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Back To The Future
I still plan to write something about this soon, but Jeff Faust has a good overview of the latest concept to meet NASA's Shuttle replacement/complement needs, an Apollo capsule derivative.
Posted by Rand Simberg at May 07, 2003 11:43 AM
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As Faust says in the linked story,
...the report makes it clear that an ?Apollo-derived? CRV or CTV will place far more of an emphasis on ?derived? than on ?Apollo?. Other than the generic shape of the capsule and a few minor subsystems, very little of the original Apollo design was deemed suitable for a future design. This should put the brakes on speculation that all NASA needs to do to build a new capsule is to simply dust off the old Apollo design.
This should be obvious, since even the Shuttle Orbiter can't be cheaply replicated today -- too much of the technology is antiquated and no longer readily available; the additional decade and a half between it and Apollo only makes matters worse for Apollo.
The issues surrounding land-landing and the trajectory of the deorbit module only make capsules worse as a successful CRV design. I don't have much faith in the Apollo-derived solutions -- I see them as a good way to find yet another corner to work ourselves into, and NASA has shown itself to be a master of that.
Posted by Troy at May 8, 2003 12:32 AM
The pic over the article isn't Skylab- it's
the last Apollo removing the docking mechanism
for the Apollo-Soyuz mission.
Posted by Dave A Burroughs at May 8, 2003 08:13 AM
I'm sorry, I don't get it (yeah, call me stupid.) To keep cost down you only want to send up the absolute minimum required to get people back down. That means a reentry vehicle only large enough for passengers and heat shield. The command module doesn't need to go up but once and never has to come down (until it's useful life is over.)
Once the RV hits the atmosphere it should self orient (heat shield directed by center of gravity) and allow for unconscious passengers. Add airbags and parachutes to a teardrop.
Don't call it a command module (call it an orbital tug) it's job is to catch the RV before it plunges safely back into the atmosphere.
Since you only have to send the tug (or fleet of tugs) up once, you can make them big and powerful (and not aerodynamic.)
Somebody tell me what I'm missing (or is this just not glamorous enough?)
When the space elevator become real I'll buy a ticket, until then we should concentrate on cheap and scalable.
Posted by ken anthony at May 8, 2003 06:08 PM
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