(Derek Lyons) wrote:
"Carey Sublette" wrote:

In the world of aerospace "elegant" and "cheap" generally have a low
correlation coefficient.
A counter-argument is offered by Jeff Bell on spacedaily.com:
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/rocketscience-03zy.html

I.e. that a straightforward semi-ballistic capsule is the way to go to get
costs down, and safety up, for the next generation of manned spaceflight.
This philosophy is consonant with the "big dumb launcher" school of thought
for launch systems.

The problem with that argument is that it concentrates solely on cost
and safety. The proponents of that argument handwave away such minor
concerns as whether or not the total system capability can be had as
cheaply (both from a fiscal and engineering point of view) under their
scheme as under another.

But the main thing lost, compared to STS-1, is downmass capability. I
happen to think this is important, and definitely worth coming up with
ways to handle, but there are a lot of people - appearently in the
professional community as well as here - who think that there is very
little need for more downmass than can be put in lockers in a capsule.

Upmass is trivial in comparison, setting aside the ISS dilemma that
some important upmass is form-factored into the shuttle. And even the
winged OPS proposals were seperating crew from cargo, so EELV loads
for upmass would have been inevitable under those schemes, too.

/dps