If the saturn family of launchers had continued, with the shuttleon a saturn, von braun wanted to make saturn reusable

On Monday, June 15, 2015 at 4:40:14 AM UTC+12, bob haller wrote:
Wonder where we would be today?

If saturn boosters had still been available apool applications could of continued. both skyabs could of been launched, the one in the smithsonian was space certified. only to be cut up for display

saturn 5s would of still been available for heavy lift

http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/satirift.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/graphics/j/juno5rec.jpg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwh8hjjzAKs
http://www.collectspace.com/ubb/Foru...ML/000880.html
http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/saturnv.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/satnc3bn.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/satsnc5n.htm
http://aerospaceprojectsreview.com/ev1n2.htm

Don't forget the Wet Station concept developed for the Saturn as well

http://www.astronautix.com/craft/satkshop.htm

Here's a TSTO-RLV with both stages winged, built around Saturn/Apollo hardware

http://www.astronautix.com/craft/reurrier.htm

We can look at the following TSTO configuration and estimate payload to orbit;

First Stage - S-IC

Length.... 138.0 feet (42.1 m)
Diameter.. 33.0 feet (10.1 m)
Empty mass 287,000 pounds (130,000 kg)
Gross mass 5,040,000 pounds (2,290,000 kg)
Engines... 5 Rocketdyne F-1
Thrust.... 7,648,000 lbf (34,020 kN)
Isp....... 263 seconds (2.58 km/s)
Burn time. 165 seconds
Fuel...... RP-1/LOX

Second Stage - S-II
Length.... 81.5 feet (24.8 m)
Diameter.. 33.0 feet (10.1 m)
Empty mass 88,400 pounds (40,100 kg)[note 2]
Gross mass 1,093,900 pounds (496,200 kg)[note 2]
Engines... 5 Rocketdyne J-2
Thrust.... 1,000,000 lbf (4,400 kN)
Isp....... 421 seconds (4.13 km/s)
Burn time 360 seconds


This two stage variant can carry 252,000 lbs into LEO from the Cape.

Now if we imagine stretching the 81.5 foot long S-II by 187.3 ft and filling it with liquid hydrogen only, and replacing the five J-2 engines with five nuclear thermal engines about the size of the J-2,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Rover

We add 280,000 lbs to the inert weight of the second stage, and increase the exhaust velocity to 8.3 km/sec.

This increases the payload to LEO to 532,000 lbs.

The 368,400 lb inert weight of the second stage, with say 82,000 lbs of payload, leaves a spare 450,000 lbs of hydrogen (extending the stage length). Feeding one bimodal NERVA type engine this stage is capable of 5.75 km/sec delta vee FROM LEO! This is sufficient to carry it to the moon for a soft landing, or to a soft landing on Mars!

A water supply found at either location would supply the craft with breathable oxygen and allow reloading of the hydrogen tank - for return to Earth! (and reuse)

In article ,
says...

On Monday, June 15, 2015 at 4:40:14 AM UTC+12, bob haller wrote:
Wonder where we would be today?

If saturn boosters had still been available apool applications could of continued. both skyabs could of been launched, the one in the smithsonian was space certified. only to be cut up for display

saturn 5s would of still been available for heavy lift

http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/satirift.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/graphics/j/juno5rec.jpg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwh8hjjzAKs
http://www.collectspace.com/ubb/Foru...ML/000880.html
http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/saturnv.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/satnc3bn.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/satsnc5n.htm
http://aerospaceprojectsreview.com/ev1n2.htm

Don't forget the Wet Station concept developed for the Saturn as well

http://www.astronautix.com/craft/satkshop.htm

Here's a TSTO-RLV with both stages winged, built around Saturn/Apollo hardware

http://www.astronautix.com/craft/reurrier.htm

We can look at the following TSTO configuration and estimate payload to orbit;

First Stage - S-IC

Length.... 138.0 feet (42.1 m)
Diameter.. 33.0 feet (10.1 m)
Empty mass 287,000 pounds (130,000 kg)
Gross mass 5,040,000 pounds (2,290,000 kg)
Engines... 5 Rocketdyne F-1
Thrust.... 7,648,000 lbf (34,020 kN)
Isp....... 263 seconds (2.58 km/s)
Burn time. 165 seconds
Fuel...... RP-1/LOX

