Author Topic: What was the most powerful vehicle ever planned?  (Read 15277 times)

Offline Jim

  • Night Gator
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 37440
  • Cape Canaveral Spaceport
  • Liked: 21451
  • Likes Given: 428
RE: What was the most powerful vehicle ever planned?
« Reply #40 on: 05/16/2006 02:21 am »

Get off the conspiracy stuff and stop painting everything with a broad brush.  NASA does follow US procurement laws.  

"NASA's enabling congressional act in 1958 specifically ordered NASA to ensure the fullest possible commercialization of space"  is  subjective and can't be a black and white test.

"Secondly, as someone with years of experience with government contracting, as well as time in the military, I know how easy it is for bureaucrats to stay within the letter of the law while engaging in exactly the opposite activity of what the congress wants it to do."
Must have been the Army or some other civilian agency.  Looks like you don't have any space experience.

NASA aeronautic research mostly directly affects US plane makers

NASA created the US commercial launch business and now buys commercial launch services (required by law since '86)

NASA helped create the commercial comsats

Rutan repeated something that was done 40 years ago and using the same research plus having the benefits of 40 years of technology advances, (especially CFD, which didn't exist 40 years ago).  

Rutan's achievement was due to happen  anyways.

Give specific examples.


PS.  It was B-52B and NASA owned it.


Offline mlorrey

  • Member
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2173
  • International Spaceflight Museum
  • Grantham, NH
  • Liked: 23
  • Likes Given: 5
RE: What was the most powerful vehicle ever planned?
« Reply #41 on: 05/16/2006 05:52 pm »
Quote
Jim - 15/5/2006  9:08 PM


Get off the conspiracy stuff and stop painting everything with a broad brush.  NASA does follow US procurement laws.  

"NASA's enabling congressional act in 1958 specifically ordered NASA to ensure the fullest possible commercialization of space"  is  subjective and can't be a black and white test.

"Secondly, as someone with years of experience with government contracting, as well as time in the military, I know how easy it is for bureaucrats to stay within the letter of the law while engaging in exactly the opposite activity of what the congress wants it to do."
Must have been the Army or some other civilian agency.  Looks like you don't have any space experience.

NASA aeronautic research mostly directly affects US plane makers
NASA created the US commercial launch business and now buys commercial launch services (required by law since '86)
NASA helped create the commercial comsats

Rutan repeated something that was done 40 years ago and using the same research plus having the benefits of 40 years of technology advances, (especially CFD, which didn't exist 40 years ago).  

Rutan's achievement was due to happen  anyways.
Give specific examples.
PS.  It was B-52B and NASA owned it.

"maximum Commercialization of space" does not mean "treat American industry as a subcontractor for NASA-only projects and don't allow any civilians in space". The fact it took until Christa McAuliffe to send a civilian into space, the fact that it took till the X-Prize for a private launcher to reach space independently of any NASA project or other government contract, and the fact that NASA had prohibitions against private space exploration until recently, speaks to the validity of my arguments. The interference of NASA in the development of Beal Aerospace's launcher (well documented) is another example.

Whether NASA owned the B-52 is irrelevant, the fact is its cost of construction was not included in the X-15 project budget, the X-15 project paid "rent" to NASA for its use only, while SS1 included the cost of White Knight.

If Rutan's project was "due to happen", why didn't it happen until the X-Prize came along?  How overdue was it? Was it overdue because of repeated NASA interference in prior projects (Beal, AMROC, Hudson, etc)?

Now, as for your attack on me that I am "bringing the board down", this particular area is about historical spaceflight, and the true and accurate history is that NASA has acted very territorially in the past, it has acted to block private launch efforts in the past, and NASA (like many other bureaucratic agencies) is demonstrably less efficient than private enterprise, and the sooner NASA and NASA fans acknowledge the past sins, and that they were, in fact, wrong to do, the sooner we can make real progress.

Need further proof? Take a look at NASA software that estimates the cost of a given launcher, and use it to predict what it would cost for NASA to replicate the SS1/WK1 project. Don't take my word for it: do the math on NASAs own software.
VP of International Spaceflight Museum - http://ismuseum.org
Founder, Lorrey Aerospace, B&T Holdings, ACE Exchange, and Hypersonic Systems. Currently I am a venture recruiter for Family Office Venture Capital.

