Apollo moon is winding down. Now lets imagine the shuttle had never
been built. NASA looked at it and decided its flight rate wouldnt be
necessary, so operations would cost too much.

So they looked at making some of apollo reusable, and other cost
cutting ideas.

wonder what they would of come up with?

bump, i think its interesting wondering what might have been.......

apollo appications would of taken us to some asteroids, and another
skylab for sure. the air and space was a full flight article

Apollo moon is winding down. Now lets imagine the shuttle had never
been built. NASA looked at it and decided its flight rate wouldnt be
necessary, so operations would cost too much.

So they looked at making some of apollo reusable, and other cost
cutting ideas.

wonder what they would of come up with?

On Mar 20, 3:31 am, "hall...@aol.com" <hall...@aol.com> wrote:
Apollo moon is winding down. Now lets imagine the shuttle had never
been built. NASA looked at it and decided its flight rate wouldnt be
necessary, so operations would cost too much.

So they looked at making some of apollo reusable, and other cost
cutting ideas.

wonder what they would of come up with?

It's interesting the Griffin in a speech a year or so ago pointed out
that for the money spent on the Shuttle, NASA could have had a modest
Skylab-type space-station program and continued to fly one or two
Apollo missions to the moon every year. And then heavy-lift capability
(the Saturn V) would still be available today.

On the subject of cutting costs, several options aside from the
Shuttle were discussed. One was the development of a new family of
cheap, low-tech boosters, probably pressure fed. They'd be heavy and
inefficient from a structural point of view, but they'd be cheaper to
operate.

Another thing considered was replacing the Saturn IB with the Titan
III. I don't know that the Titan was intrinsically much cheaper than
the Saturn,

There were proposals to improve the Saturns. My favorite among these
are the Saturns V-B, -C and -D proposed by Corcoran and Scott in a
1968 paper (astronautix.com has some information on these boosters).
The first stage of the Saturn V would have been made into a stage-and-
a-half model known as the S-ID: part way through the flight the outer
four engines would have been dropped. The first stage flying by
itself, known as the Saturn V-B, could have carried 50,000 lb into
LEO. This would have eliminated the need for the Saturn IB, allowing
that production line to be closed. It's possible that the four dropped
engines would have been recovered and re-used.

Over time the Apollo CSM could have evolved into something better
suited to LEO applications. The command module could have been adapted
to carry a crew as large as six (see David Shayler's book "Apollo: The
Lost and Forgotten Missions") and to touch down on land, making
operations cheaper.

Perhaps the service module, which was over-
designed for LEO missions, might have evolved into a smaller, lighter
and cheaper version. I would have thought that, especially with a
touch-down on land, there's no fundamental reason the command modules
could not have been refurbished and re-used.

To keep lunar missions flying under this scenario, you'd still need
the S-IVB, for which we have no other use. My feeling is that between
the cost of keeping the S-IVB in production and NASA's increased
aversion to risk, manned lunar flights would have stopped.

Another thing considered was replacing the Saturn IB with the Titan
III. I don't know that the Titan was intrinsically much cheaper than
the Saturn,

It was. Had the US decided to continue with the Apollo CSM, it's likely
they would have launched atop Titan IIIs once the supply of Saturn IBs
was exhausted.

On Sun, 23 Mar 2008 18:18:16 GMT, simberg.interglo...@org.trash (Rand

Simberg) wrote:
In fact, Apollo would have been much cheaper (and more sustainable,
though perhaps not enough) had they taken this approach in the first
place, and not developed Saturn at all. �

Titan III-C didn't yet exist when Apollo was born. In fact, an
argument can be made that the Air Force should have joined the
already-existant Saturn program rather than make the huge investment
in SRBs and Complex 40-41 needed for III-C. But there was too much NIH
going on.

Saturn was not developed to save money. �It was developed to save
time, and beat the Russians to the moon. �Too few people understand
this.

Because its only partly true. Saturn I and Apollo were already in
development before the moon goal was approved by Kennedy. That's why
the first Saturn was able to fly only five months after the "before
this decade is out" speech.

Saturn IB was born of the moon program, but something like it (an
improved Saturn I... Saturn C-2 or whatever) would have followed
anyway. But von Braun's Saturn family was already on the drawing
boards... NASA just had to jump past C-2 through C-4 (and C-5....
Saturn V... was actually closer to the Nova concepts) to meet the 1970
deadline.

Apollo, launched by Saturn I, was planned as America's generic
spacecraft to succeed Mercury. It got the moon mission by default,
with Gemini later implemented to speed the process up.

Brian

Griffin was mistaken. As much as I disagree with Jeffrey Bell most of
the time, he wrote a good article dissecting Griffin's numbers and logic.

I'd like to see that -- do you know where I could find it?

