for the
financial failure of the shuttle program.

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

[Jeff Findley]

"Ray" > wrote in message
news:4d3Ye.8545$T55.1030@trndny06...
> I have question about all this. Many you seem to be anti-NASA and
> anti moon, mars and beyond because you suspect its all bull ****. NASA
did
> a study on moon, mars and beyond before they presented it to the President
> and Congress. If moon, mars and beyond was not workable with the budget
> they receive, I don't think they would have presented to the President and
> Congress, and I don't think the government would have agreed to it. What
> makes you right about all this and them wrong?

Because of NASA's track record with the shuttle and ISS. Development costs
of the shuttle weren't so bad, but the high per flight cost of the program
after it was declared "operational" after a few test flights was (and still
his) terrible. Now they plan on using many of the shuttle components for
"moon, mars and beyond" and Griffin tells us it's "pay as you go". Sorry,
but many of us are smart enough to realize that it's the high fixed costs
and low flight rate of the shuttle that makes it expensive, and we don't see
that changing for the stick and the SDHLV.

As far as ISS goes, look at how many times cost overruns were "discovered"
and ISS had to be "redesigned" in order to control costs. Now that the
shuttle program is ending, ISS will be declared by the US to be "assembly
complete" after the last shuttle launch, even though quite a bit of ISS
hardware, designed for shuttle launch, will remain on the ground.

And you want us to trust them when they say it's "pay as you go" and that
they know how much all of this will cost? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool
me twice, shame on me.

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

[Jeff Findley]

"Ray" > wrote in message
news:Kg3Ye.8546$T55.1554@trndny06...
>
> "Jeff Findley" > wrote in message
> ...
> > NASA could focus on the real problem, which is high launch costs.
> >
> I really don't think its NASA's job to concentrate on lowering
> launch costs really. That's private industries job.

Too bad NASA is planning on building the stick and the SDHLV. Even if lower
launch costs emerge from private industry, NASA won't be in a position to
take advantage of it. In fact, their lack of buying launches from private
industry will make it harder for private industry to justify the investment
needed to lower launch costs.

> NASA's job is to goto
> the moon and beyond

That's not NASA's one and only job. Read it's charter.

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

[Jeff Findley]

"Ray" > wrote in message
news:Ul3Ye.8932$i86.4776@trndny01...
>
> "Jeff Findley" > wrote in message
> ...
> >
> > "Ray" > wrote in message
> > news:22LXe.7296$i86.3182@trndny01...
> >>
> >> I like what you said below, but I actually like a big CEV in orbit.
> > The
> >> astronauts deserve a roomy CEV. By the way, do you know the dimensions
> >> of
> >> the CEV or where I could find that information? Will the CEV be as big
> >> as
> >> the shuttle crew cabin or smaller?
> >
> > The astronauts deserve it? That's hardly justification to spend about
$10
> > billion to develop the CEV and the stick.
>
> For space exploration, its worth it.

It's your opinion that for the cost, it's worth it. That's not my opinion.
Remember that the astronauts will only ride in the CEV for a few days.
They'll spend most of their time (up to six months) on the lunar surface.
Extra space on the CEV could be justified by many things, but crew comfort
isn't one of them that I think is valid.

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

[Jeff Findley]

"Rand Simberg" > wrote in message
.. .
> On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 23:17:30 -0400, in a place far, far away, "S.
> Wand" > made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
> >Really? What existing launchers would be cheaper than SDHLV? $500 mil
/
> >250Klb gets you $2000/lb to LEO.
>
> Where do you get half a billion per flight?

No kidding. If NASA launches two lunar missions per year (that's what they
seem to have baselined), then where are they hiding the high fixed costs of
the infrastructure to support those launches?

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

[Jeff Findley]

"Michael Rhino" > wrote in message
...
> "Jeff Findley" > wrote in message
> ...
> >
> >
> > NASA could focus on the real problem, which is high launch costs. For
the
> > $7 billion a year this program is going to cost, they could fund dozens
of
> > X-vehicle programs, each aimed at one aspect of lowering launch costs.
> > The
> > results of these programs would be public knowledge, useable by both the
> > established launch companies, and the startups.
> >
> > Certainly this would delay our return to the moon, but it would make the
> > return to the moon far more affordable and sustainable. Apollo wasn't
> > sustainable due to high costs.
>
> Apollo was sustainable, but someone chose not to.

Apollo was not sustainable because it was deemed too expensive. Once it
became clear we were going to beat the "Godless Communists" to the moon,
NASA wasn't quite the high priority it once was. Since the race to the moon
was won, and since the cold war has ended, there is no reason to believe
that NASA will ever be funded at the same levels it was at the peak of the
Apollo program.

> Apollo was replaced by
> the Shuttle which was also expensive. The shuttle was sustained for 20
> years which is a fairly long time. One shouldn't expect programs to be
> sustained forever.

While this is true, it's also true that none of the orbiter airframes will
ever come close to their intended 100 flight lifetime. Ending the program
due to safety concerns is only part of the reason the program will end in
2010. The biggest reason it will end is because it's far too expensive of a
launch vehicle to support the moon/mars initiative. The SDHLV will improve
on that, but only somewhat. Certainly the SDHLV will launch far more than
the shuttle, but its flight rate is baselined at two per year (in order to
support the baseline of two manned lunar missions per year). So its fixed
costs will be spread out over fewer flights than the shuttle.

Griffin keeps saying this will be a "pay as you go" program, but the high
fixed costs of the stick, the SDHLV, and the CEV will be nearly as much as
the shuttle program (much of the same components are there), leaving little
room for cost savings by canceling flights. The landers strike me as being
about as expensive as ISS to continuously build and fly, especially if
NASA's intent is to start building lunar bases using the lunar landers left
on the moon as the building blocks. If that happens, the landers will start
looking more like ISS modules (in terms of the equipment they have on board)
and less like a LEM on steroids.

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

[Jeff Findley]

> wrote in message
ups.com...
> Give me some good reasons for abandoning the Saturns.

High cost killed the Saturns. Their production run was capped during Apollo
and it was never restarted. Several lunar landing missions were cancelled
due to cost. Some of the surplus Saturns that were freed up as a result
were used for Skylab and ASTP. The others are museum pieces or were
scrapped.

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

[Josh Hill]

On 19 Sep 2005 15:12:26 -0700, "Alex Terrell" >
wrote:

>
wrote:
>> The bottom line is : let s give back to NASA in 2018 the capabilities
>> it had in 1972.
>
>Not quite. In 1972 NASA could do a moon landing with a single launch.
>The new scheme will require two launches of two different, specially
>designed rockets.
>
>This should provide good employment opportunities for rocket designers.

I think they said something about needing a vehicle that can take
crews to the space station. Safety concerns may also have played a
role.

--
Josh

"This is a devastating storm. This is a storm that's
going to require immediate action now." -George W. Bush,
four days after Hurricane Katrina

[Josh Hill]

On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 00:49:16 GMT, "Ray" > wrote:

>
>"Jeff Findley" > wrote in message
...
>>
>> > wrote in message
>> ups.com...
>>> The bottom line is : let s give back to NASA in 2018 the capabilities
>>> it had in 1972.
>>
>> And cost more money and time to do it. :-(
>>
>> Jeff
>> --
>> Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.
>>
>
> It doesn't cost more money than Apollo. This will cost 55% of
>Apollo, and well worth it.

Which makes me kind of suspicious about the number . . .

--
Josh

"This is a devastating storm. This is a storm that's
going to require immediate action now." -George W. Bush,
four days after Hurricane Katrina

[Jeff Findley]

"Ray" > wrote in message
news:cZbYe.17672$zG1.8119@trnddc05...
>
> If NASA has one big rocket(HLV) to do everything and something
> happens and they cant launch the CEV or anything into space, but if they
> have two rockets, stick and hlv, they can still use the stick to lauch
> CEV/payload into orbit and not loose the capability to put people or cargo
> into space. NASA has learned not to put all of its eggs into one basket
> here.

But this doesn't hold true for all problems. If it's an SSME or SRB
problem, both would be grounded, since the stick uses one of each and the
SDHLV uses two SRB's and five SSME's.

If that were true, and they intended to save money, they wouldn't spend the
money to develop the stick. Instead, they would buy commercial launches for
this. Currently, there is Atlas V and Delta IV. They could size the CEV to
be launched on an Atlas V heavy or a Delta IV heavy.

There isn't much of a pressing *need* for NASA to develop the stick. It's
more like a pressing desire.

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

[Josh Hill]

On 21 Sep 2005 06:01:15 -0700, wrote:

>Give me some good reasons for abandoning the Saturns. Bear in mind that
>in the late '60s NASA was hoping to have the both the Saturn system and
>Space Shuttle as operational vehicles through the 70's and 80's.
>
>I'm still not sure why everyone is griping and moaning on this NG about
>the new plan. After 30+ years of Earth orbit operations, NASA finally
>has the marching orders to continue human lunar exploration. Yes it
>seems like Apollo redux, but is that necessarily a bad thing? I don't
>think so.

I don't think it's such a good thing. A lot of money that could be put
towards a more interesting objective like Mars.

OTOH, I think it's kind of unfair to blame today's NASA for having to
recreate the Apollo capability. They weren't the ones who ended Saturn
production or made the shuttle and ISS decisions -- they're the ones
who have to pay for those mistakes. Unwillingness to bite the bullet
is I suspect one of the reasons they kept the shuttle going for so
long. And thanks in part to treaty obligations, we're still in the
same boat with ISS.

--
Josh

"This is a devastating storm. This is a storm that's
going to require immediate action now." -George W. Bush,
four days after Hurricane Katrina

[Josh Hill]

On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 16:03:18 GMT, (Rand
Simberg) wrote:

>On 21 Sep 2005 06:01:15 -0700, in a place far, far away,
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such
>a way as to indicate that:
>
>>Give me some good reasons for abandoning the Saturns.
>
>They cost too much.

A lot less than the shuttle, and nobody was willing to finance a more
economical replacement . . .

--
Josh

"This is a devastating storm. This is a storm that's
going to require immediate action now." -George W. Bush,
four days after Hurricane Katrina

[Josh Hill]

On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 11:18:15 GMT, "Ray" > wrote:

>
>"Alex Terrell" > wrote in message
oups.com...
>>
>> Derek Lyons wrote:
>>> wrote:
>>> >CEV recreates Apollo and Soyuz but bear in mind that Soyuz was the
>>> >Russian equivalent to Apollo.
>>>
>>> Not really - Soyuz started out as an independent orbiter and became a
>>> dedicated space taxi. Apollo started as a space taxi/general purpose
>>> orbiter and became a dedicated long range/long duration lunar craft.
>>>
>> That's it! What's needed for ISS is a Space Taxi. The CEV is cruise
>> ship, and is an inherently expensive way to reach ISS.
>>
>
> A space taxi? Why so we can spend the next 30 years circling the
>earth, circling the earth, circling the earth like we spent the previous 30
>years. I think that will get the program canceled out of boredom. No, its
>time to push ahead to moon, mars and beyond. If we can spend 84 billion
>dollars for one year in Iraq and Afghanistan then we can spend 100 billion
>dollars over 12 years getting ready to goto the moon..

Amen, if you make that Mars . . .

--
Josh

"This is a devastating storm. This is a storm that's
going to require immediate action now." -George W. Bush,
four days after Hurricane Katrina

[Brad Guth]

Since "NASA formally unveils lunar exploration architecture", then
perhaps we village idiots can seriously discuss those potentially
lethal physical impacts, thermal issues, radioactive, reactive and
atmospheric environment about our moon that really sucks, especially by
day unless you're one hell of a robot.

It seems the status quo is entirely taboo/nondisclosure yet somehow
that's perfectly fine and dandy for the likes of "David Knisely",
whereas otherwise life involving the regular laws of physics and
hard-science that's the least bit outside the box is where pesky morals
or so much as having a stitch of remorse sucks because;
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.astro.amateur/tree/browse_frm/thread/312=
c0ee1964db812/85e2050d1b0c9a78?rnum=3D11&hl=3Den&q=3Dbrad+guth&_done=3D%2Fg=
roup%2Fsci.astro.amateur%2Fbrowse_frm%2Fthread%2F3 12c0ee1964db812%2F8ee6a5d=
795a6cc43%3Flnk%3Dst%26q%3Dbrad+guth%26rnum%3D7%26 hl%3Den%26#doc_abc3dca90e=
b703fc
>There are some posters out there
>who feel the need to formulate
>their own elaborate theories
>about the heavens and their fate.
And otherwise lord/rusemaster David Knisely having contributed yet
another very nicely worded mainstream status quo rant, which is exactly
why such all-knowing folks as Knisely are not likely going to
contribute an honest need-to-know squat upon this next related
sub-topic as to the lunar atmosphere and subsequent environment.

