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Losers from Obama's proposed 2011 budget
Jeff Findley wrote:
"Pat Flannery" wrote in message dakotatelephone... Jorge R. Frank wrote: Unsafe. Successful rendezvous with the heat shield would be required for the crew to return safely. Apollo could get back to a "free return" trajectory at just about any point in the flight plan. Your plan could not. You had better have a talk with the people done at work about this problem, because the NASA Constellation plan had the Orion staying in lunar orbit in a unmanned state while Altair went down to the surface and came back up to meet it with the astronauts. So no successful rendezvous in lunar orbit = no Orion with its heat shield to go home in. That's a tad different. In the 60's, having a man in the Apollo CM to keep an eye on things was necessary due to the lack of automation at the time. Specifically, lack of automated rendezvous and docking technology meant that someone had to be in the CM to dock it to the LM ascent stage. Automation has come a long way since then. If the Russians and ESA can do automated rendezvous and docking, why not the US? It's more than a tad different. Both Apollo and Orion could abort back to Earth from Earth parking orbit, translunar coast, and in Lunar orbit. The only danger zone was after the LM/Altair undocked, but this was understood to be the risk you took in order to land on the moon. Sending a spacecraft to the moon without a heatshield and rendezvousing with the heatshield in lunar orbit completely eliminates any possibility of a safe abort in Earth orbit and translunar coast. That is far more unsafe. |
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Losers from Obama's proposed 2011 budget
Fred J. McCall wrote:
:Sending a spacecraft to the moon without a heatshield and rendezvousing :with the heatshield in lunar orbit completely eliminates any possibility f a safe abort in Earth orbit and translunar coast. That is far more :unsafe. : Not only that, but even if it all works, now you've got to INSTALL the bloody thing on your return vehicle (perfectly) while in vacuum. Not the sort of assembly I think I'd want a mission to have to rely on. Duct tape. Pat |
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