Posted on 11/15/2004 8:56:22 AM PST by cogitator
Liberally excerpted due to length; I recommend clicking the article link and reading the whole dismal thing.
"VSE" stands for "Vision for Space Exploration".
Telling excerpts:
International Space Station: "There is no plan to handle NASA's share of the huge up-cargo and down-cargo demands of the finished ISS, except for a thin wedge labled "ISS transportation" in the famous VSE budget chart. There is no plan for a US cargo vehicle.
There is no initiative to do away with the Iran Non-Proliferation Act which forbids NASA to purchase Progress launches from Russia. There is no plan to purchase ATV cargo flights from Europe, or to purchase HTV flights from Japan.
Even worse, there is no plan for crew exchange without Shuttle. The "finished" ISS will require that a total of 12 crewpersons be launched and landed each year. NASA is responsible for the non-Russian share of this.
The INPA forbids the purchase of Soyuz flights; Europe and Japan have no manned vehicles to purchase; and the Chinese Shenzhou program is withering away with an apparent flight rate of less than 0.5/yr.
The announced US policy for the future of ISS amounts to this: NASA will finish assembling the ISS at vast further expense in American money (and possibly dead American astronauts), then dump the whole white elephant on the international partners, who will be totally unable to meet its crew exchange and "junk exchange" needs.
This plan is so stupid that even Congressmen are objecting to it. For some months there has been a series of increasingly less polite requests from Congress that NASA present some kind of plan for adequate logistical support of the finished ISS. But no plan has been produced - much less a budget.
.........
Hubble Robot Repair Mission: "For $2200M, one could build several more Hubbles and launch them on expendable boosters. It just doesn't make any sense to develop a whole new space robot technology for this one repair job. There is no chance that Congress will pony up this amount of money to save Hubble. Anybody working on this mission is wasting their time."
Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter:: "Of course, JIMO is the mission which was used to justify the hugely expensive Prometheus program for improved nuclear power in space.
But that was back in the pre-VSE environment when it was officially forbidden for NASA to work on or even plan for any post-ISS manned programs. Clearly, the Prometheus 100kw space reactor plant is far more necessary as an auxiliary power source for manned ships and bases than it is as propulsion power for unmanned probes."
Mars Sample Return: "For a while it seemed that Earth was only getting young volcanic Mars rocks, probably from the Tharsis region. But then ALH 84001 was belatedly recognised as a chunk of Mars' ancient highland crust.
The bogus controversy over "fossils" in this meteorite has tended to overshadow the large amount of real science that was extracted from it.
The most important programmatic implication of ALH 84001 was that if we collected enough Mars meteorites, we might get samples of most of the significant geological units on Mars.
Instead of spending billions on MSR, it might be more cost-effective to expand the existing collection program in Antartica, or offer big cash prizes to rockhounds for genuine Mars rocks in their collections.
Concluding paragraphs: "This is a pretty scary list of disasters. The combined impact of these failures and cancellations in the next year or so could be disastrous, on top of the Columbia, OSP, and Genesis fiascos. Possibly NASA needs an "Associate Administrator for Early Warning".
His job would be akin to that of the old court jester - to speak the unspeakable truths that loyal courtiers dare not mention, early enough that these doomed projects could be quietly put out of their misery before they generate too much bad publicity.
It might not be a good idea, but I think that this Canada company has been on the NASA team for a long time (they built Canadarm).
Bingo, more private competition and a reality TV series! Sir Richard Branson needs stroke his ego in a space race vs. Paul Allen.
True, but what Rutan did NASA has never done.
I know.
'We did it before so we should do it again...'???
I think not.
I'm think that the private sector was expressly forbidden from trying to do what NASA was doing nearly 50 years ago up until fairly recently.
sad space ping
Heat load basically wasn't much of an issue with Rutan's flight.
But even orbital velocity heat shielding isn't that hard if you configure your vehicle and reentry profile correctly.
The shuttle is a worst case scenario: very high heat loading due to the Air Force crossrange requirements coupled with an aluminum frame to cut fabrication costs (which was pretty stupid given they probably wound up spending several dollars in tile maintenance for every dollar they saved on fabrication).
Cut the crossrange requirements and go to a titanium structure and you will find reentry to be much more forgiving.
I don't think you can compare Rutan and NASA. Totally different requirements. I do like that there was a challenge issued and met by outsiders. Competition is a great thing and you never know where it will lead.
Here's a taboo thought: I believe that in exploration if you don't lose some people along the way, you're not reaching far enough. It is dangerous. The witchhunts following NASA failures are ridiculous. A sober engineering analysis is the proper thing to do.
