It is relevant to making it affordable. If the GOVERNMENT doesn’t want to do enough in space to make it affordable, that doesn’t mean that it makes sense to build a ridiculously huge vehicle. Regardless of whether it’s being done by the GOVERNMENT or the private sector, the sensible way to open up space is with small vehicles, until there’s enough demand to economically justify a large one. And putting words in ALL CAPS doesn’t make them less nonsensical than does using lots of exclamation marks.

Completely irrelevant to the point, which is market size, and the ability to justify the high costs of development and low flight rate of an oversized vehicle for it in its infancy.

You don’t even seem to understand what we’re talking about.”

Rand, it is obvious YOU do not understand, i am talking about heavy lift for CARGO building materials, NOT passenger travel. Can you please stay ON TRACK! You are comparing apples and oranges. I already said to keep PASSENGER vehicles, SMALL AND SAFE and reusable. So do not try and somehow do a bait and switch and say I am talking about heavy lift PASSENGER launch vehicles, I WAS NOT.

I used the comparison of the DC3 NOT as an example of cargo heavy lift but as an answer to your question on developement chains and that the Saturn V represented the start of the chain for heavy lift development.

That’s a laughable claim. The DC-3 allowed millions of people to fly affordably. The Saturn V allowed a dozen or so.

You don’t even seem to understand what we’re talking about.

Except we’ve lost a lot of the documentation on Saturn V and most of the engineers are long gone. As an illustration one of the major issues we’re having is that we no longer know how to make the Apollo era heat shields. I hate to break it to you, but it’s not like riding a bike. We just don’t have the balance we used to with HLV’s.

The systems in place in the saturn V are largely incompatable with the current technologies and, as a programmer who has had to update other people’s code, reusing much beyond the conceptual is little more than a nightmare. They’re talking even with the shuttle of passing an engineering point of no return within months if the breakes aren’t put in on the shuttle shut down. And you expect we’ll simply resurrect the Saturn V (or a modernized version of it), strap some new tech on it and fire it up? That’s just dillusional.

I’ll also remind you we have 40 years worth of reduced budgets, increased long-term demands from science programs (the more voyagers we have, the more we spend to keep tracking them), and bureaucratic bloat as well, which pretty much nixes the chances of the blueprint to pad effectiveness of the Apollo era. NASA simply is not that agency and space is simply not the priority it once was.

So we have a lack of understanding of our old work, less in the way of funding, more priorities, and a lower rank on the list of national priorities. We may be able to do an HLV, but it’s not just a matter of calling von Braun for the bluprints and firing up the production line. Essentially we have little choice but to reinvent the wheel with Ares.

Aremis

You are correct, we didnt start with the 747 but the DC-3 but that is not a correct comparison. The DC-3 was designed in 1935 and was a propeller driven plane. The 747 was a jet liner so to make that comparison for rockets you would need a new type of propulsion for a new heavy lift in the same way from prop engines to jet engines. From a standard rocket to a nuclear powered rocket. I am not talking about a new breakthrough in propulsion.

The military built 10000 DC-3’s and literally THOUSANDS were converted over to civilian use after the war so their long life was helped by that fact.
One of the precursors to the 747 was the 707.
The DC3 could move 21-32 passengers, the 707 could move 140 passengers. The 707 was in the air 2 years after the project started.

“The 707 was based on an aircraft known as the 367-80. The “Dash 80″ took less than two years from project launch in 1952 to rollout on 14 May 1954.”

So from the time of the DC3 to the 707 you had over a 6 fold increase in passenger size. In less then 20 years we went from 20 to 140 passengers.

Well I am not talking about building the 747 of heavy lift, but I would submit that we ALREADY BUILT the DC-3 of heavy lift and that was the Saturn V. It successfully flew everytime. So to SOMEHOW suggest that a heavy lift vehicle would be coming straight out of no where with NO DEVELOPMENT CHAIN and totally new technologies would be needed is, to use YOUR WORDS “it was a pathetic attempt”

We DO have 40 years of development in material sciences, computer science, avionics and rocket propulsion SINCE first flying the Saturn V.

The obvious flaw in your logic is that “the space shuttle was a heavy lift vehicle, the space shuttle flew rarely, THEREFORE ALL heavy lift vehicles WILL fly rarely” Failed logic there Rand.

I never made that argument. Great attempt (OK, it was a pathetic attempt) at a straw man, though.

There are many reasons why, with current technology and budget constraints, that heavy-lift vehicles will be low flight rate, that have nothing to do with Shuttle.

— Donald

Now you are saying that space is SOMEHOW the exception to the rule?

No. You’re the one who violated the rule. The first cost effective space vehicles will be small, because that’s what will be affordable (and if you think we’re going to do anything worthwhile at current launch costs, you’re living in a dreamworld). When there is enough activity to justify larger vehicles, they will be built.

The first successful airliner was the DC-3, not the 747. There’s a reason for that.