I notice there was no mention of the Jupiter proposal, to build a next-generation heavy lift launch vehicle (HLLV) from “off-the-shelf” components from the present shuttle program (engines, etc.)- just minus the aging and increasingly unsafe shuttle orbiters. We’ve lost two of them , one going up, one coming down; the latter was a signal that the airframe time is reaching a critical state. “Extending” their use is another way of saying, “we’re willing to kill another crew to save money.” (Except that with increasing maintenance costs, it doesn’t even accomplish that.)
As for the Ares program, that is the “prestige” item at NASA right now, the last time we decided to go with a “designed from scratch” system to get a package upstairs without using proven existing components, the result was the Navy’s Vanguard, based on the rather cranky Viking sounding rocket- which blew up on the pad. It was the Army’s Jupiter C, an uprated Redstone ballistic missile, that took first Explorer 1 and later Alan Shepard into space.
(Vanguard was the result of a PR-based decision to use only “non-military” developments for the satellite program- never mind that the Navy paid for same. Like most PR-based decisions, it became a major PR embarrassment.)
The Orion vehicle (basically an improved Apollo)is a good design, and one we should have been building and using for the last three decades, just as the Russians have used Soyuz. We should also have unmanned, robot cargo carriers, on the same principle as the Russian Progress vehicles. Such “one-shot” vehicles are, believe it or not, cheaper to build and “expend” than a “multi-use” vehicle like the shuttles. (They are also safer, as they rarely have time to develop “hangar rash”, etc.) The cheaper it is to put people and materiel’ in orbit, the sooner we’ll get back to the Moon, and on to Mars.
Interestingly enough, this was exactly the approach favored by Dr. Wernher von Braun, the architect of our manned space program before the shuttle. Who, incidentally, was the man who led the team that put Explorer 1 in orbit, and later put the Apollo missions on the Moon.
We didn’t listen. The Russians did.
clear ether
eon
