A Space & astronomy forum. SpaceBanter.com

Go Back   Home » SpaceBanter.com forum » Space Science » Policy
Site Map Home Authors List Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read Web Partners

Maximum Rate Shuttle Launches



 
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #21  
Old June 12th 07, 12:20 AM posted to sci.space.shuttle,sci.space.policy
Charles Talleyrand
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 6
Default Unmanned Shuttle

On Jun 11, 1:08 pm, " wrote:

Of course I would like to see the shuttle continue flying as a
unmanned cargo vehicle.

this would allow station completion flights with no risk of crew
deaths.

gut lots of life support stuff and things from crew cabin like no
longer needed seats to increase cargo weight capacity.


Can the shuttle fly with no one on board? Takeoff, dock, land, the
whole shebang?

-Still learning....
-Charles Talleyrand

  #22  
Old June 12th 07, 12:31 AM posted to sci.space.shuttle,sci.space.policy
Rand Simberg[_1_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 8,311
Default Unmanned Shuttle

On Mon, 11 Jun 2007 16:20:27 -0700, in a place far, far away, Charles
Talleyrand made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

Can the shuttle fly with no one on board? Takeoff, dock, land, the
whole shebang?


No, but the ability to allow it to do so is trivial, other than
opposition from the astronaut office...
  #23  
Old June 12th 07, 01:47 AM posted to sci.space.shuttle,sci.space.policy
Henry Spencer
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,170
Default Maximum Rate Shuttle Launches

In article .com,
Charles Talleyrand wrote:
...That rate would require quite a few more facilities -- e.g.,
two or three more of the big simulators at JSC -- and a lot of money.


Can you tell us more about these big simulators? Are these flight
simulators needed to train pilots, or some other thing?


They're the whole-orbiter simulators in which a lot of the late-preflight
crew training takes place. Currently there are only two of them, and the
Rogers Commission report estimated that that fact alone would limit the
flight rate to 10-12/year. They were very heavily booked in 1985.

I would find it quite odd if the rate limiting item for shuttle
launches was pilot training. Not impossible, just suprising.


It's not so much that you need to train the pilots to fly the thing, as
that a crew needs to train together fairly intensively to get to the point
where it reacts to a surprise emergency as a coordinated whole, with no
fumbling and no crossed wires. So long as you're putting together a fresh
crew for each flight -- which is partly driven by the diversity of payloads
and partly just by the way the Astronaut Office does things -- this is an
inevitable overhead.

You could avoid a lot of that with more drastic rethinking of how things
are done, going back to how Slayton thought flight operations should run:

+ Small basic flight crews that stay together and fly repeatedly, and are
in charge of the orbiter; in the event of an emergency, everybody else's
job is to sit down and shut up. They don't do payloads.

+ Individual mission specialists, or small teams of them, for the more
stereotyped payloads and for spacewalk work. They *do* specialize, and
fly whenever their particular talents and training are useful.

+ Payload specialists, who are (horrors!) *not* professional astronauts,
for most things related to payloads.

This has two big problems. First, it would greatly reduce the power of
Astronaut Office management, by taking a lot of the suspense and mystery
out of crew selection. And second, the astronauts hate having to let
non-astronauts into their flying clubhouses.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |
  #24  
Old June 12th 07, 02:53 AM posted to sci.space.shuttle,sci.space.policy
Jorge R. Frank
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,089
Default Unmanned Shuttle

Rand Simberg wrote:
On Mon, 11 Jun 2007 16:20:27 -0700, in a place far, far away, Charles
Talleyrand made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

Can the shuttle fly with no one on board? Takeoff, dock, land, the
whole shebang?


No, but the ability to allow it to do so is trivial,


Perhaps for launch and landing. Not so for docking. That would be a
distinctly non-trivial upgrade.
  #25  
Old June 12th 07, 03:14 AM posted to sci.space.shuttle,sci.space.policy
Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,865
Default Maximum Rate Shuttle Launches

Somwhere on my desktop machine 400 miles away, I have a quick writeup on
this.

The long poll in the tent used to be the MLPs. There's only 3.

Now of course only 3 orbiters only.

But you're limited to stacking only 3 stacks at a time.

So, before when we had 4 orbiters, it really was a matter of how long an MLP
was in use.

I think I calculated that a reasonable number of up to 18 flights for a year
or so.

You'd need to fly an orbiter every 3 months. The typical turn-around (at
the time I read up on this) was about 3 months. So that's not to bad of a
change.

SRB sets I think there were plenty.

