As the STS-114 mission winds down, some members of Congress have been talking about the mission, or even talking to members of the crew. SPACE.com reported that Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) visited JSC on Friday and took a few minutes to talk to the crew. DeLay in particular, SPACE.com reported, “noted the flight is the beginning of ‘the fulfillment of the president’s vision’ to return to the Moon by 2020 and travel on to Mars.” He also “made a point of pointing out the mission demonstrated what could be done by United States in space ‘with our international partners.'” The visit also gave Sen. Hutchison a chance to talk about NASA administrator Michael Griffin:
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison said Griffin’s directness and honesty are what she likes about him — and what she dislikes.
“He is looking at it as a scientist-engineer, so he is telling us every little thing,” the Republican senator from Texas said Friday during a Johnson Space Center tour with the NASA administrator.
The Riverside (Calif.) Press-Enterprise published an interview Saturday with Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA), chair of the space subcommittee of the House Science Committee. Calvert said that he was “disappointed” about the foam shedding problem and resulting decision to ground the shuttle, but insisted that the shuttle would continue flying:
Let’s not be pessimistic. It’s too early to do that. The shuttle is going to be retired in 2010. We’re trying to get 20 more missions out of them. We have one of the missions dedicated to fixing the Hubble. Without the shuttle, you can’t fix the Hubble. The rest of the missions are to finish the international space station.
Calvert’s remarks remind us that there is a difference between disappointment that something is less than perfect and hopeless resignation.
We’re used to seeing people trot out numbers comparing accident rates of the Shuttle versus miliary or civil aviation accidents. Those numbers invariably show that if we flew Shuttles as often as we fly commercial airliners, we’d be killing dozens of people daily. Of course, that ignores the fact that if we were making all those commercial flights with second-generation planes, from 1915 or so, given that the Shuttle is a second-generation space vehicle, a lot of them would fall from the sky every day.
Space flight, regardless of how often we do it, will always be much riskier than flying on Earth, for reasons we all understand. No place on Earth or a few miles above it is as dangerous and threatening as space. But the destinations sought in space are so much more important than any destination available to any commercial airliner. Let’s hope the Shuttle’s problems drive that point home.
Yes, I believe I know first hand why space flight will not be as safe as commercial aircraft. For one, flying a clunky old vehicle doesn’t help. For another, the rise of the project and demise of the matrix organization has lead to the almost total demise of reliability and safety engineering. Yes, they exist, but in such a pitiful state they are barely worth having. I don’t know when the last time was I saw a company funded reliability R&D project. They are also hampered by our runaway tort system that causes companies not to keep failure data for fear of having it subpoenaed and used against them in a lawsuit. And no reliability or safety engineer will ever be able to do an “independent analysis” as long as they get their raise (or don’t) from the program manager.
I remember the hell I was put through in my post-Challenger safety studies when I dared find and catalog single point failures. I was prevented from analyzing wire bundles outside of boxes by the “rules”, but I found one Kapton insulated bundle running through a box that had several thousand amps of potential, enough to blow the box apart with a single short circuit, and forget about redundancy. Then there was the loose nut on the 3″ shoulder bolt I discovered the day before the hardware shipped to the Cape. It was fortunate the manager of that equipment was a little old dude, or he would have definitely come at me. Fortunate for him, because they would have carried him out in a box. How someone could get so mad at another person and be so wrong I’ll never understand.
Reading between the lines, what the senators want is for NASA to go back to sweeping problems under the rug. They say they want a culture change and then get mad when it happens. Shuttle is a glorified welfare program. They don’t want to hear about problems, all they want is for the money to continue to flow to their states. It’s total b.s.
As the first winged orbital vehicle, isn’t the Shuttle a _first_ generation vehicle? Isn’t that the problem: NASA’s trying to make a first-generation experimental ‘craft into an operational vehicle?
— Donald
Flying “old clunky” machines? There are many old machines that work very well. The B-52, for example, is more than a century old. But with proper care and maintenance, the system works safely and well. The cost is not nearly the same as that which is required to operate a fleet of 21 B-2s.
However, the Shuttle is not ideal for space transportation. That much is clear. A plan is in place to remedy this (though I would prefer a commercial system, we’ll have to wait when this is practical). Fixing NASA, well, that’s another problem. Indeed, we have many Cold War organizations in serious need of removal or revamping, and these include NASA, CIA, and others.
But in this country, at least most of the time, politics and budget always trumps practicality and efficiency.
Yes, the shuttle is ‘first generation’. A problem is that, unlike with early aircraft, each ‘generation’ is extremely expensive. As a result the technology is an evolutionary dead end.
Expendable vehicles seem to have more room to evolve at current flight rates and government cost structures. Maybe some small companies will get the cost of reusable orbital launch vehicles down so they can also evolve as quickly, but I’ll believe it when I see it.
Donald, Paul: Yes, the Shuttle is a first-generation winged vehicle. I was going for second-generation in the sense that the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo vehicles represented a first generation. In any case, the Shuttle is no more operational than any of those earlier designs. I don’t want NASA flying anything other than experimental vehicles. Operational vehicles are the business of the miitary and the private sector. NASA read the tea leaves wrong when it hyped the Shuttle as an operational space truck, and it is now reaping the seeds of that PR mistake.
