Former Astronaut Says Shuttles Unfit for Service

(http://www.hindu.com/seta/2005/07/14...1400101600.htm)

Three-time shuttle astronaut George `Pinky' Nelson had the unique
experience of flying the missions immediately before and after the
1986 Challenger accident, which saw a space shuttle dramatically break
apart on lift-off. An astrophysicist by training, Nelson left NASA in
1989 and now directs the Science, Mathematics and Technology Education
program at Western Washington University in Bellingham.

.. . . . .

WHAT WAS different about the first flight after an accident from the
crew's point of view? Did your perception of the risk change?

No. Actually, the flight before Challenger was really ragged. We had
five launch attempts on the pad, and all kinds of technical problems.
You could see things weren't going real well at that point. But when
you're in the cockpit, you just want to go fly. And the flight after
Challenger, we certainly knew that bad things can happen, but I felt
that they had looked at everything twice and it was going to be a
pretty safe mission. I had full confidence that if something got us,
it wasn't going to be the O-rings (which failed on Challenger).

So it's unlikely to be debris striking the wing this time, as it was
on Columbia two years ago?

Yes, that was really a fluke. (While NASA knew that debris often falls
during launch, this was a big piece that hit a particularly vulnerable
spot.) But there's no excuse for flying either Challenger when they
knew the O-rings were a problem or Columbia when they knew they were
losing material off the external tank. I don't fault the engineers, I
fault management. This problem of debris falling is a problem that got
them once. If they don't think they've got the problem fixed, I would
worry. But they feel like they do.

Do you think the shuttle programme is really fixed?

No. It should have been put to bed 10 years ago. I mean, the shuttle's
a marvellous machine, but it never worked out to be the operational
spacecraft they hoped it would be, and they should have moved on.

Are you happy with NASA's plan to build another vehicle to send people
to the Moon and Mars?

Yes. I don't think much of the space station, which has been NASA's
focus for the past decade, and it will be nice to have another
vehicle. I think the station's a marvellous engineering achievement,
but it was sold as something else. There's no science being done on
the space station. If anything, they should have built a platform
around the moon or some place interesting.

What about the current astronaut corps?

There aren't many flight opportunities, but there are something like
100 active astronauts. Not very active (laughs). That's something they
really ought to think hard about. How many astronauts do they really
need for what they're trying to do? They still have the skill mix for
their initial fantasies about the shuttle and the space station.

That's what NASA hired them for, but they know it's not true. I feel
sorry for those guys \u2014 the world's most talented people just
going to meetings, sweating, living in the world's worst climate there
in Houston.

It doesn't seem right; they ought to at least move them to San Diego
or something . I don't know what I would do if I were in their shoes,
although there are still interesting things to do from an astronaut's
point of view. Building the space station's got to be a hoot, a great
mission. And servicing the Hubble Space Telescope \u2014 I think NASA
administrator Mike Griffin will make a good call on that.

What do you mean by "a good call?"

I think if you're going to fly the shuttle at all, you ought to
service the Hubble Space Telescope. It's got to be the number one
priority. Here's something you can do for to science.

I had no respect for former administrator Sean O'Keefe's
decision-making on that (when he scrapped the servicing mission). He
got burned by Columbia, and was trying to get rid of every mission he
could. I don't think he realised NASA was an agency that actually did
things.

Can NASA be revitalised?

I don't know. Right now NASA's getting by on inertia. Its centers are
spread all over the country, and money's being spent, and the
aerospace industry needs people.

That's what's driving it all. They have no mission like saving the
world from communism, like in the past. I would like to see the
moon-Mars exploration programme happen.

But we're spending a lot of money blowing up stucco in Iraq. It's hard
to send aluminium into space when you're sending bricks and mortar 50
feet up.

TONY REICHHARDT
Nature News Service
Printed in "The Hindu" newspaper sci-tech section 7/14/2005

.. . . . . .


Words of a qualified, experienced insider - worth heeding.

Ok ... the machines are overly complex and fragile, the engineers
keep getting ignored by the management, the program has spread
itself out so far and wide that it's becoming dissipated and there
is no longer any sense of "mission" keeping everyone focused. This
is all very BAD. Sounds as if we dumped twice as much money into
this we'd just double the number of screwups (or do screwups scale
exponentially, I can never remember).

So the big question becomes "What Next ?".

The shuttles never came close to living up to expectations.
Dreadful attempts at "Do-it-all - but nothing well" committee
and pork-barrel-driven engineering. Now, after a fraction of
their supposed utility life they're creaky falling-apart
death-traps that NASA hopes can be held together for a few
more flight, given enough duct tape and super-glue. Two years
of fixes, and they didn't even bother to replace those
worn-out fuel sensors. "Oh we worried about problems with
those ..." - well you had TWO YEARS guys .....

Clearly the fleet should be quickly decommissioned and shipped
off to amusement parks for the kiddies to play on. Unfortunately
it seems nobody actually has a decent REPLACEMENT in development,
much less ready for timely deployment.

Seeing everything that goes wrong with shuttles, any sane person
would seek to employ the KISS principle when it comes to designing
replacement lifter and passenger rockets. Alas, the whole thing
is run by politicians, not engineers ...

Maybe if China starts outshining us, maybe ...

In any event, I'll hazard a few general proposals. First of
all, have two kinds of vehicles - a big un-manned lifter and
a passenger carrier - both of 'disposable' design. Sounds
expensive, but then how much time and money get spent trying
to refurbish shuttles ? Modular components could allow some
systems and instrumentation to be re-used on the passenger
carrier - strip the old one and put the parts into the new
shell.

The heavy lifter ... think something like an updated, simplfied,
Saturn 1-B with an option for adding two or three SRBs for extra
boost. Big booster, small 2nd stage, big cargo pod with maneuvering
jets - all remote/program-controlled. Aim at something like 150%
of the current shuttles lifting capability. The advances in
materials and techniques OUGHT to yeild a booster that's essentially
100% reliable for the few minutes it has to operate and cheap
enough (again, think modular & mass-manufacturing) that you don't
mind dunking it into the ocean afterwards.

The passenger lifter ... think of a really big Apollo or Soyuz
that can carry up to ten people and enough supplies for three
weeks. Use the same booster hardware as the heavy lifter as
much as possible ... uniformity reduces errors because everyone
knows what it's SUPPOSED to look/act like. Also reduces costs.
Various mission-specific add-ons could be included - manipulating
arms, satellite capture thingies, docking devices, whatever. If
you don't need the arm, don't bring it. If you do, it should
fit into a standard socket and electronic harness just like
the other accessories.

And KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID ! Spartan, minimial, rugged, reparable,
dependable. Don't try to make the vehicles do it all. It's quite
possible to launch specialty packages - construction hardware
and such - seperately, perhaps on Delta/Titan-class rockets if
they're not too big. That way you will have what you need where
you need it, when you need it without screwing-up your main
work vehicles with ten thousand messy options that will screw
up on you.

In short, decide what you need early on and then STICK with the
designs no matter what kind of political pressure is applied.
The KISS fleet can be justified, defended and popularized.
Americans like 'space' - they just don't like spending endless
gigabucks on questionable, dangerous junk.

Now I know American engineers can DO this ... but will their
employers go along with programs that won't produce the
lucrative cost-overruns they're used to ? IMHO these ideas
can be sold in terms of profit derived from VOLUME production.
Aerospace Inc has been doing much like early automobile makers
did - build one-off machines one at a time, no two quite alike,
everything hand-made and hand-fitted.

