From: Adrian Tymes (wingcat@pacbell.net)
Date: Sat Feb 01 2003 - 12:38:36 MST
Technotranscendence wrote:
> Part of this is just that NASA is run politically. The Shuttle program,
> in particular, is so focused on reusability that efficiency falls by the
> wayside. (Okay, I'm ready for a certain rocket engineer to chime in
> with "you don't throw away a 747 everytime you fly it." If the cost of
> maintaining the plane after one flight were more than building a new, I
> would. Throwaway Saturn Vs would probably be more efficient and maybe
> even safer than the Shuttles.)
You don't throw away a 747 everytime you fly it. The very fact that it
costs so much to maintain is, itself, causing the problem, and as such
the economics become an engineering concern just like if the main engine
sometimes refused to light.
>>One of the mission specialists was a personal
>>friend of my dad, and I had to comfort him.
>>Angry that NASA's mismanagement of
>>replacement programs has allowed this
>>malfunction to happen, perhaps, but not
>>insensitive.
>
> I'm not so sure, but I tend to side with you here. We have to get the
> facts in first to see what happened and why before judging this
> particular tragedy.
Based on my own knowledge of NASA, its procedures and its history, I
feel safe in predicting that this was caused by a technical malfunction,
probably age-related, that either did not exist or did not present any
significant danger of causing problems in flight on any of the space
shuttles a decade ago.
> BTW, I posted this on Starship Forum
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Starship_Forum/ ) earlier this week. I
> thought it might be of interest to some on this list.
The first two - Rolls-Royce plus Oil Change - are what myself and some
of my acquaintances are already working on, for Earth-to-orbit vehicles.
(And, let's face it: this side of Moon or Mars colonization, practically
every space mission is going to have to use an Earth-to-orbit vehicle,
which means problems with such vehicles impact *all* human activity in
space. If you could, for the same cost, double performance of deep
space or Earth-to-orbit engines, you could do the latter and just launch
more reaction mass for the same cost for the inefficient deep space
engines, while reaping other benefits that will eventually pay for
doubling the deep space engines too.)
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