Torbjörn Larsson was complaining that we are using too many SRB segments in the Ares launch vehicle.

That wasn’t my main complaint – it was the changes. But yes, there’s no need to let transport (rather, economy) be a deciding factor for cutting edge technology. That is a basic problem here.

Btw, I like your out-of-the-shadows suggestion.

Things are always more complex and nuanced when you know the whole story. Like the comments about why didn’t we keep rolling out Saturn V’s. I loved the Saturn V,and the IB. Great birds! But I wouldn’t bring back the Saturn V today, even if we could. The S-IC stage was an awesome beast, but the same job can be done much cheaper and more reliably today by Solid Rocket Boosters. The F-1 engines were marvels of engineering, but way too costly to use once and throw them in the drink 50 miles downrange. The S-II was a helluv an engineering achievement, but way too costly, too. North American fought constraints imposed by weight growth in both the other stages, and had to make compromises that made the S-II very difficult, costly, and time consuming to manufacture. The S-IVB was, by comparison, a piece of cake. I’m sure the Douglas boys would disagree, but they had an easier job than Stormy and the boys at Downey. But to answer the question, we scrapped the Saturn V because of three wars. The War on Poverty, the Viet Nam War, and the Cold War. All three were going at once. The Johnson administration cut our budget, and Nixon’s OMB cut us more. We were told we could not contininue those excessive $4B budgets, with big, expensive rockets. So a reusable space truck looked pretty attractive. (Perhaps kind of like the “Secret Shadow Rocket” does today. Everything looks good on briefing charts. You don’t run into the hard brick walls of physics and engineering, not to mention economics).

The original proposal was for a fully reusable, crewed, flyback booster, with liquid fueled engines. We didn’t get to build that one, even though that was the one that generated the optimistic turn-around and cost models. Congress and OMB said “no” due to peak year funding constraints and total program cost. So we ended up with what we got. A marvel of engineering, but a whole string of compromises due to cost constraints. And it violates one of the cardinal rules of rocket design. Don’t put fragile components (tile, RCC leading edges, etc.) downsteam from stuff that can break off! Like spray-on foam. Still, I’ll hate to see the old birds stop flying. BTW, Does anyone else think it’s insane to retire the Shuttle before we have a proven replacement capability,and put the very existance of the Space Station and crew at the mercy of a single failure which could ground the Russian Soyez fleet?

One more example of why things are not always what they seem. Torbjörn Larsson was complaining that we are using too many SRB segments in the Ares launch vehicle. Turns out that decision was made by a couple of horses asses. Literally. British roads date back to Roman times, and were made just wide enough to accomodate a pair of horses pulling a chariot. This practice persisted to colonial times, and was copied in the colonies. Our railroads were often built on existing road beds, determining the rail guage. All our railroad bridges and tunnels were built to acommodate this guage. The solid rocket segments are built in Utah, and come by rail to KSC. So, the SRB diameter was determined by a couple of horses asses. Otherwise, we could use shorter, fatter, and thus fewer segments. But we can’t get them to KSC.

NASA often does things the way they do because of laws and budgets passed by the congressmen YOU elected. Please stop blaming NASA for decisions beyond their control. Can you imagine Mike Griffin testifying before Congress, “We decided to scrap the Constellation program designs and schedules because a few guys came up with what they claim is a better idea on their lunch hours. Yes sir, we did have concept, engineering, budget, and programmatic reviews of our current plans. No sir, these ideas were not submitted then. They have not passed our proven processes of peer and senior management review. But they claim they have a better idea, so we are throwing away two years and $3B of effort. I have every confidence they will come up with something.”

Give me a break!!!

I have not seen these “Secret Shadow Rocket” designs, nor am I competent to judge them myself. But these troops should have the courage of their convictions. They should stand up like men, make an appointment with Mike Griffen, march boldly into his office and present their plans. He will give them a fair hearing, He is, IMHO, the best NASA Administrator since Jim Webb. NASA has a process whereby anyone who thinks anything is going wrong can air thier concerns all the way to the top. So stand up, Shadow Warriors, step out of the shadows, and speak up!

Bill
Proud NASA Alumnus

I too fail to see why they scrapped the Saturn V program. In hindsight it seems to me that it would have been far less expensive to continue rolling out Saturn V’s, which, as has already been stated, were more powerful than the Shuttle. Plus they had the advantage of being able to deliver to both LEO and boosting out of orbit.

First from a 4 segment SRB to a 5 segment SRB, due to a better choice of upper stage engine:

This Crew Launch Vehicle (CLV), named Ares I, originally featured a modified 4-segment SRB for its first stage, while a liquid-fueled second stage, powered by a single Space Shuttle Main Engine, would have propelled the Orion into orbit. It’s current design, initially introduced in 2006, and since modified, will feature the originally planned, but scrapped 5-segment SRB first-stage, with a second stage powered by an Apollo-derived J-2 rocket engine.

But then from a 5 segment SRB to a 6 segment SRB because the Altair lander gets heavier (?):

The redesign, which incorporates a larger Ares V core holding six RS-68B engines and making the booster taller and more powerful than the now-retired Saturn V and Energia rockets, will allow the Ares V to place the Altair lunar lander into space and propel that, and the Orion spacecraft to the Moon by 2020. Unlike the 5-segment SRB for the Ares I, the 5.5-segment boosters will be identical in design, construction, and function to the current SRBs, except for the extra segments.

More parts means less safety. But at least they wont lift crew in that system.

Personally, I can’t see how we will be back on the Moon by 2020 at current funding levels.

Except he doesn’t go far enough. It won’t happen but if you want to achieve objectives in space pick the ten most successful project managers under 50 and give them authority to each hire 2 or 3 percent of the current NASA staff into a new agency which will contain 20 to 30% of the existing NASA staff. Give/force the rest of the NASA staff onto early retirement at half pay.

Then give the new NASA a sufficient budget to hire 10% additional new staff per year exclusively from the new pool of fresh top-grade engineering and science grads under 30 years old – and require them to lay off at least 5% of the existing staff every year so that the staff increases at about a net 5% each year. I’m a productive 60 old fart myself but the fact is that creativity and productivity do not improve with age for the vast mass of the working population, and even if they did almost all very long term employees get hide bound and lazy.

”The Saturn V was far too expensive to keep flying”

Not really. In fact, the original plan was to keep Saturn V flying because it could handle far larger payloads than Shuttle; Shuttle was originally intended only to replace the medium boosters like Atlas and Titan, with Delta (it was smaller in those days) retained for smaller payloads and Saturn V for larger ones. Saturn V could put in LEO a payload about 5x what Shuttle could leave up there.

What happened, though, in a move by Shuttle program managers to trim runaway budget overruns, and coincidentally burn the Saturn V bridge to ensure it wouldn’t endanger Shuttle, was that the Saturn V launch pads (Complex 39A and 39B) and the Vehicle (nee Vertical) Assembly Building were massively remodeled to accomodate Shuttle ops (original plans were for separate facilities) which rendered them unusable for Saturn.

Ultimately the outcome of that made the Saturn V too expensive to fly, yeah — you’d have to rebuild the infrastructure.

Expect to see similar decisions made by NASA to force a commit to Ares at the expense of anything that can reuse use existing Shuttle infrastructure as-is. Of course they’ll color them as “cost-saving” measures.