Re: Space Shuttle Grounding....depressing....

Christophe Bachmann wrote: 
Andrew Swallow wrote:

Wesley Struebing wrote:


On Tue, 2 Aug 2005 04:23:32 +0000 (UTC), dg411@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(Andre Lieven) wrote:



Andrew Swallow (am.swallow@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx) writes:


Matt Ion wrote: 

<snip>

Or give the orbiter a fourth engine and a bigger fuel tank. 

Given that the SRBs each put out 3,000,000 pounds of thrust, you'd
need to add 6,000,000 pounds of thrust in eliminating the SRBs.

As the SSMEs only put out around 400,000 pounds of thrust each,
you're going to need not one more, but about fifteen of them. Plus,
the starter three.



The SRBs are heavy so the mass trade off could be very interesting. 

Most of that is fuel. Most of any rocket, as lift off, is fuel.


Just a question (I believe someone mentioned the "possibility" in
another post here...)

Didn't the Saturn V have a main stage thrust of right around 7.5
million pounds?

Of course, as pointed out, it was a couple years dead already... 

Even if the blue prints have been lost photographs
still exist.  Museum exhibits may be a little rusty
but they can be measured.


The Saturn V blueprints have never been lost, they are kept at Marshall Space Flight Center on microfilm.
However they are useless now, because they incorporated much off-the-shelf 1960 components which are not available any more.
They got to the moon in one decade, and it was a great feat of engeneering, but they did it with a technology that is just totally obsolete, and we'd be better off just to start from a clean sheet, using todays computers and composite materials to do a much better rocket. 

Most of the original rocket engineers will have
retired taking their unpublished knowledge with them.
A major money saving action by NASA is to get
historians to make a list of the modifications made
to the V2 and Saturn V rockets plus the reason for
the modification.  Give each rocket engineer a copy
and a request that they avoid repeating these mistakes.

A few hours reading the list and applying to the new
design is a lot cheaper and quicker than spending
millions replacing the launch tower for the tenth
time because the previous missile blow up.

Andrew Swallow

.

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