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

[USS KG5]

diankra wrote:

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There was indeed a fire, though that makes it seem more dramatic than it was (smouldering and smokey, not sheets of flame). The main life support system could only support so many crew, so when more than one crew was aboard at the same time, it had to be supplemented with oxygen generating 'candles' - oxygen producing chemical packs that can overheat and smoulder if not monitored well.

Those the same ones that finally offed the crew of the Kursk? Poor bastards.

[T'Girl]

USS KG5 wrote:

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Those the same ones that finally offed the crew of the Kursk? Poor bastards.

I don't think the candles are what did them in, eventual they ran out of them. The russian's weren't equiped to deal with the rescue.

darkwing_duck1 wrote:

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Not that I'm in favor of us doing so, but as a matter of technical curiosity, wasn't a 1g contstant-thrust engine developed for Apollo? They abandoned it in favor of the Sat-V because the fuel it required was considered too volatile.

If the saturn five only developed one constant gee of thrust, wouldn't it just sit on the launch pad?

Hober Mallow wrote:

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Unless those pesky WMD are actually in a crater of the moon, Saddam was all talk and no threat.

Government released a list of twenty-eight reasons to go to war with Iraq, WMD was just one item on the list.

And while we didn't find warehouses packed with them, hundreds of WMD's (chemical and biological) were found, so you can't say no WMD's.

Al-Qaeda terrorists in Iraq still use them (chemicals) in conjuction with regular explosives in bombings of civilian targets.

[Hober Mallow]

T'Girl wrote:

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And while we didn't find warehouses packed with them, hundreds of WMD's (chemical and biological) were found, so you can't say no WMD's.

From the final report of George Bush's own Iraq Survey Group (ISG):

Saddam Husayn ended the nuclear program in 1991 following the Gulf war. ISG found no evidence to suggest concerted efforts to restart the program.

While a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions have been discovered, ISG judges that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991. There are no credible indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical munitions thereafter.

In practical terms, with the destruction of the Al Hakam facility, Iraq abandoned its ambition to obtain advanced BW [biological warfare] weapons quickly. ISG found no direct evidence that Iraq, after 1996, had plans for a new BW program or was conducting BW-specific work for military purposes.

And from factcheck.org:

Q: Were there really weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when the U.S. invaded in 2003?

A: No. The Iraq Survey Group determined that Iraq had abandoned its quest to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and that it had already destroyed all of its existing stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons

[SilentP]

T'Girl wrote:

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If the saturn five only developed one constant gee of thrust, wouldn't it just sit on the launch pad?

True, unless they meant:

-1G of overall acceleration i.e. generates 2G, one of which is countered by Earth's 1G in the opposite direction.

OR

-1G when the vehicle was effectively 'free' of Earth's Gravity.

[Alpha_Geek]

Saturn V *peak* acceleration was 6G, which was very brief in duration. Apollo astronauts were subjected to 4 G for longer periods of acceleration.

[sojourner]

For anyone interested, ULA has published what they think is a good alternative to the current space plan. Pretty good reading. I like the depot strategy and the high launch rates (high launch rates mean high construction rates which introduces economies of scale).

http://www.ulalaunch.com/docs/public...ecture2009.pdf

There is also some neat spacecraft eyecandy.

[diankra]

sojourner wrote:

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For anyone interested, ULA has published what they think is a good alternative to the current space plan. Pretty good reading. I like the depot strategy and the high launch rates (high launch rates mean high construction rates which introduces economies of scale).

http://www.ulalaunch.com/docs/public...ecture2009.pdf

There is also some neat spacecraft eyecandy.

Promising, but... once-bitten, twice-shy on high launch rates. That was what the Shuttle was supposed to achieve - I'm old enough to have mid-1970s era books on manned spaceflight that include flight manifests that build up to 30+ flights a year by 1984-ish.
It only works if it actually works, as it were!

[sojourner]

^well, the shuttle was supposed to achieve those launch rates with only 4 orbiters and a huge ground crew for servicing. EELV's would be mass produced and require a fraction of the ground crew the shuttle does.

And if you read the report, they admit that they couldn't do it alone. Other companies (SpaceX?) in the industry would get contracts for the fueling launches as well.

