How would you improve the Shuttle design?

[ZedNova]

First off, i'd probably make it into a cylinder, remove the wings, add a nosecone parachute...

[Kryten]

What's the point in being able to 'reassess' a sample return mission to something other than sample return? That'd require a failure in your return system, which means humans could only 'reassess' into one thing; a catastrophe. That's the other issue here, you can send robotic missions with a 30% failure chance and nobody cares, but humans have to have much less than that. It drives up cost even more than having to lug around life support, much larger return capsule, et.c. already do.

[GJames]

Why do you assume a rover wouldn't be able to find something like the genesis rock, for example? After all, it could have a lot more time at the landing site than any plausible human mission.

There was a plan put forward by two NASA engineers in the 1990's for a manned mission to Mars (four crew members) using only existing technologies. It was proposed to cost around $20-30 billion dollars, only a bit more than the $18 billion that each Apollo landing cost.

Bringing it back to your point about robotic missions being able to investigate their landing site more, the mission was planned to stay on the surface for 18 months, and they would have a methane powered buggy which would extend their range to 320km in any direction.

That's nearly ten times as far as the most widely traveled robotic rover, and with a humans ability to put things into context and reassess the situation that Nikolai and Fractal mentioned, that's a lot of exploration and possible discoveries right there.

Unfortunately, the Mars Direct plan that I was talking about was never approved because it was blocked by certain teams at NASA who felt that their projects wouldn't be needed for it. It, and all the other manned mission proposals outside of LEO have all been pushed to one side in favor of robotic missions by people with much the same mindset as you.

We will have to go to other planets eventually, basic human curiosity and instinct dictates that. It's just the question of when we will go, and how long we were held up by pen-pushing bureaucrats who were too concerned about the value of the mission and how much it would cost.

[Flixxbeatz]

Two more additional SRBs, this time attached to the Orbiter itself for extra OOMPH

[ThePyrateCaptain]

Better designed propulsion systems, more efficient propulsion systems. Quicker turn around time. Modular construction to fit mission specific tasks. Life pod. Artificial gravity for prolonged space flight.

The list goes on and on.

They call it sci fi when we want better, 30 years ago cell phones were bulky and not very good. Now they look like communicators, smart technology ain't so.

[Canopus]

Better designed propulsion systems, more efficient propulsion systems. Quicker turn around time. Modular construction to fit mission specific tasks. Life pod. Artificial gravity for prolonged space flight.

The list goes on and on.

They call it sci fi when we want better, 30 years ago cell phones were bulky and not very good. Now they look like communicators, smart technology ain't so.

And how would that all work? Artificial gravity, life pod and better designed propulsion system?

[henrik908]

What the hell is wrong with you?!

Nothing

[Nikolai]

It's the entire point of the mission; identify an area with samples you want, send a lander, and select them very carefully. Not like there needs to be any hurry about it.

What you seem to be missing is that there's a break-even point. It's not the case that once you send a lander, (a) you'll succeed as long as the lander doesn't fail; nor is it the case that ( everything after the sending of the lander is a sunk cost, and everything else you get for free.

To address (a), there's no way for a lander to adapt if initial hypotheses are "wrong enough". A human can adapt on the fly. To be sure, a human mission can still be "wrong enough" to fail, but those parameters are much broader; and hopefully, we have some basic robotic recon at that point anyway.

When it comes to (, we need to ask how much searching time is enough. If a lander can be expected to return a piece of information in, say, ten thousand times the amount of time a human would take (to make Squyres' glib estimate work), then we need to ask whether it's cost-effective to pay the engineers, scientists, technicians, ground support, custodians, etc., etc. for ten thousand times the amount of ground time or whether it's more cost-effective to build a manned program. To be sure, it's much more of a bargain when those times are short; but as our understanding deepens and we need more detail, sending humans gets more and more beneficial.

That's why I refer to the depth of scientific knowledge required. If you want to get a basic overview, a machine is much more cost-effective to send into the hazardous environment of space. But there comes a point when sending machines is more expensive simply because designing a machine to last long enough (or sending enough machines to make up the difference) to seek knowledge deeper than what we currently have is prohibitive. (More humans can be built with unskilled labor, after all; even though they're squishy, they're adaptable and smart.)

[Nikolai]

What's the point in being able to 'reassess' a sample return mission to something other than sample return?

That's only the most dramatic kind of reassessment. It's also possible that -- as we see with our attempts to reconcile orbital measurements with ground measurements on Mars -- your initial assessments could be off, and you might end up needing to re-analyze the geology on the fly and return different samples from what you originally thought you wanted. And again, a human can re-assess ten thousand times faster than a robot with a camera, a spectrometer, and a ground crew.

[Fractal_UK]

Okay, to go back to the original point about the space shuttle, as a European, I'll approach this from an ESA perspective.

