Simple, old and good

On Apr 14, 10:29*am, Frogwatch wrote:
I was struck by the images Pat Flannery provided of the Russian
rockets and remarks on how they are slightly evolved from the V2.
Extreme simplicity works and it is 67 year old technology. *You'd
think that with modern CAD and modern materials it would be easy for a
company to replicate this for much less than SpaceX spent. *I realize
that many things seem simple until one starts working on them.

OK, as to"...simple until one starts workign on them,' but the
Russians have been launching Soyuz and its 1960s, RELIABLE technology
for decades. At a lecture I just attended, given by a high level NASA
official, he said that the problem with the Shuttle is that it never
became routine-operational: it was always experimental. He noted that
initially, they were going to fly the shuttle once a week. I remember
being in a NASA presentation when I was in junior high at which they
said the shuttle was supposed to fly once a month.

But they kept discovering new things with each shuttle launch. Well,
you can tweak anything forever. And it is understandable that space
flight is lot harder to make routine than, say, commercial aviation.
Commercial aviation is not so totally routine, quite either; for that
matter, driving is not routine enough to be accident free.

The Russians use reliable tech, over and over. By now, access to orbit
should be pretty reliable.