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NASA studies new booster (UPI)
On Wed, 28 Apr 2004 15:03:58 GMT, in a place far, far away, Scott
Lowther made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that: Rand Simberg wrote: On Wed, 28 Apr 2004 03:19:47 GMT, in a place far, far away, Scott Lowther made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that: The problem is that the heavy lifter has much higher development costs, Undemonstrated ?? Only to someone utterly innocent of launch systems. Indeed? When has *anyone* *ever* built a low-cost launch vehicle? I don't know. When has anyone built a hypersonic hovercraft? |
#442
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NASA studies new booster (UPI)
Scott Lowther wrote: Dick Morris wrote: And how big do you think we need? Saturn V class seems to be appropriate for minimal Moon missions, and for major componants of Mars missions. I saw two Saturn V launches from about 3 miles away, and God knows I'd love to see another one, but I don't think we're going to be building anything that big again this side of 2050. But that doesn't mean we *can't* go back to the Moon or to Mars. The IMLEO of a Moon or Mars ship will be roughly 80% propellants, so a vehicle with a payload of 1/5 the IMLEO could launch all the hardware in one flight, then launch the propellants in several tanker flights of the same launch vehicle. No on-orbit *assembly* would be required, just docking and propellant transfer operations. -- Scott Lowther, Engineer Remove the obvious (capitalized) anti-spam gibberish from the reply-to e-mail address |
#443
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NASA studies new booster (UPI)
Dick Morris wrote:
Scott Lowther wrote: Dick Morris wrote: And how big do you think we need? Saturn V class seems to be appropriate for minimal Moon missions, and for major componants of Mars missions. I saw two Saturn V launches from about 3 miles away, and God knows I'd love to see another one, but I don't think we're going to be building anything that big again this side of 2050. I don;t see why not. A shuttle-derived vehicle can easily be in the same class as the Saturn V. -- Scott Lowther, Engineer Remove the obvious (capitalized) anti-spam gibberish from the reply-to e-mail address |
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NASA studies new booster (UPI)
Scott Lowther wrote in message ...
Dick Morris wrote: I saw two Saturn V launches from about 3 miles away, and God knows I'd love to see another one, but I don't think we're going to be building anything that big again this side of 2050. I don;t see why not. A shuttle-derived vehicle can easily be in the same class as the Saturn V. That's the hilarious thing about the Shuttle stack. It's a Saturn V equivalent heavy lift launcher (it can throw 97% of the S-V LEO payload into orbit, counting the orbiter mass but not the SSMEs). And it's flown over a hundred times. Nobody notices this because of the huge inefficiency, and general banality, of the Shuttle system and program. Just imagine what we could have done with 100 Saturn-V launches. |
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NASA studies new booster (UPI)
Scott Lowther wrote: Indeed? When has *anyone* *ever* built a low-cost launch vehicle? Scout; IIRC they used to go for around 1 million apiece. Pat |
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NASA studies new booster (UPI)
Pat Flannery wrote:
Scott Lowther wrote: Indeed? When has *anyone* *ever* built a low-cost launch vehicle? Scout; IIRC they used to go for around 1 million apiece. But the paylaod was pathetic, and that was when a million dollars was *real* money. -- Scott Lowther, Engineer Remove the obvious (capitalized) anti-spam gibberish from the reply-to e-mail address |
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NASA studies new booster (UPI)
Scott Lowther wrote: Scout; IIRC they used to go for around 1 million apiece. But the paylaod was pathetic, and that was when a million dollars was *real* money. But there might be some lessons to learn from it; it didn't need many ground support crew or much launching infrastructure due to it's simplicity (it was solid-fueled) and those factors allowed it to be launched with economy from fairly simple sites like Italy's San Marco site and our Wallops Island in a manner more like a sounding rocket than what is associated with a liquid-fueled satellite launcher. And with a launch success rate of over 98%, it didn't suck in the reliability sphere either. The reason I mentioned it was that it was one space launcher that was specifically developed for economy- in development, construction, and operations. Pat |
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NASA studies new booster (UPI)
On Thu, 29 Apr 2004 12:27:43 -0400, in a place far, far away, Michael
Gallagher made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that: On Tue, 27 Apr 2004 16:07:47 GMT, h (Rand Simberg) wrote: No .... The Atlas and (Thor) Delta families of boosters have been used to launch payloads into space for almost as long as we've been launching payloads into space. That' not sustainable? They've been sustained for almost 50 years. Not for any serious exploration initiative. .... not for serious exploration activities. The Altas family launched the Mercury orbital missions, the Agena target vehicles for Gemini, as well as the Mariner, Surveyor, and Pioneer unmanned probes. In recent years, the Delta 2 has been the workhorse for planetary exploration, most recently for the Spirit and Opportunity missions. The heavy versions of the Delta iV and Atlas 5, each using three booster cores, could conceivably orbit an Apollo-class capsusle, so they could be used at least for getting the CEV/Constellation on orbital missions. That's not space exploration? Not on the scale being proposed (or that many, including me, would desire). |
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NASA studies new booster (UPI)
Pat Flannery wrote
Scout; IIRC they used to go for around 1 million apiece. x10 The 1991 edition of Isakowitz' "International Reference Guide to Space Launch Systems" gives the estimated launch price in 1990 dollars as $10M to $12M for Scout, $15M for Enhanced Scout. ($10M in 1990 bucks is ~ $14M in 2004 per http://www.bls.gov/cpi/.) |
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