Re: Space funding (was Re: Hillary needs to quit)

Brian Thorn <bthorn64@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> writes:
>Technologically, no it isn't. There is not a better, high-performance
>oxygen/hydrogen rocket engine than the Space Shuttle Main Engine (and
>no one has figured out a better propellant combination.) The Shuttle's

NASA disagrees, since they're sending out teams to aerospace junkyards all
over the planet, looking for J2 engine parts. They've lost a lot of the
design plans needed to build them again, and also lost almost all of the
institutional knowledge as to why they were built the way they were, and
how individual parts were machined. It's the biggest loss of engineering
knowledge of all time. That's NASA today.

>Solid Rocket Booster, despite the Challenger Disaster, is by far the
>best large solid-propellant rocket ever built, with by far the best
>safety record. The Shuttle's External Tank is a spectacular

SSRBs SUCK. Period. They can't be throttled, they can't be shut down, and
they can't be aborted without jettisoning them and blowing them up. To the
devil with them. 

>mass fraction that is still the best in the space industry. The
>Shuttle's computers still operate software that is orders of magnitude
>more reliable than standard commercial software. There is still no

On hardware that's 20 years out of date, and no, it's not all that
reliable. They've had a lot of time to find bugs, but early on computer
problems were a common source of scrubs and countdown delays.

>other operational reusable thermal protection system... Shuttle's
>tiles are in a league of their own.

Not any more they're not. And they're so freaking fragile that you can
damage one by throwing a piece of foam at them, or with a fingernail. This
is not smart.

>It is the Shuttle's operational difficulties and high cost that sink
>it. NASA aims to solve some of this by re-applying Shuttle technology
>into a new launch vehicle, the Ares.

Ares is very much a 'back to the future' kind of thing. Ares could have
existed without the shuttle ever coming into being, for the most part.
It's
a great program, as an apollo followup.

>Especially since it is the vehicle responsible for 70% of the people
>who have ever travelled into space and has done so with a failure
>record statistically no worse than its chief rival, Russia's Soyuz.

At many times the cost. *
-- 
* PV   something like badgers--something like lizards--and something
       like corkscrews.