The “day to day” work of maintaining and preparing the STS was ‘farmed out’, specifically to the United Space Alliance, which was an LLC jointly formed by The Boeing Company and Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company in 1995. Although the mission operations were run by Johnson Space Center and the essential infrastructure as provided by Kennedy Space Center as Launch Complex 39, virtually everyone turning a wrench or inspecting engines was a USA employee or subcontractor thereof. Far from making missions cheaper and faster to execute, the pace of missions plateaued and then declined while the per launch costs continued to rise. This notion that handing off spaceflight operations to private contractors as a cost-saving and efficiency measure does not historically hold water, and in fact the program became a cash cow for the principals.
The problems with the Shuttle in the spaceplane form are manifest, stretching from the limited payload it could carry due to the added mass of the wing structures which detracted one for one from payload mass to the complexity and delicacy of the thermal protection systems to the questionable reusability of the SRBs and the Shuttle Main Engines. Although the notion of a spaceplane seems “forward thinking” owing to the fact that we are familiar with aircraft as a routine type of craft, the reality is that there is little reason to add all of this complexity and risk which only functions for a few minutes as the very end of reentry flight.
Neither Space X or the Russians have successfully flown anything close to either the Space Shuttle or the Saturn V. The Russians tried to build equivalent programs, and failed in both cases. You need a pretty weird definition of “efficiency” to have that qualify.
Going by the numbers in wikipedia, the marginal cost of a launch was pretty similar in inflation adjusted dollars for both vehicles. The shuttle never lived up to its promise of being a cheaper easier launch method, but it wasn’t wildly more expensive either.
I think people have an overly rosy view of how cheap the Apollo program was. It was absorbing half a percent of GDP at its height, which is about what we spend on Social Security today. Space being really expensive isn’t the fault of the Shuttle.
The fact is, sending humans to space is, and will remain for the foreseeable future, really expensive. This is true for the the public or private sector, true for the Russians and the US and true for the Shuttle and Saturn V.
That’s because the USA was formed from two dinosaur companies, which combined to form an ever bigger and slower dinosaur. The USA is totally uncompetitive in the commercial market, and basically all of their business is from the US Government (probably all in cost+ contracts). Not to mention that they are highly dependent on imported Russian engines.
Obviously, private contractors aren’t a magic bullet. In some cases, they have all the same flaws as government efforts. The difference is that it is at least possible to have an efficient private effort.
I don’t know if SpaceX’s reusable rocket will work, but there is absolutely no way it could have come out of NASA or one of the older contractors. Not in a form that justifies its existence, at any rate.
SpaceX isn’t too far from their Falcon 9 Heavy, which will have around half the payload of a Saturn V. They aren’t there yet, but I think it’s unfair to say they’re nowhere close.
And of course no one has flown anything close to the Shuttle–no one would dare copy that boondoggle.
I said they haven’t flown anything close. Saying they have plans to fly something close (to the extent that half the lift capability is close) is a weird response. Especially when my entire point was that it was meaningless to compare hypothetical vehicles costs with those of actually flying ones.
SpaceX is a good example of this, their planned cost/launch costs have fairly consistently been a factor of two or three cheaper before they actually start launching them.
The Russians did try and copy that boondoggle, but their program failed. Which is why I was questioning the claim their program was more efficient. On a cost per flight basis, their program cost infinite dollars, which is a lot more expensive then even our Shuttle program.
You aren’t the first person to say that SpaceX’s costs are double what they claim, but so far I haven’t seen any evidence. Do you have a cite?
The Buran was really nothing close to the Shuttle. It looked pretty similar but was different in all but superficial ways. It didn’t fail (the one unmanned flight was pretty successful), but the program was cancelled due to being useless.
The Russians’ choice of staying with the previous type of launch vehicle was more efficient than the Shuttle program.
“Space Shuttle incremental per-pound launch costs ultimately turned out to be considerably higher than those of expendable launchers:[2] by 2011, the incremental cost per flight of the Space Shuttle was estimated at $450 million,[3] or $18,000 per kilogram (approximately $8,000 per pound) to low Earth orbit (LEO). By comparison, Russian Proton expendable launchers, still largely based on the design that dates back to 1965, are said to cost as little as $110 million,[4] or around $5,000/kg (approximately $2,300 per pound) to LEO.”
The United Space Alliance (USA) is the LLC formed as a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin which was contracted with NASA to run the day to day launch vehicle integration and spaceflight operations for the Space Transportation System (colloquially, the ‘Space Shuttle’) from 1995 to the retirement after STS-135. They also contracted to provide similar support on the now cancelled Constellation program and are bidding to do the same the currently in development super-heavy lift Space Launch System.
The United Launch Alliance (ULA) is the joint venture, also formed between Boeing and Lockheed Martin in 2006 (and largely under protest by both contractors) to support the space launch integration and spaceflight operations of the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicles (EELV) consisting of the Delta IV (Boeing) and Atlas V (Lockheed) families of heavy launch vehicles for the United States Air Force. Although both programs are run by the same parent contractors, they are entirely separate programs with different workforces and different tasks, operating for different government agencies.
