Yep. There’s an untapped microprocessor vein up there in the Jura mountain range near Sinus Iridium. Could be the mothelode. We can mine 'em and ship 'em back by FedEx.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want humanity exploring space only via unmanned probes. I want to get out there and see it for myself. Even if this only takes us somewhere we’ve already been, it’s more development in manned spacecraft, which if you ask me is just what this planet needs.
But we already know how to engineer those things. What’s the point of re-inventing the wheel?
It ain’t about research, chief. It’s about walking on the freaking moon. It’s about walking on the freaking moon while all these other countries make their little gadgets and geegaws and chatter about how the U.S. is done for and should get out of the way. Then we yell down to them from the moon, “We’re walking on the freaking moon and you’re developing new and better food additives. Have fun down there.”
Let’s see, the Moon’s roughly the size of Africa, we’ve sent a handful of guys there for a few days, who managed to explore an area about the size of Cape Town, and you’re ready to declare “Mission Accomplished” and that nothing new will ever be found on the Moon. If we’re going to push manned exploration in the solar system to places like Mars, we need the Moon. The Moon offers us a place close to Earth where we can practice the technologies we’ll need on Mars (given that the Moon’s a harsher environment than Mars, if it’ll survive on the Moon, then Mars should prove to be no problem). With the Moon’s lower gravity, it’ll be cheaper to lift things like oxygen and hydrogen (both of which can be extracted from lunar soil) to space, so that they can be used to supply missions to Mars, and heck, any space stations orbiting Earth.
Another advantage of using the Moon as a testbed is that when things go wrong (as they most certainly will), we’ll be able to either quickly get help to them, or bring them home. Whereas if they’re on their way to Mars, at the very least, it’ll take a while to get them home, if there’s anything we can do at all. Better to iron out the kinks here, then try to jerry rig a solution (with potentially no clear idea of what’s gone wrong) halfway to Mars.
As for the cost of manned spaceflight, well, if you just sit around waiting for something to happen, it’ll never get cheaper. Right now, we’re basically using one-off designs, to explore space (including the unmanned program), and one-offs are expensive. The Saturn V was about to hit economies of scale when Nixon killed Apollo, had it been allowed to continue, we’d have a cheaper way to space than we do now. As proof of this, you only need to look at the Russian program. They’re basically using the same rocket and crew module as they did in the 1970s, and they’re costs to put things in orbit have held fairly constant since then. Ours, on the other hand, haven’t. When Nixon forced NASA to adopt the shuttle, they also had to dump the unmanned booster development (since the shuttle was supposed to do all of that), then when it became obvious that the shuttle couldn’t do it, they had to scramble to come up with unmanned boosters again.
Tucker said it fairly well, UncleBeer. We’re not reinventing the same wheel, we’re inventing a new, improved wheel that will eventually help us get to other places.
Lifting light gases into orbit ain’t the biggest problem, tho’. It’s lifting all the heavy materials that proves most troublesome. And it’s gonna be far easier to push a fully assembled spacecraft outta earth orbit than it will be to move all the necessary raw materials—and equipment and labor to process those raw materials—to the moon first. Not to mention the equipment that’s gonna be required to extract that those gases from Moon soil and then process and store 'em.
It’s not the environment on either the Moon, or Mars, that presents the greatest difficulties. It’s surviving the GCR & SEP radiation effects during the trip. And sending unmanned probes is the only safe way to quantitfy those dangers with any certainty.
Yep. Because those few people who spent those few days on the moon are very, very far from the sum total of exploration and research that’s been done on that body. We quite simply know everything we need to know about to moon to design viable spacecraft and long-term occupancy structures for say - Mars. (I don’t believe a manned mission to Mars is anything we should be spending money on either.)
Right. Which is why the money we spend on space exploration should be put towards something that has some hope of yielding a return. Manned Moon and Mars missions do not meet that criteria.
Which makes unmanned space exploration all that more attractive.
Who said anything about building spacecraft of on the Moon? Next, there’s the structural strength which something has to be designed with if it’s going to have to lift off from the Earth fully loaded. It’s not going to need all that strength in space or on Mars. Better to design it so that it can be launched empty, and then fueled in orbit. Saves weight and saves money. Most of the processing on the Moon can be done by automated equipment, with humans taking time from their other duties to handle the little fiddly bits that the machines can’t handle or give a cantankerous machine a kick every now and then.
