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

On Sat, 20 Aug 2005 03:08:48 +0000 (UTC), dg411@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(Andre Lieven) wrote:

>Josh Hill (usereplyto@xxxxxxxxx) writes:
>> On Thu, 18 Aug 2005 20:33:35 +0000 (UTC), dg411@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> (Andre Lieven) wrote:
>>
>>>Josh Hill (usereplyto@xxxxxxxxx) writes:
>>>> On Mon, 15 Aug 2005 13:48:47 +0000 (UTC), kruegerb76@xxxxxxxxxxx
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>What I'd like to know is: how many people think a manned mission to
>>>>>Mars is where NASA's time and effort should be going?
>>>>
>>>> Me! Me! Me!
>>>>
>>>>>If you get right down to it, what do you think should be NASA's
>>>>>priority right now?
>>>>
>>>> NASA has about the same budget, adjusted for inflation, as it did
>>>> during the Apollo years.
>>>
>>>I would suggest that you attempt tp make this claim amongst the
>>>experienced denizens of sci.space.history. They could then swiftly
>>>and with loads of facts, disabuse you of this incorrect notion.
>>
>> NASA's budget peaked in 1966 at a bit more than twice what it is today
>> in inflation-adjusted dollars.
>
>Indeed. Now, price out some technological artifacts from then,
>and now, and you'll see that a lot of prices have far more than
>doubled since then.

Note "inflation-adjusted dollars." Not to mention that, if anything,
the price of technology has come down.

>> When I take the average expenditure of
>> the Apollo years, from 1963-1972, I get 18.6 billion 1996 dollars per
>> year -- as opposed to the current 13.7 billion 1996 dollars. A bit
>> higher, but not I think nearly enough to justify the huge discrepancy
>> in accomplishment.
>
>Well, then you're failing to take in the difference bewteen sunk
>and constant costs, such as pension payouts, and the like, and the
>effects that such costs have in squeezing whats reasonably discretionary
>after those costs.

I haven't seen the figure for fixed costs, but I suspect they don't
eat up most of the discretionary budget.

>>>> In 1961, we launched our first suborbital
>>>> flight; the following eight years saw pioneering unmanned missions,
>>>> our first orbital flight, our first flight with multiple astronauts,
>>>> our first spacewalk, our first docking, and the landing on the moon.
>>>
>>>Note that NASA budgets were *increasing* all through that period,
>>>until the gear was mostly developed, by FY 1966, when NASA budgets
>>>started to go... down.
>>>
>>>> NASA has done some good stuff in the 35 years since the first moonwalk
>>>> -- the space shuttle, Skylab (really the last gasp of the Apollo era),
>>>> the Hubble, a variety of successful unmanned missions, some of which
>>>> have made fundamental discoveries. Still, there's a great gulf between
>>>> NASA's accomplishments in the first decade of manned flight and those
>>>> of the last 35.
>>>
>>>Sure: No bucks, no Buck Rogers.
>>
>> With the budget about 74% of what it was from 1963-1972, even
>> accounting for fixed and ongoing expenses, they should be able to do
>> plenty of Buck Rodgers stuff.
>
>And, they are. At it's peak, NASA could, in one year, fly five Gemini
>capsule flights ( 2 cramped guys, no cargo ) a year ( 1965, 1966 ),
>or a max of four Apollos.
>
>Since the 80s, they've had years with more shuttle flights than that,
>per year, with loads more people and payloads flown. Thats plenty of
>the Buck Rogers stuff.

But Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo all accomplished something.

This is getting circular. My original point was that NASA /had/ the
money to do cool Apollo-style stuff but has done so at a much lower
rate. The money is there, but it's been frittered away on the ISS and
the shuttle, a wonderful accomplishment but a lousy space tug. The
same money could have taken us to Mars, could have funded genuinely
innovative programs like SSTO and nuclear propulsion in addition to
the valuable unmanned science missions like Hubble..

>> It's not the budget.
>
>Yes, it is. Theres little room in NASA's budget to *both* continue to
>operate the shuttle, and various robot probes, per year, *and* pay to
>develop a new manned spacecraft, possibly with a new launcher, too.