This has got to END and more of a mass-production philosophy
is desperately required. Instead of making one super-expensive
billion-dollar vehicle a year, make ten or twenty fifty-million-
dollar ones that are assembled largely by robots. The cost-savings
in the manufacturing process will increase profits - resulting in
manufacturers making MORE money than they get for the single
super-expensive rocket.

Finally, NASA needs to be re-organized, streamlined and
concentrated on space missions. Dump as many bureaucrats
as possible and try to find the kinds of practical can-do
engineers that were around in the 60s (may have to import
them from Russia and India, alas). Right now NASA is into
too many kinds of projects. The projects may be worthy,
but many should be handed-off to groups OTHER than NASA.
Keep NASA "on-mission". Such focus will pay off.

We CAN make space utilization both much cheaper AND much
safer. We've put a fortune into the space program and now
it's either time to make it PRACTICAL or just pretty much
abandon the whole thing until warp-drive or whatever comes
along.

Blackwater wrote:
(http://www.hindu.com/seta/2005/07/14...1400101600.htm)

Three-time shuttle astronaut George `Pinky' Nelson had the unique
experience of flying the missions immediately before and after the
1986 Challenger accident, which saw a space shuttle dramatically break
apart on lift-off. An astrophysicist by training, Nelson left NASA in
1989 and now directs the Science, Mathematics and Technology Education
program at Western Washington University in Bellingham.

. . . . .

WHAT WAS different about the first flight after an accident from the
crew's point of view? Did your perception of the risk change?

No. Actually, the flight before Challenger was really ragged. We had
five launch attempts on the pad, and all kinds of technical problems.
You could see things weren't going real well at that point. But when
you're in the cockpit, you just want to go fly. And the flight after
Challenger, we certainly knew that bad things can happen, but I felt
that they had looked at everything twice and it was going to be a
pretty safe mission. I had full confidence that if something got us,
it wasn't going to be the O-rings (which failed on Challenger).

So it's unlikely to be debris striking the wing this time, as it was
on Columbia two years ago?

Yes, that was really a fluke. (While NASA knew that debris often falls
during launch, this was a big piece that hit a particularly vulnerable
spot.) But there's no excuse for flying either Challenger when they
knew the O-rings were a problem or Columbia when they knew they were
losing material off the external tank. I don't fault the engineers, I
fault management. This problem of debris falling is a problem that got
them once. If they don't think they've got the problem fixed, I would
worry. But they feel like they do.

Do you think the shuttle programme is really fixed?

No. It should have been put to bed 10 years ago. I mean, the shuttle's
a marvellous machine, but it never worked out to be the operational
spacecraft they hoped it would be, and they should have moved on.

Are you happy with NASA's plan to build another vehicle to send people
to the Moon and Mars?

Yes. I don't think much of the space station, which has been NASA's
focus for the past decade, and it will be nice to have another
vehicle. I think the station's a marvellous engineering achievement,
but it was sold as something else. There's no science being done on
the space station. If anything, they should have built a platform
around the moon or some place interesting.

What about the current astronaut corps?

There aren't many flight opportunities, but there are something like
100 active astronauts. Not very active (laughs). That's something they
really ought to think hard about. How many astronauts do they really
need for what they're trying to do? They still have the skill mix for
their initial fantasies about the shuttle and the space station.

That's what NASA hired them for, but they know it's not true. I feel
sorry for those guys \u2014 the world's most talented people just
going to meetings, sweating, living in the world's worst climate there
in Houston.

It doesn't seem right; they ought to at least move them to San Diego
or something . I don't know what I would do if I were in their shoes,
although there are still interesting things to do from an astronaut's
point of view. Building the space station's got to be a hoot, a great
mission. And servicing the Hubble Space Telescope \u2014 I think NASA
administrator Mike Griffin will make a good call on that.

What do you mean by "a good call?"

I think if you're going to fly the shuttle at all, you ought to
service the Hubble Space Telescope. It's got to be the number one
priority. Here's something you can do for to science.

I had no respect for former administrator Sean O'Keefe's
decision-making on that (when he scrapped the servicing mission). He
got burned by Columbia, and was trying to get rid of every mission he
could. I don't think he realised NASA was an agency that actually did
things.

Can NASA be revitalised?

I don't know. Right now NASA's getting by on inertia. Its centers are
spread all over the country, and money's being spent, and the
aerospace industry needs people.

That's what's driving it all. They have no mission like saving the
world from communism, like in the past. I would like to see the
moon-Mars exploration programme happen.

But we're spending a lot of money blowing up stucco in Iraq. It's hard
to send aluminium into space when you're sending bricks and mortar 50
feet up.

TONY REICHHARDT
Nature News Service
Printed in "The Hindu" newspaper sci-tech section 7/14/2005

. . . . . .


Words of a qualified, experienced insider - worth heeding.

Ok ... the machines are overly complex and fragile, the engineers
keep getting ignored by the management, the program has spread
itself out so far and wide that it's becoming dissipated and there
is no longer any sense of "mission" keeping everyone focused. This
is all very BAD. Sounds as if we dumped twice as much money into
this we'd just double the number of screwups (or do screwups scale
exponentially, I can never remember).

So the big question becomes "What Next ?".

The shuttles never came close to living up to expectations.
That's not true.

NASA got whacked by severe and probably unfair budget cuts.

In spite of that, they still managed to send a vehicle to space, that
could return.

This is no small achievement.

But, yeah, we have to make space exploration a priority again to keep
growing as a people.

It takes a lot of focus and consensus.

And what is the final goal?

To explore and learn.

And why is this bad?

What happened to the concept of gaining knowledge?

Oh yeah, the spreadsheet....



Dreadful attempts at "Do-it-all - but nothing well" committee
and pork-barrel-driven engineering. Now, after a fraction of
their supposed utility life they're creaky falling-apart
death-traps that NASA hopes can be held together for a few
more flight, given enough duct tape and super-glue. Two years
of fixes, and they didn't even bother to replace those
worn-out fuel sensors. "Oh we worried about problems with
those ..." - well you had TWO YEARS guys .....

And they don't want it to happen again.

Maybe they just need to be refreshed, reenergized.

A little rock and roll music, if you please.



Clearly the fleet should be quickly decommissioned and shipped
off to amusement parks for the kiddies to play on. Unfortunately
it seems nobody actually has a decent REPLACEMENT in development,
much less ready for timely deployment.

Seeing everything that goes wrong with shuttles, any sane person
would seek to employ the KISS principle when it comes to designing
replacement lifter and passenger rockets. Alas, the whole thing
is run by politicians, not engineers ...

Maybe if China starts outshining us, maybe ...

In any event, I'll hazard a few general proposals. First of
all, have two kinds of vehicles - a big un-manned lifter and
a passenger carrier - both of 'disposable' design. Sounds
expensive, but then how much time and money get spent trying
to refurbish shuttles ? Modular components could allow some
systems and instrumentation to be re-used on the passenger
carrier - strip the old one and put the parts into the new
shell.

The heavy lifter ... think something like an updated, simplfied,
Saturn 1-B with an option for adding two or three SRBs for extra
boost. Big booster, small 2nd stage, big cargo pod with maneuvering
jets - all remote/program-controlled. Aim at something like 150%
of the current shuttles lifting capability. The advances in
materials and techniques OUGHT to yeild a booster that's essentially
100% reliable for the few minutes it has to operate and cheap
enough (again, think modular & mass-manufacturing) that you don't
mind dunking it into the ocean afterwards.

The passenger lifter ... think of a really big Apollo or Soyuz
that can carry up to ten people and enough supplies for three
weeks. Use the same booster hardware as the heavy lifter as
much as possible ... uniformity reduces errors because everyone
knows what it's SUPPOSED to look/act like. Also reduces costs.
Various mission-specific add-ons could be included - manipulating
arms, satellite capture thingies, docking devices, whatever. If
you don't need the arm, don't bring it. If you do, it should
fit into a standard socket and electronic harness just like
the other accessories.

And KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID ! Spartan, minimial, rugged, reparable,
dependable. Don't try to make the vehicles do it all. It's quite
possible to launch specialty packages - construction hardware
and such - seperately, perhaps on Delta/Titan-class rockets if
they're not too big. That way you will have what you need where
you need it, when you need it without screwing-up your main
work vehicles with ten thousand messy options that will screw
up on you.

In short, decide what you need early on and then STICK with the
designs no matter what kind of political pressure is applied.
The KISS fleet can be justified, defended and popularized.
Americans like 'space' - they just don't like spending endless
gigabucks on questionable, dangerous junk.

Now I know American engineers can DO this ... but will their
employers go along with programs that won't produce the
lucrative cost-overruns they're used to ? IMHO these ideas
can be sold in terms of profit derived from VOLUME production.
Aerospace Inc has been doing much like early automobile makers
did - build one-off machines one at a time, no two quite alike,
everything hand-made and hand-fitted.

This has got to END and more of a mass-production philosophy
is desperately required. Instead of making one super-expensive
billion-dollar vehicle a year, make ten or twenty fifty-million-
dollar ones that are assembled largely by robots.

NO, by humans.

Building spacecraft is an art.

Duh.

The cost-savings
in the manufacturing process will increase profits - resulting in
manufacturers making MORE money than they get for the single
super-expensive rocket.
See, cost controls are a good thing, but this driven by business is
what ****ed them up in the first place.

Work _with_the_creative_people, not against them.

No one wants sloppy engineering or cost overuns, but you let business
drive the art, and pretty soon you have businessman's art: see the
record business.

They killed it.

SO the businessmen have to know their place.



Finally, NASA needs to be re-organized, streamlined and
concentrated on space missions. Dump as many bureaucrats
as possible and try to find the kinds of practical can-do
engineers that were around in the 60s (may have to import
them from Russia and India, alas). Right now NASA is into
too many kinds of projects. The projects may be worthy,
but many should be handed-off to groups OTHER than NASA.
Keep NASA "on-mission". Such focus will pay off.

We CAN make space utilization both much cheaper AND much
safer. We've put a fortune into the space program and now
it's either time to make it PRACTICAL or just pretty much
abandon the whole thing until warp-drive or whatever comes
along.

We must always explore, always expand.

We die inside as a people when we stop learning, stop growing, stop
exploring.

Just look at any over 40 white American man....

On 19 Jul 2005 12:40:59 -0700, "Miles and Carol Silverberg"
wrote:



Blackwater wrote:
(http://www.hindu.com/seta/2005/07/14...1400101600.htm)

Three-time shuttle astronaut George `Pinky' Nelson had the unique
experience of flying the missions immediately before and after the
1986 Challenger accident, which saw a space shuttle dramatically break
apart on lift-off. An astrophysicist by training, Nelson left NASA in
1989 and now directs the Science, Mathematics and Technology Education
program at Western Washington University in Bellingham.

. . . . .

WHAT WAS different about the first flight after an accident from the
crew's point of view? Did your perception of the risk change?

No. Actually, the flight before Challenger was really ragged. We had
five launch attempts on the pad, and all kinds of technical problems.
You could see things weren't going real well at that point. But when
you're in the cockpit, you just want to go fly. And the flight after
Challenger, we certainly knew that bad things can happen, but I felt
that they had looked at everything twice and it was going to be a
pretty safe mission. I had full confidence that if something got us,
it wasn't going to be the O-rings (which failed on Challenger).

So it's unlikely to be debris striking the wing this time, as it was
on Columbia two years ago?

Yes, that was really a fluke. (While NASA knew that debris often falls
during launch, this was a big piece that hit a particularly vulnerable
spot.) But there's no excuse for flying either Challenger when they
knew the O-rings were a problem or Columbia when they knew they were
losing material off the external tank. I don't fault the engineers, I
fault management. This problem of debris falling is a problem that got
them once. If they don't think they've got the problem fixed, I would
worry. But they feel like they do.

Do you think the shuttle programme is really fixed?

No. It should have been put to bed 10 years ago. I mean, the shuttle's
a marvellous machine, but it never worked out to be the operational
spacecraft they hoped it would be, and they should have moved on.

Are you happy with NASA's plan to build another vehicle to send people
to the Moon and Mars?

Yes. I don't think much of the space station, which has been NASA's
focus for the past decade, and it will be nice to have another
vehicle. I think the station's a marvellous engineering achievement,
but it was sold as something else. There's no science being done on
the space station. If anything, they should have built a platform
around the moon or some place interesting.

What about the current astronaut corps?

There aren't many flight opportunities, but there are something like
100 active astronauts. Not very active (laughs). That's something they
really ought to think hard about. How many astronauts do they really
need for what they're trying to do? They still have the skill mix for
their initial fantasies about the shuttle and the space station.

That's what NASA hired them for, but they know it's not true. I feel
sorry for those guys \u2014 the world's most talented people just
going to meetings, sweating, living in the world's worst climate there
in Houston.

It doesn't seem right; they ought to at least move them to San Diego
or something . I don't know what I would do if I were in their shoes,
although there are still interesting things to do from an astronaut's
point of view. Building the space station's got to be a hoot, a great
mission. And servicing the Hubble Space Telescope \u2014 I think NASA
administrator Mike Griffin will make a good call on that.

What do you mean by "a good call?"

I think if you're going to fly the shuttle at all, you ought to
service the Hubble Space Telescope. It's got to be the number one
priority. Here's something you can do for to science.

I had no respect for former administrator Sean O'Keefe's
decision-making on that (when he scrapped the servicing mission). He
got burned by Columbia, and was trying to get rid of every mission he
could. I don't think he realised NASA was an agency that actually did
things.

Can NASA be revitalised?

I don't know. Right now NASA's getting by on inertia. Its centers are
spread all over the country, and money's being spent, and the
aerospace industry needs people.

That's what's driving it all. They have no mission like saving the
world from communism, like in the past. I would like to see the
moon-Mars exploration programme happen.

But we're spending a lot of money blowing up stucco in Iraq. It's hard
to send aluminium into space when you're sending bricks and mortar 50
feet up.

TONY REICHHARDT
Nature News Service
Printed in "The Hindu" newspaper sci-tech section 7/14/2005

. . . . . .


Words of a qualified, experienced insider - worth heeding.

Ok ... the machines are overly complex and fragile, the engineers
keep getting ignored by the management, the program has spread
itself out so far and wide that it's becoming dissipated and there
is no longer any sense of "mission" keeping everyone focused. This
is all very BAD. Sounds as if we dumped twice as much money into
this we'd just double the number of screwups (or do screwups scale
exponentially, I can never remember).

So the big question becomes "What Next ?".

The shuttles never came close to living up to expectations.
That's not true.

NASA got whacked by severe and probably unfair budget cuts.

In spite of that, they still managed to send a vehicle to space, that
could return.

This is no small achievement.

But, yeah, we have to make space exploration a priority again to keep
growing as a people.

It takes a lot of focus and consensus.

And what is the final goal?

To explore and learn.

And why is this bad?

What happened to the concept of gaining knowledge?

Oh yeah, the spreadsheet....



Dreadful attempts at "Do-it-all - but nothing well" committee
and pork-barrel-driven engineering. Now, after a fraction of
their supposed utility life they're creaky falling-apart
death-traps that NASA hopes can be held together for a few
more flight, given enough duct tape and super-glue. Two years
of fixes, and they didn't even bother to replace those
worn-out fuel sensors. "Oh we worried about problems with
those ..." - well you had TWO YEARS guys .....