The Lockheed-designed Atlas V, run by the United Launch Alliance, uses a single Soviet-era RD-180 RP-1/LOX engines on each core stage. The upper stage is a Centuar-derived vehicle using one or two Rocketdyne designed RL-10 LH2/LOX engines of Saturn-program heritage. The design was licensed to Pratt & Whitney which attempted to construct the engine but had multiple failures in qualification, so these engines are still sourced from NPO Energomash in Russia.
The Delta IV uses one RS-68 LH2/LOX engine designed by Rocketdyne (now Aerojet Rocketdyne) per core stage. This engine is a derivative of the RS-25 Space Shuttle Main Engine. It is domestically sourced and manufactured, and consideration has been made to providing it for use on the Atlas V, although redesigning that vehicle to accommodate cryogenic fuel (LH2) would be a significant effort.
I would agree that neither USA nor ULA have any particular incentives to reduce cost or increase efficiencies. ULA would rather launch 10 to 12 vehicles a year at US$130B to US$200B rather than twice as many at 60% of the cost because they clear more actual profit without having to increase the workforce or expand facilities to perform processing in parallel. Nor have they really been given any incentive by their sponsor organizations to innovate or streamline operations; they are essentially guaranteed a certain amount of profit per launch, and as organizations run by accountants and finance people they see that as the better deal, especially as there is currently an almost non-existent market for medium-heavy to heavy launch vehicles at that price point.
However, there are certain irreducible complexities and inherent risks in space launch, and especially with a new-type vehicle with unproven heritage and using unflown design concepts and technologies. The trials and tribulations of the Falcon 1 launch vehicle–a relatively simple two stage RP-1/LOX small lift vehicle flying to Low Earth Orbit–experienced three consecutive launch failures before a successful delivery to orbit, and though SpaceX has never published the actual launch costs with delays and logistical issues of operating out of Omelek Island they certainly exceeded the advertised cost of US$6M per launch. The savings to be had are less on the side of simplicity in launch vehicle fabrication or reducing fuel requirements as they are in reducing the labor and time involved in launch vehicle and payload integration (often taking six months or more and involving hundreds of skilled technicians and engineers), simplifying qualification and acceptance processes for engines and avionics components via robustness, and, provided there is a market for multiple payload integration or bulk mass delivery, increasing gross payload mass to orbit, thus driving down the cost per unit mass.
Note that on the Falcon 9, only the first stage is reusable (designed to fly back to a capture site and soft land). The second stage is still expendable. How ‘reusable’ the stage actually is will depend on the robustness of the engines, propellant feed system, and avionics. The purported reusability of the STS turned out to drive costs higher than a thrust-equivalent expendable heavy lift launcher, and the schedule required for refurbishment, including replacement and re-acceptance of major components after every flight. It remains to be seen just how much savings there will be in reusability, at least in the near term. Again, the major cost savings is found not in the stage and element fabrication and assembly itself but streamlining of qualification, acceptance, and integration activities.
The SPAR Aerospace-built Shuttle Remote Manipulator System (SRMS) a.k.a ‘Candadarm’ is a truly remarkable piece of engineering. Although it looks like a simple robot arm, the loads and environments to which it is subject while having to operate with an extraordinary degree of precision is nothing short of amazing given it’s 'Eightes-era heritage.
However, with that said, the Canadarm is in no way necessary or required for the vast majority of Shuttle operations. It’s primary use was actually in assembly of the International Space Station, but it should be noted that Soviet/Russian Mir station, which was also a multi-module station, was assembled without a shuttle or remote manipulator arm simply by using automated propulsion and control. Given the costs of a Shuttle launch it would actually have been nearly as cost effective to build and launch another Hubble-type telescope, though given the lead time and lack of political support (despite the phenomenal amount of scientific data returned by the HST over its twenty-three years and counting career) a repair mission was the only real option.
In fact, many of the decisions and specific efforts of the NASA-run space program have been done not because they represented the best technical solution but because they were politically expedient or directed, which is unsurprising as NASA was essentially formed as an agency with the mission to perform the purely political ‘stunt’ of putting men on the surface of the Moon before the Soviet Union. That it has also been able to accomplish some great scientific and technical accomplishments–including the Voyager ‘Grand Tour’, the many robotic Mars lander/rover missions, exploration of the Jovian and Saturn systems, Earth observation, and solar weather observation, is largely a testament to sneaking genuinely valuable scientific programs in below the fiscal ‘noise floor’ of the manned exploration directives commanded at various times by Congress and the Chief Executive (and frankly more popular with the public). Future crewed exploration has its place, but manually assembling space habitats or trying to land people on Mars soonest to plant a flag are extraordinarily costly efforts with relatively small scientific benefits. Developing the technology to get people in space and into sustainable orbital habitats and high impulse spacecraft where they can operate probes, examine samples, and improvise without the onus of a long time lag and robotic vehicles designed a decade prior would be a far more sensible approach for near term space exploration and resource utilization efforts.
