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#21
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Budget cut for NASA?
On Nov 18, 7:48*am, David Spain wrote:
BradGuth writes: 50/50 is what makes that notion impossible. Which 50/50 partner? Smith or Wesson? Sturm or Ruger? Bazalt or Degtyarev? Izhevsk or Tula? Seriously, I don't see what the USAF gains with the ISS that it could have for far less $$$ other ways. I agree, as in ten fold better ways, but unless we dump ISS into the Pacific ocean, we're kinda stuck with keeping it going. The concept of manned milsats seems overly complex for the missions at hand. Then there is the question of what happens in times of tension. I'll coin a new noun for this, call it 'provocativity'. It's one thing to FOBS out a spy sat, its a whole nuther ball game when its a manned spy station. Dave Spys are all expendables, especially those working as double agents. If they so happen to be sitting in ISS or some other manned spysat, they're fair game (so to speak). ~ BG |
#22
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Budget cut for NASA?
On Nov 18, 8:45*am, Pat Flannery wrote:
David Spain wrote: BradGuth writes: The concept of manned milsats seems overly complex for the missions at hand. That's what the USAF figured out in regards to its MOL program before the MOL/KH-10 got built, and the Soviets figured out after they had flown a couple of Almaz reconsat station missions (Salyuts 3 and 5). The only real advantage you get over a unmanned reconsat is that the crew can look for targets of opportunity to photograph on the surface of the Earth, and for that you pay a huge weight penalty in regards to the quarters and life support systems the crew needs to inhabit the station, as well as needing more launches to exchange crews and bring up more supplies for them. All the weight for housing a crew could be weight given over to a much more capable reconnaissance system with greater capabilities (IR and multispectral filtering, etc.) and better photographic resolution via a larger diameter mirror. This became doubly obvious with the increasing degree of automation made possible by advances in electronics and computing, and the ability to transmit images generated by CCDs to the ground in a encoded form rather than photographing them on film and having to recover the film from orbit somehow. Pat Robo spys are just the ticket, at not 10% the unit mass and they function as rad-hard 24/7, as well as the don't consume 1% the all- inclusive energy and resources. That's a 1000:1 advantage right off the bat. ~ BG |
#23
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Budget cut for NASA?
On Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:42:17 -0600, Pat Flannery
wrote: Overall though, their success rate is running around 80%. Shuttle's is 98%. Exactly how 80% is competent and 98% isn't, I don't quite understand. A lot of the above flops were due to Goldin's "Better, Faster, Cheaper" approach, Irrelevant. A flop is a flop. If you're going to excuse mission failures because of their budgets/design philosophy, we can play that game with the manned side and aeronautics as well. In comparison, the manned efforts since Shuttle have been a great example of how to spend a huge amount of money for zero return, X-30 (zero return might be an exaggeration, but it was a debacle) X-33 (sort of, more RLV than manned program at that stage) X-38 CRV (lifeboat concept, wasn't a huge amount of money) OSP (morphed into Orion, still in progress.) spacecraft after spacecraft is either proposed (or even gets started in construction) only to get its plug pulled a couple of years later. A good example of that is Orion. I must have missed Orion's cancellation. Cite? They decided to base the return capsule shape on the Apollo CM, despite the fact that the wide heatshield made the Apollo CM very heavy for its internal volume (the whole three-module Soyuz spacecraft weighed around the same as the Apollo CM, while boasting more internal volume for the crew between the orbital and reentry modules). And an additional critical seperation event during entry, which has already killed a crew and damn near killed a second. Plus Apollo has far greater hypersonic lift, and Orion is primarily meant to come back from the Moon. If they had gone with the Soyuz gumdrop-shape for the Orion CM, they might well have been able to house everything in it they wanted to within their original weight estimates,* and avoided all the performance shortfall problems with the Ares 1 booster they ran into once the weight of the finished Orion became obvious. Orion is not NASA's problem, Ares I is. The original SSME Ares I wouldn't have had the performance problems the current *******ization does. Note that Orion's diet began almost instantly after Ares I went to J-2X and FSB. * Or made a Orion that you could launch on a Delta IV Heavy or Atlas V Heavy. Definitely, but NASA wasn't allowed to choose it. The authorization bill explicitly says use Space Shuttle infrastructure to the greatest extent possible. NASA's mistake was trying to make Ares I work without SSME, instead of moving to something like DIRECT and just calling it "Ares II". Brian |
#24
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Budget cut for NASA?
"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
. .. Joseph Nebus wrote: It really stands out, doesn't it, how in the past twenty years something like one out of every three unmanned space probes has failed, when in the years before 1990 something like two out of every three such attempts succeeded instead. It took me a second to catch that...that was pretty damn clever. :-D Our school dr. back in college wrote an article where he pointed out that w/o drugs, the common cold took a week and a half to two weeks to get over. With drugs, it only lasted 10-14 days. -- Greg Moore Ask me about lily, an RPI based CMC. |
#25
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Budget cut for NASA?
"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
dakotatelephone... They decided to base the return capsule shape on the Apollo CM, despite the fact that the wide heatshield made the Apollo CM very heavy for its internal volume (the whole three-module Soyuz spacecraft weighed around the same as the Apollo CM, while boasting more internal volume for the crew between the orbital and reentry modules). I've always objected to that particular line of thought. I mean a tube 50m long and .5m in diameter may have more internal volume, it's not very useful. From the impression I've gotten, the Soyuz may have more room, it's still very cramped. -- Greg Moore Ask me about lily, an RPI based CMC. |
#26
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Budget cut for NASA?
Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote:
From the impression I've gotten, the Soyuz may have more room, it's still very cramped. The orbital module is pretty roomy, the reentry module is pretty cramped, as the whole intention was to make it just big enough for the crew to squeeze into for ascent or reentry to keep the weight of the heatshield down by keeping its diameter small. From a volume vs. weight viewpoint the closer you can approach a sphere the better (and of course a sphere is also great from a pressurization viewpoint). The Soyuz reentry module gets a lot closer to a sphere* than the Apollo CM ever did, and the orbital module is basically a sphere. * In fact, NASA originally thought there was a spherical Voskhod capsule lurking inside of the Soyuz reentry module: http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4209/p102.htm Pat |
#27
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Budget cut for NASA?
On Nov 19, 10:20*am, George Orwell wrote:
"Pat Flannery" wrote in message dakotatelephone... This would pretty much end Constellation and even kill off Ares and Orion in LEO: http://nasawatch.com/archives/2009/1...re-a-10-b.html If this really goes ahead and the U.S. starts joined exploration with China it will truly mark the end of the U.S. as the dominant Superpower. I mean, why would you help a rival (antagonist or not) to gain parity in something which is the DEFINITIVE example of American technological supremacy? The U.S. has completely LOST its way and has its priorities completely mixed up. Spending almost $1 Trillion (!) on a war (Iraq) which has resulted in NOTHING substantial except a regime change. Yet $15 billion is too much for the space program?! That bogus war, the one before and their all-inclusive collateral damage, including global inflation and corruption has actually been costing us more than $1T/year. You have to include the cost of our having ignored other critical matters of our national infrastructure. If the U.S. has spend that $1 Trillion on the space program we could have had a permanent base on Mars, the Moon and would have started terraforming both Mars and Venus. Space tourism would have resulted in thousands of U.S. jobs and countless billions in profits. True, and it gets even a whole lot better when there's a return on such off-world accomplishments. The demise of the U.S. will be the demise of the West in general and could lead to more countries (even countries that previously aligned themselves with the West) moving towards a dictatorial capitalist system. They'll argue that as long as the economy is growing, people will accept a totalitarian regime. Many/most oil and fossil fuel product exporting nations are that way as is, and even those exporting uranium or thorium are essentially dictatorial capitalist. So, as long as those energy related reserves exist, all is well and good with the dictatorial capitalist system. ~ BG |
#28
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Budget cut for NASA?
On Nov 19, 12:20*pm, George Orwell wrote:
If this really goes ahead and the U.S. starts joined exploration with China it will truly mark the end of the U.S. as the dominant Superpower. I mean, why would you help a rival (antagonist or not) to gain parity in something which is the DEFINITIVE example of American technological supremacy? Don't panic. If you actually read the statement, it says: "The United States and China look forward to expanding discussions on space science cooperation and starting a dialogue on human space flight and space exploration." ...."Discussions and dialogue", as opposed to "setting and achieving clear goals with deadlines". |
#29
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Budget cut for NASA?
On Nov 20, 10:15*am, Damien Valentine wrote:
On Nov 19, 12:20*pm, George Orwell wrote: If this really goes ahead and the U.S. starts joined exploration with China it will truly mark the end of the U.S. as the dominant Superpower. I mean, why would you help a rival (antagonist or not) to gain parity in something which is the DEFINITIVE example of American technological supremacy? Don't panic. *If you actually read the statement, it says: "The United States and China look forward to expanding discussions on space science cooperation and starting a dialogue on human space flight and space exploration." ..."Discussions and dialogue", as opposed to "setting and achieving clear goals with deadlines". It's a start in the right direction, and should have happened decades ago with Russia, as well as with China and India. ~ BG |
#30
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Budget cut for NASA?
On Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:54:25 -0600, Pat Flannery
wrote: This would pretty much end Constellation and even kill off Ares and Orion in LEO: http://nasawatch.com/archives/2009/1...re-a-10-b.html Pat It could. However, the oroginal source article ..... http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/...,4658928.story ..... makes the point -- which shouldn't be surprising -- that President Obama probably won't make a decision about human sapceflight until February. And remember, this is the guy who makes stirring speeches but keeps details close to the vest until too late. He's also been known to change things depending on how much controversy he runs into. The words "public option" come to mind. I am not saying that he won't kill Orion Ares or that he will, just that true to form, he's going to play it as close to the vest for as long as possible, regardless of what little dribs or drabs come out now and then. He did it during the campaign and he's doing it as president. So as nerve-wracking as the next few months will be for NASA employees, maybe those of us whose jobs DON'T hang on it should calm down a little. Granted, I keep doing "Obama Space Policy" searches in Dogpile all the time. But pontificating about what WILL or WON'T happen when Obama may not have even made up his mind yet may just be a little counterproductive. Just a thought. |
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