Rutan Faults NASA on Apollo-Style Capsule

Associated Press ^ | 5/4/06 | ALICIA CHANG,

[anymouse]

LOS ANGELES - Maverick aerospace designer Burt Rutan on Thursday criticized NASA's decision to use an Apollo-style capsule to return to the moon, saying it "doesn't make any sense" to build a new generation of space vehicles using old technology.

The designer of SpaceShipOne said NASA's proposed crew exploration vehicle to replace the aging space shuttle fleet doesn't push the technical envelope needed to accomplish more complex future missions that might include manned flights to other planets and moons.

"I don't know what they're doing," said Rutan, referring to NASA. "It doesn't make any sense."

Rutan said there needs to be a technological breakthrough in spacecraft design that would make it affordable and safe to send humans anywhere in the solar system. But he said he doesn't know what that breakthrough will be.

"Usually the wacky people have the breakthrough. The smart people don't," Rutan told an audience at the International Space Development Conference in Los Angeles.

NASA is planning to return astronauts to the moon by 2018 and eventually send them to Mars. Unlike previous lunar missions, the space agency is studying possible areas where it can set up a human outpost.

Two competing contractors, Lockheed Martin and a team of Northrop Grumman and Boeing, each have contracts to develop conceptual designs of the crew exploration vehicle. The vehicle, which will be shaped like an Apollo-era capsule, will launched atop a rocket and return to Earth by parachutes.

NASA is expected to name a winner to build the vehicle by August.

NASA spokesman Dean Acosta said the crew exploration vehicle is a "fiscally responsible" project that achieves the space agency's goal of returning to the moon within its budget constraint.

"If you want sexy, it will cost a lot more money," Acosta said.

Rutan is currently building a commercial version of SpaceShipOne, which made history in 2004 when it became the first privately financed manned rocket to reach space.

Virgin Galactic, a British space tourism company, plans to take tourists on suborbital spaceflights using Rutan-designed rocketplanes launched from a proposed spaceport in New Mexico.

Virgin Galactic President Will Whitehorn said Thursday the company is looking at possible future spaceports in the United Arab Emirates, Australia, Scotland or Sweden.

Virgin Galactic representatives recently visited Kiruna in northern Sweden to explore the possibility of launching suborbital flights that will allow passengers to see the Northern Lights, Whitehorn said.

Last summer, Virgin Group founder Richard Branson and Rutan, president of Mojave-based Scaled Composites LLC, agreed to form The Spaceship Company to build and market spaceships and launcher planes, licensing technology from a company owned by billionaire Paul G. Allen, who financed SpaceShipOne.

___

On the Net:

Virgin Galactic: http://www.virgingalactic.com/en/

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/exploration/spacecraft/index.html

Scaled Composites: http:/http://www.scaled.com

[CWOJackson]

The Starship was too expensive to produce...it was a flop.

[Constantine XIII]

"About a dozen"

Oh, really? :)

[KevinDavis]

[operation clinton cleanup]

You mean the BEECH Starship?

[anymouse]

So do you work for a NASA contractor or do you just shill for them for the fun of it?

NASA is not immune from criticism just because they do something slightly more valuable with our tax dollars than most other government agencies. We as tax dollars should demand the best from every government agency and every single person on the government payroll. To settle for less is just furthering the problem.

BTW, if the commercial sector is able and willing to do an activity as well or better than the government, we are fools for allowing the government to keep doing it. Last I checked businesses and their employees and investors pay taxes, where as the government spends those taxes. Less government means less taxes. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the greater benefit of getting the government out of the space business - or other businesses for that matter.

[anymouse]

I was speaking specifically about any single current NASA bureaucrat. If you compare an individual engineer to a whole government agency over its entire existence, you are the one comparing apples to oranges.

BTW, most of the x-planes were designed and built by contractors not civil servants. And most of the x-planes were flown by the Air Force not NASA. But why should I get in the way of your love affair with NASA's inflated ego. I bet you think NASA invented Tang and Velcro as well.

[anymouse]

Sorry for the typo. It didn't look right, but I didn't think it was worth looking up.

Again Beech dropped the ball in driving the production costs down. Then again the corporate jet market was pretty much dominated by Lear and Gulfstream. They don't exactly roll them off an assembly line.

[July 4th]

After laying on NASA, I was actually expecting him to propose something, but no.

