Rocket thread! Talk about space (mainly rockets and the iss with

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>>8040690
How many old Space Shuttle boosters are left?

What is more efficient in terms of pure delta v, Nerva engines or ion propulsion?

Does the ion propulsion change much if its powered by a nuclear drive instead of solar cells?

taking this into account, does anyone have any sources regarding what propulsion is being considered for the mars mission?

i mean, surely if we could get around the nuclear paranoia the nervas would be the best bet for it

>>8041544
Most efficient is having a ground based laser beaming power @ u

>>8041567
yeah but the infrastructure investment for that would be considerable, not to mention the R&D costs...

on the other hand, both nerva and ion have been experimentally tested with success, we have more experience with the ion, sure, but i think the nerva is more advantageous enough that it makes up for it

the only real issue is if they can find a way to sell to the american public puting radioactive stuff in space

>>8040690
i came to sci wanting to make a thread like this, so lets go!.

Do you think its gonna be possible to reduce current launch prices to 1/100 the current price?

if it were, lets do a thought excersise, what could nasa do with its current funding then?

which organization previously unable to handle this kind of project would be able to do so?
would an international corporation be able to make an apollo program?
would a college be able to send satellites or even people to LEO?

could economies of scale bring the cost further down?
how about space manufacturing?

are there any real projects to apply nanotechnology to space travel???


Bonus question: famous drug dealers pablo escobars fortune was estimated to be near $100 billion 2015 dollars, that's about the cost of the whole apollo program
if he had decided to launch his own space program, taking into account additional expenses because of his unique situation, do you think he would have been able to run at least one apollo mission by himself?

ur rocketfu a shit

>>8041790
my rocketfu is the space shuttle, most explosive lover

>>8041788
>Do you think its gonna be possible to reduce current launch prices to 1/100 the current price?
No, he's just overselling it like he always does this naughty musk, if by some miracle the whole super convoluted and ultra complex process doesn't lose money it will at most shed a couple million dollars from the launch price, probably not much more

>>8041544
Ion engines, but the thrust of everything we have working is terrible

>>8041876
Theres nothing better you can do with ion engines, they are limited by availible electricity

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>>8041788
>all this retarded popsci bullshit

>>8041876
ion engine is more efficien in delta v terms? like, for the same mass you get more delta v?

how bad can the thrust be? doesnt that mean that it just takes more time to accelerate ? why not just make it go brachistrochorne and accelerate till halfway then decelerate till it gets to mars?

>>8041887
could it be improved by massive solar cells or would the added weight be too much of a penalty?, how about making it run on a nuclear reactor?

>>8041889
what about it? im not claiming anything, im just asking questions, why not just put your take on it, just say "this is impossible, this is not feasible because... " that would be very interesting and i would greatly appreciate it. I dont really see the point of you coming here just to complain

>>8041889
but gotta admit ilolled at your picture. I think your skepticism woul dbe greatly apreciated in this thread i made also:
>>8041831

>>8041887
Not true, there are engines in development with much better thrust but still have a plausible power draw, or you could just get the power from a nuclear reactor

>>8041903
>much better thrust
while keeping the same isp benefits?

>>8041897
>ion engine is more efficien in delta v terms
Efficiency is measured in ISP, to get more delta-v you just add more fuel

>how bad can the thrust be?
Dawn, which has over 10km/s of delta-v, has 3 ion engines on it. Each produces less than 1 newton of thrust, and it only fires one at a time. It accelerates constantly for months at a time

>could it be improved by massive solar cells or would the added weight
Weight is a big issue with current gen ion thrusters due to the low thrust

>>8041909
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoplasmadynamic_thruster

If they get this thing to work then yes

>>8041903
They can build bigger engines, maybe with better thrust to weight, but its still a question of electricity & their efficiency turning it into thrust.

Meanwhile chemical engines can dump their thrust in LEO to take advantage of oberth effect, and travel direct to their destination.

Noone has built any space nuclear reactors yet, I suspect it would probably be more weight efficient to use solar panels anyways.

is it possible to join this field with a physics major? if so, where could I go?

I'm from whiteland though I'm okay with travelling to another country.

>>8041919
>Efficiency is measured in ISP, to get more delta-v you just add more fuel
your right of course, what i meant is more delta-v for the same total weight of the craft

>>8041935
>a question of electricity & their efficiency
is massive amounts of solar panels a solution? how about a nuclear reactor? batteries? a diesel reactor?

>>8041935
Its really just a question of which option gets the needed delta-v for the least amount of money, and at this point its an open question, although on paper at least chemical rockets are not the best method

>>8041938
Ion engines get far more delta-v than chemical engines for the same amount of mass

>>8041939
>is massive amounts of solar panels a solution?
This is where Dawn gets its power, but weight is a big issue

>>8041945
i know but how do they measure with nervas?

how about orion and other types of nuclear propulsion?


