Re: An alternative to Orion/Constellation?
- From: "Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)" <mooregr_deleteth1s@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 22:01:38 -0400
Some good points, some I disagree with, others not so much.
"David Spain" <nospam@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:88GdnZ3vC-NLfm3UnZ2dnUVZ_vmdnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Posted this email to a friend today in response to a email
I think it's a big waste of time and money. We will once again focus on
the moon to the exclusion of all else, esp. planetary exploration.
Agreed. But hey, it looks good as sounds bites!
We should *not* be building a water landing capsule. Ala Apollo 2.0.
This I agree with 100%. Sure, there's a lot of ocean, and it's a nice option, but in reality it really ups the logistical problems.
We should be building a manned glider (w/o payload capacity) that can
either ride atop an expendable rocket or can be launched from
a mother-ship ala Scaled Composites' SpaceShipOne [2]. It's sole purpose would
be to ferry people up to orbit and ferry people down from orbit.
Tend to agree. Something like the HL-20 design.
Shuttle costs got out of control when we decided to make it big enough
to carry a significant payload other than people [1]. If it were just to ferry
people it could have been made a lot smaller with a lot more launch options
which would have improved the economies of everything.
Perhaps. Size and cost don't necessarily scale.
Complexity and cost do. And once you go crewed, you don't go back. (on costs at least.)
A water-landing capsule gets us nowhere in terms of reducing access cost
to space. A moon-base is a poor run-up to any kind of Mars exploration
and will eventually be abandoned when whatever small political support
for it vanishes. Any Mars program that starts after Constellation will
be finding itself starting over from square one.
I partly disagree. While much of the hardware won't transfer, I think we need to start to get used to not being just minutes away in orbit, but days. It does change the mindset on how you approach problems.
Instead...
We should be focusing on building what I call a 'traveling space habitat'.
Something on the order of a very small space station that can be sent out
of low Earth orbit (LEO) on orbital exploration missions. First to the moon,
then maybe Venus, and eventually Mars. It would be self-sufficient and fully
reusable and capable of supporting a 6 person crew nearly indefinitely. Such
a vehicle would get us well past the moon, but could be effectively used in
a lunar exploration program as well as giving us a pathway to the planets.
I'm not sure Venus is worth it, but maybe. You're reinventing Aldrin's Cycler concept in some ways. Not sure we're ready there with the tech just yet.
We need not another moon capsule but a better shuttle and the ability to
construct stuff in low Earth orbit (LEO). The moon can wait IMO. Colonization
should be left up to the private sector when there is sufficient economic
reason to do so. That's the only way it will ever be sustainable.
I think once cheap access to orbit occurs, the rest does get a lot easier.
Dave
[1] The other reason I remember was the unique ability to 'retrieve' payload from orbit.
IIRC this was done exactly *once* with a comm sat (whose PAM module failed
to ignite?) and failed to achieve proper orbit. IIRC, the company that lost the
satellite received an insurance payout and the insurer got back the retrieved
satellite which I assume they sold to someone else to try again? It appears
that this once taunted feature of the shuttle was never really that important.
As others have pointed out, this isn't accurate.
[2] No I'm *not* implying that a White Knight could do the job. Only something new
that was designed for a much, much smaller shuttle that launches from the carrier
craft using (expendable) rocket assist with only OMS pods and wings for return from orbit
where it would glide to a respectable runway landing. As an aside, I don't for the
life of me understand this compulsion to throw everything out with each new generation
of space transport and start over.
Well they're not. They're keeping all the worst aspects of the current shuttle design for Ares! :-)
My whole engineering career in the commercial sector
has seen incremental improvements where technology is refined and refined. The one
exception being due to the break through from vacuum tubes to solid state. I suppose
a space-elevator would be the equivalent type of break through in space transport.
But I don't see one yet. But why do we go from capsule to shuttle now back to capsule?
This makes no sense.
Agreed.
--
Greg Moore
Ask me about lily, an RPI based CMC.
.
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