Second Stage - S-II
Length.... 81.5 feet (24.8 m)
Diameter.. 33.0 feet (10.1 m)
Empty mass 88,400 pounds (40,100 kg)[note 2]
Gross mass 1,093,900 pounds (496,200 kg)[note 2]
Engines... 5 Rocketdyne J-2
Thrust.... 1,000,000 lbf (4,400 kN)
Isp....... 421 seconds (4.13 km/s)
Burn time 360 seconds



You're ignoring money. Saturn V was canceled because it cost too much
fracking money to fly. None of the above do much of anything to reduce
launch costs. On top of that, there would be development costs
associated with producing any of those variants. So this alternate
history crap where Saturn continued to fly implies that after the Space
Race ended that NASA somehow won back all of the funding it had
previously been getting specifically to win the Space Race.

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer

"JF Mezei" wrote in message
eb.com...

On 15-06-26 13:05, Jeff Findley wrote:

You're ignoring money. Saturn V was canceled because it cost too much
fracking money to fly.

In what way would the Saturn-5 engines costs more than SSMEs ? Were they
even more complex ?


They were simpler. But that's not what Jeff said. He said the Saturn V was
more expensive to fly, not that the F-1 engines were more expensive.


Any chance they could have converted those engines to be re-usable ?

Maybe. For example at least one had ben test fired 35 times. In service,
they probably would have been torn down much like the earlier SSMEs were
until more confidence was developed in their re-usee.

However, the problem is retrieving them. There was a least one Saturn V
variation proposal I recall that would have jettisoned the outer four
engines and recovering them. The problem though is landing them in
salt-water is not good for the metals and electronics. One advantage of
landing the SSMEs with the shuttle was they landed high and dry with no
impact damage.



Cosnidering the Shuttle needed that much power to get off the ground, it
seems to me like saturn 5 engines were not overpowered for the task.
They still would have needed 4 or 5 of them to get the shuttle off the
ground.

1 alone was basically equal to the 3 SSMEs. However its ISP was much lower,
which would have meant a much bigger tank than the ET ended up being.
Also, you lose engine out capability for post SRB flight if you only have
one engine.

For the SRBs, again, you could have used one each, but needed bigger
boosters.


I realise from another thread that there were political considerations.
But I am curious about whether the design of those engines was sound and
could have been reused for a new generation of ships (aka Shuttle and
other rockets that need heavy lift).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket...A_after_Apollo and the F-1B
thread.
Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarvis_(rocket)

There's been various discussions over the years to bring them back. The
problem is that they're almost TOO big for anything.


Seems to me like today, we are again in need of heavy lift rockets, so
it isn't as if Apollo was a one off thing whose tech would never again
been needed.

Except Apollo was a one-off.

--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net

On Friday, June 26, 2015 at 1:05:39 PM UTC-4, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article ,
says...

On Monday, June 15, 2015 at 4:40:14 AM UTC+12, bob haller wrote:
Wonder where we would be today?

If saturn boosters had still been available apool applications could of continued. both skyabs could of been launched, the one in the smithsonian was space certified. only to be cut up for display

saturn 5s would of still been available for heavy lift

http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/satirift.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/graphics/j/juno5rec.jpg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwh8hjjzAKs
http://www.collectspace.com/ubb/Foru...ML/000880.html
http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/saturnv.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/satnc3bn.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/satsnc5n.htm
http://aerospaceprojectsreview.com/ev1n2.htm

Don't forget the Wet Station concept developed for the Saturn as well

http://www.astronautix.com/craft/satkshop.htm

Here's a TSTO-RLV with both stages winged, built around Saturn/Apollo hardware

http://www.astronautix.com/craft/reurrier.htm

We can look at the following TSTO configuration and estimate payload to orbit;

First Stage - S-IC

Length.... 138.0 feet (42.1 m)
Diameter.. 33.0 feet (10.1 m)
Empty mass 287,000 pounds (130,000 kg)
Gross mass 5,040,000 pounds (2,290,000 kg)
Engines... 5 Rocketdyne F-1
Thrust.... 7,648,000 lbf (34,020 kN)
Isp....... 263 seconds (2.58 km/s)
Burn time. 165 seconds
Fuel...... RP-1/LOX

Second Stage - S-II
Length.... 81.5 feet (24.8 m)
Diameter.. 33.0 feet (10.1 m)
Empty mass 88,400 pounds (40,100 kg)[note 2]
Gross mass 1,093,900 pounds (496,200 kg)[note 2]
Engines... 5 Rocketdyne J-2
Thrust.... 1,000,000 lbf (4,400 kN)
Isp....... 421 seconds (4.13 km/s)
Burn time 360 seconds



You're ignoring money.

