Obama Space Plan: Return to Moon: "No Go"

Well we had a lot of the technology didn't we or quite simply it would never have been built in ten years, a lot of the very basic research in rocketry and so on had been done by the Nazis.

Like most great technological achievements the Apollo missions were the result of bringing technologies together and adjusting them for the current need. Apollo was an amazing achievement but do not kid yourself that the technical development required to get us from where we are now to everyday spaceflight could be achieved in ten years no matter how much you throw at it.

Some of the technologies required for a Mars mission (including the ability to build very large ships with artificial gravity, quite possibly a requirement if you want sane astronauts at the other end) simply do not exist in any form.

Maybe you could build it in space, maybe in ten years we could make efficient ion engines or other advanced propulsion, but everyday space flight that us commoners could use? No way, not for a long time.

I don't think it is wise to go into politics here - suffice it to say if Bush had said "Lets all go for tacos" he might have had trouble finding support at that point!

Well the most important new technology of the last 60 years was the Internet, which came from the risk of nuclear war, so it is likely there would have been other avenues for that tech to come from, but of course the whole Apollo mission plan owed a lot to the threat of nuclear war and international posturing.

Maybe it is a mistake to take Apollo out of its political context, surely if sticking it to Russia was an important motivator, then the current economic disaster is at least as good a reason to hold fire?

 

Well flicking through wikipedia. What needs to be brought from Earth is a supply of Hydrogen and a power source. Combing the Hydrogen with the carbon dioxide would give us Methane and Water. Take the Hydrogen out from the water and you feed it back to the beginning of the process.

The advantage is that we can send people to Mars knowing that there is already fuel there waiting for them. Also saves weight.

 

To get into space, the manned space program developed improved heat shields & insulation, mutiplexing control signals, remote medical telemetry , scratch resistant lens coatings, thermoelectric cooling, advanced the fields of metallurgy ^ aviation technology, structural analysis, etc, etc, etc.

The V-2 that Von Braun brought us was pretty primitive. We still needed lots of stuff to get skyward.

 

First, a minor point: both Atlantis and Endeavour existed before the Challenger disaster - Atlantis had just made its first flight, while all the essential component for Endeavour had been manufactured as a full set of structural spares before the Shuttle production line was shut down. All that happened later was the NASA was given permission to put them together as a replacement orbiiter (to have restarted the production line later would have been near impossible).

Second, what modifications are you suggesting should have been made to Atlantis and Endeavour, beyond the improved escape options and added drag chute that were fitted to the entire fleet?
The problem on Challenger wasn't in the orbiter, after all; the SRBs were modified, and beyond that the only solution would have been to replace them entirely.
As for Columbia... the only modification which can avoid the punch-through danger is a fundamental redesign of the entire system - either to remove the big delta wings (which are mainly there to provide a cross range landing capability that's never been used - it was needed to fly the single orbit polar orbit missions from Vandenberg which were cancelled by the DoD after Challenger), or replace the extrernal tank/SSRB combination entirely.
Of course, it's easy WITH HINDSIGHT to say that there should have been restrictions on the launch temperatures because of the o-rings, and that the orbiter should be inspected in orbit before being Oked for re-entry. But both were dangers were considered but were were felt to be more unlikely than they proved to be.
Every spaceflight involves risk: the judgement is whetehr to guard against the one in a million dangers, or the one in ten million. As the's latter costs more, where you set the line depends on how much budget you've got. The danger comes when a 1/10million problem turns out to actually be a 1/1million one (though I'm not denying that in both cases there was an element of complacency: the problem had been noticed, but as it hadn't proved critical, it was judged acceptable).
It comes back to: the external tank/SRB/big wing orbiter design is not what NASA originally wanted. It resulted from the original fully reusueable designs with a smaller orbiter beiing changed to fit the budget awarded by congress, and the performance requirements of the DoD. And it's inherently flawed, in ways that mean it can't do the job it was designed for - reliable, easy access to low orbit, which could be launched almost weekly all year round.

 

Larger fuel capacity:
Atlantis should have been modified for power hook up to the ISS.
At the very least The station should have been fitted for an escape vehicle that may also be used to rescue or transfer supplies....by now....the station has been under construction for 11 years. Design had to be at least for 5.

(Ideally) Oxygen Capacity for 30 days.

Did they think the shuttle was going to continue indefinitely with the prepp time it needed? For God's sake the russians still use the Soyuz spacecraft. One should always be docked to the station for emergencies.