Again, circular -- my original point was that we /shouldn't/ be
operating the shuttle, that using it for routine missions is a waste
of money.

>>>> Some say, and I suspect they're right, that the problem with NASA is
>>>> that after the moon landings it was no longer goal-directed. It
>>>> answers now to constituencies; its priorities are bureaucratic and,
>>>> frequently, unimaginative -- let's build another space station bigger
>>>> than the last two, let's make another expensive fix to keep the
>>>> shuttle, essentially an experimental craft that was never an
>>>> economical means to get material into orbit, flying long after it
>>>> should have been replaced by the next generation of manned spacecraft.
>>>
>>>Since that " next generation " is nowhere to be seen, this really
>>>means " lets stop flying manned spacecraft ".
>>
>> No, it means that NASA chose to pour money into flying shuttles
>> instead of developing a new vehicle.
>
>Thats what I said: fly now, or stop flying, to pay for a later ship.

Well, several points.

First of all, there shouldn't have been an all-or-nothing need for a
later ship. The original plan called for a new runs of Saturn V's,
which would have hauled the space station to orbit in only a few
trips, with the shuttle used only for crew service. We should never
have abandoned our heavy lift capacity. After the shuttle blew up, we
couldn't even loft satellites. But once the Saturn was out of
production, replacing it became a costly proposition.

Secondly, NASA had to stop flying anyway because of the shuttle
failures. They could have developed new lift capacity in that period
and in fact they did develop new vehicles for satellite launches. But
they stuck with the shuttle for heavy lifting and crew service.

Thirdly, had NASA gone to Congress and said "The shuttle is
unreliable, we need a temporary increase in the budget to rapidly
develop successors," I suspect they would have gotten it. In fact,
they did get an emergency budget increase -- but it was to build a
replacement for Challenger. And Congress was perfectly willing to
allocate the money. Now they're doing what they should have done years
ago -- designing a new heavy lift and crew vehicle and retiring the
shuttle. I'm not particularly fond of the Bush Administration, but
they deserve credit for that.

>> The shuttle was a tremendous
>> achievement, but using what was essentially an experimental vehicle
>> with basic design flaws as a workhorse long after it became apparent
>> that it would never be safe or economical was a serious mistake. NASA
>> kept throwing good money after bad.
>
>NASA cannot just take it's budget and spend it as it chooses. Congress
>takes a dim view of gov't agencies usurping the spending perogatives
>of Congress.
>
>If Congress says " Heres 7 Billion to fly the shuttle with ", then
>you spend that money for the purpose that they told you.

Sure, but Congress doesn't make that decision in a vacuum. Had NASA
had a strong leader who said "this is what we have to do," they
Congress would have done at least some of it.

>> Columbus is precisely why we /should/ go to Mars. There were other
>> routes to the Indies -- routes which actually got there -- and
>> Columbus could have used those routes. Instead, he chose to go by a
>> new one, and bumped into something unexpected.
>
>Yet, theres not a lot unexpected about Mars today...

How do you know that? Sure, we know some of what it's made of, and
what the atmosphere and temperature are like, and that there's some
water on it. But we haven't a clue about the most interesting question
-- whether it harbored, or even continues to harbor, life.

>> I'm sure we'll have a permanent moon base someday, and viable space
>> stations. But the cost of space travel will likely have to come down
>> if these things are to yield economic benefits. And from the
>> perspective of science and exploration, as things now stand, the ISS
>> and return trips to the moon are just too boring and too expensive
>> given that the scientific and technical knowledge they yield can be
>> obtained elsewhere at less expense.
>
>Then, get Congress to fund new and cheap launcher development.

>> Who remembers the 20th group to climb Mt. Everest? The adventure is
>> gone -- not for those who fly or work in the space program, but for
>> the general public, which foots the bill.
>
>Thats as it should be. I, for one, am greatly pleased that the
>" adventure is gone " when I get into a 767...

Because people like the Wright Brothers and Lindberg risked their
necks. It's the failure to explore that carries with it the biggest
risk -- the risk, hell, the certainty, that we won't find anything
new.

