“… but because despite there being no monarchies left in Europe to annoy by executing a monarch and creating an example that makes them squirm, we still can’t just off this guy.
Who is also apparently immortal.
Shut up.”
“Who is also apparently immortal.”
Er, rather, is possessed of indefinite lifespan.
…but because we need somebody to kill the Iron Sky Nazis before they launch their invasion.
“…because we need a cover story for showing the Russians that we can build a rocket to deliver a nuclear bomb with pinpoint accuracy.”
There were sound geopolitical reasons for racing the godless Soviets to the moon that go beyond JFK’s rhetorical flourish. There were even sounder reasons to build on that accomplishment that politicians at the time failed to grasp.
There were sound geopolitical reasons for racing the godless Soviets to the moon that go beyond JFK’s rhetorical flourish.
Yes, but they didn’t have much to do with actually developing space. We could have just as well been racing them to the bottom of the Marianas Trench, if that hadn’t already been done the year before.
Actually, that is untrue. Much could have been done by evolving the Apollo/Saturn technology, as I think you know. We choose to try to build a national spaceline instead, a grave mistake. Also, a race to the bottom of the sea did not and does not have the cache that space flight has.
Much could have been done by evolving the Apollo/Saturn technology, as I think you know.
Not very much. We couldn’t afford to continue to carpet the bottom of the Atlantic with Saturns. It was an architecture designed to beat the Russians to the moon, not to be affordable, or sustainable, or scalable. That’s why it was canceled
We choose to try to build a national spaceline instead, a grave mistake.
Yes, that was a bad idea, too. But politically, NASA had to be given something to do.
We couldn’t afford to continue to carpet the bottom of the Atlantic with Saturns.
In truth, we also couldn’t really afford to carpet it with External Fuel Tanks for an economical resuable space vehicle that really wasn’t all that reusable or economical, either.
Modifying existing Apollo and Saturn hardware (say, a replacement for the Saturn IB using a single F1-A, the backup Skylab, perhaps a cargo vehicle based on a modified SM bus) to continue a modest LEO space station presence, something that at least….would have been evolvable. And safer and cheaper. Still not the most efficient or sustainable architecture, but enough to continue a modest manned presence while the technology and need develops enough for private sector to emerge. Instead, we threw away a proven architecture for a clean sheet design with no evolvability and much higher risk. And long gaps in manned capability to boot.
Well, it’s all water under the bridge now. What good news there is now lies with NewSpace, and whatever NASA’s robotic probes are up to. May their tribe flourish.
People who talk about Apollo as a “proven” architecture never explain what was exactly proven about it. No, there was never a major failure of the launch system, but it only flew a dozen times. It was certainly proven to be expensive. There really was a reason that they wanted to go with a reusable, high-flight-rate system. That they failed to achieve it programmatically doesn’t mean it wasn’t the right goal.
Hello Rand,
People who talk about Apollo as a “proven” architecture never explain what was exactly proven about it.
A fair point. But obviously with spacecraft we’re in a different realm than we are with aircraft, given the frequency of operation, so “proven” is a relative term. In this respect, the U.S. really has never had *any* “proven” manned space vehicle. Perhaps Soyuz might qualify by now, at a stretch, but…
I just don’t think that true reusability (which I agree is highly desirable, and ultimately, necessary for any spacefaring civilization) was feasible with the technology and budget available in in 1971-2. It was a bridge too far. Because the budget was limited, because so much was demanded of it, and because so much technology was bleeding edge, too many compromises were built into STS.
If the choice was between developing STS (or something like it), or simply adapting and developing existing Apollo/Saturn hardware to a more modest program, I think the latter is the easy choice. We sank over $20 billion into Saturn/Apollo and we just threw it away. Now, some will say that this is a false choice, and that no time was too soon to begin development of a robust commercial sector. But that seems so far away from any realistic political possibility in the early 1970s.
That wasn’t the choice. Continuing Apollo was not an option, politically. There were no good choices, politically. There haven’t been since.
Mark, the word you are looking for is “cachet”.
In hindsight I also think a downscaled Apollo based rocket would have been able to do all the necessary missions since for a lot cheaper than what the Shuttle provided.
