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Wernher von Braun was against Shuttle, but...
At July 4th I saw in German TV an interview with an older journalist. Yeah, a journalist was interviewd by a journalist. The old guy said he once did an interview with Wernher von Braun. Von Braun remarked that the Shuttle is a bad idea. "Its the second step before the first" and it will have reliability problems because its too complicated. I always thought that WvB was a supporter of the shuttle. I dont know the time of the interview or whether his remarks were off the record. The reliability issue is a matter of course. But what did he mean by "first step"? A space station as answer seems not to fit as it only helps to give the shuttle a better reason to exist. For me it sounds like he had some launch system in mind. Any idea? ## CrossPoint v3.12d R ## |
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Wernher von Braun was against Shuttle, but...
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Wernher von Braun was against Shuttle, but...
Jorge R. Frank wrote: Most likely, that *experimental* reusable vehicles should precede *operational* reusable vehicles. That's the inference I'd take from his remark. It's a pity we didn't build the X-20 Dyna-Soar, if for no other reason than to get experience in the operations and maintenance requirements of a reusable winged spacecraft. Pat |
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Wernher von Braun was against Shuttle, but...
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Wernher von Braun was against Shuttle, but...
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Wernher von Braun was against Shuttle, but...
Bob Haller wrote: shuttle was unsafe boondoggle from day one. nice idea cheap design At two billion dollars per orbiter (the cost of replacing Challenger with Endeavor) I wouldn't call it "cheap". That's 2/5ths the price of a Nimitz class aircraft carrier. Here's some other ways to grasp just how much money a Shuttle orbiter costs: The ocean liner Queen Mary II cost $800 million so you could get two for less than the price of one orbiter. If this makes one think that we are getting taken to the cleaners be the aerospace industry when we have them build a Shuttle, you are not the only one. A Virginia class attack sub costs around the same as a Shuttle orbiter though- 2 billion each. Now let's have some fun: Endeavour weighs 172,000 lbs. with her motors, or 2,752,000 ounces...or around 2,507,000 Troy ounces... now gold costs around $400 per Troy ounce these days, so if we take our Shuttle and put it on Sir Percival's scale with the duck, and start heaping gold on the other side until it crushes the witch, we will find that the Shuttle's weight in gold is worth around $1,002,800,000 dollars. So that a Shuttle orbiter costs around twice its own weight in gold. Now, a gold 1 Troy ounce coin- such as the .999 pure gold Canadian Maple Leaf in this case- is 2.8 mm thick; so if we were to stack up the number of them required to buy an orbiter (2,507,000) we would have a pile of coins 7,574,000 mm; or 7,574 meters, or (to return to a more civilized form of cyphering, untainted by the monstrous infamies inflicted by the French on that cold and barren nation's mathematics.) 24,849 feet in height- or to put it another way- 4.7 miles high...up where (if you were standing on top of it) you would go unconscious in around 3-5 minutes due to lack of oxygen. You don't want to know how high a pile of Sakawea dollar coins would be; at 2 mm each, you would need a pile of them 4,000,000,000 mm high to buy a Shuttle orbiter...in other words, you would be around 2,500 miles up, far beyond the Shuttle's reach, and enjoying the subtle delights of the inner Van Allen Belt. Pat |
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Wernher von Braun was against Shuttle, but...
Pat Flannery wrote:
Bob Haller wrote: shuttle was unsafe boondoggle from day one. nice idea cheap design At two billion dollars per orbiter (the cost of replacing Challenger with Endeavor) I wouldn't call it "cheap". True, although a lot of money was spent to solve problems and build things on the shuttle which were never needed. The cargo bay was unusually large to support very large DoD satellites, because policy was made to have shuttle be the sole launch vehicle for all satellites in USA, civilian, government, military. This choice was made to get needed funding from military budgets. The wings were made larger than they should have needed to be otherwise, to support cross range gliding capacity for polar orbit launches from Vandenberg AFB. This was never used. However, the larger wings led to much greater thermal challenges and lower safety margins for reentry. As a result of these changes, the shuttle became much larger and heavier. Important safety features, including a go around feature for landing and viable crew escape system were deleted from the design. So while the shuttle wasn't "cheap," many priorities led to over engineering some aspects (which were never used anyway) at the expense of cheap decisions elsewhere. The result is the shuttle is much more expensive to build and operate than it could have been, and more dangerous too. After Challenger, priorities got shifted and safety became more conservative (Centaur liquid fueled upper stage, polar launches, military use all got deleted) but it was too late for much of the shuttle design. |
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Wernher von Braun was against Shuttle, but...
wrote in message ... At July 4th I saw in German TV an interview with an older journalist. Yeah, a journalist was interviewd by a journalist. The old guy said he once did an interview with Wernher von Braun. Von Braun remarked that the Shuttle is a bad idea. "Its the second step before the first" and it will have reliability problems because its too complicated. I always thought that WvB was a supporter of the shuttle. I dont know the time of the interview or whether his remarks were off the record. The reliability issue is a matter of course. But what did he mean by "first step"? A space station as answer seems not to fit as it only helps to give the shuttle a better reason to exist. For me it sounds like he had some launch system in mind. Any idea? Perhaps he was in favour of first building some expendable system that would be designed to do good science in LEO. |
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Wernher von Braun was against Shuttle, but...
Pat Flannery wrote: Bob Haller wrote: shuttle was unsafe boondoggle from day one. nice idea cheap design At two billion dollars per orbiter (the cost of replacing Challenger with Endeavor) I wouldn't call it "cheap". By CHEAP I meant they dropped LFBB and other features to cut devlopment cost at the expense of safety and long term operating expenses. It was a design by comitee the really did no job well and cost way too much to operrate |
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Wernher von Braun was against Shuttle, but...
In article .com,
tomcat wrote: Wernher von Braun was a vertical tubular rocket scientist/engineer par exellence. However, if you look at *his* ideas of reusable launch vehicles, they too generally had wings. The fact is winged rockets, or waveriders if you prefer... Winged rockets and waveriders are two different classes of vehicles. Waveriders typically are lifting bodies, with no distinct wings, due to the constraints imposed by trying to exploit a hypersonic shock wave for lift. Winged rockets seldom attempt that, because it's difficult and is unnecessary for their missions. The whole point of waveriders is efficient hypersonic cruise... but winged rockets generally have no need to cruise in the atmosphere at all. Note that a number of winged rockets have been built and operated fairly successfully, and nobody has yet flown a waverider. ...A large waverider could be used to do a sub-orbital mission by carrying a large payload to a distant city, place a sizable payload in orbit, or take a smaller payload to the Moon... Maybe someday. Not soon. And, such a winged vehicle can return without a half random parachute reentry. And, it could return with a sizable payload too. There are quite a few ways to return to a precision landing with a sizable payload. Most of them don't involve waveriders, and a number of them don't involve wings. The Space Shuttle has proven itself despite Wernher von Braun's dire prediction. No, it hasn't -- its job was to greatly reduce the cost of spaceflight, a task at which it has failed completely. More than 100 Shuttle flights prove it to be a spaceworthy waverider. The orbiter is not a waverider. Try looking up what the word means. It is now time for a full HTOL (Horizontal TakeOff and Land) version. "...the mass budget of an HTHL SSTO with its own takeoff-capable landing gear never closes, even at infinite total weight." (Dana Andrews, then of Boeing, 1994) -- spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. | |
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