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Space Shuttle: Was it worth it?
http://www.space.com/12166-space-shu...-promises-209-
billion.html Interesting discussion on the accomplishments of the Space Shuttle program and whether we could have better spent the $209 billion on something else. I personally believe that the Shuttle program will be remembered as one big failure, which not only didn't live up to its promise of making space access cheap and routine, but cost the lives of 14 astronauts whilst keeping the U.S. circling our blue globe. It's true that after Apollo NASA thought it would need both a space station and a Shuttle to lay the groundwork for manned flights to Mars. How strange than that almost all subsequent designs for a manned Mars mission called for a Direct trajectory from Earth to Mars, with nothing being assembled in orbit. I doubt that even now ISS could be used to assemble anything worthwhile, it's simply not designed for that. It's nothing more than a trailerpark in space! NASA could've used the $209 billion to design an even bigger rocket called Nova, already on the drawing boards at that time, using the F-1 or even larger M-1, stretching the design over a longer period of time to cut (annual) costs. At the very least a manned Mars flyby wouldn've been possible with Nova, if not a landing. Almost fourty years later, the U.S. has been turned into one giant oligipoly where Senators are simply paid representives of Corporate America. This culiminated in the law that directed NASA to design and build the Senate Launch System (a nickname) based on the components of the companies those Senators represent. This means that NASA is essentially a headless chicken, roaming wildly though the henhouse with no goal and no purpose. Those same companies are directing Congress to block NASA getting too involved with commercial space companies like SpaceX, hindering cheat and affordable access to space. In the 1970's the U.S. was so far ahead in space that no nation, let alone China, would ever dream of surpassing it. Now, because of Shuttle, the Chinese are not only catching up, slowly but surely, but are quietly dreaming of overtaking the U.S. by performing either a manned Moon landing or a Martian-flyby. Fortunately for them video technology has improved dramatically during the last few decades and their missions will be infinitely better recorded (and therefore remembered) than the fuzzy Apollo Super-8 and primitive NTSC color video captures, most of which weren't even recorded properly. It's only natural to try and make space travel more routine by making it more airliner-like, resulting in some sort of winged-vehicle, which should be spacious and have a proper toilet. But we now know that this simply isn't feasible since winged vehicles are too fragile for the rigors of space travel. The energies involved in going orbital are simply too great and since weight is crucial there will be too many dangerous compromises made. Any wing or tailplane will easily be ripped off during an explosion of the launch vehicle or carrier rocket rendering the craft uncontrollable. So my answer to the original question would be: no, it wasn't worth it, not by a long shot. I, for one, will be glad to see the Shuttle go, and hoping for commercial companies like SpaceX, Orbital and Sierra Nevada to take up the slack and to try new or at least cheaper ways of getting people into orbit. |
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Space Shuttle: Was it worth it?
It's true that after Apollo NASA thought it would need both a space station and a Shuttle to lay the groundwork for manned flights to Mars. How strange than that almost all subsequent designs for a manned Mars mission called for a Direct trajectory from Earth to Mars, with nothing being assembled in orbit. I doubt that even now ISS could be used to assemble anything worthwhile, it's simply not designed for that. It's nothing more than a trailerpark in space! The space station is in the wrong orbit to support a Mars mission. Plane change to support such a mission is essentially impossible. The ISS is a dead end in itself. Val Kraut |
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Space Shuttle: Was it worth it?
On 7/7/2011 9:46 PM, Dave U. Random wrote:
http://www.space.com/12166-space-shu...-promises-209- billion.html Interesting discussion on the accomplishments of the Space Shuttle program and whether we could have better spent the $209 billion on something else. I personally believe that the Shuttle program will be remembered as one big failure, which not only didn't live up to its promise of making space access cheap and routine, but cost the lives of 14 astronauts whilst keeping the U.S. circling our blue globe. I think it's going to be looked back on like the Navy's rigid airship program of the 1920's-30's and the Concorde SST. Sure looked neat, but wasn't the anywhere near worth the amount of money that got thrown at the concept. What is amusing is that the little, simple, Soyuz is going to keep right on going, having outlived both the Apollo and Shuttle programs. Italian sports cars were great; but the Volkswagen beetle had a lot going for it also. ;-) Pat |
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Space Shuttle: Was it worth it?
