Commercialized Space Shuttle
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Doggtyred
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Because the Government operated, Civil Service environment wasn't conducive to cost cutting. The commercial for profit environment is. The trade off is... cutting fat (surplus spending) without cutting meat (operational capability or safety).
That's the theory anyway... How much of that $4billion was amoratizing in all the post Columbia mods to the heat shield? Who would maintain operational oversight of the shuttles?
Dr. O
Pattern Altitude
And why (fer gawd's sake) don't we simply put the Saturn V and the crew return capsules back on the production line? That system has been amortized, man rated, and proven reliable... That bad boy lifter will punch 300,000 pounds into LEO without even breaking a sweat... And no one has to spend 8 billion reinventing the wheel...
denny-o
denny-o
Dr. O
Pattern Altitude
Two flights a year?!?
With the Saturn V lifter and crew capsules it could be two flights with 200,000 pounds of cargo a month for the same money...
With the Saturn V lifter and crew capsules it could be two flights with 200,000 pounds of cargo a month for the same money...
???? Anyone have real current $$$ numbers on a Saturn 5 launch? I can't imagine those F1 motors are cheap.... Not to mention that they aren't near as efficient as aerospike engines.
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Bob Noel
Cap'n Jack
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Probably because they lost the blueprints? (just a guess)
JeffDG
Touchdown! Greaser!
The Saturn V is, IIRC, the only launcher that has never had a catastrophic failure...
How many did they launch, a dozen in total? The Shuttle launched what, 132 times, one failure on the 25th launch and one failure on re-entry (which I witnessed with my 9 year old nephew I woke up to watch) on the 113th shuttle mission, the 28th for that vehicle.
Comparing the programs safety records in any way is a bit ridiculous. If they would have kept on launching the Saturn Vs, they would have eventually blown one of those up as well. They had the same crappy workmanship as everything the government puts out to bid, and the Apollo program killed one crew and almost a second due to those issues. The only reason a Saturn V didn't blow up was luck.
zaitcev
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Pete Zaitcev
I can answer that: despite being "amortized", Saturn V was inaffordable. When "beat the Soviets, money no object" period ended, the program was cancelled. Simple as that.
For all of its magnificent achievements, Apollo did a lot of harm to our nation's spacefaring capabilities by implanting the diseased culture of dumping unlimited amounts of money into the project. This is not the way to fly into space routinely. I knew a few people who hate Apollo retreads who sucked 800 million in Kistler K-1 days and produced nothing for it.
zaitcev
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Pete Zaitcev
Indeed, Shuttle was extremely reliable. If you look at Kyle database, for instance, STS sits at .97 predicted rate with only two (!) launchers above it: Delta 2 and Soyuz-U (among retired rockets, Tsyklon-2 and Atlas II/AS were better than that).
Saturn V had a certain reliablitiy improvements designed into it though. For example, it is still the only booster ever that survived an engine-out. Mr. Musk promises the same with Falcon 9, but we'll see.
I think it's possible that Saturn V would fly until today without a catastrophic launch failure, but with a loss of crew. The reason for that is, launch malfunction is pretty small propability slice for a mission as complex as a LOR moonshot without any infrastructure in place. If Apollo 13 oxigen tank blew up any later into the mission, that would be the end of it, no matter how much Gene Kranz repeated "failure is not an option".
ScottM
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iBazinga!
Apollo 13 was not a failure of the Saturn 5 booster. It was a failure of the service module. That was a separate item from the booster. Apollo 1 was also not a failure of the booster but a failure of the command module, again that is a separate system from the booster.
The only failure of the of the Saturn booster that I am aware of is during Apollo 13 when there was engine cut out on the S2 stage. I am sure there were other failures during the unmanned Apollo 4,5, and 6 missions while they worked out the bugs. Apollo 7 was a Saturn IB and not the Saturn V. Apollo 8 was the first manned test of a Saturn V.
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wanttaja
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Tooling, actually. It was all scrapped years ago.
You'd end up redesigning it anyway. Can't imaging building something that large and complex these days without CAD/CAM.
Ron Wanttaja
Jack Spectre
Line Up and Wait
I find it extremely suspicious that the VentureStar program was shut down shortly before they could test the aerospike on the vehicle. I'm thinking the government wanted that tech for "other" programs.
mbundy
Pre-Flight
Last ditch effort by United Space Alliance to stay in the manned spaceflight business. Of course, our country doesn't have a clear policy on manned spaceflight at the moment, so it's all a crapshoot--at best!
If we are looking to 'shuttle' crew to and from the ISS, then the Soyuz is probably the best bang for the buck, except we're letting the Russian's bank the revenue. Note: revenue, not profit. I'm not sure they are making money on the ISS flights, but the subsidy and accelerated launch schedule certainly helps the Russian 'space economy. '
At the moment, it seems like the only hope we have for a new domestic manned spaceflight vehicle is SpaceX. I don't anticipate the United Launch Alliance seeking to put actual humans on top of their rockets (Delta & Atlas) anytime soon! In fact, I expect ULA to find a way to 'buy out' SpaceX sooner than later...The last thing longtime government suppliers like Boeing and Lockheed Martin want is for some upstart to win a bunch of government contracts...