I would not operate a vehicle like the space shuttle without an almost complete redesign to a horizontally launched vehicle. In practice this would mean that I would provide funding to develop the Skylon concept, a fully reusable spaceplane design powered by the SABRE engine in exchange for the right to either manufacture or buy a certain amount of these craft at a fixed price. I would also look at designing other craft that could utilise the SABRE engine to meet a variety of payload requirements, the capability for super-heavy launch, if possible, would be ideal.

While doing this, I would invest in electrical propulsion systems combining reasonable TWR and high Isp (VASIMR, magnetoplasdynamic, etc) for applications once in orbit, along with suitable reactors to power these designs.

Combined these would offer a capacity to launch both cargo and humans into space at vastly reduced cost, as well as the option of using in orbit construction to build spacecraft capable of travelling much further afield. It has been correctly argued by some here that a plane isn't exactly the ideal configuration for a spacecraft, a good reason to utilise the plane-like part solely for the area where it is most efficient, i.e. the to orbit and return from orbit mission components. It is after all likewise true that rocket-like designs are horrendously inefficient for atmospheric applications.

These steps would likely transform ESA into the world's premier space agency, easily capable of manned Lunar and Martian operations, something I would definitely consider to be a step in the right direction!

[Nikolai]

There was a plan put forward by two NASA engineers in the 1990's for a manned mission to Mars (four crew members) using only existing technologies. It was proposed to cost around $20-30 billion dollars, only a bit more than the $18 billion that each Apollo landing cost.

Bringing it back to your point about robotic missions being able to investigate their landing site more, the mission was planned to stay on the surface for 18 months, and they would have a methane powered buggy which would extend their range to 320km in any direction.

Let me illustrate the principle of "break-even" with this example. It's simplified, yes, but it helps to illustrate the point.

Let's say that our crew was only able to spend 10% of their surface time -- 1.8 months -- doing useful work. And let's say that it cost $30 billion. And a rover works at one ten-thousandth of the rate of a human.

The same work, done with rovers, would last 72,000 months -- or 6000 years. Let's say that you can make a really phenomenal rover that will last five years and can continuously operate the entire time. That's 1200 rovers to do the equivalent work of your crew of four with a 10% duty cycle. Now, for it to be cost effective, each rover has to cost less than twenty-five million dollars, including support -- which sounds like a lot until you actually start building one.

Edited May 20, 2013 by Nikolai
Forgot to multiply by four

[Kryten]

Why are you assuming the slow pace of rovers is due to them working slower, rather than simply scrutinising every tiny thing they come across? After all, Lunokhod 2 went further than Opportunity has in about a tenth of the time, by the metrics you seem to be using that means it was a better rover.

[Nikolai]

Why are you assuming the slow pace of rovers is due to them working slower, rather than simply scrutinising every tiny thing they come across? After all, Lunokhod 2 went further than Opportunity has in about a tenth of the time, by the metrics you seem to be using that means it was a better rover.

I never measured or compared distance. Try again.

[Kryten]

That was derek sorry, misremembered. Still, at least he gave something quantifiable. A rover 'works' at one ten-thousandth the rate of a human, according to who? How is 'work' defined? What are you assuming the humans doing? It's not like they can continually take stereo images or hold APXS' still for a few weeks.

[The Stinger]

Why are you assuming the slow pace of rovers is due to them working slower, rather than simply scrutinising every tiny thing they come across? After all, Lunokhod 2 went further than Opportunity has in about a tenth of the time, by the metrics you seem to be using that means it was a better rover.

Just read this article: Why Space Exploration Is a Job for Humans

And if you don't want to then just read this quote:

[Mars rovers] Spirit and Opportunity are fantastic things on Mars, but the fact that they've traveled as far in eight years as the Apollo astronauts traveled in three days speaks volumes.

And by the way, they do little exploration.

Most of the time goes into planning a safe route, determining which spots to examine and if it's safe for the rover to use it's instruments on the sample.

It took curiosity many weeks to finally examine an actual sample.

Edited May 20, 2013 by The Stinger

[Kryten]

It took curiosity many weeks to finally examine an actual sample.

Because it had to test that everything was working properly. We're not in a hurry here.

That article uses some pretty misleading comparisons. The most glaring example is that it compares an apollo-esque mission to mars with a single robotic sample return mission, saying that the crewed mission would bring back a lot more rocks. Except if you throw the same amount of actual money at it, you'd return a heck of a lot more rocks with robotic missions, due to not having to bring the squishy humans along. That's the main issue here. It might be somewhat more efficent for the moon I grant you that, but the advantages of not having life support or having to have abort options increase exponentially as you move further out.

[Nikolai]

A rover 'works' at one ten-thousandth the rate of a human, according to who?

Steve Squyres, Principal Investigator for the MERs. It was a glib estimate which I'm using for some obviously oversimplified calculations, as I mentioned before.

