Spacecraft Designer Calls for Retirement of Shuttle

Kansas City Star/Los Angeles Times ^ | Fri, May. 16, 2003 | RALPH VARTABEDIAN and PETER PAE

[Paul Ross]

Sheesh. I never said that. What a grouch!

[RightWhale]

A true american would go into space aboard the space shuttle.

America is a place to set up your Oneida, your New Harmony. It requires wilderness and a frontier. That America flourished 200 years ago, and is gone, gone, gone.

The American spirit needs land, lots of land, promising and unforgiving land. It is the land that allows dreams to be made real. America had that, but it is gone.

Time is now for the new America, the endless America, the America that goes on forever without limit in the expanding universe.

The Space Shuttle goes only across the Mississippi from St. Louis and back. America starts when the Space Shuttle leaves you out there. Out there where, believe it or not, a star was just discovered in Aries, only 7.8 lightyears away. We know nothing about the endless wilderness, and anything is possible out there. How can real Americans possibly be content to sit here at the dock in St. Louis when everything is just across there? If you go out there, you'll die. But guess what, if you stay here, you'll die anyway.

[KevinDavis]

What I should have said is yes the Space Shuttle is old technology and dangerous. I would still go on it. However, I would to go to Alpha Centauri or the new star that was discoverd. Personally I prefer to go to Alpha and hopefully find a Earth like planet and live there.

[DPB101]

More disappointed than a grouch. The net teems with unmmaned vs manned debates. I thought, first, I would learn something by introducing the subject and, secondly, a good debate would interest more people in the subject and keep the thread alive. So far, I've learned I must be smoking dope (told this twice), I am a "wimp", my comments are suspect because I registered to post this month and I make typos.

Your comments were humorous tho....

:-)

It was the totality of it which prompted me to take it out on you. Maybe someone else (who has been here longer) will introduce the debate on the next space thread and I can hid in the weeds.

[RightWhale]

The instant someone mentions robotic exploration of space the image of Sagan pops up. He is the man who killed the space program, and his agitation for using robots to the exclusion of human beings, for whatever reason, is why there is no moon base, no Mars base, no asteroid mining, no private property rights in outer space, and why people think we never went to the moon at all but Planet X is coming to knock us on the head. Sagan ===> Space Aliens.

That's how it is. Let me just ask, if we aren't going to go into space ourselves and build settlements, why bother sending robots?

[DPB101]

Thanks! I didn't know that. I despised Sagan so there is one strike against unmanned flight for me (irrational as my feeling may be).

See some people refer to Ben Bova and say manned vs unmanned is a phony debate--it is not either/or. Another good comment I saw is that people tend to see the debate of how to spend the money within the budget of NASA. That appeals to me. The debate should be how much to spend within the budgets of NASA, HUD, the NEA--among others--for space exploration. I tend towards 100%.

[RightWhale]

The way we sent men to the moon seemed reasonable at the time, and it involved robots, lots of them. Every camera they smashed into the moon snapping pictures all the way down was a robot. The landers they sent to potential manned landing sites were robots. Robot exploration has its place when you need to know conditions at the landing site. It was thought that a manned lunar lander might disappear to the bottom of a 1/4 mile of dust, so the Surveyors were sent ahead to test the ground.

A couple more RC cars are being sent to the surface of Mars in a couple weeks. The plan should be to check a potential settlement site, but it seems they are after pure science.

On top of that, manned space exploration is way too expensive the way it is being done. It's the usual: The ISS and the Space Shuttle were only the first stage of a true space transportation system that was to reach to the moon and to Mars. Usual in the sense that the committees got hold of the design and decided to run with that while ignoring the reason for creating it. No room for individual genius. All show, no go.

But Dr. Malin's creation is still going strong, to the consternation of the committees. An individual with a clear idea somehow got past the mission adjustors. That's what can be done, and what committees will never do. It's a robot, the MGS, and thanks to that Mars should be a goal of manned spaceflight, no question. Maybe the primary goal, although the moon should have some human presense along the way.

[Paul Ross]

Here is one example of your 'whirligig' SSTO, called the 'Roton':

[Paul Ross]

Tom Clancy was on the board of Directors when they rolled this out in 1999 and test-flew it successfully. I don't know what the status of the prototype is currently. (As we know, a competing concept-vehicle for SSTO the DC-X, suffered an unfortunate explosion from combustible vapor buildup under its engines and was destroyed)

[Paul Ross]

Home

SPACE

TRANSPORT :

Spacecraft :

Roton

Yep, what you see above is no computer graphic. Of all the wannabes in the aerospace private industry, Rotaryrocket is the only one which has tested a 100% scale prototype. While the Roton ATV ( Atmospheric Test Vehicle ) is not capable of even sub-orbital flight, but it is atleast a start.

	Content	Design
rotaryrocket.com : Rotary Rocket Company's official website.	6/10	3+3+1/10
scaled.com/projects/roton/roton.htm : Read about Scaled Composites association with Roton.
spacefuture.com/vehicles/designs.shtml : Spacefuture.com's vehicle designs page.

[Paul Ross]

You will find many, if not most of the space enthusiasts, do actually want to go forward with both manned and unmanned for the reasons already outlined by the others here...with the emphasis on the ultimate point...getting Man out there. The L-5 Society and High Frontier have nothing on us (heck a lot of 'em are here). A good source for information in the field is at SpaceFuture.com Give it a try and then come back when you have a "Thus Spake Zarathustra" Moment to share!

[bvw]

A wonderful design concept! But far from what I was imagining. I was thinking of a whirlygig of filaments stretching a few hundred miles, held to a pivot at one of the lagrangians. A space bungie cord, maybe.