On Jul 20, 4:19*pm, Frogwatch wrote:
On Jul 20, 3:59*pm, "Calif Bill" wrote:



"Frogwatch" wrote in message

...
On Jul 20, 1:22 pm, thunder wrote:

On Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:52:19 -0700, Frogwatch wrote:
NASA wants to de-orbit the space station believe it or not in 2016.

Yup, $100 billion spent, a now that it's nearing completion? If NASA
wants to de-orbit the ISS, perhaps, it's time to de-orbit NASA.
Personally, I think they are just fishing for more $$, and more
projects.

I cannot even blame NASA, they did what seemed right, ending the
Saturn V top develop a "re-usable" cheap system except it is neither
reusable nor cheap. *Thye all made a simple mistake with ending the
Saturn V.

Standing next to a Saturn V is a humbling experience. *Frigging huge.
Amazing they worked as well as they did. *How many million parts? *NASA was
building a smaller, cheaper shuttle, and to get more money, accepted
military money to build a big delivery truck. *They should have build 2
sizes. *One for the big parts and a smaller one for research and delivery of
smaller stuff to orbit. *Most of the satellites could have been deliver to
low orbit via a small shuttle. *And a smaller shuttle could have been built
without the huge aux tanks and most likely fly from an airfield, not a
launch pad.

The shuttle is far from re-usable requiring a near complete rebuild of
its propulsion system every time. *The analogy of throwing away your
car every time you use it that was used to justify trying to develop a
re-usable system is a false one because your car's mass is not 90%
fuel just to get to the grocery store whereas being 90% fuel (roughly)
is an actual physics requirement of rockets needing to get to 17,000
mph. *It truly is cheaper to throw the rocket away than to try to re-
use it.
Rather than try to develop a re-usable system, they should have
concentrated on making the Saturn V cheaper. *Add Solid Rocket
boosters for more payload capability. *Development of low mass
composite fuel tanks would have considerably increased payload. Ramp
up to a 4 person command module. *Develop a re-usable LEM because you
do not want to lift that thing into space and then to the moon every
time you want to use it.
A shuttle is a bizarre thing to lift into orbit, those wings have mass
and that reduces payload capability, forget it, it was *a bad idea.
The Saturn came in three diff sizes already.
If only....If only we had not made the mistake of trying to build the
shuttle, we would have a robust reliable evolved Saturn based launch
system.

NASA now proposes to develop the Ares/AresV rockets supposedly based
on shuttle hardware and while this is a good thing compared to the
shuttle, I prefer the so-called Direct concept that actually does use
shuttle hardware. The NASA Ares rockets would use a new version of
the shuttle solid rockets lengthened by a half core length thus
requiring a lot of testing and unknowns. Direct uses existing shuttle
solids, existing shuttle external tank and existing Atlas rocket
engines. The payload would sit atop the whole thing unlike the
shuttle where the payload (shuttle) rides aside the tank.
I will support either one or even the alternative of man rating the
Atlas V Heavy. However, I think manned spaceflight should be the
province of pvt industry and NASA (and FAA) should simply get out of
the way and allow it to happen.
BTW, there is a $50 million prize for first pvt manned orbiting craft
to dock with another craft (I forget the rest of the requirements) but
it was put up by Bigelow Aerospace.