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The next step outward is a step backwards???
The next step outward is a step backwards???
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The next step outward is a step backwards???
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I don't care if it's wood lathe and glued canvas, so long as we're doing _something_ to further our development of a space presence. I agree,
single-stage-to-orbit or Rutan-style with two reusable stages is a superior concept, but I don't feel nearly as passionate about that concept... ...as I do about simply _going_. "No can brain today. Want cheezeburger." From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies 
dontpostingenpoldontpostingenpoldontpostingenpoldontpostingenpoldontpostingenpolohfuckit
Quote:Certainly we have the greater crew capacity, and it might be more advanced because of the inclusion of STS matured technologies, but its still just a bloody scaled up Apollo module! I actually had the opportunity to talk to a guy in the know on Constellation/Orion a while back and I mentioned that "supersized Apollo" thing. Y'know what? If you tried to fly a winged spacecraft to the moon and back, you'd burn the wings off in reentry. The Orion design is like that for a reason, not to piss off people who demand their spaceships look like the ones on the teevee. Futhermore, with the current state of chemical rocketry - which is about as close to perfected as we're ever gonna get - winged spacecraft are of at best marginal use and SSTO is a total pipedream. Accept it and move on. Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information "I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!" 
If we just accepted it and moved on, we'd all still be crammed into the slums of Europe Fnord.
And if chemical Rocketry is fully 'mature'... Maybe we need another source. Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky? That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry- NO QUARTER!!! -- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children
Seconding the 'another source' comment. We keep hearing about new engines being developed- just last year, I heard about an inventor creating a
working ion engine out of off-the-shelf parts- so why aren't we researching/using them? We need NASA (and her sister space agencies) to research a few more levels of Propulsion tech. My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours. I've been writing a bit. Star Ranger4 Wrote:If we just accepted it and moved on, we'd all still be crammed into the slums of Europe Fnord. Spare me the bullshit. SSTO is never going to happen, not in any meaningful sense. The mass fractions required to make it work are absurd, way beyond current or projected materials science. Even with equally pipe-dream toys like magic nanotech the fractions are still iffy. You can wave your Columbus slogans around all day but no amount of wishful thinking will change the numbers. Bluemage Wrote:Seconding the 'another source' comment. We keep hearing about new engines being developed- just last year, I heard about an inventor creating a working ion engine out of off-the-shelf parts- so why aren't we researching/using them? PROTIP: These engine designs are useless for launching payloads from the surface. They're being researched and used, but not as launch vehicles. Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information "I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!" 
Somewhat less snarkily, ion engine designs -- no matter what you've seen in Star Wars -- are incredibly useful and are currently in use in space
applications. But the problem is this: they are incredibly fuel-efficient, making them ideal for long-term use in space; they do not produce much actual thrust, making them useless for anything other than zero-g environments. To put it in perspective, the average ion drive thrust is roughly comparable to the weight of a sheet of paper lying on your hand. In zero-g, this is useful -- if slow -- as a method of maintaining orbit or altering trajectory. Not so much at the bottom of a gravity well. Edit: personally, I think we should be concentrating on space elevators.  --sofaspud --"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
Chemically powered SSTO's are, indeed, almost certain to remain unfeasible for the foreseeable future. Multistage reusable, something along the lines of a full-featured version of the Rutan suborbitals, should be doable, but would take longer to develop and get into service than the simpler Orion concept. Possibly there are other reasons for avoiding it that NASA's familiar with and I'm not.
My personal bias, of course, is 'Atomic power does not mean going back to the nineteen fifties'. 'Old Bang-Bang', for instance, is and will and should remain in the 'Oh fuck no!' range, no matter what its cool quotient is. But there are other designs, more practical with modern materials than ones from half a century ago, that keep their radioactivity decently sequestered and have higher potential ISPs than chemical propellants ever will. But that's going to be politically impossible for a while yet. Pity. =========== =============================================== "V, did you do something foolish?" "Yes, and it was glorious."
Two words, ladies and gentlemen.
