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What if the Saturn-Shuttle was built instead of what we got?


fredinno

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On February 11, 2016 at 7:31 PM, Bill Phil said:

What increases costs is the amount of time it takes. That's why the IB was so expensive for its size/payload.

Building 9 different fuel tanks takes time, putting them all together takes time, building 8 engines takes a lot of time.

A monoblock and an F-1 would have only provided benefits. Cheaper by an enormous margin.

SpaceX is reducing costs because A: they have modern tech, B: they've managed to cut overheads.

It has little to do with the number of engines they have. They only used the Merlins because they had the design already, thus saving on development costs.

We are in no position to judge whether or not they should've used the HG-3. There's very little info we have.

Having a boat load of engines only reduces costs if you can reduce the amount of man-hours to build them. This is what an assembly line does. But rocket engines are built without assembly lines. There's usually a bunch of technicians that have to spend many hours on only one component, and then they put it together.

You can't reduce costs if you still have to pay a bunch of people for their many hours of work. And for 16 turbo pumps you'll have to foot a very large bill.

So? Are you implying ULA doesn't use modern tech? I do not see them using apollo-era computers....

And one way they cut overheads is by standardising engines (producing more of one type instead of few of 2 types). Another is by hiring only young employees, so they don't have to pay as much to them.

And Merlins today have little to do with the ones used on Falcon 1. The original Merlin was ablatively-cooled, had FAR lower thrust, and did not use a deepcryo RP-1 Lox mixture. The newest ones are ablatively cooled, have over 200% more thrust, and use Deepcryo Rp-1 Lox.

 

And you can make engines from assembly lines if you make more, not less, like you're proposing, which reduces costs.

On February 11, 2016 at 8:06 PM, Bill Phil said:

Over the course of the H-1's lifetime about 150 were built. If we as the S-3D (very similar design) then we get abou 250, maybe 300, engines. That's enough to severely reduce costs, but that barely happened, if at all.

That's because the rate of engines was only 10 per year. If the Saturn IB used them, that would increase H-1 use to enough of a level to use mass-production, the SIB used 8 of those.

On February 11, 2016 at 8:30 PM, DerekL1963 said:

AIUI, propulsive landings are really only possible with relatively modern computing and inertial technology.

Also, the effects if the Shuttle's engine plume on the first stage are going to be...  interesting.

Also, also, developing a throttleable F-1A is going to be a very, very expensive and difficult challenge.   Big motors like that have impressive amounts of response lag.

 

I've been meaning to say that for a couple of days now...  In all these discussions of extending the I/Ib, folks are forgetting why it was abandoned in the first place.

So, I should consider something like parachuted landings, or parafoil capture of the S-IC?

On February 11, 2016 at 9:01 PM, Bill Phil said:

Which is exactly why cost saving measures, like a monoblock first stage, and an F-1 engine (perhaps modified?), and production streamlining were necessary to keep using it.

But they also needed payloads. Which was another reason to stop building them. Although, the shuttle program is what killed that. The Russians used protons (similar payload class) to launch a bunch of payloads. Space stations/modules, probes, and a bunch of other stuff.

I agree with you on the mono-block- the entire reason to use the multi-block 1st stage was to have commonality with missiles, that by 1970, were retired. However, I do not agree on the F-1, as I explained earlier.

On February 11, 2016 at 9:03 PM, Exploro said:

We had ICBM's....why would we need a space shuttle to conduct nuclear strikes (The military never intended to use orbiters as strike platforms anyway!)

As for Buran; it's debut happened to coincide with collapse of the Soviet Union. Simply put; by that time there was no longer any funding for the Soviets to support a shuttle program on the scale of it's American counterpart.

A space Shuttle can launch nukes, then keep them there for long periods of time, then deorbit them back to Earth at up to mach 10. The extra energy, and the near-impossibility to deflect them makes a nuke in space worth it, albeit very expensive.