Offline Jim

  • Night Gator
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 37440
  • Cape Canaveral Spaceport
  • Liked: 21451
  • Likes Given: 428
Re: What was the most powerful vehicle ever planned?
« Reply #42 on: 05/16/2006 08:13 pm »
Why should NASA send civilians into space other than for S&G's.  There is no real need other than for political reasons.  Christa and the other SFP should have never flow on the shuttle.

There was no money in private spaceflight until the Xprize.  

"it has acted to block private launch efforts in the past"    Prove it.

NASA did not do any wrt Beal.  Documented?  Andy's rants do not qualify as documentation.   I know someone who worked for Andy and he was just paranoid and because he had an unworkable design and needed a scapegoat.

Spacex is doing find

Offline rnc

  • Member
  • Posts: 38
  • Liked: 3
  • Likes Given: 1
Re: What was the most powerful vehicle ever planned?
« Reply #43 on: 05/16/2006 11:20 pm »
On the topic of the thread ;-)

The RD270. Not planned. Tested. http://www.astronautix.com/engines/rd270.htm (and te 270M). I love the description -  "No design bureau would attempt anything like it today. It was the maximum possible power from the design: gas and gas mixture in the combustion chamber; two gas generators in the combustion chamber; one oxidiser rich and one fuel rich; closed cycle; staged burning; very high pressure in the combustion chamber (266 bar compared to about 80 bar in many today, except the SSME".

The UR-700 http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/ur700.htm. The confidence "Chertok asked Chelomei what would happen if, God forbid, such a booster exploded on the launch pad. Wouldn't the entire launch complex be rendered a dead zone for 18 to 20 years? Chelomei's reply was that it wouldn't explode, since Glushko's engines were reliable and didn't fail. "

PS The green paint. You must have to love green paint to be a engineer in the Russian Republic, or it's predecessors. That's off-topic, but nearly deserves one of it's own.

Offline mlorrey

  • Member
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2173
  • International Spaceflight Museum
  • Grantham, NH
  • Liked: 23
  • Likes Given: 5
Re: What was the most powerful vehicle ever planned?
« Reply #44 on: 05/17/2006 06:26 pm »
Quote
Jim - 16/5/2006  3:00 PM

Why should NASA send civilians into space other than for S&G's.  There is no real need other than for political reasons.  Christa and the other SFP should have never flow on the shuttle.

On the contrary: the issue over russian space tourists on ISS illustrates my point exactly: NASA flatly refuses to even entertain the idea of American space tourists being able to buy emty seats on the Shuttle to go to ISS, and if they had their way, the Russians wouldn't be allowed to bring them up on Soyuz, either. That NASA refuses to even consider selling empty shuttle seats to space tourists is a violation of its congressional mandate.

Quote

There was no money in private spaceflight until the Xprize.  


Wrong again. Gary Hudson had worked on various private launch ventures more than a decade before the X-Prize, including Rotary Rocket (which raised $35 million), and the SSX, which the DC-X was based on, was a private proposal based on Hudsons earlier designs. Include AMROC (millions raised and hardware flown), and Truax's SeaDragon (which he raised millions for and engines tested), plus the $100 million Beal spent on his venture, a decade before the XPrize, and you are wrong multiple times.

Quote

"it has acted to block private launch efforts in the past"    Prove it.

NASA did not do any wrt Beal.  Documented?  Andy's rants do not qualify as documentation.   I know someone who worked for Andy and he was just paranoid and because he had an unworkable design and needed a scapegoat.

Spacex is doing find

While it has widely been rumored that NASA communicated with large satellite operators that they would have difficulty finding space on Shuttle if they flew with Beal, such coercive manipulation isn't really needed to be shown. What happened was that NASA encouraged Beal to enter into his venture, claiming they were very interested in seeking private development of launchers. Once he jumped in and dropped a load on it, NASA and the USAF then went to Congress on behalf of Boeing and Lockheed for $10 billion to subsidize the EELV program. The economic implications of that sort of subterfuge is staggering: imagine if Microsoft announced they were looking for a provider of a certain type of software application to fill a niche in the market, and once a company dumped a lot of money they could have put elsewhere, into developing the needed app, and provided a lot of information on their development to Microsoft, Microsoft announced they were going to develop their own application (incedentally using a lot of the information provided by the other company).