How is 'work' defined?

Certainly not merely traversing distance. I doubt Squyres' point was that the MERs could only move at one ten-thousandth the velocity of a human.

It's not like they can continually take stereo images

Neither can the rovers/landers. I was being generous by allowing them to work continuously. In reality, they can be somewhat autonomous, but they need a lot of input from the people back on Earth to carry out a geological survey intelligently.

or hold APXS' still for a few weeks.

If they really need this particular instrument to figure out the mineral composition of rocks and soil -- which would seem odd for a trained geologist -- they can bring it with them and put it on the ground and let it work. Do you seriously think that Apollo astronauts brought no instruments with them?

[The Stinger]

You are still over looking the fact that rovers can only carry so much instruments and are limited by their hardware and input from Earth.

Humans are more versatile thane rovers.

They can do things faster, decide situations for themselves and can do more stuff in a day than rovers in their whole lifespan.

[Kryten]

They can also not get launched. What you people seem to be missing is that the lower overall cost of the robotic missions means they can actually happen. Nobody is going to pay for another apollo without very good reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with scientific return, never mind a mars landing.

[The Stinger]

So what you say is it's better to have decades and decades of rovers examining other planets, instead of having manned mission which does it in 1 mission.

[ThePyrateCaptain]

And how would that all work? Artificial gravity, life pod and better designed propulsion system?

Well until the tech catches up with the ideas, then don't make one. Basically the current systems are noise converters. They take a fuel and make a lot of noise. Besides what the heck is in space that would make you spend a lot of money to go and see? News flash, this solar system is vacant save for Earth. Nothing to see here, move along.....

[ThePyrateCaptain]

Oh and one more thing, you send people to mars, be prepared to bury them.

[softweir]

And that's part of the problem, isn't it? You can design a rover to accomplish a specific mission and its capable of performing within the parametres of that mission. On the other hand, humans are capable of changing the parametres of their mission due to changing circumstances. Humans have the ingenuinity to reassess the progress of a mission throughout its operation period and if somthing does not appear to be paying off, they can act on the information they have to redefine the mission in a way that affords better results. A rover is only capable to the limits of what was already planned for on the ground.

There is no doubt that a rover can achieve adaquete scientific objectives and, in many cases, for now they are the only option for exploring certain bodies but as it becomes possible to have humans closer to the action, doing so is certain to result in a higher quality of research. That's before we even add the fact that placing humans and in space and doing it safely presents technical challenges that are worth exploring in their own right, something that could have positive benefits ranging from human colonisation and resource utilisation of other planets to sub-orbital passenger flight here on Earth.

I don't agree. The men you send out there will always be limited by the skillset and equipment you send with them and the very limited timescale of any mission; we simply can't send men to Mars for the duration needed to really do any significant research, however skilled and well-equipped they are. For the cost of sending two men and a small range of test equipment for a short-duration mission you can send dozens of rovers out with a far wider range (between them, not on any one rover) of test equipment, AND explore a wider variety of environments and terrains, AND continue the research for years afterwards, AND maintain a large Earth-based skillset to adjust the parameters of a rover's mission to within the limits of its design. Spirit and Opportunity enabled us to learn far more than any single manned mission could have done despite the low cost and limited equipment. Curiosity will do even better. And if it fails to answer any particular questions, then the next rover can be equipped to answer them - and all for far less than one manned mission would have cost.

Having said that, I believe there is a place for manned research, but we can't just send men out blind. If we had sent a manned mission to Mars in place of Spirit and Opportunity then they would have learnt a fraction of what the rovers achieved and used up all NASA's research budget for twenty years, simply because we would have had no informed goals for them to accomplish. We need to learn as much as we can using rovers, so we can pick and choose the destinations for manned missions with specific research goals that rovers can't achieve.

Wait: Weren't we talking about the shuttle?

Edited May 20, 2013 by softweir
Afterthought.

[Canopus]

Well until the tech catches up with the ideas, then don't make one. Basically the current systems are noise converters. They take a fuel and make a lot of noise. Besides what the heck is in space that would make you spend a lot of money to go and see? News flash, this solar system is vacant save for Earth. Nothing to see here, move along.....

So you basically have no idea what you are talking about? You just throw some sci-fi stuff into the conversation? Let me tell you that: the current engines and technologies that can be build, are fully capable of bringing us EVERYWHERE in the solar system. And if you think there is nothing to see in our beautiful sol-system you're just wrong. Go back watching your star wars movies but stop playing KSP.

[Kryten]

So what you say is it's better to have decades and decades of rovers examining other planets, instead of having manned mission which does it in 1 mission.

Yes, because working towards the latter goal ensures no missions will happen at all, and probably with good reason considering the enormity of the costs that would be involved. Might as well get some science out of it.