Hi,

Sorry. Rereading my last two posts, I too felt they were a bit jerky. It is just that I have slightly different ideas on why we should colonize space. The indirect benefits to Earth will be tremendous. If the Egyptians could mobilize resources to build Pyramids for a thousand years, it should be possible for us to mobilize resources to colonize space. Only, we should be very clear why we want to go there. I don't think the American Public will pay for just another romp on Mars.

Regards and Best Wishes.
Selvaraj

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, sraj wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Sorry. Rereading my last two posts, I too felt they were a bit
jerky. It is just that I have slightly different ideas on why we
should colonize space. The indirect benefits to Earth will be
tremendous. If the Egyptians could mobilize resources to build
Pyramids for a thousand years, it should be possible for us to
mobilize resources to colonize space. Only, we should be very clear
why we want to go there. I don't think the American Public will pay
for just another romp on Mars.
>
> Regards and Best Wishes.
> Selvaraj
>

Hi Selvaraj,

I agree, the American taxpayers would not be happy with a repeat of
the Apollo missions.

Every story has a Who, What, Where, When, How, and Why. Thirty
years ago the Americans put men on the moon and brought them back,
throught he use of technological wizardry and a lot of math, and to
repeat the feat without recognizing that the "Why" is now gone would
be bad storytelling. The US sent men to the moon for one reason: to
get there before the Russians did, thus proving the superiority of
the american Capitalist system over the soviet Socialist political
system. The moment Armstrong and Aldrin came back to earth,
the "why" dissolved into nothingness. One of the 20th century's
great ironies is the delusion that a socialist method - NASA itself -
"proves" that capitalism is superior to socialism.

And today, the "why" has become "maintaining NASA funding". The
politicians and bureaucrats in charge of NASA for the last three
decades have scrupulously avoided answering "why" for any of the
manned space endeavours in that time.

Instead they give us bafflegab like "it's for science", posturing
that the advancements of science over the last 30 years are largely
due to the manned spaceflight activities of that time period. In
reality, the science data acquired by the american shuttle
astronauts has had a very poor return on investment either in
scientific papers published or products developed or enhanced.

The millions of man-hours invested in Apollo was a monumental
effort, akin to your exmple of the Pyramids. NASA has also tried
very hard to paint space operations of any kind since then as being
akin to the building of the Pyramids - as massive operations that
involve tens of thousands of people working together for many
years. Apollo may have been like that, a Wonder of the World, but
that was then. People have been noticing the stagnation of the
space program, and seeing entrepreneurs like Rutan, Bezos and and
Musk having some successes for miniscule amounts compared to NASA;
Scaled Composites entire development program is costing something
like 26 million dollars, what NASA spends in 15 hours.

The advancements in computer technology lie in stark contrast to
progress in space, with home coputers now equivalent to NASA's
entire computing capacity in 1969. Computing cost has plummeted,
but cost to orbit has stagnated. The discrepancy is impossible to
ignore.

Slowly, the "space is hard and expensive, and only governments can
do it" meme is dying out. However, it doesn't help that NASA's past
business practices regarding competitors makes Microsoft look like
corporate angels. Just ask the guys at Rotary Rocket.

So why the avoidance, the bafflegab, the posturing, the presentation
of space as too difficult and expensive for private interests? NASA
walks a fine line; they must keep the public interested in space
enough to keep the money rolling in, but not offer the possibility
that the average person, or their children, might _themselves_ go
into space. After all, that is what really interests people about
space, the desire to go there for themselves. That's what keeps
NASA funded.

However, if NASA was to actually get the average person into space,
then NASA's manned spaceflight program could no longer exist in its
present form. They fought hard, unsuccessfully, against allowing
Dennis Tito and Mark Shuttleworth onto the ISS; they were vociferous
about Lance Bass. These men are the thin edge of the wedge, and
NASA execs know it - if average guys who just happen to be wealthy
can go into space, then the public might get the idea that anybody
can do it, not just NASA-vetted bermenchen.

Consider what would happen if there was a vibrant commercial orbital
tourist launch market. NASA's structure would change radically.
Some Centers might be closed or moved; the affected Senators and
Congressmen would be none too pleased. Such a market would force a
reorganization that makes the current shuffling of the deck pale in
comparasin. NASA would even have its budget cut.