Lifting. Body. -- Sucrose Octanitrate. Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
Okay, maybe SSTO IS a pipe dream, at least given the curent techs Fnord. But MY point is if we never dream, and only accept the status quo, breakthroughs never
happen... I'll even accept that wings wouldnt work for deep space transfer orbits. It still come back to my point that it seems like Nasa is resting on its laurels rather than trying to find ways forwards. and THAT I worry about, for the reasons pointed out above. I guess the thing that sticks out in my mind largest right now is that the Orion might be all fine and well for local use; by that I mean no further than the moon. But they're also talking about sticking 4-6 people in one and sending it to MARS. Now correct my misassumptions here, but I was under the impression that we're talking a mission duration in MONTHS, maybe even over a year? Stuck in a cone of how many cubic feet? Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky? That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry- NO QUARTER!!! -- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children Quote: ECSNorway wrote:I'm failing to understand your point. A lifting-body design is all well and good, but to reach orbit it still requires thrust. Further, as the atmospheric density decreases, the amount of lift generated follows suit, requiring more thrust to maintain altitude. It is still not fuel-efficient enough to justify the enormous expense of SSTO designs. Now, you could argue that a lifting-body design, coupled with some sort of acceleration mechanism (linear magnetic catapult, for example), and taking advantage of ramscoop velocities, *could* be a viable, relatively fuel-efficient method of reaching orbit -- and further, the lifting body design would in theory make for safer, easier landings upon reentry. But then you're faced with other problems, such as safety and reliability of the catapult, what happens if a bird or a suicidal teenager wanders onto the track, and so on. I'm failing to see other scenarios where a "lifting body" is the solution, and the two here aren't really options at the moment. --sofaspud --"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
I'm not suggesting SSTO, I'm just saying that it might be more useful than a straight-up capsule design for the return from orbit at the velocities
described for the Mars mission - the one where re-entry would "rip the wings off of" a shuttle-like design. -- Sucrose Octanitrate. Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode. Star Ranger4 Wrote:It still come back to my point that it seems like Nasa is resting on its laurels rather than trying to find ways forwards. and THAT I worry about, for the reasons pointed out above. You didn't point out anything, you just bitched that the Orion design didn't look like a sexy starship. Once again, it's designed like that for a reason. It doesn't have wings or a lifting body because those design elements won't handle direct atmospheric entry from a circumlunar trajectory. The frustum shape will. It's like the Soyuz; Soyuz is neither sleek nor sexy, but it fucking works. And when you're putting some schmuck's ass on the line a quarter-million miles from rescue, it fucking works is what you want. This shit right here? This is why space advocacy is doomed. For the first time in more'n twenty years NASA is finally doing more than Powerpoint presentations on a resurgence of the manned space program, but since it doesn't look right to the finicky fanboys... Jesus fucking wept. Quote:I guess the thing that sticks out in my mind largest right now is that the Orion might be all fine and well for local use; by that I mean no further than the moon. But they're also talking about sticking 4-6 people in one and sending it to MARS. Now correct my misassumptions here, but I was under the impression that we're talking a mission duration in MONTHS, maybe even over a year? Stuck in a cone of how many cubic feet? Your impression is incorrect. The rough outline for a Mars mission has been solid for almost ten years, based off the Mars Semi-Direct mission profile, 2.5 years total mission duration. Orion is used as a crew transfer vehicle, but not as the main mission lander. Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information "I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!" 
This may come as something of a shock, but I'm in M Fnord's camp on this one.
