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| Re: NASA to announce undeserving shuttle winners today (763996) | |||
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Re: NASA to announce undeserving shuttle winners today |
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Posted by WillD on Tue Apr 12 13:47:32 2011, in response to Re: NASA to announce undeserving shuttle winners today, posted by orange blossom special on Tue Apr 12 13:20:57 2011. Given that there are only three Shuttles to go around, I'd rather see them go to places which do not have an enormous amount of Apollo hardware. I'd much rather see the Shuttle hardware spread around the country to potentially lessen resistance to increasing NASA's budget on the part of both the extreme fiscally conservative and pro-social polity left wing. And I'd certainly rather see them not go to the places responsible for the Shuttle program's major disasters and the utter failure of its replacement program to accomplish anything. As a result I think it is only right to not give one to Johnson, Kennedy, or Marshall Spaceflight Centers.IMHO sending the Enterprise to New York was a mistake, in part because of its relative proximity to Washington DC and the Udvar Hazy Center. I'd rather have seen the Enterprise go to the Northwest, maybe the Evergreen Aircraft Museum in Oregon, or the Museum of Flight in Seattle. The remaining Shuttles should be distributed between California, the Midwest, and the Udvar Hazy Center. Have you gotten a chance to see the plan for the new rocket that's stronger than Delta IV Heavy? I cannot recall from memory the company name. Yes, I posted about it. It's an interesting development because most pundits and forum posters seemed to agree that SpaceX would opt for both the Raptor cryogenic hydrolox upper stage, and a 1 to 2 million lbf kerolox engine to replace the 120,000lb Merlin cluster before they went for the Falcon 9 Heavy. But now it looks like they're going full steam ahead on the Falcon 9 Heavy with 27 Merlin engines in the first stage, and possibly a single Merlin vacuum engine for the upper stage. The Raptor engine gives them a capability to make the single core Falcon 9 truly competitive with the rest of their field to Geosynchronous orbit. But it is somewhat unclear from SpaceX whether their description of the Falcon 9H is with a hydrogen or kerosene upper stage. If it is with a kerosene upper stage, then they have a huge margin for growth, perhaps edging on 70mT to orbit with the addition of the hydrolox Raptor stage. In any event, I suspect their choice to launch the Falcon 9H from Vandenberg may indicate that some of the heavy low earth polar orbit satellites the USAF has broadly hinted at in its desire for a heavy lift launch vehicle may be ready for launch in the 2013 timeframe. |
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