Jon Goff’s musings on essential spacefaring technologies was very useful, inasmuch as it seems to have kicked off a substantial discussion in the blogosphere. One wonders how many at NASA are reading.
[Friday morning update]
Jon has some further thoughts. I would add one technology to his list: routine EVA equipment and orbital assembly techniques.
Anousheh Ansari may want to reconsider her upcoming trip:
Zvezda has manufactured seats, suits and other personal equipment for every single of Soviet cosmonauts, including Yuri Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova who was the first woman to fly to space. Ansari as any other female member of a Soyuz-TMA crew requires a different bowl for disembowelment, Pozdnyakov. “This equipment is fit for answering both kinds of calls of the nature,” Pozdnyakov told Space.com in an interview on Thursday.
[Emphasis mine–Via emailer Adrian Reilly]
[Update at noon]
This part was cute, too:
A woman’s organism is different, that’s why we need to modify some of the life systems in the capsule…
It sure is. Vive la difference!
Jon Goff writes about technologies necessary to a spacefaring civilization that NASA is avoiding developing, instead pouring most of its resources into new and expensive (and probably ultimately unaffordable) launch systems.
[Afternoon update]
Clark Lindsey notes an omission. I agree, tugs are important as well. And NASA’s not working on one of those, either.
Travis Johnson writes about SpaceDev’s prospects, with the loss of its COTS bid. I’m not sure he understands Rocketplane Kistler, though:
Rocketplane Kistler arguably has the design that’s most like SpaceDev’s DreamChaser, in that it’s based on a spaceplane design somewhat like a smaller version of the current shuttle, so if there was a spot for SpaceDev on this contract I expect we have Rocketplane to blame for them not getting it. SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft is essentially a capsule that rides on the Falcon launch vehicle.
I have no idea what he’s talking about here (perhaps because he has no idea what he’s talking about, either). There is no resemblance whatsoever between the Shuttle, Dreamchaser or the Kistler orbital vehicle.
Well, all right, there’s a superficial resemblance between Dreamchaser and the Shuttle, in that they’re both vertical takeoff/horizontal landing vehicles. But neither of them look anything like the Kistler vehicle, which returns a capsule with no wings at all (via parachute, I believe). Perhaps he is confused by the Rocketplane XP (a Learjet derivative), but that has nothing to do with COTS–it’s a suborbital vehicle only.
Ed Kyle has a new lunar architecture proposal (or rather, a variant on an old NASA lunar architecture proposal). It’s an improvement on ESAS (a low bar, of course), but it would still be horrendously expensive, and in the long run, neither affordable or sustainable.
[Update]
Sorry, link is fixed now.
I shouldn’t have to tell regular readers this, but not all who come here are regular readers. Clark Lindsey has a blow-by-blow of the COTS announcement, an RpK press release, and other info.
He does this stuff, so I don’t have to.
[Update on Saturday morning]
Clark has another set of links, and an idiotic quote (are there any other kind?) from John Pike.
COTS finalists are supposed to be announced in a couple hours.
Clark Lindsey has an overview of the program, and links (including one to the webcast of the announcement, which will occur at 4 PM Eastern).
[Update shortly after begin of announcement]
Just said that two have been selected. So we know they’re not going to be spreading money thin.
Well, that didn’t take long. SpaceX and RpK.
That means two (partially) reusable vehicle companies.
[Update a minutes later]
Well, I see via comments that I didn’t have to liveblog it. An army of reporters!
…and probably even get well paid for it, in an influential publication, if I didn’t want to lose my job. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t pay that well…
Proposition (with which I don’t necessarily agree):
NASA’s approach, a return to Apollo (both in terms of the “we need to set a goal and get there,” and the actual hardware concepts) represents the mindset of a cargo cult.
As Rusty Barton noted over at sci.space.policy, in response to this story, “When Boeing started designing the 787, did its engineers go to the Udvar-Hazy Museum and start pulling parts off the Dash-80?”
Discuss.
OK, my question to Dr. Stanley is, if it’s a good idea for Mars, why isn’t it a good idea for the moon?
“If you refilled the EDS in orbit [using commercial LEO fuel depots] it could act as the MTV,” says Georgia Institute of Technology aerospace professor Douglas Stanley, manager of the November 2005 NASA exploration systems architecture study (ESAS).
I think people tend to draw far too many generalizations on the basis of far too few examples in the launch business.
There is a long essay to be written on this subject.
I agree with this as well:
Ironically, most SpaceX personnel come from Boeing, Northrop and other space companies. It is the sometimes Dilbertian environment, not the individual engineers, that holds those organizations back.