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13 hours ago, wumpus said:

Unfortunately,  the only way the shuttle ever made sense was to smuggle that one very large satellite back down to the ground.  We also know that neither actually happened, because such a launch had to happen at Vandenburg (which never launched a shuttle.  And there is simply no way to keep a shuttle launch secret.

This is why I don't understand your entire premise.  This threads has a bunch of holes:

1.  You assume that the shuttle's cargo bay could be smaller and cargo could use fairings like every other rocket.  At this point the biggest design failure of the shuttle disappears and of course you could build a better vehicle.  The shuttle was a remarkable craft assuming you needed to schlep 5-7 astronauts and 100Tons of orbiter every mission whether you needed them or not.  Congress, DoD, and NASA liked this idea, thus the shuttle.

2. Assuming you can vertically land a Saturn, and/or you can reuse an F-1 engine.  NASA considered engine re-use from Mercury and abandoned it every time up until the Shuttle.  The SSME engines were designed to be reusable (and used non-sooty fuel) and still were more expensive to refurbish than to launch a single use rocket (presumably without the 100T returning penalty).  You would need to redesign the entire engine to throttle (Saturn emulated "throttling" by turning off an engine) and somehow create the autonomous computers out of 1970s tech (hint, plenty of computers were built using discrete transistors at the time).

3.  If you want to go for re-use, the DC-3 appeared the way to go.  Get rid of the pointless specs that the Apollo-Shuttle needs, and the DC-3 is suddenly viable.  The only real question is why the DC-3 hauls jet engines into space while the flown shuttle didn't need them (hopefully they could have done without them and had more cargo room).

4.  If Congress/DoD/NASA are willing to ditch the cargo bay (and make the entire orbiter 30T), you open some new possibilities for the actual shuttle design.  An "regular" shuttle (as designed, but considerably scaled down to 30T launches), and a "heavy" shuttle, with two more (Buran-style) SRBs and presumably a somewhat larger fuel tank (plus another 30-50T inside a fairing).  Note that this gives you *real* re-use (wildly easier than anything made out of Apollo parts, but still limited to Shuttle-level reuse.  i.e refill the steel SRBs and rebuild the SSMEs).  I'm really liking this idea and am seriously wondering if "blocking the pilot's view" killed it , was the Spirit of St. Louis (another famous vehicle that blocked all forward visibility) on display near the capitol (the Smithsonian Air and Space museum didn't open until 6 years after the Shuttle was started.  Some of the exhibits were in the Castle, but I was extremely young when I visited then).

The SSMEs were more expensive since they were so darn complex and advanced.

But the computers are definately a problem. Looks like I'll have to invent a non-propulsive solution.

The DC-3 used jet engines on the first stage to be able to land back on a runway, the 2nd stage used it to make landing easier. It wasn't really needed.

And the pilot has little control over the launch- apollo did just fine with no view.

And a "heavy" version (which I doubt would be needed) could be made with 5m diameter F-1 LRBs, landing via parachute in the ocean- or just make the rocket entirely expendable, and remove the Shuttle with an engine pod.

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9 hours ago, Exploro said:

Part of the reason is that the speeds a re-entry vehicle returning from the Moon or beyond would be traveling substantially faster than one coming from LEO. With that in mind a capsule design makes more sense than a winged craft.

Then why make super expensive LEO only shuttle? :)

NASA should continue using capsules from Gemini or Apollo.

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6 hours ago, fredinno said:

So? Are you implying ULA doesn't use modern tech? I do not see them using apollo-era computers....

And one way they cut overheads is by standardising engines (producing more of one type instead of few of 2 types). Another is by hiring only young employees, so they don't have to pay as much to them.

And Merlins today have little to do with the ones used on Falcon 1. The original Merlin was ablatively-cooled, had FAR lower thrust, and did not use a deepcryo RP-1 Lox mixture. The newest ones are ablatively cooled, have over 200% more thrust, and use Deepcryo Rp-1 Lox.

 

And you can make engines from assembly lines if you make more, not less, like you're proposing, which reduces costs.

That's because the rate of engines was only 10 per year. If the Saturn IB used them, that would increase H-1 use to enough of a level to use mass-production, the SIB used 8 of those.

So, I should consider something like parachuted landings, or parafoil capture of the S-IC?

I agree with you on the mono-block- the entire reason to use the multi-block 1st stage was to have commonality with missiles, that by 1970, were retired. However, I do not agree on the F-1, as I explained earlier.

A space Shuttle can launch nukes, then keep them there for long periods of time, then deorbit them back to Earth at up to mach 10. The extra energy, and the near-impossibility to deflect them makes a nuke in space worth it, albeit very expensive.

ULa uses tech from the 90s, at least in some aspects, and the RD-180 is based on a design from the late seventies.

The merlin was heavily upgraded over time.

SpaceX isn't cutting costs with commonality or mass production. They're cutting overheads. There's something called diseconomies of scale, which is when the more you build the more expensive the product gets, since you get to a point where you have to add more overheads to build those extra products.

10 per year for 10 years is only 100. They actually built the engines in batches, and also the rockets.

Engines are hard to put on assembly lines. You have to mold and cast the injectors, which takes a long time, you have to mold and cast the manifold, the Turbopumps, and weld a whole bunch of stuff together. They're not like cars, where you can add one piece at a time, they can only be built on assembly line to an extent, which limits total production unless you go bigger, which raises the limit.

One F-1 IS cheaper, that's the bottom line, the simple truth. It has 1/8 the number of Turbopumps and other complicated components as well as less mani folding in the actual rocket stage. An F-1 is just a better configuration.

The H-1s: legacy hardware, all complex and expensive components multiplied by 8

F-1: relatively new, more efficient, more cost effective

A turbopump takes a long time regardless of size, and the H-1's TP does not take 8 times less time, and thus a single F-1 makes sense.

They actually didn't originally want H-1s, they wanted to use Es, but they couldn't be developed in time.

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7 hours ago, fredinno said:

A space Shuttle can launch nukes, then keep them there for long periods of time, then deorbit them back to Earth at up to mach 10. The extra energy, and the near-impossibility to deflect them makes a nuke in space worth it, albeit very expensive.

You can really only do one nuke at a time this way, and only at the cost of a non-negligible amount of OMS fuel, and you're a sitting duck when your target realizes what hit them.

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3 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

ULa uses tech from the 90s, at least in some aspects, and the RD-180 is based on a design from the late seventies.  The merlin was heavily upgraded over time.

The Merlin is being heavily and rapidly upgraded because SpaceX started from the bottom from scratch with an engine designed for the misbegotten Falcon I.  It has to evolve or they'd be bankrupt and the bits sold off to the highest bidder at auction.

It's not like there was some huge revolution in rocket technology over the last forty years that ULA is missing out on.

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3 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

ULa uses tech from the 90s, at least in some aspects, and the RD-180 is based on a design from the late seventies.

The merlin was heavily upgraded over time.

SpaceX isn't cutting costs with commonality or mass production. They're cutting overheads. There's something called diseconomies of scale, which is when the more you build the more expensive the product gets, since you get to a point where you have to add more overheads to build those extra products.

A turbopump takes a long time regardless of size, and the H-1's TP does not take 8 times less time, and thus a single F-1 makes sense.

They actually didn't originally want H-1s, they wanted to use Es, but they couldn't be developed in time.

Space-X also gets certain NRE advantages in having a single type of engine (in vacuum and non-vacuum models).  Using a straight F-1 has issues similar to using an RD-180 design straight out of the 1970s (as opposed to whatever they are using now), it is built assuming 1960s parts and skills.  My understanding is that NASA recently built an F-1 by using (ultra-high-tech metal additive) 3d printing, as the welding costs (and inspection) required would have been prohibitive.

