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Sounds like a good idea.
some of these guys think China might be thinking of building a Nuclear Pulse Rocket program
board
be warned though, the board is not well moderated like here and seems to be full of nuts
Oh well. In the news:
http://uplink.space.com/showflat.php?Ca … o=0&fpart=
http://www.space.com/news/060412_china_cooperation.html
You got me there.
Angara will be awhile in coming, though they seem to be making a lot of headway in terms of their pad. Ariane M will at least be an all Euro venture. I hope they go for that.
Very well put!
Maher: Bush Guilty of “Treason” for Putting “Oil Profits” Before Global Warming Proof
Posted by Brent Baker on March 25, 2006 - 05:58.
http://newsbusters.org/node/4616
Bill Maher ended his HBO show Friday night, Real Time with Bill Maher, with a tirade about supposed efforts by the Bush administration to suppress information about global warming.These are the same folks who pridected--in the 1970's--how the sky would be black as the ace of spades--and how we would run out of oil by the year 2000 and be in a new ice age. Same old fear mongering.
The Falcon ended in failure - I wonder what Jeff Bell will say about the alt.space crowd trying to deliver the goods
At least Musk actually spent money on real Launch Vehicle hardware. I respect that.
I however, cannot stand Tumlinson--who hasn't launched ANYTHING, or that Tax cheat Anderson who trys to take credit for 'private' space tourists atop Soviet era boosters. Space Adventures and the Branson-ites seem more interested in "spaceports" (resorts I call them). Even with the failure--I still rank Musk ahead of Rutan & Co. in crediblility.
If you add up the mass of the payload and the cradle, it will probobly exceed the capacity of the stock Delta-IV HLV or the new CLV.
NASA might be able to work around all these issues - eventually - so flying Shuttle is a the quicker and probobly more reliable solution, particularly since the ISS has probobly less then ten years of life left in it.
That pretty well sums it up.
IIRC, the LV was a semi-balloon tank design. I wonder how much the blanket had to do with it. The engine is exposed to the elements (which allowed us to at least see a bit.), and it is possible that the craft just cracked and spilled fuel atop the powerhead.
Space X
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/forums … 302#M27136
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/forums … 49&start=1
At last, somebody got it.
Well, to play Devils advocate--MIT didn't do much science either--before the builders finished bricking it up and putting the roof on.
With respect to 'secret aircraft' yes. I have the issue at home--and I do believe the part about Boeing calling each core a seperate flight for test purposes.
From the web:
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/forums … 1&posts=40
Nice quote from there:
There's a pdf from 2004 that discusses lunar exploration with current and slightly enhanced Ariane 5 variants:
http://www.astron.nl/p/news/LO/Iranzo_A … rkshop.ppt
The currently flying Ariane 5 ECA can only put 2.2 tonnes of payload on the moon's surface (this number doesn't include the descent stage mass). Ariane 5 ECB could put over 3 t with direct lunar transfer injection (no stop in LEO) but the upper stage Vinci engine is currently on hold. (It's an expander engine, like RL-10 but more thrust and slightly better ISP, compared to the current ECA HM7B gas-generator engine.) They assume storable propellant stages for lunar orbit insertion and descent.
The rockets are currently designed for GTO launch, and can put only 20 to 23 t in LEO. They discuss some enhancements, like increasing Vinci thrust, composite casing for the solid boosters and making a Vulcain III main engine with 13s better ISP. This would make the LEO payload 27 t, but there'd be dynamic pressure issues.
Then there's a brief mention of a 1991 study "Ariane Super Lourd", with 4 solids, 5 Vulcain II main engines, one Vulcain II second stage and 35 t lunar transfer orbit mass. It tapers up like a Saturn V.
I don't dare copy-paste any pictures from it...
I personally don't endorse building rockets from ground up for just some lunar missions that are performed less than ten times.
Orion will cost a lot more. Sea Dragon is simple by comparison. It is small compared to the Troll platform which cost around a Titan IV launch or two to build.
Warmed over OSP crud.
