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AsaScot

Listed below are comments made by AsaScot between Sunday, 2nd August 2009 and Friday, 30th October 2009.

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Ares 1-X gives Mr Obama something to ponder 7:27pm on 30 Oct 2009 Chiefy1724, this is a blog on the future of the Ares 1, I think its been hijacked quite enough which is why I suggested going to a more appropriate forum like BAUT to discuss some of these issues in the first place. Since however you seem determined to keep going and become increasingly rude well I'm sorry but what you propose as 'evidence' is nothing of the sort, its just anecdotes from books written decades after the event that you've chosen to interpet as meaning a manned Soviet flight was imminent, when it could just as easily be taken as meaning the program as a whole should go ahead regardless of what the USA might do.
I'm going to make that my final word on the subject on this blog, if you want to take my refusal to argue further as running away or conceding defeat you go right ahead.
Ares 1-X gives Mr Obama something to ponder 4:29pm on 30 Oct 2009 "Civility in dealing with people being one of those little things that I have picked up

Maybe I'll get a Civilised welcome at BAUT ?"

I thought my post was perfectly civil but if you felt otherwise I do apologize. You will receive a civil welcome at BAUT but you will be expected to back up some of your claims with hard facts, especially that one about the manned Russian Moon flight.
Ares 1-X gives Mr Obama something to ponder 2:06pm on 30 Oct 2009 Chiefy1724 I'm sure the Russians and the Chinese have plans to go to Mars but what neither they nor anyone else has is a rocket big enough to launch the required payloads, that's why the Ares V is needed by NASA. As to this Chinese super LEM, some evidence it exists as more than a theoretical excercise would be nice. The suggestion that Soyuz could be used as the sole crew ferry is naive at best, especially when you also seem to be implying the Russians might turn against the ISS at some point. I am also an amateur observer, I would suggest taking your post and using it to open a thread at the BAUT(Bad Astronomy Universe Today) forum where the experts can explain the issues you raise much more clearly.
Ares 1-X gives Mr Obama something to ponder 11:13am on 30 Oct 2009 "The reason for two is that it is supposed to be versatility. If you only need to send heavy cargo, but no crew, you can send Ares V alone. If you only need to send crew, you can send Ares I alone. Or maybe even two Ares V but only one manned Ares I... situations are endless."

Well I think one of the motivators for the two rockets was actually that NASA needed, or was pressured to create, a manned launch system that could be brought online as soon after the Shuttle retirement as possible, hence the Ares I design. The real problem isn't even the rocket but the Orion capsule itself; which is a fine design but massively overbuilt for the role of crew ferry for the ISS, which is initially the role it would be expected to fill, hence the focus in the Augustine report on a simpler commercial vehicle like the Dragon. Take away the crew ferry role and the Ares I rocket doesn't really have a mission, when/if NASA is ready to go to the moon/Mars/NEO's an Ares V 'lite' as an Orion launcher makes sense.

As far as the Russian nuclear rocket goes, its certainly an admirable goal but it will be a long time before the technology is ready, never mind the international politics.
Ares 1-X gives Mr Obama something to ponder 2:09pm on 29 Oct 2009 "@AsaScot: that's what I meant. Why waste all that money, when money is tight, in anything else but Ares V?"

That seems to be roughly speaking what the Augustine Committee was suggesting, with the job of ferrying crew to the ISS falling to a commercial vehicle, possibly the Falcon9/Dragon but that was one of the things they left open. Using Orion as a LEO ferry is a hideous waste of money, it's going to cost more per launch that something like the Dragon, even if the development costs are similar, that's where the committee see a saving in the costs.
Ares 1-X gives Mr Obama something to ponder 11:19am on 29 Oct 2009 "What is missing is a really heavy launcher, not yet another reinventing of the manned rocket."

It's not missing, it's called the Ares V. Originally intended as just a heavy cargo launcher the Augustine Committee put forward the idea of a 'Lite' version with fewer engines and smaller SRB's(the ones intended for the Ares 1) to be used for launching the Orion capsule for missions beyond LEO. One other point the committee made was that using Orion as a ferry for the ISS would be expensive and wasteful, something along the lines of the SpaceX Falcon9/Dragon combo would be more economic operationally if not in terms of development costs.
The point of the Ares 1 was to be the simple, cheap, quick solution to replacing the shuttle. It's already failed on all three counts so why push on with it?
Nasa's 'stick of a rocket' - will it launch? 1:32pm on 04 Sep 2009 If as seems likely manned missions to Mars are dropped from NASA's agenda then it will be a refreshing outbreak of honesty. The past few Whitehouse adminstrations have followed the same pattern:
1-Announce a manned mission to Mars as a future goal, always for a time well after the president in question will be enjoying their retirement.
2-Do exactly nothing about said goal, except cut NASA's budget when no one's paying attention.

If the American public really want to send a man to Mars then they can protest in terms that will give the president a mandate to provide the funds. If they don't, well then why play lets pretend with Mars anymore?

As for the Ares 1, this really does look like NASA insisting on having their own design and coming up with it in about 5 minutes while waiting for the meeting on Manned Launchers to start. Man rate the Titan IV, pursue Direct 3.0, or better still pump money into Space-X who are already working on a man rated launcher, what is the point of NASA building its own vehicle to compete with the private sector? If none of these are satisfactory co-operate with the ESA on a manned version of the ATV, or put money into Reaction Engines and Skylon, Anything but this glorified firework NASA seems to be stubbornly clinging to!
Time now for the space station to deliver 11:08pm on 30 Aug 2009 The problem with depending on unmanned craft is that they tend to have much lower success rate than manned missions. Any number of Mars probes could have been saved if there had been someone near enough to make corrections. As to the ISS it has the potential to do good science. The real problem with the US space program isn't manned flight or the ISS, it's that the Space Shuttle never became the space truck flying every month it was orignally touted as. hopefully the new review will avoid a repeat of that kind of mistake again.
The UK spaceplane aiming to go to a new level 6:32pm on 04 Aug 2009 As far as long term funding goes their best bet might be a link up with Scaled Composites and Richard Branson with a view to building Skylon as 'Spaceship Three'. RE's propulsion combined with Bert Rutan's innovative approach to vehicle design would be fascinating.
The UK spaceplane aiming to go to a new level 10:36pm on 02 Aug 2009 "Lockheed Skunk works, failed to create a functional Single stage to orbit vehicle not that long ago, why do we a country with the absolute minimum possible experience in space flight think we can do better.

A less ambitious first step would be more sensible"

Thing is they failed largely because the US government wouldn't spend the money to make it work, not the same as not being able to make it work. At the moment RE are workign on proving the technology, if it does progress it to a vehicle it will be in association with either agencies like the ESA or aerospace companies like BAE. They are unlikely to jump straight from proving the technology to building Skylon, there are bound to be intermediate vehicles, perhaps modifying an existing launcher.

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