NASA 2011 budget and Ares-1

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
.. .
Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote:
When it came time to design the Shuttle, NASA wasn't about to paint
itself into that corner, so it was _going_ to require people to fly it
come hell or high water.


You're putting the cart before the horse. Of course the Shuttle was
going to have people on it. That was sort of the point.

Once you accept that design requirement, you discard the need to make it
entirely autonomous.

Although it would have been interesting to make it totally autonomous for
simple satellite boost missions (Buran was going to have the ability to
fly unmanned operational missions if so desired),

Perhaps, but then again, you're losing what was in theory a valuable
attribute of the system, the ability to intervene while on-orbit if a
problem does come up. An ability used more than once.


I was thinking along the lines of just flying it unmanned for the first
orbital test or so for safety's sake, like the intention was for
Dyna-Soar, another system intended to be always manned when operational.*
The Air Force thought that was doable by November, 1965; it should have
been doable fifteen years later.

Thinking and doing are two different things.


*Although it might have occurred to them that if they did give it the
ability to fly unmanned missions, its time on-orbit could be greatly
extended, and you would end up with something along the lines of the X-37B
decades sooner.


For what purpose though?


Pat



--
Greg Moore
Ask me about lily, an RPI based CMC.

Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote:
*Although it might have occurred to them that if they did give it the
ability to fly unmanned missions, its time on-orbit could be greatly
extended, and you would end up with something along the lines of the X-37B
decades sooner.


For what purpose though?

Way back when the program got started, Dyna-Soar was to carry a atomic
weapon around in it to bomb Russia after flying a skip-glide trajectory
over the north pole; that concept got dropped with the successful
arrival of the ICBM, but that was the origin of the program.
An unmanned version could have been launched into orbit in times of
crisis and commanded to descend from orbit to attack the USSR while
maneuvering to evade ABMs. If unneeded, it could reenter and land for
future reuse. One other thing you could envision it doing unmanned is
flying a automated reconnaissance mission over a period of a month or so
and then bringing all the film back, as it would have been in the time
frame where physical film return was still done.
What really worked against Dyna-Soar was the need to use a Titan III or
Saturn I booster to get it into orbit; that is getting awfully expensive
to do on any sort of regular basis.

Pat