Wernher von Braun was against Shuttle, but...

On 15 Jul 2006 19:39:49 -0700, in a place far, far away,
" made the phosphor on
my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:


The final Shuttle design, as we see it today, is a result of trying to
keep the initial cost of development and construction down. The only
problem with this is that it costs way more in the long run.

This is only one (small) part of the problem of the Shuttle program.

True, but it is the basis for pretty much all of its problems.


Rand Simberg wrote:
On 15 Jul 2006 19:39:49 -0700, in a place far, far away,
" made the phosphor on
my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:


The final Shuttle design, as we see it today, is a result of trying to
keep the initial cost of development and construction down. The only
problem with this is that it costs way more in the long run.

This is only one (small) part of the problem of the Shuttle program.

On 15 Jul 2006 20:07:55 -0700, in a place far, far away,
" made the phosphor on
my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

True, but it is the basis for pretty much all of its problems.


Rand Simberg wrote:
On 15 Jul 2006 19:39:49 -0700, in a place far, far away,
" made the phosphor on
my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:


The final Shuttle design, as we see it today, is a result of trying to
keep the initial cost of development and construction down. The only
problem with this is that it costs way more in the long run.

This is only one (small) part of the problem of the Shuttle program.

No, it is only a part of that.

wrote in message
...

At July 4th I saw in German TV an interview with an older journalist.
Yeah, a journalist was interviewd by a journalist. The old guy said he
once did an interview with Wernher von Braun. Von Braun remarked that
the Shuttle is a bad idea. "Its the second step before the first" and
it will have reliability problems because its too complicated. I always
thought that WvB was a supporter of the shuttle. I dont know the time
of the interview or whether his remarks were off the record. The
reliability issue is a matter of course. But what did he mean by
"first step"? A space station as answer seems not to fit as it only
helps to give the shuttle a better reason to exist. For me it sounds
like he had some launch system in mind. Any idea?

Perhaps he was in favour of first building some expendable system that would
be designed to do good science in LEO.

Pat Flannery wrote:
Bob Haller wrote:

shuttle was unsafe boondoggle from day one. nice idea cheap design


At two billion dollars per orbiter (the cost of replacing Challenger
with Endeavor) I wouldn't call it "cheap".


By CHEAP I meant they dropped LFBB and other features to cut devlopment
cost at the expense of safety and long term operating expenses.

It was a design by comitee the really did no job well and cost way too
much to operrate

In article .com,
tomcat wrote:
Wernher von Braun was a vertical tubular rocket scientist/engineer par
exellence.

However, if you look at *his* ideas of reusable launch vehicles, they too
generally had wings.

The fact is winged rockets, or waveriders if you prefer...

Winged rockets and waveriders are two different classes of vehicles.
Waveriders typically are lifting bodies, with no distinct wings, due to
the constraints imposed by trying to exploit a hypersonic shock wave for
lift. Winged rockets seldom attempt that, because it's difficult and is
unnecessary for their missions. The whole point of waveriders is
efficient hypersonic cruise... but winged rockets generally have no need
to cruise in the atmosphere at all.

Note that a number of winged rockets have been built and operated fairly
successfully, and nobody has yet flown a waverider.

...A large waverider
could be used to do a sub-orbital mission by carrying a large payload
to a distant city, place a sizable payload in orbit, or take a smaller
payload to the Moon...

Maybe someday. Not soon.

And, such a winged vehicle can return without a
half random parachute reentry. And, it could return with a sizable
payload too.

There are quite a few ways to return to a precision landing with a sizable
payload. Most of them don't involve waveriders, and a number of them
don't involve wings.

The Space Shuttle has proven itself despite Wernher von Braun's dire
prediction.

No, it hasn't -- its job was to greatly reduce the cost of spaceflight,
a task at which it has failed completely.

More than 100 Shuttle flights prove it to be a spaceworthy waverider.

The orbiter is not a waverider. Try looking up what the word means.

It is now time for a full HTOL (Horizontal TakeOff and Land) version.