And they don't want it to happen again.

But can they prevent it ? Will the political
administrators allow them, even if it's a
technical possibility ?

Maybe they just need to be refreshed, reenergized.

A little rock and roll music, if you please.


Less head-banger music please, more Bach ...


Clearly the fleet should be quickly decommissioned and shipped
off to amusement parks for the kiddies to play on. Unfortunately
it seems nobody actually has a decent REPLACEMENT in development,
much less ready for timely deployment.

Seeing everything that goes wrong with shuttles, any sane person
would seek to employ the KISS principle when it comes to designing
replacement lifter and passenger rockets. Alas, the whole thing
is run by politicians, not engineers ...

Maybe if China starts outshining us, maybe ...

In any event, I'll hazard a few general proposals. First of
all, have two kinds of vehicles - a big un-manned lifter and
a passenger carrier - both of 'disposable' design. Sounds
expensive, but then how much time and money get spent trying
to refurbish shuttles ? Modular components could allow some
systems and instrumentation to be re-used on the passenger
carrier - strip the old one and put the parts into the new
shell.

The heavy lifter ... think something like an updated, simplfied,
Saturn 1-B with an option for adding two or three SRBs for extra
boost. Big booster, small 2nd stage, big cargo pod with maneuvering
jets - all remote/program-controlled. Aim at something like 150%
of the current shuttles lifting capability. The advances in
materials and techniques OUGHT to yeild a booster that's essentially
100% reliable for the few minutes it has to operate and cheap
enough (again, think modular & mass-manufacturing) that you don't
mind dunking it into the ocean afterwards.

The passenger lifter ... think of a really big Apollo or Soyuz
that can carry up to ten people and enough supplies for three
weeks. Use the same booster hardware as the heavy lifter as
much as possible ... uniformity reduces errors because everyone
knows what it's SUPPOSED to look/act like. Also reduces costs.
Various mission-specific add-ons could be included - manipulating
arms, satellite capture thingies, docking devices, whatever. If
you don't need the arm, don't bring it. If you do, it should
fit into a standard socket and electronic harness just like
the other accessories.

And KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID ! Spartan, minimial, rugged, reparable,
dependable. Don't try to make the vehicles do it all. It's quite
possible to launch specialty packages - construction hardware
and such - seperately, perhaps on Delta/Titan-class rockets if
they're not too big. That way you will have what you need where
you need it, when you need it without screwing-up your main
work vehicles with ten thousand messy options that will screw
up on you.

In short, decide what you need early on and then STICK with the
designs no matter what kind of political pressure is applied.
The KISS fleet can be justified, defended and popularized.
Americans like 'space' - they just don't like spending endless
gigabucks on questionable, dangerous junk.

Now I know American engineers can DO this ... but will their
employers go along with programs that won't produce the
lucrative cost-overruns they're used to ? IMHO these ideas
can be sold in terms of profit derived from VOLUME production.
Aerospace Inc has been doing much like early automobile makers
did - build one-off machines one at a time, no two quite alike,
everything hand-made and hand-fitted.

This has got to END and more of a mass-production philosophy
is desperately required. Instead of making one super-expensive
billion-dollar vehicle a year, make ten or twenty fifty-million-
dollar ones that are assembled largely by robots.

NO, by humans.

Building spacecraft is an art.

Duh.


In case you didn't notice, most 'artists' are BAD
artists ...

Rockets and spacecraft should be cookie-cutter, modular,
mass-producable, assembled almost entirely by machines
that get it right and don't suffer from hang-overs or
girfriend problems. My old man got a first-hand look
at the smouldering wiring nightmare that was Apollo 1
shortly after they pulled out the corpses ... 'art'
failed badly.

Rocket science should be SCIENCE -

Duh.


The cost-savings
in the manufacturing process will increase profits - resulting in
manufacturers making MORE money than they get for the single
super-expensive rocket.
See, cost controls are a good thing, but this driven by business is
what ****ed them up in the first place.

Work _with_the_creative_people, not against them.


Sounds great, but in PRACTICE it never seems to
work out that way. Too many managers and politicians
involved. So much money and prestige involved. Doing
it right, employing creative solutions - those get
lost in the process.

The only solution is to build systems that are difficult
to screw up even IF bureaucrats get involved. Indeed there
needs to be a conspiracy on the part of the engineers to
build bureaucrat-proof systems - from the harware on up.
The answer to "We could save time/money by doing it this
way ..." has to be "No, everything's arranged around doing
it the RIGHT way and you can't change one part without
changing everything else at a cost of years and billions".

No one wants sloppy engineering or cost overuns, but you let business
drive the art, and pretty soon you have businessman's art: see the
record business.

They killed it.

SO the businessmen have to know their place.


Unfortunately, businessmen control the MONEY ... so they
often get determined to run things THEIR way even if it
means engineers are expected to now say 2+2=5.


Finally, NASA needs to be re-organized, streamlined and
concentrated on space missions. Dump as many bureaucrats
as possible and try to find the kinds of practical can-do
engineers that were around in the 60s (may have to import
them from Russia and India, alas). Right now NASA is into
too many kinds of projects. The projects may be worthy,
but many should be handed-off to groups OTHER than NASA.
Keep NASA "on-mission". Such focus will pay off.

We CAN make space utilization both much cheaper AND much
safer. We've put a fortune into the space program and now
it's either time to make it PRACTICAL or just pretty much
abandon the whole thing until warp-drive or whatever comes
along.

We must always explore, always expand.

Yea, but in a DC-3, not the Hindenburg ...

We die inside as a people when we stop learning, stop growing, stop
exploring.

Just look at any over 40 white American man....

Moi ? I'm on my Harley every weekend, exploring new
backroads and byways out in the boonies ... strange
new worlds .....

Blackwater wrote:
(http://www.hindu.com/seta/2005/07/14...1400101600.htm)


One reason the shuttle is an engineering nightmare was that funding was
approved during the Vietnam War. Nixon would not approve any design
which required R&D funding that exceeded 1.5 billion in any year. The
original design had a piloted fly-back 1st stage attached in the same
way as the External Tank. OTOH, it possibly wouldn't have worked for
the same reason the AeroStar was cancelled: they couldn't design a
re-usable LH2 tank.



Three-time shuttle astronaut George `Pinky' Nelson had the unique
experience of flying the missions immediately before and after the
1986 Challenger accident, which saw a space shuttle dramatically break
apart on lift-off. An astrophysicist by training, Nelson left NASA in
1989 and now directs the Science, Mathematics and Technology Education
program at Western Washington University in Bellingham.

. . . . .

WHAT WAS different about the first flight after an accident from the
crew's point of view? Did your perception of the risk change?

No. Actually, the flight before Challenger was really ragged. We had
five launch attempts on the pad, and all kinds of technical problems.
You could see things weren't going real well at that point. But when
you're in the cockpit, you just want to go fly. And the flight after
Challenger, we certainly knew that bad things can happen, but I felt
that they had looked at everything twice and it was going to be a
pretty safe mission. I had full confidence that if something got us,
it wasn't going to be the O-rings (which failed on Challenger).

So it's unlikely to be debris striking the wing this time, as it was
on Columbia two years ago?

Yes, that was really a fluke. (While NASA knew that debris often falls
during launch, this was a big piece that hit a particularly vulnerable
spot.) But there's no excuse for flying either Challenger when they
knew the O-rings were a problem or Columbia when they knew they were
losing material off the external tank. I don't fault the engineers, I
fault management. This problem of debris falling is a problem that got
them once. If they don't think they've got the problem fixed, I would
worry. But they feel like they do.