Don't underestimate engine-out issues.  If you have any hope of manned launches or plan on lifting vehicles that cost more than the launch costs (i.e. nearly all the existing market) you will need extreme reliability.  Allowing a single engine-out changes your reliability from roughly the reliability of the engine to the reliability of the engine squared (unless, of course a bracket fails in your fuel/oxidizer tank).

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4 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

ULa uses tech from the 90s, at least in some aspects, and the RD-180 is based on a design from the late seventies.

The merlin was heavily upgraded over time.

SpaceX isn't cutting costs with commonality or mass production. They're cutting overheads. There's something called diseconomies of scale, which is when the more you build the more expensive the product gets, since you get to a point where you have to add more overheads to build those extra products.

10 per year for 10 years is only 100. They actually built the engines in batches, and also the rockets.

Engines are hard to put on assembly lines. You have to mold and cast the injectors, which takes a long time, you have to mold and cast the manifold, the Turbopumps, and weld a whole bunch of stuff together. They're not like cars, where you can add one piece at a time, they can only be built on assembly line to an extent, which limits total production unless you go bigger, which raises the limit.

One F-1 IS cheaper, that's the bottom line, the simple truth. It has 1/8 the number of Turbopumps and other complicated components as well as less mani folding in the actual rocket stage. An F-1 is just a better configuration.

The H-1s: legacy hardware, all complex and expensive components multiplied by 8

F-1: relatively new, more efficient, more cost effective

A turbopump takes a long time regardless of size, and the H-1's TP does not take 8 times less time, and thus a single F-1 makes sense.

They actually didn't originally want H-1s, they wanted to use Es, but they couldn't be developed in time.

Ok, I guess we will always have different opinions.

4 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

You can really only do one nuke at a time this way, and only at the cost of a non-negligible amount of OMS fuel, and you're a sitting duck when your target realizes what hit them.

No, the Shuttle would be long gone by the time the nuke deorbits. Either way, it doesn't matter, treaty has made it illegal anyways.

1 hour ago, wumpus said:

Space-X also gets certain NRE advantages in having a single type of engine (in vacuum and non-vacuum models).  Using a straight F-1 has issues similar to using an RD-180 design straight out of the 1970s (as opposed to whatever they are using now), it is built assuming 1960s parts and skills.  My understanding is that NASA recently built an F-1 by using (ultra-high-tech metal additive) 3d printing, as the welding costs (and inspection) required would have been prohibitive.

Don't underestimate engine-out issues.  If you have any hope of manned launches or plan on lifting vehicles that cost more than the launch costs (i.e. nearly all the existing market) you will need extreme reliability.  Allowing a single engine-out changes your reliability from roughly the reliability of the engine to the reliability of the engine squared (unless, of course a bracket fails in your fuel/oxidizer tank).

More engines also increases the chance of one of them failing. :P

But yeah, redundancy is a good idea.

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2 hours ago, wumpus said:

Space-X also gets certain NRE advantages in having a single type of engine (in vacuum and non-vacuum models).  Using a straight F-1 has issues similar to using an RD-180 design straight out of the 1970s (as opposed to whatever they are using now), it is built assuming 1960s parts and skills.  My understanding is that NASA recently built an F-1 by using (ultra-high-tech metal additive) 3d printing, as the welding costs (and inspection) required would have been prohibitive.

Don't underestimate engine-out issues.  If you have any hope of manned launches or plan on lifting vehicles that cost more than the launch costs (i.e. nearly all the existing market) you will need extreme reliability.  Allowing a single engine-out changes your reliability from roughly the reliability of the engine to the reliability of the engine squared (unless, of course a bracket fails in your fuel/oxidizer tank).

We're talking about back in the 60s....

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13 minutes ago, fredinno said:

And things like "engine out" still apply back then. An Apollo SatV mission was saved by it, forgot which one.