On the subject of cutting costs, several options aside from the
Shuttle were discussed. One was the development of a new family of
cheap, low-tech boosters, probably pressure fed. They'd be heavy and
inefficient from a structural point of view, but they'd be cheaper to
operate.

That is only a "local minimum" of the optimization function.
The global
minimum is an RLV flying at high flight rates with minimum maintenance
required between flights.

The OP specified a low flight rate.

The shuttle was an attempt at that, but their
first problem was hubris: the belief that they could "get it right" with
an operational vehicle the first time around, without a series of
X-vehicles leading up to it from where the X-15 left off. (Their second
problem was being unwilling to re-examine their assumptions once they
proved to be flawed, and making do as best they could with what they had.)

I agree about that...!

I don't know that the Titan was intrinsically much cheaper than
the Saturn,

It was.

There were proposals to improve the Saturns. My favorite among these
are the Saturns V-B, -C and -D proposed by Corcoran and Scott in a
1968 paper (astronautix.com has some information on these boosters).
The first stage of the Saturn V would have been made into a stage-and-
a-half model known as the S-ID: part way through the flight the outer
four engines would have been dropped. The first stage flying by
itself, known as the Saturn V-B, could have carried 50,000 lb into
LEO. This would have eliminated the need for the Saturn IB, allowing
that production line to be closed. It's possible that the four dropped
engines would have been recovered and re-used.

I think a better solution, in terms of preserving lunar capability for
later, would have been the opposite: keep the Saturn IB but replace the
first stage with a non-clustered stage utilizing a single F-1A rather
than eight H-2s. That way you keep both the F-1 and J-2 lines open.

But cost-wise, it still would have been a loser compared to the Titan III.

If the 4 booster engines could have been re-used and if the AF could

Over time the Apollo CSM could have evolved into something
better suited to LEO applications. The command module could
have been adapted to carry a crew as large as six (see David
Shayler's book "Apollo: The
Lost and Forgotten Missions") and to touch down on land, making
operations cheaper.

I really doubt you could do both at the same time...

Shayler cites a North American study offering land recovery and a crew

In fact, Apollo would have been much cheaper (and more sustainable,
though perhaps not enough) had they taken this approach in the first
place, and not developed Saturn at all.

Saturn was not developed to save money. It was developed to save
time, and beat the Russians to the moon. Too few people understand
this.

On Sun, 23 Mar 2008 18:18:16 GMT, simberg.interglobal@org.trash (Rand
Simberg) wrote:

In fact, Apollo would have been much cheaper (and more sustainable,
though perhaps not enough) had they taken this approach in the first
place, and not developed Saturn at all.

Titan III-C didn't yet exist when Apollo was born. In fact, an
argument can be made that the Air Force should have joined the
already-existant Saturn program rather than make the huge investment
in SRBs and Complex 40-41 needed for III-C. But there was too much NIH
going on.

Saturn was not developed to save money. It was developed to save
time, and beat the Russians to the moon. Too few people understand
this.

Because its only partly true. Saturn I and Apollo were already in
development before the moon goal was approved by Kennedy. That's why
the first Saturn was able to fly only five months after the "before
this decade is out" speech.

Saturn IB was born of the moon program, but something like it (an
improved Saturn I... Saturn C-2 or whatever) would have followed
anyway. But von Braun's Saturn family was already on the drawing
boards...

Saturn IB was born of the moon program, but something like it (an
improved Saturn I... Saturn C-2 or whatever) would have followed
anyway. But von Braun's Saturn family was already on the drawing
boards...

Where it would have likely remained, absent the need to beat the
Russians to the moon.

are wrote:

... Saturn V-B, could have carried 50,000 lb into
LEO. This would have eliminated the need for the Saturn IB, allowing
that production line to be closed. It's possible that the four dropped
engines would have been recovered and re-used.

I think a better solution, in terms of preserving lunar capability for
later, would have been the opposite: keep the Saturn IB but replace the
first stage with a non-clustered stage utilizing a single F-1A rather
than eight H-2s. That way you keep both the F-1 and J-2 lines open. But
cost-wise, it still would have been a loser compared to the Titan III.

It's interesting the Griffin in a speech a year or so ago pointed out
that for the money spent on the Shuttle, NASA could have had a modest
Skylab-type space-station program and continued to fly one or two
Apollo missions to the moon every year. And then heavy-lift capability
(the Saturn V) would still be available today.

Griffin was mistaken. As much as I disagree with Jeffrey Bell most of
the time, he wrote a good article dissecting Griffin's numbers and logic.

Saturn IB was born of the moon program, but something like it (an
improved Saturn I... Saturn C-2 or whatever) would have followed
anyway. But von Braun's Saturn family was already on the drawing
boards...

Where it would have likely remained, absent the need to beat the
Russians to the moon.