http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/01/27/rumor-obama-to-axe-ares-and-constellation/

Anybody know if this Plan B is still on the cards or what else has happened with it?

I’m just annoyed that the animation has the rocket making noise in space. What is this, Star Wars?

Nahh that’s the other govt space project where theyhave lots of “death ray” space satellites blowing up ICBM’s ..

As for noise in space – well, just imagine your listening to the noise from inside the ship
okay?

Its just an audio cue to let us Earth-bound viewers see somethings happening anyway.

According to the designers, “Plan B” (isn’t that some sort of contraceptive?) …

I look forward to seeing NASA’s new RU 486 rocket project …

… But I fear that its launch may get aborted!

(Sorry couldn’t resist.)

So plan A was the Orion-Ares Apollo reheat … Plan B is this intermediate shuttle-Apollo cross …

Will plan C be replacing the extra components here with the old shuttle orbiter again and taking us right back to how we are today?

Nice video & I guess a reasonable idea but … well … its a bit of a let down. I’d like to see something a lot better & more capable. Plan B if we must be please lets try plan A a bit harder first!

It was more about the way NASA is constantly taking two steps forward by first taking two steps back. They don’t spend any money on potentialities that might someday be far, far, far cheaper ways into space; and really, given their funding level, I can’t blame them at all for that.

But the end result is that, forty years after Man walked on The Moon, we’re still plugging away at launch systems that are designed around letting large portions of their structure drop off and burn up in the upper atmosphere. We’re essentially stuck with the “be wasteful and expensive, there’s money to burn!” conceptual framework of the Moon Shot days while there’s just a fraction of the national will to spend oodles of cash on space that those days enjoyed.

It’s the same complaint I had long ago about the STS in general: as cool as it is, it’s a really damn expensive and inefficient way into space, especially considering that the whole shebang is completely and totally limited to LEO.

Space X probably has a better approach in that they are trying to simplify and eventually reuse components from a standard 2 stage rocket design. If successful in launching and producing the falcon 9 rocket they feel they can cut costs to 1/5 th of the current price for and existing Atlas or Delta within a few years. The best approach to reach the moon would probably focus on utilizing the components we already have in the form of the basic shuttle stack since no other rocket that exists or is on the drawing board can lift the necessary volume (10 meters diameter is needed for the current Altair) and mass, around 100 mt or even more is ideal. It simply makes no sense to throw away or extensively modify the current shuttle stack that we have spent 100 billion on over the years when something on the order of an additional 10 billion can modify it into a perfectly good moon rocket.

In addition we should fully fund companies like Space X in developing rockets to support the ISS, LEO operations, propellant transportation and support of basic lunar operations. There is no reason with the right support and right amount of time that a commercial company can’t develop a support systems to extend the effectiveness of the basic shuttle system and in the long run replace it.

I’m going to bring it up again – retiring the shuttle fleet without a working replacement is just plain stupid. Obama has the power and the authority to fix Bush’s nonsense. Keep the fleet flying until you have a working replacement sitting on the pad. Relying on other countries, none of which actually like us, is just asking for trouble. We didn’t make it to the moon first just so we can be hitchhikers four decades later.

Howard, the shuttle is over. Why? There is no way to service the shuttle, all those companies have phased out of business. Atlantis at least is in need of a rebuilt, so quiet simply they’re unsafe to continue to fly.

I’d like to think so too … Read a good SF story about that idea once but can’t recall the title or author so not much use ..

Ideally NASA will get there with plan A …

… But if they can’t I’d rather see them have a plan B and even plans C, D & E to fall back on & try than nothing ..

But most of all I’d really like to see something just actually happening towards getting us back into the human space exploration program.

I’d most like them to just GET ON & BUILD IT ! GET ON & DO IT!

Return to the Moon? Fly people to Mars? Visit a Near Earth Asteroid? Blazes yes!
Enough waiting & talking already! Let’s go, go,go!

Impatient? Me? Why yes, I sure am!

It would probably have better results than the Constellation problem, err, program.