Do you think the shuttle programme is really fixed?

No. It should have been put to bed 10 years ago. I mean, the shuttle's
a marvellous machine, but it never worked out to be the operational
spacecraft they hoped it would be, and they should have moved on.

Are you happy with NASA's plan to build another vehicle to send people
to the Moon and Mars?

Yes. I don't think much of the space station, which has been NASA's
focus for the past decade, and it will be nice to have another
vehicle. I think the station's a marvellous engineering achievement,
but it was sold as something else. There's no science being done on
the space station. If anything, they should have built a platform
around the moon or some place interesting.

What about the current astronaut corps?

There aren't many flight opportunities, but there are something like
100 active astronauts. Not very active (laughs). That's something they
really ought to think hard about. How many astronauts do they really
need for what they're trying to do? They still have the skill mix for
their initial fantasies about the shuttle and the space station.

That's what NASA hired them for, but they know it's not true. I feel
sorry for those guys \u2014 the world's most talented people just
going to meetings, sweating, living in the world's worst climate there
in Houston.

It doesn't seem right; they ought to at least move them to San Diego
or something . I don't know what I would do if I were in their shoes,
although there are still interesting things to do from an astronaut's
point of view. Building the space station's got to be a hoot, a great
mission. And servicing the Hubble Space Telescope \u2014 I think NASA
administrator Mike Griffin will make a good call on that.

What do you mean by "a good call?"

I think if you're going to fly the shuttle at all, you ought to
service the Hubble Space Telescope. It's got to be the number one
priority. Here's something you can do for to science.

I had no respect for former administrator Sean O'Keefe's
decision-making on that (when he scrapped the servicing mission). He
got burned by Columbia, and was trying to get rid of every mission he
could. I don't think he realised NASA was an agency that actually did
things.

Can NASA be revitalised?

I don't know. Right now NASA's getting by on inertia. Its centers are
spread all over the country, and money's being spent, and the
aerospace industry needs people.

That's what's driving it all. They have no mission like saving the
world from communism, like in the past. I would like to see the
moon-Mars exploration programme happen.

But we're spending a lot of money blowing up stucco in Iraq. It's hard
to send aluminium into space when you're sending bricks and mortar 50
feet up.

TONY REICHHARDT
Nature News Service
Printed in "The Hindu" newspaper sci-tech section 7/14/2005

. . . . . .


Words of a qualified, experienced insider - worth heeding.

Ok ... the machines are overly complex and fragile, the engineers
keep getting ignored by the management, the program has spread
itself out so far and wide that it's becoming dissipated and there
is no longer any sense of "mission" keeping everyone focused. This
is all very BAD. Sounds as if we dumped twice as much money into
this we'd just double the number of screwups (or do screwups scale
exponentially, I can never remember).

So the big question becomes "What Next ?".

The shuttles never came close to living up to expectations.
Dreadful attempts at "Do-it-all - but nothing well" committee
and pork-barrel-driven engineering. Now, after a fraction of
their supposed utility life they're creaky falling-apart
death-traps that NASA hopes can be held together for a few
more flight, given enough duct tape and super-glue. Two years
of fixes, and they didn't even bother to replace those
worn-out fuel sensors. "Oh we worried about problems with
those ..." - well you had TWO YEARS guys .....

As many others have pointed out, the early years of aviation is filled
with crashes that killed pilots and crews, and early passenger flying
also killed thousands of civilians. The real problem with the shuttle
isn't its inherent dangerousness, it's the cost of each accident. The
military still suffers non-combat aviation accidents but no one demands
an end to this dangerous technology.

You're one of those kinds who walks into a dark room, lights a match,
and yells, "Fire, fire." IOW, you know better than the drivel you post,
you just like playing arsonist.



Clearly the fleet should be quickly decommissioned and shipped
off to amusement parks for the kiddies to play on. Unfortunately
it seems nobody actually has a decent REPLACEMENT in development,
much less ready for timely deployment.

Seeing everything that goes wrong with shuttles, any sane person
would seek to employ the KISS principle when it comes to designing
replacement lifter and passenger rockets. Alas, the whole thing
is run by politicians, not engineers ...

Maybe if China starts outshining us, maybe ...

In any event, I'll hazard a few general proposals. First of
all, have two kinds of vehicles - a big un-manned lifter and
a passenger carrier - both of 'disposable' design. Sounds
expensive, but then how much time and money get spent trying
to refurbish shuttles ? Modular components could allow some
systems and instrumentation to be re-used on the passenger
carrier - strip the old one and put the parts into the new
shell.

The heavy lifter ... think something like an updated, simplfied,
Saturn 1-B with an option for adding two or three SRBs for extra
boost. Big booster, small 2nd stage, big cargo pod with maneuvering
jets - all remote/program-controlled. Aim at something like 150%
of the current shuttles lifting capability. The advances in
materials and techniques OUGHT to yeild a booster that's essentially
100% reliable for the few minutes it has to operate and cheap
enough (again, think modular & mass-manufacturing) that you don't
mind dunking it into the ocean afterwards.

The passenger lifter ... think of a really big Apollo or Soyuz
that can carry up to ten people and enough supplies for three
weeks. Use the same booster hardware as the heavy lifter as
much as possible ... uniformity reduces errors because everyone
knows what it's SUPPOSED to look/act like. Also reduces costs.
Various mission-specific add-ons could be included - manipulating
arms, satellite capture thingies, docking devices, whatever. If
you don't need the arm, don't bring it. If you do, it should
fit into a standard socket and electronic harness just like
the other accessories.

And KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID ! Spartan, minimial, rugged, reparable,
dependable. Don't try to make the vehicles do it all. It's quite
possible to launch specialty packages - construction hardware
and such - seperately, perhaps on Delta/Titan-class rockets if
they're not too big. That way you will have what you need where
you need it, when you need it without screwing-up your main
work vehicles with ten thousand messy options that will screw
up on you.

In short, decide what you need early on and then STICK with the
designs no matter what kind of political pressure is applied.
The KISS fleet can be justified, defended and popularized.
Americans like 'space' - they just don't like spending endless
gigabucks on questionable, dangerous junk.

Now I know American engineers can DO this ... but will their
employers go along with programs that won't produce the
lucrative cost-overruns they're used to ? IMHO these ideas
can be sold in terms of profit derived from VOLUME production.
Aerospace Inc has been doing much like early automobile makers
did - build one-off machines one at a time, no two quite alike,
everything hand-made and hand-fitted.

This has got to END and more of a mass-production philosophy
is desperately required. Instead of making one super-expensive
billion-dollar vehicle a year, make ten or twenty fifty-million-
dollar ones that are assembled largely by robots. The cost-savings
in the manufacturing process will increase profits - resulting in
manufacturers making MORE money than they get for the single
super-expensive rocket.

Finally, NASA needs to be re-organized, streamlined and
concentrated on space missions. Dump as many bureaucrats
as possible and try to find the kinds of practical can-do
engineers that were around in the 60s (may have to import
them from Russia and India, alas). Right now NASA is into
too many kinds of projects. The projects may be worthy,
but many should be handed-off to groups OTHER than NASA.
Keep NASA "on-mission". Such focus will pay off.

We CAN make space utilization both much cheaper AND much
safer. We've put a fortune into the space program and now
it's either time to make it PRACTICAL or just pretty much
abandon the whole thing until warp-drive or whatever comes
along.

