Re: Ares vs DIRECT

On Wed, 5 Dec 2007 08:30:10 -0800 (PST), in a place far, far away,
behlingjo@xxxxxxxxx made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way
as to indicate that:

One of the udnerlying ideas behind Ares is to separate the cargo and
crewed vehicles instead of doing it all in one. So having separate
launchers makes sense.

The very idea that separating crew from cargo for ISS missions is silly to
me.

That was one of the dumber (among many dumb ones) "lessons" learned
from the Shuttle.

It wasn't ISS "cargo". It was other payloads unrelated to the crew

Why is that relevant?

Let me expand.

Every time an airliner takes off, it carries cargo not only unrelated
to the crew, but even unrelated to the passengers. It's their own
version of Fedex, using excess cargo capacity to carry cargo in their
excess cargo capacity. It has rarely caused
any problems. This remains a dumb "lesson learned."

Launch vehicles are not airliners, the analogy is not applicable.

Why not? "Because I say so" won't cut it.

If you are going to use the airline analogy, then Valuejet is your
airline.

That's nonsense. Valuejet happened once, out of many thousands of
flights.

Flying unrelated spacecraft with crew does the following:

1. Increases risk to the crew and the amount is not trivial.

How?

More parts means less reliable

What? Why are "more parts" required to carry cargo, and how does
carrying cargo make it less reliable?

2. Increases risks to the companion spacecraft.

How?

Manrating the spacecraft increases weight and complexity.

What does "manrating" mean in this context? Shuttle itself was never
"manrated."

It has cause problems for the companion spacecraft: Syncom-IV-3,
GRO, SPARTAN and some unmentionables are some

How does sharing a ride with a crew "cause problems"?
.

Relevant Pages

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  • Re: Ares vs DIRECT
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  • Re: Ares vs DIRECT
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    (sci.space.policy)
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