Commentary: Space: At NASA, a return to Apollo?

Who sez new is better???


(United Press International) writes:

*This is the first in a weekly series of UPI articles examining the
*programs of countries involved in the quest to achieve a presence in
*space.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 11 (UPI) -- In a corner of the National
Air and Space Museum in Washington, a pair of tiny spaceships stands
docked together. The larger, silver craft is a back-up Apollo space
capsule, like the kind that ferried nine American missions to the
moon, beginning nearly 35 years ago. The smaller, pea-soup-green
companion is a Russian Soyuz.

The exhibit at the world's most popular museum signifies a
remarkable cooperative effort that took place in July 1975,
temporarily uniting the world's two superpowers and rivals in a
peaceful spaceflight.

Both spacecraft, one might think, are mere relics of the
Cold War, of the technologically primitive space programs of the
past, supplanted by the winged space shuttles and now of interest
only to historians and museumgoers.

Don't bet on it. The Soyuz, ancient though it may be,
remains in service to this day. In fact, it is keeping the supply
line and crew rotation going for the International Space Station.
Without it, station missions would have had to be abandoned
following the Shuttle Columbia disaster.

The lesson has not been lost on NASA. The agency may
resurrect the Apollo capsule, triggering an extraordinary attempt to
supplement -- and perhaps even replace -- the nation's aging and
troubled shuttle fleet using a technologically inferior machine of
the past, the capsule, to rescue America's future in space.

Surprising, but this new look at capsules actually began
last fall. NASA had begun a program called the Space Launch
Initiative. Its goal was divining a shuttle-sized shuttle
replacement. Study contracts had been let to Boeing, Lockheed
Martin, Northrop Grumman and other industry contractors. What
rapidly emerged from the study was that NASA needed a large, fully
reusable spaceship that could do all of the things the shuttles
could do, but in more advanced, safer and more flexible ways. The
main user of such a space machine was thought to be NASA itself, so
NASA's needs -- such as space stations and hauling large payloads or
probes into Earth orbit -- were primary.

.......


--
A host is a host from coast to
& no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX
Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433
is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433

(Derek Lyons) claims:

David Lesher wrote:
Don't bet on it. The Soyuz, ancient though it may be,
remains in service to this day.

Well, this is utterly untrue. The current Mark of Soyuz is very
different from it's ASTP ancestor and wildly different from the
original.


Whoa.... I did not say that.

I quoted a wire feed. Please don't attribute it to me..
--
A host is a host from coast to
& no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX
Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433
is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433

On Fri, 12 Sep 2003 16:43:18 +0000, Derek Lyons wrote:

Well, this is utterly untrue. The current Mark of Soyuz is very
different from it's ASTP ancestor and wildly different from the
original.

Here's a little research on that based on Mark Wade's site:

The original Soyuz 7K-OK was modified somewhat after Komarov's death in
Soyuz 1 but was used for 13 flights.

The 7K-OKS was used for the first two Salyut missions. It was basically a
7K-OK with the addition of a lightweight docking system and a crew trasfer
tunnel.

After the Soyuz 11 accident (depressuration on re-entry) the next design
was the Soyuz 7K-T. The major changes were a reduction of crew size from 3
to 2 to allow pressure suits to be worn during re-entry, and a change from
solar cells to battery power. Soyuz flew 31 times between June 1972 and
May 1981. The ASTP Soyuz 7K-M was a slightly modified 7K-T with the
changes needed for ASTP (docking adapter, optical aids, antennae) and
solar panels instead of batteries.

The next version was the Soyuz T, the crew size went back to the original
3.

Comparing the Soyuz T to the 7KT-OK: Improvements were made to the design
life (from 10 days to 14 days) and the orbital storage life from 35 to 180
days). The dimensions were the basically the same (the T was slightly
shorter in length). The total mass went up from 6,790 to 6,850 kg.
Propellant load went from 500 to
700 kg. The primary engine thrust decreased from 417 to 400 kgf. Main
Engine Propellants were changed from Nitric Acid/Hydrazine to N2O4/UDMH.
Main Engine specific impulse went up from 282 to 305 sec, and total
spacecraft delta v from 210 m/s to 320 m/s. The electrical system power
increased about 20% primarily because the solar panels were somewhat
larger. Most of the improvements were upgrades in electronics, control
was now digital, and the telemetry rate was improved. On the other hand
the basic configuration was actually closer to the original 7K-OK(S) than
the "interim" 7K-T.

The Soyuz T first flew in December 79, and the last was in March-July 1986.

The Soyuz TM had some improvements over the TM.
Updated docking systems for example. There were some materials
improvements, the metal sections were stronger, and the heatshield
material was lighter. The overall spacecraft was slightly heavier however.
The overall dimensions and interior volumes were unchanged.

The TM was used on all Mir missions starting in February 87 and for ISS
missions until Soyuz TM-34 from April to November 2002.

The latest Soyuz TMA is a modified TM to meet NASA requirements for more
latitude for Crew height and weight, and an improved parachute system. To
date it's been launched twice, and landing once returning the ISS
Expedition 6 crew. TMA-2 is still docked with ISS having brought the
current Expedition 7 crew of Malachenko and Lu.

So just how different is the current Soyuz from the original? The basic
dimensions and configuration are pretty much identical, there have been
improvements in electronics, engines, and materials. Actually the
"interim" Soyuz 7K-T was the farthest from the original since it was the
only Soyuz with a two-man crew and without solar cells.

