[EtherShock]

I think the CEV is an interim craft, until the VS is technologically feasible. It seems like we're taking a step backwards with Apollo-based capsules though.

[Mefustae]

So...doesn't anyone in the US think that possibly NASA and all Space Programs be put on hold for the time being, so you guys can get your Economy, not to mention your Health and Education systems, back on track? I'm not saying it should be cancelled, but since you guys are putting so much cash into the Occupation force in Iraq, maybe you should cease all non-neseccary functions that put major drains on your economy...

[Kosh]

I have a question about the Kliper and the CEV. Do either of them have the ability to carry things like modules for the ISS and satalites into orbit?

I looked both of them up in the Wiki, but it didn't give me that impression.

[Nuke]

Originally posted by kv1at3485
NASA made a prodigious effort to get the X-33 (the lead-up to the full scale Venture Star) working, but was eventually defeated by immature technology.

In particular was the cryogenic hydrogen fuel tank that was to be constructed with composite materials. They could not produce the composite materials that were necessary.  (Either the materials were not strong enough or they made the tank far too heavy.)

It may very well be that even today the X-33 and the VS are impossible, the refinement of technology still being insufficient to solve the more scathing problems.

The X-33 and the VS were great ideas just a little too ahead of their time.  It may be some years yet before the technology needed to make them viable emerges, if that has not already happened.  Even if the technology does exist today, it may not even be possible to resurrect the program (i.e. funding.)

I am sure that the lessons learned from the X-33 will be put to good use in the upcoming CEV.

space ship one used a composite no2 tank for its engine which worked pretty effectively. nasa needs to get away from cryo-fuel  and start working with hybrid engines. they are much lighter and are pretty safe. they dont require complex plumbing like solid fuel engines, so theres less that can go wrong. anyone who has studied ss1's schematics would be supprised how simple the design is compaired to nasa hardware. ss1 is also an example of what an all composite spaceframe can do. the composite skin adds to the ships structural integrity, meaning that a lighter spaceframe may be used. the materials are also less thermally conductive than metals. also the fuel tank is epoxyed to the skin and doesnt require any structural support by the frame, it gets all the support it needs from the spacecraft's skin.

the other major thing nasa should learn from rutan is that a spacecraft, if light enough, can be slowed down in upper atmosphere and avoid a hot reentry. to slowdown from an orbital velocity in a manor to pull off a cold re-entry would be trickey, but not impossible. nasa likes to do a steep re-entry for some reason. one thing i descovered by playing orbiter, is that you can andjust your orbit so that your ship skims through the upper atmosphere, and by doing this you can bleed off excess velocity. if you enter the upper atmosphere yet still remain in an orbit of sorts so that your wings produce lift and drag essentially moving from a low orbit to high altitude flight (sorta what they want to do with high altitude passenger jets). orbit to atmoshere transition need not be a violent affair.

[Lynx]

Originally posted by Kosh
I have a question about the Kliper and the CEV. Do either of them have the ability to carry things like modules for the ISS and satalites into orbit?

I looked both of them up in the Wiki, but it didn't give me that impression.

They don't, but they aren't supposed to either since they have different mission profile. They're meant to serve either as pure crew shuttles and command modules for bigger craft. They're a good step forward, since they're reuseable and offer far more space than a Soyuz capsule. They're like mini-space shuttles, but without a cargo hold. And they can be combined with several modules a form a bigger spacecraft for ong duration missions as future moon landings or mars missions.

On the havy cargo lifting front, the ESA is working on the Phoenix spaceplane. This is especially cool since if it actually gets fully developed it's going to be incorporated into the Hopper project - a 4 mile long massdriver used to accelerate spacecraft to escape velocity. Phoenix

As for the NASA, it should be disbanded and reformred as new agency since it's severly hampered by monstrous buerocratic apparatus. No other space agency is being dragged down by such a
deadweight. The NASA, while being the highest funded aerospace organization, is also among the least effective ones.

[Kosh]

It is anticipated that the production craft will enter use between 2015 and 2020

So there will be a 5-10 years "lag" where we will be without a cargo carrier. So, what will happen to the ISS while we wait? Does it just become vaporware?

[Lynx]

Something like that. It'll be maintained by a crew of three, though that's barely enough to keep it afloat, so they won't be able to run any expreiments on the station though. They'll have to limit the crew to three since that's the maximum crew capacity of a Soyuz capsule which are docked as return and rescue vehicles. Normally, this shouldn't be the case, but in an especially smart move the NASA killed off the development of the Crew Rescue Vehicle, which would have allowed a crew of seven to stay on the ISS.

If things go by, Kliper will enter service in 2011 and allow a bigger crew on the ISS to finally being used for reasearch, even though still incomplete. So far it's only been eating up money without any other effect thanks to the NASA's homegrown stupidity.

[Ford Prefect]

Am I the only one who's become convinced that the ISS was a cataclysmic waste of money?

[vyper]

Who is in charge of the next-gen development of shuttles?

Is it NASA itself or do they outsource like the military? I'd hand this project to a private firm like Lockhead or Boeing, and say - make me a cost effective, reusable, high capacity vehicle capable of a return moon  trip.

Then I'd sit back for a while.

Have a cigar, some red wine, maybe even a nice steak or three hundred...

Then eventually you'd get a good shuttle.

[vyper]

Originally posted by Ford Prefect
Am I the only one who's become convinced that the ISS was a cataclysmic waste of money?

Yes. The ISS is a weight around the necks of politicians that will force them to continue support for the exploration of space - so long as there's a very large and costly space station ready to plummet to earth, they'll be willing to spend money to keep it up there.

[Lynx]

There is no official successor for the shuttle in development; there were a fewones in development some years ago but they got all killed off thanks to budget cuts. IIRC some companies are conducting independent design studies on that subject, but without an order from NASA they won't get far.