On the other hand, I’m not sure that the interests of NASA, its political masters, and the private sector are enough in synch to allow the seeds of NASA experimental efforts to bear much private fruit. That’s mostly because the interests of the private sector remain to be clearly defined.
Phil: I think you meant the B-52 is half-a-century old (and counting), not a century old. Your point remains valid. In the future, I imagine we will see vehicles that always operate in space, never enduring the stress of liftoff or reentry, living to equally ripe old age.
“In the future, I imagine we will see vehicles that always operate in space, never enduring the stress of liftoff or reentry, living to equally ripe old age.”
The Voyagers, and especially the Pioneers, are already decades old.
— Donald
Just a thought, given a 10 year development period and unlimited resources (hahahah) what would a second generation RLV with the same capacity as the shuttle (7 passengers, 30 tons of cargo, 1000 miles cross range capability) with the additional capacity of the ability to abort from any point during the launch look like? Would it still have silica tiles and RCC for heat protection? Would it be a stacked configuration or would it have its own manned booster? What would be the turn around time?
Just wondering if any one has ever given it any thought.
The shuttle was a first and probably a last generation because it was a stupid idea. What is the point of the wings? Is it to justify the existence of the pilot? Why go to all the trouble to accelerate wings, landing gear, and their requisite structure to 17,000 mph, just to bring them back to Earth a few days later? Isn’t the point of the vehicle to get PAYLOADS TO ORBIT? It costs a fantastic amount of energy to do that, why waste it on a huge amount of structure that contributes nothing to the mission?
And then to dead stick land a vehicle that has the glide ratio of a brick? What idiot thought of that? It is as amazing to me that the shuttle hasn’t crashed due to pilot error as it is that an SSME hasn’t blown apart during boost due to cracking of the turbines. The whole vehicle concept lives on borrowed time. It is a testament to the skill of the engineers who maintain, and the astronauts who fly it that it hasn’t killed more people or destroyed more property.
It is a bad idea, top to bottom. It should be abandoned and serve as a warning for future endeavors. If a reasonable vehicle can be assembled from some of its components, it would far exceed my expectations.
> We’re used to seeing people trot out numbers comparing accident rates of the Shuttle versus
> miliary or civil aviation accidents. Those numbers invariably show that if we flew Shuttles as often
> as we fly commercial airliners, we’d be killing dozens of people daily. Of course, that ignores
> the fact that if we were making all those commercial flights with second-generation planes, from
> 1915 or so, given that the Shuttle is a second-generation space vehicle, a lot of them would fall
> from the sky every day.
That ignores the fact that we wouldn’t be flying second-generation space vehicles, if we were flying thousands of flights a day,
In 1948, the air age was as old as the space age is today. By that time, thousands of airplane designs had been developed and tested, and the evolutionary survivors (such as the DC-3) had already made air travel fairly common.
>Space flight, regardless of how often we do it, will always be much riskier than flying on Earth,
> for reasons we all understand.
The evidence contradicts that understanding. The first few hundred airplane flights had almost exactly the same fatality rate as spaceflight has to date.
> No place on Earth or a few miles above it is as dangerous and threatening as space.
Non sequitur. kill you just as dead as anything in space.
The reason relatively few people die crossing the North Atlantic is not because the Atlantic is in any way benign. It’s because aircraft have been developed with sufficient redundandancy and margins that they rarely fall into the Atlantic.
We can and will develop spacecraft that have similar redundancy and margins.
> The shuttle was a first and probably a last generation because it was a stupid idea. What is the
> point of the wings? Is it to justify the existence of the pilot?
The “unmanned space” lobby strikes again.
Piloted vehicles are orders of magnitude more reliable than UAVs or RPVs.
The obvious safety and cost considerations more than justify the existance of pilots.
> Why go to all the trouble to accelerate wings, landing gear, and their requisite structure to 17,000
> mph, just to bring them back to Earth a few days later?
To avoid having to replace the vehicle and crew a few days later. (There are other ways of doing that, but wings work fairly well.)
> Isn’t the point of the vehicle to get PAYLOADS TO ORBIT? It costs a fantastic amount of energy to do that,
> why waste it on a huge amount of structure that contributes nothing to the mission?
Because the propellant burned to produce that “fantastic” energy is quite affordable. The labor and capital cost of building and launching expendable vehicles is not.
> And then to dead stick land a vehicle that has the glide ratio of a brick? What idiot thought of that?
There’s no reason a spacecraft has to make a deadstick landing or have the glide ratio of a brick.
Just because you don’t have a real pilot doesn’t mean you don’t send up humans. Justifying a pilot has to do with the part of NASA that came from NACA and their test pilots. It’s about the right stuff. It isn’t about real space exploration or development. We sent 11 test pilots and only one scientist to the Moon. If it had been purely up to NASA it would have been 12 test pilots and we would know far less about the Moon than we do today.
“Isn’t the point of the vehicle to get PAYLOADS TO ORBIT? ”
Almost forgot, the ability to retrive 15 tons from orbit.
Let’s put our preconcived notions asside aside. How would you build a RLV with the same capabilities as the shuttle but make it safer?