>>8041928
is there a theoretycal limit for electric propulsion?
it all boils down to how fast they can accelerate the particle right?

>>8041947
> measure with nervas?
Still a lot better, but nerva is a decent compromise between ISP and thrust to weight

>is there a theoretycal limit for electric propulsion?
I have no idea

>it all boils down to how fast they can accelerate the particle right?
Partly, but also how many particles you expel at once

I think NASA should focus on is building nuclear thermal upper stages for commercial rockets
Thats certainly a way to keep America's lead on rocketry.

>>8041968
i kinda agree, its quicker. But if electric propulsion can achieve higher ISP¨while mantaining decent thrust its a no brainer...

nasa is too dependant upon public opinion, and nuclear energy just has too much of a bad rep.

Space Shuttle booster rockets were modified Peacekeeper ICBM's. They were modified for parachute recovery. All of the Peacekeeper ICBM's have been deactivated. Once a year, people from FE Warren AFB in Wyoming would send one to Vandenberg CA to launch toward the Kwajalein Test Range.

>>8041981
High thrust ion engines are a long way away if they are realistic at all. Nuke engines are the logical choice for interplanetary missions in the near future. Also I use them in KSP so that proves it

>>8041981
Electric engines are most efficient at high Isp, which means very low thrust

Anyways NERVA engines are potentially in thousands of megawatts, whereas electric engines are like 200 kilowatts. I think they WILL be used as extra Isp during the trip to mars but not the main source of deltaV

>>8041997
But nuke engines get enough thrust and delta-v on their own

>>8042002
?
nuke engines are nerva

>>8042020
Nerva was one specific american project to design a nuke engine.It wasnt the only one, and it is not the one currently in place. America doesnt have a monopoly on the nuclear rocket concept

>>8041791
I would say Saturn or the shuttle

>>8042020
when we say nuclear propulsion we mean nerva engine, which means a nuclear reactor that directly heats the propellant before expelling it. The exhaust is radioactive

there is another more literally nuclear drive that uses actual nuclear bombs to propel itself, but thats unfeasible for now, for obvious reasons


there is also the more interesting choice of a nuclear reactor that generates electricty which in itself is used to power an ion drive, i wonder how that looks like


>>8042055
>saturn
yeah, you would need something as big as the saturn to feel something at this point

>>8042020
If the sts program did work meaning that the shuttle was orbiting the moon, we would have nuclear engines

>>8042065
Orion isnt actually unfeasible, its just that no one has the balls to try it, for obvious reasons

>>8042067
The US government killed nuke engines so they wouldnt be commited to a few more decades of the space race. That shit is expensive and they had already won

>>8042070
political and economical feasibility is also a thing

theres no way they'd let you take off with an orion from earth, the most you would get is an orbitally constructed orion or a ton of chemical boosters to get it to higher orbit

either way its a project that cannot be done in a small scale, even the most modest orion drive would be a HUGE investment in infrastructure, R&D and manufacturing. Like, in practice it would be a lot cheaper in terms of say.. $/kg to the moon or to mars, but the cost of it would be like another apollo program, maybe more who knows its just a big ass project no matter how you see it

>>8042073
The Soviets on by most accomplishments
But the space race was good. They made a Saturn v every 6 or so months now it takes a lot longer for SLS. The space race was good.

>>8042080
Won***

>>8042080
>The Soviets on by most accomplishments
At the end of a war you dont tally up the numbers of battles won by each side to determine the winner

>>8042080
>The Soviets on by most accomplishments
personally, from a scientifc and personal point of view i agree. The soviets, with a budget a really small fraction of that which american had accomplished everything except the moon landings, some of it first, most of it using really clever technology, they even invented the safest method of LEO space travel known to this day, which is actually the only current way to get to the ISS

On another interesting note, there was a very realistic, very possible project of a Soyuz moon landing(the soyuz was designed for this purpose originally) using already tested technology

the trick was to assemble the craft in orbit using proton rockets (which were already proven to work just fine). Too bad Serguéi Koroliov, who favored this approach, died tragically.

Then they just blew most of their moon mission money on the N1 tests, and it is a real pity because if they had just go on with their "smart" plan they originally had instead of their "brute force" aproach they did later, they might have made it
That being said, the space race was essentially a propaganda race, and the moon landings make the US undisputable winners of it from this point of view.

>>8042075
>theres no way they'd let you take off with an orion from earth
With a media blitz teaching people the negligibility of "fallout" threat, or an actual need to do it, it could easily happen.