Which has probably already been done, since we’ve sent a number of probes to Mars and beyond, and it seems likely to me that NASA would have had them reporting on things like radiation levels on their way out. Even if they didn’t, it’d be a simple matter to program the next probes to do so.
Right, and you quit your job at the patent office because everything’s already been invented, didn’t you? We’ve been wandering around on Earth for something like 100,000 or so years and we’re still discovering things about the place that we didn’t know about. Oh, and while we might have some idea of the conditions on the Moon and Mars, we still don’t have all the answers, otherwise NASA wouldn’t be trying to figure out how to deal with Moon dust.
And what do you think is going to happen if the manned program get’s killed tomorrow? Do think that NASA’s entire 16 billion dollar budget is going to be turned over to unmanned missions? Not on your life. IIRC, half NASA's 16 billion budget is devoted to unmanned missions, so when you cut the manned missions out, they’ll want to cut the budget in half, since that’s all the unmanned program needed. Then, the Nemeiah Scudders will smell blood, and go after the unmanned programs, arguing that it’s run by a bunch of misguided folks who think that evolution is real. You’re also forgetting that a rocket which is capable of sending men to the Moon, could send a freakin’ armada of robotic probes to Mars, Jupiter, or anywhere else in the solar system. The more launches by a particular rocket system, the cheaper they are. Ideally, you’d have NASA launching one heavy lift vehicle a month, alternating between manned and unmanned missions. On a Saturn V, the third stage (where the CM and LM were) was 21.7 feet in dia., 58.3 feet high, weighed 25,000 lbs unfueled, that beat’s the dogshit out of a Delta II.
Cause its a sheep dipped project for the airforce/navy space command. I doubt that there is anything commercially viable , or scientifically interesting enough to justify a return to the moon.
But the highground , sure.
Declan
Yeah, one of the drawbacks of a solid fuel rocket - the fuel doesn’t pour out easily.
The same applies to many commercial airlines - they can’t land with a full fuel load, at least not safely, and not all of them have fuel dumping provisions. Does not seem to have discouraged air travel.
It’s not an “attitude computer”, it’s a guidance system called a “tenu”. The computer didn’t control attitude, the pilot did. Since the pilot was still functional there was no need to abort as the machine was still under positive control. You see, Rutan’s space ship is flown by a human being, not a computer.
Unlike the shuttle, where the procedure for computer failure includes “bend over and kiss butt goodbye”
Yes, there is some risk - that’s why it’s called experimental and flown by test pilots.
And NASA has lost three ships with people aboard - Apollo I, Challenger, and Columbia for a total count of 17 dead. So far, everyone who’s worked for Rutan has gone home to their families.
I’d be surprised if he bid - he’s interested in commercial space launches and space tourism. It’s a different niche.
Why consider Rutan at all? The man innovates nicely. He comes up with novel and workable solutions to problems. Do they always scale up? No, they don’t.
SpaceShipOne was a hybrid-fuel rocket, using something like solid HTPB for fuel, and liquid nitrous oxide for oxidizer. So while it’s technically, pedantically true that they were unable to dump fuel, it would have been nice for them to come up with a way to dump or vent their liquid oxidizer.
They also have the ability to sustain straight and level flight, and their controls are characterized well enough that they can simply fly a few more orbits over the runway until their fuel is depleted to a safe weight.
The Shuttle is also more than 20 years old. It’s a good bet that a system developed today will either have critical-but-double-redundant computers, or a viable manual control option, or both.
NASA has also been flying several manned missions annually since the 1960s (with interruptions for each of the Shuttle disasters). Rutan is also building on lessons that NASA learned the hard way.
And despite our apparent disagreement on the minor stuff, it’s clear we see eye-to-eye on the bigger issue. Rutan should no more be bidding on a Mars contract than NASA should be trying to optimize their ability to make sub-orbital manned flights.
I don’t understand your complaint at all. Rutan’s company (Scaled Composites) designs and builds prototype airplanes from composite materials. They now have the expertise to build manned sub-orbital spacecraft with hybrid rocket motors, (which I’m very impressed by), but that’s about it. The CEV is nothing like Spaceship One - it’s a manned capsule that gets launched into orbit on top of an expendable rocket. It’s designed for orbital transfer and eventually deep-space travel. Technical challenges include life support design, thermal regulation in orbit and deep space (which is totally different from thermal design of an aircraft), space navigation (including orbital maneuvers and docking), heat shields for reentry at orbital speed, ability to integrate with a launcher and survive launch stresses, etc. Scaled Composites doesn’t have experience in any of these areas. And the technologies they do have experience in (aircraft design and composite structures) are not very important for the CEV.