On Jul 8, 4:16*am, "Val Kraut" wrote:
It's true that after Apollo NASA thought it would need both a space station and a Shuttle to lay the groundwork for manned flights to Mars. How strange than that almost all subsequent designs for a manned Mars mission called for a Direct trajectory from Earth to Mars, with nothing being assembled in orbit. I doubt that even now ISS could be used to assemble anything worthwhile, it's simply not designed for that. It's nothing more than a trailerpark in space! *The space station is in the wrong orbit to support a Mars mission. Plane change to support *such a mission is essentially impossible. The ISS is a dead end in itself. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Val Kraut Wasnt the original freedom station in a better orbit for launching outbound operations to other planets? doesnt really matter by the time of a outbound mission ISS will be a dim memory...... |
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Space Shuttle: Was it worth it?
No.
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Space Shuttle: Was it worth it?
Dave U. Random wrote:
[etc. essentially money spent on shuttle not worth the $209 billion spent] For those of us who have been reading these groups for awhile it boils down IMO to two points: 1) Although shuttle *could* provide routine access to space; a) it was known that it was not going to be able to do so affordably, b) nor with a high degree of regularity (flight rate). a) Was known even before the first shuttle took flight, by anyone who bothered to look 'at the numbers'. But the trick is defining what you mean by 'affordable'. A good debate I have not seen here is whether or not Shuttle was putting people into orbit for less money than an Apollo capsule or a suitable expendable follow-on could have done, given rates of inflation etc. Certainly there are payload considerations that have to be taken into account when comparing costs as well. ??? b) Was learned as we progressed, painfully, coming to a head in 1986 with the Challenger disaster. NASA was trying to ramp up the flight rate, accepting higher degrees of risk than were warranted until it finally caught up to them. 2) When the Space Station went from Freedom to ISS, we gave up all hope of it serving as a construction base for flights to elsewhere, due to the high inclination orbit it needed to be in to allow easier Russian access. IMO today we read about 'direct access' methods simply because there are (currently) no other viable alternatives if the goal is simply jumping from one gravity well to another. If there were an orbital infrastructure already in place you'd probably see different plans being put forward by the planet (read Mars) chauvinists. None of this means that LEO and CIS-Lunar infrastructure build out is a bad idea. More like an untried idea I'd say... Item 1a in particular is symptomatic of large government programs. These things (so far) have not allowed for programs to 'evolve'; i.e. the shuttle once designed and delivered was not contracted for any follow-on revisions that might have made it both safer and cheaper to fly. Also there was huge impetus to 're-use' as much of the Apollo infrastructure as possible. The idea behind that (and with SLS as well) is that it was supposed to 'save money' to reuse existing infrastructure. What we have seen with commercial space and the fact that they are re-using NONE of the existing shuttle infrastructure, is that this argument is largely a canard. There is also a big difference in 'project mentality' between big exploration programs like Apollo and that which you will find in the airline industry. Shuttle adopted the Apollo paradigm because that is what NASA knew (and knows) how to do. For commercial space the paradigm is different and we are already seeing the effects. Could we have done something different with $209 Billion? Certainly. Could we have done a flags and footprints mission to Mars? Maybe and even if we had where would be today? Remarkably, pretty much in the same position we are in now, sans the ISS. There would likely be some type of space station in orbit, it would not be the ISS, nor Freedom, likely MIR-2 operated by the Russians. As for the US? Had we done an Apollo style Mars program? Barring a disaster, we'd have done it and now *still* be asking the question: "What's next?" and those big heavy boosters we'd have built for Mars would *also* be way too expensive for LEO / CIS-lunar ops. So you know what? Nothing on the planning boards in the 1970's post-Apollo was really 'worth it' IMO. But we picked something and executed a plan, such as it was. A 1970's Mars mission plan, with what might have been feasible, would still have us back here asking this very question today (or even sooner). Dave |
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Space Shuttle: Was it worth it?
Dave U. Random wrote:
It's only natural to try and make space travel more routine by making it more airliner-like, resulting in some sort of winged-vehicle, which should be spacious and have a proper toilet. But we now know that this simply isn't feasible since winged vehicles are too fragile for the rigors of space travel. The energies involved in going orbital are simply too great and since weight is crucial there will be too many dangerous compromises made. Any wing or tailplane will easily be ripped off during an explosion of the launch vehicle or carrier rocket rendering the craft uncontrollable. BTW, I completely disagree with this. The X-37B is the simple refutation of your blanket generalization. Now if I assume you are talking about a 'crewed' vehicle, maybe. I think again you are drawing overly broad assertions on future technology, which remains largely untested, based solely on the design trade-offs chosen for the shuttle. I would not draw this inference based on the lack of test data. Dave |
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Space Shuttle: Was it worth it?
