Re: Cost of slowing down?

Fred J. McCall wrote:
> No. The Shuttle is a failure because it did not live up to its
> promises by an order of magnitude.

Nothing is perfect, but the Shuttle -- 70's technology -- did what
nothing before had done. It regularly put men into orbit with plenty
of cargo capability. It could launch satellites or retrieve them.


> Now we have to step back and try and go in the right direction.

What direction is that? Not taking a step backward, I hope. And, not
taking 12 years to do it.


> Poppy***! SSTO is very difficult. What you propose is bloody
> impossible with chemical fuels.

A 6 minute SSME burn with a very high mass ratio and a 'spaceplane'
could make orbit easily. In fact, there would be fuel left over, which
there should be.


> "It makes nuclear fusion a cinch."
>
> Well, no. You really do believe in that magic Technology Fairy, don't
> you?

He3 fusion has been done at the University of Wisconsin. The actual
'working' results were incredible.


> :the SSME,
>
> We already had reliable, restartable hydrogen engines.
>
> :and hefty cargo capacity into orbit.
>
> Which could have been more cheaply achieved another way.

The Saturn V used F-1 engines, not LH2/LOX, for primary boost. I
regret that it's production was stopped. Stopping production was a
money saver, supposedly. A false savings.

> That's some ugly baby. It would have been much prettier if it had
> been built as originally conceived. As it was, it sucked up all the
> money for far too long into a dead end.

How was it 'originally' conceived?

It sucked up too much money because it flew quite often. It flew quite
often because it was needed for satellite insertion, repair, and
retrieval. Corporations paid for this. Money, one way or the other,
was allocated for military missions.


tomcat

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