{:0[ !!

Oops, you’re right. There’s an arcane bug in this unit conversion program somebody wrote in reverse Polish for my HP cacluator!

Because there’s not enough room in the payload bay for an EDO pallet on ISS assembly missions. Besides, the only EDO pallet was lost with Columbia.

The 28 day stay wouldn’t being needed for delivering space station modules to the station. A 28 day Shuttle mission would be for scientific research and observations performed on the Shuttle, instead of on the ISS.

I’m suggesting that NASA has never used this 28 day stay capability because Shuttle missions of this length would compete with the ISS. The International Space Station is confined to one orbit, whereas Shuttles can choose many orbits.

…Maybe even polar orbits, if launched from Vandenberg with more powerful first stage boosters than the Thiokal’s solid rockets. Studying the shrinkage of Earth’s polar ice masses is a hot topic currently. The International Space Station will never be to overfly the Earth’s poles or, for that matter, North America. It does give excellent views of Kazakhstan.

A Space Shuttle may even be able to stay aloft for months, if it could rendezvous with an orbiting supply cache and solar electric power array and a bit of extra room for human experimenters … a smaller space station that could be launched by one Shuttle-C or a few EELV missiles. The crew working areas for this small station station might even be hybrid folding tent/inflatable chambers.

One could speculate that this Shuttle-small space station duo could do 80 or 90 percent of the useful science that the ISS will ever do. NASA could name this smaller space station, umm, what?

Skylab II.

Wrong. A metric ton is 1000 kg, not 2000. By the weight statements you gave, that’s 80 metric tons, not 40.

( 28 days? That is interesting. Why doesn’t NASA use that capability?

Because there’s not enough room in the payload bay for an EDO pallet on ISS assembly missions. Besides, the only EDO pallet was lost with Columbia.

I’ve figured out the real purpose of ESAS. Egypt has their Sphinx, we will have our Sphallix. What other reason could there be for having two 5 segment boosters instead of 3 of the 4 segment variety? You know, like the shuttle uses now. Like the crew rocket will be based on. Oh yeah, then the external tank wouldn’t be just like the one the shuttle uses now, right? You know, the external tank with the engines on the bottom and its nose shoved up the orbiter’s…

I know, it’s time for me to turn off the computer.

That’s closer to its maximum gross weight in thousands of kilograms, not tons, with a full cargo bay. You need to punch the right buttons on your calculator to keep that unit conversion stuff straight.

A late model Shuttle Orbiter’s empty, dry weight is roughly forty metric tons.
The NASA Facts cited below seem to say that that the new capsule Crew Module plus Service Module, or functional equvalent thereof, will weigh twenty five (25) metric tons at liftoff. That’s down from the 30-40 metric tons stated in earlier descriptions.

But still, the Apollo on Steroids (TM) vehicle is not an order of magnitude smaller mass than a Shuttle Orbiter. AoS (TM) seems oversized for the task of getting people up and down from the ISS.

SPACE SHUTTLE ORBITER SPECIFICATIONS

First launch: 12-Apr-1981
Number launches: 80 to end-1996
Principal uses: US manned capability to beyond 2010 (four reuseable Orbiter fleet), 25,000 kg payload delivery to LEO, satellite retrieval/in situ repair, short-duration science platform, Space Station assembly/servicing
Availablity: typically 7-8 flights/year manifested but with restricted commercial access
Cost: NASA’s figures for the first 20 missions (1981-85) showed an average cost of $257 million. STS-27 military mission cost to NASA in Dec-1988 was reported at $375 million. Constuction cost is about $1.3-2 billion per orbiter (each capable of &gt100 missions)
Performance: OV-103/104/105 can deliver 24,990 kg into 204 km LEO; they are called 55K Orbiters because of their 55,100-pound capacities (the design goal was 65K). OV-102 can only handle 21,140 kg because of its greater dry mass
Crew size: 2 min, 8 max
Endurance: originally 9-10 days; OV-102/104 were modified as 16-day Extended Duration Orbiters (EDO); OV-105 was constructed with EDO capacity. OV-104/105 are capable of carrying EDO kits allowing up to 28-day missions, although none is yet planned

( 28 days? That is interesting. Why doesn’t NASA use that capability? Because it might makes psace stations seem superfluous?)