I think that an interesting comparison could be made between the Soyuz
and the B-52. Today's Soyuz is no more different from it's ancestor than
the B-52H flying today is from the original B-52, and probably less so.
Of course the B-52 is 15 years older.

Even sticking to "capsule" spacecraft, there's a much bigger difference
between Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo than between the Soyuz variants.

I'm reminded of an interesting comment which David Weeks made to me this
summer. He'd been doing a lot of research on the Apollo CSM for the Space
In Miniature book which was released this year. He said that he was struck
by how much Apollo was the logical design successor to Mercury and that
Gemini had been a side-path. Despite the similarity in "look" between
Mercury and Gemini, There were more configuration similarities between the
Mercury and the Apollo CM than between Mercury and Gemini.

In article ,
Rick DeNatale wrote:
...He said that he was struck
by how much Apollo was the logical design successor to Mercury and that
Gemini had been a side-path. Despite the similarity in "look" between
Mercury and Gemini, There were more configuration similarities between the
Mercury and the Apollo CM than between Mercury and Gemini.

This is not actually too surprising. Apollo's basic design was fixed at a
time when Mercury was only just starting to fly, and it was designed and
built by a different company, while Gemini (originally Mercury Mark 2) was
based firmly on actual Mercury flight experience and was put together by
the same folks who did Mercury. So Apollo really had little opportunity
to learn from Mercury's mistakes, and hence repeated a number of them,
while Gemini was explicitly meant as "Mercury done right". Mercury and
Apollo were both first-generation designs, while Gemini was definitely
second generation.
--
MOST launched 1015 EDT 30 June, separated 1046, | Henry Spencer
first ground-station pass 1651, all nominal! |

David Lesher wrote:

(Derek Lyons) claims:

David Lesher wrote:
Don't bet on it. The Soyuz, ancient though it may be,
remains in service to this day.

Well, this is utterly untrue. The current Mark of Soyuz is very
different from it's ASTP ancestor and wildly different from the
original.

Whoa.... I did not say that.

I quoted a wire feed. Please don't attribute it to me..

You forward such a ridiculous article, you take the heat for the
contents.

D.
--
The STS-107 Columbia Loss FAQ can be found
at the following URLs:

Text-Only Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq.html

Enhanced HTML Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq_x.html

Corrections, comments, and additions should be
e-mailed to , as well as posted to
sci.space.history and sci.space.shuttle for
discussion.

In article , says...
In article ,
Rick DeNatale wrote:
...He said that he was struck
by how much Apollo was the logical design successor to Mercury and that
Gemini had been a side-path. Despite the similarity in "look" between
Mercury and Gemini, There were more configuration similarities between the
Mercury and the Apollo CM than between Mercury and Gemini.

This is not actually too surprising. Apollo's basic design was fixed at a
time when Mercury was only just starting to fly, and it was designed and
built by a different company, while Gemini (originally Mercury Mark 2) was
based firmly on actual Mercury flight experience and was put together by
the same folks who did Mercury. So Apollo really had little opportunity
to learn from Mercury's mistakes, and hence repeated a number of them,
while Gemini was explicitly meant as "Mercury done right". Mercury and
Apollo were both first-generation designs, while Gemini was definitely
second generation.

There's also, implied in your statement, a question of "authorship" of
the designs. Gemini was primarily designed by McDonnell-Douglas people,
while Mercury and Apollo designs came primarily from Max Faget and his
roving band of gypsy engineers... :-)

Max went straight from designing Mercury into designing Apollo, and by
1961, with the help of his draftsman-cum-engineer Caldwell Johnson
(among others), had generated a set of Apollo drawings that were nearly
indistinguishable to the layman from the spacecraft that actually flew to
the Moon. No real time allowed there for lessons learned from Gemini to
creep into the basic design.

--

Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for | Doug Van Dorn
thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup |

Doug... wrote:
Max went straight from designing Mercury into designing Apollo, and by
1961, with the help of his draftsman-cum-engineer Caldwell Johnson
(among others), had generated a set of Apollo drawings that were nearly
indistinguishable to the layman from the spacecraft that actually flew to
the Moon. No real time allowed there for lessons learned from Gemini to
creep into the basic design.

Collins refers to this in his book IIRC. And was not Gunter Wendt
rehired because the Apollo 1 investigation showed a lack of experience
on the part of North American?
--
The STS-107 Columbia Loss FAQ can be found
at the following URLs:

Text-Only Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq.html

Enhanced HTML Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq_x.html

Corrections, comments, and additions should be
e-mailed to , as well as posted to
sci.space.history and sci.space.shuttle for
discussion.

In article ,
says...
Doug... wrote:
Max went straight from designing Mercury into designing Apollo, and by
1961, with the help of his draftsman-cum-engineer Caldwell Johnson
(among others), had generated a set of Apollo drawings that were nearly
indistinguishable to the layman from the spacecraft that actually flew to
the Moon. No real time allowed there for lessons learned from Gemini to
creep into the basic design.

Collins refers to this in his book IIRC. And was not Gunter Wendt
rehired because the Apollo 1 investigation showed a lack of experience
on the part of North American?

Wendt was *hired* by NAA, not rehired. He had worked for McDonnell-
Douglas during Mercury and Gemini. It was a good move, as far as I'm
concerned.

--

Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for | Doug Van Dorn
thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup |