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

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

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

"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.

"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.

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

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

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".

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

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.