Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ncrlnk!ncrcae!hubcap!gatech!bloom-beacon!apple!vsi1!v7fs1!mvp
From: mvp@v7fs1.UUCP (Mike Van Pelt)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: heavylift launchers
Message-ID: <264@v7fs1.UUCP>
Date: 10 Mar 89 19:09:09 GMT
References: <203340@<1989Mar3> <218100011@s.cs.uiuc.edu>
Reply-To: mvp@v7fs1.UUCP (Mike Van Pelt)
Organization: Video7, Cupertino, CA
Lines: 31

In article <218100011@s.cs.uiuc.edu> carroll@s.cs.uiuc.edu writes:
>	I'm still missing something - why not start cranking out Saturn V's
>again? Would it be as difficult as building a new launcher? I was surprised
>when I found out that the Saturn lifts about 40% *more* than Energiya (sp?)
>(140 tonne vs. 100 tonne) to LEO. Are the designs for the Saturn available
>to space companies? 

The plans for the Saturn V are incomplete; much of it was been tossed
out in the garbage years ago.  The tooling was broken up and sold as
scrap.  All that's left is a couple of the Saturn V's themselves, one
of which is rusting away on the lawn outside the visitors center at the
Johnson Space Center in Houston.  There are also a few of the F-1
engines in storage somewhere, but to build more it would be necessary
to start from scratch.

And today's NASA is not the NASA of the 60's.  The people who built the
Saturn V are dead, retired, or about to retire, and the paper-pushing
bureacrats are in charge.  These are the people who say that it would
be impossible to put a man on the moon again in less than 10 years,
even though it only took us 8 years from a standing start 20 years ago.

Did you read the news item about how NASA is trying to put all the
expertise of the retiring engineers into an expert system so things can
keep going after they've left?  That gives me cold chills ... Very
strongly reminds me of one of the 'racial memory playback' scenes in
_Planet of the Apes_.  (The book, not the movie.)
-- 
Mike Van Pelt                 Video 7              ...ames!vsi1!v7fs1!mvp
"... Local prohibitions cannot  block advances in military and commercial
technology.... Democratic movements for local restraint can only restrain
the world's democracies, not the world as a whole." -- K. Eric Drexler