Lee Jay - 21/2/2008 3:11 PMThat included me, but not for building stations - for repairing JWST and other such operations, should the need arise, and even then a much smaller total system - a little arm for a single person (more like a fishing rod),
Jim - 21/2/2008 3:49 PMQuoteLee Jay - 21/2/2008 3:11 PMThat included me, but not for building stations - for repairing JWST and other such operations, should the need arise, and even then a much smaller total system - a little arm for a single person (more like a fishing rod), I believe the CEV is not needed for those missions. Most spacecraft are not in reach of the CEV or there is no need to waste a manned mission on it (orbital express)
nacnud - 21/2/2008 8:01 PMHow about putting rails for the SSRMS cart out past the SARJ.
vt_hokie - 21/2/2008 12:54 PMAs an aside, I seem to recall that the Skylab display at the Air & Space Museum is actual flight hardware. Is that correct?
pr1268 - 1/3/2008 2:35 PMThe 2nd (unused) Skylab is what you see at the Air & Space Museum.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylab
pr1268 - 1/3/2008 2:35 PMhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkylabSide note curiosity: The Wikipedia page mentions that the town of Esperance, Western Australia "...fined the United States $400 for littering." Anyone know whether the US ever paid the fine? Thanks!
pippin - 21/2/2008 7:19 PMOne more thing: We do a lot of shuttle-bashing these days as in "all the bad decisions that were taken back then", "if we only had kept the Saturns" etc. We know that now, but probably we had to go through that experience to learn that the shuttle paradigm does not work.
And "failure of the shuttle paradigm" should always be qualified in two ways:
1) It "failed" as a version 1.0. No other complex transportation technology has ever come close to an operational/economic sweet spot in its first and only iteration. That we blame the shuttle for failing to do so says more about hyper-inflated expectations than it does about either the paradigm or the specific design.
2) It "failed" at the painfully low flight rates that were inevitable without sustained Apollo-or-higher budgets. (And by the standards of aviation even the upper reaches of Mathematica fantasy count as "painfully low"). It's fun and easy to tout the obvious economies of reusability ("if we threw away a jetliner after every flight...") It's painful and hard to accept just how many flights it takes for those economies to overcome the enormous up-front costs.
From where I sit, the only paradigm that demonstrably "failed" was that of "Here's a technology path that's inherently incremental, slow and very very expensive. We'll attempt it in one big jump, fast, and on the cheap. Then we'll spend 37 years second-guessing the design as if that were the heart of the problem."
Jorge - 2/3/2008 4:13 AMRegardless of the failure of the shuttle paradigm, the Saturn V was unaffordable.
nacnud - 3/3/2008 9:59 AMQuoteJorge - 2/3/2008 4:13 AMRegardless of the failure of the shuttle paradigm, the Saturn V was unaffordable. I have some vague memory of Griffin saying that for the cost of developing the Shuttle the Saturn V could have been kept going.
Jorge - 3/3/2008 11:29 AMQuotenacnud - 3/3/2008 9:59 AMI have some vague memory of Griffin saying that for the cost of developing the Shuttle the Saturn V could have been kept going.He is mistaken. As much as I disagree with Jeffrey Bell on most issues, he wrote a good article refuting Griffin's statements on Saturn affordability.
nacnud - 3/3/2008 9:59 AMI have some vague memory of Griffin saying that for the cost of developing the Shuttle the Saturn V could have been kept going.
modavis - 3/3/2008 8:48 AMAnd "failure of the shuttle paradigm" should always be qualified in two ways: 1) It "failed" as a version 1.0. No other complex transportation technology has ever come close to an operational/economic sweet spot in its first and only iteration. That we blame the shuttle for failing to do so says more about hyper-inflated expectations than it does about either the paradigm or the specific design.2) It "failed" at the painfully low flight rates that were inevitable without sustained Apollo-or-higher budgets. (And by the standards of aviation even the upper reaches of Mathematica fantasy count as "painfully low"). It's fun and easy to tout the obvious economies of reusability ("if we threw away a jetliner after every flight...") It's painful and hard to accept just how many flights it takes for those economies to overcome the enormous up-front costs.From where I sit, the only paradigm that demonstrably "failed" was that of "Here's a technology path that's inherently incremental, slow and very very expensive. We'll attempt it in one big jump, fast, and on the cheap. Then we'll spend 37 years second-guessing the design as if that were the heart of the problem."