Wingspan: 23.79 m
Length: 37.24 m
Height: 17.27 m
Habitable volume: 71.5 m3
Dry mass: 82,288 kg OV-102, 78,448 kg OV-103, 78,687 kg OV-104, 79,135 kg OV-105
Landing mass: 104,328 kg max, defined by abort requirements

http://www.braeunig.us/space/specs/orbiter.htm

The spacecraft will have a total mass of 25 metric tons, be able to dock with the International Space Station and other exploration elements, use a liquid oxygen/liquid methane service module propulsion system (yet to be developed), and
return to dry land with a water landing as backup.

Launch System

• After extensive study of all viable options, NASA chose the shuttle-derived option
for its launch system because of its superior safety, cost and schedule
availability. Specifically, the space shuttle’s main engines and solid propellant
rocket boosters are reliable, human-rated, and best able to fit the planned
architecture. The industrial base to support this option is already in place that will
significantly lower development costs and support a workforce that will transition
when we retire the shuttle in 2010.

…”support a workforce that will transition
when we retire the shuttle…” — the real aganda

• NASA chose two primary launch vehicles. The crew launch vehicle is a single
four-segment shuttle solid propellant rocket booster with a liquid oxygen / liquid
hydrogen upper stage supporting one shuttle main engine. This configuration can
lift 25 metric tons. This capacity can be increased by an additional 7 metric tons if
a fifth segment is added to the booster.

Hmmm, planning for seven tons of weight growth? That would put Apollo on Steroids back into the 30-plus metric ton category mentioned in early accounts. To be fair, that mass probably includes the capsule, the service module, and the tractor escape rocket. But it still seems like an oversized clunker for the job of getting up and down from the space station.

…

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/133820main_ESAS_Facts.pdf

Not nearly, the dry weight of the Orbiter is around 120 tons IIRC.

The new proposal will neither do what it is supposed to do in a cost effective manner, nor will it happen soon.

This 30-40 metric ton capsule and Service Module will be grossly oversized for getting up and down from the ISS. Therefore it will be inefficient.

As the need arises the products will be developed.

Then why don’t we have the appropriate products for completing the space station available?

… I’m hoping that if the CEV design is successful there will be many more Apollo 11 moments to come and a steady stream of Apollo 17 prospecting.

That’s an old-fashioned concept of how to explore the Moon. NASA needs to use more robotic rovers and so forth to prospect on the Moon. Dfens made an excellent point about this last night.

Does anyone the mass of the new Crew Module, i.e., capsule, and its Service Module? I can’t find a number for the empty weight of the proposed new capsule. Last night I guessed that that new capsule might have twice the mass of an Apollo CM. That was just a guess. Maybe the new capsule will weigh more than that.

The ESAS slide show states the mass of the new CM plus its Service Module is between thirty (30) and forty (40) metric tons. They want to use something that heavy to send six people to the ISS. That is about as massive as a Shuttle!

So if the H2 fueled Departure stage is going to deliver the new capsule plus its service module plus a lunar lander module to lunar orbit, that payload mass might be more than the mass of a Shuttle Orbiter plus an Apollo Lunar Excursion Module.

Please explain where my guesstimates are wrong.

Nope, the EDS uses H2.

Well then, why not find way to launch a filled STS External Tank, attach it to a Shuttle Orbiter, and
proceed to Luna? :0\

Nope, the EDS uses H2. The SM and ascent module of the lander uses CH4.

Right now, the costs are too high. The costs were too high with Apollo. So what is NASA’s long term plan for space exploration? Go back to a “shuttle derived” Apollo rocket. It is stupidity built on stupidity.