The ET costs varied a lot. The changes made to reach the ISS (Al-Li etc) caused the cost of it to inflate substantially. I think major advances were made in the engine and reentry technology but the whole program shouldn’t have been done at that scale to begin with. I think it should have started as a subscale project and it needed at least two more prototypes with better technology before it should go into production.
In the wake of the success of Apollo (in terms of accomplishing its stated goal, not in terms of opening up space), the NASA engineers probably had some hubris, and thought they could do anything (“If we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we build a reusable launcher?”). But even with adequate budget, they didn’t know how to do anything cheaply — the “waste anything but time mentality” had created a very high-cost culture at the agency, and they didn’t really have enough experience to know the best approaches to reusability. In fact, we still don’t to this day. That’s why the Shuttle, as the “next logical step” for NASA, was a mistake.
Godzilla,
I think it should have started as a subscale project
An excellent point – so much emphasis was placed upon a final, mature architecture, without any interim steps. Separating cargo from crew capability was a nonstarter. It was simply too ambitious.
Hello Rand,
the “waste anything but time mentality” had created a very high-cost culture at the agency
Certainly this was one of the pernicious effects of the Moon Race on U.S. space exploration – an effect that is still with us. Only we now waste time, too.
A downscaled Apollo/Saturn continuation into the 1980’s and even beyond is not ideal; it’s merely making the best of a difficult situation (and budget). Politically, it was not (alas) in the cards to start privatizing launch, let alone crew, capability. But at least you would have have some architecture capable of evolving – a multibody Saturn, upgraded engines, maybe even eventually reusable to some degree; a steadily more capable Apollo CSM (perhaps with an orbital module) better adapted to lengthy LEO stays, something you could learn from. In a similar way, no one (least of all its designers) would pretend that DIRECT’s Jupiter was an ideal architecture, or one you’d design from scratch; it was merely making the best of existing architecture given likely political and budgetary constraints to develop a new (more reliable and safer) heavy lift capability.
A couple aerospace engineers I know recently even plotted out an alternate history of what such an architecture could have turned out like. It’s not an ideal world, just a considerably better one than the one we wound up with over the last 45 years.
I find it a little distressing that the octopus did not survive the deep freeze. A lunar Napoleon without an octopus isn’t something I really want to contemplate.
“… but because despite there being no monarchies left in Europe to annoy by executing a monarch and creating an example that makes them squirm, we still can’t just off this guy.
Who is also apparently immortal.
Shut up.”
“Who is also apparently immortal.”
Er, rather, is possessed of indefinite lifespan.
…but because we need somebody to kill the Iron Sky Nazis before they launch their invasion.
“…because we need a cover story for showing the Russians that we can build a rocket to deliver a nuclear bomb with pinpoint accuracy.”
There were sound geopolitical reasons for racing the godless Soviets to the moon that go beyond JFK’s rhetorical flourish. There were even sounder reasons to build on that accomplishment that politicians at the time failed to grasp.
There were sound geopolitical reasons for racing the godless Soviets to the moon that go beyond JFK’s rhetorical flourish.
Yes, but they didn’t have much to do with actually developing space. We could have just as well been racing them to the bottom of the Marianas Trench, if that hadn’t already been done the year before.
Actually, that is untrue. Much could have been done by evolving the Apollo/Saturn technology, as I think you know. We choose to try to build a national spaceline instead, a grave mistake. Also, a race to the bottom of the sea did not and does not have the cache that space flight has.
Much could have been done by evolving the Apollo/Saturn technology, as I think you know.
Not very much. We couldn’t afford to continue to carpet the bottom of the Atlantic with Saturns. It was an architecture designed to beat the Russians to the moon, not to be affordable, or sustainable, or scalable. That’s why it was canceled
We choose to try to build a national spaceline instead, a grave mistake.
Yes, that was a bad idea, too. But politically, NASA had to be given something to do.
We couldn’t afford to continue to carpet the bottom of the Atlantic with Saturns.
In truth, we also couldn’t really afford to carpet it with External Fuel Tanks for an economical resuable space vehicle that really wasn’t all that reusable or economical, either.
Modifying existing Apollo and Saturn hardware (say, a replacement for the Saturn IB using a single F1-A, the backup Skylab, perhaps a cargo vehicle based on a modified SM bus) to continue a modest LEO space station presence, something that at least….would have been evolvable. And safer and cheaper. Still not the most efficient or sustainable architecture, but enough to continue a modest manned presence while the technology and need develops enough for private sector to emerge. Instead, we threw away a proven architecture for a clean sheet design with no evolvability and much higher risk. And long gaps in manned capability to boot.