Why doesn't NASA believe in being flexible....I don't know.
The problem on Challenger wasn't in the orbiter, after all; the SRBs were modified, and beyond that the only solution would have been to replace them entirely.
As for Columbia... the only modification which can avoid the punch-through danger is a fundamental redesign of the entire system - either to remove the big delta wings (which are mainly there to provide a cross range landing capability that's never been used - it was needed to fly the single orbit polar orbit missions from Vandenberg which were cancelled by the DoD after Challenger), or replace the extrernal tank/SSRB combination entirely.
Of course, it's easy WITH HINDSIGHT to say that there should have been restrictions on the launch temperatures because of the o-rings, and that the orbiter should be inspected in orbit before being Oked for re-entry. But both were dangers were considered but were were felt to be more unlikely than they proved to be.
Every spaceflight involves risk: the judgement is whetehr to guard against the one in a million dangers, or the one in ten million. As the's latter costs more, where you set the line depends on how much budget you've got. The danger comes when a 1/10million problem turns out to actually be a 1/1million one (though I'm not denying that in both cases there was an element of complacency: the problem had been noticed, but as it hadn't proved critical, it was judged acceptable).
It comes back to: the external tank/SRB/big wing orbiter design is not what NASA originally wanted. It resulted from the original fully reusueable designs with a smaller orbiter beiing changed to fit the budget awarded by congress, and the performance requirements of the DoD. And it's inherently flawed, in ways that mean it can't do the job it was designed for - reliable, easy access to low orbit, which could be launched almost weekly all year round.[/QUOTE]

 

I wonder if the leading edge construction for the X-20 would have been more punch through resistant. Rather than all carbon/graphite, the X-20 leading edges were to be a carbon zirconium composite.

 

As an ardent space-funding support I would argue that no it isn't, but I'd also argue that it's not an either/or proposition and not worth arguing over semantics about.

 

And where would they have put the extra fuel? You couldn't store in the shuttle it's self and increasing the size of the EFT would then open up another can of worms as everything would have to be designed.

Same goes for additional O2 storage.

Soyuz can only carry 3 people at time.

Being flexible was what got the shuttle into the mess in the first place. NASA wanted it to do one thing, the military anouther so they met half way with the end result the shuttle design was compromised

 

No hindsite was needed for Challenger. Here is an excellent link to the engineer involved in the launch/scrub decision.
http://temp.onlineethics.org/moral/boisjoly/RB-intro.html

The Dyna-soar was never ment to be side launched like the shuttle. It would have been on the top of the LV and not subject to the same conditions.

 

Sojourner, maybe. Granted it was top mount on a Titan, but some of the X-20 mission profiles seem to indicate that it was to be a sturdy little bird. I think they would have made it tougher since it was to do stuff like grab or disable Rooskie birds in addition to surveillance, intel, and more.

Dynasoar as concieved when taking the cold war to space was still in the realm of possibility. Armed craft were on everyones drawing boards, so defensive measures seem likely, including rhino-hiding your orbiter.

Shame she never flew. I'll bet we're in 100% agreement on that.

 

Actually, Endeavour was built with the capacity for a 30 day flight [EDIT: on checking it was actually 16 days]; it was fitted with the connections to let it carry the Extended Duration Orbiter wafer at the back of the payload bay if needed for a long solo mission (Columbia was later refitted so it could also carry the EDO wafer).
Why not do the same to every orbiter and carry the EDO on every mission? Because it adds to the orbiter's weight, and every pound of orbiter is a pound off the payload (more actually, in the case of something that's being brought back like the EDo wafer, as it unbalances the centre of gravity and has to be balanced). The EDO wafer weighs 3,500 pounds, and the maximum payload to orbit of a shuttle is 55,000 pounds - but it's less on flights to the ISS, which is at a compromise inclination between the one that offers the highest possible payload for launches from KSC and the equivalent for Baikonur.
So carrying the wafer - or maybe a couple to offer 28 days? - could, paradoxically, increase the risk of an accident in the long term. If you take (say) 10% off the payload capacity, then you need 10 launches to do what could have been achieved by nine, which means an extra launch and re-entry, which as we know all too well are the really risky bits of the flight. Hence the EDO's only worth carrying if you can make good use of the extra time in orbit - fine on solo lab missions like STS-113 where doubling the flight time effectively gives you two missions for the risk of one launch; less so on a cargo delivery and maintenance mission like STS128.

As for leaving a shuttle docked to the station (assuming that's what you meant; there is always a Soyuz docked to the station if not), a) where do you get the spare shuttle? and b) the shuttle can't be powered down in orbit as Soyuz can - and Soyuz had to be extensively modified a number of times to allow this, and then extend its safe life span to 3, 6 and 12 months in turn.

 

One of the few things they got right on Ares.

^for it's time. Still far short of anything advanced enough to reach the moon.

 

True. But the Redstone that launched Alan Shepherd on the first US spaceflight was effectively an upgraded V2/A4, and the first stage of the Saturn 1B that launched the LEO Apollo flights was (putting it crudely) eight Redstone strapped together to fire in parallel.

 

Former NASA Admin in writing
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=32351

 

That's some great dry wit.

 

Or, you know, we could pour the money into R&D right here on earth at a fraction of the cost for the same gain...

 

T'Girl to the poor: "Let them eat 'pride'..."