CEV = Early Apollo plan?

IIRC, before Kennedy's challenge, Apollo was envisioned as a general purpose
vehicle; it was dedicated to Lunar missions after Kennedy's speach.

Since it's being proposed for use in both Lunar and Interplanetary missions,
would the Crew Exploration Vehicle mark a return to the early Apollo plan --
to a workhorse of a vehicle that can perform a variety of missions? And
would a new family of launchers paired with it count as a rebirth of the
Apollo/Saturn series?

Just wonderin'.

"Michael Gallagher" writes:

IIRC, before Kennedy's challenge, Apollo was envisioned as a general purpose
vehicle; it was dedicated to Lunar missions after Kennedy's speach.

Don't forget Skylab (3 CSM's) and ASTP (one CSM and one unflown
backup). It really was a general purpose vehicle in terms of where it
could go, but was single purpose in terms of what it could do (it was
a crew transport containing life support, but with much of the "real
work" being done in whatever it was docked to (LEM, Skylab, ASTP
docking module).

Shuttle, on the other hand, is a general purpose vehicle in terms of
what it can do (large payloads up and down, crew transport, robotic
arm, airlock, etc.), but isn't in terms of where it can go since it's
limited to LEO.

Since it's being proposed for use in both Lunar and Interplanetary missions,
would the Crew Exploration Vehicle mark a return to the early Apollo plan --
to a workhorse of a vehicle that can perform a variety of missions? And
would a new family of launchers paired with it count as a rebirth of the
Apollo/Saturn series?

I would hope that the CEV has limited capabilities much like the
Apollo CSM with the "real work" being done on other modules (e.g. ISS,
moon base, or Mars lander), but with the ability to "go anywhere".

Jeff
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In article ,
jeff findley wrote:
Don't forget Skylab (3 CSM's) and ASTP (one CSM and one unflown
backup). It really was a general purpose vehicle in terms of where it
could go, but was single purpose in terms of what it could do (it was
a crew transport containing life support...)

The Russian TKS spacecraft, built for the Almaz military space stations
but (in the end) never flown manned, was really a much better design for
any mission that wasn't as propulsion-intensive as the lunar missions. It
had a *pressurized* service module, reached via a heatshield hatch, with a
space-station docking port on the rear (and small maneuvering engines
flanking it). Cargo capacity *down* was small, but that has never been
very important.

The original Apollo concepts envisioned a variety of different modules aft
of the CM, although it was never entirely clear on how you would reach
them (if they needed reaching).
--
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since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |

On Thu, 15 Jan 2004 21:11:00 GMT, (Henry Spencer)
wrote:

..... The original Apollo concepts envisioned a variety of different modules aft
of the CM, although it was never entirely clear on how you would reach
them (if they needed reaching).

Thanks for that and the information on the TKS.

I think NASA would have to investigate a pressurized SM, or SOMETHING
if they want to use the CEV for a Mars mission. It's one thing to go
to the Moon crammed into something with maybe the same amount of
interior space as my Pontiac Vibe. But I don't see how you could do a
Mars mission without something at least a little bigger; the CEV
capslel could serve as the command module and reentry vehicle for when
you get back to Earth, but you'd have it docked/mated to a larger
habitat module (latter day MOL to deep space!?) where the crew would
live, work, and exercise.

Now that I think about it, I just read in a book I bought on Apollo
(*Apollo: The Epic Journey to the Moon* by David West Reynolds) that
von Braun had envisioned using the Skylab workshop as the baseline
module for Lunar and Planetary missions. Something like that should
be configured for the core interplanetary vehicle, not the CEV.

If it's an updated CM, that is.

Michael Gallagher wrote in message . ..
On Thu, 15 Jan 2004 21:11:00 GMT, (Henry Spencer)
wrote:

..... The original Apollo concepts envisioned a variety of different modules aft
of the CM, although it was never entirely clear on how you would reach
them (if they needed reaching).

Thanks for that and the information on the TKS.