[diankra]

sojourner wrote:

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^well, the shuttle was supposed to achieve those launch rates with only 4 orbiters and a huge ground crew for servicing. EELV's would be mass produced and require a fraction of the ground crew the shuttle does.

And if you read the report, they admit that they couldn't do it alone. Other companies (SpaceX?) in the industry would get contracts for the fueling launches as well.

Five orbiters if NASA had got its way, but yep.
I just hit the bookcase and have come back rather gobsmacked - checking Reg Turnhill's Observer's Book of Manned Spaceflight (1978 3rd edition, and yes, it's a bit of a kid's book, but a solid one), I find I'd actually under-remembered: the flight manifest it prints, starting with OFT1 in June 79 with the Skylab rescue on the second flight, actually ramps up to a projection of 58 flights in 1988 (40 from KSC, 18 from Vandenberg).
Even then I suspect that might have been a tad optimistic... but it's an eye-opening reminder of how high hopes once were. (Quick addition: pages 347-349 of Heppenheimer's Development of the Space Shuttle have some intersting stuff on how the flight manifest affected the number of orbiters built, quoting a 1977 General Accounting Office memo that 'NASA's five orbiter fleet is based on the assumption that the number of payloads will more than double during the 1980s, from 40 a year to over 90 a year'. Gulp!).

[BCI]

Squiggy wrote:

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No one who actually knows what's going on. Bush told NASA to to back to the moon but didn't give them any more money to do so. So NASA not only has to complete it's mission to finish the ISS but also operate the shuttle fleet AND develop the next generation spacecraft with the same amount of money.

But next time you want to start a thread like this, man up and bring it to another board in here and let me really school ya.

I think it's really a shame. There is the STS, and it's such a wonderful peace of technology. From the seventies up to now, it has cost as much as a handful of B2 bombers.

[sojourner]

Well, each orbiter costs about the price of 2 B-2's and each launch of the STS cost about .6 of a B-2, so rough estimate, you could buy about 50 B-2's for the price of the orbiters and all launches to date. That's a little more than a handful.

B-2 price grabbed from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-2_Spirit
Shuttle prices from
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/information/shuttle_faq.html#311

[T'Girl]

Five orbiters if NASA had got its way, but yep.

--- The way I heard it was promised in the late seventies, with a four shuttle fleet, there was to be a launch every two weeks, with each shuttle going up once every two months. I'm a big NASA booster, and even I wouldn't of bought that.

A story my uncle from boeing told me, that went around the areospace industry years ago. The shuttle and B-1 bomber proto-type were being built by Rockwell at the same time. Shuttle's contract was cost plus, the B-1 was fix price. Whenever the B-1 went over price for any given month, they would order things against the shuttle, and then quietly transfer them across.


Breitbart had a small interesting article on Chinese space ambitions

www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.d250ad11b26dc10b20fcd37105b9e55 2.71&show_article=1

[Marc]

sojourner wrote:

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Well, each orbiter costs about the price of 2 B-2's and each launch of the STS cost about .6 of a B-2, so rough estimate, you could buy about 50 B-2's for the price of the orbiters and all launches to date. That's a little more than a handful.

B-2 price grabbed from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-2_Spirit
Shuttle prices from
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/information/shuttle_faq.html#311

I suspect the B-2's had a slight economy of scale advantage when it came to their production costs.

[sojourner]

^and illustrates what's wrong with the shuttle. It could never reach economy of scale. You had to build half the system for each launch, the other half of the system was in limited supply, and the whole damn thing required a standing army to operate.

It is a wonderful machine and I love it, but NASA was crippled when it was designed by outside forces that lead to extreme compromises.

[Marc]

sojourner wrote:

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^and illustrates what's wrong with the shuttle. It could never reach economy of scale. You had to build half the system for each launch, the other half of the system was in limited supply, and the whole damn thing required a standing army to operate.

It is a wonderful machine and I love it, but NASA was crippled when it was designed by outside forces that lead to extreme compromises.

Do you have any details on what would of been different with the Shuttle is it hadn't been the bastard child of NASA and the Military?