The temperature on moon surface is what I believe can become moderated
to suit, at least on behalf of greatly improving the odds on behalf of
robotics that can be robust and thus engineered so as to not care about
their local thermal or radioactive background dosage environment nor of
whatever's incoming that's producing all of that truly nasty
secondary/recoil worth of hard-X-rays. However, with having such a
crystal clear layer of Radon plus another extended layer of Argon
should create quit a well insulated surface baking environment that's
capable of getting a damn site hotter than the sort of hell reported by
our cloak and dagger MI6/NSA~NASA Apollo spooks.

In spite of all the brown-nosed minions of their mainstream status quo
that thinks and/or keeps insisting at we village idiots should only
think that we've already done that and been there, thus why all of
their need-to-know and/or taboo/nondisclosure that sucks and blows at
the same time, which only seems rather out of proper form, especially
when it appears that building/terraforming an artificial lunar
atmosphere for robotics has been doable without our ever risking so
much as one TBI white hair upon another astronaut:

Not that I'm insisting this as the one and only alternative, however
for further sportmanship reasons I'm thinking that the likes of Radon
gas should become liquid at night and, otherwise expand out to perhaps
an atmospheric depth of a km by day. Topped off by mostly argon that
might reach as far as 50 km by day and something less than 10 km by
nighttime/earthshine.

According to Mike Williams;
"The strength of the surface gravity (1.623 m/s/s) isn't the critical
factor. What's more significant is the escape velocity (Moon 2.38km/s,
Titan 2.65km/s)."

"The heavier gas sticks around but the useful gas escapes. The various
types of molecules settle down to having the same average kinetic
energy,
but that means that the lighter molecules move faster than the heavier
ones. They move just as fast, in fact, as if the heavier molecules were

not present."

"There's a piece of JavaScript on this page
<http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/kinetic/kintem.html#c4>
that will calculate the average molecular speed given the molecular
mass
and temperature. N2 molecules (m=3D28) on Titan (T=3D-197C) average 260m/s
which is about a tenth of the escape velocity. CO2 molecules (m=3D28) on
the Moon (daytime T=3D107C) average 464m/s which is about a fifth of the
escape velocity. That might sound OK, but not all molecules travel at
the average velocity, some travel faster and leak away. The Earth isn't
able to hold on to hydrogen molecules, and they average about a fifth
of
Earth's escape velocity."

"Radon atoms would travel at an average of 206m/s on the Moon, which
suggests that you could build an atmosphere of pure Radon."

Density of dry ice: anywhere from 1.2 to 1.6 kg/dm=B3 depends upon
compactness (avg 1.5 g/cm3)
Frozen solid form at -78.5=B0 C
Sublimes at anything much hoter than -78=B0C
In a snowball form of compactness upon the moon it may represent less
than 1 g/cm3.

Radon, Rn atomic number: 86
Atomic mass: [222] gmol-1(no stable nuclide)
Isotope: 222Rn (222.017570)
Specific gravity of the liquid state is 4.4 g/cm3 at -62=B0C, and SG of
the solid state becomes 4 g/cm3, thus 4 tonnes/m3 if frozen solid and
especially frozen solid if that Rn were sequestered by the likes of
frozen CO2 at 1.5 g/mm3.

A cubic meter of each substance, that which Earth needs to get rid of
anyway, represents a composite sphere of 5.5~5.9 tonnes, and that's not
actually all that large of diameter of what can be easily directed at
impacting (not orbiting) the moon. From the zero-G vantage point of
such being accelerated from the nullification zone of roughly 60,000 km
away from the moon gives an hour, in that there's an unobstructed path
of least resistance that'll also benefit from the 1.623 m/s/s worth of
gravity, whereas this should not require all that much added thrust
energy for getting the final velocity up to good speed of final impact
becoming worth at least 30 km/s (9 fold better KE bang/kg than DEEP
IMPACT), although what's stopping us from achieving 60+km/s?.

Our moon is already fairly radioactive by several fold greater than
Earth, thus another clue that our moon is actually that of an icy
proto-moon as having arrived instead of being ejected out of Earth,
that plus the much having lesser density makes a whole lot more sense
than any spendy computer model that's keeping the likes of a Pope and
other terrestrial or but religions as happy campers.

Of course, my lunar terraforming notions of artificially bombing the
holy crap out of our moon with the likes of large blocks or spheres of
dry-ice having frozen Rn within, besides creating whatever horrific
meteor like impacts worth of vaporising lunar basalt into capably
releasing a ratio of 1e6:1 worth of O2, the very nature of the
delivered CO2 might subsequently revert to just good old elements of
co/o2 or perhaps react into just C and O2, whereas the Radon element
should have vanished within a few days unless we'd replaced and/or
supplemented that lunar bombing of frozen Rn with the likes of
including Ra226 which might even react quite nicely with the already
available He3 into making a nifty long-term supply of creating Rn.
After the Ra226 is sufficiently depleted, say in 6400 years it should
be at 1/16th of it's initial potency, and by then having established a
good amount of terraformed atmosphere as becoming the case since the
amount of continual Radon-222 would have extensively moderated the
hot/cold of the lunar day/night differential to something quite
manageable for the likes of holding onto O2, whereas by then there
shouldn't be hardly any significant local radioactive threat for naked
humans that could be safely accommodated for 60 earthshine days upon
the surface of our moon, that which a reasonably engineered moonsuit
couldn't manage, or at least sufficient as for accommodating the likes
of whomever we don't want living here on Earth (I have a growing list
of whom those folks should be, roughly the bulk of the upper 0.1% of
humanity that have been pillaging and raping mother Earth while
continually snookering the lower 99.9% of humanity, and I do believe
there should be plenty of available space on and/or within the moon for
accommodating each and every one of those 15e6 folks in spite of all
the deployed Ra226 that upon average shouldn't have modified the
already background radioactive terrain by more than 10%).

According to the above "Molecular Speed Calculation" of Argon-40, even
if the elevated average altitude represented at worst 100=B0C (373K)
would give Argon the maximum RMS velocity of 482.4 m/s which obviously
should stick around. Even that of O2-32 only jumps to an RMS velocity
of 539 m/s which should also stay put at least up until a truly nasty
solar wind of 1200~2400 km/s excavates such lighter mass elements away.

So, you tell me why artificially bombing our moon, and especially with
the sorts of nasty stuff that Earth is getting more and more desperate
to get rid of isn't such a good idea.
>So stick to just the cold hard facts
>and do not engage these fools.
>As time goes on, they should then fade
>and prove that knowledge rules!
- D. Knisely
Obviously this nifty rant closing was speaking on behalf of warning us
about himself, as for our not bothering to engage such mainstream
rusemasters because, doing so will only bring us MOS LLPOF infomercials
and thus wasting human talents, resources of expertise and energy as
well as sustaining collateral damage and continued carnage of the
innocent.

BTW; just because certain folks fade is more than likely because
they're too smart to waste valuable time and resources upon the lost
cause of humanity that's ruled by and thereby performing as brown-nosed
minions to the upper most 0.1%, of which the likes of lord D. Knisely
is apparently even somewhat above that.
~

Life upon Venus, a township w/Bridge & ET/UFO Park-n-Ride Tarmac:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-town.htm
The Russian/China LSE-CM/ISS (Lunar Space Elevator)
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/lunar-space-elevator.htm
Venus ETs, plus the updated sub-topics; Brad Guth / GASA-IEIS
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-topics.htm
War is war, thus "in war there are no rules" - In fact, war has been
the very reason of having to deal with the likes of others that haven't
been playing by whatever rules, such as GW Bush.

[Josh Hill]

On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 01:14:03 GMT, "Ray" > wrote:

>
>"Herb Schaltegger" > wrote in
>message .com...
>> On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 07:21:41 -0500, Ray wrote
>> (in article <p9TXe.8506$i86.1501@trndny01>):
>>
>>> That makes no sense. You have a spacecraft designed to operate
>>> outside of earth orbit, you make a few flights to the moon and then
>>> cancel
>>> the program? No. And do what with the CEV? Operate it in orbit only? No.
>>> It
>>> was not designed for that.
>>
>> It's not designed at all. So far, all you or anyone else has seen are
>> a bunch of pretty pictures. NASA and its contractors are very fond of
>> pretty pictures. Do you really believe these are the only pretty
>> pictures NASA has produced to drum up support for a project? Do you
>> not realize how few actually come to fruition?
> The US government has no choice. It will replace the space shuttle
>with CEV. Their is even talk of retireing the shuttle early, like 2007.
>
>>
>>>I dont think any future American President,
>>> Senate or Congress will be that stupid enough to cancel the program with
>>> one
>>> exception.
>>
>> Flash back to the late 1960's/early 1970's and consider what was done
>> with Apollo, then consider what you just wrote.

> Apollo was canceled after 8 missions to the moon, and because NASA
>had a idea about making a spacecraft with wings that could land at an
>airport, but now that we found out this is the wrong way to fly into space,
>we will not make that mistake again.

Did we find that out, or did we find out that a partially-reusable
prototype with intrinsic design problems doesn't save money?

--
Josh

"This is a devastating storm. This is a storm that's
going to require immediate action now." -George W. Bush,
four days after Hurricane Katrina

[Josh Hill]

On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 14:00:52 -0400, "Jeff Findley"
> wrote:

>
>"Ray" > wrote in message
>news:vt2Ye.6634$N35.4411@trndny09...
>>
>> Apollo was canceled after 8 missions to the moon, and because NASA
>> had a idea about making a spacecraft with wings that could land at an
>> airport, but now that we found out this is the wrong way to fly into
>space,
>> we will not make that mistake again. Going to the moon today and in the
>> future will be a lot cheaper than in the 60s because shuttle hardware is
>> cheaper.
>
>Actually Apollo was cancelled before the final landing missions, because the
>production of Saturn V launch vehicles was capped and the later Apollo
>missions that were planned were cancelled. NASA actually fought hard to
>keep Saturn V (to compliment a space shuttle intended to *service* Saturn V
>launched stations), but lost. The cost was deemed too high by those that
>pay the bills (i.e. the legislative branch).

And look at how much money they saved . . . </end sarcasm mode>

--
Josh

"This is a devastating storm. This is a storm that's
going to require immediate action now." -George W. Bush,
four days after Hurricane Katrina

[S. Wand]

> > >Really? What existing launchers would be cheaper than SDHLV? $500
mil
> /
> > >250Klb gets you $2000/lb to LEO.
> >
> > Where do you get half a billion per flight?
>
> No kidding. If NASA launches two lunar missions per year (that's what
they
> seem to have baselined), then where are they hiding the high fixed costs
of
> the infrastructure to support those launches?
>
$500 mil per launcher, not including payload. Take the orbiter out of the
equation and NASA should easily hit the $500 million mark for an SDHLV.

There are really two questions being asked. Question one is whether there
should be a manned space exploration program at all. If your answer is no,
then we all applaud your fiscal responsibility and utter lack of a sense of
adventure. But if you think mankind should be opening up the non-LEO
frontier, then the real question seems to be: should NASA place manned
space exploration on hold while we wait for private industry to mature and
deliver substantially lower launch costs? I think that answer depends on
how long we'll have to wait. If you're saying that by next year Joe's
Monster Rocket Garage can build 20-30K LEO launchers for $1000 / lb, then by
all means NASA should procure their services. But is that going to happen
that fast? Beal Aerospace had a working million pound thrust engine and an
owner with deep pockets, but he didn't feel the market could support him so
it folded. Kistler's been a joke. Space X is probably the best positioned
of all the contenders, but it's still more hot air than rocket exhaust. The
small private companies will be much more credible to everyone, including
government, when they start lifting 5-10K loads into orbit for the prices
they've quoted. My own suspicion is that we're at least 10 years before any
private company will be fielding a reliable 20-30K LEO launcher (and I
thought the same thing 10 years ago!). And another 10 years for the kind
of HLV needed for lunar missions. In other words - twice as long as the
proposed architecture, and placing a lot of faith in a private launch
industry that's demonstrated nothing.

