I'm a space nut, but even I can't keep up with the managers at NASA, who trot out one manned spacecraft program after another, just to have then fail. Orient Express, HL-20, National Areospace Plane, HL-42, VentureStar, X-38 ACRV etc...The ACRV died and was ressurected so many times that I was never sure if it was coming or going: I'd read an artcle that it was cancelled, only to see another drop test being conducted. But now its dead-dead.

Then came the announcement last year that NASA was taking a giant leap backward and reintroducing the CAPSULE h.
Now last week comes the announcement that NASA wants a simple capsule, to be launched perhaps on one of the shuttle's solid boosters hat?

Or will  several more hundreds of millions of dollars be spent AGAIN with no hardware to show for it?

Honestly, I'm pessimistic as can be over manned space ops.  The "throw money at it and see if we get something" approach is eerily reminiscent of the FAA's attempts to upgrade automation of the National Airspace System.  So far as I know, there have been at least three failed attempts to replace the IBM 9020 computers that drive the radar displays in the enroute centers, each one more costly than the previous one, and none resulting in a replacement for most of the centers.  The 9020's started their work lives in 1970, and when I worked at Miami Center in 1983, we had to send to an IBM museum for a replacement for a burned-out part.  Exactly that same bureaucratic mentality exists at NASA, where advancing into the final frontier is not so important, but covering managment's butts is Job #1.

Quoted: Honestly, I'm pessimistic as can be over manned space ops.  The "throw money at it and see if we get something" approach is eerily reminiscent of the FAA's attempts to upgrade automation of the National Airspace System.  So far as I know, there have been at least three failed attempts to replace the IBM 9020 computers that drive the radar displays in the enroute centers, each one more costly than the previous one, and none resulting in a replacement for most of the centers.  The 9020's started their work lives in 1970, and when I worked at Miami Center in 1983, we had to send to an IBM museum for a replacement for a burned-out part.  Exactly that same bureaucratic mentality exists at NASA, where advancing into the final frontier is not so important, but covering managment's butts is Job #1.

I can understand the sentiment, but I have to disagree whole heartedly. NASA during the 80s and 90s was completely hamstrung three things, shrinking budgets, lack of mandates and the shuttle/space station complex.

First off let me make this clear: There is no science being done, going to be done on the ISS that is worth the astronomical cost. The science that is needed for long duration human space flight has been done by the Russians since the 70s. Most of the material science experiments have been done on the Space Shuttle could be done much, much, cheaper by unmanned or periodically manned facilities.

Then again, the space station might have proven a valuable tool if it could have been built cheaper and quicker. This is where it becomes a travesty to all space geeks. Let me tell for you the little known story of the 'Space Station Architecture Study'. Shortly after President Reagan directed NASA to build a new space station called Freedom. (The ISS original name meant as a big technological middle finger to the then USSR) The study considered many options, but what they eventually boiled down to was NASA using existing shuttle hardware and facilities and replace the orbiter in the shuttle stack with a cargo pod. Dev cost for this would only have been on the order of $500-800 million since it wouldn't have to be man rated. This would have been able to put 80-90 tones in orbit in one throw. Using this 'Shuttle C' NASA was going to build the space station, (bigger then the current ISS by the way in terms of pressurized volume) in 3 or 4 launches, I don't remember the specifics and then use orbiter shuttle launches to send the crew up and down. A problem came up, if the shuttle was going to be nothing more then a crew taxi and only fly to cargo missions, NASA couldn't justify the flight pace they wanted and the hugely expensive and protracted Space Shuttle would be an even more glaring albatross then it is. Thus the Lego work space station as we know it was designed essentially as make work for the shuttle fleet, to make sure the 100,000 personnel (The Shuttle Army) need to maintain that money pit keeps getting pay checks. I'm not even going to go into the Clinton era redesign to turn the ISS into a charity for out of work Russian Aerospace Engineers.

I'm going to gloss over the times NASA has courted AltSpace (or at least Commercial Space) start up and then cut their legs out from under them.

Example 1; the Industrial Space Facility corporation, they were going to build and launch a private 'occasionally' manned orbiting lab, that soon threatened the justification for NASA's big white space station, NASA killed their shuttle launch contract and then testified against them in congress, also their was some goings on with the FAA but I don't want to go into it.

Example 2; The X-33/Venturestar (there will be some dissention on this one, there certainly is on the space boards I frequent) but essentially Lockheed invested a huge amount of company funds in what was essentially a co venture with NASA to develop a demonstrator for a larger SSTO. After one malfunction in a composite fuel tank due to a fabrication error the reactionist entity that is NASA killed the program and left LockMart holding the bag. There could be an interesting postscript to this particular tale as one of the nearly complete airframes has disappeared and there was latent USAF/DARPA interaction in the program but, who knows....

Point being that NASA during the 80s and 90s was the perfect example of how not to do space, driven by politics, lacking a mission, and fearing what they saw as competition from the private sector.

Fast forward to today and you'll see the reason why I have hope. The first glimmers of light came with Dan Goldin, who had many faults, but with the reforms of the robotics science program (so Called Faster Better Cheaper) got NASA away from the cost plus leviathan programs that NASA had become known for. Now Griffin is seriously finally, putting the shuttle in it's grave and courting many private firms for true commercial contracts for Space Station supply so we can get out of that particular mistake as soon as politically feasible. We're adopting direct launch architectures for the Moon/Mars initive, planning for using indigenous recourses, creating a long term strategy for a permanent human presence on the Moon and Mars. We're pursuing low costs launchers such as a Shuttle Derived heavy lifter (/cough/ remember the Shuttle C?) for cargo and a cheap expendable or mostly expendable medium launcher for disposable crew taxi operations. NASA is finally going about space the right way, without cost plus and embracing private development.

Meet the Launchers of the future:

The heavy lifter that will throw Moon and Mars ships and base components into orbit. That picture depicts and axial configuration, while now and inline configuration looks more likely. Also we will be using the newer five segment SRBs


The Stick, essentially and SRB with an RL10 upper stage with an expendable crew capsule. Easy and cheap to develop since all the components save for the simple capsule already exist and are man rated.

Sorry for writing a book on this but this is something I feel is vitally important for the long term national interests of this country, the future is out there, and like I said in the Native America thread, the first rule of civilization is expand or die. Write your congress critters and tell them to support the Moon Mars initive and Space Commercialization.

wow, the fried chicken thread has more posts then a thread about the space program!

Quoted: wow, the fried chicken thread has more posts then a thread about the space program! hr

I feel your pain bro h
But here's some hope! :

Quoted: There could be an interesting postscript to this particular tale as one of the nearly complete airframes has disappeared and there was latent USAF/DARPA interaction in the program but, who knows....