Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: What's Wrong with this Picture?
Message-ID: <1988Oct3.172838.8828@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <6981@ihlpl.ATT.COM> <1988Oct2.021158.15076@utzoo.uucp> <5705@killer.DALLAS.TX.US>
Date: Mon, 3 Oct 88 17:28:38 GMT

In article <5705@killer.DALLAS.TX.US> rcj@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Robert Johnson) writes:
>why the hell they are using Energia?  The whole advantage to ours is that
>our main engines are reusable.  The Energia and engines will fry, and all
>that will be reusable is the shuttle itself, and maybe the SRB's (well, 
>LFRB's...).  All I have to say to this is why?  It's akin to sticking a
>Shuttle on a Saturn V...Sorta defeats the purpose.

The Soviets say that all of Energia, the core as well as the strap-ons,
is designed to be recoverable.  Sounds like a tall order to me, but there
is nothing fundamentally impossible about it.  I believe they haven't yet
tried recovering the core.

Bear in mind that Energia has two primary roles, not just one.  It's not
just a shuttle carrier; it is also a heavylift booster in its own right.
Putting the engines on the orbiter would make that impossible.  The US is
just now talking about building Shuttle-C, the shuttle-derived heavylift
booster; the Soviets started with the heavylift booster and added a shuttle
as a bonus.

Don't forget that the economics of reusability are not quite as simple as
one might think.  The Soviets have a far more capable space program than
the US's, based entirely around expendable boosters.  Their costs for an
expendable launch are considerably lower than for the US's mostly-reusable
shuttle.  Mass production makes a big difference.  The West tends to think
that 50 boosters is a huge bulk order; that's six months' supply for the
Soviet space program.  They are committed to a 40-year production run on
Energia already.  (Lest we forget, the Saturn V was dead ten years after
its first flight.)

Sticking a shuttle on a Saturn V would have been a hell of a lot better
than sticking it on segmented solid boosters!  And it would have flown
sooner, and probably have been cheaper, too.
-- 
The meek can have the Earth;    |    Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
the rest of us have other plans.|uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu