Heard too much and need to vent.

"Rand Simberg" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 24 Jul 2003 17:57:48 +0000 (UTC), in a place far, far away,
"Dave" made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

Sure it's a good reason. It's a waste of money.

I'm not sure that "wasting money" has ever been a good enough reason to
stop
doing something.

It is for me...

On a more serious note, what is "good" for the individual, isn't necessarily
"good" for the larger economy.

Sometimes wasting money can be very useful.

Although, in the case of your current spending crazy government you may have
taken that a tad too far.

:-/

Are you sure Bush is a Republican?

Cardman writes:

On 24 Jul 2003 17:11:14 -0400, jeff findley
wrote:
This is absolutely false. The marginal cost of a shuttle flight is
far less than this. The marginal cost is the cost to add or remove
one shuttle flight to or from the manifest. This cost is somewhere
around $100 million (from a quick web search).

If it was $100 million they would be doing them all the time and have
the ISS complete in no time. What you do I guess is to look at the
budget allocated for Shuttle flights and divide by the number of
flights.

Some say that this is over $500 million, which is why I was recently
quoted at about $450 million for a Shuttle-C launch.

That's not the marginal cost to add or remove a flight, that's the
marginal cost plus the fixed costs (the cost of the standing army).
Put another way, it's what you get if you take the total program cost
and divide by the number of launches in one year. The cost to add or
remove a single flight is far less than this and is referred to as the
marginal cost of a shuttle flight.

If you ground the fleet for a year, you only save the marginal costs
of the flights. Your fixed costs stay the same. That's one reason
why you don't see any savings at NASA while the shuttle is grounded.

Replace the shuttle stack with something similar (your shuttle derived
HLV), and your fixed costs stay nearly the same. You're using the
same VAB, the same pads, the same payload processing facilities...

I see that you really don't understand the basic underlying economics
of "running a railroad". Stop the trains and your costs drop by the
marginal costs only. You're proposing swapping a train for a similar
train derived vehicle. If you do this, you'll still need the rest of
the infrastructure and people intact to keep running your railroad.

You've got to replace the ELV with something reusable,

NASA has a handle on that one already...

Good one! I'll end with that so I'll be laughing all the way out the
door. Goodbye.

Jeff
--
Remove "no" and "spam" from email address to reply.
If it says "This is not spam!", it's surely a lie.

Cardman writes:

On 24 Jul 2003 17:19:32 -0400, jeff findley
wrote:
I don't believe HLV is needed (there is no market for the 100 ton
payloads you propose).

Fine, but what about in the Shuttle payload range of the 30 ton class?

Not needed. The shuttle payload is oversized for reasonable missions
(there is a performance penalty for the ISS orbit that can be avoided
by launching into a more reasonable inclination).

If it were, I'd look at big, dumb boosters.
Specifically a huge, pressure fed, TSTO, one engine per stage design

Not counting on an engine out then?

Less to go wrong. Pressure fed engines don't have turbopumps to blow
up (the bits on the SSME's that have been redesigned several times
because they're so high strung)..

using LOX and kerosene (not RP-1), built out of steel in a shipyard,
not an aerospace contractor.

LOL. Has NASA ever asked for a price quote?

Stop laughing and try to learn something. Please read this:

Sea Dragon
http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/searagon.htm

And I am sure those at the shipyard would point out that they could
work with the likes of aluminum as well.

Why? What's wrong with steel? It's cheap, strong, and shipyards
already work with it (and charge far less than an aerospace company
would charge for a comparable aluminum structure). Quote:

The design was reviewed with Todd Shipyards, who concluded that it
was well within their capabilities, and not too unlike making a
submarine hull. 8 mm thick maraging steel was used, similar to the
Aerojet 260 inch solid motor of the time.

The best part of this design, (from your HLV uber alles point of view)
was the 550 ton payload capacity. Too bad there is no need for
payload capacities this large.

And as I said NASA needs an end application, where launching something
in the direction of the Moon could give it one.

Congress will never let it. You're living in a fantasy world. You
should be writing (bad) science fiction.

Jeff
--
Remove "no" and "spam" from email address to reply.
If it says "This is not spam!", it's surely a lie.

On Sat, 26 Jul 2003 01:15:52 GMT, "Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)"
wrote:

"Cardman" wrote in message
.. .

I saw them do that on the Shuttle once, where they just ran the
remaining two engines for longer. All relaxed sounding they were are
the time, but I knew that the s**t had hit the fan, where sure enough
all their Shuttle wiring was soon replaced.

Note the shuttle only has single engine out (and later 2 engine out) after a
certain point in its launch.

Well I was left thinking that the Shuttle would have ended up not
quite where it should have been.

I guess that in any case they can do nothing until the SRBs have
burned out and have been ejected, where I can only feel that losing
two or all three engines before this point would be extremely bad.

Then after separation from the SRBs I recall that they can either go
for an abort landing, or they can try jumping for it. As the Shuttle
is not good at landing other than on a nice runway, then jumping seems
the better other option.

A single engine out within seconds of SRB ignition would be a bad day.

And that is why they like to power them up seconds before the SRBs are
ignited, when given the odds an engine out at this point is extremely
unlikely.

That does make me wonder about the survival odds of such a ground
based explosion, when after Challenger we know that it was not the
initial explosion that killed them.

Hopefully, we will never find out...

I don't know how soon it is safe to lose an engine, but doing so early
on would give me serious doubts over making orbit.

Cardman.

On Sat, 26 Jul 2003 03:10:28 +0100, in a place far, far away, Cardman
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

That does make me wonder about the survival odds of such a ground
based explosion, when after Challenger we know that it was not the
initial explosion that killed them.

There was no explosion in Challenger, initial or otherwise. Do you
never tire of flaunting your ignorance?