So I determined it was the MLP that was the issue.

There's also some steps you could make to make things easier.

Refly the same crews as often as possible, especially for the PLT/CDR.

Try to fly similar payloads in the same orbiter, again to minimize changes
required.

After a year or so though, you start to hit into things like scheduled
maintenance (OMDP,)



--
Greg Moore
SQL Server DBA Consulting Remote and Onsite available!
Email: sql (at) greenms.com http://www.greenms.com/sqlserver.html

wrote in message
oups.com...
Given a few extra billion dollars, and a year or two for preparation,
what sort of sustainable launch rate could the shuttle attain?

-Curious
-Charles Talleyrand



  #26  
Old June 12th 07, 03:17 AM posted to sci.space.shuttle,sci.space.policy
[email protected]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,516
Default Unmanned Shuttle

On Jun 11, 9:53?pm, "Jorge R. Frank" wrote:
Rand Simberg wrote:
On Mon, 11 Jun 2007 16:20:27 -0700, in a place far, far away, Charles
Talleyrand made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:


Can the shuttle fly with no one on board? Takeoff, dock, land, the
whole shebang?


No, but the ability to allow it to do so is trivial,


Perhaps for launch and landing. Not so for docking. That would be a
distinctly non-trivial upgrade.


soyuz could ferry trained pilots to handle final docking

  #27  
Old June 12th 07, 03:19 AM posted to sci.space.shuttle,sci.space.policy
Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,865
Default Maximum Rate Shuttle Launches



"Henry Spencer" wrote in message
...

Plus there is that little problem that at such rates, you're probably only
a few years from another loss-of-orbiter accident. (One of the more
interesting post-Challenger reports -- from OTA? I forget -- concluded
that ongoing orbiter production was mandatory for reliable long-term
operations, especially if projects like the space station needed a
guaranteed minimum fleet size. This was not what people wanted to hear
just then, so that report was quietly shelved...)


I've often wondered in the value if NASA had simply flown additional flights
with minimal payload and called them "research" flights.

This would allow them to do things like work on workflow, gain additional
experience and data on usage, etc.
i.e. actually treat the damn thing like a research program.

And guess what, we're about to make the same mistakes with VSE (and that's a
general rant, not direct at Henry :-)


--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |


--
Greg Moore
SQL Server DBA Consulting Remote and Onsite available!
Email: sql (at) greenms.com
http://www.greenms.com/sqlserver.html


  #28  
Old June 12th 07, 04:39 AM posted to sci.space.shuttle,sci.space.policy
Henry Spencer
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,170
Default Unmanned Shuttle

In article . com,
Charles Talleyrand wrote:
Can the shuttle fly with no one on board? Takeoff, dock, land, the
whole shebang?


Takeoff and land, not quite, but there are no fundamental obstacles --
it's just a matter of giving the computers control of a few things that
are currently done manually (either for safety or because it was just
easier that way). If memory serves, some of those changes were going to
be made anyway, because the "safe haven at space station" plan requires
unmanned de-orbit capability to clear the broken orbiter off the station.

For most orbital operations, I have a dim memory that there are some more
issues, but it's mostly the same thing -- a little more computer control
needed in certain areas.

The one big sticky issue is that the US has no flight-proven automated or
teleoperated docking capability. Lots of lab experiments, and one or two
attempts at in-space tests, but nothing available off the shelf.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |
  #30  
Old June 12th 07, 05:23 AM posted to sci.space.shuttle,sci.space.policy
Derek Lyons
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,999
Default Maximum Rate Shuttle Launches

"Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)" wrote:

After a year or so though, you start to hit into things like scheduled
maintenance (OMDP,)


That's not a problem for a sustained rate - because it's merely a
scheduling issue. It sounds like your write up was more based on 'how
long could a surge be maintained and how high would the surge rate
be'.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL
 




Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Maximum Rate Shuttle Launches [email protected] Space Shuttle 69 June 28th 07 04:59 AM
shuttle launches on HDNet ctt Space Shuttle 1 April 5th 06 07:26 PM
How to Guarantee Maximum Shuttle Safety bob haller Space Shuttle 0 December 29th 04 02:08 PM
Shuttle maximum altitude Mike Miller Space Shuttle 18 November 18th 03 03:01 PM
Was a second rate FOAM used in the shuttle???? hank Space Shuttle 17 September 14th 03 02:10 PM


All times are GMT +1. The time now is 08:11 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©2004-2024 SpaceBanter.com.
The comments are property of their posters.