I'm disappointed that we don't get to keep something LIKE a shuttle AND have the Constellation too. But if you're only going to have one. Have it be the Constellation. Look, I Loved the shuttle when it first came out. Love with a capital L. In a way I still love it, and I'll MISS it terribly when it's retired. There was nothing like it in the world, and most likely we won't see anything like it through the rest of this century. But the shuttle is a deeply, tragically flawed design. It's already killed two whole 7 man crews. It's too big for what it needs to do. It's never been able to utilize 100% of that cargo space. There are better, cheaper, safer ways to build a machine for re-entry. And whoever the FUCK decided to use SRBs instead of liquid fueled boosters has got a LOT to answer for. For what we are using the shuttle for, we don't NEED an enormous, rocket launched, winged glider. We NEVER DID! I know it LOOKS like a step back. But I agree with Fnord. Updating the "Apollo" style of capsule is something that will FUCKING WORK. We don't need finesse. We don't need to be so far out on the bleeding edge of aerospace tech that we have a machine too advanced for the job it's doing. Sometimes brute force is the best option. And think of all the advances we've made since the Apollo years. You realize that they almost didn't have a computer in those spacecraft at all by our standards? They calculated orbital trajectories by slide rule to input them into the guidance computers! They flew to the moon and landed via the seat of their fucking pants! I admire the HELL out of the Apollo astronauts for the enormous clanking BALLS they had to do that! But we don't have to do it that way anymore! Think what we can cram into a bigger version of Apollo NOW. (Hell even the most recent addition to the shuttle fleet is behind the times in terms of computer tech.) Couple that with the potential of working WITH a private run sector of space lift capability (Spaceship 2, Richard Branson, Burt Rutan, et al) and I think we could have something that really works well by the end of the next decade. Of course, with the current political/economic situation we have, little to none of that is going to happen. NASA is going to get cut so far I doubt even Constellation will happen. I think the US is going to retreat almost altogether from manned space travel. JPL will still do great things for science and astronomy. But I think the next generation of space travel and possibly a mission to Mars is going to belong to someone else, like the Chinese. I wish them the best of luck. SOMEONE needs to get off this rock. And if the US can't be bothered to be the ones, then we never deserved it in the first place. But aside from my pessimism about NASA and the United States in space, I still agree that Constellation would be the better approach assuming they can afford to do it and if we can muster the political will for it.
Yes, its clear that the mars mission would be a MRO, like any follow on lunar missions will be. But how long are our people going to be cooped up in the Orion
capsule? At the moment I appear to be laboring under the mis conception that the missions will be much like the inital Lunar landings just writ longer... which under my incorrect assumptions would mean more time was spent in transit than in the landing phase? And Logan... 2 seven man crews out of how many flights again? Seems to me we're still in the level of acceptable risk here. And most engine failures occur with liquid fuels, not Solids. Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky? That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry- NO QUARTER!!! -- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children
(Edit: this is an aside and if you want to respond to it, maybe start a new thread. I don't want to derail the current thread.)
Actually, if you stop to think about it. The ORBITER has never in itself failed. It's the stuff that LAUNCHES it that has caused fatalities. The SRB O-rings killed Challenger, and the damn foam off the main tank killed Columbia. Actually in Columbia's case, the new "environmentally friendly" foam is what killed Columbia. The stuff that used to stick to the tanks before they changed it never had that problem. Thank you environmentalists for killing more people! What still bugs me about that is that is that even with the new substandard foam, we could still safe-proof the tank by the simple expedient of PAINTING IT. I do NOT understand why they won't just PAINT THE DAMN TANK! Put a nice thick coat of white rubberized latex paint over the tank like they used to do for the first 3-4 shuttle flights back in 81-82. Argh... it's this sort of thing that has me so cynical about NASA. You can't do ANYTHING in that damn agency without a freaking committee and study group. I KNOW. I have friends who work there. It's NOTHING like it was in the 60s. Engineers don't run that damn place, bureaucrats do. And that's why it's been so EPIC FAIL the last 20-30 years. Quote: Star Ranger4 wrote:Your definition of 'acceptable risk' is not what the powers-that-be use, and frankly, I'm in agreement with them. How do you define acceptable risk? In general terms, it boils down to a risk-reward ratio. Simple in theory, moderately complex in practice especially when you're talking about people's lives. Simple math with will tell you that the shuttle is not cost-effective to operate (especially if you can't recoup the investment over multiple launches since it's blown up), which is a negative in the 'reward' column. Simple observation will tell you that most satellite launches (supposedly one of the shuttle's main purposes) are carried out by other means, which implies that the shuttle is not necessary for, or cost-effective for, the majority of satellite launches. Another negative. The shuttle is not capable of having its range extended. They call it the orbiter for a reason. Small negative, granted, but in theory you can stack extenders on rockets until the cows come home, giving them the advantage here. On the plus side, the shuttle can retrieve