Re: Buran evolution - wish I understood Russian!


"Pat Flannery" <flanner@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:13ebcanfo7pej10@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


Jeff Findley wrote:
Yea, I think he really went off on a tangent here. But I do believe that
testing is a good thing. I think testing was lacking a bit during
Apollo, due to the schedule pressure, especially when it came to the
Saturn V. Saturn IB had quite a few flights under its belt before it
carried people. Saturn V did not.


At least we launched the Saturn V V twice before sticking a crew on it.
On STS-1 we did the first all-up manned test of a launch vehicle, and
particularly given all the fixes and tweaks we've made to the design
since, that looks like a completely crazy idea in retrospect. For it to
work, two SRBs that had only been fired in strap-down tests had to work
right, a ET that had never been flown had to accelerate from a standing
start to over 17,000 mph,
a orbiter that had only been glide tested at a few hundred MPH had to
reenter the atmosphere at over Mach 20 and land.

Even as young as I was, I figured STS-1 had a 50/50 chance of coming home in
one piece. I did, however, hope that the e-seats would be able to save the
crew in most cases, but that was pretty optimistic, considering the range of
altitude and speed at which they would have been effective. The e-seats may
have heped when Challenger broke up (since there were signs that someone
survived long enough to activate personal air packs in front of them).
Unfortunately, e-seats would not have helped when Columbia broke up.

If you had told the people that designed Apollo that's what you had in
mind for the first Apollo test flight- you were going to launch the first
Apollo CSM manned on the first Saturn V, loop the moon with it and bring
it back home, they would have thought you were out of your mind. At the
time it seemed rational to do STS-1 like that, but in retrospect the idea
was crazy; the Shuttle should have been given a automatic landing system
and flown unmanned like Buran on its first flight.

At the time, an automatic landing system would have been costly and surely
the astronaut office would have opposed it since it would have increased the
risk of losing the orbiter. As far as I can remember, the guys flying the
shuttle test flights were still test pilots willing to take risks.

And I think that mentality of pushing the schedule carried over to the
shuttle program. I don't think NASA thought they could afford a long,
drawn out, test program for the shuttle, so things like aborts simply
never got tested. Of course, the shuttle was never designed to be tested
without a pilot and co-pilot on board.


That was the fundamental error, and if they had wanted to, they could have
made it capable of landing itself like Buran did...but you do that, and
somebody's going to say: "then why can't it do the whole mission unmanned
most of the time? Can't it just take up a satellite and drop it off in
space, and then fly back home?" and that's the last thing NASA wanted to
hear.
The fact that we never developed a automated docking system for orbiting
spacecraft like the Soviets had since the late 1960's worked against us
ever since. We were dead set that someone was going to eyeball that CM
probe into the drogue on the LM.
If we had developed a means for unmanned spacecraft to dock, we could have
had a good-sized space station in orbit by the mid-1970's using a Skylab
type core launched on a Saturn V with additional modules going up on
Saturn 1B's or Titan III's.
The whole thing could have been pre-assembled by the time the first crew
went up, and might still be in use nowadays.

Sorry, that's not the way the shuttle was sold. You're thinking of the
initial concept of a manned shuttle to *service* a space station. That died
when NASA needed DOD support for the shuttle. That led to the huge payload
bay and relatively large cross range requirements.

This leads us to the famous John Young quote, "You don't need to practice
bleeding" (not sure if that's the exact quote). Of course you don't
practice bleeding! That's what the crash test dummies are for! Hasn't
John Young ever watched Mythbusters?!? ;-)

Seriously, if NASA does go forward with CEV, I think they do plan on
testing the launch escape system, which is a step in the right direction.


That seems to be still up in the air to some extent (bad pun) a few months
back, I read an article which suggested that the cut-down SRB Orion abort
tests may cost to much to be worth it. If they keep running into Orion
weight issues, someone is going to suggest that it doesn't _really_ need a
LES anyway. You can see that coming a mile off.

That would be political suicide when you consider the crews lost on both
Challenger and Columbia. In fact, safety is the big reason the shuttle
program is ending in 2010. If it doesn't look to the politicians like it's
going to be safer, they'll start to really question the program. In other
words, I think it's *got* to have a launch escape system to maintain
political support for the program.

Of course, I wouldn't put it past NASA to float a "trial balloon" for this
very issue. There have been a few Ares I/CEV "changes" discussed on the web
that NASA later dismisses as design studies only.

Jeff
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety"
- B. Franklin, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)


.

Relevant Pages

  • Unofficial Space Shuttle Launch Guide
    ... The following is the Unofficial Space Shuttle Launch Guide. ... HAM frequencies for listening to and watching NASA ... http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/view/view_shuttle.html (NASA KSC ...
    (sci.space.shuttle)
  • Unofficial Space Shuttle Launch Guide
    ... The following is the Unofficial Space Shuttle Launch Guide. ... HAM frequencies for listening to and watching NASA ... http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/view/view_shuttle.html (NASA KSC ...
    (sci.space.shuttle)
  • Unofficial Space Shuttle Launch Guide
    ... The following is the Unofficial Space Shuttle Launch Guide. ... HAM frequencies for listening to and watching NASA ... http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/view/view_shuttle.html (NASA KSC ...
    (sci.space.shuttle)
  • Unofficial Space Shuttle Launch Guide
    ... The following is the Unofficial Space Shuttle Launch Guide. ... HAM frequencies for listening to and watching NASA ... http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/view/view_shuttle.html (NASA KSC ...
    (sci.space.shuttle)
  • Unofficial Space Shuttle Launch Guide
    ... The following is the Unofficial Space Shuttle Launch Guide. ... HAM frequencies for listening to and watching NASA ... http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/view/view_shuttle.html (NASA KSC ...
    (sci.space.shuttle)