No I'm not.

Saturn V was canceled because it cost too much
fracking money to fly.

No it wasn't. No it didn't.

None of the above do much of anything to reduce
launch costs.

All of it does. You don't get that.

On top of that, there would be development costs
associated with producing any of those variants.

Those development costs were far less than the development costs of the Space Shuttle, the SSME, the ET, and other things that came later. This is well documented in the technical literature.

So this alternate
history crap

The Shuttle was Crap. The Saturn and its variants were not.

Neil Armstrong and others said as much following the Challenger explosion.

http://www.dispatch.com/content/grap...fff,q: 90,r:1


where Saturn continued to fly implies that after the Space
Race ended that NASA somehow won back all of the funding it had
previously been getting specifically to win the Space Race.

You are confabulating launch costs with payload costs. You're also ignoring the fact that NASA budget cuts started the year following the JFK assassination not the year following the Moon landing.

Kennedy sought to develop a new frontier which would allow the Soviet Union and the United States to compete with one another in peace in a new and exciting frontier of interplanetary space while avoiding nuclear war on Earth and the radicalization of populations.

JFK spoke of this while he was a senator and congressman from Massachusetts following the Sputnik launching. A theme he continued into his presidency..

JFK also was an ardent supporter of the nuclear airplane and the nuclear rocket because the technology could be applied to make high temperature nuclear reactors that would make energy too cheap to meter as then AEC chair Leo Strauss mentioned at the time.

JFK was unfortunately killed before the end of his first term.

Johnson, who worried about a Murder Inc., operating in the CIA, did what he was told for the most part, directing vast resources into Vietnam away from JFK's vision, and killing various civilian programs including nuclear propulsion, aerospike, hypersonic research programs like the X-15 as civilian programs.

However, LBJ did push to complete a moon landing to honor the fallen JFK.

So, LBJ turned the expansive alternative to military and social conflict into a man on the moon project by 1964.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...sident/376281/

Nixon, who was even more controlled than LBJ killed the Saturn program following the Moon landing (recall LBJ chose not to run in 1968)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOs7BjZrgqY

after he ejected Agnew from office for his refusal to support a reduced space program. Recall Agnew called for use of the Saturn hardware to implement the EMPIRE program to send a manned fly by of Mars during Nixon's second term using what became Skylab hardware with a manned landing on Mars following.

Nixon did what LBJ refused to do, Nixon pushed in favor of the Shuttle limiting human presence to LEO, abandoning Saturn and its variants and any journeys beyond LEO.

Following the moon landing in 1969 Vice President Spiro Agnew pushed for a continuation of the Saturn program and pushing on to Mars (for less cost than the Shuttle program). In response he was ejected from his office,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTCfm3-l0eY

and Gerald Ford replaced him. The same Gerald Ford that served on the Warren Commission.

After that Nixon was removed from Office and Ford became the unelected President of the USA.

Here's Senator Prescott Bush (Pres. Bush's Father & Grandfather) with Nixon and Jack Ruby back in the 1940s when Nixon was hired by Prescott to run for office in California to represent his interests.

http://jfkmurdersolved.com/images/prescott-nixon.jpg

Lowering LAUNCH COSTS puts pressure to lower PAYLOAD COSTS as the amount of payload on orbit increases dramatically and total budgets spiral upward to make efficient use of the growing lift capacity.

This paradoxically REDUCES INCOME FOR MILITARY PROVIDERS since the unit cost of products falls, and demand for military hardware does not follow the same increase. This changes military suppliers into space suppliers and ENDS THE POWER OF THE MILITARY IN WASHINGTON. This is spoken about in letters written by JFK at the time, and among other specialists after JFKs term in office.

Those who see a large and secret military as a means to maintain covert control of markets and resources, and keep population of undesireables in check, will do anything to keep this from happening.