I think NASA would have to investigate a pressurized SM, or SOMETHING
if they want to use the CEV for a Mars mission. It's one thing to go
to the Moon crammed into something with maybe the same amount of
interior space as my Pontiac Vibe. But I don't see how you could do a
Mars mission without something at least a little bigger; the CEV
capslel could serve as the command module and reentry vehicle for when
you get back to Earth, but you'd have it docked/mated to a larger
habitat module (latter day MOL to deep space!?) where the crew would
live, work, and exercise...

I think I may have been in on a similar thread some weeks back; the
discussion centered around the craft pictured at
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/morflyby.htm in the image
http://www.astronautix.com/graphics/m/morlmars.gif .

I'd been noticing some of the plans for lunar missions using Gemini
hardware and remarking how, just because two guys could survive two
weeks shoehorned into a Gemini cockpit, that didn't mean it'd be the
best thing to spend a week and a half flying to the Moon and back in.
Similarly, we'd also been discussing some of the plans from the late
'60, for Mars flyby missions involving Apollo hardware, and thinking
the same thing: the Apollo CM/LM combined cabin space may have been
good for a week-and-a-half trip to the Moon and back, but when you're
going to be a year or more flying to Mars and back, a space the size
of the Apollo CM cabin suddenly sounds really cramped. I found myself
thinking that not just science, but the desire to keep the crew from
going nuts would make an abbreviated SkyLab-type mission module
necessary. Most of us imagined it, of course, working similar to an
Apollo lunar flight, except that after burning TMI, the CM/enhancedSM
separates, turns and docks with the mission module/TEI-burn stage, and
the crew moves into the much larger and more comfortable mission
module/lab/quarters, only going back to the CM for those mission
functions which require a crewman "on the bridge", or when having to
strap in for TEI or re-entry.

(In fact, in the previous thread, before I went and took a peek at
MWEA, a lot of us arrived at something somewhere in between the Apollo
Mars Flyby MORL vehicle, and a Mars expedition ship in Stephen
Baxter's "Voyage".)

I could be wrong, but you'd probably need a space not quite as large
as SkyLab for an EVA airlock, experiment equipment racks, control
panels for the experiment packages, a small galley/wardroom, sleeping
cubicles for three crew and -- if not an actual functioning toilet, at
least a small private space set up for one crewman at a time to go and
do their business and clean up after themselves. I'm not quite sure
how big a space they're calling for in the image at MWEA, or what they
planned to carry aboard, but it doesn't look really as big as the
S-IVB-retrofitted SkyLab, more like one of your larger ISS modules
(I'm using the size of the CM in the image -- and its windows -- to
figure the "human scale" for this vehicle).


--
"All over, people changing their votes,
along with their overcoats;
if Adolf Hitler flew in today,
they'd send a limousine anyway!" --the clash.
__________________________________________________ _____________
Mike Flugennock, the Sinkers, flugennock at sinkers dot org
Mike Flugennock's Mikey'zine, http://www.sinkers.org

On 15 Jan 2004 15:21:00 -0500, jeff findley
wrote:

Don't forget Skylab (3 CSM's) and ASTP (one CSM and one unflown
backup). It really was a general purpose vehicle in terms of where it
could go, but was single purpose in terms of what it could do (it was
a crew transport containing life support, but with much of the "real
work" being done in whatever it was docked to (LEM, Skylab, ASTP
docking module).


Yes, you are right.

..... I would hope that the CEV has limited capabilities much like the
Apollo CSM with the "real work" being done on other modules (e.g. ISS,
moon base, or Mars lander), but with the ability to "go anywhere".


And I would hope that if nothing else comes of Bush's initiative, we
get the CEV in its related boosters online. While a hypothetical
Democratic president might cancel the Moon/Mars program, he might keep
the CEV, just as Clinton killed SEI but kept the station.

Michael Gallagher writes:

And I would hope that if nothing else comes of Bush's initiative, we
get the CEV in its related boosters online. While a hypothetical
Democratic president might cancel the Moon/Mars program, he might keep
the CEV, just as Clinton killed SEI but kept the station.

Considering that it's inevitable that the Shuttle be retired "soon",
something like CEV is needed. Even if space policy reverts back to
what it was before the Bush plan, you have to have something to go
to/from ISS, so we can keep "exploring" LEO. :-(

Jeff
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