Comments on: After the Shuttle, Should Astronauts be Launched on Satellite Rockets?

By: Frank McDougald

Frank McDougald — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 05:38:41 +0000

What is the problem here? We have a known and reliable Shuttle system. We just keep using that until the Orion system is ready. Projecting the readyness of a new set-up is a guess. You keep using the old stuff until the next new thing is ready. So, now we just give it all up because it's too expensive?And, then, when someone else reaps the benefits of all that's been done, I guess we hold an inquiry to find out why it"s not us!

By: Frank Glover

Frank Glover — Wed, 21 May 2008 20:45:42 +0000

Some people want to take the presumably man-rated Ares-1 and make a 'satellite launcher' variant. But a lot of other people are not impressed…

http://www.transterrestrial.com/archives/2008/04/what_fresh_hell.html

By: John Mendenhall

John Mendenhall — Mon, 12 May 2008 16:19:29 +0000

Maybe that's why John Glenn wants to keep the shuttle going.

By: Lab Lemming

Lab Lemming — Sun, 11 May 2008 11:35:47 +0000

John Glenn rode into space on an Altas 46 years ago. Talking about treading water…

By: PHWilson

PHWilson — Sat, 10 May 2008 14:02:09 +0000

Hmmm, more and more often Bigalow industries appears in articles. Did anyone say Hadden Industries? Wanna take a ride?

By: Fred

Fred — Fri, 09 May 2008 22:06:34 +0000

Russia will have a shuttle?
Russia had a shuttle. They turned away from that setup (for now at least) because there was no getting around the launch and turnaround costs of such a spacecraft.

What we want is a single stage to orbit or space plane. A return to hashing out venture star or oriental express solutions… which could take decades and cost billions without conducting any useful human spaceflight.
Focusing on that alone means no valuable flight experience is gained in the mean time and a stop to many other important areas of space development.

Nasa is simply looking at what works with what we can build today. This leads to small and lightweight capsules.
The ideal would be a dual approach that embraces advanced space craft development while not giving up our current foothold on the ISS and a long overdue return to lunar missions.

Unfortunately, with the current pick of US politicians, thats not likely to happen.

By: Frank Glover

Frank Glover — Fri, 09 May 2008 21:13:39 +0000

Can this be any different from launching them on 'man-rated' ballistic missiles as we used to do? The only manned launchers that didn't start that way were the Saturns and the Shuttle.

At least commercial customers (with tens and hundreds of millions of dollars on the line) want their payloads to reliably reach orbit as much as any thing with people, and those launchers are built to deliver as best as they can. The only real difference today, is that unmanned launchers don't have any provisions for detecting situations that would trigger an emergency abort, because there are no escape systems to make use of them…

By: Ross

Ross — Fri, 09 May 2008 20:40:18 +0000

Welp, Another sardine can job coming. Just what are we suppose to do in a tuna can that you can hardly move around in other then to jockey for your seat? I bet this is what N.A.S.A. plans to blast our astroauts into space with when the orion capsule is ready to use. Meanwhile back at the ranch, Russia will probably have their shuttle ready to use.

I think N.A.S.A. is scard stiff of the shuttle because they had a couple of them crashing one them. They should up grade the shuttle technology, not decommission it. If bigalow aero-space hotels are successful, how we going to get people up there. Hopefully Virgin Galactic will be up and flying. More then just sub-orbital.