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>> NASA is good at doing very big and actually pretty efficient projects when you take reliability into account. Didn't the shuttle have around two orders of m

by berntb 10y ago

>> NASA is good at doing very big and actually pretty efficient projects when you take reliability into account. Didn't the shuttle have around two orders of magnitude larger cost/lbs to orbit than originally promised? (Is that some form of world record, btw?) And set back space research for decades? NASA's job programs just aren't working. No one can afford to do anything worthwhile with those launch costs. If we delay real space colonies for a few more decades, it can mean the extinction of humanity. That is important -- job programs are not.

dogma1138 10y ago
>Didn't the shuttle have around two orders of magnitude larger cost/lbs to orbit than promised? (Is that some form of world record, btw?) And set back space research for decades? No, mostly because the 600 $ per lbs. figure touted quite often as the target was never actual the target, it was the based on differential payload costs when launching a crew only mission vs a crew + payload. The shuttle had its problems but it was an important project. >NASA's job programs just aren't working. No one can afford to do anything worthwhile with those launch costs. Eh, show me another country/entity/organization that does as much space exploration as NASA. >If we delay real space colonies for a few more decades, it can mean the extinction of humanity. Nonsense, our species is 250K+ years old, all of a sudden 50 delay years would mean extinction?
- berntb 10y ago
  All space exploration stopped, the Shuttle just cost too much to launch. Here is this criticism in a nutshell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Space_Shuttle_program#Retrospect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Space_Shuttle... NASA administrator Michael D. Griffin argued in a 2007 paper that the Saturn program, if continued, could have provided six manned launches per year — two of them to the moon — at the same cost as the Shuttle program, with an additional ability to loft infrastructure for further missions: If we had done all this, we would be on Mars today, not writing about it as a subject for “the next 50 years.” We would have decades of experience operating long-duration space systems in Earth orbit, and similar decades of experience in exploring and learning to utilize the Moon. >> No, mostly because the 600 $ per lbs. figure touted quite often as the target was never actual the target, it was the based on differential payload costs when launching a crew only mission vs a crew + payload. Your comments re cost/lbs to orbit seems weird. Can you post a link discussing this, from the early days? It doesn't seem supported by wikipedia. There was nothing on e.g. the introduction on the page I link above about the promised cost without crew and with crew, regarding the original sell of the program from NASA. (Also -- there are big threats to human existence today. One example: Just a bit of lag for development of counter measures to better technology for developing biological weapons. If relatively primitive groups/countries can develop doomsday weapons, we have a real problem. It is a risk the coming 1-2 decades you can't just dismiss seriously.)
