Posted on 01/10/2009 2:59:12 PM PST by Vendek
"On the return flight from a meeting at NASA headquarters a couple of years ago, my mind was reflecting upon the Space Shuttle program...its milestones...its tragedies...and its soon-to-be fleet retirement.
While gazing out over the clouds through the airplane window, a number of thoughts swirled in my head:
Instead of retiring the Space Shuttle, and simply moth-balling the orbiters at museums and "rocket parks" around the country, could we give the fleet a heroic assignment? A grand mission commensurate with their thirty years of service?
The concept:
• Fly two Space Shuttle orbiters into earth orbit.
• Rendezvous and connect the two orbiters together -- top to top -- by a truss.
• The ends of the truss are anchored to the bases of the orbiters' payload bays.
• At the center of the truss, dock a sufficiently sized propulsion stage.
• Install a "crew-transfer conduit" -- a pressurized, accordion-style inflatable system that connects the airlock hatches of the two orbiters so that the crew could freely move between the two spacecrafts.
• Once the propulsion stage has accelerated this entire system on its trek to Mars, the truss is detached from the two orbiters and the truss-propulsion assembly is jettisoned.
• The two orbiters then separate to a distance of a few hundred feet, but remain connected -- top to top -- by a tether cable that is spooled out.
• During the separation, the accordion-style inflatable crew-transfer conduit equally elongates.
• Once the orbiters are at their maximum fixed distance apart, they would simultaneously fire their reaction control systems to set the pair into an elegant pirouette -- creating a comfortable level of artificial gravity for the crew's voyage to the red planet....
(Excerpt) Read more at remarkable.com ...
Sure! I’d like to volunteer Feinstein, Boxer, Blagoevich, Kennedy, Mr. and Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Holder, Chuckie Schumer, and Frank Lautenburg.
I think I see a problem with this plan...
Eric has addressed a lot of issues, but he is neglecting a serious atmospheric entry problem at Mars. When the vehicle finally reaches the portion of atmosphere where it could use his rube-goldberg parachute system, it would be traveling at an insane speed - probably Mach 13 or 14. If the vehicle didn’t burn up by then, the chutes would shred within a millisecond of deployment, and Mars would have a nice large new crater for future scientists to study.
no taxes to pay for the bailouts, might not be too bad of a deal...
Then there’s the old “How the hell do we get back” issue.
The guys that developed the two rovers had exactly that problem. Almost killed the mission. They went through about 10 chute designs and techniques before they got one that worked.
how do we get back?
Space scuttle...
Give that boy a CIGAR.....lol
Well not exactly. I know that story. This fool has the physics all wrong. There is no parachute at all that would stop a craft like that under those conditions. In the case of Steve Squyres' MER team they were having problems with chute DESIGN, but not the actual physics of atmospheric entry. Their biggest problem really was the time factor facing them based on a launch window they had to make.
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