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Post by gtvc on Nov 18, 2011 9:50:49 GMT -4
Some people claim that the technology to send a man to the moon is lost, if Nasa wants to send astronauts to the moon again needs to create everything from zero is this true?
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Post by randombloke on Nov 18, 2011 10:17:21 GMT -4
Sort of.
If someone wanted to recreate the entire Apollo programme down to the last nut, the blueprints (almost certainly) still exist as microfilm copies, but 90+% of the expertise of the original builders has been lost through natural wastage over forty years of not doing anything like it.
But then, why would someone want to do that? Materials and computer science has advanced significantly since then, as has our understanding of human biology in space, and a bunch of other things. Recreating the Apollo programme would be an exciting exercise in experimental archaeology but ultimately quite silly; the technology to go to the Moon, as it existed in the sixties, has disappeared, in large part because we've improved on so much of it that the old ways have been discarded.
To send people to the Moon tomorrow would require starting almost from scratch, true, but then "scratch" these days is significantly further forward than where it was in the sixties: There are now groups all over the place that regularly put things into space, including people, which was simply not the case back when Apollo was first conceived and while there are no heavy-lift vehicles on the scale of the Saturn V any more, LEO is positively crowded and there is a semi-permanent presence up there to use as a staging point too.
So, would a new Lunar programme have to start from the beginning again? Sure, but it wouldn't have to teach a whole generation of engineers what the "beginning" is first, nor would there be any need to determine if humans could even survive in microG without falling apart first. Accordingly, I reckon it could be faster and cheaper than the original, assuming all you wanted to do was land two people and bring them home after a short while.
But then, we already did that; why repeat ourselves?
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Post by Apollo Gnomon on Nov 18, 2011 12:50:14 GMT -4
The entire AGC could be replaced with a hobbyist grade microcontroller, the mainframes on the ground doing the "heaving lifting" of trajectory calculations could be replaced with a laptop, the 35 lb radios could be replaced with handheld units from Walmart and most of the rocket engines are either still in production or easily replaced with items still in production.
Building the Apollo program from scratch would be stupid and overly complicated, but replicating the functionality with modern technology would be a cinch.
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Bob B.
Bob the Excel Guru?
Posts: 3,072
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Post by Bob B. on Nov 18, 2011 13:05:42 GMT -4
I think a good analogy to the Apollo situation is to ask “is steam locomotive technology lost.” The answer is both yes and no. Yes in that we no longer have the tools and factories to manufacture steam locomotives. Yes it that we no longer have craftsmen skilled in building them. And yes in that we no longer have engineers experienced in designing them. However, no in that we understand how steam locomotives worked. No in that there we have documents showing how they were designed and manufactured. And no in that we have surviving hardware, some of which is even still operational.
Is it a good idea to revive the manufacture of steam locomotives? Of course not, it is an obsolete technology that has been replaced by modern machinery. But could we design and build new stem locomotives if we wanted to? Of course, but they wouldn’t be like the ones of yesteryear. The materials and manufacturing methods of 100 years ago don’t exist anymore. If we were to build them now we’d use modern materials and methods, which would necessitate the design is changed to take advantage of the modern means. We’d have the old examples to draw from for ideas, but everything would have to be reengineered from the ground up. We’d also have to build the factories and the tools to manufacture them, and tradesmen would have to acquire the skills to fabricate them.
So is steam locomotive technology lost? It depends on how you want to look at it, but I’d say largely yes. Similarly, is the Apollo technology lost? In many ways the answer is yes; however, the situation is much like I describe above for stream locomotive technology. It was done once before and the historical record of how it was done still exists, along with surviving examples of the hardware. It could be done again, but only by redesigned from scratch utilizing the most up to date materials and techniques.
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Post by echnaton on Nov 18, 2011 18:51:31 GMT -4
Some elements of the Apollo design would be reused. The Orion craft took many ques from Apollo because the basic physics and engineering had been worked out in the sixties and there was no really better shape to build a space capsule that had to take the crew all the way from the launch pad to reentry and ocean recovery. But it would not have been the Apollo capsule.
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Post by abaddon on Nov 18, 2011 21:00:43 GMT -4
The entire AGC could be replaced with a hobbyist grade microcontroller, the mainframes on the ground doing the "heaving lifting" of trajectory calculations could be replaced with a laptop, the 35 lb radios could be replaced with handheld units from Walmart and most of the rocket engines are either still in production or easily replaced with items still in production. Building the Apollo program from scratch would be stupid and overly complicated, but replicating the functionality with modern technology would be a cinch. Well, that's an excellent point. The whole PIC series would wipe all the AGC, but thats just progress. |
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raven
Jupiter
That ain't Earth, kiddies.
Posts: 509
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Post by raven on Nov 18, 2011 22:01:37 GMT -4
There would have to be other changes if you changed the computers.
For example, the relatively inefficient computers of the era produced a significant amounts of waste heat that had to be taken account with the cooling system.
If you simply replaced the computers with something of equal functionality, you would have to either change the cooling system or increase the power of the heaters, or the astronauts are going to be frigid like the Apollo 13 astronauts when everything was turned off.
Either change is going to produce other necessary changes further down the line.
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Post by ka9q on Nov 22, 2011 8:16:52 GMT -4
I think it depends on what you consider to be "Apollo technology". I certainly agree that many of its hardware components are now completely obsolete and there'd be no point in recreating them.
But the Apollo program produced far more than just a pile of hardware. Much of the effort went into developing mission modes, ideas, procedures and experience that were fully documented. Much of this work is still in use: orbital rendezvous and docking; spacecraft tracking and orbit determination; orbital mechanics and mission design, and so on. There was so much preliminary work that a separate manned program (Gemini) was created. We don't have to repeat that work.
Also don't forget the three major robotic programs (Ranger, Surveyor and Lunar Orbiter) that mapped the moon and characterized its surface in preparation for Apollo. Their work has now been extended by a whole new generation of robots culminating with LRO. The moon is hardly the unknown it was when Apollo was started.
I think the people who documented and managed the Apollo project had a pretty good sense of what information would be of the most use to a later generation that decides to go back. As an engineer, I've found their insights and experience, e.g., as recorded in the Apollo Experience Reports, to be much more enlightening than the detailed circuit diagrams of the Apollo Guidance Computer, for example.
So if you consider Apollo to have been much more than just the hardware you see at KSC and in the Smithsonian, then all of the really important parts are still with us.
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