I’m sure NASA, USAF, etc, would choose Scaled if they ever need specialty composite aircraft designed and built. They have in the past, as I recall. Perhaps even part of a Pegasus-style launch system. But I don’t see why Scaled has any right to a contract for a manned orbital capsule.
If you’ll scroll up, you’ll see that Rutan did express interest in building the CEV until he and the other folks at t/Space decided they had better things to spend their money on than hiring people to generate the 40 to 50 reports a month NASA was demanding. As for why I think Rutan & Co. would beat the dogshit out of anyone else, let me refer you to this article which points out that t/Space was able to take the $4 million that NASA gave them to design hardware for lunar missions, design the hardware, build it and test it! All without exceeding the $4 million dollars awarded to them by NASA. Now, how often do you hear about a project ran by Boeing or LM not only coming in on-budget, but accomplishing more than had been initially planned? Given that NASA’s operating on a shoestring budget, it seems to me that it makes more sense to look at folks who give you the most bang for your buck.
(Full disclosure; I work for one of the companies that has been awarded the contract, and could end up working on the CEV project in some fashion.)
This is the real crux of the problem with awarding the contract to t/Space (which withdrew from bidding, ostensibly due to bureaucratic issues but I suspect more owing to the fact that they didn’t want to spend the time and money on a proposal they knew they had no chance in being awarded). Scaled Composites is a manufacturer and subsystems supplier (primarily spaceframes and composite structures) to the aerospace industry with virtually no experience in systems integration. The work on the CEV is going to be a large undertaking, with subcontracts and subsubcontracts, all needing to have prime contractor oversight; the very paperwork that Burt Rutan sneers at is, for better or worse, going to be the bulk of the work for the prime, and the major aerospace/booster integration companies, i.e. those that won the contract, have the existing infrastructure and expertiese to deal with it. Whether NASA’s bureaucracy and documentation requirements are good or bad is immaterial; they exist, they are a major portion of the project, and any prime contractor and Tier 1 subcontractor has to be able to commit experienced resources to that work.
Also, the team that was awarded the contract–Northrop Grumman (including the former TRW Aerospace and Defense companies), The Boeing Company (including the former McDonall/Douglas and Rockwell Aerospace companies), and United Space Alliance–all have significant experience and legacy in the space program as well as various defense-related aerospace projects. Admittedly, a significant portion of the legacy knowledge has been lossed in the years in which the space program and aerospace industry waned, but these companies can still tap into proprietary and legacy information that Scaled Composites or another start-up contractor would not have. Again, this has its good and bad points–the “old boys” are likely to pick solutions based upon past experience, even when they’re not the best or most efficient choice–but this represents an additional comfort level for a NASA that has grown conservative due not only to its maturity as an agency but also public and Congressional demands for absolute safety and success in all endeavors.
So, it’s no surprise that the awardees were big players, and this probably had little to do with who is sitting in the Oval Office. (The major defense and aerospace contractors all contribute heavily to the major players in both parties in hopes of wrangling influence regarding Congressional budgets and awards.) Boeing was the prime for the Saturn V booster, North American Aviation (later NA Rockwell and later just Rockwell) the Apollo Command Module system, and Grumman (later Northrop Grumman) the Landing Module. Lockheed did major work on the Shuttle. SC, in contrast, has little experience in large-scale system integration OR space travel, despite their inventive and remarkable suborbital system.
As far as the larger discussion of the American space program, manned (vs. unmanned) space exploration, and a return mission to the Moon and a misssion to Mars: space exploration is valuable for what it is; expanding both our knowledge and available resources. This comes at great cost, as does any exploration, and the fiscal return won’t be seen for at least a generation, if not much longer. Exploration is to be done because its what we, as sentient entities, do to feed our intellectual and appropritory appetites. The other option seems to be to compete and even war over existing resources and real estate, turn inward to religious and spiritual speculation, inductive philosophy, and other naval-gazing exercises, and generally sit upon our arses and squeeze blackheads in a display of philistine callowness while the great production of the unknown universe plays out in its spectacular ballet.