>>…we wouldn’t be flying second-generation space vehicles, if we were flying thousands of flights a day,
In 1948, the air age was as old as the space age is today. By that time, thousands of airplane designs had been developed and tested, and the evolutionary survivors (such as the DC-3) had already made air travel fairly common.
We aren’t flying thousands of space flights today beccause there is no incentive, economic or otherwise, to do so. The speed and capability increases offered by the airplane over its transport predecessoits were mich more significant than those offered by orbital vehicles over airplanes. Flying London-New Tork in several hours versus sailing for several days is an increase that is much more appealing than rocketing in less than an hour versus several hours.
In addition, the 1903-1948 period included two world wars and any number of smaller conflicts which greatly accelerated the development of aviation. The “space age” has seen nothing like that, fortunately.
In the future, all the current focus on how to get people to and from LEO will seem to have little to do with actual human space exploration. Space exploration takes place in space. LEO travel is tantamount to taking a little ferry out to meet an oceanliner. It is a problem to be solved and, then, handled routinely. In my view, the Shuttle was a naive attempt to provide that routine solution that stretched the limits of the technology available at the time. Time to move on, rather than rehashing 30-year-old decisions about a vehicle that is marking time.
Whether LEO vehicles have wings or not, are reusable or not, is irrelevant as long as they aren’t safe, cheap and routine. The objective is to get to and from orbit, not perfect some interest group’s favored architecture.
In an case, space exploration begins 200 miles up, on orbit, not on the tug that gets you there.
mrearl: “How would you build a RLV with the same capabilities as the shuttle but make it safer?”
Given your earlier criteria of “a 10 year development period and unlimited resources” I think a RLV that looked a lot like the current shuttle “stack” could be made much safer than the current STS is. If starting from scratch I believe an external tank could be designed that didn’t shed anything, insulation or otherwise. And again starting from scratch an orbiter could probably be designed that had a TPS that was more resilient than what we currently have. Other improvements in computer systems etc. could also be made at the same time. It would be safer, but not cheaper.
Not saying it’s a smart thing to do, it’s not, but I imagine it could be done.
Might the Shuttle “done right” look a bit like the Soviet Buran?
On a related note, this was in Tim Furniss’ column in February’s Spaceflight journal:
“Yuri Semenov, the head of the Russian Energia company, has proposed the resurrection of the energia heavy duty booster and its launch complex at Baikonur for NASA’s Vision for Space Exporation program to fly to [Earth’s] moon and Mars, which Russia has been invited to join. The one-hundred tonne to LEO Energia might cost $10 billion to bring into operation again, ‘but is much less than a new carrier,’ said Semenov.”
— Donald
bill,
You’re right. I meant the B-52 is half a century old. Thanks for catching that.
I agree that the Shuttle is a first generation winged spacecraft. I think X-20 fits in that category as well.
bill,
You’re right. I meant the B-52 is half a century old. Thanks for catching that.
I agree that the Shuttle is a first generation winged spacecraft. I think X-20 fits in that category as well.
bill,
You’re right. I meant the B-52 is half a century old. Thanks for catching that.
I agree that the Shuttle is a first generation winged spacecraft. I think X-20 fits in that category as well.
Donald: “Might the Shuttle “done right” look a bit like the Soviet Buran?”
It might “look like” a Buran, but then the Buran looks an awful lot like a US Orbiter doesn’t it?
Buran had no technological advantages over the US shuttle that I am aware of, other than autonomous flight capability. I doubt the Buran would have been any more successful than our shuttle had the Soviets pursued it and flown it multiple times.
As far as a resurrected Energia, I am all for it; as long as the Russians pay for it. I don’t care to see one cent of my tax dollars going to building Russian launch vehicles or facilities.
Good morning, Cecil,
I think the Soviet version featured several changes over the United States’ design, including liquid boosters (Zenit) and placing the liquid engines under the tanks in the form of the Energya booster. A “Shuttle-C” was an inherent part of the initial design. I’m sure that these were “lessons learned” from watching the pioneering American experience.
“I don’t care to see one cent of my tax dollars going to building Russian launch vehicles or facilities.”
If it’s the best and lowest-cost rocket for the job, why ever not? I thought you conservatives were supposed to be free market, and all that. . . .
— Donald
It is my understanding that the main reason the placed the engines under the tank was their lack of an engine capable of being re-used numerous times, therefore they might as well throw away the engines every use.
” I thought you conservatives were supposed to be free market, and all that. . . ”
Hehe, yes we are. But I see things like heavy lift rockets, and the capacity to build them, as strategic resources. You don’t see the US buying aircraft, tanks and ships from Russia do you? I’m sure they could build all of those we need at a very nice price.
If the US is going to use a HLV I prefer it be one that Americans are employed in building. We’ve discussed political aspects of implementing the VSE before, if you really want to have congressmen/senators up in arms and wanting to kill the VSE just export their constituents’ jobs to Russia.
Actually, I agree with you. I was just making sure I understood correctly that these free market principles only apply to things that we liberals think important!
