NASA's 'CEV' and 'Return to Moon vision' by Calhoun

It's designed to do the same thing as the Apollo space craft, so it's quite likely to look similar. The technology inside it is going to be much more advanced, the engines cheaper and more efficient. Look at cars and planes, from the outside they haven't changed much since the 60's, but they are far more advanced technologically.

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Wednesday, January 11, 2006 2:47 PM

Well Scaled Composites have done the equivalent of Alan Shepards Mercury flight and that's all. I don't think that qualifies them to be the world experts.

The problem with space travel is that since Apollo the question hasn't been "what can be done" so much as "what can be done with this amount of money." The return the the moon program basically uses bits and pieces of shuttle and Apollo technology to keep the costs down, it doesn't really give us what we need to go further.

Ideally you would put a space station in Earth orbit, another in Luna orbit with some kind of reusable shuttle rocket going back and forth between them, just like 2001....

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Wednesday, January 11, 2006 2:50 PM

GUNRUNNER

I wasn’t very fond of the idea of a capsule spacecraft but since the Columbia disaster my view has changed somewhat. Look at the Russian Soyuz, its been active since Apollo and its had what, two failures resulting in loss of life? (Soyuz 1 in ‘67 and 11 ‘71 resulting in a total of 4 dead.) Really says something about the concept of space capsules.

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Wednesday, January 11, 2006 3:49 PM

Quote:
Fletch:

Well Scaled Composites have done the equivalent of Alan Shepards Mercury flight and that's all. I don't think that qualifies them to be the world experts.

In light of the numerous attacks you made I my posts, don't take this the wrong way, because it really is nothing person, just another clay pigeon that needs shooting down.

Scaled Composites are world experts? WTF? Who qualifies then, God Almighty? Scaled Composites is the company of Burt Rutan, who is, unquestionably I feel, the world expert when it come to aeronautics. Rutan's team is indeed way ahead of Nasa on the drawing board, but unlike NASA they have no media and govt pressure with budget strings attached and so they don't need to rush to experiment with human lives.

The problem is that gunrunner is right, but the snag is not so much the capsule as the rocket, it's a flying bomb. A VTOL craft with oribit capability would be ideal, and then as fletch said, dock on a space station and meet the interplanetary vessel there, or meet directly with the mothership. Remember, the mothership is going to have to dispatch a shuttle when it reaches Mars.

My strong suspicion is that Scaled Composites will get there long before any govt. and all that awaits after that is a reason to go.

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Wednesday, January 11, 2006 5:36 PM

GUNRUNNER

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
The problem is that gunrunner is right, but the snag is not so much the capsule as the rocket, it's a flying bomb.

I perfer to think of it as a flying chemical reaction. ;)

Quote:
A VTOL craft with oribit capability would be ideal, and then as fletch said, dock on a space station and meet the interplanetary vessel there, or meet directly with the mothership. Remember, the mothership is going to have to dispatch a shuttle when it reaches Mars.

VTOL is unnecessarily complex and dangerous. Are you familiar with the crash rates of the Russian Navy's Yak-38 'Forger' or the Harrier or the V-22 Osprey? Some pilots call the Harrier ‘the widow maker’, the pilots of the Yak-38 liked that it was unreliable- it meant they didn’t have to fly the thing- 1/3 of all Forgers were lost in accidents:

“Pilots despised the Yak-38 and were with good reason even afraid of it. Many tried to transfer to other duties, and it was not unusual for pilots to go on the sicklist rather than fly it. A handful of pilots went so far as to send a letter of complaint against the type to the Soviet Central Committee.” Source: http://www.vectorsite.net/indexav.html

If you can afford to make a spacecraft you can afford to build a runway for it. CTOL increases take off weight (Even more if you use RATO/JATO or a “cat”) and gives you a better margin of safety (can’t really abort a VTOL takeoff). VTOL may work on Mars but on Earth it’s unnecessary unless you need to fit an aircraft on a small flight deck of a warship.

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Wednesday, January 11, 2006 7:10 PM

JAYTEE

lets spend two or three times what we've already spent to reinvent the wheel. yep, it's Apollo, the sequel! What a waste. I'm all for space exploration but this is heading in the wrong direction. It's 2006 already and all we can come up with is a redesigned throwaway chemical rocket? C'mon, America is a bit more innovative and creative than that. We can't even finish the space station or put it to full use yet and we're going back to the moon? Just another "bread and circuses" ploy by the Bush administration to distract people.