>even the most modest orion drive would be a HUGE investment in infrastructure, R&D and manufacturing.
Not really, its just a matter of starting up the production lines for nuclear bombs again.
Or using the existing stockpiles of plutonium.

I don't know why you think it would cost so much money, theres no real development of new technologies needed, more a matter of alloting the budget.

If you need to go somewhere in a hurry, there is nothing with the Isp or the thrust of a Nuclear Pulse rocket

>>8042065
>The exhaust is radioactive
No it isn't
It's just exposed to the heat of the reactor

>>8042101
Soviets truly are some of the best at spaceflight at a lot of it. The space shuttle was amazing but it killed more than 14 people that is astronauts+ civilians. Soyuz was more reliable as it had a escape mechanism that did not rely on staging times and it can be adjusted. Soyuz ≠ Shuttle

>>8042109
>No it isn't It's just exposed to the heat of the reactor
It is actually. How do you think a nuclear reactor would heat something up that much without irradiating it?

>>8042109
>Not really, its just a matter of starting up the production lines for nuclear bombs again.

yes, if you start from the idea that you can take off with nukes then maybe

but that would be a REALLY REALLY REALLY hard sell to the public, dont you think the us goverment doesnt try to make people more nuclear friendly, they tried for ages, but people are just too stupid, they think they know more about radioactivity than the scientist

so maybe MAYBE you could sell the public that youre gonna put a couple of nukes in orbit but that they will explode far far away from their precious blue marble (lets not even get into the salt treaty) but no way youre gonna convince them to do a nuke take off, so that means that you have to put in orbit a fully supplied orion vessel with all the nukes via chemical rockets, that will be expensive

>>8042118
what do you think of the soviet moonshot project?

dont you think that it would have been kinda feasible to do it, i mean imagine just 3-4 proton rockets and you have the assembly in orbit, they could have used a soyuz as command module and that shitty one person lander they designed

why do you think they didnt do it?

>>8042128
Russia designed stuff to be compact and have a use. I would not care to much that I am in a small space but I would be scared of the unknown

>>8042136
> I would not care to much that I am in a small space
You might after a few days of it

>>8042121
It gets heated by the reactor to 2000 degrees, its not made radioactive

>>8042124
I think you greatly overestimate how relevant popular support is, even in a democracy.
For now I believe republicans might be holding nuclear back because they are coal/oil shills, and because Obama was pro-nuclear.

>>8042139
I would because I am lonly. And I would.

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>>8042139
>>8042136
actually, all current spaceships are essentially claustrophobic and will continue to be for a long time. the difference between one and another couldnt have been more than a few cubic meters.

Travelling in the soyuz is like being buried alive for a couple of days, true story

>>8042147
Op here
I admit defeat
I am more interested in the iss and space shuttle o rings

>>8042142
>It gets heated by the reactor to 2000 degrees, its not made radioactive
Once again, how do you suppose it is possible to get fuel close enough to a nuclear reactor to heat it to 2000 degrees without irradiating it?

>>8042157
youre not op, im op

>>8042172
Uh, im pretty sure i'm op

>>8042172
I'm op I am positive.

>>8042168
You think civilian nuclear reactors make millions of gallons of water radioactive?

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>>8042178
>>8042176
fuck you guys its not funny

ok then

so, the main question here is ...


WILL ELON MUSK SUCCEED?

WHEN will the first falcon refly

WHEN will they be 99% sure they can recover boosters

HOW MANY times will the boosters be able to refly

HOW MUCH will it really cut down costs?

>>8042183
Civilian reactors dont pass the working fluid through the reactor core

>>8042184

>WILL ELON MUSK SUCCEED?
BE MORE SPECIFIC

>WHEN will the first falcon refly
50/50 before the end of the year

>WHEN will they be 99% sure they can recover boosters
When they start routinely recovering them

>HOW MANY times will the boosters be able to refly
Maybe 10 or so times if they are lucky

>HOW MUCH will it really cut down costs?
By half maybe, but not for a while and that will be quite a stretch

>>8042183
civilian reactors only need to heat water to make it go trough a turbine

a spaceship reactor needs to get the fucking propellant as fucking hot as fucking physically possible without fucking fuck shit melting the fucking ship itself

every percentage of a fraction of a portion of a degree celsius that the propellant is not heated up to becomes a loss in delta v

>>8042194
>>8042188
I don't see any mention at all of solid core NTR design causing radioactive exhaust
Things do not magically become radioactive just because they were exposed to radiation

>>8042192
Will be by far more than half, what SpaceX charges isn't what it costs them.
I believe they will have a reusable upper stage soon

So rapidly it's going to turn into how fast they can launch rockets.