IBM developed the micro-hard drives and I would bet money they used a fare bit of taxpayers’ cash to do it, however indirectly. They promptly sold the technology and manufacturing operations to the Chinese, which in the long term is very likely to cost many Americans their manufacturing jobs. Likewise, we happily export high-end chip manufacture, and increasingly design. If I object to that I’m a “Statest” liberal. If you object to exporting rocketry jobs, you’re a good conservative concerned about strategic industries.
Don’t get me wrong, I am on the free trade end of things, and I think that the current satellite contols are doing nothing more than shoot ourselves in the foot. But there does seem to be a bit of a double-standard in the ideology here.
— Donald
Donald: “IBM developed the micro-hard drives and I would bet money they used a fare bit of taxpayers’ cash to do it, however indirectly. They promptly sold the technology and manufacturing operations to the Chinese, which in the long term is very likely to cost many Americans their manufacturing jobs. Likewise, we happily export high-end chip manufacture, and increasingly design. If I object to that I’m a “Statest” liberal.”
Well I guess that makes me a liberal also, as I oppose those things as well.
But why do you disapprove of exporting high-end chip manf. etc, but want to export satellite tech?
At least in my opposing “all of the above” I am being consistent, to me your position doesn’t seem so.
Donald: “I was just making sure I understood correctly that these free market principles only apply to things that we liberals think important!”
Oh yeah, one more point. I can only speak for myself but this conservative’s support for “free trade” does not go so far as to be detrimental to national security. As I stated above, we could export weapons manufacture to other countries and save a bunch of money but that would not be a wise thing to do. Likewise I don’t believe it to be a wise thing to export ANY high tech capacity to any country and especially not to one that is less that totally friendly such as China.
“”But why do you disapprove of exporting high-end chip manf. etc, but want to export satellite tech?”
We have made difficult the export of _finished_ satellites. That’s what I oppose. With rare exceptions (Boeing farming medium-sized satellite bus construction to India), I do not believe that we have exported much satellite manufacturing (except indirectly as foreign purchasers try to avoid the ITAR regulations).
— Donald
“”But why do you disapprove of exporting high-end chip manf. etc, but want to export satellite tech?”
We have made difficult the export of _finished_ satellites. That’s what I oppose. With rare exceptions (Boeing farming medium-sized satellite bus construction to India), I do not believe that we have exported much satellite manufacturing (except indirectly as foreign purchasers try to avoid the ITAR regulations by buying European.
— Donald
>>“Yuri Semenov, the head of the Russian Energia company, has proposed the resurrection of the energia heavy duty booster and its launch complex at Baikonur…”
I suspecct Mr. Semenov would suggest the resurrection of the Romanovs if it would bring some American cash his way.
> Just because you don’t have a real pilot doesn’t mean you don’t send
> up humans. Justifying a pilot has to do with the part of NASA that came
> from NACA and their test pilots. It’s about the right stuff.
You’re revising history, Karen. Military and commercial aviation were using pilots long before NASA came along. In fact, Von Braun and NASA didn’t really want pilots. Their dream was fully automated capsules that would be “manned” only by scientists and “specimens.”
> It isn’t about real space exploration or development.
> We sent 11 test pilots and only one scientist to the Moon.
You’re confusing science with exploration. The dictionary says exploration is “travel for purposes of discovery.” Being a scientist is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition.
If you try to limit space travel to scientists, you’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Even if you’re successful, all you’ll succeed in doing is keeping space travel expensive so very few scientists get to go.
If you want to see a lot of scientists in space, you should be a supporter of human spaceflight for *everyone*, not just scientists.
Donald: “We have made difficult the export of _finished_ satellites.”
Yes, but I think China is slick enough to steal technology by examining assembled satelites.
> We aren’t flying thousands of space flights today beccause there is
> no incentive, economic or otherwise, to do so.
There are huge numbers of people who want to go into space. Every poll confirms that. There is a huge incentive to develop space transportation, whether you want to go or not.
> Flying London-New Tork in several hours versus sailing for several days is
> an increase that is much more appealing than rocketing in less than an
> hour versus several hours.
It might be more appealing to you, Bill. That does not mean it is more appealing to everyone. Dennis Tito would not have spent $20 million to fly on a jet from New York to London. Going into space was much more appealing to him, and it’s appealing to lots of people.
> In addition, the 1903-1948 period included two world wars and any number of
> smaller conflicts which greatly accelerated the development of aviation.
> The “space age” has seen nothing like that, fortunately.
Really??? Did you miss the Cold War? Korea? Vietnam? Kuwait? Afghanistan? Iraq?
There has been more wartime funding for space than there was for aviation. The US government has spent a cumulative total of one trillion dollars on space and missile technology.
> In the future, all the current focus on how to get people to and from LEO will
> seem to have little to do with actual human space exploration. Space exploration
> takes place in space. LEO travel is tantamount to taking a little ferry out to
> meet an oceanliner.
The dictionary says exploration is “travel for purposes of discovery.” It doesn’t require a special snooty form of travel. Millions of people discover (explore) the oceans on cruise ships every year. Some cruise ships today even have scientific laboratories, where Karen’s scientist friends can work.
> Whether LEO vehicles have wings or not, are reusable or not, is irrelevant
> as long as they aren’t safe, cheap and routine.