Here's hoping that XCOR, Spacex, Armadillo and the rest can bypass
the NASA monolith and establish that market sometime before NASA's
CEV comes on-line. That would bring about an abrupt stop to NASA's
so-far 30 year manned spaceflight death spiral.

Ed

On Feb 17, 2004, at 10:41 AM, Ed Minchau wrote:

> The advancements in computer technology lie in stark contrast to
> progress in space, with home coputers now equivalent to NASA's
> entire computing capacity in 1969. Computing cost has plummeted,
> but cost to orbit has stagnated. The discrepancy is impossible to
> ignore.

Information technology depends only on moving bits; which, in the
strict sense, have a mass of 0 or very close. Thus, there is a lot of
room for optimization. Getting a human into orbit involves
accelerating 70-80 kg to about 27,000 km/hour. Furthermore, the space
environment requires a lot of gear to keep the human alive so at least
a few hundred kg is needed, probably more. This leaves a bit less room
for optimization.

Also consider the number of trials. We have been able to make hundreds
of millions of computers. That provides many opportunities to learn.
There have only been a couple thousand orbital launches ever, the vast
majority by the USSR -- an organization that was completely immune to
any pressure from NASA.

>
> Slowly, the "space is hard and expensive, and only governments can
> do it" meme is dying out. However, it doesn't help that NASA's past
> business practices regarding competitors makes Microsoft look like
> corporate angels. Just ask the guys at Rotary Rocket.
>

Rotary Rocket, at least the rotary bit, could never have worked. It
was physical nonsense. Furthermore, many launch vehicles have been
developed in the last 40 years without NASA seeming to be able to stop
them. The Russians, Chinese, Europeans, India, and several US
companies have all developed successful launchers in the last few
decades. There was even a successful US startup company, Orbital
Sciences. They began a decade or two ago with nothing and now have a
corner on US small payload launches. NASA helped many, if not all, of
the US developers by providing test facilities, as NASA is currently
doing for X Prize participants. The notion that NASA has prevented the
private development of orbital launch is not supported by the facts.
On the other hand, NASA has failed repeatedly to improve on the
shuttle, a very capable but extremely costly vehicle.

We need much better launchers than we have. Bashing NASA is not likely
to help much. For an approach to orbital launch based on the X-Prize,
see the last section of http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs/excerpts.html

Space tourism could be our ticket to the stars. Save your pennies,
suborbital flights for $100,000 may start in 2005! See
http://www.spaceadventures.com/suborbital for details.

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

Views expressed in this email are only my opinions and are not the
position of any organization I'm familiar with.

Hi Ed, Al,

.....The advancements in computer technology lie in stark contrast to
progress in space, with home computers now equivalent to NASA's
entire computing capacity in 1969. Computing cost has plummeted,
but cost to orbit has stagnated. The discrepancy is impossible to
ignore. ........

I agree with this statement. The Space Shuttle was conceived in the early 70s, when the available electronics was more or less of the Apollo era. The first Shuttle, Columbia, flew in 1981. Much more sophisticated electronics and data processing capabilities are available today.

True, electrons are not as heavy as a humans, but electronics and information capabilities must be viewed as enabling technologies, they provide a huge leverage. If we don't look behind the scene, and view just the two shuttle failures, they don't actually prove that the Shuttle is unreliable. The first shuttle failed due to faulty design of O rings, while the second failure seems to have been caused by a chunk of ice falling on the wing (Is there any other reason?) .... That the tiles stuck on the Shuttle are fragile was known long back. (Temperature seems to playing a part in these failures, if that is a potential problem, the Shuttle can be launced from a place having a more temperate climate.)

May be, people are just overreacting because of lack of reliable information. What needs to be done is to put all the repair done on the 100 odd Shuttle on a computer data base and find out a pattern; and focus on areas which need attention and quit worrying about those areas where there are no real problems. Inspection and repair can be speeded up by automating the process. It may even be possible to get back to the original turnaround time of 2 weeks! Electronics, software and robotics can make this possible. But will this happen? No. Not unless everyone is very clear regarding the purpose behind all this hustle.
"By the year 2000 we will undoubtedly have a sizable operation on the Moon, we will have achieved a manned Mars landing, and it's entirely possible we will have flown with men to the outer planets." Wernher von Braun, 1969

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/oped-03zn1.html

Selvaraj.

Hi Selvaraj,

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, sraj wrote:

> May be, people are just overreacting because of lack of reliable
information. What needs to be done is to put all the repair done on
the 100 odd Shuttle on a computer data base and find out a pattern;
and focus on areas which need attention and quit worrying about
those areas where there are no real problems.

I am certain that this has been done. The parts needing the most
repair are most likely the parts under the greatest thermal
stresses, the heat-shield tiles and the engines.

The shuttle orbiter is mirror-symmetrical along the centerline, as
opposed to the radially-symmetrical shapes of Mercury, Gemini,
Apollo, Soyuz and Shenzou. The wings are the biggest problem; tiles
cannot be used on the leading edges, and the wings force an
irregular shape to the body. Each tile is therefore a unique
complex shape. The shuttle's surface area is very large, so the
tiles must be very lightweight; they crumble under the slightest
touch. They cannot ablate (and take away some of the heat of
reentry), so they must be made of special ceramics. They must be
inspected while they are affixed to the orbiter, so expensive Xray
equipment is used to look for flaws. Any flawed tiles must be
removed and a custom-made tile put in its place, all without
damaging neighboring tiles. All this adds up to a huge expense,
lots of mass, and plenty of violations of the KISS method.

Contrast this with Shenzou. That heat shield is expendable,
radially symmetric (many identical parts), and ablates while forming
a ceramic on its leading edge during reentry. The exotic, space-age
material used? Wood.

What it boils down to is the area NASA would have focus on based
upon your suggested database, is the fact that the shuttle has
wings, which are all but useless except for the last few minutes of
flight.

The second big problem area would be the engines. Although they
are "reusable", the amount of testing and maintenance required
between flights is enormous. Maintenance of a shuttle engine isn't
like working on your old Chevy either, unless you have to take apart
your entire car to check the oil. In the long run, it would be
cheaper to simply make new engines for every launch.

But the decision to reuse the engines was made way back in the early
70's, and it forced the side-by-side configuration of shuttle and
external fuel tank. This also forced the decision to use liquid
hydrogen as fuel due to the higher ISP than kerosene. Had the
engines not been reused, they could have been mounted on the bottom
of the stack, with the orbiter on top and the fuel in between. With
that flight profile, kerosene could have been used as a fuel.

The decisions to reuse the engines and to add wings to the platypus
duck was early policy, two bad decisions. In private industry, such
bad design decisions are either soon scrapped or else the company
goes out of business. When such decisions are made by NASA brass
and politicians, and no market forces can correct these decisions,
we get the "reusable" shuttles.

> Inspection and repair can be speeded up by automating the process.
It may even be possible to get back to the original turnaround time
of 2 weeks! Electronics, software and robotics can make this
possible. But will this happen? No. Not unless everyone is very
clear regarding the purpose behind all this hustle.

Will this happen? no, never. In order for automation to be used to
inspect and repair a vehicle, the vehicle must be designed for such
inspection and repair. The small size of the fleet suggests that
there will be no economies of scale to offset design costs of such
equipment. Finally, NASA is a vote-buyer, and those votes depend
upon NASA contracts to the various centers scattered across the
country. Decrease the size of the NASA workforce and you risk
decreasing the size of your voter base.

> "By the year 2000 we will undoubtedly have a sizable operation on
the Moon, we will have achieved a manned Mars landing, and it's
entirely possible we will have flown with men to the outer
planets." Wernher von Braun, 1969
>

"The problem with NASA is that they aren't killing enough
astronauts" - Burt Rutan, 2001

Ed

HI Ed!

>Contrast this with Shenzou. That heat shield is expendable,
>radially symmetric (many identical parts), and ablates while forming
>a ceramic on its leading edge during reentry. The exotic, space-age
>material used? Wood.

I don't think so.

Oak /has/ been used as an ablative shield on some earlier re-entry vehicles
built in China, but I can't find any references to its use on Shenzhou.

And - before people scoff at the application of natural materials in
spacecraft - I believe resin-impregnated wood formed part of the Apollo hatch.

