Columbus wasn’t just screwing around in the ocean at great taxpayer expense. He was testing a hypothesis that, if borne out, would have had enormous economic and strategic implications for Spain providing a shorter route to the Indies, and given Spain a huge competitive advantage.

Teaching a grammar school class from space, on the other hand, is a straight-up, and totally pointless, waste of money. That alone convinced me that the space program should be canned, if they can’t find anything better to do than that.

As for satisfying the urge to explore, how about the depths of the ocean? There might actually be a point to that (manganese nodules and all that), and there are already schools down there (sorry).

Re: redoing Apollo. Yeah, there’s no need to use the same stuff because the hardware has evolved quite a bit. In fact, I’d wager current cargo only engines are safer than the S-V engines were. Other proven tech, like better aluminum and/or wound composite tanks would only make an Apollo II cheaper and safer. (Okay, maybe I’m trying a little to insure I’d have a job on the project.)

Again, I wouldn’t see any need to go to the razor’s edge of technology like they tried with the X-33. That could have flown if they had designed it from the start with aluminum cryo tanks, but they had to develop composite tanks and couldn’t keep them from cracking. Then the aluminum backup design (because they never had them in the weight budget) made it too heavy.

There was a lot of pressure both in the early Shuttle days and later when it actually started flying, to get rid of heavy launch capability to insure the Shuttle was the one heavy lift vehicle. In fact, after Challenger, we had to upgrade the Titan so it could launch payloads that had been designed as Shuttle only.

It’s a shame so much politics was injected into the space game, but I guess it was inevitable seeing as Apollo et al were fueled as much by Cold War politics as technology. I have a lot of faith (and hope) that NASA’s new Administrator will steer things more towards exploration, technology, and knowledge gathering and away from a political fiefdom (a game they never played well anyway) otherwise I fear the days of NASA as we know it are numbered.

Just my 2 cents, but, I mean they were too busy acquiring appliance makers to commit the needed management’s attention to getting this done properly.

Weren’t there proposals on the drawing board for using the standard Saturn 5 to launch other equipment to the moon, for a possible lunar base? It would be interesting to see all the old proposals from the late ’60s for the extended use of Saturn hardware.

And the more I think about it, the more I think Saturn could be revived. jimmitude is right; the engines don’t have to be identical. Improved Russian or American engines could be used.

What kills me is that we threw away a design that worked. I have books about the development of the Shuttle. One concept drawing stood out; it had a shuttle mounted on a Saturn first stage. The idea was obvious; keep the Apollo-Saturn program going as the shuttle was developed. If the shuttle failed, Apollo-Saturn could continue.

It’s heartbreaking they didn’t take that approach.

I believe that manned space exploration is important, but the Shuttle is not a vehicle capable of ‘real’ space exploration. Using the Columbus analogy, the Shuttle is a really big scow capable of rowing around the Spanish coastline. Columbus would be proposing the Apollo program.

Re: rickl, I don’t want to sound harsh but the ‘we can’t build the Saturn V anymore’ arguement was a canard. As an aerospace engineer, I was pretty insulted when NASA floated that one. I’ve also worked on gov. programs; I can pretty much guarrantee that nothing ever gets thrown away, and if it gets burned, there are ten copies left.

Apollo II would not have to be a cutting edge technology program. Lockheed Martin has engines (some that they buy from the Russians) with the thrust range to make a very similar launch vehicle quite easily. The Command Module (capsule) would likewise be easy to cob together using old Shuttle parts. The re-entry design is not a problem anymore. Probably the biggest re-design job would be the lunar lander, as those were pretty much hand made, tested, and then modded as needed. Everybody who worked on the LM (that I knew, anyway) had their own ideas what a ‘real lander’ would be.

Joe Schmoe has it correct. There will not be star travel for a very long time – if ever. What NASA is doing with the shuttle and the Space Station is a complete waste of money. Your idea of making space exploration a private enterprise is a non-starter though. It’s way too expensive. I think Rutan is shooting for the sight-seeing business and that’s about it.

I’m more concerned with the shape of the capsule, which is proven to work for re-entry, even from the Moon (which is much faster than from Earth orbit). Maybe they could make one a bit larger, reconfigure the interior for more people/equipment, and other stuff. Definitely, they’d have better electronics and batteries and fuel cells.

The point is, Apollo is a place to start, with incremental improvements. NASA’s attitude is, clean sheet of paper, never mind the cost.

OK, it being late at night, I missed the part where you said “using a different rocket”, but I believe my remark about Saturn rockets also applies to Apollo capsules.