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    So Mars Rover's, New Horizons, Juno.... Space exploration did not stop. >NASA administrator Michael D. Griffin argued in a 2007 paper that the Saturn program, if continued, could have provided six manned launches per year — two of them to the moon — at the same cost as the Shuttle program, with an additional ability to loft infrastructure for further missions: No this isn't what he said, this is why I hate wikipedia they quote mined a sentence from the very last paragraph and made it look like it was saying "if we didn't had the shuttle we would've been on mars", he did not say any such thing, not even remotely. Here is the full paper: http://aviationweek.typepad.com/space/2007/03/human_space_exp.html http://aviationweek.typepad.com/space/2007/03/human_space_ex... The Shuttle had many issues, technical, conceptual and also political/budgetary overall it was a chicken and the egg problem with which resulted in that the Shuttle did not fly enough to be economical and was not economical enough to fly ;), and after the challenger disaster the shuttle program also lost most if not all of it's DoD contracts which made things quite worse. The challenger disaster being on the 25th launch and the "risk aversion" of the US space programme didn't work that well for the Space Shuttle, but nonetheless the Space Shuttle did flew 135 mission which is technically more than the Soyuz (it's on 131 or 132 now), it had 2 loss of crew incidents which is the same as the Soyuz. That's not to say that the Soyuz is not a great programme on it's own, yes the shuttle was expensive but at the end it wasn't nearly as bad as some people make it out to be for some reason. And again this isn't an argument for the Shuttle, NASA did what it could with the shuttle, the Air Force wanted it, it was supposed to be the cornerstone of space Station Freedom and many other projects including Star Wars and NASA got stuck with it and yes in the later years it fought to keep it alive not because NASA was stupid but because it had no other option since there were no alternatives on the table.
    - berntb 10y ago
      So you have nothing to say about this weird claim you made about launch costs (or my other points you dismissed), which seems to be contradicted by Wikipedia: >> No, mostly because the 600 $ per lbs. figure touted quite often as the target was never actual the target, it was the based on differential payload costs when launching a crew only mission vs a crew + payload. [Edit: 600$/lbs is in "modern" dollars. In early 70s dollars it was ~ 110$. The real costs were somewhere between one or two orders of magnitude larger, depending on what year you select the dollar. The differential costs can only be a fraction of that.] >> the Air Force wanted it As far as I've read, NASA sold the Shuttle to the air force with unrealistic promises. That is why they wanted it. It isn't so? >> No this isn't what he said That full paper contained e.g.: the expense of owning and operating [the shuttle], or any similar system, is simply too great. Any new system, to be successful, must offer a much, much lower fixed cost of ownership. And this was from someone that was as tied to not making NASA look bad as anyone can be! [Edit: I really can't see that Wikipedia misrepresent Griffin's position, as you claim? Please be more specific about that claim. You really need to show quotes to dismiss wikipedia today.] >> NASA got stuck with [the shuttle] and yes in the later years it fought to keep it alive not because NASA was stupid but because it had no other option since there were no alternatives on the table. The Shuttle ate a large part of the NASA budget (30% at least some years), which contained lots of aviation and other programs. The shuttle was a gigantic job program -- that gave NASA, with a big weight to throw around, an incentive to kill off all competing launch systems! There was probably a reason not much happened in launch systems until the Shuttle died... [edit: The point was, there were no other launch systems not just because the Shuttle took such a gigantic amount of the total budget but also because NASA had motivation to keep the job program going.] [edit 2 on this: If you put your foot in a trap and can't afford the tools to get the foot out of the trap, because the trap was so expensive -- you're not "stupid"? :-) ] And, to go back to the original subject, the Orion seems to be another cuckoo, eating up most of the food in the nest. :-(