On to Shuttle problems:

>What it boils down to is the area NASA would have focus on based
>upon your suggested database, is the fact that the shuttle has
>wings, which are all but useless except for the last few minutes of
>flight.

Oh yes. And half a tonne of brakes, useless until the last few seconds
/after/ a flight.

Imagine it! Nasa has sent /a thousand tonnes/ of wheels, wings and brakes
into LEO, when they are just not necessary. Ballistic is the way, with a
steerable parachute for spot landings.

>The second big problem area would be the engines. Although they
>are "reusable", the amount of testing and maintenance required
>between flights is enormous. Maintenance of a shuttle engine isn't
>like working on your old Chevy either, unless you have to take apart
>your entire car to check the oil. In the long run, it would be
>cheaper to simply make new engines for every launch.

An SSME is, what, 40 million US$? A /production line/ of SSME's, built in
bulk, and used en masse to reduce individual failure risks on a disposable
rocket makes so much more sense.

>"The problem with NASA is that they aren't killing enough
>astronauts" - Burt Rutan, 2001

Unpleasant but true.

Ground the shuttle. Pour all the money into a ballistic replacement. In the
meantime keep the knowledge base in Russia intact by buying in Soyuzes. :-|

Andy G

--- In spacesettlers, "Ed Minchau" wrote:

> "The problem with NASA is that they aren't killing enough
> astronauts" - Burt Rutan, 2001

Easy for him to say. He doesn't have to explain dead astronauts to
weeping spouses & children, angry congressmen, or a public that's
starting to reconsider this whole "space tourism" hullabaloo (after
all, space travel is *obviously* too dangerous for regular people;
even astronauts can't survive it).

Xenophile (build it and they will come... unless they think that they
will die)

Ed M.
>> Contrast this with Shenzou. That heat shield is expendable,
>>radially symmetric (many identical parts), and ablates while forming
>>a ceramic on its leading edge during reentry. The exotic, space-age
>>material used? Wood.

>Andy Goddard wrote:
> Oak /has/ been used as an ablative shield on some earlier re-entry
>vehicles built in China, but I can't find any references to its use on
>Shenzhou.
> And - before people scoff at the application of natural materials in
>spacecraft - I believe resin-impregnated wood formed part of the
>Apollo hatch.

And cork was used in the heatshield on the two recent MER craft. An
improvement on the original formula used on the Viking landers.

>> The second big problem area would be the engines. Although they
>>are "reusable", the amount of testing and maintenance required
>>between flights is enormous... In the long run, it would be
>>cheaper to simply make new engines for every launch.
>
> An SSME is, what, 40 million US$? A /production line/ of SSME's, built in
>bulk, and used en masse to reduce individual failure risks on a disposable
>rocket makes so much more sense.

Or not use SSMEs due to the higher production costs -all to throw them
away. Is the loss in performance made up by the cheaper engines?
This topic has application in the hypothetical Shuttle-C vehicle, too. Most
depictions show SSMEs in a recoverable aft prop & avionics pod, but it may
have worked out that it's cheaper overall to use other engines and toss the
entire thing in the drink after use.

> Ground the shuttle.

Hear, hear. Tons of funding for buying Soyuz, developing the OSP/CEV,
maybe use the infrastructure to fly Shuttle-C to build the ISS (would it be
cheaper to do this, than to keep the Shuttle flying?), fly something manned
with an arm and some payload and an interior workspace to do the HST refits
they already have the parts for.

> Pour all the money into a ballistic replacement.

Like the Sea Dragon. Old fashioned, maybe not even recoverable (except for
the first stage maybe), not as sexy as the Shuttle's image was touted to be,
but effective, sure, and cheap, and it gets us to the Moon and Mars. Does
anybody think orbital assembly of the parts of an interplanetary vehicle -the
parts sent up on EELVs is going to be cheap & easy compared to
development of a BDB that does the entire mission in one shot?
>In the meantime keep the knowledge base in Russia intact by buying
>in Soyuzes.

Above all, keep manned spaceflight going strong, without the somewhat
ridiculous posture of insisting on keeping a second Shuttle ready for 40-90
day launch to rescue astronauts from the ISS "safe haven".