Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!usc!ucselx!crash!pro-canaveral.cts.com!gandalf
From: gandalf@pro-canaveral.cts.com (Ken Hollis)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: SSME Cost...
Message-ID: <5759@crash.cts.com>
Date: 20 Nov 90 23:16:15 GMT
Sender: root@crash.cts.com
Lines: 34

Greetings and Salutations:

>From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
>Subject: Re: SSME's

>In article <5667@crash.cts.com> gandalf@pro-canaveral.cts.com (Ken Hollis)
write
s:
>>The SSME is made for a MAN RATED rocket.  Redundancy, double checks, etc...
>>...  When the unmanned rocket motors are designed,
>>they don't need all of the safeguards...

>Uh, let us not forget that most of the major "unmanned" rocket motors
designed
>in the US are, or have been at one time, man-rated.  Atlas and Titan have
both
>launched manned spacecraft, Delta uses Atlas-derived engines, and the Saturns
>were man-rated from the start.  None of them had anywhere near the hideous
>engine cost and complexity problems of the SSMEs.  This is an excuse, not a
>reason.

Please be reminded that these are the first engines rated from sea-level all
the way to the vacuum of space.  They are not staged engines designed to work
in only 1 region (ie sea level to XX Thousand feet, and another engine to take
over from there).  This is a completely re-designed engine, although
admittedly Rocketdyne had the experience to build them.  They are also more
complex because they COULD be made complex.  Computer systems & control
systems that couldn't be made in Saturn days are now used on the SSME's.

Ken Hollis

ProLine:  gandalf@pro-canaveral         
Internet: gandalf@pro-canaveral.cts.com
UUCP:     crash!pro-canaveral!gandalf