How would you improve the Shuttle design?

[panfish5]

We should paint it gold and stud it with diamonds so we can orbit with swag .

[Stargate525]

But The Laws of Physics are King, and we are its subjects. There are limits to what we can do, and short of an amazing, unforeseen discovery by our particle physicists out there, we have a pretty solid grasp on how things work now.

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." -Lord Kelvin, 1895

"There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean the atom would have to be shattered at will." -Albert Einstein, 1932

"Transmission of documents via telephone wires is possible in principle, but the apparatus required is so expensive that it will never become a practical proposition." -Dennis Gabor

I'm fairly wary of people saying that we 'can't' do something, especially when it has the potential to make someone fabulously rich.

IF we keep advancing in nano-materials and energy storage we might be at the beginning of an age of space elevators, magneto-pulse propulsion and such things by 2090. But they would not have supplanted rocketry. And I would be 121 years old.

I'm not saying we're at the end of our technological rope by any means. But we need to learn to climb better to get much farther.

then you're an old fart. I'd only be 101, an age easily doable with medical advancements coming down the pipe (or I'll be very, very put out). And given the rate of nanotechnological advancements, I have no doubt we will be able to build a nanotube of the sufficient length to get a space elevator.

[78stonewobble]

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." -Lord Kelvin, 1895

"There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean the atom would have to be shattered at will." -Albert Einstein, 1932

"Transmission of documents via telephone wires is possible in principle, but the apparatus required is so expensive that it will never become a practical proposition." -Dennis Gabor

I'm fairly wary of people saying that we 'can't' do something, especially when it has the potential to make someone fabulously rich.

That just proves that us humans are sometimes wrong. The laws of physics presumably stayed the same no matter what Einstein or anyone else said about them.

But I agree on being weary of exclamations of "absolute certainties" like: "This ship can't sink or tsunami waves at nuclear powerplants will obviously only have a wave height of maximum xx meters".

In some ways it's better to know that you can be wrong than to think you're right.

...

Personally I don't think that "we" ... "need" ... technological leaps to make major inroads in our stellar neighbourhood.

We could go extremely far with things that are technologically achievable today.

Just imagine what we could do with ie. 6-12 scheduled heavy lift launches a year every year (nigh mass produced). 100 tonnes plus to LEO per each one.

A fully developed nuclear powered electric rocket (the reactors have been compact and zipping around the worlds oceans for 4 decades for crying out loud).

...

It's more a question of priorities and will.

...

PS: Well if we have to go "reusable", I'd try with something akin to: Take a saturn 5 analogue, make the first stages reuseable (parachutes and reinforcement), make the re-entrying parts reuseable (cept for stuff like lunar lander payloads offcourse) by applying a 1 time use heatshield on those parts. Replace capsule with something akin to the dynasoar thing. A small space plane... But with 1 time use heatshields.

The question being whether the reuseability will offset the lower efficiency of bringing anything up due to the added weight.

Edited December 23, 2013 by 78stonewobble

[Nibb31]

Erm the Nuclear test ban treaty WAS why the project was cancelled that is a fact. Thats the main reason given.

You do know that there were some pretty good reasons to ban atmospheric nuclear tests, don't you? It wasn't particularly healthy to spread plutonium into the stratosphere or to vitrify pacific islands. Most of those islands were made uninhabitable for centuries. They are certainly not comfortable places for hundreds of engineers to build and launch spaceships.

The USAF aproach to the presidant I heard in a documentry which I think was in the BBC documentry and from a interview with Freeman Dyson himself, I say I think as I heard a few.

As for the classified stuff? Well some of the gennral ideas and projects orion was piggbacked on were declassified but the details arnt and are still locked up.

You really shouldn't believe everything you see on TV.

I am still waiting for a detailed explanation on why it wont work. With maths and evidence?

Sorry, the burden of proof is on you, since you are the one making the positive claim. There is simply no evidence of any detailed engineering work, apart from some conceptual sketches and preliminary studies.

Handwaving the problems away with "Top secret ways of reducing fallout" doesn't work. Neither does "50 mile exclusion zones".

There is no way you can maintain the infrastructure to build, maintain, and replenish a skycraper-sized space ship in the middle of an area that has just been nuked by the previous launch. It is simply impractical to have every launch obliterate your entire infrastructure each time.

The principle of using a pusher plate was a very high-level paper design, but in practice, there is no material that can be exposed to hundreds of nuclear blasts without being affected structurally or becoming radioactive... There is a long way between a few diagrams on paper and getting a proper engineering model that can handle all the mechanical, thermal, biological and radiological constraints with a proper level of reliability.

And you would need more than a "metal plate" to prevent contaminating the whole continent with radioactive elements from the explosion. Especially if you were to launch these things several times. And any of the failure modes of the rocket would have catastrophic consequences.

This whole discussion is stupid anyway, because Orion was never intended as a launch method. Atmospheric explosions are simply a non-starter, for all sorts of reasons. The ship components and nuclear bombs would have to be assembled in orbit the old fashioned way, with good old chemical rockets. Orion was for interstellar propulsion, which is something that we simply have no use for at the moment. Even if we could build an Orion-based propulsion system, we simply don't have any of the other technologies for a manned interstellar expedition.

Im also waiting for your list of better ways to get stuff into orbit cheaply and safely ?

Rockets are actually pretty cheap and safe these days... Mass production and reusability are on the horizon and can only make them cheaper. Don't tell me that you think Orion was ever going to be cheap? And it wasn't desiged to get stuff into orbit at all.

Edited December 23, 2013 by Nibb31

[78stonewobble]

@nibb31:

Orion was for interstellar propulsion, which is something that we simply have no use for at the moment.

I don't quite agree... But because I tend to count "because we should try and see if we can" as a reason all in itself.

It's not really an economically tenable argument though.

[KASASpace]

You know, I was thinking the other day.

How about this:

1. If the goal of the shuttle was to return engines and cargo even though it cost more to refurbish the engines than to buy new ones, then why?

2. Why are the panels on the shuttle so small?

3. Why so big?

Now, to answer them:

1. To fix this, redesign the engines to be reusable up to 5 flights per. After that 5 flights they get rotated out to be refurbished/upgraded.

2. Get bigger tiles/ robotic placement system to make it a lot cheaper.

3. The original design didn't need that much payload, so smaller in general.

And thus, a space shuttle that actually has quick turnarounds.

[KASASpace]

I am cautiously optimistic about a space elevator before 2090

Umm, problem. Earth rotates at a speed of 1000 miles per hour at the equator, the elevator would have to go to geo-synchronous orbit, and would be rather big with limited cargo. Would take years or decades to pay for itself.

[KASASpace]

Can you think of a better way to not only lift huge payloads, including saftey feature that you could never put on current chem rockets into orbit but also travel huge distances at great speed while doing it in a relativly "cheap" and resuable way that opens space up to human expansion in way not thought possible all useing CURRENT tecnology?

Well, have you heard that it would cost over a billion dollars per launch? NOT CHEAP! ANd tiny solids compared to that much fuel, nope, not safe either. I would stick to EELVs for now, maybe not going so, huge.

[IsicDiscontinuity]

Umm, problem. Earth rotates at a speed of 1000 miles per hour at the equator, the elevator would have to go to geo-synchronous orbit, and would be rather big with limited cargo. Would take years or decades to pay for itself.

A decade or two to pay off a space elevator investment is nothing, when you consider what a space elevator gets you. Space access for everyone and everything. No more propellant needed for orbital access from Earth.

It gets you private companies able to launch deep space and interplanetary missions anywhere in the solar system, micro-gravity manufacturing on an economic scale, and more orbital science in a year then in the history of space travel.

It's such a disruptive change in the human condition if we had one that I'd say the idea of a payoff period is basically absurd - the result is so valuable and unpredictable that if it can be done it will be done.

[Nibb31]

A decade or two to pay off a space elevator investment is nothing, when you consider what a space elevator gets you. Space access for everyone and everything. No more propellant needed for orbital access from Earth.

No. A space elevator is too slow for manned transport. Remember that the orbital station lies at GEO at 36000km. Your elevator cabins are going to need to carry power to travel that far, and their speed is going to be limited by the friction of the rollers on the cable. Even if you manage to get your cabins to travel reliably at 200km/h, that's a 2 week journey from the ground to the station, with supplies and consumables to last the trip.

It can only be realistically used for cargo. People would still have to fly up to GEO on multi-stage chemical rockets. SSTO is hard, but single stage to GEO is much much harder. This means that you still have to maintain a conventional launch infrastructure anyway, so the financial savings aren't that much.

