<p>And "failure of the shuttle paradigm" should always be qualified in two ways:</p><p> 1) It "failed" <strong>as a version 1.0. </strong>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.</p>
<p>2) It "failed" <strong>at the painfully low flight rates</strong> that were inevitable without sustained Apollo-or-higher budgets.
<p>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."
The program was initiated after NASA showed some briefing slides to Reagan that depicted a late Salyut station (I think it was Salyut 7). Those briefing slides are publicly available, but I'm not sure if they're online. I think they were reprinted in one of the Exploring the Unknown books.Anyway, we're venturing far afield here, but to answer your question, I don't think the issue was size. Reagan did not say "build a space station that is larger than the Russian one." He simply agreed to a space station because the Soviets already had one. So simply having a US-led space station that allowed for both permanent presence and the participation of Western allies would have satisfied that basic requirement. That could have been done with a few modules and an expandable capability.Unfortunately, the ball quickly got rolling and what NASA started to design was bigger than Mir, bigger than Skylab, included many modules, many launches, a lot of power, etc. Now they justified this in part because they said that they needed to do X-science missions and that required a sizeable volume with very low gravity. But they did that in a pretty sloppy and half-hearted way, and once they started building the ISS hardware (and _building_ stuff is what NASA engineers really wanted to do), then they started to blow the budget, and they started to axe the science. Was science really a justification, or just an excuse?(SNIP)So what could they have done differently? Start with something small, Salyut-sized, that could have been launched in a single shuttle mission. Keep the science goals modest (primarily longer-duration human spaceflight, not materials science). Get it up there and say "We now have a space station." After that, expand it gradually, add a European module, a Japanese module, etc. Then, if necessary, throw it all away and develop a bigger one. Had they followed this approach, they could have had a space station by the original timeline (1990) and gotten several years of operation out of it. By that time cooperation with the Russians would have become possible.They took a different path and, well, here we are.
Longer duration Spacelab experiments. After all, you could do Spacelab experiments in, er, Spacelab. So if you could extend the flight duration a bit, you could get a month or two of experiments in Spacelab equivalent racks. That should have been easily accomplished with a couple of shuttle launches placing two modules in orbit.I've long thought that this was what the US should have done. We should have taken the Russian approach of launching a core module and then adding to it as resources became available.But you have to understand how NASA works and that starts with understanding that human spaceflight is essentially an engineering exercise. The engineers want to build something big and ambitious and challenging, because that's fun. They care little about what it will actually do, as long as that justifies building it in the first place.So they establish a set of assumptions that are also big and ambitious. In the case of the space station, they decided that it would have a significant micro-g area, and it would also mount both Earth-viewing and astronomy sensors. And it could also have a construction/support role. All of this cried out for a very large station, and that's how Space Station Freedom was conceived. But what then happened was that the engineering costs kept overrunning, and when that happened, they threw off the easiest things to discard, which were the things that were supposed to be added late in construction, i.e. all the science stuff that established the initial justification for the station (there's a pretty long list). That way, over a long period of time, what we ended up with was an engineering project, where all the time and effort is expended building and maintaining the station, and not actually _doing_ anything on it. After ten years of construction, the astronauts are able to perform three hours of experiments per _week_ on the ISS.If the U.S. had instead taken the Soviet Salyut/Mir approach, they could have been conducting initial science experiments from the start and adding to that as the station grew. Yeah, you can argue that the science would not have been terribly ambitious, but 70% (or even 40%) of something is better than 100% of nothing.
Why is everyone so enamored with Big Gemini? Any plausible alternative history should use Apollo hardware.
...quotes from Blackstar (from older threads) that make a lot of sense ...http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=13040.msg337555#msg337555Quote...I've long thought that this was what the US should have done. We should have taken the Russian approach of launching a core module and then adding to it as resources became available.But you have to understand how NASA works and that starts with understanding that human spaceflight is essentially an engineering exercise. The engineers want to build something big and ambitious and challenging, because that's fun. They care little about what it will actually do, as long as that justifies building it in the first place.So they establish a set of assumptions that are also big and ambitious. ...But what then happened was that the engineering costs kept overrunning, and when that happened, they threw off the easiest things to discard, which were the things that were supposed to be added late in construction, i.e. all the science stuff that established the initial justification for the station (there's a pretty long list). That way, over a long period of time, what we ended up with was an engineering project, where all the time and effort is expended building and maintaining the station, and not actually _doing_ anything on it. After ten years of construction, the astronauts are able to perform three hours of experiments per _week_ on the ISS.......
...I've long thought that this was what the US should have done. We should have taken the Russian approach of launching a core module and then adding to it as resources became available.But you have to understand how NASA works and that starts with understanding that human spaceflight is essentially an engineering exercise. The engineers want to build something big and ambitious and challenging, because that's fun. They care little about what it will actually do, as long as that justifies building it in the first place.So they establish a set of assumptions that are also big and ambitious. ...But what then happened was that the engineering costs kept overrunning, and when that happened, they threw off the easiest things to discard, which were the things that were supposed to be added late in construction, i.e. all the science stuff that established the initial justification for the station (there's a pretty long list). That way, over a long period of time, what we ended up with was an engineering project, where all the time and effort is expended building and maintaining the station, and not actually _doing_ anything on it. After ten years of construction, the astronauts are able to perform three hours of experiments per _week_ on the ISS....
The options would bear comparison with those favored by Paine; but whereas Paine started with the current budget and hoped to go upward, the BoB staff started at the FY 1970 level and considered the consequences of tilting sharply downward.(snip) Two other options, at $2.5 billion, also permitted flight of Skylab with its three visits, along with the six Apollos [NOTE - the six lunar landings]. There could even be a space station in 1980, with Titan III-Gemini for logistics. However, there would be no space shuttle.
manned space station logistic vehicle. Apollo was not.
1. What about the modules, would they be like the current NASA ISS modules brought by an expendable tug to ISS?, would the module + tug fit in an Atlas or Delta ?. 2. also without the shuttle the modules would be different since the current modules are spacelab heritage. 3. Another thing is the truss, seems to me like its really inefficient, since there is no shuttle the truss would be more like a line of couple of unpressurized service modules with smaller booms (like that on Mir) holding the panels.
Quote from: markododa on 12/23/2010 06:19 am1. What about the modules, would they be like the current NASA ISS modules brought by an expendable tug to ISS?, would the module + tug fit in an Atlas or Delta ?. 2. also without the shuttle the modules would be different since the current modules are spacelab heritage. 3. Another thing is the truss, seems to me like its really inefficient, since there is no shuttle the truss would be more like a line of couple of unpressurized service modules with smaller booms (like that on Mir) holding the panels.The exercise was to show that the shuttle is not needed for construction of a space station. Yes, without the shuttle, the design would be different. 1. Yes, that was the point of the exercise and yes2. no, they aren't Spacelab heritage. they are new design. 3. How is it inefficient? There many more systems in the truss other than solar arrays.
How are the trusses berthed ?
Quote from: markododa on 12/23/2010 02:42 pmHow are the trusses berthed ?To what ?
5. Service Module with ARAD or OMV – could be derived from #2 but smaller. It provides attitude control, power and some propulsion to a launch package. Just what is needed to bring a launch package from insertion orbit to the ISS
And here's another thing ISS not only could have been built without but in fact was built without: heavy lift. That's despite the fact that it has a mass of about 400 tonnes.