Who said they shouldn’t be safe, cheap, and routine (sic)???
> The objective is to get to and from orbit, not perfect some interest
> group’s favored architecture.
The objective determines the architecture. It’s one thing to say a vehicle can be cheap and non-reusable. It’s another to build such a mathematical contradiction.
> In an case, space exploration begins 200 miles up, on orbit, not on the tug
> that gets you there.
According to Billg, not according to the dictionary.
Edward, I am one of those people who’d love to travel in space. I always have been. But, I’m not willing to spend $100k for it. If a current incentive to make money taking people into space existed, people would be making money doing just that. I hope and expect that to change, but that’s in the future.
Dennis Tito is an oddball exception. If the Russian program wasn’t broke, he woulodn’t have flown. Besides, if space travel is limited to people who can spend $20 million on it, or even $100k for a 20-minute high-altitude airplane ride, it will be a useless elitist amusement. The improvement between sailing from London to New York in a week or so versus flying there in 7 hours is obviously much greater than cutting that 7 hours in a plane to less than one in a rocket. That does not mean that people would not take the rocket, assuming comparable ticket prices. it just means the shortening of trip duration isn’t as significant as it was with ships versus aircraft.
Whatever the government has spent on space and missile technology (they are not synonymous), there have been no wars that have sparked the development of human space technology like WWI and WWII changed aviation. However, the first 50 years of aviation and the first 50 years of human space travel are completely different eras. Attempting to draw persuasive analogies of one to the other is pointless.
Who said anything about “snooty” travel? If humanity is to explore and exploit space, then, by definition, the trip to LEO will be routine and insignificant. Yes, as you argue, any given individual’s first trip to LEO can be seen as a personal voyage of exploration, just as a Philadelphia kid’s first trip to the Jersey shore can be seen as a personal voyage of exploration. But, the shore is already rather well explored and the trip there is already routine and insignificant. Otherwise, the kid couldn’t go.
I don’t know if cheap and non-reusable is a “mathematical contradiction”. Nor do I care. I do care that we don’t postpone human space exploration while we all argue about how to build the perfect space vehicle. If someone builds a reusable vehicle that is cheaper than throwaways, fine. If not, that’s fine, too. It isn’t a religious issue for me.
I’m not really interested in what the dictionary says about space travel. The fact is that in LEO you are barely above Earth’s atmosphere. Our voyages to LEO are comparable to the first little trips on the local pond taken by the first human raft builders somewhere in Africa hundreds of centuries ago.
I seem to recall a war we were in recently where missiles figured prominently. The Cold War. It wasn’t so long ago.
Sarcastic needling aside, billg, I’ve got to complement you on this remark:
“If someone builds a reusable vehicle that is cheaper than throwaways, fine. If not, that’s fine, too. It isn’t a religious issue for me.”
It is ironic how often both science and religious zealots mistake one for the other.
Reusability most likely is part of the answer for relatively cheap access to space, just not the shuttle’s kind of reusability. It makes much more sense to build a reusable first instead of final stage. The only vehicle I have seen where wings bought their way on the final stage was that Burnside-Clapp black horse concept. I don’t know much about that one (other than I questioned the choice of Dan Raymer as the configurator).
Other than that, the winged orbiter has had more to do with feeding the astronaut ego than it has with science. It’s much cooler to swagger down the runway than be hauled out of the ocean like someone who has had their ride shot out from under them. If returning precious cargo from orbit was relevant, we’d do it on occasion. Talk about the stupid ideas that begat shuttle… Of course for the members of the astronaut cult (i.e. NASA), science has little relevance.
> I am one of those people who’d love to travel in space. I always have been. But, I’m not
> willing to spend $100k for it.
Were you one of the people who paid $10,000 for a VCR? In most industries, it’s natural for prices to decline over time. Why do people assume space should be different?
> If a current incentive to make money taking people into space existed, people would be making
> money doing just that.
By that logic, it’s impossible for anyone to be the first to make money do anything. Obviously, that is not correct, or we could never make money doing anything.
> The improvement between sailing from London to New York in a week or so versus flying there in 7 hours
> is obviously much greater than cutting that 7 hours in a plane to less than one in a rocket.
That’s not obvious at all, if you look at what people will pay for those trips. Value is not measured in units of time, it’s measured in dollars as determined by what the market will bear.
> Whatever the government has spent on space and missile technology (they are not synonymous), there
> have been no wars that have sparked the development of human space technology like WWI and WWII
> changed aviation.
Bill, I really don’t know what to say. The War on Terrorism, the Cold War (and a numbers of associated hot wars) happened. Saying they didn’t is just bizarre.
> However, the first 50 years of aviation and the first 50 years of human space travel are completely
> different eras. Attempting to draw persuasive analogies of one to the other is pointless.
Indeed they were, but the differences have nothing to do with the lack of a war or wartime spending since World War II because we have not lacked either. If your theory does not fit the facts, you have to change your theory, not the facts.
> Yes, as you argue, any given individual’s first trip to LEO can be seen as a personal voyage of exploration,
>just as a Philadelphia kid’s first trip to the Jersey shore can be seen as a personal voyage of exploration. But,
> the shore is already rather well explored and the trip there is already routine and insignificant.