>>8042201
>I don't see any mention at all of solid core NTR design causing radioactive exhaust
http://web.stanford.edu/~rhamerly/cgi-bin/Ph241-1/Ph241-1.php
"While the rocket is designed to avoid radioactive leakage products, inevitably a small amount of radioactive waste will make it into the rocket's exhaust"

>Things do not magically become radioactive just because they were exposed to radiation
?!?!?!?!!?!?!?!?

>>8042208
I dont care about fanboy pipe dreams

I got a question; what if STS 27 lost another tile?

>>8042213
are the barge and land landings pipedreams?

everythings a pipe dream in space travel, anything is wacky until it gets done

>>8042225
Agreed
But then explain the odds of STS 51l and 107 happening again

>>8042209
Look like the radioactive exhaust is being made by pieces of the reactor call degrading/falling off
Possibly could be eliminated or greatly reduced
Radiation is one of those hugely overstated issues anyways

>>8042243
reactor core*

>>8042243
Oh im not saying the radiation is particularly bad or worth worrying about, just the fact that it is there. That report also mentions that a 340 day trip to mars is expected to deliver 5 rems to the astronauts from the engines

>>8042250
I would make it so there is a layer of lead that is thin but can reduce radiation

>>8042255
>I would make it so there is a layer of lead that is thin but can reduce radiation
The thinner it is, the less radiation it absorbs. All spacecraft have this anyway, space is full of radiation

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>>8042255
It's impact can be described like this: imagine one snowflake then a snowstorm a small thing can make a large impact

>>8042250
Thats a question of shielding & proximity to the engine

>>8042257
Or a changeable sheet. I would work on radiation proofing stuff

>>8042262
Its space, you go with whatever option does the job for the least amount of weight

>>8042268
I can not agree more.
Was there ever a ares launch?

>>8042268
if that were true we would have nuclear spacecraft in 1955, germans already knew how to build em

but its not
politics goes against economics sometimes

>>8042297
And money ruined a moon colony or the space shuttle visiting the moon

>>8042303
>space shuttle visiting the moon
please tell me there were real plans for that, taht would have been cool as fuck

>>8042303
is it me or is the space shuttle built to look cool, it is by far the nicest looking spacecraft ever

maybe its the fact that its aerodynamic, skylon also looks cool to bad its not real

>>8042336
One day my friend, one day

You have a stupid interest OP.

>>8042344
The year is 2045,somehow youre still alive...

you check your email

SURPRISE YOU HAVE BEEN WON A SPECIAL CONTEST WHICH MAKES YOU GO TO SPACE

this is very lucky for you, since most working or middle class people who live on earth usually dont go to space...
and to think that a ticket to luna is almost THREE TIMES as expensive as an airplane ticket to japan!, thats a lot of money indeed who can spend that? not many people unless you have job or family there

ok, this means they will either put you on a reusable rocket or one of those skylon spaceplanes, they both been competing head to head since space became viable for civilians, they say skylons are safers, but a rocket sounds cooler, i hope i get the rocket

anyway, that will probably take me to one of the LEO node from where i will catch the ion ferry to luna, or maybe mars, who knows?? oh gee im so excited to live in the time when humans became intelligent and decided to put down their stupid actions like war and put up their god tier actions like science

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>>8042354
Why must you make me feel these feels?

>>8042358
the pain, it makes us strong, it makes us go on with more passion

>>8041211
At least two empties, I'd think.
>Also depends what you mean by "left"

>>8042385
There are none left because no one has ever been to space, its all a lie to allow nasa to steal my tax dollars

>>8042390
implying the goverment needs a lie as complex as the space program to steal your measly illiterate redneck salary whole


i mean jesus, most of the people in the country give money to a guy only because jesus said so, and that is objectively confirmed by science to be a false non truth opposite of reality fairy tale

>>8041997
>are most efficient at high Isp

Is this not tautological?

>>8041997
yeah, this guy >>8042442 knows
youre falsely indicating that high isp must always necesarily mean low thrust

it kinda TENDs to be like it, but its not necesarily like that

I have a question... is NASA any better than it used to be? I read Richard Feynman's report on the challenger disaster and the management sounded like shit

>>8042454
its easy to talk shit about nasa, it now has the same amount of money as any other scientific endeavour

back in the cold war day it had FUCKING 5% OF ALL OF AMERICAS MONEY

i think even a retard could have gotten to the moon on that budget

>>8041997
>>8042442
>engines are most efficient at high Isp
This really depends on what you mean by "efficient." High ISP demands less propellant mass per unit of impulse, but actually requires more energy per unit of impulse. So, with a limited but steady power input (i.e. solar panels), you can either feed propellant to it slowly and eject it at high velocity providing low thrust at high ISP (i.e. ion engines), or you can feed it more quickly producing greater thrust at lower exhaust velocity and ISP (i.e. thermal rockets).

