Christmas (Holiday Dinner) under Enterprise… No one who has seen the “dummy” shuttle Enterprise, and has a rudimentary knowledge of flight mechanics (mine is from long love of models, books, building flying models, and hours in the Air and Space – everything…) isn’t impressed by the sheer size of the orbiter, and dumbfounded by power and complexity of the system that is necessary to orbit the shuttle system. However, it is not a capable realistic transport bus to get 7 to 10 astronauts into orbit, and down from orbit – and nothing more.
I am not a classic engineer, just an enthusiast who has followed the space program since I built my first model of the Jupiter C/Explorer as a child. My guide was Jules Bergmann and I built every available model of every American and Russian Spacecraft that I could get my hands on.
1. Soyuz. The Booster is merely a product improvement and upgrade of the same rocket that put Sputnik in orbit. It works. It’s escape system works. The capsule/service module/orbital module design is from the 1960′s and aside from the improvements installed because of improved technology, it works.
2. We need a heavy lifter to get stuff into orbit. Why re-invent the wheel at great cost? With modern materials Saturn V (VI, VII) would be a champ, Especially the first stage. It is nice to contemplate all sorts of great “orbital and exploratory taxis” but we have to get that equipment into orbit, and out of orbit (which means boost, fuel, and replacement fuel.) Again, why re-invent a wheel.
Ok, I will grant you that the second stage of the Saturn V rocket is a slightly more complex and expensive vehicle to be so disposable, but how much easier would it be to re-design a cheaper replacement than try to build the entire system?
Sometimes “New” and Shiny (said with a ton of smarmy tonal slide) isn’t so good. The Russians have proven that.
3. The need for outside of the box thinking is plain to see, but not so easy to implement. As is shown here, everyone has some other “idea” of just what the box is in the first place.
4. Manned exploration, left up to private corporations, will go NOWHERE… no company is going to invest such huge sums in an adventure that amounts to exploration equivalent to what the Corps of Exploration (Lewis and Clark) and the Pike expeditions were conducting. It was 1869 before we had a transcontinental railroad, and if anybody here doesn’t know the story, the Credit Mobile scandal, and the massive government bond and rights transfer necessary to build it then they should do some light reading. Businesses don’t explore, they make profit, and there is little or no profit in flushing money down black hole R&D projects that might go exactly no where.
Besides? What corporate benefit is there in having a base on the Moon? Where is the profit in that?
No, the job of risky exploration is to be left to sovereign entities, not corporate fictions. People explore, businesses exploit at a later date.
We need a mix of things that work, simplicity, and innovation. NASA needs to drop the “do everything with one car” sort of mentality, and it needs to realize something that the Army did years ago about the helicopter…
The UH-1 still works, well. The design, still flies all over the world. Because it works, and aside from incremental improvements, it hasn’t needed to change since its initial design in the late 1950′s.
Ares is a failure, Orion could be a success but it needs to be simplified greatly, and it needs a booster system that works. It can’t be of much use sitting on the ground looking innovative.
Best Regards and thanks for a great discussion,
John