I was getting the impression that he thought I wanted to bring back the Saturn.

Engine out obviously still applies, however, almost no F-1 ever had a problem, even on most unmanned flights. Four E-1s might've been better: engine out and less complex.

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45 minutes ago, fredinno said:

And things like "engine out" still apply back then. An Apollo SatV mission was saved by it, forgot which one.

Apollo 6, the second (unmanned) Saturn V/CSM test.   And mind you, being saved by engine out was a bit of a fluke.   It wasn't supposed to have engine out capability in the first place because it was thought that the gimbals and the flight control system wouldn't be able to compensate.  (Also keep in mind that even though it was trying to, the cause of the engine out didn't lead to unplanned disassembly.)

And saving is perhaps a bit of an overstatement, they had to use the CSM's SPS to circularize and as a result didn't have enough delta-V to accelerate the CSM enough to meet the re-entry parameters.  (It was supposed to simulate a lunar re-entry by using the SPS to accelerate the stack before SM jettison.)

In fact, AFAIK, none of the "saved from engine out" flights to date (the Shuttle had two ATO due to insufficient thrust) actually saved the entire mission.

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16 hours ago, fredinno said:

A space Shuttle can launch nukes, then keep them there for long periods of time, then deorbit them back to Earth at up to mach 10. The extra energy, and the near-impossibility to deflect them makes a nuke in space worth it, albeit very expensive.

Consider that ICBM's utilized MIRV's. MIRV were inherently capable of defeating the ABM countermeasures of that era (ABM systems that themselves utilized nuclear warheads. Thus any extra kinetic energy from orbital deployment might impart is somewhat moot). Further by staying in orbit for prolonged periods; an orbiter would most certainly be detected by Soviet tracking stations. Thus it's very presence cedes the element of surprise. The Russians were experimenting with anti-satellite technology around the same time the Shuttle was being developed. Had the Soviets went beyond the experimental stage and actually deployed ASAT weaponry, an orbiter loitering in space would most assuredly be high on the list of potential targets.

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6 hours ago, DerekL1963 said:

Apollo 6, the second (unmanned) Saturn V/CSM test.   And mind you, being saved by engine out was a bit of a fluke.   It wasn't supposed to have engine out capability in the first place because it was thought that the gimbals and the flight control system wouldn't be able to compensate.  (Also keep in mind that even though it was trying to, the cause of the engine out didn't lead to unplanned disassembly.)

And saving is perhaps a bit of an overstatement, they had to use the CSM's SPS to circularize and as a result didn't have enough delta-V to accelerate the CSM enough to meet the re-entry parameters.  (It was supposed to simulate a lunar re-entry by using the SPS to accelerate the stack before SM jettison.)

In fact, AFAIK, none of the "saved from engine out" flights to date (the Shuttle had two ATO due to insufficient thrust) actually saved the entire mission.

Actually, the 2nd stage of Apollo 13 was saved by engine out capability- well, there was still a failure, but it had nothing to do with the 2nd stage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_13#Launch_and_translunar_injection

3 hours ago, Exploro said:

Consider that ICBM's utilized MIRV's. MIRV were inherently capable of defeating the ABM countermeasures of that era (ABM systems that themselves utilized nuclear warheads. Thus any extra kinetic energy from orbital deployment might impart is somewhat moot). Further by staying in orbit for prolonged periods; an orbiter would most certainly be detected by Soviet tracking stations. Thus it's very presence cedes the element of surprise. The Russians were experimenting with anti-satellite technology around the same time the Shuttle was being developed. Had the Soviets went beyond the experimental stage and actually deployed ASAT weaponry, an orbiter loitering in space would most assuredly be high on the list of potential targets.

Still, a nuke in space can have a tactical advantage.