It may be insignificant to you but quite significant to another person. Again, value is subjective, not absolute.
> I do care that we don’t postpone human space exploration while we all argue about how
Who said we should postpone human space exploration? You have my permission to proceed with exploring space any time you like. The problem is not that you don’t have my permission, but that you don’t currently have the *means*.
> I’m not really interested in what the dictionary says about space travel. The fact is that in LEO you
> are barely above Earth’s atmosphere.
??? So? Have you spent so much time above the atmosphere that you’re bored with it? I sure haven’t.
> Other than that, the winged orbiter has had more to do with feeding the astronaut ego than it has with science.
We do space travel for purposes other than science? Horrors! Next thing, you’ll tell me people fly airplanes and drive boats for reasons other than science!
> It’s much cooler to swagger down the runway than be hauled out of the ocean like someone who has
> had their ride shot out from under them.
Yes, and much safer, cheaper, and reliable, too.
You seem awfully bothered by the fact that someone might find it fun, though. Are you a Puritan, by any chance?
> Of course for the members of the astronaut cult (i.e. NASA), science has little relevance.
That would be a big surprise to those astronauts who are scientists. But even if that were true, so what? Do you believe scientists are the only people who have a right to go into space?
1. Military missiles and human spaceflight are separate technologies. They’re related in that both currently use rockets and in that NASA and DoD cooperate, but to argue that the Cold War accelerated the development of human space flight on a par with the world war’s acceleration of aviation is specious. After 45 years, we are flying only a handful of crewed spaceflights each year. Fourty-five years after the Wrights, it was a different story.
2. I’ve stated my position on reusability; I don’t care. That’s hardly zealotry. If it costs more to get people into space using a reusable vehicle than a throwaway alternative, use the throwaway. Or, vice versa. (For what it’s worth, the Shuttle can more reasonably be described as rebuildable, not reusable. We tried, it didn’t all work out. Stick a fork in it and move on. )
Ascribing the wings on the Orbiter to pilot ego seems more than a bit hysterical. If you are going for reusablilty, wings are an obvious approach. Since science is a result of, not a primary driver for, human spaceflight, it doesn’t make much sense to link the Shuttle’s wings and science.
3. I don’t assume the cost of private spaceflight will remain astronomically expensive. But, to date, projected prices are absurd. The economic factors that drive down the prices of digital equipment such as VCR’s will not apply to private spaceflight.
4. It seems perfectly apparent to me that doing London-New York in 7 hours versus 7 days is much more of an increase than doing London-New York in 1 hour versus 7 hours. Concorde is an example of a transport technology that offered faster trips but never became a serious factor in commercial aviation. Paying $400 or so for a 7-hour flight seemed more rational to almost everyone than paying $3000 to get to the same place in 3 hours. If my goal is to fly on a rocket, regardless of destination, my consideration of price will be different than if my goal is to get to a specific destination, regardless of method. In other words, if spaceflight is to compete with existing transport technology, it will need to be priced competitively. If it is to be only a joyriding stunt, then it will be priced differently.
5. I didn’t argue that wars haven’t taken place. i argued that human spaceflight has not been advanced by those wars as aviation was by the world wars. Our fear of war has advanced missile technology, not human spaceflight. I don’t see any crewed military vehicles in orbit or on the Moon.
6. It’s silly to argue about subjective value. etc. The fact is this: That kid could not have gone to the Jersey shore unless someone else had already explored the shore and created a transport network that makes the trip routine and insignificant. It isn’t important that the trip is significant and has subjective value for the kid, because the kid had nothing to do with the initial exploration and opening up of the shore.
7. Someone’s degree of boredom has nothing at all to do with the size of the Universe. LEO travel is, and always will be, only the first step. Getting to LEO might be fun, but it is spaceflight only in the sense that driving around the block is auto travel.
Regarding 1, the fact that the MX missile, Titan (34 and IV), and shuttle all use solid boosters was more than coincidental. Also, if you start poking around looking at who is developing life support equipment for space vehicles (not that there’s a lot of that happening these days) it is generally the same companies using much the same hardware they’ve already proven in commercial and military aircraft.
Personally I don’t think it is much of a stretch to assign the failure of a vehicle to perform in regard to safety and reliability to the fading of these disciplines within engineering, which has been ongoing since the early ’80s (at least to the degree I have been aware of it). To me, it seems more reasonable to associate reliability and safety of a vehicle to engineering disciplines with the same names rather than to something as esoteric as what generation something is or whether or not it looks exactly like this or that missile or rocket.
With regard to item number 2, if you were older, had a better grasp of history, or perhaps if you just had a better memory, you would recall a time when the theory that wings were the product of astronaut ego rather than reasoned analysis was very mainstream.
If you look at this chart you realize, of course, that the difference in the lifting capacity of the current shuttle vs. the first option (reading left to right) is the wings, gear, and associated structure the current shuttle takes to orbit, right? So, I’m not talking about some trivial engineering detail here. I’m talking about the kinds of fundamental design decisions, which, if you don’t make the right call, can destroy or severely limit the usefulness of a vehicle. I suppose one man’s hysteria can be another man’s paycheck.
