🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan4.201501.18537@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> rbw3q@rayleigh.mech.Virginia.EDU (Brad Whitehurst) writes:

>	Come on, Allen, don't get even more retentive on us!

I suppose I was. I apologize.

>The realistic chance of significant U.S. manned presence in orbit in
>Russian hardware in the next few years is miniscule.  

that's not the point. The point is not what we WILL be doing but
what we COULD be doing. The first step to change is realizing that
alternatives exist.

We could fly Soyuz on an Atlas or Titan. We could build a small
station with room and power equal to Shuttle. We could dock the two
and get far more work done for far less money. We could then use the
savings to fly more experiments and furthur open the space frontier.
That is what we can do with conservative engineering.

Alternatively, we can follow the Coffman school of engineering which
states that nothing which doesn't exist today can be built. Under this
plan, we support Shuttle (since no alternatives are possible) and
spend our lives siting on this rock.

>problems, scheduling, etc....  As a practical matter, I'd be willing
>to bet that even moderate effort on a reusable SSTO (DC or otherwise)
>could be available within a year or so of the time frame it would take
>to convert our manned space program from Shuttle to Soyuz.  

Shuttle isn't getting us anywhere. Wrose, is sucks up all the money we
get preventing progress. DC can work but it may not work. We need alternatives.


>Would everything go to
>Russia for launch, and depend on an uncertain foreign infrastructure,
>or convert part of Canaveral to launch Russian rockets?  

We don't use Russian rockets; we use Atlas or Titan. Both routinely rebuild
their launchers to conform to payload interface requirements and NASA's
evaluation of Soyuz as ACRV indicate that using Soyuz with US aerospace
standards isn't a problem.

As for stability, that isn't seen as a problem since NASA will be using
Soyuz for ACRV.

>Can you get enough power and life support from Soyuz/Mir for
>5-6 people + our experiments?

Send them to an industrial space facility. We have build space stations
before and replacing Shuttle's limited ability in orbit shouldn't be
hard. We already have Spacehab and Spacelab and it shouldn't be hard
to add power and facilities to them. Keeping the lab in orbit will allow
greater utilization and cut costs even more.

  Allen
-- 
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Allen W. Sherzer | "A great man is one who does nothing but leaves        |
|  aws@iti.org     |  nothing undone"                                       |
+----------------------110 DAYS TO FIRST FLIGHT OF DCX----------------------+