Jaytee

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Wednesday, January 11, 2006 10:01 PM

CALHOUN

Quote:
Fletch2 wrote:
Wednesday, January 11, 2006 14:47
Well Scaled Composites have done the equivalent of Alan Shepards Mercury flight and that's all. I don't think that qualifies them to be the world experts.

Only replicated the Mercury flight? If that is so easy how come everyone doesnt do it? They also do it much safer (their rocket engine cannot explode) and what about the innovative shuttlecock re-entry system! brilliant! I think you seriously underrate their achievements.
Burt Rutan / Scaled Composites have done the impossible, that makes them mighty! They won the X-prize easily, no one else came close. Imagine what they could accomplish if they had just 1/10th NASA's budget. I look forward to seeing SpaceShip 2 and White Knight 2 in action and to seeing what else they can achieve.

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Wednesday, January 11, 2006 11:04 PM

Could you have gone to the moon based just on the data you got from Shepards flight? No. There were things you needed to learn how to do which was what Gemini was for. Scaled Composites did a wonderfull job, I believe that the private sector is the only way we will get "routine" cheap spaceflight in our lifetime, but just as there were big steps between Freedom 7 and Apollo 11 there are a lot of things SC have to do before they are the world experts on spaceflight.

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Wednesday, January 11, 2006 11:21 PM

Quote:
lets spend two or three times what we've already spent to reinvent the wheel. yep, it's Apollo, the sequel! What a waste. I'm all for space exploration but this is heading in the wrong direction. It's 2006 already and all we can come up with is a redesigned throwaway chemical rocket? C'mon, America is a bit more innovative and creative than that. We can't even finish the space station or put it to full use yet and we're going back to the moon? Just another "bread and circuses" ploy by the Bush administration to distract people.

Can someone explain to me how the concerns of travelling to the moon have changed since the sixties? The fact is within current technology unless you’re going to make the trip to the moon very often there is absolutely no point in having a reusable vehicle. What do you expect? The star ship enterprise?

The capsule is something we know will work, and will get us there. Why innovate the wheel if the one we've already got works fine and just needs a pneumatic tire to bring it up to date?

The shuttle isn't much more than a throw away chemical rocket, truth be known. A lot of the Shuttle parts ARE NOT reusable. The booster rockets have to be stripped down and rebuilt, with a good percentage of parts being thrown away after every flight. Also the shuttle is designed to carry a payload into orbit. We haven't got the technology to build a reusable lunar lander, and I'm not sure we would have without major leaps in material and drive technology.

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Thursday, January 12, 2006 12:57 AM

It hasn't, it's more to do with what you intend to do on the moon when you get there.

Apollo wasn't the only way to go to the moon, way back in the 50's Von Braun published an archetecture for a moon mission in Colliers magazine. The problem was that it needed two things, assembly of craft in Earth orbit and very large rockets to launch all the pieces. What you got for your trouble though was an orbital shipyard around the Earth and a moonbase that was sustainable in the long term.

Problem was that by 1963 NASA had a 7 year deadline to do the moon thing. They had to go with a design that the Saturn V could lift. The result was a "flags" mission where they just went, poked about a couple of days and then came home. The only useful piece of Apollo hardware that continued to operate long term was the lazer range finding mirror.

The point isn't just to go back, ---North American and Gruman still have the plans for Apollo we could just pay them to build more--- it's to go back and do something significantly different from last time like.... I dunno build a moonbase.

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Thursday, January 12, 2006 2:15 AM

Right, and it's a simple matter of building an orbiting spacecraft factory. Tell the International Spacestation people, they'll tell you how easy that is

.

We're going to have to start at where we left off in order to start the moon base off. We can't just throw together some parts and fly off to the moon, it's not the simple.

There's no point in just building more Apollos though. They're old tech, and using an updated design would be safer easier and ultimatly cheaper.

We don't currently have the technology to build and sustain a moon base, and we're not going to get it without knowing what our technology can do in respect to the moon, and the logical step would be to send a few craft similar to the original landers, in order to gain the experties we've essentially lost.

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Thursday, January 12, 2006 3:12 AM

Gunrunner,

My point was that you can't build a runway on mars before you get there. current vtol tech may not be up to snuff, but it's something that needs to be worked on.

