CEV history

Mark Wade has added information to his Encyclopedia Astronautica website
about the history and contenders for the CEV design:
http://www.astronautix.com/craftfam/cev.htm
The final Lockheed design looked like a Soyuz A:
http://www.astronautix.com/graphics/z/zcevlocm.jpg
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/soyuza.htm

Pat

On Sun, 05 Feb 2006 07:45:49 -0600, Pat Flannery
wrote:

Mark Wade has added information to his Encyclopedia Astronautica website
about the history and contenders for the CEV design:
http://www.astronautix.com/craftfam/cev.htm
The final Lockheed design looked like a Soyuz A:
http://www.astronautix.com/graphics/z/zcevlocm.jpg
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/soyuza.htm

Another EA opportunity to dump on the US, I see. Has Wade ever made a
positive comment about NASA?

Why he's fixating on the "superiority" of Soyuz's three-module
arrangement (again) is baffling. Constellation won't need a third
module. We already have a Space Station, so we don't need a
Shenzhou-like mini-lab at the top of CEV. For moon flights, there will
be an LSAM attached up there, so the third module would be redundant,
especially with the CEV being unmanned during lunar landings. Cargo to
ISS is supposed to be launched separately, and CEV's one-module
internal volume is about the same as Soyuz's anyway.

Wade carries on about how NASA is "making the same mistake as Apollo"
(almost as if Apollo lost the moon race) but nowhere in his anti-US
tirade does he explain why NASA's CEV design is bad. He just wants us
to take it on faith (and that seems to be true, literally) that
anything coming out of NASA must, by default, be wrong.

Brian

Brian Thorn wrote:


Another EA opportunity to dump on the US, I see. Has Wade ever made a
positive comment about NASA?

Why he's fixating on the "superiority" of Soyuz's three-module
arrangement (again) is baffling.


A lot of the U.S. contenders apparently took the three-module approach
quite seriously looking at the various drawings shown.

Constellation won't need a third
module. We already have a Space Station, so we don't need a
Shenzhou-like mini-lab at the top of CEV. For moon flights, there will
be an LSAM attached up there, so the third module would be redundant,
especially with the CEV being unmanned during lunar landings. Cargo to
ISS is supposed to be launched separately, and CEV's one-module
internal volume is about the same as Soyuz's anyway.

Wade carries on about how NASA is "making the same mistake as Apollo"
(almost as if Apollo lost the moon race) but nowhere in his anti-US
tirade does he explain why NASA's CEV design is bad. He just wants us
to take it on faith (and that seems to be true, literally) that
anything coming out of NASA must, by default, be wrong.



I think that the current CEV design is awfully conservative in the
design department, but that might be a good thing all-in-all.

Pat

In article ,
Brian Thorn wrote:
Wade carries on about how NASA is "making the same mistake as Apollo"
(almost as if Apollo lost the moon race) but nowhere in his anti-US
tirade does he explain why NASA's CEV design is bad...

While he may not be expressing it well, there's a real problem there.
Apollo's design wasn't a bad one, given its limited political objectives
(which did include haste and didn't include graceful expansion for more
ambitious missions). The mistake is to repeat it, when its job was done
thirty years ago and doesn't need re-doing.

The CEV design is, as has often been said, "Apollo on steroids"... and
that's *all* it is. Its basic mission profile -- LOR with an expendable
spacecraft -- is optimized for occasional short visits on a generous
budget. This is not a good way to start a "back to stay" project.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

On Sun, 05 Feb 2006 11:38:43 -0600, in a place far, far away, Brian
Thorn made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such
a way as to indicate that:

Wade carries on about how NASA is "making the same mistake as Apollo"
(almost as if Apollo lost the moon race) but nowhere in his anti-US
tirade does he explain why NASA's CEV design is bad.

Because while it won the moon race (which was its primary purpose) it
won't be any more affordable or sustainable than Apollo was.

Henry Spencer wrote:
In article ,
Brian Thorn wrote:
Wade carries on about how NASA is "making the same mistake as Apollo"
(almost as if Apollo lost the moon race) but nowhere in his anti-US
tirade does he explain why NASA's CEV design is bad...

While he may not be expressing it well, there's a real problem there.
Apollo's design wasn't a bad one, given its limited political objectives
(which did include haste and didn't include graceful expansion for more
ambitious missions). The mistake is to repeat it, when its job was done
thirty years ago and doesn't need re-doing.