>>8042457
>back in the cold war day it had FUCKING 5% OF ALL OF AMERICAS MONEY
No, they had almost 5% of the federal budget. Only the military gets 5% of our entire GDP.

>>8042490
what difference?

>>8040690

SPACEX

SPACEX

SPACEX

SPACEX

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>>8042526

>>8042541
im 37, i've fought in a war, i have 2 kids, im the boss of like, 20 people...

yet you got me giggling like a fucking high school girl

well played anon

well played

>>8042541
Please someone send this to Melonusk

>>8042548
go away to plebbit

posts like this dont belong here

>>8042541
i wonder if Musk wanders the internett, sometimes checking out treads like these. He should, just to collect the tears of haters and fanboys alike. And also, so he could see this masterpiece

>>8042310
There were plans. Google like original STS program

>>8042619
I know Bruno is active on Twitter loves ksp

>>8042828
jesus, wonder what the shuttle would have looked like if it was supposed to handle Moon-Earth return speeds at entry

>>8042877
IT WOULD HAve probably looked like a lot of crispy dust

>>8042877
The same
They slide have a nuclear engine in one payload and it would attach during another mission

>>8042911
wat?

>>8043392
They add a nuclear engine to boost it to the moon

Got it?

>>8043936
thats so retarded, why take an atmospheric ferry to the moon, it makes so much sense to just leave the shuttle in orbit, strap a crew cabin to the nuclear engine and then use that when you come back, god damn the retardness of some people

>>8044156
Payload you need a payload.

>>8044181
strap the payload to the nuke engine then what do i care, why the fuck pay the fuel cost to carry huge wings an a heavy as fuck heatshield to the friggin airless moon

>>8044190
Remember this is from 1972 and it was the SHUTTLE program

And the shuttle had to return decoupling the wings would only cause issues. AMD another craft would require more money shoestring budget...

>>8044190
It's not for the trip there, it's for the trip back.

But even for orbital missions the Shuttle was rather ridiculous, save for the hypothetical task of grabbing some large payload (i.e. an entire satellite or space station module) and bringing it to Earth intact. A lunar Shuttle would be good for the same thing - bringing something large back from the Lunar surface (though even there it'd probably make more sense to leave the Shuttle in lunar or even Earth orbit and bring the payload out to meet it before returning to Earth).

>>8042168
The propellant is hydrogen.

Ordinary hydrogen won't become radioactive even if it absorbs a neutron. It just becomes deuterium, which is a stable isotope.

Deuterium can absorb a neutron and become radioactive tritium, but it has a much lower probability to absorb a neutron than regular hydrogen, is present only in trace amounts if at all in hydrogen fuel, and tritium isn't scary as an environmental pollutant anyway (short biological half-life, ~10 year radioactive half-life, it just gets diluted into the global water cycle and when it decays it gets lost in the background radiation).

The prospect of the engine leaking or blowing up is a significant concern with NTRs, neutron activation of the propellant isn't.

Uh... the plans to have a nuclear-thermal lunar shuttle in the original STS didn't mean a nuclear-thermal space shuttle as we know it.

"Shuttle" means "vehicle that travels repeatedly back and forth between two places", not "spaceplane".

The STS plan was for an Earth-LEO shuttle (chemical rockets), a LEO-LLO shuttle (nuclear), and a LLO-moon-surface shuttle (chemical).

The LEO-LLO shuttle had the least demanding propulsion requirements (if they had to stop a burn early, it would just be in the wrong orbit, not crash).

>>8044438
>Earth-LEO shuttle (chemical rockets)
you mean the actual space shuttle, right?

>>8045859
Yes, that's what eventually became the space shuttle that was actually built.

However, the original concept wasn't so silly. What they wanted at first was to continue the Saturn V (and continue to improve it -- there were options for partial reusability, for instance, possibilities for increasing its performance, and ways to streamline production using new technology) for bulk launch, and start on fully reusable vehicles with a *small* spaceplane, capable of carrying two men and a couple hundred pounds of cargo.

I think if they had been free to pursue such a rational plan in whatever way worked best, we'd have had propellant production on the moon and a large airliner-like fully reusable spaceplane before the end of the 80s.

