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True. But it is almost pointless to compare these two programs since Apollo was so much more complex. To put it in perspective, Apollo flew on a rocket with f
by marze 12y ago
True. But it is almost pointless to compare these two programs since Apollo was so much more complex.
To put it in perspective, Apollo flew on a rocket with five engines producing 1,500,000 lbf thrust each, on the first stage alone. By contrast, the Virgin motor produces 60,000 lbf thrust for 70 seconds.
The Apollo program had a safety culture configured so that if anyone identified a safety issue, they became responsible for the problem and responsible to sign off that it was corrected.
- vacri 12y agoSpeaking of perspective, the Apollo was fully-backed by the government of the most powerful economy in the world at the time - 4% of the federal budget was directed towards it, with 34,000 NASA employees and 375,000 third-party employees, with a cost of ~$140B of today's dollars. How the hell is a private company supposed to compete? Not even Apple's famed $100B in cash could pay that bill. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA#Cost_of_Apollo_program http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA#Cost_of_Apollo_p... Edit: It's also worth noting that the same entity that ran the Apollo missions currently has no way of putting people into space, and the last system they had also looked like a plane... and had problems with exploding and killing people.
- aptwebapps 12y ago"True. But it is almost pointless to compare these two programs since Apollo was so much more complex." That's funny, because you were the one who compared them first.
- marze 12y ago"Almost pointless" due to the vast differences in scale and complexity but still worthwhile, as a contrasting example of a solid safety culture employed by the Apollo engineering and operations teams. Although the Virgin 60,000 lbf rocket is small by the standards of Apollo, it is still an extremely challenging problem. There are no problem-free or inherently safe options, so safety needs to be engineered in from the bottom up carefully and competently. Otherwise, failures like this will not happen just once. The engineers involved would do well to study the Apollo program and other successful complex engineering efforts such as nuclear reactors, as well as the counter examples of the two space shuttle that were lost due to management putting schedule ahead of safety.
- chris_wot 12y agoIf there are no inherently safe options, then that tends to preclude engineering in safety. I really don't think you know what you are talking about.
- marze 12y agoA propulsion system that was "inherently safe" wouldn't have dangerous failure modes. Although Virgin has tried in the past to paint their hybrid prolusion system as being "inherently safe", it isn't. No 60klb rocket engine is. To make any such system operate safely and reliably is a big engineering challenge. I think you don't understand the meaning of the term "inherently safe" in an engineering context.
- chris_wot 12y agoCould you define it for me then?