The CEV design is, as has often been said, "Apollo on steroids"... and
that's *all* it is. Its basic mission profile -- LOR with an expendable
spacecraft -- is optimized for occasional short visits on a generous
budget. This is not a good way to start a "back to stay" project.
--


However, there's nothing about the *CEV* design that precludes a
significantly different misssion profile: dry launch, use of an orbital
propellant depot filled by the cheapest available launcher, and
possibly reusable lunar landers.

Will McLean

Will McLean wrote:

However, there's nothing about the *CEV* design that precludes a
significantly different misssion profile: dry launch, use of an orbital
propellant depot filled by the cheapest available launcher, and
possibly reusable lunar landers.

Well, that's only technically true. Sure, you could eventually evolve
it
into something useful, but at that point there would be nothing of the
original CEV architecture left. It would basically be entirely new
vehicles.
The LSAM for instance, can't really be modified into being reusable.
You can design an entirely new reusable lander, but then that begs the
question of why not design it to be reusable from the start? You could
make a dry-launched EDS vehicle, but what vehicle could realistically
dry launch something that bulky? And the thing really has none of the
equipment that would be necessary to allow it be reused.

A truly cost effective and useful lunar architecture is doable, but why
waste billions of taxpayer dollars on building what is really a useless
technological dead-end when you already admit that there are likely
better ways of doing it (ways that might even be cheaper to field) ?

~Jonathan Goff
www.selenianboondocks.com

Actually, there is an article on EA that discusses the similarities
between Soyuz and GE's original Apollo proposal. I can't remember if
the article suggested good old Soviet reverse engineering.

Gene DiGennaro
Baltimore, Md.

Jonathan Goff wrote:
Will McLean wrote:

However, there's nothing about the *CEV* design that precludes a
significantly different misssion profile: dry launch, use of an orbital
propellant depot filled by the cheapest available launcher, and
possibly reusable lunar landers.

Well, that's only technically true. Sure, you could eventually evolve
it
into something useful, but at that point there would be nothing of the
original CEV architecture left. It would basically be entirely new
vehicles.

The CEV, however, could be used essentially as is in the mission
profile I described.


The LSAM for instance, can't really be modified into being reusable.
You can design an entirely new reusable lander, but then that begs the
question of why not design it to be reusable from the start?

Look again. Delete the ascent tanks and engine and you have a vehicle
that can get to the surface and back if it starts from lunar orbit with
full tanks.


You could
make a dry-launched EDS vehicle, but what vehicle could realistically
dry launch something that bulky? And the thing really has none of the
equipment that would be necessary to allow it be reused.

A truly cost effective and useful lunar architecture is doable, but why
waste billions of taxpayer dollars on building what is really a useless
technological dead-end when you already admit that there are likely
better ways of doing it (ways that might even be cheaper to field) ?

~Jonathan Goff
www.selenianboondocks.com


Note that nobody is going to spend serious money on EDS, LSAM or CaLV
until after 2010. So there is plenty of time for a different plan if
some of the uncertainties of the "likely better ways " get resolved.

Will McLean

Will,

The CEV, however, could be used essentially as is in the mission
profile I described.

Wow. Gosh, isn't that great. We have a CEV that can only be
launched on a government booster, and we have an EDS and
LSAM that need to be completely redesigned, but at least we
can reuse the CEV design itself! It could've been designed to
be launchable on current and future commercial vehicles, but that
wouldn't provide ATK and P&W enough pork, now would it?

Look again. Delete the ascent tanks and engine and you have a vehicle
that can get to the surface and back if it starts from lunar orbit with
full tanks.

With only a tiny amount of cargo compared to the vehicle size.
Maybe if you also had tons of propellant on the lunar surface,
maybe the LSAM as designed could just drop the ascent tanks
and engine (and redesign the structure, and the electronics, but
hey, what's a bunch of costly redesigns between friends?) and
still be useful...but I doubt it. If they actually wanted a design
that could transition to reusability over time, they could have
picked that. But they picked Apollo on Steroids instead.

Note that nobody is going to spend serious money on EDS, LSAM or CaLV
until after 2010. So there is plenty of time for a different plan if
some of the uncertainties of the "likely better ways " get resolved.

Yeah right. Do you honestly think all those "political realities"
are going to magically change themselves just because a better
technical solution comes along? NASA is doing a little to help
put those technologies on the shelf, but when you look at the
relative amounts of funding, the misprioritization is huge. When
you have big technical unknowns that have potentially large
payoffs, you find ways to retire them early. Things like prizes
or fixed-price contracts for demonstrating the technologies in
question. Instead, they're trying to funnel more and more money
into dead ends like the Shaft.

NASA could still do the right thing here, and there are good
people there trying to keep our options open, but the general
direction that Griffin is taking with most of this is discouraging.

~Jon