If we are looking to 'shuttle' crew to and from the ISS, then the Soyuz is probably the best bang for the buck, except we're letting the Russian's bank the revenue. Note: revenue, not profit. I'm not sure they are making money on the ISS flights, but the subsidy and accelerated launch schedule certainly helps the Russian 'space economy. '
At the moment, it seems like the only hope we have for a new domestic manned spaceflight vehicle is SpaceX. I don't anticipate the United Launch Alliance seeking to put actual humans on top of their rockets (Delta & Atlas) anytime soon! In fact, I expect ULA to find a way to 'buy out' SpaceX sooner than later...The last thing longtime government suppliers like Boeing and Lockheed Martin want is for some upstart to win a bunch of government contracts...
flyingcheesehead
Touchdown! Greaser!
Thirteen total (Apollo 4, 6, 8-17, and Skylab) if you count the Skylab launch which only used the first two stages.
After thirteen Shuttles, the two had the same safety record, WRT fatalities at least.
Yup. I wouldn't say that the ONLY reason one didn't blow up was luck, but the time pressure to fulfill JFK's vision must have been extreme. Nearly half (8 of 18) Apollo/Saturn flights had relatively major failures. It was an awesome feat of engineering, but in some ways was like a house of cards. I agree with Henning, and I think that the Shuttle's safety record would probably vastly outshine that of the Saturn had they launched as many Saturn missions as Shuttle missions.
steingar
Taxi to Parking
I've always been very impressed with NASA's safety record. Every launch is an entirely experimental vehicle created in a vacuum, and televised live to the whole country. Yes, their record could be better, but it's still pretty good given the complexity and inherent danger in spaceflight.
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zaitcev
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Pete Zaitcev
The point many seem to be missing is that there is "old" money, freaking gazillions allocated to the legacy systems (about 8 billion a year, give a take due to shared facilities such as Stennis etc.) and there's "new" money, which is much smaller, but still somewhat noticeable (about 1.1 billion a year), allocated to "commercial" systems. Shuttle uses the old money, and as long as it keeps using it every year, there is that much less to develop any other replacement government system. With me so far?
Note that there is a whole bunch of useful stuff coming out of that one billion: 2 boosters (SpaceX Falcon and Orbital Taurus II), 2 rocketplanes (Sierra-Nevada DreamChaser and Orbital Prometeus), 2 capsules (SpaceX Dragon and Boeing CT-100), various commercial subsystems such as possible Bigelow module, Hamilton-Sunstrand water recycler, maybe VASIMR thruster. That was the intent: give a pittance to all these people and hope some of them come up with cheap space transports. Once we have the transport, we can use the "old" money for something useful, like a spaceship to Mars, maybe Aldrin's cycler or a rotating space colony or whatever. To get any of that it's essential to stop wasting untold billions on hyper-expensive government space transport.
Now some genius came up with the idea to cut all that. The 1.5 billion the USA proposes will be 1.1 in "commerical" money and 400 million they'll ask Congress to add to "commerical" slice. For that, we'll get a system that flies 2 times a year and cannot serve as a lifeboat to station. But the worst of all, no meaningful reduction in the cost of transport. And also I suspect it's a fake price anyway. Once all these pesky little Oribitals and Sierra Nevadas are eliminated, USA will says "oops, here's a little price overrun". And then we'll have to eat it up because there is no alternative.
Commercial Shuttle is pure politicing to kill the commerical space. Which would be fine by me as such -- it's not like Elon Musk or Dave Thompson's children will go to bed hungry if we take that billion from them. But the side effect of it is that we continue to be locked into low orbit forever. That is why I think Commercial Shuttle is a terrible idea.
Note that there is a whole bunch of useful stuff coming out of that one billion: 2 boosters (SpaceX Falcon and Orbital Taurus II), 2 rocketplanes (Sierra-Nevada DreamChaser and Orbital Prometeus), 2 capsules (SpaceX Dragon and Boeing CT-100), various commercial subsystems such as possible Bigelow module, Hamilton-Sunstrand water recycler, maybe VASIMR thruster. That was the intent: give a pittance to all these people and hope some of them come up with cheap space transports. Once we have the transport, we can use the "old" money for something useful, like a spaceship to Mars, maybe Aldrin's cycler or a rotating space colony or whatever. To get any of that it's essential to stop wasting untold billions on hyper-expensive government space transport.
Now some genius came up with the idea to cut all that. The 1.5 billion the USA proposes will be 1.1 in "commerical" money and 400 million they'll ask Congress to add to "commerical" slice. For that, we'll get a system that flies 2 times a year and cannot serve as a lifeboat to station. But the worst of all, no meaningful reduction in the cost of transport. And also I suspect it's a fake price anyway. Once all these pesky little Oribitals and Sierra Nevadas are eliminated, USA will says "oops, here's a little price overrun". And then we'll have to eat it up because there is no alternative.
Commercial Shuttle is pure politicing to kill the commerical space. Which would be fine by me as such -- it's not like Elon Musk or Dave Thompson's children will go to bed hungry if we take that billion from them. But the side effect of it is that we continue to be locked into low orbit forever. That is why I think Commercial Shuttle is a terrible idea.