On 20 Jul 2005 09:48:44 -0700, "Name Redacted"
wrote:

Blackwater wrote:
(http://www.hindu.com/seta/2005/07/14...1400101600.htm)


One reason the shuttle is an engineering nightmare was that funding was
approved during the Vietnam War. Nixon would not approve any design
which required R&D funding that exceeded 1.5 billion in any year. The
original design had a piloted fly-back 1st stage attached in the same
way as the External Tank. OTOH, it possibly wouldn't have worked for
the same reason the AeroStar was cancelled: they couldn't design a
re-usable LH2 tank.


Frankly, a piloted (or even auto/remote-piloted) fly-back
1st stage seems ridiculous. Some engineers were told to
run with the 'reusability' concept as far as they could
possibly go ... and this is what emerged.


Three-time shuttle astronaut George `Pinky' Nelson had the unique
experience of flying the missions immediately before and after the
1986 Challenger accident, which saw a space shuttle dramatically break
apart on lift-off. An astrophysicist by training, Nelson left NASA in
1989 and now directs the Science, Mathematics and Technology Education
program at Western Washington University in Bellingham.

. . . . .

WHAT WAS different about the first flight after an accident from the
crew's point of view? Did your perception of the risk change?

No. Actually, the flight before Challenger was really ragged. We had
five launch attempts on the pad, and all kinds of technical problems.
You could see things weren't going real well at that point. But when
you're in the cockpit, you just want to go fly. And the flight after
Challenger, we certainly knew that bad things can happen, but I felt
that they had looked at everything twice and it was going to be a
pretty safe mission. I had full confidence that if something got us,
it wasn't going to be the O-rings (which failed on Challenger).

So it's unlikely to be debris striking the wing this time, as it was
on Columbia two years ago?

Yes, that was really a fluke. (While NASA knew that debris often falls
during launch, this was a big piece that hit a particularly vulnerable
spot.) But there's no excuse for flying either Challenger when they
knew the O-rings were a problem or Columbia when they knew they were
losing material off the external tank. I don't fault the engineers, I
fault management. This problem of debris falling is a problem that got
them once. If they don't think they've got the problem fixed, I would
worry. But they feel like they do.

Do you think the shuttle programme is really fixed?

No. It should have been put to bed 10 years ago. I mean, the shuttle's
a marvellous machine, but it never worked out to be the operational
spacecraft they hoped it would be, and they should have moved on.

Are you happy with NASA's plan to build another vehicle to send people
to the Moon and Mars?

Yes. I don't think much of the space station, which has been NASA's
focus for the past decade, and it will be nice to have another
vehicle. I think the station's a marvellous engineering achievement,
but it was sold as something else. There's no science being done on
the space station. If anything, they should have built a platform
around the moon or some place interesting.

What about the current astronaut corps?

There aren't many flight opportunities, but there are something like
100 active astronauts. Not very active (laughs). That's something they
really ought to think hard about. How many astronauts do they really
need for what they're trying to do? They still have the skill mix for
their initial fantasies about the shuttle and the space station.

That's what NASA hired them for, but they know it's not true. I feel
sorry for those guys \u2014 the world's most talented people just
going to meetings, sweating, living in the world's worst climate there
in Houston.

It doesn't seem right; they ought to at least move them to San Diego
or something . I don't know what I would do if I were in their shoes,
although there are still interesting things to do from an astronaut's
point of view. Building the space station's got to be a hoot, a great
mission. And servicing the Hubble Space Telescope \u2014 I think NASA
administrator Mike Griffin will make a good call on that.

What do you mean by "a good call?"

I think if you're going to fly the shuttle at all, you ought to
service the Hubble Space Telescope. It's got to be the number one
priority. Here's something you can do for to science.

I had no respect for former administrator Sean O'Keefe's
decision-making on that (when he scrapped the servicing mission). He
got burned by Columbia, and was trying to get rid of every mission he
could. I don't think he realised NASA was an agency that actually did
things.

Can NASA be revitalised?

I don't know. Right now NASA's getting by on inertia. Its centers are
spread all over the country, and money's being spent, and the
aerospace industry needs people.

That's what's driving it all. They have no mission like saving the
world from communism, like in the past. I would like to see the
moon-Mars exploration programme happen.

But we're spending a lot of money blowing up stucco in Iraq. It's hard
to send aluminium into space when you're sending bricks and mortar 50
feet up.

TONY REICHHARDT
Nature News Service
Printed in "The Hindu" newspaper sci-tech section 7/14/2005

. . . . . .


Words of a qualified, experienced insider - worth heeding.

Ok ... the machines are overly complex and fragile, the engineers
keep getting ignored by the management, the program has spread
itself out so far and wide that it's becoming dissipated and there
is no longer any sense of "mission" keeping everyone focused. This
is all very BAD. Sounds as if we dumped twice as much money into
this we'd just double the number of screwups (or do screwups scale
exponentially, I can never remember).

So the big question becomes "What Next ?".

The shuttles never came close to living up to expectations.
Dreadful attempts at "Do-it-all - but nothing well" committee
and pork-barrel-driven engineering. Now, after a fraction of
their supposed utility life they're creaky falling-apart
death-traps that NASA hopes can be held together for a few
more flight, given enough duct tape and super-glue. Two years
of fixes, and they didn't even bother to replace those
worn-out fuel sensors. "Oh we worried about problems with
those ..." - well you had TWO YEARS guys .....

As many others have pointed out, the early years of aviation is filled
with crashes that killed pilots and crews, and early passenger flying
also killed thousands of civilians. The real problem with the shuttle
isn't its inherent dangerousness, it's the cost of each accident. The
military still suffers non-combat aviation accidents but no one demands
an end to this dangerous technology.

The cost of each accident IS extremely high ... but the CAUSES
of each accident (and nearly-averted ones) point to weaknesses
in the design, be they structural, conceptural or systemic. It
is a VASTLY more complicated machine than a 737 jetliner and
the consequences of many kinds of failures can be spectacular.
A 737 can usually limp to an airport if something goes wrong
(in truth, a ancient DC3 is even more robust).

Yes, spacecraft ARE going to be more complex than a jetliner,
no getting around that. Thing is that every added speck of
complexity is something else to go wrong, something else
that's hard to predict or diagnose. We reach a point where
it's just not PRACTICAL to do everything necessary to keep
each part and system in perfect running order.

You're one of those kinds who walks into a dark room, lights a match,
and yells, "Fire, fire." IOW, you know better than the drivel you post,
you just like playing arsonist.


Well, I *am* shouting 'fire' ... because there IS a fire, so
to speak.

Junk 'em. Start again. Do better. That's what they did for all
those not-so-good aircraft designs and that's what they need to
do with the shuttle fleet.


Clearly the fleet should be quickly decommissioned and shipped
off to amusement parks for the kiddies to play on. Unfortunately
it seems nobody actually has a decent REPLACEMENT in development,
much less ready for timely deployment.

Seeing everything that goes wrong with shuttles, any sane person
would seek to employ the KISS principle when it comes to designing
replacement lifter and passenger rockets. Alas, the whole thing
is run by politicians, not engineers ...

Maybe if China starts outshining us, maybe ...

In any event, I'll hazard a few general proposals. First of
all, have two kinds of vehicles - a big un-manned lifter and
a passenger carrier - both of 'disposable' design. Sounds
expensive, but then how much time and money get spent trying
to refurbish shuttles ? Modular components could allow some
systems and instrumentation to be re-used on the passenger
carrier - strip the old one and put the parts into the new
shell.

