Saturn V vs. Shuttle

[Usonian]

As work progresses on an update of Skylab1973, I am exchanging e-mail with a couple of folks producing addons for the Saturn INT-21 launch vehicle, a Saturn V variant having just the first and second stages.

This vehicle lifted Skylab whole into a high inclination, 430km altitude orbit. It seems that something on the scale of the ISS could have been assembled from just four or five payloads that size. A payload somewhat smaller than Skylab could have been topped with a CSM (to act as an assembly tug and return vehicle) both payload and tug launched together by a proven Saturn booster.

Using the 70s technology at hand, couldn't something like ISS have been completed by 1980, and a fraction of the Shuttle/ISS costs? Doesn't this indicate that the last 25 years of NASA manned spaceflight was a complete blunder? If that's so, how did this happen?

The Right Stuff chronicles the early tug of war between the engineers designing their "spam in the can" capsule system, and the pilots' push to design a spacecraft that they could really fly. Doesn't the Shuttle represent the complete rout of the unromantic engineering approach, and the triumph of the fly boys?

Shouldn't we have stuck with course of Skylab and Apollo Applications? Shouldn't we be reviving the Saturn family, rather than developing new boosters, and pour all development money into CEV? A giant leap (backwards) for all mankind!

 

[pete.dakota]

Sounds ideal, really. However, I believe Saturn was discontinued, not because NASA wanted to pursue Shuttle, but because the USA couldn't afford to keep flying the them after Apollo.

 

[Brad]

IMHO that is exactly what happened. NASA wanted the Shuttle at all cost and scraped the launch platform they had at that time. They should of canned the Shuttle after Challenger.

 

[Andy44]

Well, Usonian, took you long enough to see the light!

NASA had originally hoped to keep the Saturn family along with STS, but Congress said, "No F'ing way! And BTW, you don't even get a new space station!".

NASA figured the shuttle would be the wave of the future, paving a cheap and reliable path to space with a re-usable 30-ton lifter, so they bid the Saturn family adieu, to our everlasting regret.

STS got very watered down as the budget kept getting tighter, but the truth is that even if it had been the most lavish design the idea of a spaceplane that flies routine missions for cheap is just a bit too far ahead of it's time. So STS has proven to be an engineering success, a technical marvel, but from an economic and reliability standpoint it's a failure.

"America's Concorde" is what I call it, except it's less reliable and more risky.

About rebuilding the Saturn family, you're preaching to the choir here. I think the new Ares family is a step in the right direction, but it relies too much on shuttle tech. They really should be going with kerosene-burning liquid first stage and save the SRBs for upgrades, like they had planned for the monster Saturn V upgrades, some of which would have lifted well over 200 tons to LEO.

 

[Urwumpe]

I think they should have learned from the Shuttle instead of Apollo, included some older ideas which got watered away...and designed a production capable version of the STS. Many capabilities of the Shuttle, like being it's own work platform, will be missing with Orion.

 

[movieman]

This vehicle lifted Skylab whole into a high inclination, 430km altitude orbit.

It's worth noting that Columbia weighed more than Skylab, at least on the first flights. The shuttle system can actually launch an awful lot of mass into orbit, it's just that most of it consists of wings, fuselage, etc, that returns to Earth every trip.

There are some NASA documents on ntrs.nasa.gov about the plans to use Columbia to reboost Skylab, if it had been able to fly before Skylab re-entered; I always thought Skylab was big until I saw the diagrams of Columbia docked with it.

Edit: here, for example:

Of course one of the early plans was for an S-II 'wet workshop' rather than the S-IVB 'dry workshop'; now, that would have been a big space station .

 

[Zatnikitelman]

If the Saturn series had kept flying ala soyuz ala Proton, then America would have the most successful space system of any country! A good rocket only comes along once in a blue moon, and the blue moon was out from '67-73' when the Saturn V was flying. It was the best damn rocket anyone's ever developed and will develop period, only tieing with SpaceX who holds the modern day best!

 

[Andy44]

I think they should have learned from the Shuttle instead of Apollo, included some older ideas which got watered away...and designed a production capable version of the STS. Many capabilities of the Shuttle, like being it's own work platform, will be missing with Orion.

Again, I agree with that. I think the X-20 DynaSoar was a more workable spaceplane idea in concept. Although it may have been of limited military value, a somewhat larger version carrying a modest crew and payload might have been a good Apollo follow-on and complement to the Saturn family, would have been more flexible on use of launchers, and might have been less risky for the crew.

I certainly hope Rutan and others can come up with something more practical in my lifetime.

 

[Usonian]

It's worth noting that Columbia weighed more than Skylab, at least on the first flights.

That's an interesting point - and not at all hard to believe when you see the two vehicles side-by-side. So, how can anyone ever have imagined that a reusable cargo plane could compete with an expendable launcher? With the expendable launch the payload is the entire weight delivered to orbit. With the shuttle, the payload is a small fraction of the weight delivered to orbit. This argument is about 30 years old, I suppose. NASA must have done a lot of fuzzy math and politics to sell the shuttle. It was the 70s, after all, when recycling (of any machine or material) was cutting edge.

A reusable passenger space plane makes sense. The weight delivered to orbit is pretty much the weight needed to bring the human "cargo" back. The ability to land on conventional runways makes perfect sense when balanced against the large Naval expenditures need for water landing and retrieval. It is hard to believe that NASA is proposing (or being forced into) water landing for the CEV - they are really grasping at straws.

Kind of ironic that all the old astronauts started out as fighter jocks - and then stuck themselves (and us) with an albatross of a cargo plane. (Although, a cargo plane that does mach 25 is pretty hot.)

 

[santy86]

Movieman is right.

The shuttle stack in the configuration Shuttle-C would have loft around 70-80 tons.
Very similar to SaturnINT-21. Unfortunately NASA dropped the project because of costs and other issues, which are now easily solvable.

That's why my personal impression is that NASA should revive the shuttle-C project
to send cargo in space. And develop something like Ares I for personnel (it's a lot safer compared to actual shuttle).

The project of Ares-V looks a bit useless to me. Not even to mension AresIV which is totally useless.

Of course this are just my opinions.

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/208/1 here is something about shuttle-C

 

[joiz]

It's worth noting that Columbia weighed more than Skylab, at least on the first flights. The shuttle system can actually launch an awful lot of mass into orbit, it's just that most of it consists of wings, fuselage, etc, that returns to Earth every trip.

There are some NASA documents on ntrs.nasa.gov about the plans to use Columbia to reboost Skylab, if it had been able to fly before Skylab re-entered; I always thought Skylab was big until I saw the diagrams of Columbia docked with it.

Edit: here, for example:

Of course one of the early plans was for an S-II 'wet workshop' rather than the S-IVB 'dry workshop'; now, that would have been a big space station .

the shuttle could have mini rockets attached to the et to boost it orbit and give you a wet workshop, another advantge is you dont need to clear all the engines and stuff out, cus the tank is brought up by teh shuttle engines, and we all know what the tank looks like in proportion to the shuttle, what if we had done this for every shuttle mission that ever happened? now that would have been a big station...

 

[DaveS]

the shuttle could have mini rockets attached to the et to boost it orbit and give you a wet workshop, another advantge is you dont need to clear all the engines and stuff out, cus the tank is brought up by teh shuttle engines, and we all know what the tank looks like in proportion to the shuttle, what if we had done this for every shuttle mission that ever happened? now that would have been a big station...

Bad idea. The foam insulation on the ET doesn't react too well to the space environment. It would in fact break up into a debris cload surrounding the ET making dockings very hazardous.

Also it would take alot of work to drain the ET of the last few tonnes of LOX and LH2 propellants, then you would need to remove the the He that's used for pressurization and pressurize it with O2 or an O2/N2 mix, to reduce flammability.

Then you would need a way to actually enter the ET LH2 tanks and outfitting them.

So lots of work for not that much gain.

 

[simonpro]

"America's Concorde" is what I call it, except it's less reliable and more risky.

Just for the record, Concorde actually made a substantial profit for British Airways.

 

[Andy44]

While checking your claim, Simonpro, I ran across this much more interesting, if unrelated, passage on wikipedia:

Due to jet engines being highly inefficient at low speeds, Concorde burned two tonnes of fuel taxiing to the runway.[15] To conserve fuel only the two outer engines were run after landing. The thrust from two engines was sufficient for taxiing to the ramp due to low aircraft weight upon landing at its destination. A Concorde once ran out of fuel taxiing to the terminal after a flight; the pilot was dismissed.[16]

Doh!

 

[Belisarius]

These are exciting days for Saturn rocket fans - the new INT 21, the new Sputnik Velcro Saturn collection, the upcoming Usonian Skylab version, the latest AMSO. I only hope my version of the Saturn V-B with 4 SRBs from Baxter's Voyage will be able to hold up its head in such company. But damn! - it really blasts off like a good 'un.

 

[agentgonzo]

Just for the record, Concorde actually made a substantial profit for British Airways.

I thought that concorde only made a profit once they wrote off the debt for the development costs?

 

[Missioncmdr]

I would not be surprised if profits tanked after Air France Flight 4590 crashed. I think that was the main factor that led to the demise of the Concorde.

 

[Urwumpe]

I would not be surprised if profits tanked after Air France Flight 4590 crashed. I think that was the main factor that led to the demise of the Concorde.

Also many other factors, the airframes had already been terrible old and the stress of supersonic flight made the planes age faster as other airliners.

There had already been feet long cracks inside the wings of many Concords, when the accident happened.

 

[Andy44]

According to wiki there is a rumor that Air France and Airbus execs privately decided (aka "conspiracy") that if there was another accident they might be held criminally liable, so they had to retire it soon anyway.

 

[gimp1992]

NASA traded a Space booster for a space truck. The shuttle for all it marvolous complexity is still only a truck. It was sold as the one stop shop for all space needs, except that it could not travel outside earth orbit, and it was a horabley expencive booster and the idea of retrieving satalites and fixing them on eargth then returning them to orbit was pure BS in fact most of the shuttles selling points in the late sixtes were BS. Unfortunatly it would be too expensive to rebuld the Saturn 5, so we are left with the shuttle derived vehicles. I guess we should have followed the Soviets path if it ain't broke don't fix it