But he said he doesn't know what that breakthrough will be.

Building a rehash of Apollo is not the future, but I don't think there's much of a future in reusable vehicles either. Perhaps for space tourism, yes. But if you've got plans to build something in space, it makes sense to use your lifting capacity to lift something that you can keep in orbit. Otherwise, returning a massive spacecraft to earth is a just a waste of the millions of pounds of fuel that you used to get it up there in the first place.

[Constantine XIII]

How can anyone who claims to be an engineer discout the tremendous technical feat of going from 0 to the moon in less than a decade?

It's unbelievable!

How can anyone not be filled with deep respect and awe when one considers that those men crossed a gap of 239,000 miles in a machine that was designed using the best technology available 37 years ago, walked on another world, planted the flag of the United States, left scientific instruments that are still being used to this day, and returned safely? There is no chance that we could repeat that feat in five years, even given our unutterably massive technological advantage. On the current schedule, we hope to go back to the moon on a schedule with a timescale similar to that of Apollo, with much more ambitious goals on what is essentially a shoestring compared to what this nation invested in Apollo.

Were there mistakes and problems in our first journey to the moon? Sure. That's only to be expected in such a vast undertaking, one that is still unique in human history. That's why the first astronauts were test pilots, men who were unafraid to risk their lives.

Someone who would so easily dismiss that achievement on account of Apollo 1 and 13 could only be a person who really doesn't know what they are talking about, even if they mean well.

[operation clinton cleanup]

BTW, most of the x-planes were designed and built by contractors not civil servants.

Ahhhh... I think they were all built by contractors.. its called the National Aeronautics and Space ADMINISTRATION.. they administer the programs, not construct the vehicles.

[anymouse]

I think you need to read for comprehension. In case missed the obvious the crew of Apollo 1 died unnecessarily in a fire during a ground test.

And most everyone on the planet who knows that Apollo 13 had quality control problems that caused them to not make it to the Moon (they were very fortunate to make it back to Earth alive.)

Also most of the engineers that made the Apollo program a success are now retired or dead.

If you want to fawn over NASA as a god-like government agency, I can't stop you, but I have worked in the manned spaceflight program for about 15 years and know that there are both heroes and zeroes employed there. If you can't distinguish the difference between the two, shame on you.

[CWOJackson]

"In case missed the obvious the crew of Apollo 1 died unnecessarily in a fire during a ground test."

Were you aware that Apollo had over 2,000,000 components? Anyone of which could have caused a cathastropic failure? You really should go back and read the remarks of the other astronauts following that disaster. Considering that they were breaking new ground the whole way, being pushed by the White House to accomplish a moon landing within a fixed time frame, and were making it up (technology) as they went along...I'd say their record was pretty impressive through Apollo.

In retrospect, over forty years later Burt Rutan was only able to mimic the results of Alan Shepard's first flight.

[Constantine XIII]

I'm not "fawing over NASA", I'm mad that you're crapping in the greatest engineering achievement in the history of mankind. O_o

[Constantine XIII]

in = on

[airborne]

I'm less worried about waiting to come up with some grand new idea.

I'm more interested in getting moving on getting back to the moon.

We're already way behind thanks to the shuttle folly.

[Question_Assumptions]

When Rutan can build a ship that can achieve orbit, then he can take on NASA. Up and down is a lot easier than getting the velocity to orbit Earth or escape Earth's orbit.

[anymouse]

When Rutan can build a ship that can achieve orbit, then he can take on NASA.

Well since Rutan designed and built the delta wing on the Pegasus rocket, which has launched numerous satellite payloads into orbit, I guess he can at least offer an opinion about NASA. Some of Rutan's structural products have flown on some military satellites and rockets as well.

With all the sidewalk supervisors on FR, I'm surprise that we don't have a FR space program. :)

[true_blue_texican]

Hey anymouse, I just FreepMailed you.

[true_blue_texican]

In retrospect, over forty years later Burt Rutan was only able to mimic the results of Alan Shepard's first flight.

He "may" have mimicked the RESULTS but he did NOT mimick the METHOD. It is the method that Rutan is criticizing NASA for. Technology has changed so drastically since 1969 that we can attain the "old" results with far better methods; that has to translate into faster, safer, cheaper, further, more....

[CWOJackson]

When you consider that Rutan had 40 years of innovative technological advances to draw upon and that's all he could accomplish, that's not very impressive.