satellites and other spaceborne objects and bring them down safely. Which is good and all, but how often do we do that? (Never mind how often we should, I'm asking how often we do.) Repair trips to Hubble or other space facilities? There's no reason a capsule can't do that just as well. The only place the shuttle shines is as a logistics route to a space station... and that could be done by cheaper reusable capsules as well. So, where's the reward? Then we have the risk side of things. Even if we don't count the human lives involved, or the social impact of seeing our fucking heroes splattered across the sky (for my generation, at least, and judging by my son, his too), or the psychological impact of watching a beloved symbol vanish in a fireball, you've still got a helluva lot of material risk going on here. The shuttle system is overly complex, and as anyone who's paid attention knows, more complex means more chances to fail. Just because the shuttles have had a long and mostly successful service history does NOT mean they're reliable. Ask the NASA folks sometime how many man-hours go into prepping a shuttle for launch, and then ask them how many go into prepping a rocket assembly. The shuttle is a beautiful albatross, weighing us down even as we admire its sleek lines. It's not what we need, it never was, and while I love the bitch to death, I don't want to see any more of my childhood dreams die due to simple fucking mistakes that would have been easier to avoid if the damn thing was less complex and touchy. Which rockets are. --sofaspud --"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs Logan Darklighter Wrote:Actually in Columbia's case, the new "environmentally friendly" foam is what killed Columbia. The stuff that used to stick to the tanks before they changed it never had that problem. Thank you environmentalists for killing more people! Columbia Accident Investigation Board report, August 2003 Wrote:F3.2-1 NASA does not fully understand the mechanisms that cause foam loss on almost all flights from larger areas of foam coverage and from areas that are sculpted by hand. FUCK YOU DARKLIGHTER Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information "I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
And here I was trying to be on your side on this, Fnord. You could have been polite and just tried to prove to me that I was wrong. I could've taken that
and we could have started a separate topic on this (I even encouraged that in my post). But no. Shows what� I get for taking you out of the ignore file and trusting. While we're on the subject: Here are some of the sources for my belief. HOWEVER. You might want to look at the bottom source, as it somewhat (though not entirely), vindicates your facts. http://wizbangblog.com/content/2004/08/ ... -envir.php And still further: From Space.com However, the above appears to be old data. Out of date. There is no source for the original article from Florida Today.com, (the link no longer works) but this guy reproduced the whole thing. Take note of the emphasized portions in red text. It appears that Columbia was using the OLD foam. Not the non-freon foam. But Discovery later used the new non-freon foam and it almost WAS destroyed by it. So I think there was confusion in the communities as to whether the "environmentally friendly" foam killed Columbia. In this specific instance, it appears that you are correct and that it did not. But that doesn't change the fact that later flights WERE made less safe and still ARE. Now, I've been nice enough about it to try and look at the resources I had and the resources you provided. And it turns out we're both correct, after a fashion. Nevertheless, you still reflexively decided to make this into a personal "fuck you" moment. So back into the round file you go. Oh and Fnord? Since it's descended to this level by your actions anyway - in return, a nice big FUCK YOU FNORD *PLONK*
Back on the subject at hand. Here's a nice article about the very thing we're talking about.
A Space Program for the Rest of Us - by Rand Simberg While I don't necessarily agree 100% with everything he says, I do like a lot of his suggestions.  Quote:I do NOT understand why they won't just PAINT THE DAMN TANK!Because paint has mass, and it takes reaction mass to push that mass into the air. I believe the choice is to lift paint on the external tank up to the separation altitude or lift another day's rations for the crew into orbit; given that, I'm quite happy seeing unpainted external tanks. -- Rob Kelk "Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of the same sovereign, servants of the same law." - Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012 Quote: robkelk wrote: Well sure, this is true. But given that IIRC the shuttle rarely uses the maximum rating in it's cargo capacity anyway, it seems like there ought to have been enough extra delta-v to cover that. I mean, let's turn that logic around - should we give them another day's rations or risk them not coming back at all?
Perhaps it's because paint is a piss-poor sealing compound?
No, really, it is, for the purpose you describe. Paint is excellent at keeping things out -- water, bugs, whatever. Its not good at all at holding things in place. If a chunk of foam decides to go for a spin, it's going for a spin regardless of whether it's painted in place or not. --sofaspud --"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
Given, that's true of normal paint. Though I didn't mean just your garden variety stuff you get at the paint store. I had in mind something more sturdy
and rubbery. Sort of a "paint on rubber" almost. Anyway. I suppose it's pointless to complain about it now. We just have until next year and then the shuttles go to the boneyard anyway.
All right.
If the shuttle IS a dead end, what SHOULD the next step be? Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky? That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry- NO QUARTER!!! -- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children |
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