/sci/ - Science & Math

>implying NASA will exist 50 years from now

>>6175278
No? Are you actually retarded?

>>6175278
I have no info on the cost of the shuttle program, but was it overall cheaper to use a reusable over complicated/heavy airplane, or is it cheaper to just use some thow-away parts?

Buran, from the one and only unmanned, fully automatic flight. Was too expensive.

>>6175390

No. It cost more than a comparable payload-to-orbit with a disposable launch system. Specifically, the rebuilding of the engines and SRBs, together with building a new external tank for every flight.

>>6175425
>No. It cost more
then I agree that it was a good thing it was stopped. What reason could there be to keep it going?

>Muh cost

Can't take this shit seriously coming from a country who spends ~700B a year fighting sand people in the middle east for oil.

>>6175434
Americans had no other way to take payloads that big up.

Never fear, the spirit of spending way too much money for inefficient government launch lives on in the SLS, which shows no signs of being any cheaper than the shuttle, in comparison to contemporary commercial options.

In related news, Boeing wants to probe Uranus:
>According to the presentation, the SLS with the LUS would be able to “Deliver a small payload into orbit around Uranus and a shallow probe into the planet’s atmosphere.”
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2013/11/new-sls-options-new-large-upper-stage/

50 years from now, NASA probably won't even exist. Or it will be split into tasking agencies that have to run on competitive bidding.

The Space Shuttle blunder is only being followed by the Neo-Apollo blunder. Never expect such agencies to admit they fucked up, ever, since they only stumble from fuckup to fuckup.

We should have been mining asteroids by now in the effort to construct space colonies at Earth's Lagrange points. Now it's just impossible to achieve. Instead, we have stupid shit like NASA outsourcing and kickstarters, all designed as economic scams. The weird thing is that people actually seem to believe the outsourcing and fundraising crap is progress. Unbelievable.

>>6175576
Space pencil frowns on your shenanigans.

If you post "Thank you, space pencil!" in this thread, much spaceflight will come into your life.

>>6175278
That's a very short-sighted opinion of the Shuttle program. NASA accumulated quite a bit of valuable experience in many different areas from the Shuttle program.

>>6175592
Space pencil is the privately-developed (with some juicy NASA subsidy contracts) Falcon 9 1.1, a rocket that's both cheap as a single-use design and designed to be reusable by flying home and landing on its tail.

The reusability aspect is still under development, but if they get it working, it's going to dramatically cut launch costs.

This is just their first try at it, too. They're planning to follow it up with a bigger reusable rocket that runs on ultra-cheap, self-pressurizing methane/oxygen propellent, where both the upper and lower stages are reused, and they can be gassed up and flown again about as easily as an airliner.

This is something several other companies are trying to do in similar ways. The future of orbital launch is looking pretty bright.

>>6175278

Typical a disgusting Capitalist materialist mentality OP.
>but muh GDP

There are other values you can have than sheckles.

Truly we live in the Kali Yuga.

Linear accelerator 0 stage
ram/scram air breathing first stage
Methane/Oxygen slush orbital stage

You'd think they'd have found a way to stop them getting stuck in clouds on the way up, and needing to be towed back down to Earth and relaunched.

>>6175679
>Methane/Oxygen slush orbital stage
Surely you mean hydrogen/oxygen.

Methane's Isp is like a hundred seconds less than hydrogen's.

OP made an identical post in /g/ too:

>>>/g/38225316

>>>/g/38225316

>>6175470

The Titan 4 was developed in the late 80s , and if they needed a large booster sooner they could have evolved the Titan 4 out of the Titan 3 sooner or developed a different large booster.

>>6175689
Hydrogen even as a slush still has a very poor density, 481.4 kg/m3 vs 85 kg/m3 your tanks must be much larger, and have much more insulation. Hydrogen slush is a fools fuel.

All the cool kids use meth.

>>6175718
Actually, no one uses methane upper stages. SpaceX is developing methane primarily for lower stage use (just as their kerosene engine was developed primarily for lower stage use), likely with the intent of applying what they learn from the experience toward the eventual development of a hydrogen upper stage.

They were previously talking about a hydrogen upper stage for a big payload boost, but decided to do methane first, because it's easier and cheaper, would cut their lower stage fuel bill, would be relevant to Mars ISRU, and would be a step toward hydrogen.

Despite hydrogen's low density, it always comes out being way better for upper stages. The only reason not to go hydrogen upper is for commonality with the lower stage.

