Posted on 08/14/2006 12:23:37 PM PDT by raygun
A visitor walks past the Apollo 16 lunar capsule on display at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala., Wednesday, Aug. 2, 2006. NASA engineers designing the next U.S. moon rocket are getting ideas from old museum pieces including the hatch from the 34-year-old capsule. (AP Photo/Rob Carr)
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. - Jim Snoddy and other NASA engineers didn't just go to the drawing board or a warehouse when they needed ideas - and parts - for America's next lunar rocket. They went to space museums.
...tight deadlines and uncertain budgets...[forces]NASA [to] both cannibaliz[e] and analyz[e] pieces of its glory years, namely the Apollo program that first put humans on the lunar surface in 1969.
Snoddy, a manager at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, has been removing valves and other parts from Apollo exhibits as he oversees construction of the upper-stage engine on the new moon rocket, dubbed Ares 1. Some of the pieces and accompanying documentation are not available anywhere but museums, he said.
[snip]
The same thing is going on at the Smithsonian Institution and Space Center Houston, where exhibits manager Paul Spana said he has had about a dozen visits this year from young NASA engineers and contractors trying to figure out how their predecessors sent people to the moon. They were particularly surprised to see the tight squeeze inside the lunar lander, he said.
[snip]
[retired] Apollo engineers are even being brought back on a contract basis to work with...[some engineers] were not even born when the Saturn V was flying lunar missions.
[snip]
"The mechanics of [getting to & from the moon] to a large extent have been solved. That is the legacy that Apollo gave us,"
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
ping
i guess it was roomy enough for a few astro to get spece sick!!!
i so silly.
IB4MHN!
Some make it sound like they are putting a fresh coat of paint on old Apollo hardware and charging $20 billion.
That's who I would have borrowed from as well. Starbuck may have been the better viper pilot but he was too much of a loose cannon.
Sure he was a loose cannon - but who'd you want watching your back when the Cylons came looking? That's right. The buckster.
Here is one of my problems with NASA:
"what they hell are they doing up there on the space station?"
- Has anyone seen a press release or a news report that says, "hey gee - look at what NASA is doing on the Space Station" ????
All that money - and I cannot find a single person who can tell me what NASA is doing up there - OF VALUE thank you very much.
> cannot find a single person who can tell me what NASA is doing up there
Fulfilling Clinton-era State Department goals. When it ceased to be "Space Station Freedom," it ceased ot be about science. NASA got saddled nto with the space station program they wanted, but the one that the State Department wanted.
Imagine if the US Army was told to expend one half of their budget for the next two decades on building boomers and aircraft carriers.
The next flight, in a couple weeks, will resume construction of the ISS. The ISS is not complete at this point. This mission will add a huge solar power array, the first of four huge solar power arrays. With the solar power arrays the ISS will have sufficient power to begin actual science work.
They had a height limitation. They could not fit somebody taller than about 5' 8" into the Mercury. The Gemini was elbow to elbow. Apollo had a little more room, but there were three couches and the ceiling was so close you could reach everything without stretching.
Imagine the concept, actually mounting the flight vehicle ABOVE the fuel tanks, making it nearly impossible for foam, or chunks, or launch debris to damage the passenger compartment.
Remembering, of course, that space flight is a risky venture in itself and many more people will die trying to accomplish the dream... we will reach beyond this planet.
Right. Seems like a lot of power, but they still have to be stingy about allocation. Still, they can fire up some of the more interesting experiments if they get this array installed.
As an old engineer, this story does my heart good. I have had about enough of these know-nothing modern engineers who have not a clue about anything unless their computer tells them the answer.
Ok - well said - good observation...
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