Posted on 09/16/2005 11:10:33 PM PDT by neverdem
The White House has approved NASA's plan to replace the nation's aging fleet of winged spaceships with a new generation of vehicles meant to carry human explorers back to the Moon and onward to Mars and beyond, aerospace experts said yesterday.
The new rockets and spaceships are a radical departure for the space program, rearranging the components of the space shuttle into a new design expected to be more powerful that the shuttle but also safer. The shuttle has had two fatal accidents in 114 missions.
"It's a thumbs-up for NASA to pursue the shuttle-derived vehicle," said John M. Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University and an adviser to the NASA initiative. "The question is the schedule, not the basic approach."
Other experts, who refused to be identified because the space agency will not formally announce the proposal, also spoke about the plan yesterday.
The redesign proposal was first reported in August by agency officials and private experts. Unlike the shuttle, the new vehicles would separate the jobs of hauling people and cargo into orbit and would put the payloads atop the rockets - as far as possible from the dangers of firing engines and falling debris, which were responsible for the accidents that destroyed the Challenger in 1986 and the Columbia in 2003.
But by making the rockets from shuttle parts, the new plan would draw on the shuttle's existing network of thousands of contractors and technologies, in theory speeding its completion and lowering its cost.
The plan has been ready for unveiling for roughly six weeks but was held up because of delays in White House approval.
Yesterday, the aerospace experts said Michael D. Griffin, NASA's administrator, met with White House officials on Wednesday and won a preliminary approval for the project despite...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I wonder if a Hubble refurbishment mission would be doable with the new vehicles before it can't be fixed?
Shuttle may yet visit Hubble one more time.....
http://www.space.com/news/050429_hubble_griffin.html
bump
Is it a single use craft?
If you want on or off my aerospace ping list, please contact me by Freep mail.
OK, the crew is twice as big, the duration on surface twice as long, the crew launches separately, and they don't land on water. But still, it doesn't seem like a stretch, especially for the money and time they want to spend!
"How is this significantly different than Apollo?"
Also more of the moon can be landed on > the far side and the all important poles where water ice is suspected to be. Also we will learn to "live off the land". Extracting necessary materials directly from the soil.
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/news/news/releases/2004/04-072.html
Mike Duke — a geologist with 25 years of experience working for NASA — leads research to help turn lunar and Martian resources into valuable products like rocket propellant, power and breathable air.
"Looks like a revamp of Apollo, unless they salvage the boosters (SRB's like Shuttle)?"
SRB's will be used, I believe with an extra segment so a bit taller. Shuttle External tank and Main Engines as well in the heavy lift vehicle. She will be a big monster! as it will be in-line and not piggyback. Much infrastructure and already trained personnel can be used. Saving time and money.
Obvious solution to the current flawed design.
Deadly avian flu keeps N.J. on edge
Study Weighs the Two Types of Mammogram
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list. Anyone can post any unrelated link as they see fit.
landing like a glider, just plain stupid,
just a gimmuck to make current spaceflight
different than Saturn 5 era.
bringing back the engines, stupid,
tris to give the false impression that
spaceflight is somehow close to airplane travel
why do people offer the false impression that
a return capsule is not re-useable
ping
another waste of mohney - sending another small buggy to the moon.
when will they start to figure out how to do some really heavy lifting?
In two principal ways. First, the systems making up the vehicles are being designed for maximum leverage -- long life, cryo-based propulsion, potential reuse in space. Second, the mission is different. In Apollo, the mission was to prove we could land on the Moon and return safely to Earth. In this case, the mission is to determine the best site to collect and use the resources of the Moon and to emplace the necessary infrastructure to do so.
Admittedly, the early missions will be very much like a "super-Apollo." However, they have potential to grow into something very different. Apollo, for all its beauty, was essentially a technical dead-end; one-use systems, storable propellants, a paradigm of launching everything from Earth. This system is designed from the beginning to adapt to a different paradigm -- the use of off-planet resources (e.g., lunar manufactured propellants) to create a permanent transportation infrastructure in cislunar space.
Should some things have been done differently? Possibly; you can never satisfy everybody by making architectural choices. However, it's a system that will get us back to the Moon with the minimal possible extra investment. It's a start back on the road to real space capability. And it's better than the alternative, which is extinction of human exploration.
and any predictions before someone says we can't afford it, should put the $$$ instead into helping the poor in NOLA
That's the LSAM (Lunar Surface Access Module, or some such...) -- the CEV is the conical, Command Module-shaped piece that's launched on "the stick."
any predictions before someone says we can't afford it
Already happened -- see any FR thread on this topic and the naysayers are always present in full force.
It's not in the plan. What is in the plan is construction of a killer robot that will be launched and will latch itself onto Hubble and force its destructive de-orbit.
I think it's safe to say that the next space telescope will be set on an orbital platform that won't require gyroscopes or thrusters for it to maintain orbit. That is to say, it'll be a lunar station.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.