Pratt & Whitney now produce both, so an order from NASA is something they have to fill--one good thing about Griffin keeping as much in house as he can--and away from the Primes--except ATK.
You will have to have that with the spaceplane as well. A rocketplane--perhaps with compact hypergolics to limit the handling of cryogenics--may come in the future. But the heaviest payloads will always come from simple rockets.
I like the old Martin Astrorocket concept but that isn't going to come anytime soon.
Unless Dubai wants one.
"the record is clear that NASA support for development of the new Crew Exploration Vehicle is almost entirely responsible."
Says who, says Nasa Watch? Nonsense!
"The proposed budget removes $0.4B from science in FY07, and almost $2B of previously anticipated growth in science over the next 5 years."
Out of how much? How much should space science be getting? Whatever we were paying back in "go in circles for science" days might be totally different then in the context of "exploration first" NASA of today.
Just slapping up a big scarry number with no context is meaningless.
Keith Cowing has a bad attitude that won't quit. He is an apologist for the life science mongers who would love to shut everything down besides Goddard Green Unabomber wannabes.
That was from AV week--a couple issues back--with the Delta IV heavy photo.
We still need a few more Delta IV heavy flights to really prove it.
I am really impressed with Atlas V, however. They have managed to get a lot more flights of their EELV under their belt.
That sounds reasonable enough--and would save money in keeping all the CaLV fittings standardized. I just hope we can get CaLV under contract before a future administration kills it.
Good thing most space science folk don't build their own launch vehicles, yes?
You know--maybe they should be forced to.
As it stands the typical exchange between scientist and engineer is something like this:
Scientist: "I need to put a drilling platform on a lander to get some Martian core samples 30 feet down--now I need this to fit in that Delta II shroud."
Engineer: "What--are you kidding. You really think you can shrink that down and..
Scientist: "Quit being a baby and just do it."
Engineer: "You know--maybe what we need to do is to cancel some of these Delta II flights and spend the money on a bigger launch vehicle that can do more, like how that sizable Atlas V launched MRO was better than all previous probes."
Scientist: "No way--me share power with the likes of you?"
And so it goes.
Once CEV/CLV and CaLV are done--there will be other launch options for larger automated probes. The CEV service module might make for a goo spacecraft bus even as some Soviet craft used Soyuz tech. CaLV could launch a true Europa lander to deploy cryobots. Science is not being hurt. Period.
It is just that the damage scientists did to LV advocates is being stopped. The two failed Volna launches of the Planetary Society are proof that scientists overthink the payload while caring nothing about launch vehicles. That attitude bit them--badly. And they repeated their mistake by trying a second Volna--which also endured many missions at sea on a rusty Soviet Sub--and they had the gall to wonder why it failed.
Yet Louis F. wants to bash Griffin--who has MRO and New Horizons under his belt--and they still tell lies about how he has "hurt science." I was disgusted by the anger the pointy heads showed towards Ms Cleave--who is a very nice lady. It wouldn't have done for me to have been there or there would have been a fight.
Griffin is doing the best that he can. Goldin was like a father who gives his kids candy to keep their mouths shut. Griffin is like a wise father who won't give in to every whine--but rather gives his kids a filling meal at the end of the day.
The science mongers need to grow up and quit acting like babies. It would not surprise me to learn that some money that could have gone to shuttle safety pre-Columbia wound up in an also ran Delta II mission under Goldin--so I would go so far as to say the anti-human spaceflight crowd has the blood of the Columbia dead on their hands.
Updated Russian Craft--with pictures
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/forums … 36&posts=7
Breakthroughs
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/GSP/SEM0L6OVGJE_0.html
New batteries:
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/batteries-0208.html
Space Business Space Elevator
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business … /index.htm
Very true. What's more--even the EELV salesmen were pushing widebody varients of their lvs, that would probably cost the same in new tooling as CaLV--but still be far less capable (30-40 tons per five RS-68 "Delta V" vs. 100 tons or so for CaLV).
Perhaps four RS-68s might surround one of the STS SSMEs when the orbiters are thankfully retired.
OURAL may be a distraction they cannot afford. Ariane M might actually be less expensive.