What if -- No VAB

In "Stages to Saturn", they discussed that the rational for the VAB (and the
crawlers) over "traditional" on-pad assembly was based on a flight rate of
(IIRC) at least 12 (or maybe 24) Saturn launches a year. Given that this was
never acheived, and that the decision could have gone either way, what would
have been the impact on both the Apollo and Shuttle programs? I'm not sure
that without the VAB we would even have gotten a Shuttle in anything like
the current configuration. I'm not sure that it would be amenable to
construction at the pad. On the other hand, perhaps the Shuttle is short
enough, and could have been designed to handle the strain of horizontal
assembly and then erection as was performed for Mercury and Gemini.

Any thoughts?

On or about Mon, 3 May 2004 11:40:59 -0400, Ami Silberman
made the sensational claim that:
I'm not sure
that without the VAB we would even have gotten a Shuttle in anything like
the current configuration. I'm not sure that it would be amenable to
construction at the pad. On the other hand, perhaps the Shuttle is short
enough, and could have been designed to handle the strain of horizontal
assembly and then erection as was performed for Mercury and Gemini.

Well, they did it at Vandenburg without a VAB. Not an actual launch, but
Enterprise at least got stacked.
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In message , Ami Silberman
writes
In "Stages to Saturn", they discussed that the rational for the VAB (and the
crawlers) over "traditional" on-pad assembly was based on a flight rate of
(IIRC) at least 12 (or maybe 24) Saturn launches a year. Given that this was
never acheived, and that the decision could have gone either way, what would
have been the impact on both the Apollo and Shuttle programs? I'm not sure
that without the VAB we would even have gotten a Shuttle in anything like
the current configuration. I'm not sure that it would be amenable to
construction at the pad. On the other hand, perhaps the Shuttle is short
enough, and could have been designed to handle the strain of horizontal
assembly and then erection as was performed for Mercury and Gemini.

Didn't the Russians assemble Buran/Energiya horizontally, and then move
it to the pad on a huge machine that looked like something out of
Thunderbirds?
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In article ,
Jonathan Silverlight wrote:
Didn't the Russians assemble Buran/Energiya horizontally, and then move
it to the pad on a huge machine that looked like something out of
Thunderbirds?

Yep. On the other hand, the Russians have long accepted heavier structure
and lower payload fraction for the sake of durability and manufacturability.
The Proton transporter doesn't even support the fourth stage and payload.
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Jonathan Silverlight wrote in message ...

Didn't the Russians assemble Buran/Energiya horizontally, and then move
it to the pad on a huge machine that looked like something out of
Thunderbirds?

Yes, and this was because the Soviets re-used a lot of the
infrastructure that was already in place for the defunct N1 program,
including the MIK assembly building (the one whose roof collapsed a
couple of years ago), the N1 launch pads and the transporter/erector.

I'm unsure as to why a horizontal assembly for the N1 was chosen when
this meant that they would have to build the erector. It's been too
long since I read my copies of "Korolev" and "Challenge To Apollo".
As a guess I would say that the Soviets decided their building
techniques were not up to building a VAB-scale structure. I'm
guessing that there's some fairly impressive engineering in a machine
that can lift a fully assembled 100 metre tall booster from horizontal
to vertical.

In response to the original poster's comment, one early (1960) Saturn
flight-rate (as mentioned in Murray & Cox) expected up to 100 Saturn
C-2 launches per year. That's 2 per week! As a lot of the early
decisions regarding the layout of the Launch Operations Complex (as
KSC was then known) were made with these sorts of flight-rates as a
possibility (no matter how unlikely), on-pad assembly was not very
likely to happen.

In turn, the VAB specs were driven from the crawler/transporter specs,
which in many ways were driven from the LC-39 specs. For instance, in
order to be able to straddle the huge flame deflector, the
crawler/transporter (CT) had to be a certain height, which in turn
meant that the booster would be a certain height, which in turn meant
that the crane within the VAB had to be a certain height above *that*
etc etc.

Finally (and interestingly IMHO), the Nova booster (at least the 12
first-stage F-1 engine variant) was never intended to be assembled
within the VAB. It was understood early on that even if development
of the Nova went ahead, the flight-rate would be so low (2 flights per
year, or even less) that on-pad assembly would have been possible.
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In article ,
Justin Wigg wrote:
Finally (and interestingly IMHO), the Nova booster (at least the 12
first-stage F-1 engine variant) was never intended to be assembled
within the VAB. It was understood early on that even if development
of the Nova went ahead, the flight-rate would be so low (2 flights per
year, or even less) that on-pad assembly would have been possible.

