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Post by ka9q on Feb 23, 2011 18:31:08 GMT -4
the Shuttle was an example of case 2. If you think the shuttle was "cheap", I'd hate to see your example of one that wasn't. Unfortunately the shuttle came through as slow, expensive and unsafe. That combination is not disallowed. Maybe the rules could be augmented with a fourth entry: "4. Reusable". The irony was that this was supposed to make the shuttle cheap, but it did precisely the opposite. When you plan on reusing a vehicle many times instead of expending one on every mission, that means you can't afford to lose it. If you can't afford to lose it, then the safety rules get very onerous and expensive to follow. Sadly, they still didn't provide much of an increase in safety. I think NASA lost sight of the most important factor in providing safe space transportation at a reasonable cost: experience. Everything else, including the reusability of specific components, may or may not serve those goals but you won't know without experience. We stopped flying humans into space for almost six years between ASTP and STS-1, and there hadn't been a flight for nearly two years between Skylab-4 and ASTP. NASA lost a lot of momentum during those periods and a lot of experienced people retired. You've got to keep a reasonable pace going, with overlapping projects so that experienced people will feel like they have a future if they stay. I fear NASA is about to enter an even worse period. At least they had the shuttle program to keep people busy through the late 1970s. Now we have nothing even on the books.
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Post by LunarOrbit on Feb 23, 2011 19:38:41 GMT -4
the Shuttle was an example of case 2. If you think the shuttle was "cheap", I'd hate to see your example of one that wasn't. Well, I think what he meant was that it was cheaper than what NASA and the Air Force originally wanted... or at least it was expected to be cheaper.
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Post by ka9q on Feb 23, 2011 20:10:27 GMT -4
Neil said that it 'sounds like wind whipping around the trees.' I haven't read everything yet, but I'm beginning to wonder if they were even talking about the radios. At the time they make that remark, the flight plan called for checking out the rendezvous radar, running the P20 program that performs rendezvous navigation and having it lock the radar onto the transponder in the CSM. Their comments confirm that's what they're doing. I think the whistling noise they're talking about could have been the mechanical sounds of the servomotors driving the rendezvous radar antenna directly above them on the front of the LM. Or maybe that drive system created RFI (radio frequency interference) that got into their VHF radios.
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Post by gillianren on Feb 23, 2011 20:20:01 GMT -4
If you think the shuttle was "cheap", I'd hate to see your example of one that wasn't. Well, I think what he meant was that it was cheaper than what NASA and the Air Force originally wanted... or at least it was expected to be cheaper. And let's face it, "cheap" is a relative term. It depends on what item you're pricing.
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Post by LunarOrbit on Feb 23, 2011 20:25:52 GMT -4
Yes, I was often reminded of that by customers when I worked in retail. I also was told several times not to use the word "cheap" because it implied poor quality, not just low price.
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Post by lukepemberton on Feb 23, 2011 21:04:55 GMT -4
I think NASA lost sight of the most important factor in providing safe space transportation at a reasonable cost: experience. Never a truer word written. Where I work, we carry out research which might not be turned into real widgets straight away. We keep the research going to mitigate for the future scenarios. We also maintain a culture that is diverse enough to try and ensure that research can potentially be exploited elsewhere. If we turn research off, we know that we will lose people, and probably never have the people with the skills to turn it back on. By keeping it going, the youngsters coming through now will be the technical leaders in 20 years time. In the long term, it is often more cost effective to carry on with research than it is to turn it off, even though there is no immediate need. It may cost more to retrain people or regain knowledge, or it might transpire that by not having the research in place, our company misses out on a market opportunity worth millions for the sake of keeping a R&D going. Close the in tap and open the out tap, and it can set an organisation back a long way. The hoaxers don't understand this point. They think space flight is like mass producing a car, and we can fly back to the moon tomorrow. NASA would have to relearn a lot of things to do it again, and I fear that postponing the return will cause huge problems downstream if the US wish to return. Obama's policy is going to cost the American space program.
