🚀 go-pugleaf

In <1993Jan5.003325.26043@iti.org> aws@iti.org (Allen W. Sherzer) writes:

>We could fly Soyuz on an Atlas or Titan. 

Why?  If we're buying Soyuz spacecraft from the Russians, 
it would make a lot more sense to buy the boosters also
and skip the integration problem.

>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. 

Who is "we?"  If you mean NASA, I don't think so.  A space station
like you're talking about would be more of a construction project
than an R&D project.  NASA isn't set up to handle those.

(On the other hand, I don't think you need to limit your thinking
to small space stations.  If you're working with the Russians, why
not put an Energia third stage into orbit?  Convert it into a "wet"
lab, and you've got a habitable volume bigger than Freedom.)


>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.

However, we haven't man-rated the Atlas or Titan since the 60's.  
The current assembly lines for those vehicles are pretty much
booked already. You could expand them, of course, but the lead
time for a man-rated Atlas or Titan would be several years.