Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!dali.cs.montana.edu!milton!uw-beaver!sumax!thebes!polari!crad From: crad@polari.UUCP (Charles Radley) Newsgroups: sci.space Subject: Re: LLNL Astronaut Delivery Message-ID: <2688@polari.UUCP> Date: 9 Nov 90 04:52:35 GMT References: <2669@polari.UUCP> <9011072124.AA13810@iti.org> Organization: Seattle Online Public Unix (206) 328-4944 Lines: 165 +this will be my last reply (nothing new is being said anyway). Mr. +Radley is welcome to have the last word. - I found your posts most stimulating and enlightening, I hope you will continue to share your news and thoughts as time permits. Let me add some "new" thoughts...... +My preference is to let them fight it out. Fund both until one is + up and working then kill the other. A little competition goes a long way. - It looks more like Freedom and LLNL could be COMPLIMENTARY, since they appear to have different missions. The question is, which mission(s) is/are the right ones. I am opposed to Mars missions, but favor a lunar base processing lunar soil. Since Great Exploration is Mars oriented, I don't like it. +BTW, how many space stations has your employer built? If the answer is not at least 3 then I would say you don't have a track record either. - My employer is not building a space station, and probably never will. We have been making space mechanical subsystems for over 20 years. Our customer, McDonnell Douglas, built Skylab, which was the US's only space station. The Freedom contractors have an average of 20 years experience in large space systems. +No I quote the original cost and schedule as provided to Congress + in 1984. - Congress was provided with various estimates as the program developed. 1984 was the Rockwell era. Later, Phase-C was awarded to a different consortium who quoted a different price. +Freedom FEL comes up there will be TWENTY flights ahead of you. Is +Freedom going to tell those people to take a hike? - It is similar to a planetary mission with fixed launch windows, Ulysses and Galileo got up on schedule, and other flights worked around them. +Actually, it makes micorgravity better. By putting the microgravity +facility in a crew-tended free flyer it won't be subjected to the +vibration which Freedom will subject it to. - True, but it won't benefit from continuous manned presence to fix problems. For a free-flyer to fly "in-formation" with a nearby manned base will require frequent disruptive thruster pulses, so it is not totally quiet. Otherwise it would have to rely on nodal regression to rendezvous with a station, with weeks or months of no human access. >It also makes studies of biological effects of zero-g impossible. +You could add a zero-G module in the middle if you want. Or if the +LLNL station demonstrates the viability of the concept you can build +large 0G stations for a very very small amount of money. - You get cheap empty shells, it costs plenty to fit them out with state of the art scientific equipment. LLNL may be lighter and cheaper than using metal modules a' la Freedom, but most of Freedom's weight and cost is in the science and support equipment, the module structure is small fraction of the total. + [text deleted] Now if this redesign happens, I would tend to +support it (provided commercial needs are met). - What commercial needs ? It puzzles me why people such as yourself prefer a small station to a big one. Every year Freedom's capability is cut, and the schedule slipped. We, the designers, find it most frustrating. I think it would have been cheaper in the long run to have built the station which was bid 4 years ago. Since then congress has blown about 10,000 man-years of effort by forcing annual redesigns. And then people such as yourself blame it on NASA and the contractors, AARGH ! +So tell me, what is the value of man rating when man rated systems +end up being no safer but four times as expensive as the non-man +rated ones? - That was not true of Mercury through Skylab, nor Vostok through Soyuz. >You mean they will design, build and fly twelve precursor (Gemini) >spacecraft to develop the technology, +Yep. Those missions have already been flown (the program was called +Gemini). That knowledge didn't just e+rase itself you know. - Gemini did not test inflatable space structures. Nobody has done that. Much of the Gemini heritage has been erased, try and get a set of Gemini manufacturing drawings. +The station flies up unmanned and inflates itself. When the +environment is OK, people go on board. What's wrong with this? - Nothing that a full qual program can't fix :-) >+Yep it has. Tell me, in 90 $$ how much does an Apollo capsule >+cost? >The tooling for Apollo has been destroyed, and there are >very few drawings left. Apollo's cannot be built for all the tea >in China. You will have to build a new vehicle. +You didn't answer my question. How much in 90 $$ does an Apollo CM +cost? Please provide a source. After all, how can we estimate the +true cost of developing a suitable capsule without looking at past +experience? - I did answer, all-the-tea-in-china is a euphamism for "indeterminite very high cost". Nobody can give a numerical answer today. And why do you want an obsolete museum peice ? New electronics and new materials permit more lightweight designs. Heck, those old Apollo computers simply ain't available any more. It is like asking today's Detroit to build you a model-T Ford, even if they could figure out how, it would take forever and nobody could afford to buy one ! The Japanese and ESA concluded that a new winged mini-shuttle is the answer and they talk $ 10s of Bs, NASA is not alone. A CM is not adequate because it could last about 30 minutes on battery power, you would need an SM to go with it. +Nope. A Titan III costs $125M list (Avation Week Jan 8, 1990 page +43). A Titan IV is less than 200M (150M according to Tech. Review). - I stand corrected. +Two Titans gives you more interior room than Freedom. - Interior volume is not particularly exciting, except for recreation. Maybe useful if we ever get a space tourism industry up and running. Right now more interested in maximum science for minimum weight and cost. >Pads 40 and 41 are already in use by USAF and commercial users. >The launch rates you quote require at least one new additional pad. +Yes the pads are in use. That doesn't mean they are unavailbe all +the time. According to OTA, no new pads are needed to achieve this +launch rate. - I have personal experience of a case where a Commercial Titan launch was bumped by a military launch. The pads are already very busy. If Henry Spencer is correct, and State Dept awarded an export license to USBI, then LLNL should be talking to them because Zenit is much cheaper than HLV or Titan. +Finally, I note that Mr. Radley has not made any major points +against the LLNL approach. His only complaint, testing, is invalid +because LLNL does do testing using methodologies considered +adaaquate for Apollo. Mr. Radley has given no detailed assessment +of why LLNL testing methodology is flawed for the level of risk +assumed and his - Testing is neither my only nor my biggest complaint. The "biggie" is the total lack of any realistic proposal for a manned ferry craft, $ 200 M doesn't cut the mustard, and US Law prohibits collaboration with the Soviets, so forget Soyuz etc. I am not familiar with LLNL's specific test approach, and you have not posted anything specific for me to critique. The costs quoted rule out Apollo style testing. To assume the first flight article will inflate first time is optimistic. And I said all along, my main problem is the cost, not so much the technical approach. +other comments indicate that he doesn't understand how the program works. - Probably true, have had trouble getting data. Unwilling to contact LLNL myself, very little available public domain.