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Post by PeterB on Feb 24, 2011 7:44:38 GMT -4
the Shuttle was an example of case 2. If you think the shuttle was "cheap", I'd hate to see your example of one that wasn't. LOL. I meant cheap in that NASA's Shuttle budget was constantly being cut. For example, one budget cut forced them to ditch liquid fuel boosters in favour of cheaper (to develop) SRBs. Another budget cut forced them to go to the Air Force for money, forcing a design compromise (the delta wing). I think this is an important point, and perhaps more important than the expense of the Shuttle being reusable. My impression is that the Challenger accident was made possible by a culture change in NASA from "don't launch unless safe" to "launch unless not safe", and the loss of experience meant the loss of some of the willingness to look for problems, of having the humility to accept there's always something more to learn (in this case, the dangers of launching when it was very cold). And I think this is a very difficult issue to resolve. I can accept the validity of arguments from several sides. 1. NASA seems to have spent a lot of money going very slowly in developing Orion, Constellation and the Ares rockets. I'm reminded of a comment attributed to Apollo engineer Joe Shea - that engineers can always think of ways to make things better, but at some stage you need to lock down your configuration and complete that design. Without a definite target such as Kennedy set, I can easily see these programs meandering along, steadily costing more. 2. Going back to the Moon as the Bush plan provided for can be presented as just Apollo Mark 2, with little benefit gained, even though it'd be spectacular to watch. The idea of going to the Moon just to keep aerospace engineers employed seems a little cart-before-horse. And the cost is such that I don't blame taxpayers for grumbling. NASA isn't necessarily the best organisation to run space missions - any more than government agencies run airlines. Perhaps it'd be better if it was pruned back to something more like the N.A.C.A., and do the research for private companies to use. 3. The idea of the USA surrendering the ultimate high ground to other nations certainly makes me uneasy. Ragging Americans is nearly a national sport here in Oz, but I'll go for America over China or Russia any day. The problem though is that if you want a national space program, you need to spend the money, and Congress doesn't seem to be able to organise itself to manage that.
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Post by echnaton on Feb 24, 2011 8:34:35 GMT -4
Thoughtful comments as usual, Peter.
There is a growing and somewhat justified political mood in the US that feels that government aerospace and defense spending has become more of a jobs program than a well managed function of government. When I hear our Texas Senators and Representatives in Congress talk about saving NASA's budget and Lockheed Martian's jet fighter program it is almost always in terms of jobs.
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Post by gillianren on Feb 24, 2011 12:38:45 GMT -4
The problem though is that if you want a national space program, you need to spend the money, and Congress doesn't seem to be able to organise itself to manage that. Didn't you know? Services provide themselves over here. We demand lots of them and refuse to have our hard-earned tax dollars spent on things we don't like. My state actually passed a tax cut and a salary raise for certain state workers on the same ballot about ten years ago.
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Post by randombloke on Feb 24, 2011 13:26:00 GMT -4
Can you imagine hat would happen if the US just swapped its defence and aerospace budgets? Even for a month or so...
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Post by gillianren on Feb 24, 2011 14:38:02 GMT -4
We're already not spending enough on body armour and similar. Now, there are certain defense contracts which could safely be trimmed a bit--Graham was eating better while he was in Iraq than I was at home. But it's still an interesting thought.
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Mar 3, 2011 14:03:21 GMT -4
Can you imagine hat would happen if the US just swapped its defence and aerospace budgets? Even for a month or so... Umm, we would wreck our current military?
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Post by echnaton on Mar 3, 2011 14:31:52 GMT -4
Can you imagine hat would happen if the US just swapped its defence and aerospace budgets? Even for a month or so... Umm, we would wreck our current military? NASA would take over defense and we would get all that high tech weaponry that the DOD has been hiding in order to keep all those grunts employed. Who needs boots on the ground when you have particle beam weapons on bots?
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Post by supermeerkat on Mar 4, 2011 16:06:40 GMT -4
It makes the LM interior look enormous. Really? I looked at the trailer, and while it's obvious that they're using a fisheye lens to film the LM interior, it still seemed to have the correct dimensions. I'll be interested to see how accurately they reproduced the LM when I get to see the actual film. I assumed the LM interior would be much smaller, and was surprised to learn the LM had "an internal volume of 60 cubic metres" and "was the most spacious American spacecraft developed to that date" (quoted from p147 Chariots for Apollo, 2009 ed)
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Post by chew on Mar 4, 2011 18:46:27 GMT -4
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