For example, Ronald Reagan pushed for civilian development of the X-30 NASP and a new day for America that would lead to a shining future for all mankind on a larger stage beyond Earth, and a global missile shield protecting all mankind. Despite a liberal pay off near term for the military industrial complex, this too suffered from the same long-term undermining of geopolitical power for those who are in covert control of governments throughout the world. As a result, an attempt was made against Ronald Reagan and the NASP and SDI program were curtailed constrained and eventually abandoned.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZZnuJ_8Xs8

The US military has ascended from strength to strength since Eisenhower warned the nation against the Military Industrial Complex. In the most recent 2015 document from DOD the US military reserves ALL space launch capability for US DOD.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zw1PIErrTso

This will take space policy planning totally out of civilian hands and place it in the covert realm of national security need to know basis.

Combined with other bull**** purporting to claim that the moon landing never happened, and bogus stories about NASA and other civilian program excesses in the media, will end any serious discussion in coming years of a civilian space program, if some in the military have their way.






Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense

No its not.


-- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines,

Wrong comparison - airbreathing engines are much cheaper than LOX using rockets.

and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer

Not so. A pressure fed rocket engine requires tanks vastly heavier than a variable bypass hypersonic inlet.

On Friday, June 26, 2015 at 3:51:29 PM UTC-4, JF Mezei wrote:
On 15-06-26 13:05, Jeff Findley wrote:

You're ignoring money. Saturn V was canceled because it cost too much
fracking money to fly.

In what way would the Saturn-5 engines costs more than SSMEs ?

They wouldn't. Anyone with a lick of sense knows that.

Were they
even more complex ?

No, the SSME was vastly more complex by comparison to the J-2.

Any chance they could have converted those engines to be re-usable ?

Every engine was fired on a test stand several times before it was approved for flight. These engines are highly reusable.

Cosnidering the Shuttle needed that much power to get off the ground, it
seems to me like saturn 5 engines were not overpowered for the task.

Anyone who took a propulsion course for space launch in school, like I did from Garvin vonEschen at the Ohio State University, knows that the ideal thrust for a given launcher has a precise Calculus of Variations solution. So, engines are not over-designed or under-designed. They are designed to meet precise goals. The Shuttle ignored many of these approaches for political reasons. The Saturn and its variants did not. For this reason the Shuttle was a vast diversion of resources away from flying beyond Earth orbit, toward reinvention of manned orbital flight.


They still would have needed 4 or 5 of them to get the shuttle off the
ground.

I realise from another thread that there were political considerations.

The political considerations dominated space travel decisions following the assassination of JFK, the demonizing of Agnew, and the attempted assassination of Reagan. JFK sought to replace nuclear tensions with the Soviets with a broad peaceful tension that turned toward cooperation as we developed interplanetary space. Agnew sought to use Saturn hardware to implement the EMPIRE program to send a crew on a flyby of Mars during Nixon's second term. Reagan sought to commercialize significant space hardware and build a space based missile defense that would later turn into an expansive global community making broad use of space resources to support high living standards for all.


But I am curious about whether the design of those engines was sound

Very. The J2 was proposed for the Ares. The RL-10 is still used today on the Centaur stage.

and
could have been reused for a new generation of ships (aka Shuttle and
other rockets that need heavy lift).

Yes. J2 pumps feeding aerospace injectors and nozzles showed that engines of any size could be built with very high thrust to weight - about 1/2 the overall weight of a conventional nozzle - that also had significant performance advantages in comparison to bell nozzle engines.

Seems to me like today, we are again in need of heavy lift rockets,

Only if we wish to develop off-world resources and off world populations.

so
it isn't as if Apollo was a one off thing whose tech would never again
been needed.

Correct. Apollo was the low-hanging fruit. Many of the people who were against the Lunar Orbit Rendezvous and supported Direct Ascent pointed out that LOR increased complexity and risk and any savings were at a huge cost to follow on development of lunar outposts. Jerome Weisner was firmly opposed to Houbolt's plans, which didn't gain any traction until after the JFK assassination.

In the direct ascent version the Service module was to boost the command module off the lunar surface while a large descent stage about the size of the S-IVB landed the entire assembly on the moon with all three astronauts.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ect_vs_LOR.gif

The wet-station concept proposed by vonBraun and eventually resulted in the Skylab was to allow the use of this stage as a lunar base for all three astronauts to stay for up to 90 days.

The wet-station concept with a nuclear thermal rocket, with bimodal (also producing electrical power when not producing thrust) capability, could produce an extended stay base, and be used as an easy mission module for Mars exploration.

http://nassp.sourceforge.net/wiki/Future_Expansion

The dry weight of the Apollo Command and Service Module (CSM) is 11.9 tons. It carried 1.1 tons of payload.