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46 minutes ago, fredinno said:

Actually, the 2nd stage of Apollo 13 was saved by engine out capability- well, there was still a failure, but it had nothing to do with the 2nd stage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_13#Launch_and_translunar_injection

Still, a nuke in space can have a tactical advantage.

It was due to the pogo effect that they shut that one engine down, and that effect could happen to almost any design.

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4 hours ago, fredinno said:

Still, a nuke in space can have a tactical advantage.

Not really, because unless you're really lucky it'll almost always be at least hours away from being into a position to be deorbited onto target.   If you're playing Global Thermonuclear War, a weapon that's unpredictable as to availability and won't be for hours or days might as well not exist.

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13 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

It was due to the pogo effect that they shut that one engine down, and that effect could happen to almost any design.

Exactly, if it was one giant engine, the mission might have had to be aborted.

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1 hour ago, fredinno said:

Exactly, if it was one giant engine, the mission might have had to be aborted.

True, however that was on the second stage.

And if it was only one engine then they would understand that they should prevent pogoing, and thus the thrust structure would be designed to mitigate it. But they could do that to multi engine stages too.

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8 hours ago, DerekL1963 said:

Not really, because unless you're really lucky it'll almost always be at least hours away from being into a position to be deorbited onto target.   If you're playing Global Thermonuclear War, a weapon that's unpredictable as to availability and won't be for hours or days might as well not exist.

Wouldn't the hours and days part depend on orbit inclination? If it went to a polar orbit it could be just a few hours couldn't it?

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11 hours ago, Halo_003 said:

Wouldn't the hours and days part depend on orbit inclination? If it went to a polar orbit it could be just a few hours couldn't it?

It's not so much inclination as orbital period and inclination.  A relatively low polar orbit might bring you in range of your target only every twenty four hours or so.

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  • 3 years later...
On 2/7/2016 at 12:36 PM, fredinno said:

 mmv3ia.jpg

 

This is a modified version of the Saturn-Shuttle concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn-Shuttle

 

NOTE: The version shown uses J-2S engines, but have been changed back to SSMEs for the increased thrust!

 

The Saturn-Shuttle was a concept to launch the Space Shuttle on a modified Saturn V. For this version, I modified the original design (which had a payload capacity of 60.5 T to LEO) to instead use a 6.5m diameter external tank (the same diameter as the S-IVB, reducing costs for new infrastructure) and slightly shorter, to be only slightly longer than the Shuttle itself. The top of the tank would contain a payload fairing for higher-risk or oversize payloads, like space station modules, or Shuttle-Centaur missions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centaur_%28rocket_stage%29#Shuttle-Centaur.

 

Meanwhile, the S-IC would be kept, but with 3-4 F-1A engines instead of 5 for the reduced mass of the upper stages. The center engine would do the reentry and landing burns, before the S-IC propulsively lands on a barge for reuse. This would make use of the extra S-IC performance to reduce the costs of this system (instead of using the hard-to-reuse SRBs). Larger fins may be added to increase this launch system's stability.

 

Lastly, it can also launch unmanned- as the development money for the SRBs and 8m diameter External Tank is instead of modifying the Shuttle to be unmanned. Ejection seats and pressure suits would always be worn during manned missions. A preliminary launch payload capacity and first launch date of 30T to LEO and 1982-1983.

 

A heavy-lift version could be made by first dumping S-IC reusability, then removing the Shuttle, instead placing the now air-started SSMEs on the side of the rocket, where the Shuttle was. The payload would be carried in the 6.5 meter diameter fairing, which can be increased to 8 meters if necessary, and would target a payload capacity of 90T to LEO, possibly increasing to 95T with the Centaur-Shuttle upper stage. A larger upper stage, and another F-1A engine added to the core stage, would increase the payload to 130T to LEO.

 

How much would thus reduce launch and development costs of the Space Shuttle if it was developed like this in the first place? Would it work?

Can you make one in KSP and show a photo of it? Maybe a video of you launching it?

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