The heavy lifter ... think something like an updated, simplfied,
Saturn 1-B with an option for adding two or three SRBs for extra
boost. Big booster, small 2nd stage, big cargo pod with maneuvering
jets - all remote/program-controlled. Aim at something like 150%
of the current shuttles lifting capability. The advances in
materials and techniques OUGHT to yeild a booster that's essentially
100% reliable for the few minutes it has to operate and cheap
enough (again, think modular & mass-manufacturing) that you don't
mind dunking it into the ocean afterwards.

The passenger lifter ... think of a really big Apollo or Soyuz
that can carry up to ten people and enough supplies for three
weeks. Use the same booster hardware as the heavy lifter as
much as possible ... uniformity reduces errors because everyone
knows what it's SUPPOSED to look/act like. Also reduces costs.
Various mission-specific add-ons could be included - manipulating
arms, satellite capture thingies, docking devices, whatever. If
you don't need the arm, don't bring it. If you do, it should
fit into a standard socket and electronic harness just like
the other accessories.

And KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID ! Spartan, minimial, rugged, reparable,
dependable. Don't try to make the vehicles do it all. It's quite
possible to launch specialty packages - construction hardware
and such - seperately, perhaps on Delta/Titan-class rockets if
they're not too big. That way you will have what you need where
you need it, when you need it without screwing-up your main
work vehicles with ten thousand messy options that will screw
up on you.

In short, decide what you need early on and then STICK with the
designs no matter what kind of political pressure is applied.
The KISS fleet can be justified, defended and popularized.
Americans like 'space' - they just don't like spending endless
gigabucks on questionable, dangerous junk.

Now I know American engineers can DO this ... but will their
employers go along with programs that won't produce the
lucrative cost-overruns they're used to ? IMHO these ideas
can be sold in terms of profit derived from VOLUME production.
Aerospace Inc has been doing much like early automobile makers
did - build one-off machines one at a time, no two quite alike,
everything hand-made and hand-fitted.

This has got to END and more of a mass-production philosophy
is desperately required. Instead of making one super-expensive
billion-dollar vehicle a year, make ten or twenty fifty-million-
dollar ones that are assembled largely by robots. The cost-savings
in the manufacturing process will increase profits - resulting in
manufacturers making MORE money than they get for the single
super-expensive rocket.

Finally, NASA needs to be re-organized, streamlined and
concentrated on space missions. Dump as many bureaucrats
as possible and try to find the kinds of practical can-do
engineers that were around in the 60s (may have to import
them from Russia and India, alas). Right now NASA is into
too many kinds of projects. The projects may be worthy,
but many should be handed-off to groups OTHER than NASA.
Keep NASA "on-mission". Such focus will pay off.

We CAN make space utilization both much cheaper AND much
safer. We've put a fortune into the space program and now
it's either time to make it PRACTICAL or just pretty much
abandon the whole thing until warp-drive or whatever comes
along.

Name Redacted wrote:

One reason the shuttle is an engineering nightmare was that funding was
approved during the Vietnam War. Nixon would not approve any design
which required R&D funding that exceeded 1.5 billion in any year. The
original design had a piloted fly-back 1st stage attached in the same
way as the External Tank. OTOH, it possibly wouldn't have worked for
the same reason the AeroStar was cancelled: they couldn't design a
re-usable LH2 tank.

There were many designs looked at. The one you see the most pictures
of had the first stage (winged) under the second stage. The first
stage burned RP-1 (a kind of kerosene), not hydrogen.

BTW, even the shuttle that was built had a real hard time justifying
its development cost; the more expensive completely reusable
version would have been an even tougher sell. Of course, even the
shuttle-as-built never lived up to the grossly overblown promises.

It could have been that a reusable first stage with an expendable
second stage could have stayed within budget, and actually have been
useful.

Paul

Paul F. Dietz wrote:
Name Redacted wrote:

One reason the shuttle is an engineering nightmare was that funding was
approved during the Vietnam War. Nixon would not approve any design
which required R&D funding that exceeded 1.5 billion in any year. The
original design had a piloted fly-back 1st stage attached in the same
way as the External Tank. OTOH, it possibly wouldn't have worked for
the same reason the AeroStar was cancelled: they couldn't design a
re-usable LH2 tank..

There were many designs looked at. The one you see the most pictures
of had the first stage (winged) under the second stage.

I've see those, but the design I understood had been submitted to Nixon
had a much larger shuttle-like fly-back first stage and a second stage
orbiter. They were connected underbelly to underbelly. I don't recall
fuels but I assume they'd be the same: it seemed like plan called for
to the first stage pump replacement fuel into the orbiter's fuel tanks
until disconnect.


The first
stage burned RP-1 (a kind of kerosene), not hydrogen.

BTW, even the shuttle that was built had a real hard time justifying
its development cost; the more expensive completely reusable
version would have been an even tougher sell. Of course, even the
shuttle-as-built never lived up to the grossly overblown promises.

It could have been that a reusable first stage with an expendable
second stage could have stayed within budget, and actually have been
useful.

Kind of a reinforced Saturn V first stage? Didn't it have little wings
on the bottom??? (Ok, that was a joke.)




Paul

Paul F. Dietz wrote:


It could have been that a reusable first stage with an expendable
second stage could have stayed within budget, and actually have been
useful.


I don't know about that- the orbital stage would have had all the TPS
concerns and high maintenance requirements of our present Shuttle
Orbiter, and the winged first stage would have still needed a pretty
sophisticated TPS at its descent speeds, after separating from the orbiter.
Between the two you would have had a great deal of between flight
maintenance time to check everything out, and that might have more that
equaled the costs associated with the expendable ET and (semi-reusable)
SRBs. Although you could have made the lower component into one hell of
a suborbital bomber or reconnaissance aircraft. I wonder if the lower
component itself could have achieved orbit if unencumbered by the weight
and drag of the orbiter?
Given the usual weight growth associated with orbital spaceplanes
(Dyna-Soar and Hermes come immediately to mind), the whole project might
have flopped due to too-optimistic calculations regarding the weight of
both components.
The lower booster component would have been a very major engineering
challenge in its own right, and the orbiter's cargo bay size was nothing
to get excited about, due to the need for the orbiter to carry its
propellants internally.
I still think the Lockheed Star Clipper would have been the way to go.

Name Redacted wrote:



I've see those, but the design I understood had been submitted to Nixon
had a much larger shuttle-like fly-back first stage and a second stage
orbiter. They were connected underbelly to underbelly. I don't recall
fuels but I assume they'd be the same: it seemed like plan called for
to the first stage pump replacement fuel into the orbiter's fuel tanks
until disconnect.





There's an illustrated discussion of the layouts he
http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4221/ch5.htm

Pat

On Tue, 19 Jul 2005 18:59:29 GMT, (Blackwater) wrote:

(http://www.hindu.com/seta/2005/07/14...1400101600.htm)

Three-time shuttle astronaut George `Pinky' Nelson had the unique
experience of flying the missions immediately before and after the
1986 Challenger accident, which saw a space shuttle dramatically break
apart on lift-off. An astrophysicist by training, Nelson left NASA in
1989 and now directs the Science, Mathematics and Technology Education
program at Western Washington University in Bellingham.

. . . . .

WHAT WAS different about the first flight after an accident from the
crew's point of view? Did your perception of the risk change?

No. Actually, the flight before Challenger was really ragged. We had
five launch attempts on the pad, and all kinds of technical problems.
You could see things weren't going real well at that point. But when
you're in the cockpit, you just want to go fly. And the flight after
Challenger, we certainly knew that bad things can happen, but I felt
that they had looked at everything twice and it was going to be a
pretty safe mission. I had full confidence that if something got us,
it wasn't going to be the O-rings (which failed on Challenger).

So it's unlikely to be debris striking the wing this time, as it was
on Columbia two years ago?