So, in conclusion I think that SDHLV is a good and capable design. I'm a
lot less happy with the Stick-CEV as it seems a big large for it's purpose
(and it looks like the Nazi Germany grenades - the NASA Potato Masher!). I
think NASA could do this cheaper than $100 billion, but I'd rather see that
investment spread out over 12-15 years than to wait for an industry that may
never mature.

[S. Wand]

> Griffin keeps saying this will be a "pay as you go" program, but the high
> fixed costs of the stick, the SDHLV, and the CEV will be nearly as much as
> the shuttle program (much of the same components are there), leaving
little
> room for cost savings by canceling flights. The landers strike me as
being
> about as expensive as ISS to continuously build and fly, especially if
> NASA's intent is to start building lunar bases using the lunar landers
left
> on the moon as the building blocks. If that happens, the landers will
start
> looking more like ISS modules (in terms of the equipment they have on
board)
> and less like a LEM on steroids.
>
The orbiter was the big expense in the shuttle program - maintenance of the
thermal tiles, engines, hydraulics, avionics, etc. The shuttle launch
components aren't particularly cheap (I've seen past figures of $35million
each for an SRB), but they have the advantage of being largely developed and
flight tested .

NASA does need to do something about the ISS modules. Why are cans so
expensive? This is a real promising area for outsourcing development - go
with the pressurized kevlar modules with some regolith covering...

[Cardman]

On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 19:01:56 -0400, "S. Wand" >
wrote:

>There are really two questions being asked. Question one is whether there
>should be a manned space exploration program at all. If your answer is no,
>then we all applaud your fiscal responsibility and utter lack of a sense of
>adventure.

I see it more the case that this solar system belongs to us. So the
more of this real estate space that can be fenced off the better. :-]

>But if you think mankind should be opening up the non-LEO
>frontier, then the real question seems to be: should NASA place manned
>space exploration on hold while we wait for private industry to mature and
>deliver substantially lower launch costs?

No, but I believe that NASA should support such enterprise.

This option could soon make all of NASA's brand new hardware obsolete,
but writing off billions could be the best option.

>I think that answer depends on how long we'll have to wait.

SpaceX seems to indicate 18 months before the larger rockets start
launching, but maybe closer to three years could be a better estimate.

And even then they would have to be proven as reasonably reliable.

>If you're saying that by next year Joe's
>Monster Rocket Garage can build 20-30K LEO launchers for $1000 / lb, then by
>all means NASA should procure their services.

Then they find out that Joe's Monster Rocket Garage has a 90% failure
rate. :-]

>But is that going to happen that fast?

Well it could well come about before NASA's own rockets do.

This I guess makes your choice for you. As when NASA comes to build
their SDHLV, then SpaceX's Falcon 5 & 9 should have already had a
fairly long history of launching. And so if SpaceX's low cost rockets
are looking good, then screw the SDHLV.

They would be better off spending their time on an orbital fuel depot
instead. And I expect that the commercial people could mostly handle
that one on their own.

>Beal Aerospace had a working million pound thrust engine and an
>owner with deep pockets, but he didn't feel the market could support him so
>it folded. Kistler's been a joke.

Well space is a hard market.

>Space X is probably the best positioned of all the contenders, but it's
>still more hot air than rocket exhaust.

One month to go. Provided that they do not detonate another test stand
that is. And should this first flight work out, then there is the
Falcon 5 and 9 already half built.

>The
>small private companies will be much more credible to everyone, including
>government, when they start lifting 5-10K loads into orbit for the prices
>they've quoted. My own suspicion is that we're at least 10 years before any
>private company will be fielding a reliable 20-30K LEO launcher (and I
>thought the same thing 10 years ago!).

SpaceX seems to be heading that way, possibly earlier than what you
may believe.

I think that the market has greatly changed since SpaceShipOne made
it's record breaking trip. As this is the proof that many large
investors needed to highlight that space can be done for a lot less
than what government can do it. Therefore there is profit to be made
here.

You could say that SpaceX is a very important step that will highlight
that the commercial people now rule orbital as well. And if they make
orbital once, then so can they do so a thousand times. The specifics
of their accounts and profit margins are a secondary factor.

>And another 10 years for the kind of HLV needed for lunar missions.

You don't need HLV for Lunar Missions. NASA is just playing safe and
being a bit unwise at the same time.

Orbital is the perfect point to refuel before you go on to your
destination. The commercial people certainly won't follow NASA's super
expensive example.

>In other words - twice as long as the proposed architecture,

I don't see that. NASA could go on to have SpaceX, t-space, or
whoever, demonstrate orbital refueling before the SDHLV has even
started to be built. And they could certainly have the full system up
and running before the SDHLV launches.

So then you can have low cost launches, assembly, refueling, and a
large mass on to the Moon.

Like it or not this is an alternate plan that could be ready before
the SDHLV is ready. More importantly it is very low cost compared to
NASA's prices.

>and placing a lot of faith in a private launch industry that's demonstrated
>nothing.

It has demonstrated that they can reach sub-orbital for (if I recall
correctly) 1/8th of NASA's price.

Based upon this one example, then so should you have some faith that
they could make orbital as well. Maybe they will, maybe they won't,
but NASA should have a Plan B if they do.

>So, in conclusion I think that SDHLV is a good and capable design.

Within the old established business model. That same model that has
much helped to keep commercial enterprise grounded.

I would even say that maybe NASA should be out of the launching
business by now. Their SDHLV is more of a special case.

>I'm a lot less happy with the Stick-CEV as it seems a big large for it's
>purpose

Well this is intended to go beyond LEO. The more interesting question
is how they scale it down for a LEO mission.

>(and it looks like the Nazi Germany grenades - the NASA Potato Masher!).

LOL. I don't think so. It looks more like Harry Potter's wand to me.

>I think NASA could do this cheaper than $100 billion, but I'd rather see that
>investment spread out over 12-15 years than to wait for an industry that may
>never mature.

And I say that they should not ignore the commercial possibilities. It
is certainly too early to make their plans around them, but when they
make orbital then the rules should quickly change.

Cardman.

[Rand Simberg]

On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 17:28:33 -0400, in a place far, far away, Josh
Hill > made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

>>>Give me some good reasons for abandoning the Saturns.
>>
>>They cost too much.
>
>A lot less than the shuttle, and nobody was willing to finance a more
>economical replacement . . .

But apparently they're willing to finance one that will cost almost as
much...

[Ray]

"Herb Schaltegger" > wrote in
message .com...
> On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 08:01:15 -0500, wrote
> (in article om>):
>
>> I'm hoping that VSE has legs.
>
> Not in the face of massive government overspending (wars, rumors of
> wars, and natural disasters you know . . .)
>
> "WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 - Conservative House Republicans plan to
> recommend on Wednesday more than $500 billion in savings over 10 years
> to compensate for the costs of Hurricane Katrina as lawmakers continue
> to struggle to develop a consensus on the fiscal approach to the
> disaster.
>
> "At the top of a partial list of the potential cuts being circulated on
> Tuesday were previously suggested ideas like delaying the start of the
> new Medicare prescription drug coverage for one year to save $31
> billion and eliminating $25 billion in projects from the newly enacted
> transportation measure.
>
> "The list also proposed eliminating the Moon-Mars initiative that NASA
> announced on Monday, for $44 billion in savings; ending support for the
> Corporation for Public Broadcasting, $4 billion; cutting taxpayer
> payments for the national political conventions and the presidential
> election campaign fund, $600 million; and charging federal employees
> for parking, $1.54 billion."
>
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/21/national/nationalspecial/21cong.htm>
> ****, if they're going to worry about a billion and a half "saved"
> (e.g., charged to employees) for parking, Moon-Mars doesn't have much
> of a shot, folks.
>
> --
> "Fame may be fleeting but obscurity is forever." ~Anonymous
> "I believe as little as possible and know as much as I can."
> ~Todd Stuart Phillips
> <www.angryherb.net>
>

I suspect that Bush, and most of the Congress will fight to keep moon,
mars and beyond intact and will succeed. Maybe they will allow 100 million
dollars as a token amount be cut. If they didn't kill the space station
back in 1991 they will not kill moon, mars and beyond.

Ray

[Ray]

"Josh Hill" > wrote in message
...
> On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 11:18:15 GMT, "Ray" > wrote:
>
>>
>>"Alex Terrell" > wrote in message
oups.com...
>>>
>>> Derek Lyons wrote:
>>>> wrote:
>>>> >CEV recreates Apollo and Soyuz but bear in mind that Soyuz was the
>>>> >Russian equivalent to Apollo.
>>>>
>>>> Not really - Soyuz started out as an independent orbiter and became a
>>>> dedicated space taxi. Apollo started as a space taxi/general purpose
>>>> orbiter and became a dedicated long range/long duration lunar craft.
>>>>
>>> That's it! What's needed for ISS is a Space Taxi. The CEV is cruise
>>> ship, and is an inherently expensive way to reach ISS.
>>>
>>
>> A space taxi? Why so we can spend the next 30 years circling the
>>earth, circling the earth, circling the earth like we spent the previous
>>30
>>years. I think that will get the program canceled out of boredom. No,
>>its
>>time to push ahead to moon, mars and beyond. If we can spend 84 billion
>>dollars for one year in Iraq and Afghanistan then we can spend 100 billion
>>dollars over 12 years getting ready to goto the moon..
>
> Amen, if you make that Mars . . .
>
> --
> Josh
>
> "This is a devastating storm. This is a storm that's
> going to require immediate action now." -George W. Bush,
> four days after Hurricane Katrina

I support going to Mars too, but I think we should learn how to live
off the land on the moon first before we goto mars and try it.

Ray

[Ray]

"Jeff Findley" > wrote in message
...
>
> "Ray" > wrote in message
> news:vt2Ye.6634$N35.4411@trndny09...
>>
>> Apollo was canceled after 8 missions to the moon, and because
>> NASA
>> had a idea about making a spacecraft with wings that could land at an
>> airport, but now that we found out this is the wrong way to fly into
> space,
>> we will not make that mistake again. Going to the moon today and in the
>> future will be a lot cheaper than in the 60s because shuttle hardware is
>> cheaper.
>
> Actually Apollo was cancelled before the final landing missions, because
> the
> production of Saturn V launch vehicles was capped and the later Apollo
> missions that were planned were cancelled. NASA actually fought hard to
> keep Saturn V (to compliment a space shuttle intended to *service* Saturn
> V
> launched stations), but lost. The cost was deemed too high by those that
> pay the bills (i.e. the legislative branch).
>
> Your statement is a blatent attempt to rewrite history.
>
> Jeff
> --
> Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.
>
Ok, I didn't know that NASA wanted to keep Saturn V and Shuttle.
Ray

[Josh Hill]

On Thu, 22 Sep 2005 00:32:57 GMT, (Rand
Simberg) wrote:

>On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 17:28:33 -0400, in a place far, far away, Josh
>Hill > made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
>such a way as to indicate that:
>
>>>>Give me some good reasons for abandoning the Saturns.
>>>
>>>They cost too much.
>>
>>A lot less than the shuttle, and nobody was willing to finance a more
>>economical replacement . . .
>
>But apparently they're willing to finance one that will cost almost as
>much...

I think they've been burned, and at this point, they're just looking
for something that works and has relatively low risk. In a sense,
they're making up for the mistakes of the past, redeveloping vehicles
that already existed and so shouldn't have had to be redeveloped --
and that isn't really their fault, but that of their predecessors and
the politicians. A bit too conservative, perhaps, from an engineering
perspective, but can they afford another failure, a program that
doesn't work out or goes way over budget or kills the crew?

--
Josh

"This is a devastating storm. This is a storm that's
going to require immediate action now." -George W. Bush,
four days after Hurricane Katrina

[S. Wand]

> >The
> >small private companies will be much more credible to everyone, including
> >government, when they start lifting 5-10K loads into orbit for the prices
> >they've quoted. My own suspicion is that we're at least 10 years before
any
> >private company will be fielding a reliable 20-30K LEO launcher (and I
> >thought the same thing 10 years ago!).
>
> SpaceX seems to be heading that way, possibly earlier than what you
> may believe.
>

Good luck to SpaceX!! My taxpayer wallet wishes them the best.

So let's consider this scenario... the Potato Masher / CEV development
starts now with a 2012 first flight. The SDHLV isn't scheduled to receive
much development money over that time. Let's also say that by 2012,
SpaceX is successfully flying the Falcon 9 at around a $1000 / lb. Then
I'd agree with you that it'd be a lot cheaper to cancel SDHLV, and fly
refueling missions with Falcon 9's loaded with fuel. (kerosene?? how long
before liquid oxygen / hydrogen would boil away in the sunlight??). This
will be a more complicated architecture than having a large HLV (and
wouldn't it be nice if ISS was in a useful orbit to store this stuff???) -
so a lunar mission would probably be delayed a few years. But that'd be
acceptable. Let's hope you're right and I'm wrong about SpaceX's ability
to deliver. But I'm still afraid I'm going to be right.

A quick word about SpaceshipOne - I think Branson is going to have a nice
little market for suborbitals, but getting that architecture to work on an
orbital craft is a really big step. It might have been 1/8th the cost, but
it also wasn't going nearly as fast the first Redstone rockets.

[Josh Hill]

On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 01:48:18 GMT, "Ray" > wrote:

>
>"Derek Lyons" > wrote in message
...
>> John Doe > wrote:
>>
>>>Didn't they say that for Shuttle, and promise the shuttle would be fully
>>>reusable with little/no maintenance required between flights and fly at
>>>very low costs many times per month ?
>>
>> They also promised great things for Apollo - but they get a pass for
>> failing there. (Failing for much the same reasons as Shuttle failed.)
>>
>> D.
>> --
>> Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.
>>
>> -Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
>> Oct 5th, 2004 JDL
>
> Maybe NASA could be cut some slack here. Apollo was the first
>spacecraft of its kind to goto the moon and shuttle was the first hybrid
>spacecraft of its kind to fly through the atmosphere and land on a runway,
>both experiments. NASA can learn from these other spacecraft and design a
>better spacecraft. I think you are all too hard on NASA.

I'm not quite sure what the problem was with Apollo, which may have
been the most marvelous engineering achievement of all time and will
be remembered a thousand years from now. The Shuttle was oversold and
squeezed between an inadequate budget and excessive demands . . .

--
Josh

"This is a devastating storm. This is a storm that's
going to require immediate action now." -George W. Bush,
four days after Hurricane Katrina

[Josh Hill]

On 19 Sep 2005 20:19:32 -0700, "Will McLean" >
wrote:

>
>Some questions struck me.
>
>The CLV uses a SSME on the upper stage, the HLV a pair of J-2s. Why the
>two different engines?

Payload vs. cost?

>This plan could be expending a dozen (or more) SSMEs a year. At that
>production rate, how much less do you pay per engine?
>
>How much would it add to development cost to put some or all of the HLV
>engines in recoverable pods?

--
Josh

"This is a devastating storm. This is a storm that's
going to require immediate action now." -George W. Bush,
four days after Hurricane Katrina

[lsvalentine@verizon.net]

S. Wand wrote:
> > >The
> > >small private companies will be much more credible to everyone, including
> > >government, when they start lifting 5-10K loads into orbit for the prices
> > >they've quoted. My own suspicion is that we're at least 10 years before
> any
> > >private company will be fielding a reliable 20-30K LEO launcher (and I
> > >thought the same thing 10 years ago!).
> >
> > SpaceX seems to be heading that way, possibly earlier than what you
> > may believe.
> >
>
> Good luck to SpaceX!! My taxpayer wallet wishes them the best.
>
> So let's consider this scenario... the Potato Masher / CEV development
> starts now with a 2012 first flight. The SDHLV isn't scheduled to receive
> much development money over that time. Let's also say that by 2012,
> SpaceX is successfully flying the Falcon 9 at around a $1000 / lb. Then
> I'd agree with you that it'd be a lot cheaper to cancel SDHLV, and fly
> refueling missions with Falcon 9's loaded with fuel. (kerosene?? how long
> before liquid oxygen / hydrogen would boil away in the sunlight??). This
> will be a more complicated architecture than having a large HLV (and
> wouldn't it be nice if ISS was in a useful orbit to store this stuff???) -
> so a lunar mission would probably be delayed a few years. But that'd be
> acceptable. Let's hope you're right and I'm wrong about SpaceX's ability
> to deliver. But I'm still afraid I'm going to be right.
>
> A quick word about SpaceshipOne - I think Branson is going to have a nice
> little market for suborbitals, but getting that architecture to work on an
> orbital craft is a really big step. It might have been 1/8th the cost, but
> it also wasn't going nearly as fast the first Redstone rockets.


Not one eighth the cost( per flight, at least)but less than one one
hundredth.Here is a
reference:http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-4201/ch6-6.htm
The figures are not corrected for inflation so you should multiply the
figure of $2.7 million for a Mercury/Redstone shot by about a factor of
six. Burt's SS1 per flight costs are around $100K Mercury /Redstone's
are at least a factor of 150 greater.

[Brad Guth]

Joe Strout,
Since our "NASA formally unveils lunar exploration architecture", then
perhaps we village idiots can seriously discuss those potentially
lethal physical impacts, thermal extremes, radioactive and otherwise
reactive facets and about the atmospheric environment of our moon that
really sucks, especially by day unless you're one hell of a robot and
thus having no DNA/RNA to fry or TBI to death.

It seems as though, by way of my going "usenet postal" along with my
trusty lose cannon has managed in spite of all of your defensive flak,
whereas I've managed to hit a few more of those tender mainstream
private parts, at least pricking a few of those status quo
nerve-endings. Thus is apparently why others are not even pitching
another one of their usual all-knowing and wag-the-dog efforts of
damage-control or any other fits over what terraforming our moon has to
offer, much less any notions of our sticking with almost if not
entirely as to whatever robotics has to offer in the way of achieving
the utmost bang for the almighty buck, while otherwise polluting mother
Earth the very least per deployed kg. Imagine that, apparently I'm
sufficiently right again and they're not.

Nuking our moon via a sub-frozen CO2 dirty-bombs worth of hosting
Ra-226/Rn-222 isn't quite the same thing as commonly thought of here
upon Earth.

Radium-226 which goes on and on with the process of creating Rn-222 gas
is exactly what could become easily delivered to our moon using
conventional SBRs as our Earth-->moon torpedoes. Otherwise frozen
Rn-222 sequestered within frozen CO2 may have to accomplish the task if
folks can't take a hint as to what's otherwise possible.

B1ackwater offers this moon related topic;
NASA Back to Moon by 2018 - But WHY ?
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.space.history/browse_frm/thread/bfe561b9=
824b9f1a/ecfa8369f334ec56?hl=3Den#ecfa8369f334ec56
This is an extremely nice topic and as such it imposes a damn good set
of rational questions and alternatives, especially important since
we're nearly bankrupt. However, since "NASA formally unveils lunar
exploration architecture", then perhaps we village idiots can seriously
discuss those potentially lethal physical impacts, thermal issues,
radioactive, reactive and atmospheric environment about our moon that
really summarily sucks worse off than our resident warlord(GW Bush),
especially by day unless you're one hell of a robot that at most
couldn't cost us 1% that of any manned expedition, and not 0.1% if
there's no return ticket to ride.

It seems the status quo is entirely mindset into their usual
taboo/nondisclosure yet somehow that's perfectly fine and dandy for the
likes of wizard "David Knisely", whereas otherwise life involving the
regular laws of physics and hard-science that's the least bit outside
the box is where pesky morals or so much as having a stitch of remorse
sucks because;
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.astro.amateur/tree/browse_frm/thread/312=
c0ee1964db812/85e2050d1b0c9a78?rnum=3D11&hl=3Den&q=3Dbrad+guth&_done=3D%2Fg=
roup%2Fsci.astro.amateur%2Fbrowse_frm%2Fthread%2F3 12c0ee1964db812%2F8ee6a5d=
795a6cc43%3Flnk%3Dst%26q%3Dbrad+guth%26rnum%3D7%26 hl%3Den%26#doc_abc3dca90e=
b703fc
>There are some posters out there
>who feel the need to formulate
>their own elaborate theories
>about the heavens and their fate.
And otherwise lord/rusemaster David Knisely having contributed yet
another very nicely worded mainstream status quo rant, which is exactly
why such all-knowing folks as Knisely are not all that likely going to
contribute an honest need-to-know squat upon this next related
sub-topic as to the lunar atmosphere and subsequent environment.

The temperature or rather the temperature extremes found on moon
surface is what I believe can become moderated to suit, at least on
behalf of greatly improving the odds on behalf of robotics that can be
robust and thus engineered so as to not care about their local thermal
or radioactive background dosage environment nor of whatever's incoming
that's producing all of that truly nasty secondary/recoil worth of
hard-X-rays. However, with having such a crystal clear layer of Radon
plus another extended layer of Argon should create quit a well
insulated surface baking environment that's capable of getting a damn
site hotter than the sort of hell reported by our cloak and dagger
MI6/NSA~NASA Apollo spooks.

In spite of all the brown-nosed minions of their mainstream status quo
that thinks and/or keeps insisting at we village idiots should only
think that we've already done that and been there, thus why all of
their need-to-know and/or taboo/nondisclosure that sucks and blows at
the same time, which only seems rather out of proper form, especially
when it appears that building/terraforming an artificial lunar
atmosphere for robotics has been doable without our ever risking so
much as one TBI white hair upon another astronaut:

Not that I'm insisting this as the one and only alternative, however
for further sportmanship reasons I'm thinking that the likes of Radon
gas should become liquid at night and, otherwise expand out to perhaps
an atmospheric depth of a km by day. Topped off by mostly argon that
might reach as far as 50 km by day and something less than 10 km by
nighttime/earthshine.

According to Mike Williams;
"The strength of the surface gravity (1.623 m/s/s) isn't the critical
factor. What's more significant is the escape velocity (Moon 2.38km/s,
Titan 2.65km/s)."

"The heavier gas sticks around but the useful gas escapes. The various
types of molecules settle down to having the same average kinetic
energy, but that means that the lighter molecules move faster than the
heavier ones. They move just as fast, in fact, as if the heavier
molecules were not present."

"There's a piece of JavaScript on this page
<http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/kinetic/kintem.html#c4>
that will calculate the average molecular speed given the molecular
mass and temperature. N2 molecules (m=3D28) on Titan (T=3D-197C) average
260m/s which is about a tenth of the escape velocity. CO2 molecules
(m=3D28) on the Moon (daytime T=3D107C) average 464m/s which is about a
fifth of the escape velocity. That might sound OK, but not all
molecules travel at the average velocity, some travel faster and leak
away. The Earth isn't able to hold on to hydrogen molecules, and they
average about a fifth of
Earth's escape velocity."

"Radon atoms would travel at an average of 206m/s on the Moon, which
suggests that you could build an atmosphere of pure Radon."

Density of dry ice: anywhere from 1.2 to 1.6 kg/dm=B3 depends upon
compactness (avg 1.5 g/cm3)
Frozen solid form at -78.5=B0 C
Sublimes at anything much hoter than -78=B0C
In a snowball form of compactness upon the moon it may represent less
than 1 g/cm3.

Radon, Rn-222 atomic number: 86
Atomic mass: [222] gmol-1(no stable nuclide)
Isotope: 222Rn (222.017570)
Specific gravity of the liquid state is 4.4 g/cm3 at -62=B0C, and SG of
the solid state becomes 4 g/cm3, thus 4 tonnes/m3 if frozen solid and
especially frozen solid if that Rn were sequestered by the likes of
frozen CO2 at 1.5 g/mm3.

Radium-226 which creates Rn-222
Symbol: Ra
Atomic number: 88
Atomic weight: [226]

A cubic meter of each substance, be it CO2, Radium-226 or even
Radon-222 that which by most accounts is exactly what Earth needs to
get rid of anyway, may represent a composite sphere of 5.5~6 tonnes,
and even that's not going to actually be all that large of diameter of
what's encased within dry-ice that can be easily directed at impacting
(not orbiting) the moon. From the zero-G vantage point of such being
easily and thus efficiently accelerated from the nullification zone of
roughly 60,000 km away from the moon's surface might offer 3600
seconds, in that there's an unobstructed path of least resistance
that'll obviously benefit greatly from the final 1.623 m/s/s worth of
gravity assist, whereas this task should not require all that much
added thrust energy if any for getting the final velocity up to good
speed of final impact becoming worth 30 km/s (9 fold better KE bang/kg
than DEEP IMPACT). Although, what's in the path of stopping us from
achieving a roundabout head-on impact of 60+km/s?.

Impacting our moon with 6 tonnes worth of most any substance that's
arriving at 30 km/s should represent more than enouth KE for producing
6e6 tonnes of vaporised lunar basalt.

Our moon has been classified as already fairly radioactive by several
fold greater than Earth, thus another clue that our moon is actually
that of an ET icy proto-moon as having arrived instead of being ejected
out of Earth, that plus having the much lesser density makes a whole
lot more sense than any spendy computer model that's keeping the likes
of a Pope and other terrestrial or bust sorts of religions as happy
campers about their being the one and only intelligent life in the
entire universe, even thosgh that notion is a bit more depressing than
our having the likes of GW Bush as our resident warlord.

Of course, my lunar terraforming notions of artificially bombing the
holy crap out of our moon with the likes of large blocks or spheres of
dry-ice having frozen Rn within, besides creating whatever horrific
meteor like impacts worth of vaporising lunar basalt into capably
releasing a ratio of 1e6:1 worth of O2, the very nature of the
delivered CO2 might subsequently revert to just good old elements of
co/o2 or perhaps react into just C and O2, whereas the Radon element
should have vanished within a few days unless we'd replaced and/or
supplemented that lunar bombing of frozen Rn with the likes of
including Ra226 which might even react quite nicely with the already
available He3 into making a nifty long-term supply of creating Rn.
After the Ra226 is sufficiently depleted, say in 6400 years it should
be at 1/16th of it's initial potency, and by then having established a
good amount of terraformed atmosphere as becoming the case since the
amount of continual Radon-222 would have extensively moderated the
hot/cold of the lunar day/night differential to something quite
manageable for the likes of holding onto O2, whereas by then there
shouldn't be hardly any significant local radioactive threat for naked
humans that could be safely accommodated for 60 earthshine days upon
the surface of our moon, that which a reasonably engineered moonsuit
couldn't manage, or at least sufficient as for accommodating the likes
of whomever we don't want living here on Earth (I have a growing list
of whom those folks should be, roughly the bulk of the upper 0.1% of
humanity that have been pillaging and raping mother Earth while
continually snookering the lower 99.9% of humanity, and I do believe
there should be plenty of available space on and/or within the moon for
accommodating each and every one of those 15e6 folks in spite of all
the deployed Ra226 that upon average shouldn't have modified the
already background radioactive terrain by more than 10%).

According to the above "Molecular Speed Calculation" of Argon-40, even
if the elevated average altitude represented at worst 100=B0C (373K)
would give Argon the maximum RMS velocity of 482.4 m/s which obviously
should stick around. Even that of O2-32 only jumps to an RMS velocity
of 539 m/s which should also stay put at least up until a truly nasty
solar wind of 1200~2400 km/s excavates such lighter mass elements away.

So, you tell me why artificially bombing our moon, and especially with
the sorts of nasty stuff that Earth is getting more and more desperate
to get rid of isn't such a good idea.
>So stick to just the cold hard facts
>and do not engage these fools.
>As time goes on, they should then fade
>and prove that knowledge rules!
- D. Knisely
Obviously this nifty rant closing was speaking on behalf of warning us
about himself, as for our not bothering to engage such mainstream
rusemasters because, doing so will only bring us MOS LLPOF infomercials
and thus wasting human talents, resources of expertise and energy as
well as sustaining collateral damage and continued carnage of the
innocent.

BTW; just because certain folks fade is more than likely because theve
become too smart to waste valuable time and resources upon the lost
cause of humanity that's ruled by and thereby performing as brown-nosed
minions to the upper most 0.1%, of which the likes of lord D. Knisely
is apparently even somewhat above that.
~

Life upon Venus, a township w/Bridge & ET/UFO Park-n-Ride Tarmac:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-town.htm
The Russian/China LSE-CM/ISS (Lunar Space Elevator)
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/lunar-space-elevator.htm
Venus ETs, plus the updated sub-topics; Brad Guth / GASA-IEIS
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-topics.htm
War is war, thus "in war there are no rules" - In fact, war has been
the very reason of having to deal with the likes of others that haven't
been playing by whatever rules, such as GW Bush.

[S. Wand]

"Rand Simberg" > wrote in message
.. .
> On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 19:01:56 -0400, in a place far, far away, "S.
> Wand" > made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
> such a way as to indicate that:
>
> >> > >Really? What existing launchers would be cheaper than SDHLV?
$500
> >mil
> >> /
> >> > >250Klb gets you $2000/lb to LEO.
> >> >
> >> > Where do you get half a billion per flight?
> >>
> >> No kidding. If NASA launches two lunar missions per year (that's what
> >they
> >> seem to have baselined), then where are they hiding the high fixed
costs
> >of
> >> the infrastructure to support those launches?
> >>
> >$500 mil per launcher, not including payload. Take the orbiter out of
the
> >equation and NASA should easily hit the $500 million mark for an SDHLV.
>
> We still await some justification for this (probably low) number.
>

Here's the number's I've seen quoted on shuttle components:
ET - $60 million
SRB - $30 million each
SSME - $20 million each ( I'd like to see the tradeoff of using more
powerful, less efficient and cheaper RS-68's)

So, take 60 + (30 * 2) + (20 * 5) and you get $220 million. Of course, it's
configured differently and it has second stage tankage, but hardware
shouldn't exceed $300 million. That leaves a god-awful $200 million for
infrastructure per launch - and I'd think that the elimination of the
orbiter and it's associated manpower and facilities would reduce the amount
needed by the SDHLV.

Let's see your numbers. Do you have a link to your preferred architecture?

[John Doe]

Ray wrote:
> A space taxi? Why so we can spend the next 30 years circling the
> earth, circling the earth, circling the earth like we spent the previous 30
> years. I think that will get the program canceled out of boredom.


You are mistaken. You want a short term program to pickup rocks on the
moon because to you, it has some deliverables.

However, going to the moon does 0 to get us the technologies that will
allow us to go to mars. Technologies and knowedge we don't have yet. We
already had the stuff to go to the moon. We have them back in 1960s.

Going to the moon requires only a pressurised telephone booth and a crew
who can be close to each other for 3 days each way. Going to mars
requires the equivalent of a space station, huge amounts of supplies,
water and air recycling systems, very large solar arrays to power
everything etc etc. And knowledge of how to exercise and live so that
after 6 months of weightlessness, the crw will be able to land and be
functional on mars.

We need to know exactly how many spare parts will be needed, how much
food, water etc. And this knowledge will come from operating the space
station. And yes, round and round and round around the earth.

What the station has told us so far is that stuff that seems to work
well on earth may not be so reliable in space (0g and with cosmic radiation).

We need to solve those issues. Going to the moon won't.

[Rand Simberg]

On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 19:01:56 -0400, in a place far, far away, "S.
Wand" > made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

>> > >Really? What existing launchers would be cheaper than SDHLV? $500
>mil
>> /
>> > >250Klb gets you $2000/lb to LEO.
>> >
>> > Where do you get half a billion per flight?
>>
>> No kidding. If NASA launches two lunar missions per year (that's what
>they
>> seem to have baselined), then where are they hiding the high fixed costs
>of
>> the infrastructure to support those launches?
>>
>$500 mil per launcher, not including payload. Take the orbiter out of the
>equation and NASA should easily hit the $500 million mark for an SDHLV.

We still await some justification for this (probably low) number.

>There are really two questions being asked. Question one is whether there
>should be a manned space exploration program at all. If your answer is no,
>then we all applaud your fiscal responsibility and utter lack of a sense of
>adventure. But if you think mankind should be opening up the non-LEO
>frontier, then the real question seems to be: should NASA place manned
>space exploration on hold while we wait for private industry to mature and
>deliver substantially lower launch costs? I think that answer depends on
>how long we'll have to wait.

How long we'll have to wait is somewhat (though thankfully not
exclusively) dependent on the degree to which NASA encourages this
outcome. This plan does nothing to do so, and if anything, has the
opposite effect, regardless of soothing words from the Administrator.

[John Doe]

wrote:
> the new plan. After 30+ years of Earth orbit operations, NASA finally
> has the marching orders to continue human lunar exploration. Yes it
> seems like Apollo redux, but is that necessarily a bad thing? I don't
> think so.

Apollo won't get you beyond the moon. It is a dead end. The plan should
have been to go to mars in 20 years. Not to the moon in 20 years.


> The biggest danger is that NASA's plan won't survive.

Of course it won't survive. Even if they go to the moon with that CEV
thingny, after a few trips bringing back rocks, they will get bored, see
the moon as a dead end and cut it. Then they will have to start from
scratch to go to the moon, and if by then the station will have been
abandonned, they will need to build a new one in order to test the
systems needed to go to mars.

[S. Wand]

"Rand Simberg" > wrote in message
.. .
> On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 22:06:48 -0400, in a place far, far away, "S.
> Wand" > made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
> such a way as to indicate that:
>
> >> We still await some justification for this (probably low) number.
> >>
> >
> >Here's the number's I've seen quoted on shuttle components:
> >ET - $60 million
> >SRB - $30 million each
> >SSME - $20 million each ( I'd like to see the tradeoff of using more
> >powerful, less efficient and cheaper RS-68's)
>
> SSMEs can't possibly be produced that cheaply, even at high rates.

SSME's without the reuse requirement? Ramp up production and costs would
fall. Anyway, the RS-68 would seem tailor made for a non-human rated cargo
ship.

>
> >So, take 60 + (30 * 2) + (20 * 5) and you get $220 million. Of course,
it's
> >configured differently and it has second stage tankage, but hardware
> >shouldn't exceed $300 million. That leaves a god-awful $200 million for
> >infrastructure per launch - and I'd think that the elimination of the
> >orbiter and it's associated manpower and facilities would reduce the
amount
> >needed by the SDHLV.
>
> How do you come up with the amazingly-low $200M fixed-cost per launch,
> other than out of your behind?

If $200M comes out of my behind, I'll build that launcher myself.
Ariane, Delta IV Heavy, Atlas V charge less than $200M per launch for
everything - infrastructure, launcher, operations, etc. Outsource the
friggin launch operations if they can't meet $200M. Again, SDHLV doesn't
have to process, launch and refurbish the CEV so don't include that
infrastructure in the total.

>
> >Do you have a link to your preferred architecture?
>
> My preferred architecture is for the government (NASA or otherwise) to
> put out a bid for dollars per pound for delivery of cargo to orbit,
> for a large amount of cargo. Unlike NASA, I don't pretend I'm smart
> enough to know the best way to do this.

Sounds like Shatner just needs to put out the word on Priceline.com. If
rockets with meaningful payload could be profitably launched for $1000/LB,
someone (Beal?) would be doing it today regardless of the NASA carrot.

[George Evans]

in article , Paul F. Dietz at
wrote on 9/20/05 5:10 AM:

> Ray wrote:
>
>> Not true. If that were true, our primitive predecessors would not
>> have gotten out of Africa. We humans might have become that way over that
>> last 200 years, but we are explorers by heart, and we need to be inspired
>> and shown the way.
>
> This is just bull****. The vast majority of humans are not explorers.
> They have been born, lived, and died in small geographical areas -- that's
> why human racial diversity still exists, after all.
>
> Long distance exploration has been a desperate, dangerous, last-resort
> behavior, undertaken by fringe elements or individuals who would otherwise
> have been failures. And these elements typically haven't needed megafunding
> from megagovernment to do this exploration, so the application to the
> current situation in space is tenuous at best.
>
>> I think its pathetic how people are against human space exploration.
>
> I think the transparently foolish arguments used to justify space
> exploration are what is truly pathetic.

I think what we're looking at is natural selection in action. Over the past
several hundred years the population of Europe has been divided into
explorers and stay-at-homes. Apparently explorers predominantly settled in
America and it is only natural that we the people of the US will lead the
way in space exploration while the others continue to complain and
criticize.

George Evans

[Cardman]

On 21 Sep 2005 18:36:46 -0700, wrote:

>Not one eighth the cost( per flight, at least)but less than one one
>hundredth.Here is a
>reference:http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-4201/ch6-6.htm
>The figures are not corrected for inflation so you should multiply the
>figure of $2.7 million for a Mercury/Redstone shot by about a factor of
>six. Burt's SS1 per flight costs are around $100K Mercury /Redstone's
>are at least a factor of 150 greater.

Well it is nice to know that NASA's operating costs were 150 times as
much. However, this 1/8th figure that I originally mentioned was the
construction cost.

This I heard within this group before SS1 did its first launch. As it
was mentioned that NASA's modern estimate to build a sub-orbital hop
system was 8 times higher than every single group taking part in this
$10 million X-Prize.

So I guess that you could say that NASA costs 8 times as much to build
and 150 times as much to operate. :-]

Cardman.

[Paul F. Dietz]

George Evans wrote:

>>I think the transparently foolish arguments used to justify space
>>exploration are what is truly pathetic.
>
>
> I think what we're looking at is natural selection in action. Over the past
> several hundred years the population of Europe has been divided into
> explorers and stay-at-homes. Apparently explorers predominantly settled in
> America and it is only natural that we the people of the US will lead the
> way in space exploration while the others continue to complain and
> criticize.

Immigrants, overwhelmingly, aren't explorers. They came to
already settled lands.

Paul

[Joe Strout]

In article >, John Doe > wrote:

> wrote:
> > the new plan. After 30+ years of Earth orbit operations, NASA finally
> > has the marching orders to continue human lunar exploration. Yes it
> > seems like Apollo redux, but is that necessarily a bad thing? I don't
> > think so.
>
> Apollo won't get you beyond the moon. It is a dead end. The plan should
> have been to go to mars in 20 years. Not to the moon in 20 years.

No, going to Mars would have been an even deader end.

While unsustainable, there is at least the possibility that Apollo 2.0
will uncover something useful, such as convenient lava tubes, or proven
methods of extracting oxygen from regolith and volatiles from polar
craters.

> Of course it won't survive. Even if they go to the moon with that CEV
> thingny, after a few trips bringing back rocks, they will get bored, see
> the moon as a dead end and cut it.

If by "they" you mean the taxpayers and federal government, I agree.

> Then they will have to start from
> scratch to go to the moon, and if by then the station will have been
> abandonned, they will need to build a new one in order to test the
> systems needed to go to mars.

ISS will be long gone, though I'm sure there will be other stations by
then. But let go of Mars already; to "go to Mars" is not important.

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: |
| http://www.macwebdir.com |
`------------------------------------------------------------------'

[S. Wand]

"Rand Simberg" > wrote in message
.. .
> On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 22:51:55 -0400, in a place far, far away, "S.
> Wand" > made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
> such a way as to indicate that:
>
> >> >Here's the number's I've seen quoted on shuttle components:
> >> >ET - $60 million
> >> >SRB - $30 million each
> >> >SSME - $20 million each ( I'd like to see the tradeoff of using more
> >> >powerful, less efficient and cheaper RS-68's)
> >>
> >> SSMEs can't possibly be produced that cheaply, even at high rates.
> >
> >SSME's without the reuse requirement? Ramp up production and costs
would
> >fall.
>
> Not that much, given the trivial rates at which NASA would use them.
>
> >Anyway, the RS-68 would seem tailor made for a non-human rated cargo
> >ship.
>
> Do you even have any idea what the phrase "human-rated" means?

Yes, I think we can all read the nasa.gov documents. Is there a point to
your question?

An RS-68 in the first stage of the SDHLV does not require the same level of
risk mitigation that a human rated launcher would require. The second stage
still needs an SSME.

>
> >> How do you come up with the amazingly-low $200M fixed-cost per launch,
> >> other than out of your behind?
> >
> >If $200M comes out of my behind, I'll build that launcher myself.
> >Ariane, Delta IV Heavy, Atlas V charge less than $200M per launch for
> >everything - infrastructure, launcher, operations, etc.
>
> They aren't run by NASA. They also are all commercial vehicles, with
> commercial launch rates.
>
> >Outsource the
> >friggin launch operations if they can't meet $200M. Again, SDHLV doesn't
> >have to process, launch and refurbish the CEV so don't include that
> >infrastructure in the total.
>
> How do you outsource NASA?

Lockheed and Boeing are launching rockets a few miles from Complex 39 - make
the prime contractor figure it out. Do you have numbers in your bottom
that say it can't be done?

>
> >> >Do you have a link to your preferred architecture?
> >>
> >> My preferred architecture is for the government (NASA or otherwise) to
> >> put out a bid for dollars per pound for delivery of cargo to orbit,
> >> for a large amount of cargo. Unlike NASA, I don't pretend I'm smart
> >> enough to know the best way to do this.
> >
> >Sounds like Shatner just needs to put out the word on Priceline.com.
If
> >rockets with meaningful payload could be profitably launched for
$1000/LB,
> >someone (Beal?) would be doing it today regardless of the NASA carrot.
>
> That wasn't Beal's business plan. And NASA wasn't offering business
> for it.

In all seriousness, we want private industry to succeed. And someday it's
going to. But that success can't (and shouldn't) come from NASA - it's
going to come from the commercial satellite market and providing low to
geosynchronous orbit launch services - probably in the 5-40 ton LEO range.
Missions to the moon are decades beyond private industry right now. Come
back in 2025 and ask again. But for now, the SDHLV is the best bet for
starting a lunar exploration program at a spending level roughly equivalent
to today's. Incorporate private launches as they become available (and
reliable), but get the ball rolling now.

[Joe Strout]

In article >,
"S. Wand" > wrote:

> But if you think mankind should be opening up the non-LEO
> frontier, then the real question seems to be: should NASA place manned
> space exploration on hold while we wait for private industry to mature and
> deliver substantially lower launch costs?

No, this question *assumes* that private industry can't supply a manned
launcher that at least equals NASA's plan to develop a new launcher, in
terms of delivery time and cost. I think that assumption is highly
questionable. It may be that SpaceX or Scaled wouldn't be ready as fast
as NASA can develop its new vehicles, but Boeing/LockMart certainly
could, and without having detailed designs dictated to them. If NASA
were to say (for example), "OK, we're going to be buying 6 20-ton
launches per year, guaranteed, from any man-rated launcher that fits
such-and-so standardize payload interfaces," then you can believe that
both Big Aerospace and the startups would be developing man-rated
solutions quite quickly.

Instead, NASA seems to have purposely sized its CEV to be beyond the
reach of existing launchers, and then compounded this error by
developing its own launch vehicle instead of relying on commercial
operators.

> But is that going to happen
> that fast? Beal Aerospace had a working million pound thrust engine and an
> owner with deep pockets, but he didn't feel the market could support him so
> it folded.

There are complexities there, but to a first approximation it is NASA's
decision that is failing to create the market needed here. NASA could
be a huge customer, if it would commit to being one at all. It's hard
to sell lemonade when the biggest family on the block grows its own
lemons (so to speak).

> Space X is probably the best positioned
> of all the contenders, but it's still more hot air than rocket exhaust. The
> small private companies will be much more credible to everyone, including
> government, when they start lifting 5-10K loads into orbit for the prices
> they've quoted.

Sure, but you don't have to wait for the small guys. I realize the big
two are practically branches of the government, but they're still better
than NASA developing launchers itself. Don't dictate how the launchers
should work; just specify operational needs, and let them supply
competing solutions. The small guys will throw their hats into the ring
as soon as they're able, and this will force the big guys to either
adapt or be priced out of the market.

But with NASA's plan, there is no market there. Markets elsewhere,
perhaps, but the loss of this Big Market, just when the opportunity for
it is perfect (i.e. Shuttle retirement), is a colossal waste.

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: |
| http://www.macwebdir.com |
`------------------------------------------------------------------'

[George Evans]

in article , Jeff Findley at
wrote on 9/20/05 7:19 AM:

> "Ray" > wrote in message
> news:GlKXe.6343$N35.5605@trndny09...
>
>> Ridiculious comment above. We are going back to the moon to learn to live
>> their! Not just to pick up a couple of rocks! Just like we have learned to
>> live in a space station in orbit for 6 months, we will learn to live on the
>> moon, another planet, and then we will transfer that knowledge to living on
>> Mars. We will learn to live off the land, and we will become better humans.
>> What is so wrong with this. We humans are explorers. This is normal for us.
>> This is well worth the cost.
>
> Then you're not understanding NASA's announcement very well. From the looks
> of the plan, about all they could sustain is about four lunar missions per
> year. In other words, this is only a bit bigger than Apollo. It's nowhere
> near the capability to build a sustainable lunar base of the size you seem to
> be thinking of.

I didn't read where he mention the size of the base. I think one of the key
questions this hinges on is the feasibility of lunar agriculture of some
kind.

George Evans

[S. Wand]

"Joe Strout" > wrote in message
...
> In article >,
> "S. Wand" > wrote:
>
> > But if you think mankind should be opening up the non-LEO
> > frontier, then the real question seems to be: should NASA place manned
> > space exploration on hold while we wait for private industry to mature
and
> > deliver substantially lower launch costs?
>
> No, this question *assumes* that private industry can't supply a manned
> launcher that at least equals NASA's plan to develop a new launcher, in
> terms of delivery time and cost. I think that assumption is highly
> questionable. It may be that SpaceX or Scaled wouldn't be ready as fast
> as NASA can develop its new vehicles, but Boeing/LockMart certainly
> could, and without having detailed designs dictated to them. If NASA
> were to say (for example), "OK, we're going to be buying 6 20-ton
> launches per year, guaranteed, from any man-rated launcher that fits
> such-and-so standardize payload interfaces," then you can believe that
> both Big Aerospace and the startups would be developing man-rated
> solutions quite quickly.
>
> Instead, NASA seems to have purposely sized its CEV to be beyond the
> reach of existing launchers, and then compounded this error by
> developing its own launch vehicle instead of relying on commercial
> operators.
>

I'm pretty sour on Boeing and Lockheed. They'd compete up until the time
the first contract was awarded, then the loser would cancel their program.
The winner would own a monopoly on man-rated launchers and we're back to
step 1. Look at their history with EELV. With their subsidized government
contracts, why aren't they going after Ariane V big time?? Boeing isn't
offering a dual satellite capability with the Heavy, and Lockheed's shelved
plans for the Atlas Heavy. It's very disappointing that they aren't having
a closeout sale in Kourou yet.
Take man-rating out of the requirement, and maybe you could get some
on-going competition in the US, with Falcon-9 eventually joining the mix.
(But open it up to the Russians and Chinese and you'd kill the US launch
industry). That still leaves you with the necessity of building a
man-rated Stick!

[Rand Simberg]

On Thu, 22 Sep 2005 00:42:51 GMT, in a place far, far away, "Ray"
> made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:


> I suspect that Bush, and most of the Congress will fight to keep moon,
>mars and beyond intact and will succeed. Maybe they will allow 100 million
>dollars as a token amount be cut. If they didn't kill the space station
>back in 1991 they will not kill moon, mars and beyond.

I hate to break this to you (but since you'e shown so much historical
ignorance to date, perhaps I shouldnt), but Bush and the current
Congress were not in power in 1991...

[Rand Simberg]

On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 20:57:33 -0400, in a place far, far away, Josh
Hill > made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

>>>>>Give me some good reasons for abandoning the Saturns.
>>>>
>>>>They cost too much.
>>>
>>>A lot less than the shuttle

No, about the same...

>>>, and nobody was willing to finance a more
>>>economical replacement . . .
>>
>>But apparently they're willing to finance one that will cost almost as
>>much...
>
>I think they've been burned, and at this point, they're just looking
>for something that works and has relatively low risk. In a sense,
>they're making up for the mistakes of the past, redeveloping vehicles
>that already existed and so shouldn't have had to be redeveloped --
>and that isn't really their fault, but that of their predecessors and
>the politicians. A bit too conservative, perhaps, from an engineering
>perspective, but can they afford another failure, a program that
>doesn't work out or goes way over budget or kills the crew?

If they're unwilling to kill a crew for a supposedly important
national goal, then that epitomizes the idiocy of the current
generation of politicians.

[Rand Simberg]

On Thu, 22 Sep 2005 00:55:11 GMT, in a place far, far away, "Ray"
> made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

>> Actually Apollo was cancelled before the final landing missions, because
>> the
>> production of Saturn V launch vehicles was capped and the later Apollo
>> missions that were planned were cancelled. NASA actually fought hard to
>> keep Saturn V (to compliment a space shuttle intended to *service* Saturn
>> V
>> launched stations), but lost. The cost was deemed too high by those that
>> pay the bills (i.e. the legislative branch).
>>
>> Your statement is a blatent attempt to rewrite history.
>>
>> Jeff
>> --
>> Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.
>>
> Ok, I didn't know that NASA wanted to keep Saturn V and Shuttle.
>Ray

OK, then consider how similarly ignorant your other postings may be
before you waste bandwidth with them on this (or for that matter, any
other subject).