Well, it’s all water under the bridge now. What good news there is now lies with NewSpace, and whatever NASA’s robotic probes are up to. May their tribe flourish.
People who talk about Apollo as a “proven” architecture never explain what was exactly proven about it. No, there was never a major failure of the launch system, but it only flew a dozen times. It was certainly proven to be expensive. There really was a reason that they wanted to go with a reusable, high-flight-rate system. That they failed to achieve it programmatically doesn’t mean it wasn’t the right goal.
Hello Rand,
People who talk about Apollo as a “proven” architecture never explain what was exactly proven about it.
A fair point. But obviously with spacecraft we’re in a different realm than we are with aircraft, given the frequency of operation, so “proven” is a relative term. In this respect, the U.S. really has never had *any* “proven” manned space vehicle. Perhaps Soyuz might qualify by now, at a stretch, but…
I just don’t think that true reusability (which I agree is highly desirable, and ultimately, necessary for any spacefaring civilization) was feasible with the technology and budget available in in 1971-2. It was a bridge too far. Because the budget was limited, because so much was demanded of it, and because so much technology was bleeding edge, too many compromises were built into STS.
If the choice was between developing STS (or something like it), or simply adapting and developing existing Apollo/Saturn hardware to a more modest program, I think the latter is the easy choice. We sank over $20 billion into Saturn/Apollo and we just threw it away. Now, some will say that this is a false choice, and that no time was too soon to begin development of a robust commercial sector. But that seems so far away from any realistic political possibility in the early 1970s.
That wasn’t the choice. Continuing Apollo was not an option, politically. There were no good choices, politically. There haven’t been since.
Mark, the word you are looking for is “cachet”.
In hindsight I also think a downscaled Apollo based rocket would have been able to do all the necessary missions since for a lot cheaper than what the Shuttle provided.
The ET costs varied a lot. The changes made to reach the ISS (Al-Li etc) caused the cost of it to inflate substantially. I think major advances were made in the engine and reentry technology but the whole program shouldn’t have been done at that scale to begin with. I think it should have started as a subscale project and it needed at least two more prototypes with better technology before it should go into production.
In the wake of the success of Apollo (in terms of accomplishing its stated goal, not in terms of opening up space), the NASA engineers probably had some hubris, and thought they could do anything (“If we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we build a reusable launcher?”). But even with adequate budget, they didn’t know how to do anything cheaply — the “waste anything but time mentality” had created a very high-cost culture at the agency, and they didn’t really have enough experience to know the best approaches to reusability. In fact, we still don’t to this day. That’s why the Shuttle, as the “next logical step” for NASA, was a mistake.
Godzilla,
I think it should have started as a subscale project
An excellent point – so much emphasis was placed upon a final, mature architecture, without any interim steps. Separating cargo from crew capability was a nonstarter. It was simply too ambitious.
Hello Rand,
the “waste anything but time mentality” had created a very high-cost culture at the agency
Certainly this was one of the pernicious effects of the Moon Race on U.S. space exploration – an effect that is still with us. Only we now waste time, too.
A downscaled Apollo/Saturn continuation into the 1980’s and even beyond is not ideal; it’s merely making the best of a difficult situation (and budget). Politically, it was not (alas) in the cards to start privatizing launch, let alone crew, capability. But at least you would have have some architecture capable of evolving – a multibody Saturn, upgraded engines, maybe even eventually reusable to some degree; a steadily more capable Apollo CSM (perhaps with an orbital module) better adapted to lengthy LEO stays, something you could learn from. In a similar way, no one (least of all its designers) would pretend that DIRECT’s Jupiter was an ideal architecture, or one you’d design from scratch; it was merely making the best of existing architecture given likely political and budgetary constraints to develop a new (more reliable and safer) heavy lift capability.
A couple aerospace engineers I know recently even plotted out an alternate history of what such an architecture could have turned out like. It’s not an ideal world, just a considerably better one than the one we wound up with over the last 45 years.
I find it a little distressing that the octopus did not survive the deep freeze. A lunar Napoleon without an octopus isn’t something I really want to contemplate.