>>8045954
Nothing forced NASA to produce such failures
I sincerely doubt, that they would have been better just left to their own devices

>>8041986
>Space Shuttle booster rockets were modified Peacekeeper ICBM's
No they weren't. The Shuttle SRBS were a single stage design roughly twice the size of the 3 stage Peacekeepr. They also entered service five years before Peacekeeper. You're thinking of the Minotaur IV which swaps out peacekeeper's warheads for a 4th stage + payload

>>8046046
>Nothing forced NASA to produce such failures
First of all, the people (such as von Braun) who made the Apollo Project work and laid out the reasonable shuttle plans were largely pushed out of positions of importance and replaced by incompetent careerists. You can say it was "NASA" who did these things, but it wasn't the same NASA.

Next, NASA was directed to serve America's immediate practical needs.

When they came up with a plan to do so, by developing a reusable rocket to save on launch costs, they were told that on the first try ever of anyone building a reusable rocket:
1) it had to be able to carry any payload anyone might want to launch and
2) it had to provide new additional capabiliites of interest to the military entirely aside from the cost savings.

This pushed the performance requirements to the bleeding edge of what was considered possible.

Then, the president's office started meddling in their design and contracting decisions. When NASA ranked the booster options, Thiokol's solid boosters came dead last out of four choices. NASA's preferred solution was a pressure-fed liquid-fueled booster. The president's office rejected that choice and assembled a new panel to re-study the options, and rank the solid boosters highest.

So it was made into pork.

There was no way to make the project meet its goals under these constraints. It was doomed to be expensive and wonky.

>>8046103
I wouldn't point at the president's office as the main culprit for meddling. That award goes to congress who would rather fund pet projects in their district/state than see any real progress.

It was meant for a shoestring budget. Like 1 billion can get 4 launches or 4 orbiters. Very reliable. The odds for challenger happening again and Columbia are slim.

>>8046158
>I wouldn't point at the president's office as the main culprit for meddling.
Congress has also been bad, but it was the executive branch that first started meddling in technical decisions in a major way, beginning with this imposition of Thiokol and its solid rocket boosters on the space shuttle.

It was, of course, the SRBs that were responsible for the Challenger disaster, and they had many other negative effects on the program and its successors. Ares I ended up being cancelled largely because of problems with the SRBs.

It's conventional to take rockets to the launchpad empty, and fill them with propellant there. This makes them far lighter and easier to handle, but it's not possible with solid rockets, which are more massive for the same impulse in the first place. So this greatly complicated shuttle pre-launch operations.

Then there are the performance limitations. It's hard to get a lot of delta-V out of a solid stage. This leaves the shuttle to provide more of its own, which meant they had to cut more mass out of it, and push the engines harder. This contributed to the high refurbishment costs, and rather directly caused the performance shortfall which meant the shuttle couldn't launch to polar orbits.

The solid boosters also caused a lot of vibration and heat. This put additional structural loads on the shuttle and its external tank, and contributed to damage of the main engine turbopumps and loss of tiles from the heat shields, a further cause for the shuttle to need excessive refurbishment.

>>8046237
There was a planned polar orbit

>>8046264
It was supposed to be able to do polar orbits from the start, but the delivered product wasn't capable of it. They built a whole second launch and landing complex in California that never got used.

Decades later, a new tank and SRBs were supposed to make it possible, but there was no reason to do it, and there was no sense in the shuttle being around that long anyway.

>>8046237
Why couldn't they dump the SRB's after that president left office?

>>8046311
First of all, it was the Nixon administration, and his successor was Gerald Ford, from the same political party. Anyway, Thiokol had other friends, and as contracts got signed, the congressmen from the districts where the work was being done got very attached to the plan.

Even if later adminstrations and congress were politically opposed together, it's not that easy to change such a major component of the design. The shuttle and its facilities were designed around the strengths and weaknesses, requirements and limitations of the solid rocket boosters.

Basically, they'd have been going back to the drawing board.

Anyway, it was obvious that the space shuttle was a terrible idea years before it flew, but that didn't lead to it being cancelled.

>>8046279
> They built a whole second launch and landing complex in California that never got used.

It never got used because of Challenger, the shuttle was capable of it.

>>8046336
The shuttle was not terrible but did it's job with side effects that are present now

>>8046347
Challenger happened near the end of the original schedule of the shuttle program. It was supposed to have completed hundreds of launches and be nearing retirement.

And no, the shuttle as it was in those days was not fit for polar missions. It might have made orbit, but not with a substiantial payload, and there was no reason to do a polar launch but satellite deployment.

>>8046349
>The shuttle was not terrible but did it's job
The shuttle was garbage, and didn't come anywhere near doing its job. You can't judge it based on the rationalizations they made for it after it failed and they continued the program anyway.

