

NASA still unsure how to end Constellation and move forward







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RE: The moon
By Solandri on 3/1/2010 4:47:48 PM , Rating: 3
In any case, I think the bottom line is NASA can't afford to be as innovative as they used to. The space shuttle was probably not the best approach so now we're depending on Soyuz capsules, though updated, were invented in the Apollo era.

The space shuttles were built with an expected duty cycle of approximately one launch a week. The expectation back in the 1970s was that space launches were going to become commonplace and routine. With weekly launches, throwing away 99% of your launch vehicle's mass and building it completely anew for each launch ends up being less cost-effective than a reusable launch vehicle.

Unfortunately, the reliability never got up to where launches could be done weekly, and the turnover costs to get a shuttle ready for re-launch never came down as much as expected. The 1986 Challenger accident effectively signed the shuttle transport system's death warrant as the duty cycle was lowered to 1 launch a month or fewer in the interest of safety.


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