Since this is the space thread, I was thinking last night that ULA could replace the RL-10 with a cluster of smaller XCOR engines and that they would not need to develop a full RL-10 sized engine to get off of it. ie no need for a large xcor engine, can take advantage of nearer term work.

They spoke favourably of upper stage engine clusters in one of those ULA papers, in that it increased stage reliability due to engine out capability, so I could see them being fine with it.

>>6175763
Tiny, reusable hydrolox engines with decent thrust-to-weight and Isp on the market at reasonable prices would make me very happy.

>>6175628
one thing that's scary: this would be the first methane/LOX engine to see flight. There are a tone of unknowns, which are likely to stretch schedules and delay flights.

>>6175680
indeed! I mean think of how tall they had to build that periscope there off in the distance, just to find out where it got stuck!

Also, due to the two giant cubesat launches by the US and Russia last week, this month sets the record for most payloads placed in orbit!

>>6176452
Eh... I don't see it as a big deal. It's obviously similar to but easier than hydrolox. The methane and oxygen are practically at the same temperature. Methane doesn't have special material compatibility requirements like hydrogen, and it's much denser.

I think it's much less likely to cause delays and mishaps than if they were doing a hydrolox rocket.

Considering this is a rocket thread, can somebody explain in easy terms how propulsion in space works?

>>6175628
maybe i'll be to get to experience being in orbit when i'm an old man.
#hope

fucking materialists
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbIZU8cQWXc

I really don't understand the NASA bashing that I've been hearing both here and other places as if it's only a waste of money and simply nothing else.

You'd have an argument if all the tax money flooded into the program ended up fruitless, but we've done more than land on the moon and create space stations and satellites (which is still saying a lot for the human race). The inventions and improvements on technology NASA has made in its own lifetime isn't even touched by private companies who have accepted just as much cash for military technologies. Too many people take for granted what kind of things came out of the space program and don't realize that they probably use some of the things that the scientists there came up with.

Not only that, but at its height, NASA created a great amount of jobs which have since been cut and forced it into hibernating state. It's really one of the great scientific collaborations that has ever existed with experts in every field contributing their knowledge and craft to what would have otherwise been slow in coming and a kind of skepticism period had the government not gone through with the program.

Honestly, NASA should be one of the last places you look for "horribly expensive over-complicated" when it comes to the budget allocation of the US government.

>>6175278
>I suppose anybody with common sense is glad the horribly expensive over-complicated Space Shuttle Program is gone. Can we all agree fifty years from now NASA will be shaking their collective heads over this 20+ year blunder ?

Space program and space in general inspired a general population to become immersed in science. It is of no surprise that some of the most polished, clearly effective writing and authors wrote during the 1960's.

I've seen it upfront. My professor, well, he's retired now, but is teaching our course because he's got nothing else to do. He's got a immense knowledge about space because that's the age he grew up in. He's taught for over 40 years and still inspired by science today because of Space.

>>6175278
>horribly expensive over-complicated Space Shuttle
... costs less than 1% of "defence" budget.

It wasn't worth it.

>b-but muh inspiration
Mhm, because nothing is as inspiring as going in circles for decades, both literally and metaphorically.

>hurr durr, military is more expensive
You don't say? Everything looks cheap as dirt, if you place it next to the money spent on the biggest army on the planet.
The only thing this indicates is how expensive the murican empire's military is.

>>6177027
>It (what?) wasn't worth it (what?)
be moar vague, faget

>>6175278
I'd prefer to call it a 30 year experiment, but otherwise no argument. The Shuttle should have been retired much earlier, when we realized that it wouldn't be getting the 20 launches a year that would have made it economical. Also it was designed by committee with too many conflicting requirements, resulting in an entire west-coast launch facility which was never used! Lots of lessons learned, and it makes for three kickass museum centerpieces!

I look forward to its more reasonably priced replacements: Dragon for cargo/crew, and Dream Chaser (pic) for the correctly designed, right-sized, sexy spaceplane.

(and let us not speak of SLS, whose main design goal is to extract pork out of congressional districts…)

> Implying the USA will exist 50 years from now.

>>6175679
Yeah let's increase vehicle weight and put additional technology risks on top of a rocket to bring costs down...

>>6176755
I think its criticizing NASAs allocation of their own budget, not the US's allocation of budget to NASA. Im pretty sure most people here still like NASA, really, its just that the space shuttle program was ultimately stupid.

>>6177221
>I think its criticizing NASAs allocation of their own budget, not the US's allocation of budget to NASA.
The funny thing though is that the latter depends on the former or in plain words: "No bucks without Buck Rogers."
The Space Shuttle simply wouldn't have gotten the necessary funds, if NASA had insisted on their original design goals or refused the design changes demanded by the Air Force.

>>6177238
>The Space Shuttle simply wouldn't have gotten the necessary funds, if NASA had insisted on their original design goals or refused the design changes demanded by the Air Force.
Bullshit. What NASA was pushing for at the time was a monopoly on US launch services. THAT is what they wouldn't have gotten. It didn't last, anyway, because the shuttle just couldn't do the jobs it was supposed to do.

They wouldn't have needed anywhere near the amount of money required for the monstrosity they built, to build the original space shuttle concept, which was a much smaller, simpler, less capable vehicle, meant to carry a couple of men and a small cargo on near-equatorial orbits.

>>6175278
If we spent the money from the war in Iraq on the space program we would be on Mars right now.

>>6175278

>>6177079
>I can't read the OP
>I can't comprehend that the faggot used the first "it" to refer to the shuttle program and the second "it" to refer to advancing the cause of spaceflight
>(i.e. the feel-good reason for building those vehicles and the only one spacetards acknowledge as worthy or relevant).

>>6177271
No, we wouldn't, and the space shuttle program is the perfect example of why we wouldn't.

The ostensible purpose of the space shuttle was to greatly reduce launch costs and increase launch availability. Instead, it greatly increased launch costs and reduced launch availability.

NASA's been about job security and pork shoveling ever since the Apollo program ended.

Even before the first launch, it was obvious to anyone who looked at it realistically that the space shuttle was technology being developed for nothing, for no benefit, a vehicle simply and plainly inferior to what we already had:
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1872/1
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/8004.easterbrook-fulltext.html

They not only finished building the thing, and launched it, but they built more of them and operated them for decades.

NASA's lack of progress can't be blamed on a lack of money. They had plenty of money. The more money you gave them, the more they would have wasted.

>>6177326
are you shitting me.

One of the most uninformed post ever.

>>6177350
There's a brilliant fucking refutation if I've ever heard one.

The entire purpose of the shuttle was to lower launch costs and increase launch frequency. It failed utterly on both points, but NASA continued, insanely, to use it anyway, for decades. On top of that, it lacked basic safety features, making it completely unsuitable for carrying crew.

1942 - first suborbital spaceflight
1957 - first orbital launch
1958 - first American orbital launch
1961 - first American man in low Earth orbit
1961 - Apollo program begins
1969 - first American man on the moon
1972 - last American man beyond low Earth orbit, Apollo program ends
1972 - space shuttle program begins, with goal of reducing launch costs and increasing launch volume
1981 - first shuttle flight
2011 - space shuttle abandoned after murdering one crew too many, having cost more and accomplished less than simply continuing to operate and refine the existing vehicles
2013 - NASA struggling to regain the capabilities it had in 1969, under the constraint of continuing to use shuttle components, to keep the pork flowing

Don't tell me they didn't have enough fucking money.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Budget
1969: $21.4 billion, 1 decade of accumulated spaceflight technology, went to the fucking moon
2011: $17 billion, 5 decades of accumulated spaceflight technology, lost human spaceflight capability

>>6177471
>durrr
That 21.4B is 132B corrected for inflation.

>>6177480
No, in 1969 they got $4.25 billion in nominal dollars. The $21.4 billion is corrected for inflation.

In 2011, they got $18.5 billion in nominal dollars.

The figures I gave are inflation-corrected to 2007.

>>6177471
most of NASA's budget is in climate science rather than spaceflight nowadays

Can we build personal spacecrafts yet?
I mean, even Alexander Belyayev back in 1930 described in detail how to build a spaceship that would be able to travel with near light speeds in Jump into the Void.

>>6177806
>described in detail how to build a spaceship that would be able to travel with near light speeds
Considering that searching on that guy's name turns up just about nothing, you're going to have to go into some of that detail.

>>6177828
If you don't know how to use the Internet based search engines then there's no hope for you.

>>6177832
>>>Hey, there's this really amazing thing that everybody would have heard about if it were true!
>>I'm searching for it, and not finding it.
>You just don't know how to use google, so I'm not talking to you.
Don't be an asshole.

Yes, thank god they shelved the combo of glider/Bic lighter/2 bottle rockets.
-But then they dropped SSTO like a bunch of damn politicos.

Blame Nixon. He started the De-funding of NASA shortly after the first few moon landings.