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!
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!