Yes, but I think it’s the most reasonable assumption, given that the military had backed away from MOL and the commercial sector was still a ways off.

“Instead, we have a space agency run by “remember when” types who think the only problem with Apollo was that we didn’t spend enough money.”

Agreed. Your Goldwater musings are an interesting alternate history.

FWIW…

I am refering to the launcher the DynaSoar would have been placed on, not the DynaSoar itself.

You’re assuming spaceflight would have remained a NASA monopoly.

My point was that President Goldwater might have reversed the Eisenhower/Kennedy policies. The Air Force might have been allowed to go ahead with manned space programs like DynaSoar, while NASA returned to its pre-Mercury role of doing basic research for the military and industry. Goldwater might also have called on Congress to repeal the Comsat Act, allowing private industry to get back into satellite communications. Goldwater was also a backer of high-speed passenger transportation such as the SST, so it’s likely he would have looked favorably on the development of civilian space transportation as well.

If the United States had taken the money spent on Project Apollo and put it into a series of research vehicles, starting with the X-20 DynaSoar, space travel might be quite routine by now and establishing a base on the Moon would raise no more eyebrows than building another base in Antartica.

Instead, we have a space agency run by “remember when” types who think the only problem with Apollo was that we didn’t spend enough money.

In one sense, that’s good to hear. Even without Ares 1, NASA will need Orion or something like it sooner rather than later to get off Shuttle and eventually service exploration missions. Although I wouldn’t mind seeing Ares 1 go the way of the do-do, it would be nice if LockMart could help keep Orion on a relatively stable track.

I don’t know, however, that the conversation with your friend really contradicts my argument that LockMart (or any of these big aerospace/military primes) has many other, bigger fish to fry outside NASA when it comes to lobbying on the Hill. I’m sure from the perspective of someone working on or near Orion that it was essential to win the contract after corporate spent a lot of B&P bucks to prepare the proposal. That doesn’t necessarily mean that corporate puts Orion in their top few “must-have” legislative initiatives each year.

“Also, keep in mind that Orion is a production contract that could have earning potential decades into the future.”

Absolutely true, but I’d bet dollars to donuts that it’s less money and less profitable (they take no risk with USA) than what they get from Shuttle work (were it extended). I’m not saying that LockMart is lobbying against Orion and for a Shuttle extension — just that they don’t have any particularly powerful incentives to lobby for Orion.

My 2 cents… FWIW… would be interesting to hear from someone in Bethesda.

Had NASA gone down a DynaSoar-like path, I’d argue it would have been cheaper, more flexible, and maybe even safer than Shuttle, even flying on Titans. And without Shuttle’s cargo bay, it would have forced NASA to pursue a single-launch (or few-launch) space station. All those factors together, we might actually have some real human space exploration underway had DynaSoar or something like it been pursued instead of the Shuttle albatross.

That doesn’t go to the core of the expendable/reusable cost debate — Shuttle is not really reusable and I’m not speculating that a reusable booster would be developed for Dynasoar. But it’s an interesting point of departure in terms of considering alternate histories and missed opportunities.

FWIW…

Again, the expendable stages would have been a bottleneck, as would the limited number of Saturn-class payloads.

> Were there really proposals for putting DynaSoar on an otherwise fully reusable launcher?

?? Paul, DynaSoar was reusable.

There were proposals for Saturn derivatives with reusable stages (perhaps not fully reusable.)

Were there really proposals for putting DynaSoar on an otherwise fully reusable launcher? I would have thought they’d instead integrate the crew-carrying vehicle and the final stage, rather than sticking a winged reentry vehicle on top.

I’m not aware of any reusable vehicle concepts that had capsules on top, except for escape purposes (e.g., SASSTO).

The utility of a reusable booster is severely limited if you have to build a new capsule every time you launch it. In system engineering terms, that would be a “bottleneck.”

The thing that makes launch expensive is the throw-away hardware. Space hardware is not much more expensive than aviation hardware. What makes it seem so expensive is that it’s only used once. DynaSoar was one of the first programs to (partially) address that.

> They would have ended up saying something like that about any effort to make reusable launchers, since one
> couldn’t have made the economic case close unless the launcher captured all of the reasonably projected
> market and a great deal of unreasonably extrapolated demand. As it turned out, there wasn’t enough real
> demand to justify even a single reusable launcher development effort.

There was no real demand because no one ever built one. Just as there was no demand for air travel before the airplane was invented.

But also because they are huge programs with large implications for the bottom lines of the companies those lobbyists work for. The same is not true of Orion or the Ares I upper stage,

For what it’s worth, a friend of mine who works for Lockheed Martin (and shall remain nameless) told me (after the fact) that it was essential that LM win the Orion contract, because they invested way too much Corporate money in their bid. I have no opinion on the validity of this, except to say that it is possible that Orion is more important to LM than it appears. If so, I hope they fight harder than they seem to be so far. . . .

Also, keep in mind that Orion is a production contract that could have earning potential decades into the future.

John: After Challenger Reagan should have stated a replacement for the Shuttle instead of building the Space Station but most everyone was in denial.

No, NASA should not be in the LEO transportation business, especially now that the Space Station exists as a market. The one thing where I strongly agree with the anti-ESAS folks is that the Ares-1 was a mistake. I said so at the time, but this is even more clear in retrospect. However, the reason Dr. Griffin did that — which nobody here seems to care about — was to tie Mars to the lunar effort, so that the vehicles to get to Mars become part of the core project. While I think it is unwise, I also think he will be very reluctant to give this up. At a minimum, ESAS will live as long as he is at NASA.

John: Anyway they are talk NEAR objects too which is better than LEO.

It’s also better than the moon. One of the key advantages of Orion (however it is launched) is that it, with suitable upper stages and storage modules, potentially could do both missions.

— Donald

No one […] said, “This is the only way Americans will ever go into space for the next 40 years.”

They would have ended up saying something like that about any effort to make reusable launchers, since one couldn’t have made the economic case close unless the launcher captured all of the reasonably projected market and a great deal of unreasonably extrapolated demand. As it turned out, there wasn’t enough real demand to justify even a single reusable launcher development effort.