Posted on 12/05/2005 7:36:05 PM PST by KevinDavis
NASA’s plan, as of now, is to fly eighteen more shuttle missions to the International Space Station and one to the Hubble Space Telescope before retiring the system at the end of 2010. This assumes a flight rate of about four a year, which is the rough average for the pre-Columbia disaster era. In fact, NASA in at least two of the five years left NASA will have to fly at least five missions a year in order to give themselves a bit of a cushion for unexpected contingencies.
The space agency has also given itself some leeway due to the decision to concentrate all the early ISS missions on the assembly process rather than logistics. Thus, they hope to complete the truss and solar array system to give the ISS all the planned electrical power capability sometime in 2008 or, at worst, early 2009. They then plan to begin to attach the modules that are now in storage, beginning with Node 2 and followed up by the European and Japanese laboratories, Columbus and Kibo. Only after that do they plan to fly the final three logistics flights.
(Excerpt) Read more at thespacereview.com ...
I think Burt Rutan has shown us the first step. The Shuttle served its purpose 30 years ago as a military vehicle. These days it's a terrible design for what it's used for.
Barring the Mars rovers, the Hubble is the only thing Nasa has this is actually doing good job.
The Hubble needs to be saved.
And just what, exactly, is that multinational flying hamhock doing that's useful?
If we are going to get the best results from NASA we need to just give them the money and tell them to surprise us. Let them be innovative and entreprenurial. The best and brightest will return and they will get a lot done with $14 billion a year.
Rutan's craft was just good enough to get the job done, which is standard procedure when there isn't access to the taxpayer's checkbook.
Check out the Soviet Buren craft for example. hauls twenty tons, not fifteen. Carries ten people, not six. Uses Kerosene/LOX for fuel, cheaper. Alternate payloads to the Buren are possible for flights that don't need return trips. It did do one complete launch, orbit, and automatic landing before the program was cancelled.
Tragic end to the craft tho.
FWIW
WHO have we not launched into space yet?
The country nowdays led by the media seem to be more interested in the ethniticity, gender or nationality of the shuttle astronauts.
Go right ahead. Who did the hyping, Rutan, the people who ran the competition , or the fans? I find it hard to knock a guy who won a competition even if it was over-hyped.
Does it really matter? He's already working on a better one, and has plans for another one after that.
You forgot politicians, teachers and alternative lifestyles, but it's more than that. It's the missions themselves, the congressional districts that must get a cut of the action, mandatory international partners and more. The unmanned program has been doing really well, but notice it's major embarrassments (botched measurement conversions) happened when the Clinton administration butted in with it's "better, faster, cheaper" program.
Kev, I won't flame ya, 'cause I think you'd taste terrible as BBQ. :'D
Save the Hubble!
Intercourse the ISS!
Seriously, the ISS is just a feel-good project for those who hate US sovereignty. There is no mission for which the ISS makes any sense. The assembly of the ISS will *no way* be done in the proposed four- or five-year time frame.
If NASA really busts its hump, it won't be able to launch the Shuttle more than three times a year until the system is retired. By the time the ISS is finished, it will be time to ditch it in the Pacific a la the Soviet/Russian Mir station. And some of the Russian-built components should be ditched right now. ;')
The Hubble is an actual science platform, and day after day for years on end has produced (and will continue to produce) more observations than Jerry Seinfeld ever has in his standup routines. (': The ISS on the other hand is just an experiment in assembling prefabbed stuff in space (or more accurately, how not to do it).
The ISS should be completed, but using a "crash" developed booster (borrowing RightWhale's phrase, "BDB" for "Big Dumb Booster") capable of delivering the large segments to orbit. The Russian boosters used for the crew and supplies will move payloads of (if memory serves) 10 tons. The Shuttle will lift (if memory serves) about 25 or 30 tons, and the modules are designed to fit in the cargo bay.
Anything done with human spaceflight, such as a lunar base, missions to Mars, one or more missions to Mercury (the dark side), and perhaps to some of the larger moons of Jupiter and Saturn, or to assay asteroids, will require development of a heavy lift capability on the order of the Saturn V (or, as Robert Zubrin says, "Saturn V or better"; his view is to use the SRB of the STS).
Seems like a good excuse to restart F1 production, if you ask me. :')
You get no argument from me.
I still don't understand why you hate the Hubble so much. It is doing science that no other platform can. Not even the new one being readied for launch in a few years.
Not true. It cannot lift a payload to orbit no matter how you cut it.
Money should be spent on human exploration.
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