They were going to build 4 shuttles, and having them flying in the late 70s, in time to save Skylab. They were going to fly 500 missions in a decade, launch 20+ ton polar satellites, launch big GEO comsats with a LOX/H2 Centaur-variant upper stage, and save America piles of money by being the only orbital launch system it needed.

Launch started half a decade late. Skylab splashed. Of the original fleet, half of them blew up and killed their crews before a quarter of the planned missions had been completed. The launch rate wasn't even one tenth of what was promised, but the development and annual program costs were higher. It couldn't keep schedule, so it was unfit for the launch of any satellite serving an important practical purpose. They had to line up make-work launches for it to have any excuse to fly the shuttle.

When the shuttle program was started, America had Saturn IB and the Apollo capsule, Atlas/Centaur, Titan III, and Delta. Plus it had Skylab in orbit. All of these were more cost-effective and suitable for any given mission than the shuttle ever became. Furthermore, it still had a reasonable possibility of restarting Saturn V production.

The shuttle program had a strictly negative effect on American launch capability and the manned space program.

>>8046405
> It might have made orbit, but not with a substiantial payload

So yes, it was capable. All launchers take a hit in payload with polar orbits.

>there was no reason to do a polar launch but satellite deployment.

Which was the shuttle's territory, until Challenger.

>>8046442
>> It might have made orbit, but not with a substiantial payload
>So yes, it was capable. All launchers take a hit in payload with polar orbits.
No, MAYBE it could have made orbit. Not "so yes". So maybe.

Most launchers have an upper stage of lesser, or at least similar, dry mass compared to the payload. The empty shuttle, with external tank, was about 100 tons, with a payload of about 25 tons.

If a conventional rocket loses 25% of the mass it can put in orbit by going polar rather than equatorial, then maybe its payload goes down by a third. If the shuttle lost 25% of the mass it could put in orbit, then it simply wouldn't go to orbit, even empty.

Even if it could go to a polar orbit with a few tons of cargo, there would be no sense to it. That wouldn't just be the payload "taking a hit", the payload would be gutted.

>>satellite deployment.
>Which was the shuttle's territory, until Challenger.
It never made sense in that role due to high cost and inability to fly on time, and as I just explained, it was incapable of carrying a useful payload to polar orbit.

>>8046405
Despite the drawbacks it did amazing. And stuff like Columbia and challenger have happend before but they did not end the mission. 1.48% failure rate good odds. You need to admire it for what it could do not what it was planned to do. Money can relate to most issues. Shoestring budget and you need to test it. They did not expect any tiles needed to be replaced after the mission.

>>8046501
>1.48% failure rate good odds.
1.48% all-hands-lost rate abysmal odds. It they were going to accept a failure rate like that, they needed the crew in a separable capsule.

>You need to admire it for what it could do
What it could do was unremarkable among launch vehicles and manned spacecraft. It doesn't get extra credit for having the upper stage attached to the crew vehicle.

>>8046501
NASA had a huge budget and accomplished dick all
Then they invented makework missions for it, like the ISS, because it couldn't do anything meaningful

You cant be THAT harsh on nasa, when you embark on a project of such magnitude you have no real way of knowing if it will work.

Altough, they should have realized earlier that if the shuttle couldnt be reusable then it wasnt good for nothing, so they should have continued making more different prototypes

they should have made 1, see the flaws, and redesign

instead of making one, seeing its shitty and then pour billions of dollars more into teh same

>>8046650
They knew it wasn't going to be reusable before it even was designed

Non-reusable boosters, non-usable fuel tank, heat shields need to be hand applied & inspected every time, pushing performance capabilities on everything, etc

>>8046658
>They knew it wasn't going to be reusable before it even was designed
yes but if the orbiter had been reusbale it would have been another story

>>8046658
>Non-reusable boosters
The boosters were reusable, though.

>>8046673
reusable stuff that had to get fished out of the water very useful

>>8046673
Cost just as much to "reuse them", aka scrap them and rebuild them, as to get a new one

Solid rocket boosters can't just be refilled, like liquid ones could

>>8046672
Even if the orbiter didn't need much refurbishment, you'd still be better off with disposable rockets.

>>8046695
>Even if the orbiter didn't need much refurbishment, you'd still be better off with disposable rockets.
it blows my mind that it would have been cheaper to keep using saturn Vs than to use the space shuttle, the sheer wastefullnes of it all


what do you think about skylon will we ever see it fly?

>>8046674
That part was really not a problem. The effort of collecting an empty rocket that fell in the water is nothing compared to the effort of building one.

The larger issue is the refurbishment and refuelling process. This wasn't a liquid-fueled rocket that could just be refilled with cheap kerosene and oxygen, it had to be taken all apart, have the solid fuel cast in it, reassembled with new seals, refurbish the electronics and thrust-vectoring, replace the separation motors, etc.

