SpaceX's Dragon capsule captured by ISS

[93143]

And what mission can conduct Shuttle that conventional single use rockets cannot?

Crew transport (normally you have to add a spaceship for this, but Shuttle already is one).

Large-capacity space station logistics, both pressurized and unpressurized (normally you have to add a spaceship for this, but Shuttle already is one). Bonus: you get a crew surge to help with unloading and anything else that needs doing.

EVA and RMS functionality (space construction and repair).

Hauling stuff around on orbit (space tug), or dealing with multiple satellites on one mission (yes, it's been done).

Low-gee-loading rapid-access downmass, both pressurized and unpressurized. Lots of it.

Mini space station capability (crew on orbit in free flight for up to a week and a half, or longer with extra equipment added, including potential hab space in the payload bay).

...

There's a market for Shuttle-class capability. Turns out it was just ahead of its time:

http://www.marylynnedittmar.com/?p=1303
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/12/ ... ters-ends/

[303]

Your view is clouded by nostalgia and emotional attachment. I'll play along though:

you could be right - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1obwMjzUY9M

all those other craft you mention are practically brand new, and unless it lands without a parachute its a capsule, not a spaceship and thus < shuttle

i thought whiteknight was the plane upon which spaceshipone sits on top

spaceshipone is sub-orbital so more of an aeroplane , as is spaceshiptwo

globalfyer last about 2 seconds in space if it could get there

[GIThruster]

Please do not forget that the shuttle was designed to do things that were not (and probably never will be) made public.

Which is part of the problem. E.g. that resulted in the requirement for insane crossrange. . .

But I thought you were such a fan of CCDev, and CCDev is funding another high cross-range spaceplane, Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser. If you are so convinced that high cross range is "insane", "crappy" and idiotic, and cannot be justified economically, then you must really hate CCDev for funding a spaceplane. I mean seriously, we don't have a cold war to justify outrageous expense to build a machine with all kinds of utility just to thumb our noses at the Soviets. If economics is the only driving force in spacecraft design, we're stuck with capsules, aren't we? So how can you laude Obama for his vision with CCDev when that vision includes what you consider to be insane, crappy and idiotic?

[ScottL]

Your view is clouded by nostalgia and emotional attachment. I'll play along though:

you could be right - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1obwMjzUY9M

all those other craft you mention are practically brand new, and unless it lands without a parachute its a capsule, not a spaceship and thus < shuttle

i thought whiteknight was the plane upon which spaceshipone sits on top

spaceshipone is sub-orbital so more of an aeroplane , as is spaceshiptwo

globalfyer last about 2 seconds in space if it could get there

Let me check, I might have read you wrong....

so what if the cost overran, name me one large project that hasn't (usually due to stupidly low initial quote to get the job)

Nope, I didn't, you said name one large project, not name one large space project. The above listed projects were rather large with ambitious goals and all succeeded without cost overruns.

[GIThruster]

The above listed projects were rather large with ambitious goals and all succeeded without cost overruns.

Yes, but the thing they have in common is they all come from private industry. I think a list of large government projects brought in on budget would be a bit smaller. I can't think of one. Too, there are a few orders magnitude difference between Global Flyer and Shuttle. Hardly a useful comparison. What you need to compare against are projects so expensive that they are forced to use cost plus contracts. There are reasons cost plussing exists and always leads to cost overruns.

Quite simply, cost-plus contracts exist specifically to shift the risk from the contractor to the buyer. Rutan can afford as contractor to set a specific price for Brandson, because the Global Flyer project was not too complex to estimate correctly. Shuttle, and most of the very complex projects funded by USG, are far too complex to estimate correctly, so they have to be cost-plus. Boeing, N-G, L-M, would never participate in a multi-billion dollar project if they were accountable for all cost oversights. Additionally, the way these very expensive programs are sold to congress and the American public, is to distort the full extent of the costs, knowing that once hundreds of millions or billions of dollars are spent, most won't want to back out of the project.

[ScottL]

The above listed projects were rather large with ambitious goals and all succeeded without cost overruns.

Yes, but the thing they have in common is they all come from private industry. I think a list of large government projects brought in on budget would be a bit smaller. I can't think of one. Too, there are a few orders magnitude difference between Global Flyer and Shuttle. Hardly a useful comparison. What you need to compare against are projects so expensive that they are forced to use cost plus contracts. There are reasons cost plussing exists and always leads to cost overruns.

I agree with what you're saying GIT, but he didn't say .GOV projects, he said name one project. I named several and clearly I've stated my opinion on the privatization of space. I'm 110% for this endeavor and think NASA should focus on science while piggybacking on some of these private rockets/spaceships/etc. Somet things you can privatize, some things you just can't, this is one that you can though.

[GIThruster]

Yes, we're all agreed then. The issue is not so much that Shuttle failed to come in on budget. See my edit above about why we do cost-plus. The real issue is that these very complex projects we see in aerospace are only just beginning to be funded privately. It's a big deal when Musk puts hundreds of millions of his own dollars into a project that is so complex it can go wrong in literally a million places. If he blows up a couple rockets with expensive payloads in them, he's out of business because customers won't be able to buy insurance to launch on Falcon, and all that money out of pocket is gone.

[Skipjack]

How about support repairing a satellite in orbit?

How about bringing it back?

Only makes sense if the repair and bringing in back is cost effective. Also the shuttle cant reach a high enough orbit for geostationary satellites. So that limits the applications quite a bit. How often was this capability really used in the end? Hmmm?

EVA and RMS functionality (space construction and repair).

Both Apollo and Gemeni had that as well.

There's a market for Shuttle-class capability. Turns out it was just ahead of its time

There is a market for many things if the price is right. The shuttle was to expensive, hence no market.

and unless it lands without a parachute its a capsule, not a spaceship and thus < shuttle

Dragon will have powered landing capability. Cant get more spaceship than that. The dreamchaser will glide like the shuttle.

But I thought you were such a fan of CCDev, and CCDev is funding another high cross-range spaceplane, Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser. If you are so convinced that high cross range is "insane", "crappy" and idiotic, and cannot be justified economically, then you must really hate CCDev for funding a spaceplane. I mean seriously, we don't have a cold war to justify outrageous expense to build a machine with all kinds of utility just to thumb our noses at the Soviets. If economics is the only driving force in spacecraft design, we're stuck with capsules, aren't we? So how can you laude Obama for his vision with CCDev when that vision includes what you consider to be insane, crappy and idiotic?

1. My main issue was not with the crossrange. It was with the fact that the shuttle had to do EVERYTHING AND have a high cross range on top of that. Cross range was just one of the too many things that the shuttle had to do.
2. Dreamchaser is not my favorite of the projects. It will be comparably high maintenance due to the many tiles ( read somewhere that they will need months). We will see whether they will be able to remain cost competitive with that.
3. Its crossrange is lower than the shuttle's.
4. It is a very different vehicle with very different operations and cost per flight. So it is somewhat hard to compare. I still prefer it over the shuttle because it is at least leaving out some of the abilities they put on the shuttle and thus has a chance of getting anywhere near a cost effective range.

[GIThruster]

. . .My main issue was not with the crossrange. It was with the fact that the shuttle had to do EVERYTHING AND have a high cross range on top of that. Cross range was just one of the too many things that the shuttle had to do.

Yes well, I challenge you to think more soberly on the subject instead of merely parroting back the stuff you read in places like NSF. Economics was NOT the sole criteria for the Shuttle design. It was indeed designed to do everything, and it was so designed 40 years ago when there were no plans for any other spacecraft. All we had was Shuttle for 30 years and during that time it flew 133 successful missions. When you ask how many times a specific ability was needed, you miss the point. If it was only needed once in 30 years, that was enough to justify the utilitarian design of the craft. If we ever get around to building something like Nautilus X, we will likewise need to design it to be as broad functioning as possible, because we don't know exactly how it would be used. This the precisely the place the shuttle designers found themselves in.

Again, no no one is saying cheaper methods couldn't have succeeded. They could. Just note there was absolutely nothing stopping Boeing from man rating Delta, nor stopping Lock-Mart from man rating Atlas. We have always had available more economical means of accessing space than Shuttle. It's just the contrarians who argue that economics is the sole criterial for judging a space access program, and this is plainly not true. Shuttle was a huge success and one that all Americans have a right to be proud of.

[Skipjack]

It was indeed designed to do everything,

Which is why it sucked at everything.

If it was only needed once in 30 years, that was enough to justify the utilitarian design of the craft.

No it does not, because it ruined human spaceflight in the US by eating up all the cost, having eternal downtimes every time something happened.
Come on! You never even bothered to read the wikipedia link that i posted.

If we ever get around to building something like Nautilus X, we will likewise need to design it to be as broad functioning as possible, because we don't know exactly how it would be used.

Well yes and no. It should be designed to be MODULAR, so it can be adapted to a variety of missions.
I do like the NautilusX. Unfortunately the darn SLS is eating up all the funds for it.

This the precisely the place the shuttle designers found themselves in.

No it is not. The space shuttle designers had to accomodate a lot more functionality.
The shuttle had to be a heavy lifter, with a cargo down capability and the ability to stay on orbit for a prolonged period of time while supporting a crew of 7(!) and on top of that it had to have crossrange and be refurbishable.
You are not using an 18 wheeler semi truck as a camper, are you?
Why do you think that something that does not make sense on earth, makes sense in space?

Shuttle was a huge success

Yeah at holding NASA back for 30 years.

[93143]

@Skipjack: apparently you can't keep track of an argument, or follow links.

1) The topic I was on was 'things Shuttle could do that an expendable LV can't'. Apollo and Gemini were not launch vehicles. Also, they did not have RMS capability, and their EVA capability was very limited. So your point is factually incorrect as well as misdirected.

2) There is, right now, a market for Shuttle (or there was late last year). Not just a "cheap enough" substitute - STS itself. Read the links.

[As an aside to anyone who cares, according to my calculations, at 4-6 flights per year, combined crew and cargo ISS logistics on STS was comparable in price to what NASA is paying for Dragon (one Shuttle flight is roughly equivalent to five Dragon flights, assuming neither is tasked with something the other flat-out can't do). Commercial operation seems to shave off roughly 40% of the total cost of STS, allowing it to approximately match SpaceX's CRS prices at 2-3 flights per year, or the lower price expected due to Dragon reuse at 4-6 flights per year.]

I'm not going to engage you any further on this topic. Your ignorance is exceeded only by your arrogance.

[DeltaV]

Commercial operation seems to shave off roughly 40% of the total cost of STS...

Government employee unions. I didn't even know they existed until I spent a few years as a contractor at NASA.

[93143]

Not just that, I don't think. There were apparently a large number of oversight positions associated with STS that didn't strictly need to exist. Regulations (and/or unions?) probably required them while STS was a government system, but a commercial operator can oversee itself, and streamline where necessary.

Government (USA overseen by NASA): ~$2.4B for 0 flights/year, ~$3.2B for 5-6 flights/year.
Commercial (basically USA cut loose): $1.5B for 2 flights/year, $1.8B (maybe ~$1.9B after inflation) for 5 flights/year.
No word on what Holleran's scheme would have cost; his assumptions were different. But he was looking at 4 flights/year assuming no NASA business, and was apparently reasonably confident of making money...

[Joseph Chikva]

And what mission can conduct Shuttle that conventional single use rockets cannot?

How about support repairing a satellite in orbit?

How about bringing it back?

Taday ALL missions allowed by Space Shuttle are allowed by single use rockets as well. And single use rockets provide their missions at lower cost. That is the fact.

[Joseph Chikva]

And what mission can conduct Shuttle that conventional single use rockets cannot?

Crew transport (normally you have to add a spaceship for this, but Shuttle already is one).

Large-capacity space station logistics, both pressurized and unpressurized (normally you have to add a spaceship for this, but Shuttle already is one). Bonus: you get a crew surge to help with unloading and anything else that needs doing.

Soviets made crew transport without Shuttle. And rather successfully. And from commercial side of view what would be more attractive: to transport a big crew with two-three crafts at lower cost or to use large spacebus with higher cost?
Certainly, by development of technology the cost of transport of 1 kg will be lower in the future. But today? Fact is only one: Shuttle program was canceled.