by berntb 10y ago

dogma1138 10y ago

>Didn't the shuttle have around two orders of magnitude larger cost/lbs to orbit than promised? (Is that some form of world record, btw?) And set back space research for decades? No, mostly because the 600 $ per lbs. figure touted quite often as the target was never actual the target, it was the based on differential payload costs when launching a crew only mission vs a crew + payload. The shuttle had its problems but it was an important project. >NASA's job programs just aren't working. No one can afford to do anything worthwhile with those launch costs. Eh, show me another country/entity/organization that does as much space exploration as NASA. >If we delay real space colonies for a few more decades, it can mean the extinction of humanity. Nonsense, our species is 250K+ years old, all of a sudden 50 delay years would mean extinction?

berntb 10y ago
All space exploration stopped, the Shuttle just cost too much to launch. Here is this criticism in a nutshell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Space_Shuttle_program#Retrospect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Space_Shuttle... NASA administrator Michael D. Griffin argued in a 2007 paper that the Saturn program, if continued, could have provided six manned launches per year — two of them to the moon — at the same cost as the Shuttle program, with an additional ability to loft infrastructure for further missions: If we had done all this, we would be on Mars today, not writing about it as a subject for “the next 50 years.” We would have decades of experience operating long-duration space systems in Earth orbit, and similar decades of experience in exploring and learning to utilize the Moon. >> No, mostly because the 600 $ per lbs. figure touted quite often as the target was never actual the target, it was the based on differential payload costs when launching a crew only mission vs a crew + payload. Your comments re cost/lbs to orbit seems weird. Can you post a link discussing this, from the early days? It doesn't seem supported by wikipedia. There was nothing on e.g. the introduction on the page I link above about the promised cost without crew and with crew, regarding the original sell of the program from NASA. (Also -- there are big threats to human existence today. One example: Just a bit of lag for development of counter measures to better technology for developing biological weapons. If relatively primitive groups/countries can develop doomsday weapons, we have a real problem. It is a risk the coming 1-2 decades you can't just dismiss seriously.)
- dogma1138 10y ago
  So Mars Rover's, New Horizons, Juno.... Space exploration did not stop. >NASA administrator Michael D. Griffin argued in a 2007 paper that the Saturn program, if continued, could have provided six manned launches per year — two of them to the moon — at the same cost as the Shuttle program, with an additional ability to loft infrastructure for further missions: No this isn't what he said, this is why I hate wikipedia they quote mined a sentence from the very last paragraph and made it look like it was saying "if we didn't had the shuttle we would've been on mars", he did not say any such thing, not even remotely. Here is the full paper: http://aviationweek.typepad.com/space/2007/03/human_space_exp.html http://aviationweek.typepad.com/space/2007/03/human_space_ex... The Shuttle had many issues, technical, conceptual and also political/budgetary overall it was a chicken and the egg problem with which resulted in that the Shuttle did not fly enough to be economical and was not economical enough to fly ;), and after the challenger disaster the shuttle program also lost most if not all of it's DoD contracts which made things quite worse. The challenger disaster being on the 25th launch and the "risk aversion" of the US space programme didn't work that well for the Space Shuttle, but nonetheless the Space Shuttle did flew 135 mission which is technically more than the Soyuz (it's on 131 or 132 now), it had 2 loss of crew incidents which is the same as the Soyuz. That's not to say that the Soyuz is not a great programme on it's own, yes the shuttle was expensive but at the end it wasn't nearly as bad as some people make it out to be for some reason. And again this isn't an argument for the Shuttle, NASA did what it could with the shuttle, the Air Force wanted it, it was supposed to be the cornerstone of space Station Freedom and many other projects including Star Wars and NASA got stuck with it and yes in the later years it fought to keep it alive not because NASA was stupid but because it had no other option since there were no alternatives on the table.
  - berntb 10y ago
    So you have nothing to say about this weird claim you made about launch costs (or my other points you dismissed), which seems to be contradicted by Wikipedia: >> No, mostly because the 600 $ per lbs. figure touted quite often as the target was never actual the target, it was the based on differential payload costs when launching a crew only mission vs a crew + payload. [Edit: 600$/lbs is in "modern" dollars. In early 70s dollars it was ~ 110$. The real costs were somewhere between one or two orders of magnitude larger, depending on what year you select the dollar. The differential costs can only be a fraction of that.] >> the Air Force wanted it As far as I've read, NASA sold the Shuttle to the air force with unrealistic promises. That is why they wanted it. It isn't so? >> No this isn't what he said That full paper contained e.g.: the expense of owning and operating [the shuttle], or any similar system, is simply too great. Any new system, to be successful, must offer a much, much lower fixed cost of ownership. And this was from someone that was as tied to not making NASA look bad as anyone can be! [Edit: I really can't see that Wikipedia misrepresent Griffin's position, as you claim? Please be more specific about that claim. You really need to show quotes to dismiss wikipedia today.] >> NASA got stuck with [the shuttle] and yes in the later years it fought to keep it alive not because NASA was stupid but because it had no other option since there were no alternatives on the table. The Shuttle ate a large part of the NASA budget (30% at least some years), which contained lots of aviation and other programs. The shuttle was a gigantic job program -- that gave NASA, with a big weight to throw around, an incentive to kill off all competing launch systems! There was probably a reason not much happened in launch systems until the Shuttle died... [edit: The point was, there were no other launch systems not just because the Shuttle took such a gigantic amount of the total budget but also because NASA had motivation to keep the job program going.] [edit 2 on this: If you put your foot in a trap and can't afford the tools to get the foot out of the trap, because the trap was so expensive -- you're not "stupid"? :-) ] And, to go back to the original subject, the Orion seems to be another cuckoo, eating up most of the food in the nest. :-(