If Microsoft did such a thing they'd be sued, charged criminally, and condemned by 99% of those here on this forum who are generally supporters of big government, particularly Big NASA.
VP of International Spaceflight Museum - http://ismuseum.org
Founder, Lorrey Aerospace, B&T Holdings, ACE Exchange, and Hypersonic Systems. Currently I am a venture recruiter for Family Office Venture Capital.

Offline Jim

  • Night Gator
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 37440
  • Cape Canaveral Spaceport
  • Liked: 21451
  • Likes Given: 428
Re: What was the most powerful vehicle ever planned?
« Reply #45 on: 05/17/2006 07:13 pm »
NASA by law cannot sell launch services, which includes people.  Additonally, there are no empty seats on the shuttle and just because there is room doesn't mean there is lift capability.  Atourist shouldn't go to the ISS because it is a gov't research facility and not a way station.  Let the russians and anyone else fly into space but on their own and not on a gov't vehicle.

I was referring to private spaceflight and not launch vehicles.    But raising money and making money are two different things.  Nothing is prevent comsats from going to other launch vehicles except that they have to work.   Hughes and Loral made reservations on the Delta III and H-2 .  Somebody builts it and they will come.  Biggest showstopper, all of them wanted a handout from NASA, especially Kisler.

"Widely rumored"?  Stop going to the conspiracy theories websites, You are making a fool of yourself.  Beal was started long after the shuttle was banned  (1986) from flying commercial satellites.  He had an unworkable design.  

NASA had nothing to do with the EELV program.  It was an DOD program, NASA did not provide requirements or money.

Offline publiusr

  • Elite Veteran
  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 1539
  • Liked: 1
  • Likes Given: 2
Re: What was the most powerful vehicle ever planned?
« Reply #46 on: 05/18/2006 07:29 pm »
Jim is right. The biggest problem with the Alt.Spacers is that investors can always say no.

A good investor will eat the free lunch you bought him--look you dead in the eye--and say "No." Leaving you to pay the tab when he walks out.

Who would you rather invest in: Kistler or Exxon?

I think we all know the answer to that.

And that is the problem--and why we need NASA. If it weren't for the military, academics (who will help you eat the LV cake but won't help you bake it) wouldn't have MRO or NH because there would be no Atlas V. Same with V-2. Space is too important to be left up to the private sector. Rutan's craft did not have the same performance as X-15, and to compare the two is beyond me.

His craft may have rose higher, but if you will do a little reasearch there were X-15 proposals that would have reached as high if not higher.

If I want to fly high, I will get in a MiG-25. If I really want to go to space, I'll get in a Soyuz.

I really don't have much faith in the NewSpace movement--I'm sorry.

Offline Launch Fan

  • Veteran
  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 1317
  • Liked: 59
  • Likes Given: 44
Re: What was the most powerful vehicle ever planned?
« Reply #47 on: 05/18/2006 09:36 pm »
What is the attraction that will keep investors interested for the long run?

Offline publiusr

  • Elite Veteran
  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 1539
  • Liked: 1
  • Likes Given: 2
Re: What was the most powerful vehicle ever planned?
« Reply #48 on: 05/18/2006 10:09 pm »
Now if I had the answer to that question I would be the Bill Gates of the private LV world. Thaere is only one answer.

Taxes.

The oil money from Gazprom/Yukos is what is funding Kliper.

Our oil companies say they want funds for exploration, right? So howabout a nice 10 billion tax on EXXON and friends and give it to NASA in one go.
Unless you feel sorry for those poor starving CEOs...

Tags:
 

Advertisement NovaTech
Advertisement Northrop Grumman
Advertisement
Advertisement Margaritaville Beach Resort South Padre Island
Advertisement Brady Kenniston
Advertisement NextSpaceflight
Advertisement Nathan Barker Photography
0