I thought the USA have learned that Operation Paperclip was too expensive for them. They thought they conquer some scientists, instead some scientists conquered them...
I for one would welcome our new brainy overlords.
I thought the USA have learned that Operation Paperclip was too expensive for them. They thought they conquer some scientists, instead some scientists conquered them...
The problem with shuttle-derived launchers is that they preserve the insanely bloated cost of Shuttle operations.
No, they don't. The cost of shuttle is driven up by the large crew and long hours needed to turn around the vehicles between flights, and the fact that the launch rate is much slower than the program was meant to do. The slow launch rate and large number of man-hours is driven by the fact that the shuttle is not as safe as it was thought to be.
The SRBs and ET are pretty cheap as far as launch vehicle components go, and if you're using them to launch something that does not have fragile tiles and people on it then it basically becomes just another rocket.
They tend to use kerosene first stages, making them unsuitable for an SDLV.We could always ask the Russians if they have anything good. :lol:
Expendable SSME's shouldn't be too much problem, only needing to be used once, no need for expensive recertification inspections.
There are already plans for that. Most of the expensive is in the backups and higher quality parts so if I recalll correctly the plan was to lower the stringent requirements on the parts and remove some of the redundancies.
It brought the cost of the SSME down to just slightly more than other engines.
There is an interesting article on engines here.
I thought the RS-68 was a disposable (and slightly upgraded) version of the SSME?
AFAIK RS-68 also has only ablative cooling.
My question is, could the SSME be modified to be cheaper while maintaining it's specific impulse?
I know, that's one of the reasons I thought it was a simpler SSME.
My question is, could the SSME be modified to be cheaper while maintaining it's specific impulse?