An inline derivative of the shuttle stack such as the DIRECT Jupiter launcher would be a big improvement over NASA’s alternative design, in that for around 2 billion more in upfront cost you get a launcher capable with some improvement of putting around 100 mt into orbit and as a result could easily outperform NASA’s Ares I and Ares V combination and meet all Constellation performance requirements. But given the politics over at NASA and the push to support the Ares launch system, even allowing the presentation of Plan B is a huge step forward for the Agency. On inpection Plan B is superior to Ares in most respects even if it can’t quite meet Ares peformance goals. Hopefully, this presentation will give the Augustine Commission the political cover necessary to eliminate NASA’s flawed Ares launch vehicles from consideration for future manned space flight and focus their analysis on true Shuttle dervied launch vehicles such as John Shannon’s alternative plan if you want to minimize development cost and changes to the current system, or an inline 2-launch Shuttle Derived Launch Vehicle (SDLV) archictecture which would cost a little more to develop, but be able to comfortably meet Constellation performance goals.

Ares is quite simply the worst launch architecture NASA could have chosen. It is complicated, expensive, demands the development of 2 separate launch vehicles, and if all of the reports on the safety of the Ares I contain on a nugget of truth potentially quite dangerous. Hopefully, eliminating the Ares I and V and focusing exclusively on true SDLV archictectures such as the DIRECT Jupiter launcher and NASA’s Plan B will be the primary focus of the Augustine Commission in it’s review of the nation’s plans for future manned space flight operations.

I do like the DIRECT approach… it seems to be what the “BDB” used in Stephen Baxter’s Manifold Trilogy is based on. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifold_Trilogy

The engineers’ alternative plan may not consider the time needed for checks and documentation and so may not be as fast as they think.

If there wasn’t to be a gap, shuttle replacement would have been started 8-10 years ago. Apollo, a top national priority then, took 8 years to become spaceborne. Plus we had inherited an experienced and motivated team from the Germans.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2009180675_nasa06.html

Seriously, I don’t think anyone has ever launched anything with a “laser launcher”, certainly not to an altitude of more than a few hundred feet an speed of more than a few tens of miles per hour. Estes model rockets can do much better. Goddard’s first rocket in 1926 did better than this, and it failed.

Think a 5 year gap is bad? How about a 50 year gap?

“Basically, it’s a rocket that leaves all the heavy bits (like fuel and the main motor) at home, without dropping them to burn up like this system does.”

That’s what I thought you meant. What makes you think we’re anywhere near the point where this is feasible? It’s only an idea that’s being worked on at a preliminary level. Only some very basic experiments have been done with very modest models, and those don’t even include laser-induced ablation techniques. It’s not as if we can just get on with it at-will. Do you know how much power the laser would require? It won’t be cheap.

In addition, the Shuttle’s is not designed for re-entry at the speed involved in a return from the Moon.

The Shuttle could carry to orbit a small vehicle that would be released and launched to the Moon, but the cargo bay can’t hold anything big enough to support a manned mission.

The Shuttle-C and the side-mount option Phil highlights here retain the basic Shuttle architecture but increase the amount lifted to LEO by eliminating the Orbiter.

One can argue that such a side-mount option could have been part of the plan all along, and that we could have both eliminated the ISS-access gap and rolled out a Lunar mission architecture in short order. But, that would have required the political support of every admininstration since Nixon’s as well as sustained increased funding for NASA. We always need to remember we’ve spent 30 years hamstrung with this flawed Shuttle design because President Nixon saw little political reason to continue manned space exploration after he killed Apollo and wasn’t inclined to fund NASA at the level needed to support any improved alternatives. Subsequent presidents have taken essentially the same position on NASA.

If we did it 40 years ago, doing it today will be a breeze.

In fact, Phil, as you know, the problem goes deeper than that. I hate to be saying this on the eve of Independence Day, but there it is. The U.S. needs to dig itself out of this quandary furiously. And I mean FURIOUSLY; not only the government, but every American as well. It’s affecting everything you do, and nowhere in history has the U.S. been more vulnerable to the whim of other foreign powers.

Btw, “the phrase may be next crisis” is very inappropriate. It’s as if the matter only started to happen yesterday. I say, like Rep. Kucinich, it’s time to WAKE UP!!!