[Ford Prefect]

Originally posted by vyper
Yes. The ISS is a weight around the necks of politicians that will force them to continue support for the exploration of space - so long as there's a very large and costly space station ready to plummet to earth, they'll be willing to spend money to keep it up there.

Yeah, but keeping the ISS in orbit isn't synonymous with space exploration. A perpetually unfinished space station hanging around and sapping resources from an already impoverished space program doesn't exactly look like the march of progress.

[Shrike]

Originally posted by Nuke
space ship one used a composite no2 tank for its engine which worked pretty effectively. nasa needs to get away from cryo-fuel  and start working with hybrid engines. they are much lighter and are pretty safe. they dont require complex plumbing like solid fuel engines, so theres less that can go wrong. anyone who has studied ss1's schematics would be supprised how simple the design is compaired to nasa hardware. ss1 is also an example of what an all composite spaceframe can do. the composite skin adds to the ships structural integrity, meaning that a lighter spaceframe may be used. the materials are also less thermally conductive than metals. also the fuel tank is epoxyed to the skin and doesnt require any structural support by the frame, it gets all the support it needs from the spacecraft's skin.

the other major thing nasa should learn from rutan is that a spacecraft, if light enough, can be slowed down in upper atmosphere and avoid a hot reentry. to slowdown from an orbital velocity in a manor to pull off a cold re-entry would be trickey, but not impossible. nasa likes to do a steep re-entry for some reason. one thing i descovered by playing orbiter, is that you can andjust your orbit so that your ship skims through the upper atmosphere, and by doing this you can bleed off excess velocity. if you enter the upper atmosphere yet still remain in an orbit of sorts so that your wings produce lift and drag essentially moving from a low orbit to high altitude flight (sorta what they want to do with high altitude passenger jets). orbit to atmoshere transition need not be a violent affair.

The difference is scale.  The shuttle is a hundred+ ton heavy launch system, spaceshipone can't even make it into orbit and is absolutely tiny in comparison.  You can't just make a small proof of concept and automagically scale it up.

People are really quick to jump on the shuttle program, without seemingly realizing how bloody freaking difficult space travel actually is, particularly when you're dealing with heavy lift regimes.

Also, something people might not know of, but there's an industry proposal by the people who make shuttle components (which company escapes me at the moment) to basically make a heavylift 'shuttle' - by removing the shuttle and putting a cargo stage on top of the main fuel tank.  That's an Apollo-level launch vehicle right there, if not better.

[Lynx]

Not to mention that the landing method of SpaceShip one simply wouldn't work. SS1 was moving at the fraction of speed of the shuttle at a far lower height. If anything shuttlesized tried to deorbit the say ss1 did no piece of it arriving the the ground would be larger than a suitcase.

[Nuke]

i view space ship one as more a successfull test of the indivitual systems rather than the functionality of the whole ship. mainly composite spaceframe and hybrid engines were the major advances. i dont see rutan's re-entry meathod working on a large scale.

the thing about re-entry is that nasa always does it broadside at extreme velocity and a steep angle of descent. rutan's meathod was unique but was just a variation of nasa's reentry philosophy. my idea is to enter the atmosphere nose first in an extremely well streamlined vehicle at a very shallow angle (nearly paralell to the surface). the idea is to enter with as little drag possible and actually skim the upper atmosphere to decelerate more slowly. nasa has us all think that the atmosphere is like a brick wall, its far more gradiated than that. you would burn retrograde so that the ship skims through ultra low density atmosphere. you would then fire another burn retrograde again untill your orbital trajectory is paralell to the surface. you would then fly, decelerating, until it is no longer posible to maintain altitude. after that you would be in glide mode. it would require fancy piloting, complex planning, and balls of steel, most of wich nasa doesnt care about.

[EtherShock]

Originally posted by Nuke
...it would require fancy piloting, complex planning, and balls of steel, most of wich nasa doesnt care about.

Sounds like what should be the requirements for an astronaut to me.

[Nuke]

theese guys can fly by their guts, the problem is that nasa wont let them. they do not recognize that flying is more of an art than a science. rutan understands this. melvill didnt get out of that spin with fancy calculations.

[Lynx]

SS1 was nothing revolutionary. The technology and theory existed already for decades, it only pioneered in the field of private semi-spaceflight. Rutan's craft did no reentry. It still was in the upper layers of the atmosphere at a relatively low velocity, so it was able to use the air to brake. That's a luxury which an orbiter can't afford. Retro rockets would solve the problem, but since you'd need lots of thrust to achieve that it'd add siginificant weight to the craft limiting it's lifting capability which would defeat the concept of a cargo lifting capability.

And nuke your post reads like you think the way the shuttles enter atmosphere the result of the nasa conspiracy to hide the true nature of the upper atmosphere from the common men.

[Nuke]

no, what happens is when you start something new you come up with several possible ways to solve the problem. so you pick the meathod you think will work best at the time. once you have worked with that solution for some time you simple forget that there are other possibilities. its not so much conspiricy as it is conservatisim. go with what has worked in the past, and foregt about other possible ways to solve the problem. but as the technology change, the best way to solve a problem may also change. nasa wants to stay in its comfort zone, rather than take a risk doing something that can potential to work better.

[Lynx]

No. There have been countless experienced people and companies working on developing shuttle concepts as well as studies on shuttle successors and various other spacecraft; so if some guy on an odd internet forum could come up with that solution, you can be sure that they could've thought of  that as well.
Entering an atmosphere is not a matter of fancy piloting and balls of steel, since when your balls are wrong your pieces are splattered onto a hundred mile corridor. The one time you make a mistake you are finished.