I could be wrong, but my understanding is that the Shuttle’s wings were a military requirement, tacked on so that the Air Force would lend political support for (or at least not fight) the effort. The idea was that the Shuttle could launch, inspect a Soviet satellite, and reenter with enough cross-range to reach the launching site, all in one orbit, hopefully escaping the Soviets’ notice. (I always thought that rather unlikely, but I freely admit that I don’t have a military mind or really understand orbital mechanics.) Because of this theoretical capability, the Soviets insisted on counting the Shuttle as a strategic weapon during arms control talks.
— Donald
Donald: “We have made difficult the export of _finished_ satellites.”
Cecil: Yes, but I think China is slick enough to steal technology by examining assembled satelites.
Okay, then let’s ban satellite sales to China. Making satellite sales to Canada and Japan so difficult they turn to European manufacturers is simply silly, not to speak of stupid and insane.
Donald “Okay, then let’s ban satellite sales to China. Making satellite sales to Canada and Japan so difficult they turn to European manufacturers is simply silly, not to speak of stupid and insane.”
So you’re saying that if our “allies” are eager to sell the rope to hang us with we should jump to the head of the line and yell “no, buy it from us”?
Maybe we should instead make a stronger effort to convince our “allies” not to sell the rope in the first place.
I dispute the whole concept that a civilian communications satellite is a “rope to hang ourselves with.”
While I can conceive of situations where a civilian satellite might be used as a passive weapon, making a foreign army more efficient, that is true of any communications technology. We don’t seem to have any trouble selling fiber optic cable and switches to the Chinese, let alone third-parties, and it’s a lot easier for me to see a difficult-to-jam fiber optic cable as a weapon than a relatively low-powered, eminently jamable comsat. We don’t seem to have any trouble selling the Chinese civilian airliners that could readily be converted to tankers to increase the efficiency of the Chinese air force. I believe that Boeing has a lot of their 747 conversion to freighter work done in China.
I believe that even the author of the law now admits that it was a mistake and is trying to find some politically expedient (meaning non-embarrassing to Republican) way to water it down.
— Donald
I’m not sure what the shuttle’s wings would have to do with the mission you mentioned, but my own memory seems to get more holes in it every day, so maybe I’m forgetting something. Frankly I didn’t remember the old arguement about the shuttle’s wings being due to asronaut egos until just recently when I was trying to remember what drove that feature in the first place. It is odd, however, how something so controversial at the time could become so conventional now. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, including me.
One of the greatest advantages the US military has over other nations militaries is its C3 (Command, Control, and Communication) capabilities, so yes a communications satellite is an enormous military asset.
As for fiber optics etc. sales to China I oppose those as well, as I stated above “I don’t believe it to be a wise thing to export ANY high tech capacity” to China.
Dfens: The wings allow “cross range.” I’ve forgotten the exact figures, but the Earth rotates a few hundred kilometers in the ninety minutes that it takes to complete one orbit. Once it is launched, the Shuttle is locked into an orbital plane, meaning that after completing its orbit it would come down at the same point _in space_ relative to Earth’s center that it took off from. Meanwhile, the Earth’s surface will have rotated, taking the actual location of the launch facility X-hundred kilometers to the east. So, the Shuttle was designed to glide a sufficient distance to make that up and land at the same facility it was launched from after one orbit.
Since NASA never envisioned single-orbit flights they never wanted wings on the Shuttle. Early Shuttle drawings looked more like the lifting body vehicles tested in the early 1970s than what we actually got. It was one more compromise that NASA had to make to get the vehicle they wanted. . . .
— Donald
Dfens:
I’m not sure what your point is about “mainstream” arguments about wings and astronaut egos. I’m not a particular fan of the Shuttle’s wings because I don’t think there’s been much of a return for their use. In other words, what did those wings let us do that we couldn’t otherwise do, except land the Orbiter on runways? Of course, that wouldn’t be an issue if the Shuttle really had lived up to cost expectations.
But, as far as I’m concerned, the Shuttle is water over the bridge. The only question is when it stops flying. At the latest, that’s 210. If the VSE rollout includes an SDV cargo carrier that can loft ISS components with minimal or no alteration, we might see that last flight much sooner.
Donald is right. The delta wing design of the present orbiter is the result of a military requirment that that the shuttle be able to land at the launch site after only one orbit. The orbiter’s lifting capasity and return payload capasity was also a military requirement Making the orditer twice as big as origanly plannedby NASA.
In the early 1970’s NASA proposed to the White House a plan for a space station, Mars expaditions and a shuttle to support them. The Nixion administration, seing space as a “Kennedy program” was not supporting any of it. They even cut out two moon missions.
To salvage something NASA meet with the DoD and private contractors like Grummond and Martin in Williamsburg and cut a deal that would save the shuttle by having it become “all tings to all people”. If you remember the shuttle was supposed to take over the launching of all government and most civilian satalites. The DoD had it’s own launch site at Vandenberg complete and ready for it’s first launch at the Challenger accident.
