The BitPg Rant: “Heavenly Vessel”

BitPig: An Online Journal | 2003.08.12 | B-Chan

[B-Chan]

Heavenly Vessel

The People's Republic of China is preparing to launch its first men into space. In a few weeks, preparations will be complete for the launch of the first Shenzhou (“Heavenly Vessel”)-class manned orbital spacecraft, which -- if all goes well -- will ferry China's first two yuhangyuan (astronauts) into orbit about the Earth. In so doing, China will become the third nation (after Russia and the United States) with an indigenous manned spaceflight capability.

While any advance into space is to be applauded, it is worrisome that the Chinese are forging ahead with their space program while the United States' government space effort languishes in the doldrums. In the wake of last winter's Columbia tragedy, NASA seems to be paralyzed, trapped between the Scylla of recrimination over the loss of the Shuttle and its seven crew and the Charybdis of the agency's ongoing projects. The biggest of these, the International Space Station, has been reduced in scope so much over the past several years that whatever mission it may at one time have had has become impossible to realize. As things stand now, NASA maintains the fiction of the Station's scientific value in order to justify the continuation of the Shuttle program (where else are the Shuttles going to go?) and the Agency's latest Bright Idea, the proposed replacement for the Shuttle fleet known as the Orbital Space Plane.

OSP as it is currently conceived is to be a winged mini-Shuttle that will be used as a ferry to the Space Station and as a lifeboat for its crew. The problem is that NASA is running the show -- which means bureaucracy working hand in glove with the Usual Suspects from the American aerospace industry, which implies boondoggle on the scale of the ill-fated X-33 VentureStar project -- NASA's last attempt a building a Shuttle replacement. The VentureStar project ended up costing the taxpayers billions of dollars, yet produced no usable hardware, other than perhaps some new cars in the Lockheed Martin employee garage. The sad fact is that NASA's civil-service culture and Big Aerospace's endless attempts to Powerpoint their way to a juicy contract will almost certainly combine to produce a similar disaster for the OSP effort. And then there's the “fog of R&D” to consider; designing a spaceplane the NASA way is an expensive and time-consuming process; within the astronautics community even optimists don't see the OSP lifting off until 2008 at the earliest.

Fortunately, other options exist -- such as capsules. Last spring, just after the Columbia disaster, an ad hoc Congressional investigatory panel made up of former astronauts and scientists and headed by NASA's Dale Myers studied the possibility of simply dusting off our 1960s-vintage Apollo capsules and using them as our “new” space transportation system. Of course, the actual hardware from the lunar program would not be re-used -- the Apollo capsules that returned from the Moon are all literal museum pieces -- but the panel concluded

unanimously that an Apollo-derived Crew Return Vehicle (CRV) concept, with a 4 to 6 person crew, appears to have the potential of meeting most of the [mission] requirements.  An Apollo-derived Crew Transport Vehicle (CTV) would also appear to be able to meet most of the [mission] requirements with the addition of a service [engine] module... [U]sing the Apollo Command Module (CM) and Service Module (SM) as a [Space Station] CRV and CTV has sufficient merit to warrant a serious detailed study of the performance, cost, and schedule for this approach... [T]he Apollo system is well understood, and proved to be a highly successful, rugged system with a very capable launch abort system... the development and manufacturing costs of an Apollo-derived CRV has the potential of lower cost than a winged vehicle due to its lower complexity level.

In other words, while the actual Apollo capsules used to go to the Moon are too old to use or even to duplicate, building an Apollo-type capsule and engine module using modern-day materials and techniques could be a faster, safer, and (because of its already-proved design and performance characteristics) less-costly solution to the problem of getting men and cargo to the Space Station in the post-Shuttle era.

The panel went on to point out that the proposed “Apollo II” capsule would be an all-new design based upon the lunar vehicles, not a direct copy of them; many of the systems needed for a Lunar voyage would be unnecessary for a ship designed for strictly orbital missions. “There would be no need for fuel cells or cryogenics,“ the report to Congress observes, “And modern guidance and communications would be lighter and less expensive.” The new capsules would be different from the old Apollos in other important aspects as well, most notably in their crew capacity (6 astronauts vs. 3 for the '60s Apollo capsule) and in their ability to be recovered, refurbished, and relaunched. The consensus of the report is that a program to design and build these new capsules, which would be orbited atop conventional booster rockets and recovered using simple parachutes instead of wings and runways like the Shuttle, could give the United States a basic, adaptable, safe, and rugged crew transportation system, at much less cost and much more quickly than could a program to create a new, winged “mini-Shuttle”.

Which brings us back to Shenzhou. If the Chinese spacecraft looks vaguely familiar, it should; it is essentially a revamp of the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, only larger in size and of all-new construction. In a sense, the Chinese have done with the Soyuz vehicle what the Myers panel proposes for the Apollo spacecraft: they have used it as the basis for an all-new ship. By doing so, they have gained all the advantages of the veteran Soyuz design (its aerodynamics, controllability, modular construction, etc.) but eliminated its disadvantages (small size, insufficient power generation capacity, '60s-era electronic systems, etc.).

Perhaps it is time that NASA took the same approach. The agency should play to its historical strengths: urgency and artillery. The steely-eyed missileman culture does capsules nd boosters well, but winged vehicles are the natural province of the civilian aircraft industry; NASA should step back from the Shuttle business and allow American private industry to develop the next generation of reusable, winged space vehicles in their own, sweet time.. Meanwhile, a NASA “crash program“ to come up with a new, capsule-based system for transporting men and supplies to and from orbit could be the best method of getting America back into space quickly.

The Chinese are forging ahead. An all-new capsule based upon the proved Apollo design, utilizing the latest advances in materials, construction, and electronics and emphasizing ruggedness, reliability, and reusabilty, could put America's government space program back on track -- and the United States back in its rightful place at at the head of the list of spacefaring nations. Let's get cracking.

[B-Chan]

Link to Above Article

“I do not believe that this generation of Americans is willing to resign itself to going to bed each night by the light of a Communist moon.” - Lyndon B. Johnson

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[Jimmy Valentine]

The problem with the Chinese launching a man into space is that an hour later, they are going to want to do it again.

Has anyone told them that the real trick is not getting them up there, but getting them back here? In one piece?

Bet not

[B-Chan]

The Chinese have been bringing back capsules for decades. Their spy satellites, which are based on really old tech, don't beam back photos like ours do; instead, they send the exposed film from their spy-cams back to Earth inside capsules. These capsules are leftovers from the 1970s man-in-space program (cancelled by Chairman Mao) and they work, even though they use primitive technology. (One of the early models had a heat shield made out of carved oak. It survived re-entry just fine.)

The Chinese are not stupid. This space program has been carefully thought out with an eye to the future. One part of the Shenzhou that is different from the Russian Soyuz is its orbital module (the cylindrical thingie up front). Unlike the modeule on its Russian predecessor, the Shenzhou OM has its own solar panels and engines -- making it capable of independent operation. In effect, each Shenzhou launched comes with its own space station module up front! Obviously, the Chinese have something more elaborate than sending up a few cans full of the Right Stuff...

[B-Chan]

Bump for the Day Shift.

[Jimmy Valentine]

Thanks for the come back. This is going to be interesting.

Sounds like the Chinese have progressed from the days when a mandarin tied black powder rockets to his sedan chair and had them lit in an effort to fly (they have haven't they?).

Regards,