Of course, as I'm fond of pointing out, the Saturn V ended up bigger than
a lot of the early Nova concepts. And the Saturn V was by no means the
biggest rocket you could fit into the VAB -- the VAB's designers had to
fix its dimensions before they knew how big a rocket it would have to
hold, so they were generous.
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MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |

(Henry Spencer) wrote in message ...
In article ,
Jonathan Silverlight wrote:
Didn't the Russians assemble Buran/Energiya horizontally, and then move
it to the pad on a huge machine that looked like something out of
Thunderbirds?

Most Russian/Soviet launch vehicles are assembled that way.
Which is why rail lines run right up to the launch gantries
at Baikonur.


Yep. On the other hand, the Russians have long accepted heavier structure
and lower payload fraction for the sake of durability and manufacturability.
The Proton transporter doesn't even support the fourth stage and payload.

Which is the smart thing to do. I was thinking about the
Russian space program a bit and I noted to myself that a
lot of the reason why they did some of it the right way
was because they were so poor. America and the West could
afford to brute force doing something the wrong way and
still pull it off spectacularly (case in point: STS). But
Russia was so poor that in order to do anything they had
to do a substantial amount of it in the most efficient
manner.

On 3 May 2004 18:29:22 -0700, (Justin Wigg) wrote:

I'm unsure as to why a horizontal assembly for the N1 was chosen when
this meant that they would have to build the erector. It's been too
long since I read my copies of "Korolev" and "Challenge To Apollo".
As a guess I would say that the Soviets decided their building
techniques were not up to building a VAB-scale structure.

....Between _Korolev_ and Asif's book, the general concensus appears to
be that no Soviet equivalent of the VAB was built because of the
secrecy involved in the program. Had something that *big* been built
in or near Tyuratam/Baikonur, it would have shown up on the KEYHOLE
photos bigger than anything. By doing the assembly horizontally, they
could do so in a building that, if only two to four stories tall,
could have appeared as anything from a big warehouse to a medium-sized
factory, with nary a clue to the outsider that something like an N-1
was being built inside.

....As for whether or not they had the technology and architectural
wherewithall to build something of that size in the first place, given
the money and had the security concerns been eliminated, they could
have build their own VAB as easily as we did. On the other hand, if
they had that roof collapse would have made a far bigger mess :-(

....One other thing to consider: from what I've been able to gather,
you can move something as big as an N1 from assembly site to launch
site significantly faster horizontally on a rail transport than
vertically on a crawler. Far less worry about the damn thing tipping
over, especially if you're trying to get to the pad in some semblance
of a hurry.

OM

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Of note

Yep. On the other hand, the Russians have long accepted heavier structure
and lower payload fraction for the sake of durability and manufacturability.
The Proton transporter doesn't even support the fourth stage and payload.


Not necessarily always. The R-7 ICBM (and its follow-ons, the latest
being the Soyuz launcher) are suspended from the 'shoulders' of the
strap-ons over the flame trench. This provided a lighter structure
than a rocket that would have to rest on its base with hold-downs. It
also provided protection from wind gusts.

In any case, all US rocket stages were transported horizontally to the
launch site (by plane, rail, or barge) so that wasn't necessarily the
determining factor.

The EELV's now coming on line have absorbed a huge amount of Russian
engineering in their designs - horizontal assembly, austere pads,
quick-disconnects, etc. Some of this was obtained through license,
some through reverse engineering, some through other means...

Not to diminish the work of US engineers, but the Soviet Union spent
1970 to 1990 engineering a vast range of new liquid propellant ICBM's
and launch vehicles, at a time when the US was just modifying old
designs. So it is not unexpected that the EELV's would take advantage
of some of that work...

One other thing to consider: from what I've been able to gather,
you can move something as big as an N1 from assembly site to launch
site significantly faster horizontally on a rail transport than
vertically on a crawler. Far less worry about the damn thing tipping
over, especially if you're trying to get to the pad in some semblance
of a hurry.

Beyond which the weather at the russian site is terrible most of the year. the
rockets go quickly from assembly to pad on that rail and minimze trime on the
pad exposed to the weather
HAVE A GREAT DAY!