Hague states “Its not completely clear to me why SpaceX have not pushed for faster turnarounds.” Any ideas?
Lack of necessity?
Almost certainly.
Shuttle mostly failed because it was rocket company run by a government. NASA will also fail if wants to be space mining company.
NASA could been successful if it was exploring how to make a Shuttle. The Shuttle they made had LH2/LOX “first stage” which require large solid boosters to get to orbit. I think a LH2/LOX first stage might work with small solid boosters, which had burn time of less than 30 seconds.
But at point in time it looks like Liquid Methane is the better choice, but don’t know if using Liquid Methane instead of Liquid Hydrogen for Shuttle would have made much difference.
And it seems to me the only significant use of LEO, is to refuel rockets.
“Flight rate was critical to the Shuttle’s mission of lowering launch costs. …
Driving down cost per launch and cost per kg thus depended on have as many launches as possible in each year.”
Because didn’t refuel rockets in LEO, they were stuck in LEO.
Because weren’t exploring space, they had invent reasons why they weren’t, safety concern was dumbest and easiest thing to do.
It was so noble, not exploring the Moon and Mars.
There is similar stupid/crazy going on with China virus.
And one of high crimes of it, was not getting cheap and rapid testing for the virus.
Another significant use of LEO is testing artificial gravity stations.
And then, having them, somewhere useful.
LEO is useful for space tourism, and satellites, but NASA job is space exploration, the private sector can do the tourism and satellites.
Another aspect is Falcon failed, quite a bit at first. And while many of its early paid missions were a success, they were also failures in reusability when the vehicle was lost attempting landing (necessary for reusability). Those failures were lessons needed to quickly make updates to subsequent vehicles. After some initial issues, it has been a solid performer, which is how most things are.
NASA avoided such failures and when minor ones occurred, they ignored them with fatal results. The space shuttle design was essentially frozen at CDR and few improvements made in the decades after. There were incentives to not make changes.
It’s more accurate to say that the quite a few Falcon 9s successfully launched their payloads but failed their recovery attempts. There has only been two Falcon 9 failures that resulted in a loss of payload – one exploded in flight and another during a static fire test.
The better solution at the time would have been fly-back Kerolox boosters.
They could have used the higher performance to allow the RS-25s to work at a lower thrust thus reducing wear and tear on the engine and inspection and refurbishment requirements to be relaxed.
Well, I think there was a fundamental paradigm shift with the DC-X from 1993 to 1996, which showed controlled flight and powered landing. Although the Apollo lunar module had already established those same capabilities decades earlier, there didn’t seem to be any idea of powered booster landings on Earth. But the concept got saddled with the pipe-dream of a viable SSTO, which likely caused another 20-year delay in landing a real booster.
I think it would be fair to say that without Elon Musk, routine booster landings would still be 20 years in the future because the design ideas for reuse were things like parachute landings, gliding runway landings, hypersonic engines with runway landings (Skylon), and Rotary Rocket’s helicopter approach.
The SpaceX approach is elegantly simple. The key to reusability is for the booster not not smack back into the Earth really hard at the end of the re-entry, and not end up floating in the ocean.
The shuttle didn’t fail. It provided jobs for NASA employees for 30 years. That’s a complete career when you get federal benefits.
“The shuttle didn’t fail. It provided jobs for NASA employees for 30 years. That’s a complete career when you get federal benefits.”
Kinda of like NASA’s current plan to “de-orbit” (burn up) the space station around 2030 or so an then deploy new and improved ones. Why not just sell/lease the space station to Space-X or some other nation and/or commercial concern? The sort of thing that would be second nature to a private concern. Because they don’t want it around to compete against the new space stations they (NASA) wants to deploy; probably afraid Congress might balk at paying for new stations if the old one is till around. Reminds me of I recall NASA deliberately ending Saturn 5 moon rocket production because they didn’t want it around to compete against the over-hyped Space Shuttle; though they claimed at the time the reason was it wasn’t “necessary”. Replaced by the Shuttle that was supposed to be completely reusable and that was supposed to be able to fly every two weeks and pay for itself with satellite delivery charges.
IT HAPPENED! Elon Musk FINALLY Reveals Artificial Gravity Starship 2021!
Appears to be a cheap, practical near term way of producing gravity using three of Musk’s soon to be launched Starships a retractable/extendable Truss for his Mars trips.