The SRBs were about the most successfully reusable component. Reuse is estimated to have saved about 20% compared to not reusing them. However, expendable liquid-fuelled boosters would surely have been cheaper, particularly when you factor in the handling issues.

>>8046713
salt water made refurbishment too expensive, they just did it to preserve the jobs it wass clearly more xpensive to refurbish tan to make new ones, even the srbs

salty water is abitch

>>8046237
>It's conventional to take rockets to the launchpad empty, and fill them with propellant there. This makes them far lighter and easier to handle, but it's not possible with solid rockets, which are more massive for the same impulse in the first place. So this greatly complicated shuttle pre-launch operations.
If solids are such a pain in the ass as you say, then how come the military makes extensive use of them without all these supposed issues?
Fuck, they even pushed a Minuteman out of the back of a C-5 and launched it in mid-air. Doesn't sound very hard to handle to me.
>>8046279
>It was supposed to be able to do polar orbits from the start, but the delivered product wasn't capable of it.
It was, but not with much payload and they lacked the launch facilities at Vandenberg. But changes were made which improved polar-launch payload capability, SLC-6 was completed in 1985 and a polar mission was planned and ready for early 1986, but the Challenger disaster interrupted these plans. In the span of the ensuing grounding, delays and knee-jerk bureaucratic bullshit, the USAF lost what little faith they still had in NASA's ability to provide reliable launch services, and invested more heavily in Titan IV and other unmanned rockets.

>>8046724
>If solids are such a pain in the ass as you say, then how come the military makes extensive use of them without all these supposed issues?
because solid fuel can be prepared to launch much quicker when you need it. which is obviously soemthing desirable for nukes.

liquid fuel is much more convenient but its much harder to prepare to launch in a hurry.
it could be done tough,the first icbms were liquid fueled and when things were bad they had to keep them permanently fueled actively cooling the fuel

>>8046724
The military uses them so they can just leave the missiles sitting around for years, ready to go at a moments notice

>>8046724
>how come the military makes extensive use of them without all these supposed issues?
They use small ones, and solids are storable, rugged, and can be lit off on a moment's notice.

A Minuteman rocket is about 35 tons, which is a big load, but well within the range of ordinary cargo transportation experience. One shuttle SRB was about 1200 tons, so hauling two of them to the launchpad was quite a pain in the ass.

File: Topol-M goes for a swim.jpg (62KB, 641x314px) Image search: [Google]

62KB, 641x314px

>>8046733
>>8046759
>leave the missiles sitting
>Or silently move them about inside a sub 1000 ft under the ocean
>Or move them around on trains
>Or take them cross-country aboard a mobile transporter-erector-launcher
>Or load them onto a fucking plane and drop them out
Solids are rugged as fuck when it comes to handling. Liquids are delicate by comparison, and they never did any of this (except limited SLBM use) before solids were adopted. You have it completely backwards.

>>8046768
>hauling two of them to the launchpad was quite a pain in the ass.
How was it ANY more of a pain than moving Saturn IB to the pad?

>>8046768
>One shuttle SRB was about 1200 tons
Sorry, the two of them together are about 1200 tons, each one is about 600 tons.

For comparison, Energia-Buran with its maximum payload would only have been about 250 tons when it was transported to the launchpad, since it was fuelled there.

The shuttle was about 1400 tons before the external tank was filled, which is why it needed that big-ass crawler to move it to the launchpad (which they're now having to upgrade because SLS is bigger and heavier, with its 5-segment SRBs).

File: energia buran transporter.jpg (99KB, 400x266px) Image search: [Google]

99KB, 400x266px

>>8046780
I don't know what you're getting at. Saturn IB was an all-liquid-fuelled rocket. They filled it on the pad.

The crawler-transporter was overkill for Saturn IB, but they wanted it for the monstrous Saturn V, so there was no reason not to use it. After being used for Saturn V, it had to be upgraded to handle the shuttle's greater mass during transportation.

The Russians were able to transport Energia-Buran to the pad much more simply, as pictured.

>>8046774
>posts stuff agreeing with posts he replies to, then ends with:
>You have it completely backwards.
Confused fucker is confused.

>>8046798
>>8046786
Saturn V weighed slightly less unfuelled than Energia. Your whole "it's a pain in the ass just because it's heavier" argument is utterly baseless. Vertical assembly and transportation is indeed a pain in the ass, but they were only necessary for the Shuttle, Saturn I and Saturn V because for some ungodly reason these three rockets were designed for vertical assembly only, not because they were heavy.

>>8046802
kek