By-Pass the Moon?

> From: Michael Persohn-Costa
> To a large extent, the same can be said about aircraft.

Not really. If your cockpit light fails in a 747, you don't need to buy a
new 747. More importantly, the FAA doesn't insist on testing the basic 747
design for air worthiness from scratch. "It's another 747? Okay. Passed."
Nor does your insurance company insist you pay the full cost of the 747
every time you fly with a payload; which seems the current premium.

> For spacecraft design purposes, tho,
> the only temperature that matters is the temperature at which
> the spacecraft will reach thermal equilibrium.

True. That is a real problem, but it's not the problem NASA likes to talk
about. The myth I'm talking about is that their craft must be able to cope
with a temperature range of something like 300 degrees centigrade. It's not
like heat absorbed by the hot bits is somehow going to magically refuse to
heat up the cold bits. You'll get some range sure, but not as much as they
like to talk about.

> Issues like this are
> why I want cheaper spacecraft designed, and for assembly-line
> asteroid probes and the like to be used instead of NASA's
> current paradigm of designing a new one every flight.
> Spacecraft design and integration is the hard part, not hardware.

Agreed. But one shot intigration is a feature of all current gen ELVs. Now
if they could carry cargo containers with fixed characteristics, that woudl
be a great improvement.

> We have expendable launch vehicles. The closest thing we
> have to a reusable launch vehicle is NASA's Space Shuttle.

Actually I'd argue the closest we have is the DC-X. Well, had...

The shuttle isn't designed to be reusable. It's designed to carry 29 tons
into orbit, have a 1200mile cross range, and a development cost of ~6.5B
$1970s in NASA's budget. The first two are USAF requirements which NASA
didn't particularly want, and the latter a congressional requirement which
NASA definately didn't want, and which crippled the orbiter.

> The Shuttle was originally planned to fly 60 (!!!!!) times

See above. Shuttle design took place in three phases A, B, and C. The C
design is the dinosaur we all know and hate today. A designs were mostly
optomistic dreams from before Apollo 13. Many of the B designs might have
worked, if the government was willing to cough up the money. Unfortunately
the good RLV designs couldn't carry existing payloads designs, which meant
short sighted government officials couldn't understand the point of building
them.

> If you're using a reusable rocket for ascent/decent to and
> from the lunar surface, that might work at decent economies
> of scale.

I find economies of scale a hollow arguement against RLVs. My objection is
that all the scales are deliberately tipped by the US government; usually in
the 'space is very difficult - so don't even try and leapfrog us!'
direction.

If US RLVs could be sold like 747s you'd have dozens of buyers world wide.
If American built a RLV, airbus could copy the design in about 3 years. If
NASA stopped harping on about how the shuttle is the most advanced vehicle
ever built, other nations might notice it isn't. If NASA didn't lie about
how you need ultra high temperature scram jet magic pixie dust wings to
build an RLV (Cause, ya know, there's no absolutely other way you could do
it) other nations might be more willing to look into the problems
themselves.

But all these things might jeperdise Americas preeminance in space - which
on NASA's list of priorities comes before going to mars of Luna*. Which is
one of the reasons they act the way they do.

> It might even raise ELV or RLV flight rates enough
> to make most designs economical. But still to me, that seems
> to be relying on reuse of spacecraft or making cheaper ones
> before bringing Earth launch costs down.

Standardisation of payload design is a good idea. But again, to a NASA mind,
if they make it look too easy, everyone will do it! They feel this would be
bad, so they try to make everything look terribly difficult.

John
*Wish I was joking about this, but it's in the official documentation. :(