On Earth, regular takeoff and landing are an unnecessary risk anyway, as they are the cause of the majority of all accidents (90%). On this one I'm with Glenn Curtis, the best venue for aircraft take off and landing is the sea.

But there's no sea on mars, and no runway, so the craft has to be capable of handling that situation because ploughing into mars with a tangetial velocity of 300mph is not going to be pretty.

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Thursday, January 12, 2006 3:19 AM

Jaytee,

This is not just a ploy to entertain the people. Neocons mean to turn it into a weapon immediately. With base on the moon and a series of flights, space stations, etc. they can put combat vessels into orbit and have the jump on regular air combat. Lasers and accellerator propelled projectiles can we sent from ships in orbit, while the ships themselves would be more or less unassailable. This replaces the unworkable star wars, SDI, which is unworkable because it relies on a signal which could be intercepted, blocked and possible mimicked by a sophisticated opponent, such as China (not Iran.)

Bush's Mars mission is insincere. If you heard his speech his just dangled that, and then launched right in to an 'intermediate step.' Really the intermediate step is an intermediate step, but not towards a mars mission.

For us Firefly fans, the opening here is for a real final frontier.

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Thursday, January 12, 2006 3:24 AM

Citizen,

It's just not practical. A battle fleet would need to constantly be changing personel, and possibly weapons. Even a real Mars mission would ultimately aim to do routing travel.

Finally, I'm sure the oil companies are loving that kind of fuel consumption.

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Thursday, January 12, 2006 7:27 AM

I'm really not sure what your point is.

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Thursday, January 12, 2006 8:12 AM

GUNRUNNER

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Gunrunner,

My point was that you can't build a runway on mars before you get there. current vtol tech may not be up to snuff, but it's something that needs to be worked on.

On Earth, regular takeoff and landing are an unnecessary risk anyway, as they are the cause of the majority of all accidents (90%). On this one I'm with Glenn Curtis, the best venue for aircraft take off and landing is the sea.

But there's no sea on mars, and no runway, so the craft has to be capable of handling that situation because ploughing into mars with a tangetial velocity of 300mph is not going to be pretty.

Mars is one big runway; there is just a bunch of rocks on it. We just need to bring the outer space equivalent of a C-130 Hercules. Landing conventionally in a short space is feasible (the Herc could land on a Carrier Deck unarrested); equipment can be brought in to clear an adequate runway for launch.

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Jaytee,

This is not just a ploy to entertain the people. Neocons mean to turn it into a weapon immediately. With base on the moon and a series of flights, space stations, etc. they can put combat vessels into orbit and have the jump on regular air combat. Lasers and accellerator propelled projectiles can we sent from ships in orbit, while the ships themselves would be more or less unassailable. This replaces the unworkable star wars, SDI, which is unworkable because it relies on a signal which could be intercepted, blocked and possible mimicked by a sophisticated opponent, such as China (not Iran.)

WTF do they need all that to launch weapons in to orbit? The Russians deployed a working a working orbital weapons platform (called Almaz) with nothing but a Proton Rocket and a Soyuz spacecraft W/Rocket for the crew. Ever heard the joke that NASA spent millions making a pen that could write in Zero Gravity and the Russians used a Pencil?

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Thursday, January 12, 2006 12:24 PM

Citizen,
we hadn't docked two spacecraft in orbit before Mercury either. If we want to be able to work in space, then we have to learn how to work in space.

Yes Von Braun may have underestimated the difficulties, he had a tendency to do that, but the truth is that you don't know how hard it is until you try it, you never get better at something until you practice.

Personally I want a moonbase rather that an "flags" mission to Mars. I want space hotels and orbital factories, because when people start working up there we will develop the skills and technologies we need for a true space faring civilization.

If capsules of the Mercury era are the Wright Flyers of spacecraft and Apollo is the Spirit of St. Louis, then what we have right now is a 1930's biplane. If civil aviation had moved along as quickly then people would still be taking 20 hours to fly the Atlantic in Empire flying boats and most people would still travel by ship.

The only way to make progress is to take risks and do things, and that means pushing the envelope a little further each time.

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Thursday, January 12, 2006 1:14 PM

Except we haven't done that. You can't just catch up on 40-50 years of missed research; you have to start where you left off. If everyone had stopped building airplanes after the Spirit of St. Louis then we'd have to build a spirit of St. Louis mark 2 with current technology before we could start building jet airliners.

And the Spirit of St. Louis was a mono plane

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Thursday, January 12, 2006 4:01 PM