It gets you private companies able to launch deep space and interplanetary missions anywhere in the solar system, micro-gravity manufacturing on an economic scale, and more orbital science in a year then in the history of space travel.

Private companies are not going anywhere unless someone pays them to. There is no demand for micro-gravity manufacturing at this point. Most of its advantages can be replicated on the ground for a fraction of the price. Even if there was demand, there would be no need to go the GEO. They could do it with something like the X-37B, or maybe even something like SS1 if the actual operation that benefits from micro-gravity can be cut down to a couple of minutes.

Besides, private corporation rarely invest in long term (>20 year) ventures these days. If they can't have ROI in the next 3 or 4 years, they won't spend money.

It's such a disruptive change in the human condition if we had one that I'd say the idea of a payoff period is basically absurd - the result is so valuable and unpredictable that if it can be done economically it will be done.

Fixed that for you.

Edited December 26, 2013 by Nibb31

[RuBisCO]

I would have never built the space shuttle to begin with. After having spent billions building the Saturn V in the 1960's I would have stay with that for a few decades, upgrading it and having commercial contractors first build several reusable mini-space shuttle launched by Saturn I, Saturn 2/3 to bring personal and small amounts of cargo to a Skylab type spacestation. The mini-shuttle could have been used to work out technological kinks before having companies compete by the 1990's or 2000's for a system that could that could lift 20-30 tons to LEO with 1-2 fully resuables fly back stages, once that working then and only then finally shut down production of the Saturn V and its downgrades.

[Tiberion]

No. A space elevator is too slow for manned transport. Remember that the orbital station lies at GEO at 36000km. Your elevator cabins are going to need to carry power to travel that far, and their speed is going to be limited by the friction of the rollers on the cable. Even if you manage to get your cabins to travel reliably at 200km/h, that's a 2 week journey from the ground to the station, with supplies and consumables to last the trip.

Fixed that for you.

36,000km / 200 kph = 180hours

180h / 24hours per day = 7.5 days

Fixed that for you.

Anyway, the 200km/h speed is related to the initial design. Since so much of the technology is undeveloped yet, its rather early to say that travel time will be a limit on the system. They might have the capabilities to use a magrail by then and decrease friction drastically, allowing high speed ascension.

None of the mundane concerns like logistics and funding are too important until the technology begins to catch up. There are all sorts of companies which want cheap access to sending things up and bringing things down and there are multiple scientific societies devoted to furthering the idea.

Arthur C. Clarke famously said we would see elevators 50 years after people stopped laughing at the notion. I don't know if we've quite stopped laughing yet, or if the technological hurdles will cooperate with that timeline, but it seems plausible.

[crazyewok]

Well, have you heard that it would cost over a billion dollars per launch? NOT CHEAP! ANd tiny solids compared to that much fuel, nope, not safe either. I would stick to EELVs for now, maybe not going so, huge.

I didnt want to go off topic again but to awnser you yes I think it was $1 billion a launch but you could lift 8 million tons at a time so that works out $125 dollers a ton. Way way way more cost effcetive and you would only need one or two launchs to get everything you need in orbit.

[crazyewok]

And as for my own on topic opinion. I think the shuttle was a dead end and couldnt be improved. It was a expensive death trap.

Theres a reason we are still useing the russian Soyuz.

If you offerd me a trip on a soyuz I would take it without hesitation. As for the shuttle I wouldnt even go on it if on the ground in a museum!

[Kryten]

I didnt want to go off topic again but to awnser you yes I think it was $1 billion a launch but you could lift 8 million tons at a time so that works out $125 dollers a ton. Way way way more cost effcetive and you would only need one or two launchs to get everything you need in orbit.

8 million tons? That's pretty impressive, given the pyramid of Giza comes in at about 5 million tons-which would incidentally make this ship the heaviest man-made object ever. The heaviest figure for a worked Orion design I can find, payload and craft, is 20,000 tons.

[KASASpace]

I didnt want to go off topic again but to awnser you yes I think it was $1 billion a launch but you could lift 8 million tons at a time so that works out $125 dollers a ton. Way way way more cost effcetive and you would only need one or two launchs to get everything you need in orbit.

Are we talking about the same thing here? I was talking about SLS, whcih can only get just over 70 tons into LEO for BLOCK I, costing over a billion buck a launch....

