Unlike past program changes, when NASA's prime contractor either was already cutting metal on the next series or at least had plans underway, this time, there doesn't seem to be a single direction.
The good news, if there is anything, is that there are several proposals underway for manned spaceflight. The difference between private spaceflight projects and government spaceflight projects, though, is pretty thin. Both flavors are being funded by the government. The only difference is that with the private programs, they are keeping their cards very close to the vest and We Who Are Footing the Bill have not much of an idea what is going on.
This article seems to do a decent job of summing things up.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: The cancellation of the Saturn V program by Richard Nixon was one of the most stupidly short-sighted decisions made by a politician in my lifetime. A single S-V would have likely cost less to fly than a Shuttle and had a payload far greater than a Shuttle.
If we had kept the Saturn V alive, the costs probably would have come down as it would be the premier super-heavy lift rocket. By now, we'd have probably built several hundred of them and, as technological evolution occurred, the rocket would have become more efficient.
But there are no super-heavy lift rockets. There hasn't been for 38 years.*
Rot in Hell, Tricky Dick. Between your War on Drugs and your gutting of the space program, you truly set the stage for fucking up this country for a very long time.
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* Yes, I know that the Shuttle was classified as a super-heavy rocket system. But since most of that was to get the spaceplane itself into orbit, I don't regard it as such. So sue me.
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Saturday, July 16, 2011
2 comments:
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The problem with the Saturn V was that unless you were sending men to the moon, it was just too bloody big for any possible payload we'd want to send up. It would have been handy for building a big donut-style rotating space station, the kind that could sustain a permanent population in orbit due to having pseudo-gravity (turns out human beings don't react well to zero-G), but nobody was willing to pay the half-trillion dollars or so that would be required to build such a space station. A couple of ISS modules had to be sent up by Russian Proton rockets because they were too big for the Space Shuttle, but the Proton rockets are much cheaper than Saturn V ever could be because the Saturn V was man-rated, while Protons are not. The Proton rockets don't fly as often as the Soyuz rockets because there just aren't many loads that heavy that need to go to orbit. And the Proton is still less than half the load to orbit of the Saturn V.
ReplyDeleteIn short, if you aren't flying to the moon, there just isn't any use for the Saturn V. It was too bloody big and expensive for anything else we might want to do with it. The real solution is a mix like the Russians have -- a cheap non-man-rated heavy lift rocket to put things like space station modules into orbit, and a man-rated medium-lift rocket (or even a lightweight shuttle/space plane) to put people into orbit. Trying to build one rocket to do it all is a waste of money because you just don't need the expense of man-rating a large rocket if all you want to do is put big loads into orbit.
- Badtux the Space Penguin
Ah, but who made the money there?
ReplyDeleteIf we had kept the Saturn V alive, the costs probably would have come down as it would be the premier super-heavy lift rocket. By now, we'd have probably built several hundred of them and, as technological evolution occurred, the rocket would have become more efficient.
And don't forget that Tricky was Prescott/GHW Bush's pick for the glory of enriching the bad guys who got rid of him as soon as he became an embarrassment, and then brought on (da da!) "Morning In America" Rayguns ASAP because GHWB was too unpopular (or thus says Russ Baker's "Family of Secrets").
Thanks for the Saturn V history lesson!
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