The dry weight of the S-IVB is 15.2 tons and it carried 104 tons of propellant. Wet-lab concepts (without the Apollo Telescope Mount, etc.) added 9.0 tons to the total.

So;

1.1 tons - CSM Payload
11.9 tons - Inert Weight CSM
15.2 tons - Inert Weight S-IVB
9.0 tons - supplies/add-ons - Wet-lab

37.2 tons - Total Inert weight.

Now, to boost from the lunar surface directly to Earth requires lifting 12.5 tons through a delta vee of 3.1 km/sec. Using a 4.3 km/sec exhaust speed, this implies 12.5 tons of propellant. This raises the amount of payload that must be landed on the lunar surface to 49.7 tons. This means that the S-IVB must retain about 49.7 tons to land on the assembly on the lunar surface.

A total mass of 99.4 tons.

To add 2.95 km/sec to the speed of the system in LEO to fly to the lunar surface and retaining 0.15 km/sec for midcourse maneuvering requires another 99.4 tons of payload. This is a total of 198.8 tons of payload. This is 80.0 tons more than the 118.0 tons capacity of the Saturn V.

This could have been done with two Saturn V launches, by putting an extra fully loaded S-IVB on orbit to dock with the assembly just described.

The Saturn's cost could easily have been reduced by creating flyback boosters of the S-1 and S-II stages as well as the S-IV stages.

http://www.up-ship.com/eAPR/images/v1n2ad5.gif
http://www.up-ship.com/eAPR/images/v1n2ad7.gif

So, the winged S-IV stage would attach to the tail of the wet-workshop lunar landing S-IV stage and boost along a lunar free return trajectory that takes 3.5 days to get to the moon. The winged S-IV stage separates and loops around the back side of the moon and returns to the launch center one week after launch. The entire system is ready for reuse two weeks later at about $4 million (instead of $400 million) per launch.

The lunar landing S-IV stage after separation of the winged S-IV stage lands directly on the lunar surface and is prepared for use as a lunar workshop.. After 90 days (non-nuclear) the CSM launches from the Moon and is recovered.

http://www.google.com/patents/US3576...ecraft&f=false

Rockwell even patented a winged CSM version - which shows they were thinking about reuse of the system as well (and use of the method used to recover Apollo in actual flight is shown to be an emergency method of recovery).

With a nuclear thermal engine the SM module becomes a small mission habitation module for up to 5 persons - and the S-IV stage becomes a return stage for the moon or mars missions.

http://history.nasa.gov/SP-400/p104.jpg

A nuclear upper stage, with a 9.6 km/sec exhaust speed, imparting 9.3 km/sec delta vee to a 37.2 ton inert payload in LEO, requires 60.8 tons of propellant and a total weight at LEO of 98 tons - 10 tons less than the Saturn V capacity.

So, putting a Skylab sized lunar base module on the moon with two reusable Saturn V launches every two weeks, with 12 weeks stay time, and 5 astronauts per station means 30 men and women can explore the moon at a 6 locations. Interesting locations can grow with expansion of the number of modules.

Four launchers doubles this capacity to 60 men and women and 12 locations around the moon.

A nuclear thermal rocket doubling as a nuclear electric source on the moon - permits longer stays and return of the entire vehicle for reuse. Four launch vehicles with two week turn around and one vehicle per launch, with 52 weeks stay times, and 5 astronauts per station, means 104 stations on the moon with 520 men and women - and two launches per week (along with two returns per week).

We can see how this experience builds our skills going forward and leads naturally to exploring Mars and the asteroids in the same way with the same hardware.

On Friday, June 26, 2015 at 10:20:38 PM UTC-4, Greg (Strider) Moore wrote:
"JF Mezei" wrote in message
eb.com...

On 15-06-26 13:05, Jeff Findley wrote:

You're ignoring money. Saturn V was canceled because it cost too much
fracking money to fly.

In what way would the Saturn-5 engines costs more than SSMEs ? Were they
even more complex ?


They were simpler. But that's not what Jeff said. He said the Saturn V was
more expensive to fly, not that the F-1 engines were more expensive.

Jeff was wrong. The Shuttle was not less expensive than a reusable Saturn V.



Any chance they could have converted those engines to be re-usable ?

Maybe.

The F-1 and J2 engines were fired on a test stand several times before they were approved for use on the vehicle. No maybe's about it.