--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org

"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
Swap the first . and @ and throw out the ".trash" to email me.
Here's my email address for autospammers:

"Rand Simberg" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 25 Jul 2003 07:57:24 GMT, in a place far, far away, "Dave
O'Neill" dave @ NOSPAM atomicrazor . com made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

I'm not sure that "wasting money" has ever been a good enough reason
to
stop
doing something.

It is for me...

On a more serious note, what is "good" for the individual, isn't
necessarily
"good" for the larger economy.

Sometimes wasting money can be very useful.

It's never as useful as spending it productively.

That can be harder to establish than it seems. One problem is that there is
obviously something of a question mark about what "productively" means.

Although, in the case of your current spending crazy government you may
have
taken that a tad too far.

:-/

Are you sure Bush is a Republican?

Yes, but he's no conservative...

People here say the same about Blair's socialism. Although that might yet
bite him in the arse.

I'm still taking odds on him not surviving the summer ;-)

On Sat, 26 Jul 2003 04:08:53 GMT, h (Rand
Simberg) wrote:

On Sat, 26 Jul 2003 03:10:28 +0100, in a place far, far away, Cardman
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

That does make me wonder about the survival odds of such a ground
based explosion, when after Challenger we know that it was not the
initial explosion that killed them.

There was no explosion in Challenger, initial or otherwise. Do you
never tire of flaunting your ignorance?

Well I have no idea what you are on about. So if there was no
explosion, then why are they dead?

On launch due to the cold one of the o-rings did not respond fast
enough to the sudden heating. As a result a leak occurred, where this
leak over time increased burning through the boosters support strap.

As a result the booster collided with the main tank puncturing it and
causing the fuel to explode, which then destroyed the main tank and
the attached shuttle.

Anyway, I never said that there was any explosion in Challenger, only
that the Challenger was destroy due to a near by explosion.

The crew compartment was still fairly intact after this though, where
it must have been interesting if NASA locked away the tapes.

Cardman.

"Cardman" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 25 Jul 2003 11:02:12 +0000 (UTC), "Dave"
wrote:

"Cardman" wrote in message
.. .

Fine, I just want my moon base, which would fill it easily.

But what do you plan to do with it then?

Why did people set sail to North America in the first place? To
explore, to understand new things, to see the sea kraken first hand,
to exploit the resources, the conquer and to be famous.

To make money, get gold etc...

There is tons what you can do on the Moon.

Yes, but that's irrelvent.

First there is exploration, where there are never too many hills to
climb or rocks to upturn, then as an extra all those direct meteorite
impacts I am sure would prove interesting. Then there is the unknown,
where I am sure that there would be a few surprises on the Moon.

So? The same applies to the Earth.

Second of all is making us of the resources, where I simply would have
to have a foundry and smelter on the Moon. So we can refine and
collect all the Lunar resources for later use, which can certainly
include HE3.

All of which are currently available significantly more cheaply on Earth.
He3 excepted, but given there are no He3 Fusion reactors and nor are their
likely to be for another century or so, your desire isn't all that
important.

snip stuff

Yes you could do all this, but there isn't a reason to beyond your wish to.

Your cost for developing your HLV and keeping all the bits around impact
on
the cost of your moonbase.

Well my plan is not to go into the Moon Base idea in a big way, but
just to develop this as an off-shoot of existing launches.

So sure had congress coughed up billions for a Moon Base, then would a
HLV be a good idea to get more resources up there than would you would
ever need.

As that is not going to happen soon, then take whatever launch system
you have and plan on sending one or two flights there. This small
start although a long way from sending people there would already be
well on the path to having a Moon Base one day.

And even if you stopped launching to the Moon, then you would already
have useful resources there for when you start up again.

Also what people here like ignoring is that NASA already has a 100 ton
HLV, where they are just launching the "Shuttle" on it. So had I a
magic wand and turned the Shuttle into the Shuttle-C, then could you
still do your four launches a year, where we just use all the spare
cargo space to launch something useful and cheap like fuel.

Except it really doesn't work like that.

As do I really have to spell out how useful a couple of hundred tons
of fuel in orbit would be in the near future?

Yes.

Keep the ISS raised no
problem, refuel the Shuttle to do that little bit more, move
satellites into high orbit for here and more.

Fuel, without a transport mechanism is useless.

You'll also have to explain to me how you intend to store it.

Sure it is not the best orbit in the world, but having that fuel there
you could still adjust to get your desired heading.

How?

These things are easy to say, but far harder to do.

I suggest some studying.

On Sat, 26 Jul 2003 04:33:21 GMT, in a place far, far away, "Dave
O'Neill" dave @ NOSPAM atomicrazor . com made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

Sometimes wasting money can be very useful.

It's never as useful as spending it productively.

That can be harder to establish than it seems. One problem is that there is
obviously something of a question mark about what "productively" means.

Increases the GDP by whatever yardstick one is using.

Are you sure Bush is a Republican?

Yes, but he's no conservative...

People here say the same about Blair's socialism. Although that might yet
bite him in the arse.

I'm still taking odds on him not surviving the summer ;-)

I wouldn't necessarily take that bet. Statesmen sometimes lose office
after the war (e.g. Churchill).

--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org

"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
Swap the first . and @ and throw out the ".trash" to email me.
Here's my email address for autospammers:

On Sat, 26 Jul 2003 05:33:51 +0100, in a place far, far away, Cardman
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

There was no explosion in Challenger, initial or otherwise. Do you
never tire of flaunting your ignorance?

Well I have no idea what you are on about.

Yes, because you remain utterly innocent of physics.

So if there was no
explosion, then why are they dead?

Do you believe that the only possible cause of human death is
explosions?

--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org

"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
Swap the first . and @ and throw out the ".trash" to email me.
Here's my email address for autospammers: