Comments on: Confidence and skepticism

By: TORO

TORO — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 03:34:36 +0000

There is no fear in cargo launching.

By: Edward Wright

Edward Wright — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 22:01:09 +0000

> We need a heavy lift vehicle because it is impractical to go anywhere
> beyond low Earth orbit (LEO) with a vehicle that can only put 5,000 lbs
> into an escape trajectory.

Look up Lunar Gemini.

http://www.astronautix.com/articles/bygemoon.htm

> Even to go to the Moon, it would be impractical to assemble a vehicle
> on-orbit out of 10 launches worth of supplies.

What’s impractical about 10 launches? Federal Express launches hundreds of flights per day. In the event of a nuclear war, the US Navy planned to launch 24 missiles from a single submarine — and they had to do that from underwater.

> With a shuttle-c type vehicle you could assemble a mission
> to scout for a settlement site with two or three launches.

And for the next six months, the 14,000 people sit around with nothing to do, while you save up the money to buy another Shuttle-C. But they’re still drawing paychecks.

> A mission like that would not just be a repeat of Apollo, but would have
> astronauts on the Moon for a week or two, flying and driving from one
> place to another. A real exploration instead of a picture postcard and a few rocks.

Okay, so you get a few more rocks and a few more postcards. A couple of man-weeks is not a whole lot of exploration.

To really explore the Moon will take many thousands of man-years, and to do that, we need to get over the fear of having more than one or two rocket launches.

By: Edward Wright

Edward Wright — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 21:47:05 +0000

> Say in five years a simple CEV is ready, with destructive tests and the old
> Apollo launch escape system (LES) or similar giving statistical confidence
> the shuttle never had …in other words, imagine a new, lower risk crew
> transport is ready.

What statistical confidence? All the evidence from past capsules shows about the same fatality rate as the Shuttle. Ejection seats and escape capsules are not magic bullets.

By: Cecil Trotter

Cecil Trotter — Sat, 30 Jul 2005 18:01:22 +0000

Simberg: “Michael, you say that like it’s a bad thing.”

LOL. Point taken.

But I would like to keep Japan in our corner, and a few others, as not all international space endeavour is bad. Purely from a US point of view however I don’t care to see us ever involved in any partnership that we are less than 51% in control of. And I don’t care to see us so closely partnered with Russia anytime soon.

By: Rand Simberg

Rand Simberg — Sat, 30 Jul 2005 15:20:38 +0000

I think their main concern would be that if we did that those countries would never cooperate with us again. Michael, you say that like it's a bad thing. I would actually consider an end to these international government boondoggles in space a feature of abandoning ISS, not a bug. And I did in fact propose changing ISS orbit to something more useful, a year and a half ago. It could be done with a number of Soyuz M flights, or with a low-thrust system, much sooner than it could be completed. It might even make sense to subsidize the additional funds necessary to allow Soyuz operations out of Kourou (probably much less than a billion dollars). But I don't think it would be the end of the world if we don't use it at all.

By: Cecil Trotter

Cecil Trotter — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:56:19 +0000

Dfens: “it would be nice to have a space station up there in case something major failed on orbit.”

The crew could always abort back to Earth from LEO in the t/Space capsule that got them up there.

By: Donald F. Robertson

Donald F. Robertson — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 22:13:03 +0000

Dfens, when the Clinton Administration broght the Russians into the project, they had to raise the inclination so that Russian launch vehicles could reach it. Presumably, since they are launched from the far north, they could not reach the intended low-inclination orbit with useful payloads. This involved a re-design of the Space Shuttle so that it _could_ reach the new high-inclination orbit. That’s how we ended up with the Aluminum-Lithium External Tank and some other modifications to reduce Shuttle launch weight.

— Donald

By: Dfens

Dfens — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 21:58:48 +0000

I was not up to speed on that orbital inclination issue. Wow, so many bad decisions… I know it is very expensive in terms of energy required to change the inclination of an orbit. Hopefully not too expensive to make station, what’s there now, worth keeping. A lot of good engineering went into it. You don’t realize how incredibly bright the engineers and scientists are at both NASA and their contractors. They have to be good to make things work under the insane constraints they deal with. Working for a contractor, I am very privileged to work with such extraordinary people, and just as frustrated to see them so often go ignored.

Cecil, I like the mission you propose, but even at that, when the astronauts hop in and do the preflight, it would be nice to have a space station up there in case something major failed on orbit. I think it would be great if station had a machining and electronics repair capability. Certainly any vehicle going on a long interplanetary mission should have such a capability. That’s the great thing about having people on board. We are adaptable and creative, with an amazing capability to overcome obstacles.

By: Cecil Trotter

Cecil Trotter — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 20:14:23 +0000

White: “In addition, this vessel should not land on Earth.”

If NASA were to adopt the t/Space concept to launch crews to LEO the CEV itself could become a true pure spacecraft intended only for spaceflight and never used for atmosphere entry. Except at Mars

By: Cecil Trotter

Cecil Trotter — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 20:11:13 +0000

Mmmmm, you have a point. But if I were betting I would bet they would never go for the idea of having to launch all of their ISS destined flights from Kourou.