Manned space exploration has its place, though given the current and near-future technical limitations it is hard to argue that sending blobs of meat into space, along with all the supporting hardware to keep them at the right temperature, pressure, and energy levels (not to mention protecting them from hazardous radiation) is in any way a cost-effective way of gathering data or expanding scientific knowledge, except of course, for our knowledge of how to keep men alive in space. As a justification, the latter is a bit of a tautology, though if one accepts the premise that manned space exploration is a necessary labor in and of itself (for eventual colonization, or because humans are more adaptable, or bragging rights, or whathaveyou) then it certainly makes sense to appropriate funds those tasks, regardless of how risky and how little scientific return per dollar they offer.
What is not a good show is the argument that valid, worthwhile, unmanned projects be reduced, delayed, or eliminated in order to support a manned “stunt project”, which is what the current Mission to Mars initiative adds up to, as it lacks either an evolving strategy for permanent space habitation or a long term committment to funding. Indeed, the M2M and even the initial CEV/moon landing are grossly underfunded to a point of laughability; one need only look back on the costs of the Apollo program, and how many times it had to make use of the open check it was offered (in pursuit of winning the space race) to see that the initial estimates for CEV are no more than conceptual funding, part of a program to either make this Administration look as if it is competing against upcoming spacefaring nations like China, or develop orbital space capabilities for military application (in competition with other nations that are likely to do the same), or both.
We saw what happened with Apollo; as it was, as Tuckerfan, about to achieve economies of scale and spur on greater development, including a higher capacity capsule, additions to the Apollo Applications Program, and (conceptually) a nuclear propulsion Apollo CSM, funding was suddenly slashed. The developments of the past decade were laid waste (as were the plans of many an astronaut and engineer), and all of the legacy and experience was squandered. CEV and M2M has even less of a long-term committment; the money is likely to be wasted on studies without accomplishing any significant technical advances, while funding to good, unmanned exploration and science is slashed.
Obviously, I’m not too optimistic about CEV, the proposed lunar and Mars missions, and space exploration under the aegis of NASA. I think it it is a worthwhile aspiration if pursued with resolution and toward the goal of developing a permanent presence in space and tapping the uncounted material resources that will be available, but the road to that end is not an easy or quick one.
And I was really looking foreward to vacations on the moons of Saturn that my first grade teacher promised me. ::sigh::
Stranger
In other words, they can’t do the job. Most of those documents would be for independent review, verification and quality control. They are absolutely essential for a successful mission, especially one as complex as the CEV.
Tuckerfan, you’re in the automotive field, aren’t you? How would you feel if a factory said they can provide you with the parts you need, but not the quality control documentation? How’re you going to trace the problem if you find a problem with one item? Are you going to recall all the cars that might have have the same problem? And how would the factory investigate and fix the problem?
All it says is they performed “flight tests of several key aspects of the proposed system.” That could mean anything. In this case all they did was build a mockup and drop it from a plane. And who knows how much of their own money they spent in this - they may feel they need to do that if they’re to win future contracts.
By the way, the CEV is a stupid project. It’s just silly to cut back development on reusable launchers and science missions in favor of another series of flags-and-footsteps missions.
SS1 has gliding capability and really, if you’re coming down from sub-orbital, you don’t need power, gravity supplies all that you need. For that matter, after the de-orbit burn the Shuttle is a glider, and the Apollo and Mercury capsules just dropped out of the sky. When coming down from orbit you don’t need power, and hauling that fuel up for just in case is a liability more often than not.
The Shuttle already has triple-redundant computers. In theory it has a manual option but no one really believes it would work.
Small aircraft can function quite well with a human in control, and it would appear from SS1 that the same may be true of small, sub-orbital spacecraft.
It’s reallly a different conceptual approach. Rutan likes to have the human in charge, with the machinery lending assistance. NASA likes to have the computers in charge, with the humans lending assistance. Both systems have advantages and drawbacks.
But it’s a mischaracterization to say that Rutan is entirely dependent on NASA’s past, or that he hasn’t come up with genuine innovations. His “feathering” return from space to atmosphere, for example, is his own creation and it works well enough - for sub-orbital. It’s highly debatable if it would be practical for orbital re-entry. Nonetheless, there might be future applications.
Quite. In large part, it’s a matter of scale. Rutan might do better as a sub-contractor on such a project rather than a prime mover. Or it might be a better strategy for Scaled Composites to simply work on something else.
