/sci/ - Science & Math

>>7938270
>significantly lowering the cost of future missions.
It lowered the cost, but not significantly.

Continuing the Apollo Program was too expensive, let alone expanding it. It was not the development costs that made Apollo expensive, but the operating costs. Enormous amounts of highly skilled labor were needed to build each set of single-use hardware for one symbolic moon visit.

It wasn't the services of a handful of clever eggheads that America couldn't spare (indeed, it would have been hard to stop them thinking about space travel all day), it was thousands of the best welders, precision machinists, production engineers, test technicians, and job bosses, who needed to get back to building and maintaining factories for consumer goods and military hardware.

Figuring out how to scale up expendable rockets wasn't helpful for developing reusable rockets. If anything, it painted NASA into a PR corner where it would be embarassing to work on smaller rockets.

When Apollo was done, the serious space people were like, "Okay, we beat the Russians, can we build something useful now?" and got told, "Only if it's, like, Saturn V size and works right on the first try. Oh, and you have to use our favorite solid rocket contractor, and spread the work around a bunch of different states."

"Well, fuck."

>>7442535
9/11, never forget.

>>7134900
>>They are literally reusing engines taken from the retired fleet of space shuttles.
>obviously. Why build entirely new manufacturing and processing facilities when the infrastructure is already there?
Why am I trying to talk to someone who doesn't know what words like "infrastructure" mean?

>>and then they have to start over with a new engine, requiring more test flights.
>Are you retarded? They're going to build more SSMEs and they will not require full flight tests just to test them.
They aren't going to be the same SSMEs. SSMEs are way too expensive for that. They're designing new engines, which they're calling SSMEs, but aren't really. They will need flight testing before they're safe for manned flights.

Mind you, NASA might go ahead without testing...

>>7056934
9/11/1986, never forget when terrorists with boxcutters took over the space shuttle and flew it to New York.

>>6723965
>The point is to demonstrate, forcibly, that space is not impenetrable to the average person.
This has been tried before.

NASA incompetence thread?

So the latest on the SLS fiasco is that the slapped-together piece of shit they were originally rushing to put together to do a meaningless demonstration flight (with reused shuttle parts, instead of the new parts they will need to sustain the SLS program beyond the first few launches) required by legislation by 2016, and which is scheduled for 2017 because they couldn't even do that, is going to be delayed until at least 2018.

Meanwhile, SpaceX has soft-landed a first stage in the ocean after an orbital launch for the second time, and demonstrated new guidance fins, drawing closer to the capability of landing back at the landing pad for immediate, gas-and-go reuse.

>>6626401
>I want to see the magic to happen again.

>>5733716
OP again
Isn't that the idea that got astronauts killed?

>2013
>Family try to talk science with you
>Ask about dark matter dark energy and other things we know very little about.
>Ask why dark matter/energy exists..
Do you ever get the feeling it's nice people are interested but you can't answer their questions and that you're a let down?
I also tried to tell them that the why something exists and does what it does question isn't really a great question because it presupposes an inherent meaning but they didn't accept that.

Anyone got similar family experiences where they try to sound interested in your studies?

http://www.counterpunch.org/grossman07222011.html

The fucktards over at NASA are going to launch 10 pounds of plutonium. Even with their permanent optimism, they say the damn thing has a 1-in-220 chance of exploding and spraying tiny little bits of inhalable plutonium all over god knows how wide an area. Do you know what plutonium does to lungs? Spoiler: nothing good. The fuck is wrong with these people?

>>3275354
This worked well for the challenger.

>>2596132

Because this happens all the time.

Europe can not into pieces.

A challenger disappears!

A challenger disappears!