After the Challenger accident was when people finaly woke up and saw that it was crazy to have a crew of 5 to 7 launch a couple of satalites! The DoD abanded the shuttle leaving NASA with a manned space craft they essentaly did want! But it was the only thing they had. The space station was proposed by the Reagan administration as a way to give some purpose to the shuttle at all.
If memory serves (debatable these days), the crossrange capability is there at DoD insistence. In addition to checking out Soviet satellites, they also wanted to use it to loft military satellites into polar orbit. Hence, the Vandenburg facility.
I think the astronaut ego factor is a bit narrow. Wings are sexy. They’ve got a large constituency outside the tiny astronaut community. (USAF, for instance.) A lot of people grew up dreaming of stainless steel spaceships with sweptback wings.
Hopefully, people will begin to understand that wings on spaceships are only useful if that vehicle needs to fly in an atmosphere. If the vehicle is not going to enter atmosphere, or doesn’t need to fly in an atmosphere, you obviously don’t need wings. And then, their usefulness needs to be evaluated against cost and design implications.
Most of the alternative Shuttle designs that I recall were for vehicles much larger than the eventual Shuttle. In particular, one involved a larger winged orbiter carried aloft and launched from the back (or side?) of a 747-sized winged and crewed carrier vehicle.
Of course, one can’t assume that every artist’s sketch that NASA or a contractor toss out repesents an actual design proposal under serious considertion.
Oh, ok, so they were claiming they could quickly roll the shuttle out and launch it. Snatch a foreign satellite out of the sky in one orbit and return before anyone knew it happened. Sounds pretty laughable now, doesn’t it? The list of lies they told to sell that program is probably a lot longer than we’ll ever know.
That’s one of the problems with proposals now. You lie your ass off to get the program, fail to perform because you proposed the impossible (or something you never intended to actually do, more likely), and get rewarded for your failure with additional funding and a schedule slide. Pretty standard stuff these days. Dare to tell the truth and you’ll never win.
Of course, the secret to success is to tell the lies the customer dearly wants to hear. That’s the key. Otherwise they won’t suspend their disbelief. I remember one time being at a meeting where a guy was lying to some Navy officers. I looked around the room to see if anyone was going to call b.s., but every face in the room was filled with rapture. Mouths open, eyes wide, pupils dilated, and I’m sitting there thinking, “are they all a bunch of abject morons?” But the guy was telling them what they wanted to hear, and all they say was, “wow!”
Maybe it is a flaw in my raising, but I could just never do that.
> I think the astronaut ego factor is a bit narrow. Wings are sexy. They’ve got a large constituency
> outside the tiny astronaut community. (USAF, for instance.) A lot of people grew up dreaming of
> stainless steel spaceships with sweptback wings.
These claims are getting goofy. Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo astronauts didn’t have wings on their rockets, and they had no trouble getting sex.
> Hopefully, people will begin to understand that wings on spaceships are only useful if that
> vehicle needs to fly in an atmosphere.
Who do you think doesn’t understand that? Certainly no one involved in designing space vehicles.
> 1. Military missiles and human spaceflight are separate technologies.
Since you keep talking about ELVs, you need to look at where those ELVs came from. Atlas, Titan, Delta — they all started as military missiles. Even the Saturns started with work Von Braun was doing for the Army.
> 3. I don’t assume the cost of private spaceflight will remain astronomically expensive. But, to date, projected
> prices are absurd. The economic factors that drive down the prices of digital equipment such as VCR’s will
> not apply to private spaceflight.
Why is it “absurd” to think the laws of economics apply to spaceflight?
You might as well suggest that the laws of physics do not apply to spaceflight.
> In other words, if spaceflight is to compete with existing transport technology, it will need to be
> priced competitively. If it is to be only a joyriding stunt, then it will be priced differently.
“Only a joyriding stunt”? What do you have against joy?
> 5. I didn’t argue that wars haven’t taken place. i argued that human spaceflight has not been
> advanced by those wars as aviation was by the world wars.
By 1912, thousands of people had already flown in airplanes. You can’t ascribe that to the World Wars because it happened before the First World War. Sorry, but the idea that aviation progress only happened during wartime is a myth.
> Our fear of war has advanced missile technology, not human spaceflight. I don’t see any crewed
> military vehicles in orbit or on the Moon.
Which is not due to lack of military investment in space. It was a deliberate policy decision. Like the decision not to have US military forces in Antarctica. It’s not because we couldn’t afford to have them, if we chose to.
> 7. Someone’s degree of boredom has nothing at all to do with the size of the Universe. LEO travel is, and
> always will be, only the first step. Getting to LEO might be fun, but it is spaceflight only in the sense that
> driving around the block is auto travel.
No, LEO is not the first step. It’s the second step, at least.
Do you remember the story of the tortoise and the hare? Just because you’re anxious to immediately head out for the Moon, Mars, or Alpha Centauri doesn’t mean you’ll be the first to get there.
billg> “Military missiles and human spaceflight are separate technologies… to argue that the Cold War accelerated the development of human space flight on a par with the world war’s acceleration of aviation is specious.”
It’s inarguably true, in that the Cold War pushed large chemical rockets from the V-2 to the R-7, Atlas and Titan. More was spent on that than on all civilian space, manned and unmanned, in all the years since. In the absence of a Cold War, how long would that have taken?