For example at least one had ben test fired 35 times. In service,
they probably would have been torn down much like the earlier SSMEs were
until more confidence was developed in their re-usee.

Tear down and reassembly costs only 4% of the original build.

However, the problem is retrieving them. There was a least one Saturn V
variation proposal I recall that would have jettisoned the outer four
engines and recovering them. The problem though is landing them in
salt-water is not good for the metals and electronics. One advantage of
landing the SSMEs with the shuttle was they landed high and dry with no
impact damage.

Which is why the winged flyback booster was proposed for all stages.



Cosnidering the Shuttle needed that much power to get off the ground, it
seems to me like saturn 5 engines were not overpowered for the task.
They still would have needed 4 or 5 of them to get the shuttle off the
ground.

1 alone was basically equal to the 3 SSMEs. However its ISP was much lower,
which would have meant a much bigger tank than the ET ended up being.
Also, you lose engine out capability for post SRB flight if you only have
one engine.

The SRB was a political deal Nixon gave to Fletcher following his **** canning Agnew and all his aerospace advisors. It was a bad idea to use the SRB and everyone at the time knew it.

For the SRBs, again, you could have used one each, but needed bigger
boosters.

The aerospike resolved many of these issues which is why NASA and Rocketdyne worked together developing it prior to the space task group issuing its report.

http://history.nasa.gov/SP-400/p104.jpg


I realise from another thread that there were political considerations.
But I am curious about whether the design of those engines was sound and
could have been reused for a new generation of ships (aka Shuttle and
other rockets that need heavy lift).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket...A_after_Apollo and the F-1B
thread.
Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarvis_(rocket)

There's been various discussions over the years to bring them back. The
problem is that they're almost TOO big for anything.

The J2X and RL10 engines are workhorses for interplanetary development and settlement.



Seems to me like today, we are again in need of heavy lift rockets, so
it isn't as if Apollo was a one off thing whose tech would never again
been needed.

Except Apollo was a one-off.

No, Greg doesn't know what he's talking about. The Apollo/Saturn was designed as part of an integrated modular interplanetary development system.

Had the USA stuck with the NERVA and Direct Ascent program, as JFK science advisor Jerome Weisner said, this would have been obvious to all.

Skylab proves that! Skylab got done for less than $2 billion in 18 months because of this fact!

The S-IVB could have landed a cryogenic Service Command module on the lunar surface, and then be used as a lunar base for up to five men and women for up to 90 days on the moon. Replacing the J2 engines with bimodal NERVA type engines would have extended the base time and improved payloads and range.

The chemical S-IV was a flexible module that was to be used for piloted fly by of Venus and Mars, lunar and orbital bases, and mars and asteroid bases and mission modules. A winged, nuclear S-IV adds considerable capacity and reuse to this mix.

http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-conten...raft-hires.jpg
--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net

On Friday, June 26, 2015 at 11:06:11 PM UTC-4, Fred J. McCall wrote:
Jeff Findley wrote:

In article ,
says...

On Monday, June 15, 2015 at 4:40:14 AM UTC+12, bob haller wrote:
Wonder where we would be today?

If saturn boosters had still been available apool applications could of continued. both skyabs could of been launched, the one in the smithsonian was space certified. only to be cut up for display

saturn 5s would of still been available for heavy lift

snip


You're ignoring money. Saturn V was canceled because it cost too much
fracking money to fly. None of the above do much of anything to reduce
launch costs. On top of that, there would be development costs
associated with producing any of those variants. So this alternate
history crap where Saturn continued to fly implies that after the Space
Race ended that NASA somehow won back all of the funding it had
previously been getting specifically to win the Space Race.


Hell, he ignores physics, material science, reality, and any number of
other things. Why not money?

--
"Ordinarily he is insane. But he has lucid moments when he is
only stupid."
-- Heinrich Heine

You're ignoring reality as you stroke your buddies. The only result is the warm fuzzy feeling you have for one another.

lol.

nasa sold the shuttle based on cutting launch costs, based on 50 or more launches per year.

nasa knew that flight rate wasnt realistic, and the shuttle was a bad idea. lacking launch boost escape, and all the other copromises made to keep design costs low knowing operating cost would skyrocket.

basically nas lied to everyone

On Saturday, June 27, 2015 at 11:17:38 PM UTC-4, Fred J. McCall wrote:
William Mook wrote:

On Friday, June 26, 2015 at 1:05:39 PM UTC-4, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article ,
says...

snip old MookSpew



You're ignoring money.


