NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #1/NN_1993_1.iso/spool/sci/space/18719

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-05 | 5.1 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!menudo.uh.edu!judy.uh.edu!st17a
From: [e-mail]
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: Stupid Shut Cost arguements (was Re: Terminal Velocity
Date: 4 Jan 1993 22:37 CST
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In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Allen W. Sherzer) writes...
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Brad Whitehurst) writes:
>
[stuff deleted]

>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.
>
Allen I put a question to you. Do you think that if we grounded the Shuttle
permanently tomorrow, laid off all personell involved in the Shuttle's overhead
and began work on the DC series that the rest of the money would be available
for other uses in space? If you think so, which seems to be your underlying
premise in advocating your scenario, then I respectfully submit that you are
mistaken. Especially now in the fiscal climate that exists today in the
US government, the money would simply be diverted to the same old bread and
circuses game that we have lived with for twenty years. My evidence? During
the Non flight years of the US space program from 75 to 81 the budget was about
1/3 what it is today, even allowing for inflation. Only when the shuttle
began ramping up did the workforce increase and the budgets begin to rise.
Additionally, the program did not get any further increases until a large
manned program, (Space Station) begin. There were plenty of opportunities during
the seventies to increase other areas of the space budget, this did not happen.
They even were further curtailed. The dearth of planetary explorers has its
origin during the years when manned space was at an ebb. The budget for the
other programs that are wonderfully worthy such as MO, Galielo and others
only happened after the manned program became robust again.

Again, I support the DC program, it should be funded. You are not considering
political reality if you think that the sacrifice of the billions spent on
shuttle would gain the DC program a dime however. The DC would have to grow
in ways that would immediately put it back into the realm of the shuttle
in its systematic costs. If we can keep the DC as a low ball effort then
we might keep the spec changers away from it long enough to develop it as a
viable complement, later a suppliment, lastly a replacement for the shuttle.
This is a worthy goal for the program, but it will not happen if it becomes
the focus of attention that you wish it to be.

>
>>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.
>

The point of this statment Allen is that if we really want to do it for the
lowest price available then we should just contract out our space program
to our Russian friends. Then we, vicariously could sit back and smile as we
watch the first Russian cosmonauts land on Mars in a few years courtesy of
money supplied by us. This would be the logical end to your whole plan of
cost reduction.




>>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.
>


You always toss of the problems of systems that you think are theoretically
superior to the Shuttle. As an engineer that will be installing a payload
in the spacehab module in 72 hours let me tell you that what you are saying
is far from reality. All Spacehab is is a pressure vessel. To maintain its
structural integrity for holdin air, it relys on its structural supports
connected to the shuttle. This is just for beginners. It totally depends on
power from the Shuttle. This goes also for thermal control, atmosphere and
control of the experiments via either direct astronaut intervention or
control from the middeck. All Spacehab is, is an extension of the middeck
lockers. IT would cost several hundred million just to make it into a free
flyer. Then you would have all of the problems relating to the fact that
none of the experiments are designed to be removed on orbit.

So Allen please try to look at things from a slightly wider perspective.

Dennis, University of Alabama in Huntsville.