Certainly there were challenges to overcome if we wanted a base on the Moon. Sadly, many of the challenges are political. All I was saying was that people at the time (myself included) expected we would have a continuing presence on the Moon; and that had we not scrapped Saturn and built the STS, that expectation may have been realized.
As you point out, the Moon is a harsh [del]mistress[/del] environment. For many things, an orbital station makes more sense. But for things like geology and exploration, the Moon is better suited. I just want to be clear that my post was not suggesting what we would have done or should have done; but just what the expectations of space cadets were.
[Note: First of the month, and I’m inundated with work; so I have not read replies after the one I quoted.]
Actually, no, it doesn’t. “Never use the same rocket design twice without improving it,” means that you’ll never have a consistent flight heritage from launch to launch, which means that you will lack a baseline from which to establish reliability and assess any anomalies. What you’d really like to do is mature a design, e.g. make modest enhancements and simplifications which reduce risk and cost, while taking what works from the present operating system design and developing a new launch vehicle that is not subject to the design constraints of the existing system while incorporating significant advances in propulsion, avionics, and structures. The lesson of Apollo–other than not focusing your entire program on one singular destination–is that we should have maintained and expanded the relatively inexpensive and low-tech Titan-Gemini system as a workhorse, matured the Apollo-Saturn system to attain maximal cost reduction and economy of scale, while developing future superheavy lift and (perhaps reusable) personnel lift such as the Chysler SERV or Sea Dragon, and the Delta Clipper or Kankoh-maru, respectively. This concurrency of parallel operation and develop allows a continuous (if intermittent) development of the necessary technologies and processes for practical operations in space while advancing the state of the art without flying at unavoidable high risk on every launch as with the STS.
The thing is that many types of research, especially research on fields ons the scientific frontiers is only possible if the Government does it or supports it. The private sector will npt want to spend the eye watering amounts that on research that may or may not yield profits. And the Government will always have political motives. Do you think that the amazing advancements between 1956 to 1975 in space science (in both blocs) would have occurred if the field had been left to the private sector? I doubt it.
Similarly, do you think any company had would have supported the various space probes?
The private sector is very good to find uses for the technologies and technique already developed.
That said, back to the OP for a minute. Is it i) feasible? And with hindsight what would you have done if you had been in a position to decide using the real world NASA budget post Apollo.
Since you aren’t going to the moon, you’ve also got the entire Service Module, plus the area where the LEM was housed. So, you’ve got a lot more room than just the capsule.
With all due respect to the work the USAF/DoD did on upgrading the Titan/Gemini concept, IMHO the Saturn should have prevailed, as I will explain.
What evolved into the Saturn IB started as the “Juno V” program, to develop a medium-lift launcher for manned missions and military payloads by clustering Jupiter and Redstone IRBMs to form a first stage, hence the clustered tanks and eight engines of the eventual rocket. Different upper stages were proposed and after the success of the liquid hydrogen fueled Centaur upper stage, it was decided to give the now rechristened Saturn a liquid hydrogen upper stage; this was the third proposed alternative hence it was originally called the “Saturn C-1” The original Saturn I used an S-IV liquid hydrogen stage that used six Centaur engines and was used to launch a series of satellites called Pegasus, as well as unmanned test flights of Apollo hardware. The Saturn IB used the larger S-IVB stage with a single J-2 engine.
But the assimilation of the Juno V into NASA’s Apollo program gave the military a bad case of Not Built Here disease. The decision was made to upgrade the Titan II ICBM by adding solid rocket boosters and upper stages to create a launcher dedicated to military purposes such as heavy reconnaissance satellites, the X-20 “Dynasoar” manned spaceplane, and the MOL spacelab.
This is unfortunate because the Titan III had to struggle to achieve a Low Earth Orbit payload of 30,000 lbs, while the Saturn IB could already boost over 40,000 lbs, and the Saturn had been designed from the beginning to be upgradable with new engines and stages to increase payload. In addition, it is difficult to have an upper stage wider than the lower stages, limiting the Titan III to a payload diameter of 10 feet vs. the Saturn’s 21 feet. This led in the case of the MOL to an almost ridiculously tall skinny stack. Ironically, when the Shuttle was designed, it had to have a payload bay that would accommodate the long narrow USAF reconnaissance satellites built for the Titan III, limiting design options.
Because the Saturn IB’s fate was tied to the Apollo program, it never became the “workhorse” launcher that the Titan III became. In hindsight, with greater payload weight and width, the Saturn would have been a much better option.
One big advantage the shuttle had over the Apollo system was it could land at Edwards or in Florida. They didn’t have to call in the Navy to recover one. How are they planning on landing the Orion command module?
Thanks! I couldn’t remember exactly where it was, only that it was a four-sided compartment that sort of opened up like a flower, and the CM/SM had to turn around and dock with it to pull it free. (I built all of the Revell plastic model kits, but it’s been a fair many years.)
So, you’ve got that much space, plus the space of the CM, and that would allow for a fairly sizeable near-orbit spacecraft, with a cargo bay and manipulator arm. Far from negligible.