No I'm not.


Yeah you are.

No I'm not. The development of the Shuttle was way more costly than flying a Skylab type mission module past Mars and Venus like Agnew suggested.


Saturn V was canceled because it cost too much
fracking money to fly.

No it wasn't. No it didn't.


Yeah it was and yeah it did.

The budgets of Shuttle vs. Saturn don't support your contention. They do support mine.

Not to mention the odds of one
undergoing structural failure.

There were no failures of Saturn V launch vehicles. NONE

We got very lucky during the Saturn V
program.

I am happy there were no failures. I am not surprised however given the quality of the engineering teams involved.


None of the above do much of anything to reduce
launch costs.

All of it does. You don't get that.


That's because this is a .sci group and we don't accept handwavium as
evidence.

No you don't get it because you're stupid and ignorant of the relevant engineering details.


On top of that, there would be development costs
associated with producing any of those variants.

Those development costs were far less than the development costs of the Space Shuttle, the SSME, the ET, and other things that came later. This is well documented in the technical literature.


Undemonstrated.

Only to you, you buffoon.

snip MookSpew



Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense


No its not.


Still stupidly commenting on .sig files, I see.

Only the foolish ones.



-- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines,

Wrong comparison - airbreathing engines are much cheaper than LOX using rockets.


No, actually that is the comparison,

No its not.

because it's the LOX cost you're
saving by the expense and weight of the airbreathing engine.

By this logic Air is free, so LOX still loses since LOX has a cost associated with it.

Of course your logic is flawed since you're not properly accounting for things.

And
airbreathing engines of similar capability are NOT cheaper than LOX
using rockets.

Let's do a proper accounting shall we?

A SSTO LOX/LH2 rocket that attains a 9.2 km/sec ideal delta vee averaging a 4.2 km/sec exhaust velocity requires 89% propellant fraction.

So, a 60 ton payload launched by a 60 ton vehicle must have a take off weight of 1,091 tons.

An efficient thrust at lift off for this vehicle is 1,525 tons.

With a 73 to 1 thrust to weight rocket engine requires a 20.9 ton engine producing 1,525 tons thrust.

This leaves a mass budget for the balance of your spacecraft - largely tankage - of 39.1 tons.

A structure fraction of 4% for carrying that 971 tons of propellant around. This is similar to a super lightweight external tank.

* * *

A SSTO LH2 air breathing jet that attains the same 9.2 km/sec ideal delta vee using a hydrogen burning hypersonic scramjet - carrying the same 60 tons into LEO using the same 60 tons of inert structure - requires the same 971 tons of hydrogen and oxygen - yet must only carry 149.4 tons of LH2 since it obtains 791.6 tons of oxygen from the air.

This is a total of 269.4 tons take off weight. Nearly 1/4th the size of the all rocket vehicle.

It is propelled by a jet on an airframe that produces a 15 to 1 LIFT to DRAG. So the veihcle requires only 18 tons of thrust to lift off, and 36 tons of thrust to climb smartly.

With a 7.9 to 1 THRUST TO WEIGHT the size of the engine is only 4.6 tons! Nearly 1/5th the size of the all rocket engine.

The remaining inert weight is 55.4 tons which carries only the LH2. A structure fraction of 37% of the weight of fuel it carries!! Thus a standard weight structure is required.

Now at $20 million per ton for the engine, and $2 million for ton for the tankage, we have

SSTO ROCKET: = $496.2 million

20.9 ton rocket engine - $418.0 million
39.1 ton lightweight tank - $78.2 million

On the jet we have the same $20 million per ton for the engine, and $1 million per ton for the standard weight tank;

SSTO JET: = $147.4 million

4.6 tons jet engine - $92.0 million
55.4 tons standard tank - $55.4 million

If they were, the world would be littered with
hypersonic airbreathing engines.

Except the DOD has classified hypersonic airbreathing engine technology, making such an eventuality untenable.

And yet the world sees lots of
operational LOX using rockets

Because their operational details are not similarly classified.

and not a single operational
airbreathing hypersonic engine.

This is a contrafactual statement given the known history of hypersonic engines.


and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer

Not so. A pressure fed rocket engine requires tanks vastly heavier than a variable bypass hypersonic inlet.


Which part of 'cheaper' was it that confused you into talking about
weight?

