9 replies to this topic

[MG Brown]

July 7, 2003 a Delta II rocket departed from the Florida coast on a journey of 36 million miles. On January 25, 2004, the Mars Rover "B" (nicknamed Opportunity) gently touched down on the surface of Mars for a planned 90 sol (Mars day) exploration of the Meridiani Planum area.

This week "The Little Spacecraft that could" has surpassed the 3000 sol mark of operation with the only problems of substance reported to date being management of hibernation (which it was not designed to do) during the bleak Mars winter and techniques that have been learned on the fly to remove accumulation of layers of dust on the solar arrays.

This is one of the rare government projects that has delivered far more value than was originally intended.

July 2012 is the planned landing of the third Mars rover which is a new generation design with greater capability. It will be interesting to follow the landing and exploration of the new rover.

[Gator Bob]

I just love watching them "leave town".

"Marvin" friggin hates it.

[TSR]

I wonder how many more years it is going to take those geniuses at NASA to follow Dick Rutan's simpler, more effective and less expensive method of horizontal space vehicle launching (VS the German Werner von Braun school of vertical take off begun after WW2), that uses 1/10th of the energy for the same weight of payload and allows for greater mass to be put in orbit or sent to other planets.

Sometimes one has to shake his head in disbelief, when a private citizen shows how it's done and the government agencies simply ignore the basic logic of it.

[Ron Hershman]

Sometimes one has to shake his head in disbelief, when a private citizen shows how it's done and the government agencies simply ignore the basic logic of it.

I have to agree.... think of how many food stamps, welfare payments, unemployment checks, abortions performed, Gov't healthcare, etc could have been paid for with all that wasted money. LMAO

[TSR]

As usual, not the point.

[gascarnut]

Here we are with a major technological triumph, and instead of celebrating the achievement of dedicated and ingenious fellow-citizens, you guys turn it into yet another soapbox for stupid, irrelevant and uninformed political opinion.

[TSR]

What's political about it? It is a simple matter of an engineering decision. The launch is a triumph, but would it not be time to think beyond the well-established envelope? Ruttan and the Air Force showed the way and NASA is wearing blindfolds.

Before NASA or at its beginnings, the North American X15 rocket-powered exploration aircraft was launched from under the wing of a B52. THAT was incredibly efficient. When NASA put all its eggs in one basket they let von Braun run the show with little opposition.

And nothing has changed since. The V1s were launched horizontally and worked quite well. The V2s never did that well...

Vertical launch is a waste of energy and is very costly.

A MUCH larger payload than Orion's could be launched from the back of a 747 at a fraction of the cost.

[MG Brown]

MrP... Have you ever tried telling a German that they are "wrong"?

Here's an interesting discussion.... http://boards.straig...p/t-139921.html

[TSR]

MrP... Have you ever tried telling a German that they are "wrong"?

I tried with BMW when they insisted that the water pump on their cars was properly located by the cylinder head, causing the pump cavitation in hot weather. Of course any idiot knows that the lower the pump, the more effective it will be, but never mind, they were right and I was wrong. So that was the last BMW car I would ever own. Took them another 20 years to relocate the pump near the crankshaft line, but few of the former 6-cylinder, early 1970s models have survived, most having blown head gaskets or having warped their cylinder heads.

Then I tried with Daimler-Benz when the entire frontal structure of a used 450SEL sedan began parting with the rest of the body. This was part of a recall and a factory fix, but only for a certain period of time. With a low-mile car, years later, you got screwed. So a lawsuit ensued in Small Claims court that I easily won, but they never admitted any wrongdoing and were adamant that they were right. It still took a while to get the check.
I am still faithful to the brand because while there are and have been a few turkeys in their product line over the years, a wise choice of certain models will outperform and outlast virtually anything out there, for a fraction of the long-term operating cost of just about anything else, while offering perks that few other cars at any price can do.

Also one has to recognize that due to the operating system of traffic in Germany where a large amount of the autobahn system has no speed limits (and a smaller percentage of traffic fatalities per mile compared to the US system), it encourages the competing manufacturers to build better handling, faster, long-lasting machinery. This is why they have now invaded France and both Peugeot and Renault are suffering with their mediocre vehicles, as their poor sales record show, with Peugeot approaching near-bankruptcy after being the second oldest production car manufacturer on the planet. In case you did not know, the first was Panhard & Levassor, but that company, absorbed by Peugeot, only makes military vehicles nowadays.

So I have to put up with the Germans.

The US space program was very influenced by von Braun and the other German Nazi scientists spirited from Peenemünde at the end of WW2, while the Soviets got the others. Von Braun had absolute authority and his influence is still felt today, because the Ruttans of the world are simply ignored by NASA as simple folks.

here is a picture of Werner von Braun in 1958 with his Mercedes-Benz 220S coupe:



Looks just like mine, and same color scheme at that!

[Duffy]

Well, comparison of the V-1 & V-2 isn't a real good argument: The inertial guidance systems that both used were crude to begin with, and suited the simpler V-1 which was basically just an airplane, while the technological solutions of a ballistic missile were still years away.

Still makes vertical launch a really, really bad idea.

But, just like the German rocket program was rushed into that bad choice, so too did we rush ahead on that same path, driven by our fear of the Soviet missile development - and von Braun, as much charismatic zealot as gifted engineer and administrator, played that fear superbly. He kept the rocket-as-weapon and rocket-as-explorer tied closely together, understanding that connection to be the surest guarantee of plenty of dollars heading his way. The Military went right along with it.

At the same time, the engineering demands of big multi-stage boosters were still more approachable than big air-breathing craft: we hadn't developed airframes and engines to the point where high-altitude piggybacking of really large payloads looked feasable, or at least as easily attained on the crash-program schedule we were heading toward.

It was just a bad train to climb on; and once it started, it became damned hard to stop.

- Actually it never stopped at all: it just ran out of steam. It ain't so much that NASA lacks vision now, there're plenty of good ideas getting floated and even worked on, hard: it's that there's just no money around to pay for 'em, and there may never be again. If we're chugging along on three cylinders with the same old tore-down jalopy, it's because nobody's figured out how to sell a really good (and unfortunately expensive) idea to a cash-strapped, frustrated and stingy public that itself really has no idea how it came to this.