Yes, that was really a fluke. (While NASA knew that debris often falls
during launch, this was a big piece that hit a particularly vulnerable
spot.) But there's no excuse for flying either Challenger when they
knew the O-rings were a problem or Columbia when they knew they were
losing material off the external tank. I don't fault the engineers, I
fault management. This problem of debris falling is a problem that got
them once. If they don't think they've got the problem fixed, I would
worry. But they feel like they do.

Do you think the shuttle programme is really fixed?

No. It should have been put to bed 10 years ago. I mean, the shuttle's
a marvellous machine, but it never worked out to be the operational
spacecraft they hoped it would be, and they should have moved on.

Are you happy with NASA's plan to build another vehicle to send people
to the Moon and Mars?

Yes. I don't think much of the space station, which has been NASA's
focus for the past decade, and it will be nice to have another
vehicle. I think the station's a marvellous engineering achievement,
but it was sold as something else. There's no science being done on
the space station. If anything, they should have built a platform
around the moon or some place interesting.

What about the current astronaut corps?

There aren't many flight opportunities, but there are something like
100 active astronauts. Not very active (laughs). That's something they
really ought to think hard about. How many astronauts do they really
need for what they're trying to do? They still have the skill mix for
their initial fantasies about the shuttle and the space station.

That's what NASA hired them for, but they know it's not true. I feel
sorry for those guys \u2014 the world's most talented people just
going to meetings, sweating, living in the world's worst climate there
in Houston.

It doesn't seem right; they ought to at least move them to San Diego
or something . I don't know what I would do if I were in their shoes,
although there are still interesting things to do from an astronaut's
point of view. Building the space station's got to be a hoot, a great
mission. And servicing the Hubble Space Telescope \u2014 I think NASA
administrator Mike Griffin will make a good call on that.

What do you mean by "a good call?"

I think if you're going to fly the shuttle at all, you ought to
service the Hubble Space Telescope. It's got to be the number one
priority. Here's something you can do for to science.

I had no respect for former administrator Sean O'Keefe's
decision-making on that (when he scrapped the servicing mission). He
got burned by Columbia, and was trying to get rid of every mission he
could. I don't think he realised NASA was an agency that actually did
things.

Can NASA be revitalised?

I don't know. Right now NASA's getting by on inertia. Its centers are
spread all over the country, and money's being spent, and the
aerospace industry needs people.

That's what's driving it all. They have no mission like saving the
world from communism, like in the past. I would like to see the
moon-Mars exploration programme happen.

But we're spending a lot of money blowing up stucco in Iraq. It's hard
to send aluminium into space when you're sending bricks and mortar 50
feet up.

TONY REICHHARDT
Nature News Service
Printed in "The Hindu" newspaper sci-tech section 7/14/2005

. . . . . .


Words of a qualified, experienced insider - worth heeding.

Ok ... the machines are overly complex and fragile, the engineers
keep getting ignored by the management, the program has spread
itself out so far and wide that it's becoming dissipated and there
is no longer any sense of "mission" keeping everyone focused. This
is all very BAD. Sounds as if we dumped twice as much money into
this we'd just double the number of screwups (or do screwups scale
exponentially, I can never remember).

So the big question becomes "What Next ?".

The shuttles never came close to living up to expectations.
Dreadful attempts at "Do-it-all - but nothing well" committee
and pork-barrel-driven engineering. Now, after a fraction of
their supposed utility life they're creaky falling-apart
death-traps that NASA hopes can be held together for a few
more flight, given enough duct tape and super-glue. Two years
of fixes, and they didn't even bother to replace those
worn-out fuel sensors. "Oh we worried about problems with
those ..." - well you had TWO YEARS guys .....

Clearly the fleet should be quickly decommissioned and shipped
off to amusement parks for the kiddies to play on. Unfortunately
it seems nobody actually has a decent REPLACEMENT in development,
much less ready for timely deployment.

Seeing everything that goes wrong with shuttles, any sane person
would seek to employ the KISS principle when it comes to designing
replacement lifter and passenger rockets. Alas, the whole thing
is run by politicians, not engineers ...

Maybe if China starts outshining us, maybe ...

In any event, I'll hazard a few general proposals. First of
all, have two kinds of vehicles - a big un-manned lifter and
a passenger carrier - both of 'disposable' design. Sounds
expensive, but then how much time and money get spent trying
to refurbish shuttles ? Modular components could allow some
systems and instrumentation to be re-used on the passenger
carrier - strip the old one and put the parts into the new
shell.

The heavy lifter ... think something like an updated, simplfied,
Saturn 1-B with an option for adding two or three SRBs for extra
boost. Big booster, small 2nd stage, big cargo pod with maneuvering
jets - all remote/program-controlled. Aim at something like 150%
of the current shuttles lifting capability. The advances in
materials and techniques OUGHT to yeild a booster that's essentially
100% reliable for the few minutes it has to operate and cheap
enough (again, think modular & mass-manufacturing) that you don't
mind dunking it into the ocean afterwards.

The passenger lifter ... think of a really big Apollo or Soyuz
that can carry up to ten people and enough supplies for three
weeks. Use the same booster hardware as the heavy lifter as
much as possible ... uniformity reduces errors because everyone
knows what it's SUPPOSED to look/act like. Also reduces costs.
Various mission-specific add-ons could be included - manipulating
arms, satellite capture thingies, docking devices, whatever. If
you don't need the arm, don't bring it. If you do, it should
fit into a standard socket and electronic harness just like
the other accessories.

And KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID ! Spartan, minimial, rugged, reparable,
dependable. Don't try to make the vehicles do it all. It's quite
possible to launch specialty packages - construction hardware
and such - seperately, perhaps on Delta/Titan-class rockets if
they're not too big. That way you will have what you need where
you need it, when you need it without screwing-up your main
work vehicles with ten thousand messy options that will screw
up on you.

In short, decide what you need early on and then STICK with the
designs no matter what kind of political pressure is applied.
The KISS fleet can be justified, defended and popularized.
Americans like 'space' - they just don't like spending endless
gigabucks on questionable, dangerous junk.

Now I know American engineers can DO this ... but will their
employers go along with programs that won't produce the
lucrative cost-overruns they're used to ? IMHO these ideas
can be sold in terms of profit derived from VOLUME production.
Aerospace Inc has been doing much like early automobile makers
did - build one-off machines one at a time, no two quite alike,
everything hand-made and hand-fitted.

This has got to END and more of a mass-production philosophy
is desperately required. Instead of making one super-expensive
billion-dollar vehicle a year, make ten or twenty fifty-million-
dollar ones that are assembled largely by robots. The cost-savings
in the manufacturing process will increase profits - resulting in
manufacturers making MORE money than they get for the single
super-expensive rocket.

Finally, NASA needs to be re-organized, streamlined and
concentrated on space missions. Dump as many bureaucrats
as possible and try to find the kinds of practical can-do
engineers that were around in the 60s (may have to import
them from Russia and India, alas). Right now NASA is into
too many kinds of projects. The projects may be worthy,
but many should be handed-off to groups OTHER than NASA.
Keep NASA "on-mission". Such focus will pay off.

We CAN make space utilization both much cheaper AND much
safer. We've put a fortune into the space program and now
it's either time to make it PRACTICAL or just pretty much
abandon the whole thing until warp-drive or whatever comes
along.

The shuttles are still quite good, especially in comparison to
what many countries have. Lockheed and others however, want to build a
"spaceplane" (runway to orbit vehicle) that they can charge the US
government mega-(taxpayer)-bucks for.
I can't be the only person who's noticed that every time
something new comes along that the wizards want, they start having
problems with the old stuff, can I?