NASA gets to build one more crewed spacecraft

Maybe two. After that much time passes commercial vehicles will be
available. So NASA should try to get it right and go out on a high
note: start with a LOX-kerosene flyback booster for Shuttle (one booster
replacing both SRBs), and then a replacement for the Shuttle orbiter (a
vertical lander which also serves as space tug and CRV, with a
7-passenger module which swaps out for a cargo pallet).

Or they can just keep doing what they're doing, and that will fill
enough time for the senior people to retire before it all falls apart.
(Anyone remember the United States Railroad Administration? They were
big in their day...)

In sci.space.policy Richard Schumacher wrote:
Maybe two. After that much time passes commercial vehicles will be
available. So NASA should try to get it right and go out on a high
note: start with a LOX-kerosene flyback booster for Shuttle (one booster
replacing both SRBs), and then a replacement for the Shuttle orbiter (a

This involves way too much redesign.
Swapping the SRBs for liquids (something thought of after Challenger)
would involve little structural redesign, the changes being almost entirely
operational.
(some abort modes become a whole lot easier, you need to change the fuelling,
and they may even be able to fly back under power.)

I find a paper in JBIS, indicating that it would add almost a third to the
payload.

However, doing this for the few shuttles remaining is almost pointless.

vertical lander which also serves as space tug and CRV, with a
7-passenger module which swaps out for a cargo pallet).

For a space tug, you almost certainly don't want to do it that way, you
want the mass as low as possible.

Or they can just keep doing what they're doing, and that will fill
enough time for the senior people to retire before it all falls apart.
(Anyone remember the United States Railroad Administration? They were
big in their day...)

--
http://inquisitor.i.am/ | | Ian Stirling.
---------------------------+-------------------------+--------------------------
"The device every conquerer, yes, every altruistic liberator should be required
to wear on his shield... is a little girl and her kitten, at ground zero"
- Sir Dominic Flandry in Poul Andersons 'A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows'

Richard Schumacher wrote:

Maybe two. After that much time passes commercial vehicles will be
available. So NASA should try to get it right and go out on a high
note: start with a LOX-kerosene flyback booster for Shuttle (one booster
replacing both SRBs), and then a replacement for the Shuttle orbiter (a
vertical lander which also serves as space tug and CRV, with a
7-passenger module which swaps out for a cargo pallet).

The way to get something efficient is to start with a clean sheet and not
with something that somehow has to fit in the braindead shuttle system.

The way I would go about it would be the following: find a good mixture of
young and ambitious engineers and some old guys that were around back when
NASA build hardware that worked. Create three independent teams. Each team
works at one place, where design, assembly and testing are made, so that
all team members can talk to each other daily if they wish.

Give each team a budget of e.g. 2 Billion $. That is not much by NASA or DOD
standards, but it is plenty by any other standard. Now comes the real fun
part: 80% of the above sum has to be used on COTS parts or parts that you
can contract out without any development effort. No new production
technologies or new materials. That should ensure that overambitious
engineers do not try to reinvent the wheel.

There should of course be no limits on where you can buy parts. If a team
needs for exmaple russian NK33 engines, it should get them without any
political compilcations.

I bet that event the least successful of the three projects would be much
more cost efficient than the shuttle. And the designs could be licensed to
commercial companies and immediately mass produced, since they contain
mostly COTS parts.

Or they can just keep doing what they're doing, and that will fill
enough time for the senior people to retire before it all falls apart.
(Anyone remember the United States Railroad Administration? They were
big in their day...)

That is what will happen. The above scenario might be fun to think about,
but it is about as likely as hell freezing over and pigs flying at the same
time. Nobody has ever heard of a huge buerocracy that suddenly became
efficient. Buerocracies just become fatter and more lethargic until they
collapse. And that is what has been happening to NASA since about 1967.

The above scenario might give us a good space transport, but it would be bad
in the long run since it would reinforce the notion that only govenrment
programs can produce space related technology. In the long run, a step by
step market based approach is much better.

regards,

Rüdiger Klaehn

p.s.: The whole NASA desaster is not without its merits. It is a very good
demonstration that socialism does not work even if most participants are
enthusiastic, highly modivated and well paid. It has convinced me more than
anything else that market-based approaches work best.