>> The figures don't bear that out. NASA's been getting lots of money,
>> but it's been going into two big sinkholes, the shuttle and the ISS.
>
>Because thats what the appropriation from *Congress* says. Take away
>both programs, and there is AbZero guarantee that NASA sees a penny
>of that cash.

Congress didn't come up with either program -- they were NASA's. More
to the point, NASA had planned to do some really cool stuff, but the
Nixon Administration trashed it and forced NASA to design a crippled
space tug:

"Eventually the Nixon administration advised NASA that not only were
there to be no flights to Mars, no nuclear interplanetary stages, no
space station, no more Saturn V's, no orbital transfer vehicle - but
there wouldn't be a space shuttle either if NASA couldn't get the
development cost down and get the USAF to participate. A USAF
requirement was a large cross-range to allow recovery of the orbiter
at Vandenberg AFB from polar orbits in the case of abort-once-around
scenarios. This, together with wind tunnel studies indicating that
Faget?s straight wing was unstable at re-entry speeds, drove NASA to
the delta wing. The reduction in development cost led NASA to throw
away the concept of reusing anything but the engines and guidance
systems. Instead the shuttle would be boosted by cheap solid fuel
boosters and, taking a concept from the Air Force, the propellants
would be put in a big expendable drop tank."

Nixon, feh.

>>>Well, because it wasn't working. Google up " VentureStar "...
>>
>> Not the Venture Star. though from what I've read it's not at all
>> certain that it wouldn't have worked. Google up "Delta Clipper."
>
>I'm well familiar with it. I saw the first flight footage at the
>1993 Worldcon, intro-ed by Jerry Pournelle. Look at DC-X2's bill of
>$450 million ( estimate ) to develop a half scale model, and a bill
>of $5 *billion* to build DC-Y.

NASA's 1995 shuttle operation budget alone was $5 billion. They're
throwing good money after bad. If the DC-Y can reduce launch costs, it
will pay for itself.

>>>> It seems like a logical
>>>> step, one that could bring us closer to the day when space travel
>>>> becomes as safe, practical, and economical as air travel.
>>>
>>>It could be. But, one would be foolish to assume that its not hard,
>>>that it doesn't require materials, fuels and technologies that don't
>>>yet exist, and that one can do it all in one or two ( If you count
>>>the STS program ) steps.
>>
>> Douglas thought otherwise.
>
>Easy to do; Did their money follow their thought ?

Yes. As I understand it, they invested a lot.

>>>Note that there were many, many aeronautical steps between the
>>>Wright Flyer and the DC-3...
>>
>> Sure, and we should be taking those steps. Both of the SSTO vehicles
>> were supposed to do that. I don't think it's at all certain that they
>> would have succeeded in doing so, but they would have been steps along
>> the way. Now we're going back to an incremental improvement of the
>> Soyuz/Apollo approach -- practical, but not pathbreaking.
>
>Practical works.

But not well.

>>>> We should
>>>> also proceed with the long-overdue restoration of the Apollo-style
>>>> crew and cargo capabilities that's already in the works, and nuclear
>>>> engines for long-haul trips such as the journey to Mars. Then, once
>>>> we've perfected the structural materials, on to the space elevator!
>>>
>>>Thats nice. Who pays ?
>>
>> Hello? All but the space elevator, which can't be built until the
>> structural materials are perfected, are already in the budget,
>
>No, they've been *proposed* by the President; But the Pres doesn't
>write and pass the Budget...

Putting an end to shuttle flights will mean all the money that's
necessary.

>> and the space elevator appears to be economically feasible.
>
>" appears to be " is the operative phrase. VentureStar's fuel tanks
>appeared " feasable " at one time, too.

You can always point to one or another component or program that
doesn't work. But most of them do, if not exactly as planned. And you
can't make progress if you don't accept risk and make mistakes. The
space program wasn't based on stasis -- if it had been, we would never
have gotten into space in the first place.

--
Josh

"You know I could run for governor but I'm basically
a media creation. I've never done anything. I've
worked for my dad. I worked in the oil business. But
that's not the kind of profile you have to have
to get elected to public office." - George W. Bush

.