I’d be willing to bet that all the paperwork was in order the day Challenger took off on her final mission, and when Columbia did her final deorbit burn. Roughly 75% of the paperwork I have to deal with in any job I’ve ever had, has been utterly unnecessary, given that the government tends to be a paperwork whore, I’d be willing to bet that the percentage is even higher. Plus, speaking from experience, I can tell you that plenty of defective stuff gets sent out, because the paperworks right, even though the parts aren’t (that’s one of the reasons why I turned in my last employer to the Feds, since they were shipping defective parts to the military, but all the paperwork was right). I’d much rather get parts from someone who had a proven track record, but said they couldn’t provide 100 lbs of paperwork for every 10 lbs of parts, than someone who had a hit or miss record, but could do all the paperwork. Plus, I can look at a defective part and tell where the problem in the process is, and I’d be willing to bet money that any engineer worth his salt could as well.
Hey, they went the extra mile for the same amount of money as they would have gotten for not going that distance. If you were going to hire an employee, who would you rather have on the payroll: Someone who does exactly what’s expected of them or someone who puts more effort into it than is required?
And in a way, I agree with you, which is one of the reasons why I’m pissed at t/Space being cut out because of paperwork (and only bureaucracy is powered by paperwork) is that I have a strong suspicion that Rutan & Co. were planning on using NASA’s dime to work out the kinks in the private space iniative. They’d give NASA exactly what they wanted (or slightly better, since Scaled managed to shave 300 lbs off the DCX design, which no one else was able to do), while taking the lessons learned and applying it to the private sector. If you watched the Discovery channel program on winning the X-Prize, you’ll notice all the PCs (Macs, actually) in the background had spacestation and spacecraft designs on them. That couldn’t have been by accident. Rutan’s notorious for playing his cards close to the chest, and if he shows you a pencil drawing on a napkin, that probably means he’s got detailed blueprints (if not the completed project) sitting around somewhere. As Stranger points out, the proposed missons are under funded (the same thing was done with the shuttle, BTW), if they’re done using conventional thinking. I don’t think that Rutan’s ever been accused of conventional thinking.
That has not been my experience. I have worked on several scientific space flight missions, and I felt we were producing just enough documentation that if something happened, we can go back and look at it to figure out exactly where and when it happened. Sometimes there wasn’t enough.
Rutan does not have a proven track record. He has zero track record in the field of manned orbital spaceflight.
We’re not talking about a “component” in the sense of a single machined part here. A sub-contractor might supply a box that contains a thousand electronic parts. You can’t just look at it and see if it’s good. If it fails after a year of testing on the ground, you’ve just wasted a year. If it fails in orbit you may lose the entire mission. To avoid it, the sub-contractor needs to show that they have selected the parts properly, had them inspected, etc. NASA would be insane to accept any component without such documentation. In addition, if a problem occurs after launch you need the documentation to find out exactly how things went wrong so they can work around it and salvage the mission. The Hubble mirror, for example - even though it was flawed, it was a well documented flaw and they had enough information to design a corrective lens system.
I envy you.
True, but given the fact that his aircraft have been so successful, and that he claimed the X-Prize, even though he got a late start on it, speaks volumes IMHO. If I had the cash, I’d happily bet that t/Space humiliates NASA in less than a decade.
Look, a good design obviously works right out of the box, or it doesn’t. (And I’ve done tech support for a sat phone company, so I have some experience with high tech gear.) Hubble’s a bit of a bad example, since NASA thought they’d save a couple of bucks and **not ** test the optics before they launched it. Of course, NASA lost the bet and had to shell out big bucks to fix Hubble while in orbit. You do recall that NASA’s buying a lot of their gear off eBay because it’s old and the problems with it are well known (including how and when it’s liable to fail), which is smart, if you’re trying to save a couple of bucks, since you no longer have to design something from scratch, put it through all kinds of endurance testing before you can declare it “fit for duty.” I’d much rather have a space program which used off-the-shelf gear and did dozens of missions than one which used custom designed gear and only launched a couple of missions.
I have a feeling Burt’s life has had numerous conversations like the following:
“Burt - what makes you think you can do that? You don’t have any experience building RC model planes”
“Burt - are you nuts? What do you know about building full size airplanes?”
"Burt - no one uses canards. "
“Burt - you don’t know anything about jets.”
“Burt - sub-orbital flight? What experience do you have with that?”
If you make “experience with manned orbital space flight” a requirement then no one but NASA will ever launch into space in the US. At some point, the space program is either going to have to move to the private sector or wither away. The question is when, and who could take over. Clearly, the first private companies are not going to have a “proven track record” - that doesn’t mean acquiring it is impossible. Nor does it mean disaster will follow. Rutan’s track record is of successfully launching into new areas of aerospace, which he has done several times without getting anyone killed. That’s a good track record, and a point in his favor.