Re: China aims for moon

In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Kaido Kert wrote:
>> 
>> > As a thought experiment, try imagine a situation where US would
>> > absolutely inevitably need to get a man on the moon in a decade ( for
>> > whatever urgent reason, a black monolith making an appearance or
>> > somesuch )
>> > How exactly would it happen ?
>> 
>> Hrm. Decision right now? OSP rescoped, a translunar stage designed for
>> an EELV - or, possibly, a new HLV started - and some form of LEM built
>> to work with it. Other details are fudgible. Expensive, but hey. If
>> there's public support, political support, it's only money. And this
>> is a thought experiment :-)

(...)

> Not that it would matter, but i, for one, am not convinced at all.
> First, your answer seems to ignore some realities that we are faced
> with today. I'll list them in no particular order, and probably omit a
> bunch of what i have thought about but wont cross my mind right now

Just as a reminder, incidentally, this thread was prompted by "Nonsense.
 If it were important to get back to the moon in a hurry, we could do
it, just as we did forty years ago."; the specific point was adressing
the question of "how we would get back in a decade" if we absolutely,
really, had a very damn good reason to. I also remind you that the
original "before this decade is out" speech was in May 1961.

> -in 60'ies, we did not have many decades of "solid knowledge" that
> everything space-related is hideously expensive and hard by
> definition. Just this "perception buildup" is one factor to actually
> make stuff harder today.

This may be the case - although I'm not sure people thought spaceflight
was easy in the early 1960s - but it should be weighed against the fact
that in 1961, the US's total spaceflight experience involved less time
than it took me to make dinner this evening... and, today, we know it
can be done. People (reasonably) regularly spend several days to months
in space, and twelve men have walked on the moon. Proof-of-concept is a
very useful thing to have done.

> -theres that one big space agency, that would politically be
> impossible to ignore or get around. Plus there are its usual suspect
> contractors. Those guys havent designed, built and flown anything new
> and successful in decades.

In May 1961, there was one big monolithic space agency, and some big
contractors. Exactly one manned spacecraft had ever been built and
flown by that space agency.

> -there are scant few people still around who actually have designed
> and flown manned deep-space vehicles. most of them retired.

In 1961.. well, yes. There aren't very many engineers who've built
spacecraft now, but I note that spacecraft managed to get built when
no-one had ever built one before.

> -IMO, some of the general paradigms of designing new hardware have
> radically changed. There were a _lot_ less nannies and safety
> inspectors around thirty years ago. 'twas a different world, then.
> Some unfortunate managagement practices werent invented then, either.
> The word "Dilbert" didnt mean much.

If a nation truly has to get somewhere, they'll do it perfectly well.
You'd be amazed how many safety regulations have loopholes; indeed,
you'd be amazed at how much work you can still do with them. (Very few
people, to the best of my knowledge, were killed working on Apollo)

> Perhaps all im saying is "we're half the men we used to be", and
> someone will comment with "speak for yourself" anyway.

Heh.

I don't know. I'm not an engineer, but I have no reason to doubt that
there are good universities turning out good engineers now.

In the 1960s, there were a lot of good engineers. They weren't demigods,
or Titans, they were good engineers. This isn't looking back to some
mythical time when Giants Walked The Earth, it's the previous generation
(for most people) doing a tricky project.

Just because what they did was remarkable, doesn't mean we can't do it.

> Still, 
>> OSP rescoped, a translunar stage designed for
>> an EELV - or, possibly, a new HLV started - and some form of LEM built
>> to work with it.

> I just cant imagine any of that happening at this day and age, not in
> situation where space industry is currently in. Even mere "rescoping
> the OSP" would probably take a few years, and at that point you would
> have only viewgraphs to show. Considering all the political, budgetary
> and technical realities, exactly who would be designing and building
> all this stuff ?

The post I made implied solutions to the first two were a prequisite,
and I don't believe the third is a showstopper.

"If there's public support, political support..."

I would assume that, given large aerospace companies say they can - and
I don't believe anyone seriously argues they can't - design and build
OSP now, they'd design and build *OSP. I don't honestly think they'd
lose their competence because someone says "moon!".

OSP is being designed now. Change the specifications, maybe set you back
a year. You don't have the shilly-shallying around with variant plans,
or weird ideas - we know what will work, we've done it before, so
specify something like that. It's not like we're starting with no idea
what to do here.

> IMO, nothing radical can happen before somebody, somewhere will stand
> up straight, and admit in a clear, loud voice that we need to get back
> to square one in space development. And i just either cant see this
> happening with the reality we live in, or the loud voice just wont be
> heard in all the noise.

*sigh*

NASA, a monolithic bureaucratic agency, managed to get us to the moon in
1969. I fail to see why it's impossible for NASA, a monolithic
bureaucratic agency, to get us to the moon in 2013, so long as someone
beats them every now and again to keep them focused and signs the
cheques.

This may not be the most efficient way to do it, it may not be the most
intelligent way to do it, it may not be the most sustainable or useful
way to do it, but it would almost certainly be able to put a man on the
moon in a decade.

-- 
-Andrew Gray
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]