"...the mass budget of an HTHL SSTO with its own takeoff-capable landing
gear never closes, even at infinite total weight." (Dana Andrews, then
of Boeing, 1994)
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

In article ,
Neil Gerace wrote:
once did an interview with Wernher von Braun. Von Braun remarked that
the Shuttle is a bad idea. "Its the second step before the first"...

Perhaps he was in favour of first building some expendable system that would
be designed to do good science in LEO.

He'd already built expendable systems that could do that quite well -- as
demonstrated by Skylab -- if someone felt like funding it, which basically
nobody did.

Most likely, he was thinking of a partially reusable system that would
gradually evolve toward full reusability -- either a reusable combination
upper stage / spacecraft to fly on an expendable lower stage, or more
probably, a reusable first stage with an expendable upper stage. The
latter would provide experience with reusability in a stage that faces a
less severe reentry and is less performance-critical; there had been
several proposals for recovery of Saturn first stages, all set aside
because it wasn't easy and the immediate requirements didn't justify the
added complexity.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

Bob Wilson wrote:

The wings were made larger than they should have needed to be otherwise, to
support cross range gliding capacity for polar orbit launches from Vandenberg
AFB. This was never used.


On the other hand, Faget's sharp wing/fuselage interface didn't pan out
in the hypersonic wind tunnel; a smaller shuttle that had higher overall
weight versus square feet of wing area had even higher reentry heating
loads and tended, to burn its wings and horizontal fins at the base when
the plasma vortices moved over them at their base during reentry.
The one that really shined in this regard was the X-24B type design that
had a far better cross range maneuver capability during reentry, despite
having a very high landing speed.
The overall lifting body concept led to not only far better hypersonic
maneuverability and crossrange, but far greater internal storage
capability for both payload and propellant per pound of airframe weight
than our present design does.

Pat

"Neil Gerace" wrote in
:

wrote in message
...

At July 4th I saw in German TV an interview with an older journalist.
Yeah, a journalist was interviewd by a journalist. The old guy said
he once did an interview with Wernher von Braun. Von Braun remarked
that the Shuttle is a bad idea. "Its the second step before the
first" and it will have reliability problems because its too
complicated. I always thought that WvB was a supporter of the
shuttle. I dont know the time of the interview or whether his remarks
were off the record. The reliability issue is a matter of course. But
what did he mean by "first step"? A space station as answer seems not
to fit as it only helps to give the shuttle a better reason to exist.
For me it sounds like he had some launch system in mind. Any idea?

Perhaps he was in favour of first building some expendable system that
would be designed to do good science in LEO.

I consider that highly unlikely. Von Braun had set his sights on reusables
since his 50s design in Collier's.

--
JRF

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check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and
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Bob Wilson wrote in :

Pat Flannery wrote:

Bob Haller wrote:

shuttle was unsafe boondoggle from day one. nice idea cheap design


At two billion dollars per orbiter (the cost of replacing Challenger
with Endeavor) I wouldn't call it "cheap".

True, although a lot of money was spent to solve problems and build
things on the shuttle which were never needed. The cargo bay was
unusually large to support very large DoD satellites, because policy
was made to have shuttle be the sole launch vehicle for all satellites
in USA, civilian, government, military. This choice was made to get
needed funding from military budgets.

The shuttle received no funding from military budgets.

The wings were made larger than they should have needed to be
otherwise, to support cross range gliding capacity for polar orbit
launches from Vandenberg AFB. This was never used.

Only partly true. Polar orbit launches from VAFB were never used. But the
shuttle's crossrange capability is routinely used on every flight to
increase nominal landing opportunities. The crossrange also greatly
enhances launch abort capability. Without that crossrange capability, most
shuttle launches would have only two intact aborts - RTLS and ATO - and a
big black zone in between.

As a result of these changes, the shuttle became much larger and
heavier. Important safety features, including a go around feature for
landing and viable crew escape system were deleted from the design.

Go-around capability wasn't "deleted" as much as "never in the design in
the first place". There were *proposals* to add such capability that were
never realistically going to happen.

--
JRF

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