From: matus (matus@matus1976.com)
Date: Sat Sep 06 2003 - 07:57:06 MDT
Robert Bradbury said:
>I'm just blown away that the U.S. let one of its most
>phenomenal technological achivements slip from its grasp. The
>younger folks on the list will not get this -- but those of us
>in our 40's watched those launches and watched the Apollo
>lunar landings on TV too.
>
Robert Zubrin had some things to say on this subject in his book
"Entering Space" Skylab had more liveable area than the ISS does and
was made from the third stage of the Saturn V, it was originally the
fuel tanks for the moon mission.
Michael
- Excerpts from Entering space - (Be sure to check the last paragraph)
Political impacts on the US space program
"The attempt to cope with these economic realities underlies much of the
pathology associated with the Shuttle program for the past twenty years.
For example, in selling the Shuttle program to Congress during the
1970's, NASA officials claimed that the Shuttle would fly forty times
per year (one launch every nine days!). This prediction should have
aroused skepticism on two grounds: (a) the technical difficult in
preparing a Shuttle for launch in so short a time and (b) the lack of a
payload manifest large enough to such a launch rate. NASA leaders left
(a) up to the engineers to solve as best they could, but attempted to
solve (b) themselves through political action. Specifically, the NASA
brass in the late 1970's abd tge early 1980's obtained agreements from
the White House to the effect that once the Shuttle became fully
operational, all U.S. government payloads would be launched on the
Shuttle. That is, NASA wanted to the expendable Deltas, Atlases, and
Titans phased out of existence so that the Shuttle could enjoy a bigger
manifest and have its economics improve accordingly. The Air Force
resisted this policy, as they feared that a Shuttle accident could cause
a stand-down of the entire program, which would them make it impossible
to launch vital military reconnaissance and communication satellites
when required. It seems incredible today, but the NASA argument actually
carried the day against the Air Force in Washington's corridors of
power. During the 1980's, the expendable "mixed fleet" was in the
process of being phased out. It was only after the Challenger disaster
in January 1986 proved the Air Force concerns were fully justified that
President Reagan reversed the decision."
Robert Zubrin - Entering Space - page 27-28
---------
Politics and the International Space Station (idealogical driven
scientific goals)
"The need to increase the launch manifest to justify Shuttle economics
played a central role in the decision to initiate the Space Station
program. In the early 1980s, NASA Deputy Administrator Hans Mark saw
clearly that achieving a shuttle launch rate of twenty-five per year
would be impossible without the manifest created by the construction and
supply needs of a permanently orbiting outpost, which he already
supported as a facility for in space scientific research (mark did not
believe the forty launches per year touted by earlier shuttle advocates
was feasible under any conditions). Based on this (probably accurate
assessment), Mark convinced first NASA Administrator James Beggs and
then the Reagan White House of the need for a space station program. The
need to generate a large shuttle manifest also helps to explain the
bizarre nature of the engineering designs that have guided the space
station program since its inceptions.
The right way to build a Space Station is to build a heavy-lift launch
vehicle and use it to launch the station in a single piece. The United
States launched the Skylab space station in this manner in 1973. Skylab,
which contained more living space than the currently planned
International Space Station (ISS), was built in one piece and launched
in a single day. AS a result, the entire Skylab program, end to end from
1968 to 1974, including development, build, launch, and operation was
conducted at a cost in today's money of about $4 Billion, roughly
one-eighth of the anticipated cost of the ISS. In contrast, the Space
Station has gone through numerous designs (of which the current ISS is
the latest), all of which called for over thirty Shuttle Launches, each
delivering an element that would be added into an extended ticky-tacky
structure on orbit. Since no one really knows how to do this, such an
approach has caused the program development cost and schedule to
explode. In 1993, the recently appointed NASA Administrator Dan Goldin
attempted to deal with this situation be ordering a total reassessment
of the Space Station's design. Three teams, labeled A, B, and C, were
assigned to develop complete designs for three distinct Space Station
concepts. Teams A and B took two somewhat different approaches to the by
then standard thirty-Shuttle-launch/orbit assembly concept, whereas team
C developed a Skylab-type design that would be launched in a single
throw of a heave lift vehicle (a "Shuttle C" consisting of the Shuttle
launch stack but without the reusable orbiter). The three approaches
were then submitted to a blue ribbon panel organized by the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology for competitive judgment. The
M.I.T. panel ruled decisively in favor of option C (a fact that
demonstrated only their common sense, not their brilliance, as C was
much cheaper, simpler, safer, more reliable, and more capable and would
have given the nation a heavy-lift launcher as a bonus). However, based
on the need to create Shuttle Launches as well as a desire to have the
Space Station design that would allow modular additions by international
partners, Vice President Al Gore and House Space Subcommittee chairman
George Brown overruled the M.I.T. panel. By political fiat, these
gentlemen forced NASA to accept option A, and thee space agency has had
to struggle with the task of building the Space Station on that basis
ever since. The result has been a further set of cost and schedule
overruns, the blame for which has been consistently placed on various
NASA middle managers instead of those really responsible."
Robert Zubrin - Entering Space - page 28-29
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