[Rand Simberg]

On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 22:06:48 -0400, in a place far, far away, "S.
Wand" > made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

>> We still await some justification for this (probably low) number.
>>
>
>Here's the number's I've seen quoted on shuttle components:
>ET - $60 million
>SRB - $30 million each
>SSME - $20 million each ( I'd like to see the tradeoff of using more
>powerful, less efficient and cheaper RS-68's)

SSMEs can't possibly be produced that cheaply, even at high rates.

>So, take 60 + (30 * 2) + (20 * 5) and you get $220 million. Of course, it's
>configured differently and it has second stage tankage, but hardware
>shouldn't exceed $300 million. That leaves a god-awful $200 million for
>infrastructure per launch - and I'd think that the elimination of the
>orbiter and it's associated manpower and facilities would reduce the amount
>needed by the SDHLV.

How do you come up with the amazingly-low $200M fixed-cost per launch,
other than out of your behind?

>Do you have a link to your preferred architecture?

My preferred architecture is for the government (NASA or otherwise) to
put out a bid for dollars per pound for delivery of cargo to orbit,
for a large amount of cargo. Unlike NASA, I don't pretend I'm smart
enough to know the best way to do this.

[Rand Simberg]

On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 22:18:23 -0400, in a place far, far away, John Doe
> made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as
to indicate that:

wrote:
>> the new plan. After 30+ years of Earth orbit operations, NASA finally
>> has the marching orders to continue human lunar exploration. Yes it
>> seems like Apollo redux, but is that necessarily a bad thing? I don't
>> think so.
>
>Apollo won't get you beyond the moon. It is a dead end. The plan should
>have been to go to mars in 20 years. Not to the moon in 20 years.

This is only a successful strategy to morons like you who think that
the only place worth going in the solar system is Mars.

[Rand Simberg]

On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 22:51:55 -0400, in a place far, far away, "S.
Wand" > made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

>> >Here's the number's I've seen quoted on shuttle components:
>> >ET - $60 million
>> >SRB - $30 million each
>> >SSME - $20 million each ( I'd like to see the tradeoff of using more
>> >powerful, less efficient and cheaper RS-68's)
>>
>> SSMEs can't possibly be produced that cheaply, even at high rates.
>
>SSME's without the reuse requirement? Ramp up production and costs would
>fall.

Not that much, given the trivial rates at which NASA would use them.

>Anyway, the RS-68 would seem tailor made for a non-human rated cargo
>ship.

Do you even have any idea what the phrase "human-rated" means?

>> >So, take 60 + (30 * 2) + (20 * 5) and you get $220 million. Of course,
>it's
>> >configured differently and it has second stage tankage, but hardware
>> >shouldn't exceed $300 million. That leaves a god-awful $200 million for
>> >infrastructure per launch - and I'd think that the elimination of the
>> >orbiter and it's associated manpower and facilities would reduce the
>amount
>> >needed by the SDHLV.
>>
>> How do you come up with the amazingly-low $200M fixed-cost per launch,
>> other than out of your behind?
>
>If $200M comes out of my behind, I'll build that launcher myself.
>Ariane, Delta IV Heavy, Atlas V charge less than $200M per launch for
>everything - infrastructure, launcher, operations, etc.

They aren't run by NASA. They also are all commercial vehicles, with
commercial launch rates.

>Outsource the
>friggin launch operations if they can't meet $200M. Again, SDHLV doesn't
>have to process, launch and refurbish the CEV so don't include that
>infrastructure in the total.

How do you outsource NASA?

>> >Do you have a link to your preferred architecture?
>>
>> My preferred architecture is for the government (NASA or otherwise) to
>> put out a bid for dollars per pound for delivery of cargo to orbit,
>> for a large amount of cargo. Unlike NASA, I don't pretend I'm smart
>> enough to know the best way to do this.
>
>Sounds like Shatner just needs to put out the word on Priceline.com. If
>rockets with meaningful payload could be profitably launched for $1000/LB,
>someone (Beal?) would be doing it today regardless of the NASA carrot.

That wasn't Beal's business plan. And NASA wasn't offering business
for it.

[George Evans]

in article , Joe Strout at
wrote on 9/20/05 8:10 AM:

> In article <p9TXe.8506$i86.1501@trndny01>, "Ray" >
> wrote:
>
>> That makes no sense. You have a spacecraft designed to operate
>> outside of earth orbit, you make a few flights to the moon and then cancel
>> the program? No.
>
> If you can't be bothered to read history, at least watch it on the
> History Channel. You're embarrassing yourself.

Or it could be the other way around. This time we don't have to slow down in
order to not embarrass the Soviet Union.

George Evans

[George Evans]

in article , Cardman at
wrote on 9/20/05 10:07 AM:

<snip>

> The last I heard was that their SDHLV could put 14 tons directly on the Moon.
> They could easily put much more mass into LEO, then to launch the required
> fuel on a second launch.
>
> The only issue here is in trying to cram things like a bulldozer into the
> smaller payload fairing. Still, they could always send up the parts to have
> this later assembled on the Moon.
>
> Seems like a good idea to me for NASA to build a fuel station in LEO, on the
> right orbit to later head on to the Moon. As then this fuel would be already
> waiting before they launched their main missions, where they can top up their
> fuel reserves as needed.
>
> You can include some simple life support here to keep things flexible and
> safe.
>
> A cargo delivery CEV to operate between Earth and Lunar orbit is also an idea,
> when to minimise costs and complexity, then you do not want to launch more
> than big dumb cargo canisters.
>
> The only issue is in servicing your CEV, where avoiding bringing this back to
> Earth saves the heat shield mass. And to allow for the lifeboat option, then
> you can just use two CEVs end to end.
>
> Better yet remove the human aspect fully and just have an automated system do
> this round trip, again, and again, and again. That way you can just have your
> humans working on either end, with the more rare trip between the two.
>
> This plan would mostly swap the SDHLV for a LEO Fuel Station. So the cost
> would be slightly cheaper to build, and a lot cheaper to operate.

Are you sure NASA has ruled these ideas out? I read the following on p. 21
of the CAIB report:

"NASA centered its post-Apollo plans on developing increasingly larger
outposts in Earth orbit that would be launched atop Apollo's immense Saturn
V booster. The space agency hoped to construct a 12-person space station by
1975; subsequent stations would support 50,then 100 people. Other stations
would be placed in orbit around the moon and then be constructed on the
lunar surface. In parallel, NASA would develop the capability for the manned
exploration of Mars."

NASA had, by this time, apparently seen the wisdom of separating crew launch
from heavy cargo launch.

<snip>

George Evans

[George Evans]

in article , John Doe at wrote on
9/20/05 12:57 PM:

> Ray wrote:

<snip>

>> And do what with the CEV? Operate it in orbit only? No.
>
> Where else do you want it to go ? Jupiter ? The CEV is just a glorified
> Apollo with more people in it. Nothing more. It is unsuitable to go to
> Mars. In fact, if there isn't room for proper exercise equipment, I
> wonder if it is suitable for 2 weeks trips. They put the exercise
> equipment in the shuttle for a good reason.

By itself it is unsuitable to go to Mars, but it is very suitable to dock to
a large Mars bound spacecraft constructed in LEO.

<snip>

George Evans

[George Evans]

in article , John Doe at wrote on
9/20/05 1:20 PM:

> George Evans wrote:
>
>> I like the emphasis on the Moon. As a science teacher in the US, I am
>> dismayed that some college aged students don't think we ever got there. I
>> know this is fantasy, but I would love to see some type of activity on the
>> Moon, maybe a large mining operation, that would be visible in amateur
>> telescopes. What a visual aid!
>
> What is more likely is that McDonalds, Coke or Pepsi will fund a flight
> to Moon whose purpose will be to unfurl a HUGE banner with their logo on
> it, so all kids who look at the moon with a telescope will be able to
> see that logo FOREVER.

Until the private sector companies get launch costs down, no Earth based
company will be able to afford such a thing.

> Since very litle of what will be done to go to Moon will be of use to go
> to mars, the trips to the moon are a diversion. If mankind is to advance
> exploration of space, it should be working on a mars mission. Unless you
> work on it, you won't develop what is needed to get there and back.

Your statement is true if missions to Mars originate on Earth. OTOH if
vehicles can be constructed and launched from the Moon, then these Moon
missions are very important.

George Evans

[George Evans]

in article , Jeff Findley at
wrote on 9/20/05 3:01 PM:

> "George Evans" > wrote in message
> ...
>
>> I think this is NASA learning from the Apollo experience. They are going back
>> to the split plan they wanted to follow Apollo. Practically, this way you
>> probably don't have to man rate the huge launch vehicles.
>>
> Assume that the stick will have a "loss of crew" rate of 1 in 2000 and that
> the CEV escape system is 90% successful. That means that the stick has to
> have a failure rate of something like 1 in 200, right?
>
> Now assume you don't "man rate" the SDHLV. It's likely to be carrying
> billions of dollars of hardware as payload on each flight and that payload
> won't have a launch escape system (since it's not "man rated"). What's its
> acceptable failure rate? Is it then o.k. to deliberately design it such that
> it has a higher failure rate than the stick?
>
> Let's put it another way. When NASA has expendable SSME's built for the
> SDHLV, can they build them in such a way that they will have a higher failure
> rate than the single expendable SSME on the upper stage of the stick? Say
> they used a LH2 turbopump that was 20% cheaper, but had a predicted failure
> rate that was 20% higher. Would they accept that, given the expensive payload
> on top? I think not.
>
> The reality is that no one is going to consciously design a "non man rated"
> launch vehicle to fail more often just because there aren't people on top. The
> payloads on top are far too valuable for NASA to tolerate that.
>
> All that man rating really seems to mean is that you incorporate elaborate
> health monitoring hardware on the vehicle so the manned vehicle on top can use
> it's escape system, and declare the thing "man rated" as a stamp of approval.

I don't know very much about "man-rating" but I would guess it has less to
do with raw engineering and more to do with red tape and paperwork.

George Evans

[George Evans]

in article , Rand Simberg at
wrote on 9/20/05 5:36 PM:

> On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 20:20:06 GMT, in a place far, far away, George
> Evans > made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
> such a way as to indicate that:
>
>> What *real* evidence do you have for this claim that commercial providers
>> could do the same for less? What commercial provider has produced a man rated
>> launcher?
>>
> What government provider has, recently? Do you even know what the phrase "man
> rating" means?

No, I don't know precisely what man rating means, but I think I heard the
FAA was involved and it has to do with a stack of hardware and explosives
with one or more "men" sitting on top.

Assuming that China and Russia care roughly the same as the US does about
"men", the score is now 3 countries to 0 companies.

George Evans

[George Evans]

in article Kg3Ye.8546$T55.1554@trndny06, Ray at wrote
on 9/20/05 7:08 PM:

> "Jeff Findley" > wrote in message
> ...
>>
>> "Ray" > wrote in message
>> news:J6KXe.15619$Zg5.1847@trndny05...
>>>
>>> I am extremely excited about this plan! I have a question for you. What
>>> else should NASA do? Personally, I rather get rid of NASA instead of
>>> letting it orbit humans around the earth forever wasting our tax money. If
>>> we are going to have manned spaceflight we need to be serious about it and
>>> explore space, moon, mars and beyond, with people not just some dam robots.
>>> Somebody mentioned something on these newsgroups once about NASA working
>>> with energy. That's bull****. We have a dept or energy for that. NASA
>>> exists to do flight in space mostly.
>>>
>> NASA could focus on the real problem, which is high launch costs. For the $7
>> billion a year this program is going to cost, they could fund dozens of
>> X-vehicle programs, each aimed at one aspect of lowering launch costs. The
>> results of these programs would be public knowledge, useable by both the
>> established launch companies, and the startups.
>>
>> Certainly this would delay our return to the moon, but it would make the
>> return to the moon far more affordable and sustainable. Apollo wasn't
>> sustainable due to high costs. Shuttle wasn't sustainable in part due to
>> high costs. What makes anyone think that the Stick and the SDHLV will be
>> sustainable?
>>
> I really don't think its NASA's job to concentrate on lowering launch costs
> really. That's private industries job. NASA's job is to goto the moon and
> beyond

You took the words right out of my mouth, brother.