Anyway, I think the shuttle should be retired. We tried the concept and it didn't work out in practice. Simple capsules should be used to ferry people back and forth from space.
Part of the problem with doing manned space flight is that there's a perception that the public can't deal with the losses of which you speak (when the government's involved). The real problem is not the loss of the astronauts, it's the loss of the expensive resource carrying the astronauts, which unfortunately is much more difficult to replace.
I agree with you -- accidents will happen and losses will occur in the course of cutting the edge. I think that was part of the appeal of "The Right Stuff" -- test pilots deal with the danger of high-tech R&D every day, and some of them end up making a big hole in the ground. Comes with the territory in which they operate.
You make good points -- I think that the article makes the point that the ISS should be terminated sooner rather than later, resulting in a significant cost-saving. Even though 4 new Hubbles vs. one old, decrepit Hubble makes sense to me, it is a PR item now and NASA would like PR that would go with a high-tech rescue mission, particularly if it works! JIMO: we'll see. Mars Sample Return: I think after the Genesis mission crash, it's going to be a very hard sell. Despite the extreme low likelihood of bringing back Martian buggies, the possibility of Earth "infection" will make it impossible.
Utter nonsense. The private sector was actively engaged by NASA at every step along the way.
It didn't even get high enough to require heat shielding.
Not true. They were above the atmosphere. What you are thinking about is the heat generated by slowing down from enough tangential velocity to achieve orbit. This discussion should clear it up for you (bold emphasis mine):
Returning craft though (including all potentially manned craft), have to find a way of slowing down as much as possible while still in higher atmospheric layers and avoid plunging downwards too quickly. To date (as of 2004), the problem of deceleration from orbital speeds has mainly been solved through aerobraking, ie. using the atmospheric drag itself to slow down. On an orbital space flight initial deceleration is provided by the retrofiring of the craft's rocket engines. Aerobraking in turn has so far mainly been achieved through orienting the returning space craft to fly at a high drag attitude coupled with ultra strong heat shields on the space craft, to convert high atmospheric friction into thermal energy, which gets dissipated mainly as infrared radiation. This generates extremely high temperatures. Sub-orbital space flights, being at a much lower speed, do not generate anywhere near as much heat upon re-entry. This has allowed maverick aircraft designer Burt Rutan recently (July 2004) to demonstrate an alternative or complementary approach to heat shield dependant reentry with the suborbital SpaceShipOne flight 15P. It may be possible that the concepts utilized in SpaceShipOne's design can be applied to orbital space craft design and result in a markedly reduced need for a massive heat shield. Currently however, the need for an ultra high-performance and ultra reliable heat shield is a major difference between crafts desigend for orbital flights (as opposed to sub-orbital ones).
However, maverick aircraft designer Burt Rutan has recently (as of 2004) demonstrated the feasibility of an alternative or complementary approach to atmospheric reentry with the suborbital SpaceShipOne flight 15P:
SpaceShipOne has what has been described as a pair of flipping wings; the spacecraft itself changes shape for reentry.
One the one hand this increases drag, as the craft is now less streamlined. This results in more atmospheric gas particles hitting the spacecraft at higher altitudes than otherwise. The aircraft thus slows down more in higher atmospheric layers (which is the very key to efficient reentry, see above). It should also be noted that SpaceShipOne, in its "wings flipped" configuration, will automatically orient itself to a high drag attitude (see below).
One the other hand, it is assumed that SpaceShipOne's flipping wings also start producing lift early, in very thin and high layers of the atmosphere. This would enable the craft to stay in the higher, less friction intensive (and thus less heat-inducing) layers of the atmosphere for longer (ie. until it has slowed down much more than ordinary craft would at that height). Normally, fully inside the atmosphere, a configuration such as SpaceShipOne's flipped wings, where the aft part of the wings (the elevator part) is folded sharply upwards, would result in a stall. However, in a very thin atmosphere (as present near the edge of space), even such a configuration will likely not stall the craft, because of the very low atmospheric density. Instead, it will likely keep the spacecraft oriented at a very high attitude and thus result in producing the maximum lift possible under these exotic aerodynamical conditions. This in turn could help keeping the craft at a higher altitude for longer — and that would allow for maximum deceleration in higher atmospheric layers. This latter aspect itself isn't strictly aerobraking as it is about producing lift (to enable higher altitude aerobraking) — which is why these issues are not discussed in the aerobraking article.
Rutan's invention was a superb innovation.
Is that the Moon Treaty the US did not sign?
The only legitimate NASA mission I see as sorely needed is the DemoRelocatio ARK of Salvation. NASA's boldly inspiring bid to build a space ark big enough to hold 55M Democrats who just have to get off Planet Earth.....
ping
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