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

[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/publications/AffordableExplorationArchitecture2009.pdf

There is also some neat spacecraft eyecandy.

 

[diankra]

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/publications/AffordableExplorationArchitecture2009.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]

^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]

So who wouldda thunk that 'Dubya' was the "space/science-friendly" President?

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.d250ad11b26dc10b20fcd37105b9e552.71&show_article=1

 

[Marc]

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]

^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?

 

[bigdaddy]

This just in...

Obama's Space Plan just axed NASA's plan to return to the moon.

Well, so much for the Messiah reaching for the stars.

So who wouldda thunk that 'Dubya' was the "space/science-friendly" President?

Who would have thought the spin here would stop?!

Bush said "Let's go to the moon by 2020!" and then gave no money!!!!

That's a great space president! Any asshole can say it, but it there is no more funding then it will never happen.

Also NASA of today is run by fuck-ups, I say we cut the budget to nothing.

 

[T'Girl]

MARC: 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? ---

The wings would of been smaller, the air force wanted "cross range" capability. The cargo hold would of been smaller, air force again wanted the big 15 x 60 feet for some of their cargos.

The Hubble Space Telescope would of had to be lifted by titan (?) booster or be much smaller to fit NASA's original shuttles cargo hold. the current size module for the ISS wouldn't fit either. Many of the satelites NASA lifted through the years would have fit, but not the deep space probes.

The smaller shuttle still could of performed crew transfers.

bigdaddy: Bush said "Let's go to the moon by 2020!" and then gave no money!!!! ---

Old president with a big dream and no spare money -- new president with no clue and too much money.

 

[Marc]

MARC: 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? ---

The wings would of been smaller, the air force wanted "cross range" capability. The cargo hold would of been smaller, air force again wanted the big 15 x 60 feet for some of their cargos.

The Hubble Space Telescope would of had to be lifted by titan (?) booster or be much smaller to fit NASA's original shuttles cargo hold. the current size module for the ISS wouldn't fit either. Many of the satelites NASA lifted through the years would have fit, but not the deep space probes.

The smaller shuttle still could of performed crew transfers.

In a way it sounds like the the military demands stopped the shuttle from being a total turkey. I'm not sure how a small capacity would of really helped things unless I'm totally dense this morning.

Or was the intention to use the Titans etc to do the heavy lifting the shutttle would then launch and do the final work in space?

 

[sojourner]

It wasn't just the military. Lack of budget was a problem too. Originally the entire system was supposed to be reusable. instead of srbs and external tank there would have been fly back boosters. the money just wasn't there to develop a reusable "first stage". The increase in size exasperated(sp?) this by making the mass fraction to reach orbit larger.

There is a really good article here on the entire design process:
http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/shuttle.htm

 

[Lindley]

The word you're looking for is exacerbated.

 

[Marc]

The word you're looking for is exacerbated.

but no doubt some people have been exasperated by the whole deal

 

[diankra]

In a way it sounds like the the military demands stopped the shuttle from being a total turkey. I'm not sure how a small capacity would of really helped things unless I'm totally dense this morning.

Or was the intention to use the Titans etc to do the heavy lifting the shutttle would then launch and do the final work in space?

With the smaller designs, then yes, use expendables to launch big cargoes, including space station modules, and then the orbiter would have been a genuine shuttle, carrying a crew of maybe five plus the contents of a smaller payload bay up to the station (or on solo missions).
It might seem limited, but it would have been able to carry more crew and cargo than Apollo (the payload bay could have carried small station modules, akin to Kvant on Salyut 7/Mir), while being fully reuseable (the other half of the system being a flyback booster stage). And there would potentially have been the option to launch large unmanned payloads by attaching a second stage to the payload and launching that from the shuttle booster (akin to Shuttle-C, or the first test of the Buran launcher Energia with an unmanned satellite as payload).

 

[sojourner]

The word you're looking for is exacerbated.

but no doubt some people have been exasperated by the whole deal

Hehe, yea, that's what i get for relying on firefox's spellcheck too much. I knew it didn't look right, but FF didn't complain.

Actually, just googled both words. They can have the same meaning when used in the same context.

So no, I wasn't horribly mispelling the word I was thinking of. You just thought I was.

 

[T'Girl]

The fly-back booster, F-1 (?), was to be a saturn five first stage with nose cone, wings, jets and landing gear. Advertised as just a standard first stage to be constructed with exsisting forms and tools, I really don't see how it could of been used repeatly.

Interesting thing about the russian buran - snow flake (?) - shuttle is that it was designed to be flown by ground control, if a crew wasn't required in orbit. Delivery runs.

 

[sojourner]

^That's only one of many conjectured flyback first stages they assessed. Check out the link I posted earlier.