The proper accounting of costs escape you not me.

--
"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar
territory."
--G. Behn

In article ,
says...

On Friday, June 26, 2015 at 10:20:38 PM UTC-4, Greg (Strider) Moore wrote:
"JF Mezei" wrote in message
eb.com...

On 15-06-26 13:05, Jeff Findley wrote:

You're ignoring money. Saturn V was canceled because it cost too much
fracking money to fly.

In what way would the Saturn-5 engines costs more than SSMEs ? Were they
even more complex ?


They were simpler. But that's not what Jeff said. He said the Saturn V was
more expensive to fly, not that the F-1 engines were more expensive.

Jeff was wrong. The Shuttle was not less expensive than a reusable Saturn V.

Mook is wrong, NASA never developed a reusable Saturn V.

As I said in a prior post, there were many *proposed* variants of Saturn
V, but the variants would have needed development money and time (years)
to bring them to fruition.



Any chance they could have converted those engines to be re-usable ?

Maybe.

The F-1 and J2 engines were fired on a test stand several times before they were approved for use on the vehicle. No maybe's about it.

Congress's beef was not with the engines, it was with the overall cost
of the vehicle on a per launch basis. Quite simply, Saturn V was too
expensive for an ongoing program.

For example at least one had ben test fired 35 times. In service,
they probably would have been torn down much like the earlier SSMEs were
until more confidence was developed in their re-usee.

Tear down and reassembly costs only 4% of the original build.



However, the problem is retrieving them. There was a least one
Saturn V
variation proposal I recall that would have jettisoned the outer four
engines and recovering them. The problem though is landing them in
salt-water is not good for the metals and electronics. One advantage of
landing the SSMEs with the shuttle was they landed high and dry with no
impact damage.

Which is why the winged flyback booster was proposed for all stages.

And would have cost billions of dollars and many years to develop.
Congress did not have the patience for that.


Seems to me like today, we are again in need of heavy lift rockets, so
it isn't as if Apollo was a one off thing whose tech would never again
been needed.

Except Apollo was a one-off.

No, Greg doesn't know what he's talking about. The Apollo/Saturn was designed as part of an integrated modular interplanetary development system.

Should have, would have, could have. The goal of Apollo was beating the
Soviet Union to the moon. That goal was far easier to accomplish using
LOR. Direct would have either required Nova (instead of Saturn V) or
EOR along with multiple launches. LOR was faster and cheaper, and was
chosen precisely because Apollo *was* a one-off. Funding was cut when
development was winding down (years before a successful manned lunar
landing).

Had the USA stuck with the NERVA and Direct Ascent program, as JFK science advisor Jerome Weisner said, this would have been obvious to all.

But that was *not* the goal. Have you even listened to the JFK
tapes????????

http://history.nasa.gov/JFK-Webbconv...transcript.pdf

President Kennedy: The only... We're not going to settle
the four hundred million this morning. I want to take a
look closely at what Dave Bell... But I do think we ought
get it, you know, really clear that the policy ought to
be that this is the top-priority program of the Agency,
and one of the two things, except for defense, the top
priority of the United States government. I think that
that is the position we ought to take. Now, this may not
change anything about that schedule, but at least we
ought to be clear, otherwise we shouldn't be spending
this kind of money because I'm not that interested in
space. I think it's good; I think we ought to know about
it; we're ready to spend reasonable amounts of money.
But we're talking about these fantastic expenditures
which wreck our budget and all these other domestic
programs and the only justification for it, in my
opinion, to do it in this time or fashion, is because
we hope to beat them and demonstrate that starting
behind, as we did by a couple years, by God, we
passed them.

Skylab proves that! Skylab got done for less than $2 billion in 18 months because of this fact!

Using surplus hardware from canceled lunar missions. Not a fair
accounting at all.

The S-IVB could have landed a cryogenic Service Command
module on the lunar surface, and then be used as a lunar
base for up to five men and women for up to 90 days on
the moon. Replacing the J2 engines with bimodal NERVA
type engines would have extended the base time and
improved payloads and range.

A delusional fantasy *not* based in the political reality of beating the
Soviets. That was the *only* reason Apollo ever got the funding it did.

Absent that funding, NASA would never have developed the Saturn V in the
1960s. If they eventually did get to the moon, it would have been via a
very different path than LOR and would have used launch vehicles far
smaller than the Saturn V.

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer