Should the US gov. ban NASA from making reusable space vehicles?

[Anonymous No.6917800]

Should reusable space vehicles like the shuttle be banned from NASA? The shuttle pretty much destroyed the American space program. I was born in 1991, and the only good memories I have of NASA are robots and satellites doing cool stuff. I remember the shuttle exploding in the early Noughties and I remember how everyone was so glad when it retired.

I am not the only person who thinks the shuttle sucks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Space_Shuttle_program

Russian rockets are 3 times cheaper.

Elon Musk is going to waste his money trying to make reusable rockets, and other nerds are going to try to make space elevators. Both will fail because of weak or heavy materials. Disposable rockets are the only way. We have already been doing this space thing for almost 70 years. We know what we're doing.

[Anonymous No.6917842]

The SpaceX Falcon 9 can deliver payloads at $2,500 per pound

Falcon Heavy will be able to do under $1,000 per pound.

What are you complaining about?

[Anonymous No.6917846]

>>6917842
What are you complaining about? Your post is off topic.

Fuck you.

[Anonymous No.6917858]

>>6917846
>Your post is off topic.

You wrote that "Russian rockets are 3 times cheaper" and went on to suggest that SpaceX's pursuit of re-usable boosters are a waste.

I then posted the cost per lb for SpaceX which are lower than Russian rockets and will go even lower thanks to the re-use of first and second stage boosters.

And NASA is not building any re-usable vehicles at the moment or in the foreseeable future.

So what are you complaining about?

[Anonymous No.6917861]

>>6917842
<span class="math">

Those / are / disposable / rockets, / which / are / fine. /

[/spoiler]
<span class="math">

My / point / is / that / the / US / gov / could / have / been / launching / stuff / at / $800/pound / by / now / if / it / had / not / wasted / three / decades / on / the / shuttle / abomination. /
[/spoiler]

<span class="math">

Ban / them / so / it / doesn't / happen / again. /
[/spoiler]

[Anonymous No.6917863]

>>6917858
The SpaceX rockets are cheaper because they are not reusable.

The moment Elon "City on Mars" Musk starts making reusables his company will have hard times.

[Anonymous No.6917866]

>>6917858
<span class="math">

Those \ are \ disposable \ rockets, \ which \ are \ fine. \

[\math]
<span class="math">

My \ point \ is \ that \ the \ US \ gov \ could \ have \ been \ launching \ stuff \ at \ $800\pound \ by \ now \ if \ it \ had \ not \ wasted
[/spoiler]

<span class="math">

three \ decades \ on \ the \ shuttle \ abomination. \

[/spoiler]

<span class="math">

Ban \ them \ so \ it \ doesn't \ happen \ again. \
[/spoiler][/spoiler]

[Anonymous No.6917868]

>>6917858
<span class="math">

Those \ are \ disposable \ rockets, \ which \ are \ fine. \

[/spoiler]
<span class="math">

My \ point \ is \ that \ the \ US \ gov \ could \ have \ been \ launching \ stuff \ at \ $800\pound \ by \ now \ if \ it \ had \ not \ wasted
[/spoiler]

<span class="math">

three \ decades \ on \ the \ shuttle \ abomination. \

[/spoiler]

<span class="math">

Ban \ them \ so \ it \ doesn't \ happen \ again. \
[/spoiler]

[Anonymous No.6917871]

>>6917858
>>6917858


Those are disposable rockets, which are fine.
My point is that the US gov could have been launching stuff at $800pound by now if it had not wasted three decades on the shuttle abomination.
Ban them so it doesn't happen again.

[Anonymous No.6917873]

>>6917863
>The SpaceX rockets are cheaper because they are not reusable

Who lied to you?

By your logic all the commercial rockets should be cheap because they too are not reusable.

You should use your head a little and figure out just why SpaceX rockets are cheap.

>The moment Elon "City on Mars" Musk starts making reusables his company will have hard times.

Said no serious person, ever.

[Anonymous No.6917875]

>>6917863
Not the anon you are responding to but my autism force me to point out that you are a retard. They won't change in any ways their actual rocket for to make it reusable.

[Anonymous No.6917878]

>>6917871
>My point is that the US gov could have been launching stuff at $800pound by now if it had not wasted three decades on the shuttle abomination.

It's not NASAs fault. The original shuttle concept was nothing like the final product until the military got involved.

>Ban them so it doesn't happen again.

Banning research into new technologies is some dark ages thinking.

[Anonymous No.6917889]

>>6917873
>By your logic all the commercial rockets should be cheap because they too are not reusable.

Compared to the Space Shuttle, all disposable rockets are cheap.

Stay on topic.

>>6917873
>Said no serious person, ever.

>u don't worship musk? u r trollan then XP

[Anonymous No.6917892]

>>6917875
>They won't change in any ways their actual rocket for to make it reusable.

Are you serious? Reusable rockets are completely different.

[Anonymous No.6917898]

>>6917889
The Space Shuttle was not reusable. Every flight, they had to strip it down to individual components, inspect and do maintenance on each one, replace half of them, and put it back together again. It was only "reused" in a Ship of Theseus sense.

An actually reusable spacecraft (I.e. one that can make more than ten flights without needing maintenance) could be extremely cheap, because you could spread the cost of building and maintaining a craft over several flights. (Rockets aren't much more expensive than 747s - but you fly the 747 ten thousand times without breaking down, and fly the rocket once.)

But nobody has built a reusable spacecraft yet.

[Anonymous No.6917900]

>>6917889
>Compared to the Space Shuttle, all disposable rockets are cheap.
>Stay on topic.

You literally implied that re-usables like the sort SpaceX is developing are a waste.

When they are fully expected to lower the costs of an already cheap rocket.

[Anonymous No.6917902]

>>6917892
Look it up. They won't change it

[Anonymous No.6917915]

>>6917889
>>u don't worship musk? u r trollan then XP

Show me a source or person that has said a re-usable system will increase the costs for SpaceX.

[Anonymous No.6917918]

>>6917892
>Are you serious? Reusable rockets are completely different.

What do you mean by completely different?

[Anonymous No.6917985]

>>6917898
You didn't read the wiki. The shuttle was conceived as exactly that, and then it became a Theseus wreck. Reusable rockets would go the same way.

>>6917900
Reusables will be more expensive. The shuttle was designed and built as a cost cutting measure. Look what happened.

Read the wiki.

>>6917915
see shuttle

>>6917918
They're made from materials and designs that don't exist yet.

[Anonymous No.6918017]

>>6917985
>Reusables will be more expensive

Re-usables are more expensive because the shuttle was expensive?

How does that logic work?
>They're made from materials and designs that don't exist yet.

What? What are you talking about?

Why would you need new materials?

Are you even aware that re-usable boosters have already been tested by SpaceX? No "new materials" are needed. It's just a rocket with some well controlled grid fins and some timed retrorocket thrust firing


There are plenty of examples of such control, without the need for your "new materials" which you keep talking about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-3zYpbw53I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwwS4YOTbbw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NANePoo_p30

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1M5qS0Y3tDw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl6pw2oossU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzXcTFfV3Ls

[Anonymous No.6918025]

>>6918017
You forgot this video, popsci fanboy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgGVkw9zjI8

[Anonymous No.6918038]

>>6918025

omg a SpaceX test rocket once exploded?

Hurr durr I guess that means they don't work.


p.s. Here is a 30 minute video of traditional rockets exploding

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McbCwSW2moo

[Anonymous No.6918616]

Shuttle program had many, many, many problems aside from being an attempt at a reusable space plane.

It fell victim to design by committee. Congress, the DoD, and academics went crazy adding design specs. The goddamn thing should never have been used for delivering satellites (a job done better and more efficiently by traditional launch tech). Think like the episode of the Simpsons where Homer designs a car and tanks his brother's business. Except the shuttle had dozens of Homer Simpsons.

On the upside, it allowed us to fix the Hubble and build the ISS. At great, price but it's not nothing. We spent more (much more) in money and lives to kill people in the desert and spread duhmockrissy.

Musk's idea is to have the first booster stage come back to earth for a controlled landing. AFAIK all the future plans at NASA and SpaceX involve the payload riding on top of a pretty traditional staged launch vehicle.

[Anonymous No.6918643]

>Disposable rockets are the only way. We have already been doing this space thing for almost 70 years. We know what we're doing.

What a fucking retard!

[Anonymous No.6918652]

>>6918616

Musk said the rockets that will succeed the Falcon Heavy will have a reusable first and second stage.

And obviously the BFR, if ever built , would have all 3 stages as reusable pieces.

The idea is that the methalox powered raptor engines may provide enough bang for the buck to allow for the inclusion of the shielding necessary for the second stage.

On paper the SpaceX people seem pretty confident that it will work.

I would be happy if they can nail down the first stage reuse.

I'm so tired of parachutes.

What Musk said about them made sense to me. If aliens were to ever land on earth I cannot imagine them dropping like a rock into the ocean on a pair of parachutes.

[Anonymous No.6918663]

Why the fuck do we even use rockets at all?

>dig deep tunnel
>maglev track pointing up
>shoot things into space

gotta be pennies on the dollar for electricity

[Anonymous No.6918678]

>>6918663
building something thats inbetween a monorail, and a rail gun is harder than it sounds.

[Anonymous No.6918691]

>>6918663

The length of the tracks I have seen would run across the entire continental US, and that's for a small payload.

I don't think it would be worth it here on earth.

Would work great on the moon or Mars though.

[Anonymous No.6918695]

>>6918678
Why? Didn't the US Navy just deploy a railgun?

>>6918691
Build the track in a circle like a particle accelerator.

[Anonymous No.6918759]

>>6918695
Gravity is a factor.

[Anonymous No.6918779]

>>6918652
Well at least they're handling the problem in manageable increments. It's lovely to have big dreams about landing tail first erryday, but I suspect we'll need some extraordinary advances in fuel efficiency... and even then, parachutes and airbrakes have a certain dumb simplicity that shouldn't be overlooked.

Getting all hot and bothered about doing things in an aesthetically futuristic way is how we wound up with a kludgy rocket plane that was only reusable if you replaced half the hardware after each flight. At least SpaceX will go bankrupt if they forget to balance the cost benefit.

[Anonymous No.6918788]

>>6918616
Although the shuttle was more reliable, admittedly. With conventional LVs, the odds of a payload being destroyed in a failure are considerably higher.

Ever since the 70s, the failure rate for unmanned LVs has held more-or-less steady at one in every 16 launches.

[Anonymous No.6918796]

>>6917878
The DOD originally planned to construct an additional Shuttle pad at Vandenberg on the West Coast with the idea of performing polar orbit manned reconnaissance missions, but it was cancelled after the Challenger Disaster and in any case the cost would have been huge compared to conventional spy satellites.

[Anonymous No.6918801]

>>6918796
In fact the Soviets had already learned well before that time the pointlessness of manned reconnaissance missions with the Almaz program.

[Anonymous No.6918889]

>>6918779
>but I suspect we'll need some extraordinary advances in fuel efficiency

For the first stage it is not that difficult because it's just an empty tin can on the way down.

You only need to fire the thrusters for a couple of seconds right before it reaches the ground. Grid fins and aerobraking take care of most of the navigation and velocity reduction.


It's the second stage that will be more difficult because it will need a shield, which is heavy, thus adding more weight, and requiring more fuel for launch.

In order for them to make a profit at that point they will need to make sure that those things really do become re-usable.

[Anonymous No.6918928]

>we shouldn't improve our rocket technology and instead continue to use the tried and trusted methods

i bet you work for the government

[Anonymous No.6918932]

>The subject of missing or damaged thermal tiles on the Shuttle fleet only became an issue following the loss of Columbia in 2003, as it broke up on re-entry. In fact, Shuttles had previously come back missing as many as 20 tiles without any problem.

wowow incompetence

[Anonymous No.6918956]

This brings us back to the old debate about whether it would have been better/safer/cheaper to continue flying Saturns w/ Apollos as a space station ferry ala Soyuz rather than the ruinously expensive Shuttle.

The Saturn wasn't a cheap bird to fly, although part of that was the extremely small number they were produced in and perhaps mass production would have reduced costs.

[Anonymous No.6918959]

Say what you want about the shuttle, but you've got to admit it's the coolest looking spacecraft.

[Anonymous No.6918965]

>>6918956
Early plans in the late 50s-early 60s envisioned using the Saturn family as a general purpose medium-to-heavy lift launcher well into the 80s with various combinations of upper stages, but this never materialized. One reason being that the DOD quickly decided on the Titan for its HL needs because they preferred to have a booster all to themselves that they were in complete control of and didn't want to share with NASA. Nor for that matter did NASA wish to share the Titan III with the DOD. So once the DOD went with the Titan, the original idea of grafting random upper stages to the Saturn evaporated and it became exclusively part of the Apollo program.

Had the Saturns kept flying, NASA could also have had bigger, more complex Viking/Voyager probes since the booster had more lift capacity than the Titan-Centaur that those used.

[Anonymous No.6918968]

>>6918956

1970s clean sheet next gen, modular or high low mix like Soyuz/Proton, medium lift vehicle + new LEO capsule > Titan 3 + New Leo capsule > Titan 3/Apollo > Saturn1b/Apollo continuation > Saturn 5 continuation.

First four options used in conjunction with a Salyut/Mir type space station program.

[Anonymous No.6918970]

>>6917800
Experiments in reusability like the Shuttle are exactly what NASA should be doing. Elon is only doing it himself because no one else has the balls to try again with a different formula, and it is his money to gamble.

The problem with the Shuttle experiment was letting it get entrenched for 30 years even after it was proven to be a wasteful failure. And the failure of the Shuttle design was not in reusability, but in the design-by-committee that led to such a complex and overlarge design. In fact, it is a crying shame that the Dream Chaser spaceplane got axed at the CC downselect because everyone who looked at its design said it is what the Shuttle should have been: right-sized.

[Anonymous No.6918972]

>>6918965

All in your head. Gemini was Titan based. NASA and the Air Force could work manageably alongside one another, otherwise the Shuttle wouldn't have garnered Air Force support at all.

[Anonymous No.6918976]

NASA not only had severe budget cuts in the 70s, but an ever-increasing portion of it was going into the Shuttle and starving other programs of resources. This actually continued into the Reagan years and it wasn't until almost the end of the 80s that they saw any kind of funding increase.

[Anonymous No.6918980]

>>6918972

+ Mercury program + obvious example of the NASA science program developing just fine using Air Force vehicles for its missions. If the matrix of using external vehicles is the course of action then NASA is perfectly capable of adapting itself to it and the Air Force of accommodating it. + current developing usage of EELVs for manned spaceflight(EFT-1 + CST-100/Atlas 5)

[Anonymous No.6918981]

>>6918976
And they're about to starve themselves again with the SLS.

[Anonymous No.6918984]

>>6918972
*shakes head*

Yes, Gemini used the Titan II but NASA ran into some pretty vicious quarrels with the Air Force since the latter were in charge of that booster's development program and had no interest in trying to man-rate it. A compromise was only reached when the abortive Gemini MOL program emerged (proposed military variant of Gemini for manned photoreconnaissance missions).

Other than that, NASA and the DOD preferred to have their own separate LV families and share as minimally as possible. For example, the Atlas-Centaur ended up as entirely NASA's LV while the Titan III/IV was almost completely the DOD's (the only exceptions being the Titan Centaur and the lone Titan IV used to launch Cassini).

[Anonymous No.6918985]

Why the fuck are you arguing about reusable rockets, when Japan is about to launch Hayabusa 2 to sample an asteroid in less than half an hour?!

Get with the program people!

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/jaxa-live

[Anonymous No.6918997]

>>6918984
And then the Air Force was planning to launch MOL on a stretched Titan III variant, not the Saturn IB.

Another example of this bifurcation was the Thor LV family being split into DOD (Thor) and NASA (Delta) variants. By the 70s however, the DOD Thor had been completely phased out and only the civilian Delta remained.

[Anonymous No.6919001]

>>6918984

>NASA used Atlas-Centaur and DoD used Titan 3.

Because of their different weight classes. Missions only needing Atlas Centaur aren't going to be bumped to Titan 3 for no reason at all. Air Force created Delta 2 and NASA used the fuck out of it.

Incidental quarrels on one program aspect during one period of time that got paved over isn't evidence of total behavioral incompatibility. Lack of perfection isn't an argument for impossibility.

Oh, I have no doubt that NASA MSF wanted their own vehicle, but that was their problem. Again, the Air Force was willing to give up their entire launch program when they were hoodwinked for the shuttle program. If you think a Titan based space program was impossible that is entirely NASA's behavioral bias, although I don't agree with that conclusion; NASA would have coped manageably with a Titan based program.

[Anonymous No.6919007]

>>6918970
>it is a crying shame that the Dream Chaser spaceplane got axed at the CC downselect because everyone who looked at its design said it is what the Shuttle should have been: right-sized.
The Dream Chaser isn't a launch vehicle, though. It's basically a capsule.

The Shuttle was supposed to be a reusable launch vehicle. It should have been smaller, but it still had to be a launch vehicle.

The early Shuttle concepts were for a much lower-capacity launch vehicle. It was basically going to be Apollo-NASA (in the sense of big funding, big mission, clear focus) showing the way to make fully-and-efficiently-reusable launch vehicles, with something basically big enough for two dudes and a smallsat. Because it was being designed in the late 60s and early 70s, it would have had a piloted first stage and a piloted second stage. If it didn't work, they would have redesigned it.

When Congress and the President didn't want to pay for Apollo-NASA, it spawned Shuttle-NASA (funding-grubbing, big bullshit, no focus). The NASA people clung to the dream of doing some shuttle, any shuttle, even if it meant building a shuttle that nobody would want.

So to sell the shuttle, they turned it into a performance monster, which was obviously not going to be fully or efficiently reusable. Then when it showed up, pointless, they spent decades in denial of its pointlessness.

Sadly, I think SLS-NASA is even more embarassing than Shuttle-NASA.

[Anonymous No.6919017]

>>6918985
Because it doesn't matter, compared to the impact of efficiently reusable rockets.

There are three or four orders of magnitude between the cost of rocket fuel and the price of a rocket launch.

There's a factor of three or four between the cost of airliner fuel and the price of an airliner flight.

Nothing else in space technology is going to move us beyond comsats and spysats, ballistic missiles and the occasional science mission or aimless manned stunt, except getting those three or four orders of magnitude out of the launch cost.

[Anonymous No.6919021]

>>6919001
>Because of their different weight classes. Missions only needing Atlas Centaur aren't going to be bumped to Titan 3 for no reason at all.
TBF, most NASA missions didn't need the Titan III anyway, not until the Viking/Voyager probes, anyway. Later planetary probes like Ulysses/Magellan/Galileo were just launched on the Shuttle.

As for the Shuttle, Congress and the White House basically forced the DOD and NASA to work together on it.

[Anonymous No.6919027]

>>6918984
Or if we look at the Soviet program, the military was not enthusiastic about having to support Vostok and the early planetary probe missions which had no value to them, so Korolev offered them a converted Vostok for photo reconnaissance (which became the Zenit family)

[Anonymous No.6919044]

>>6918997
The Air Force didn't want to use Saturn so as to not deal with the bureaucracy of the MSFC, but also all of their processing and launch facilities were set up for the Titan. The Saturn pads at CC could have been converted for their use, but a totally new pad would have needed to be built at Vandenberg.

As mentioned above, all Titan IIIs were used for DOD launches except the six T-Cs, the Titan IV used for Cassini, and one Titan IIIC flown by NASA in 1974.

[Anonymous No.6919048]

>>6919044
Titan was cheaper and simpler than the Saturns anyway.

[Anonymous No.6919055]

>>6918956
Admittedly, the Saturn was far safer than the Shuttle. The only astronauts to die atop a Saturn were victims of a horribly designed spacecraft and not a launch vehicle.

[Anonymous No.6919069]

No, the future is not about one time only space vehicles. Like all new technology, it's not as efficient as the previous iteration. It takes time and a considerable amount of money before it becomes a viable option. In time it becomes exponentially more efficient.

However, with that said, I don't think solid fuels are the future of lifting mass into orbit. But railguns and space elevators are still out of the question.

[Anonymous No.6919070]

All true. The Shuttle ended up being a grossly expensive monster that killed 14 astronauts. Both failed flights could have been terminated were there any way to add a LES as well.

[Anonymous No.6919073]

>>6919069
>However, with that said, I don't think solid fuels are the future of lifting mass into orbit

Solid rocket motors will always be problematic because they can't be shut off once started, nor can they be throttled. Also when a SRM fails, it produces a massive fuckton of flaming debris while liquid fueled rockets just blow into a fireball with relatively little debris.

[Anonymous No.6919079]

>>6919007
right, it doesn't need to be a launch vehicle. It uses an existing one, the reliable mass-produced Atlas V. Only reuses the piece that needs to be, the plane that returns the crew. Separation of concerns.

[Anonymous No.6919114]

>>6919073
>Wake me up when we've harnessed artificial singularities

[Anonymous No.6919152]

>>6917800
Why are you beating a dead horse? The shuttle is gone and NASA's making a huge non-reusable rocket.

[Anonymous No.6919209]

>>6919069
>>6919073
>solid fuels/motors
• high energy density
• low cost
therefore we're stuck with 'em

[Anonymous No.6919217]

>>6919209
That's like saying we're stuck with boats because planes haven't been invented yet.

[Anonymous No.6919250]

>>6919073
Also SRMs are not really safe for manned launches since they render any kind of abort system unusable. Nylon parachute lines and burning SRM chunks do not mix.

[Anonymous No.6919254]

>>6918965
During the early days, the plan was to assemble the Apollo CSM and LM in LEO using two smaller boosters, but when JFK set the goal of landing on the moon by the end of the 60s, it was decided instead to build a huge cost-no-object booster that Congress would more than happily fork over the cash for, especially after the president's untimely death when completing that goal was seen as a way of honoring his memory.

[Anonymous No.6919256]

>>6919254
And when they did that, von Braun was quoted as saying it meant humans would never land on Mars within his lifetime.

[Anonymous No.6919260]

>>6918984
NASA and the DOD occasionally launched payloads for each other as well. A few NASA scientific satellites were launched from VAFB by the DOD and some military payloads launched from the Cape by NASA such as the failed Atlas-Centaur and Delta launches in 1987 and 97, which were carrying Navy comsats.

[Anonymous No.6919309]

>>6918956
Assuming we're talking about the Saturn IB, that was never produced in large numbers since it was just intended as an interim vehicle for LEO testing of the Apollo hardware.

[Anonymous No.6919440]

Yeah, launching satellites on the Shuttle was a waste of money that could have been done much more cheaply on conventional boosters, despite the slightly higher risk of losing them in a launch accident.

During the 80s, the rate of Delta and Atlas-Centaur launches (NASA's two workhorses) dramatically slowed as the Shuttle took more and more of their business. The Titan-centered DoD was less affected and their plans to launch Shuttles into polar orbits from the West Coast never materialized although a handful of classified military Shuttle flights did take place.

[Anonymous No.6919522]

>Space shuttle sucks

[Anonymous No.6919948]

>>6919079
See though, it's not a "space shuttle". It's just a capsule glider, a crew cabin with maneuvering thrusters and a lifting body.

A shuttle is a vehicle that makes frequent, short trips back and forth between two locations. The space shuttle was supposed to be a shuttle. They compromised on "frequent" in the design to increase performance and in a failed attempt to reduce development cost, and failed at it completely in the interpretation. However, the intention was still there. And the reason to develop it was to make progress toward cheap, efficient, highly-available launch services.

A capsule glider launched on top of an Atlas V is in no sense of the word a "shuttle", nor can it be in any way an attempt to succeed at the space shuttle's intended purpose.

[Anonymous No.6919967]

>>6919948
that's why I like the SpaceX approach. A stepwise program towards reusability, where the test program is piggybacked on paying launches. It is still a gamble, but Elon's not putting all his eggs in one basket. If recovering the first stage doesn't close the business case, he still has a decent expendable system. And if it does succeed, he can work toward other reuse plans, like alternate landing platforms, further 1st stage and engine refinements to reduce refurbishment, recovering the 2nd stage, and designing even bigger rockets with recovery in mind.

Another approach that hasn't yet been tried is a winged flyback booster. There are several Russian designs that could have followed on from their experience with automated Buran landings.

[Anonymous No.6921246]

>>6919522
Need
Another
Seven
Astronauts

[Anonymous No.6921640]

>>6917800
>and I remember how everyone was so glad when it retired

Everyone here in England were well pissed off. Still are. You dont understand how inspiring it was outside the US maybe.