Edited December 27, 2013 by KASASpace

[crazyewok]

Really even wiki has

the 8 million super orion listed.

Hell it was from Freeman dysons mouth himself in a interview i first heard it.

Dont know why your having trouble finding it, have another look if you cant let me know and il try and find a good internet link, if not the book project orion the atomic rocket by george dyson will list it,

The first one i know was meant to be 20,000 i beleive to test it but i think the therory was there was little diffrence between 10,000 and 8 milliom tons in reguards with difficulty.

But yes very impresive its the 8 million ton figure that peaked my intrest in the subject.

[crazyewok]

I thought you wererepying to another post

Forget what i said.

[Guest Brody_Peffley]

I would make everything use methane, Cheaper than hydrogen. More dense so more fuel and longer burns and more power.

[Kryten]

Really even wiki has

the 8 million super orion listed.

Yes, but it's not exactly a complete design, is it? It's what happened when somebody took a previous design and set the parameters to 'insane', ignoring actual limits from stuff like maximum practical weapons yield, or the whole ridiculous thing just collapsing under it's own weight.

[crazyewok]

I dont know about the weight issue im not a engineer but the weapons yeild was not much more than for the 20,000 version.

This was actually planned out. If it worked or not who knows? But the engineers and nuclear scientists working on the project thought so and so did the USAF who wanted to carry the idea on.

Fact is the nuclear test ban treaty got the project canned before enough research was done. So no one can be 100% sure but even if they got the 10,000 ton version working that would still have been a enormous earth to orbit cost reduction.

I dont see whatthe hate is? Fine i know saftey was a concern and maybe for the best if was cancelled (at least until 100% fusion is cracked) but the fact is it was a viable plan which putting saftey to one side didnt have any scientific reason not to work. Of course if anyone here is a engineer or nuclear scientist and can give me a indepth reason why the orginal scientists were wrong please let me know.

[Kryten]

I dont know about the weight issue im not a engineer but the weapons yeild was not much more than for the 20,000 version.

It has the same number of weapons as the '1000-2000 ton' version, but would require a few orders of magnitude more total impulse. Given the pulse units were supposed to be able to transfer energy with over 50% efficiency even in the small units, not much of it can be from an increase of that, so it has to come from yield increase.

[crazyewok]

Il have to check on that. I have the book on order.

By the way i hate the term "weapon" its very missleading as the explosions are not being used for warefare or deliberate killing.

[dacamp66]

first thing i would do is to split up the cargo and personnel functions. for cargo, just use a regular unmanned remotely controlled BDB (big dumb booster).

for personnel, a small orbiter with wings/control surfaces just large enough to provide positive, safe control authority; once reentry is finished, deploy a large ram-air parachute to land. landing would be on plain old metal skids NOT wheels (too much unnecessary mass) ala x-15/ dyna soar. on board engines would be OMS only, the lion's share of the launch would be done by the LV . the russians have been doing it in a similar way for DECADES; remember the old engineers proverb: K.I.S.S. (KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID!!!!!!) for a spacecraft to perform at it's best it should (imo) do one thing only and do it well.

P.S.: personnel shuttle should be launched on top of LV not on it's side, if you do this you DOUBLE your chances of survival in a catastrophic LV failure (explosion travels along axis of MINIMUM drag instead of axis of MAXIMUM drag as happened with the challenger disaster (what most people dont know is that a little known nasa report hints that crew MAY have survived explosion only to die when cockpit section slammed into the ocean) if the space shuttle had been a "top launch " design it is possible IMO there might have been survivors.

[KASASpace]

Okay, there were actually many problems with the shuttle, one was the foam, it was expensive to develop, as well as place onto the ET. It would've been cheaper not to use it. As well as an assembly line, building 25 orbiters on the first run, and building all the ETs needed throughout the year, as well as the SSMEs, whcih should've been replaced. Robotic inspection and placement of the tiles would greatly reduce cost and time, as well as a module to remove the SSMEs which get rotated out and refurbished. There, cheaper version of shuttle. Quick turnaround and even an armada of orbiters. This would work 100 times better and because of the launch rate we could upgrade the shuttles and improve the safety 100 times over the course of 2 and a half years. PREPARE FOR THE 200s! Starting of course with OV-201, probably will be named Prometheus, ushering humankind to a new age.