George Evans

[George Evans]

in article , Jorge R. Frank at
wrote on 9/20/05 7:15 PM:

> George Evans > wrote in
> :
>
>> in article , Jorge R. Frank at
>> wrote on 9/19/05 9:43 PM:
>>
>>> Reed Snellenberger > wrote in
>>> .119:
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>>>> and ultimately be more versatile than the orbiter.
>>>>
>>> In the sense that it can go to the moon, yes. For LEO missions, it's way
>>> less versatile than the orbiter. In particular, "ISS assembly complete" is
>>> about to be redefined as "whatever state the station happens to be in
>>> whenever the shuttle stops flying, since there ain't no way CEV is going to
>>> do any meaningful assembly."
>>>
>> Isn't it possible for ISS to do some unassisted assembly now that it has its
>> own remote manipulator?
>>
> No. You have to perform rendezvous and prox ops to get the modules within the
> capture envelope of the manipulator. ISS can't do that, and neither can the
> modules. So you have to have some sort of third vehicle - either a modified
> CEV or a space tug launched with the modules - to perform that go- between
> function.
>
> As it is, CEV won't be available until 2012, and the baseline design won't be
> capable of carrying modules to ISS.

Thanks for the clarification.

George Evans

[George Evans]

in article , Joe Strout at
wrote on 9/20/05 7:42 PM:

> In article <4d3Ye.8545$T55.1030@trndny06>, "Ray" >
> wrote:
>
>> I have question about all this. Many you seem to be anti-NASA and
>> anti moon, mars and beyond because you suspect its all bull ****. NASA did
>> a study on moon, mars and beyond before they presented it to the President
>> and Congress. If moon, mars and beyond was not workable with the budget
>> they receive, I don't think they would have presented to the President and
>> Congress, and I don't think the government would have agreed to it.
>
> You're new, aren't you? Missed out on previous experience with Apollo,
> Shuttle, and ISS, to name a few?

Please note that Joe only lists US lead programs thus revealing a leftist
bias. A lot of these guys just don't want the USA to succeed. Not all, but
most.

George Evans

[Paul F. Dietz]

George Evans wrote:
> in article , Paul F. Dietz at
> wrote on 9/20/05 7:28 PM:
>
> <snip>
>
>>History shows manned space programs decline in popularity with time, btw.
>>It happened to Apollo, and Shuttle, and ISS, and to the Russian space
>>program.
>
>
> Everything declines in interest with time. How many people care about
> robotic exploration of space? How many people get worked up about highway
> systems? But that doesn't mean the people don't want highways anymore.

But it does mean the point I was responding to, which you so helpfully
deleted, is contrary to the historical evidence.

Paul

[Herb Schaltegger]

On Thu, 22 Sep 2005 03:19:01 -0500, George Evans wrote
(in article >):

> I don't know very much about "man-rating" but I would guess it has less to
> do with raw engineering and more to do with red tape and paperwork.

There's a bit more engineering than that, actually, though there
certainly is paperwork (but not much "red tape"). Mostly requirements
verification and lots of FMEA work.

--
"Fame may be fleeting but obscurity is forever." ~Anonymous
"I believe as little as possible and know as much as I can."
~Todd Stuart Phillips
<www.angryherb.net>

[Rand Simberg]

On Thu, 22 Sep 2005 08:32:44 GMT, in a place far, far away, George
Evans > made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

>>> What *real* evidence do you have for this claim that commercial providers
>>> could do the same for less? What commercial provider has produced a man rated
>>> launcher?
>>>
>> What government provider has, recently? Do you even know what the phrase "man
>> rating" means?
>
>No, I don't know precisely what man rating means, but I think I heard the
>FAA was involved and it has to do with a stack of hardware and explosives
>with one or more "men" sitting on top.

In other words, you (like most people who throw the phrase around as
though they know what they're talking about) know nothing about what
it means, or whether or not it's even necessary...

>Assuming that China and Russia care roughly the same as the US does about
>"men", the score is now 3 countries to 0 companies.

There has been no man-rated rocket developed since the sixties.
Shuttle is not man rated. Burt Rutan's vehicles, however, as will
Jeff Bezos' and John Carmack's, and Rocketplanes, will be designed to
carry passengers, as SpaceShipOne was.

[Rand Simberg]

On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 23:44:33 -0400, in a place far, far away, "S.
Wand" > made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

>> >Anyway, the RS-68 would seem tailor made for a non-human rated cargo
>> >ship.
>>
>> Do you even have any idea what the phrase "human-rated" means?
>
>Yes, I think we can all read the nasa.gov documents. Is there a point to
>your question?
>
>An RS-68 in the first stage of the SDHLV does not require the same level of
>risk mitigation that a human rated launcher would require.

So, there's no problem losing a multi-billion-dollar payload, as long
as no crew are aboard?

>> >> How do you come up with the amazingly-low $200M fixed-cost per launch,
>> >> other than out of your behind?
>> >
>> >If $200M comes out of my behind, I'll build that launcher myself.
>> >Ariane, Delta IV Heavy, Atlas V charge less than $200M per launch for
>> >everything - infrastructure, launcher, operations, etc.
>>
>> They aren't run by NASA. They also are all commercial vehicles, with
>> commercial launch rates.
>>
>> >Outsource the
>> >friggin launch operations if they can't meet $200M. Again, SDHLV doesn't
>> >have to process, launch and refurbish the CEV so don't include that
>> >infrastructure in the total.
>>
>> How do you outsource NASA?
>
>Lockheed and Boeing are launching rockets a few miles from Complex 39 - make
>the prime contractor figure it out. Do you have numbers in your bottom
>that say it can't be done?

That's not outsourcing--that's called contracting, which is what NASA
already does.

>> >Sounds like Shatner just needs to put out the word on Priceline.com.
>If
>> >rockets with meaningful payload could be profitably launched for
>$1000/LB,
>> >someone (Beal?) would be doing it today regardless of the NASA carrot.
>>
>> That wasn't Beal's business plan. And NASA wasn't offering business
>> for it.
>
>In all seriousness, we want private industry to succeed. And someday it's
>going to. But that success can't (and shouldn't) come from NASA - it's
>going to come from the commercial satellite market and providing low to
>geosynchronous orbit launch services - probably in the 5-40 ton LEO range.

That private industry already exists. It's doing nothing to
significantly reduce launch costs.

>Missions to the moon are decades beyond private industry right now. Come
>back in 2025 and ask again. But for now, the SDHLV is the best bet for
>starting a lunar exploration program at a spending level roughly equivalent
>to today's. Incorporate private launches as they become available (and
>reliable), but get the ball rolling now.

Your faith in the reliability of government programs, and government
launchers, in light of history, is quite amusing.

[Rand Simberg]

On Thu, 22 Sep 2005 07:14:46 GMT, in a place far, far away, George
Evans > made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:


>NASA had, by this time, apparently seen the wisdom of separating crew launch
>from heavy cargo launch.

You mean, the way they did in Apollo?

Oh, wait...

[Jeff Findley]

"S. Wand" > wrote in message
...
> The orbiter was the big expense in the shuttle program - maintenance of
the
> thermal tiles, engines, hydraulics, avionics, etc.

This will be replaced by a continuous production and maintenance of CEV's.
They are planned to be used for, at most, ten missions each. They also want
the continuous production because they also plan on continuous improvements.
This might mean that each CEV will be somewhat unique, making things like
maintenance harder.

There was an airliner (an Airbus?) that developed a fuel leak because a part
was put on the wrong version of an engine. This was spotted by the person
doing the maintenance, but management told him to use the part sincd it
appeared to fit. The wrong part caused the fuel line to rub against another
part, causing a massive fuel leak.

To guard against such a problem requires not only careful maintenance
instructions and maintenance records, but a layer of management that
realizes that each vehicle is different and could require different
workflows. That costs time and money and may require more specially trained
workers if the CEV's are different enough.

> The shuttle launch
> components aren't particularly cheap (I've seen past figures of $35million
> each for an SRB), but they have the advantage of being largely developed
and
> flight tested .

I'm talking about high *fixed* costs. Not the cost of an SRB, an ET, or
even an SSME, but the cost of maintaning the facilities (e.g. pads, crawler,
VAB, OPF's, and etc.) as well as keeping everyone employed that works in
those facilities. After all, you're maintaining facilities and paying
employees even when you're not flying. Those are your *fixed* costs, which
do not change with an increase or decrease in flight rate.

Since NASA is baselining two lunar missions per year, if you cancel both of
those, you only save the money required to build the expendable hardware and
the cost of fuel, required overtime, and etc. that you need to launch that
expendable hardware. That will be a pretty huge chunk of their $7 billion
per year they plan on spending on this program.

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

[Jeff Findley]

"Josh Hill" > wrote in message
...
> On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 14:00:52 -0400, "Jeff Findley"
> > wrote:
> >Actually Apollo was cancelled before the final landing missions, because
the
> >production of Saturn V launch vehicles was capped and the later Apollo
> >missions that were planned were cancelled. NASA actually fought hard to
> >keep Saturn V (to compliment a space shuttle intended to *service* Saturn
V
> >launched stations), but lost. The cost was deemed too high by those that
> >pay the bills (i.e. the legislative branch).
>
> And look at how much money they saved . . . </end sarcasm mode>

Actually, that just points out the big flaw with Apollo/Saturn economics.
Most of your costs were fixed costs. You paid them every year whether you
launched one Apollo mission or 20. The problem was that the flight rate was
extremely low, so the high fixed costs were spread out over very few
missions.

The same was true of the shuttle and the same will be true of the stick and
SDHLV. It's not the SRB's, ET, SSME's and etc that will be most of your
costs. What costs you are the VAB, crawlers, OPF's (that will no doubt
process CEV's), and all the employees that will fill those facilities *and*
the facilities and people at every other NASA center involved in the
program. Those costs won't change with an increase or decrease in flight
rate.

That's why I hate it when Griffin keeps saying this will be "pay as you go".
That would only be true if you could fire half of NASA's employees and close
down half of their facilities when you cut the flight rate in half. We all
know *that* would never happen. Congress would have a fit.

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

[Jeff Findley]

"George Evans" > wrote in message
...
> in article , Jeff Findley at
> wrote on 9/20/05 7:19 AM:
> > Then you're not understanding NASA's announcement very well. From the
looks
> > of the plan, about all they could sustain is about four lunar missions
per
> > year. In other words, this is only a bit bigger than Apollo. It's
nowhere
> > near the capability to build a sustainable lunar base of the size you
seem to
> > be thinking of.
>
> I didn't read where he mention the size of the base. I think one of the
key
> questions this hinges on is the feasibility of lunar agriculture of some
> kind.

You won't need lunar agriculture until your base size is far bigger than
what NASA will be capable of doing with their proposed architecture. Their
architecture will support a base about the same order of magnitude in size
as ISS, which means bringing all your food with you.

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

[Jeff Findley]

"George Evans" > wrote in message
...
> in article Kg3Ye.8546$T55.1554@trndny06, Ray at wrote
> on 9/20/05 7:08 PM:
> > I really don't think its NASA's job to concentrate on lowering launch
costs
> > really. That's private industries job. NASA's job is to goto the moon
and
> > beyond
>
> You took the words right out of my mouth, brother.

Then you need to read NASA's charter as well. Their charter says they're
supposed to do more for the US aerospace industry than just build their own
little manned space exploration fiefdom.

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

[George Evans]

in article , Paul F. Dietz at
wrote on 9/20/05 7:45 PM:

> Ray wrote:
>
>>> Infrastructure that is useful for... what? It's too expensive to show a net
>>> return on any activity you might imagine conducting with it. Like the
>>> shuttle, it's going to be a dead end.
>>>
>> Infrastructure to goto the planets. I think many of you are too focused on
>> money here.
>>
> Too focused on money? Absolutely not. You are far too *unfocused* on the
> economics of the situation. This is not untypical when trying to cloud
> economically dubious policies.
>
> Money is a placeholder for human effort and other resources. These cannot be
> ignored when judging the worth of a course of action. They cannot be ignored
> when judging the sustainability of policies, or the consequences of following
> the policies.

Maybe what Ray was meaning is that dollars spent for exploration can't be
directly equated with dollars spent for domestic programs. The most extreme
case is when resources are drying up. Money spent trying to invent new ways
to squeeze turnips is not as valuable as money spent searching for places to
put new turnip fields.

>>> History shows manned space programs decline in popularity with time, btw. It
>>> happened to Apollo, and Shuttle, and ISS, and to the Russian space program.
>>>
>> I dont think Russia is declining. They are developing Klipper.
>>
> The space program in Russia became very unpopular, to the point that to
> survive it turned into a profit-making enterprise. Darn, it's that money
> stuff again.

Maybe the people of Russia became freakin' agree at the Soviets for lying to
them about the "great successes" without telling them the truth about
failures and thought that a dose of good old capitalism would be cleansing.

George Evans