Re: Shuttle proves being superb manned spacecraft

Leopold Stotch <butters@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

The vast
majority of the constraints that forced decisions that would later prove
to be problematic were due to political factors rather than engineering
factors.

Excellent -- you're making progress. The next step is to recognize
that "political factors" (in this case, pulling together enough
support by enough players inside and outside the government to get
funding) are not some illegitimate intrusion into the purity of
Engineering Fantasyland, but are just as real as Isp and mass-ratio
numbers... and just as much show-stoppers if you get them wrong.

If space had proved easy enough (in physics and engineering terms) to
be tackled at the real cost levels -- and thus the pace -- of the
Wright brothers and Bleriot, of Curtiss and Douglas and Boeing...

But it wasn't. Not nearly. So it *was* inescapably political.

If in 1971 "cheap access to space within the decade" had been as
politically compelling a goal as "men on the moon within the decade
(and prove our tech can beat Soviet tech) " had been in 1961...

But it wasn't. Not nearly.

Partly because the U.S. had *succeeded* so spectacularly in meeting
that 1961 goal. Resting on your laurels is universally acknowledged to
be a bad idea; it's also a common, frequent, and very natural failing
of societies as well as individuals.

Partly because other changes in the 1960s, domestically as well as in
foreign affairs, had made it harder for most people (as distinct from
space fans) to believe that any "next step in space" would be *the*
proof of our skill and self-confidence.

Partly because CATS was (and is) intrinsically a far less spectacular
and clear-cut goal. Every grown-up here knows that it's a prerequisite
to *enable* the spectacular goals: a cost-effective and fully
functional space station, sustainable moon bases, Mars exploration,
SSP and other space resources. But it lacks that flags-and-footprints
sizzle.

Partly because CATS was (and is) intrinsically a *harder* goal than
Apollo's. The minute you say "cheap," your trade space has a new
dimension and many new boundary conditions and constraints. It's no
longer 1961's "Saturn or Nova? Direct ascent or EOR or LOR? Never mind
cost per flight or long-term sustainability, what will let us deliver
on JFK's commitment?"

As Jorge's post makes clear, CATS demands an incremental, systematic
exploration of this more complex trade space. Worse, for some levels
of technology cost and of payload volume, there may be *no* good
"operational" solution: it doesn't matter how technically sweet an RLV
design may be if it requires too much money up front, and/or if it
only starts to pay off at more launches per year, more tons to orbit
per year, than anyone is willing to pay for.

In that case, you may need to accept that CATS simply isn't amenable
to the Great Leap Forward approach that worked for Apollo. You may
need to keep your operations on ELVs and grind out progress towards
RLVs -- and ultimately CATS -- one subsystem at a time, through an
open-ended series of X-programs, for however long it takes to
accumulate enough knowledge of the trade space. Even then, it will
surely take longer and cost more than going from the X-1 to the X-15;
my guess is it will take longer and cost more than going from the V-2
to the Saturn V.

That's gritty, depressing stuff. It doesn't feel nearly as good as a
lot of typical sci.space.* fare, about how Congress or the public or
the media let down the Dream after Apollo...

Or about how "NASA lied" in selling STS (OK, they did, but they were
deceiving themselves at least as much as Congress and the public --
and the great majority of space fans lapped it up like honey at the
time)..

Or about how this or that "grass is greener" architecture coulda
turned the Shuttle into a contender, and we'd be on Mars by now.

But hey, there *is* a place for all that: soc.history.what-if and
alt.history.what-if are just down the hall.



.

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