Hague states “Its not completely clear to me why SpaceX have not pushed for faster turnarounds.” Any ideas?
Lack of necessity?
Almost certainly.
Shuttle mostly failed because it was rocket company run by a government. NASA will also fail if wants to be space mining company.
NASA could been successful if it was exploring how to make a Shuttle. The Shuttle they made had LH2/LOX “first stage” which require large solid boosters to get to orbit. I think a LH2/LOX first stage might work with small solid boosters, which had burn time of less than 30 seconds.
But at point in time it looks like Liquid Methane is the better choice, but don’t know if using Liquid Methane instead of Liquid Hydrogen for Shuttle would have made much difference.
And it seems to me the only significant use of LEO, is to refuel rockets.
“Flight rate was critical to the Shuttle’s mission of lowering launch costs. …
Driving down cost per launch and cost per kg thus depended on have as many launches as possible in each year.”
Because didn’t refuel rockets in LEO, they were stuck in LEO.
Because weren’t exploring space, they had invent reasons why they weren’t, safety concern was dumbest and easiest thing to do.
It was so noble, not exploring the Moon and Mars.
There is similar stupid/crazy going on with China virus.
And one of high crimes of it, was not getting cheap and rapid testing for the virus.
Another significant use of LEO is testing artificial gravity stations.
And then, having them, somewhere useful.
LEO is useful for space tourism, and satellites, but NASA job is space exploration, the private sector can do the tourism and satellites.
Another aspect is Falcon failed, quite a bit at first. And while many of its early paid missions were a success, they were also failures in reusability when the vehicle was lost attempting landing (necessary for reusability). Those failures were lessons needed to quickly make updates to subsequent vehicles. After some initial issues, it has been a solid performer, which is how most things are.
NASA avoided such failures and when minor ones occurred, they ignored them with fatal results. The space shuttle design was essentially frozen at CDR and few improvements made in the decades after. There were incentives to not make changes.
It’s more accurate to say that the quite a few Falcon 9s successfully launched their payloads but failed their recovery attempts. There has only been two Falcon 9 failures that resulted in a loss of payload – one exploded in flight and another during a static fire test.
The better solution at the time would have been fly-back Kerolox boosters.
They could have used the higher performance to allow the RS-25s to work at a lower thrust thus reducing wear and tear on the engine and inspection and refurbishment requirements to be relaxed.
Well, I think there was a fundamental paradigm shift with the DC-X from 1993 to 1996, which showed controlled flight and powered landing. Although the Apollo lunar module had already established those same capabilities decades earlier, there didn’t seem to be any idea of powered booster landings on Earth. But the concept got saddled with the pipe-dream of a viable SSTO, which likely caused another 20-year delay in landing a real booster.
I think it would be fair to say that without Elon Musk, routine booster landings would still be 20 years in the future because the design ideas for reuse were things like parachute landings, gliding runway landings, hypersonic engines with runway landings (Skylon), and Rotary Rocket’s helicopter approach.
The SpaceX approach is elegantly simple. The key to reusability is for the booster not not smack back into the Earth really hard at the end of the re-entry, and not end up floating in the ocean.
The shuttle didn’t fail. It provided jobs for NASA employees for 30 years. That’s a complete career when you get federal benefits.
“The shuttle didn’t fail. It provided jobs for NASA employees for 30 years. That’s a complete career when you get federal benefits.”
Kinda of like NASA’s current plan to “de-orbit” (burn up) the space station around 2030 or so an then deploy new and improved ones. Why not just sell/lease the space station to Space-X or some other nation and/or commercial concern? The sort of thing that would be second nature to a private concern. Because they don’t want it around to compete against the new space stations they (NASA) wants to deploy; probably afraid Congress might balk at paying for new stations if the old one is till around. Reminds me of I recall NASA deliberately ending Saturn 5 moon rocket production because they didn’t want it around to compete against the over-hyped Space Shuttle; though they claimed at the time the reason was it wasn’t “necessary”. Replaced by the Shuttle that was supposed to be completely reusable and that was supposed to be able to fly every two weeks and pay for itself with satellite delivery charges.
IT HAPPENED! Elon Musk FINALLY Reveals Artificial Gravity Starship 2021!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhXN2KMM_tE
Appears to be a cheap, practical near term way of producing gravity using three of Musk’s soon to be launched Starships a retractable/extendable Truss for his Mars trips.