Posted on 05/18/2003 5:23:01 PM PDT by anymouse
A highly-regarded spacecraft designer says the space shuttle should be retired and the human space program suspended until a better vehicle can be built.
This newest critic is Max Faget, 81, who designed the Mercury space capsule and had a managing role in the design of other U.S. human launch systems, including the space shuttle, Apollo and Gemini. He has received almost every commendation that exists for engineers and was inducted into the Ohio-based National Inventor's Hall of Fame earlier this year.
"The bottom line is that the shuttle is too old," Faget said this week. "It would be very difficult to make sure it is in good shape. We ought to just stop going into space until we get a good vehicle. If we aren't willing to spend the money to do that, then we should be ashamed of ourselves."
Faget (pronounced fah-ZHAY), director of engineering for human spacecraft design at NASA for 20 years, was blunt in his criticism of the growing U.S. reliance on the Soyuz. The craft ran into problems this month when a three-man crew returning from the space station landed hundreds of miles off course.
NASA engineers at the working level said privately that they regarded Faget as "a giant in the space community whose opinions are worth more than anybody else's."
In Faget's view, the choices are obvious.
"We ought to get a decent vehicle," he said. "It could carry fewer people, but it ought to be a new vehicle."
Faget said such a program might make sense, but he questioned why anybody would use the same shuttle architecture that he pioneered almost 30 years ago.
(Excerpt) Read more at kansascity.com ...
America is a place to set up your Oneida, your New Harmony. It requires wilderness and a frontier. That America flourished 200 years ago, and is gone, gone, gone.
The American spirit needs land, lots of land, promising and unforgiving land. It is the land that allows dreams to be made real. America had that, but it is gone.
Time is now for the new America, the endless America, the America that goes on forever without limit in the expanding universe.
The Space Shuttle goes only across the Mississippi from St. Louis and back. America starts when the Space Shuttle leaves you out there. Out there where, believe it or not, a star was just discovered in Aries, only 7.8 lightyears away. We know nothing about the endless wilderness, and anything is possible out there. How can real Americans possibly be content to sit here at the dock in St. Louis when everything is just across there? If you go out there, you'll die. But guess what, if you stay here, you'll die anyway.
Your comments were humorous tho....
:-)
It was the totality of it which prompted me to take it out on you. Maybe someone else (who has been here longer) will introduce the debate on the next space thread and I can hid in the weeds.
That's how it is. Let me just ask, if we aren't going to go into space ourselves and build settlements, why bother sending robots?
See some people refer to Ben Bova and say manned vs unmanned is a phony debate--it is not either/or. Another good comment I saw is that people tend to see the debate of how to spend the money within the budget of NASA. That appeals to me. The debate should be how much to spend within the budgets of NASA, HUD, the NEA--among others--for space exploration. I tend towards 100%.
A couple more RC cars are being sent to the surface of Mars in a couple weeks. The plan should be to check a potential settlement site, but it seems they are after pure science.
On top of that, manned space exploration is way too expensive the way it is being done. It's the usual: The ISS and the Space Shuttle were only the first stage of a true space transportation system that was to reach to the moon and to Mars. Usual in the sense that the committees got hold of the design and decided to run with that while ignoring the reason for creating it. No room for individual genius. All show, no go.
But Dr. Malin's creation is still going strong, to the consternation of the committees. An individual with a clear idea somehow got past the mission adjustors. That's what can be done, and what committees will never do. It's a robot, the MGS, and thanks to that Mars should be a goal of manned spaceflight, no question. Maybe the primary goal, although the moon should have some human presense along the way.
| SPACE | TRANSPORT : | Spacecraft : | Roton |
Yep, what you see above is no computer graphic. Of all the wannabes in the aerospace private industry, Rotaryrocket is the only one which has tested a 100% scale prototype. While the Roton ATV ( Atmospheric Test Vehicle ) is not capable of even sub-orbital flight, but it is atleast a start.
| Content | Design | |
| rotaryrocket.com : Rotary Rocket Company's official website. | 6/10 | 3+3+1/10 |
| scaled.com/projects/roton/roton.htm : Read about Scaled Composites association with Roton. | ||
| spacefuture.com/vehicles/designs.shtml : Spacefuture.com's vehicle designs page. |
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