On Jul 8, 2:30*am, Pat Flannery wrote:
What is amusing is that the little, simple, Soyuz is going to keep right on going, having outlived both the Apollo and Shuttle programs. Italian sports cars were great; but the Volkswagen beetle had a lot going for it also. ;-) Pat Except that as you well know, if the Russians could dump the dinky little Soyuz for something a little bit bigger and better, they would. The only thing holding them back from developing and flying something new, like Klipper, is money. At nearly 60 million USD per seat, Space X's Dragon will eat Soyuz's lunch, when it finally starts carrying people in 3-5 years. Not to mention, Dragon will probably also eat some of Progress' lunch since it will actually be able to haul *back* experiments, up to three or four full ISPR racks at a time as well as carry them up. So Soyuz is a dinosaur only being kept going because there well and truly is nothing coming out to replace it in the pipeline as far as the Russians are concerned. -Mike |
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Space Shuttle: Was it worth it?
On 7/8/2011 7:58 PM, Mike DiCenso wrote:
On Jul 8, 2:30 am, Pat wrote: What is amusing is that the little, simple, Soyuz is going to keep right on going, having outlived both the Apollo and Shuttle programs. Italian sports cars were great; but the Volkswagen beetle had a lot going for it also. ;-) Pat Except that as you well know, if the Russians could dump the dinky little Soyuz for something a little bit bigger and better, they would. They keep coming up with replacement ideas, but anything new needs both a new spacecraft and a more powerful booster, and there just isn't funding to do both at once. The Soyuz spacecraft and booster work great as a economical launch system that they have squeezed just about maximum performance out of, and although it would be nice to have a more capable space craft, it's the bird in the hand that's worth two in the bush. The only thing holding them back from developing and flying something new, like Klipper, is money. At nearly 60 million USD per seat, Space X's Dragon will eat Soyuz's lunch, when it finally starts carrying people in 3-5 years. Not to mention, Dragon will probably also eat some of Progress' lunch since it will actually be able to haul *back* experiments, up to three or four full ISPR racks at a time as well as carry them up. So Soyuz is a dinosaur only being kept going because there well and truly is nothing coming out to replace it in the pipeline as far as the Russians are concerned. They are thinking about replacing the engines in the R-7 booster with new engines and the upper stage engine with the engine from the old N-1 rocket: http://www.russianspaceweb.com/soyuz2_3_lv.html But again, no funding yet. Pat |
#10
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Space Shuttle: Was it worth it?
In sci.space.policy message , Fri, 8
Jul 2011 04:16:11, Val Kraut posted: It's true that after Apollo NASA thought it would need both a space station and a Shuttle to lay the groundwork for manned flights to Mars. How strange than that almost all subsequent designs for a manned Mars mission called for a Direct trajectory from Earth to Mars, with nothing being assembled in orbit. I doubt that even now ISS could be used to assemble anything worthwhile, it's simply not designed for that. It's nothing more than a trailerpark in space! The space station is in the wrong orbit to support a Mars mission. Plane change to support such a mission is essentially impossible. The ISS is a dead end in itself. Since the ISS orbit is at 52 degrees to the Equator, and the Equator is 23 degrees to the Ecliptic, and Mars orbits near the Ecliptic, ISTM that twice in each orbit - more than once an hour - the ISS's velocity is parallel to the plane of Mars' orbit. The ISS orbit precession rate is once every 72 days, so ISTM that once in every 36 days one of those occasions will have the velocity approximately parallel to the Earth's velocity. The launch window for a reasonably near-Hohmann orbit to Mars is, I believe, over a month. So it should be possible with chemical fuel to launch from ISS to Mars, making good use of ISS's velocity. Clearly, to be ready to go to Mars, we need rockets that can reliably be started at the pre-planned moment - the Russians are already fairly good at that. But ISTM that chemical propulsion to Mars and back is very difficult; propulsion with higher Isp is needed, in which case optimising the starting conditions becomes less important. The need, therefore, is to press on as fast as can be usefully afforded with VASIMR and rival technologies. -- (c) John Stockton, nr London, UK. Turnpike v6.05 MIME. Web http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/ - FAQqish topics, acronyms and links; Astro stuff via astron-1.htm, gravity0.htm ; quotings.htm, pascal.htm, etc. No Encoding. Quotes before replies. Snip well. Write clearly. Don't Mail News. |
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