Text 14753, 45 rader
Skriven 2007-05-19 20:01:10 av cmadams (1165.babylon5)
  Kommentar till text 14719 av rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated (1131.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: Are Ares I and V red herrings or the way to the Moon?
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Once upon a time, Andrew Swallow  <am.swallow@btopenworld.com> said:
>Two different design of rockets for the same mission appears expensive. 

They aren't two different designs for the same mission.  First, there
are a number of shared pieces between the designs.  Second, the missions
are different.

Ares I is the people lifter.  It will carry a capsule to low Earth
orbit, which can then do multiple things.  It can reach ISS (since the
Shuttle is going away, this will be our way to get people to and from
the station).  It can also dock with other vehicles to go other places
(the Moon for now, hopefully Mars later).

Ares V is the heavy lifter.  It will put unmanned vehicles (or parts of
vehicles) in orbit.  If it takes more than one launch to get the
necessary vehicle in orbit, the people just wait for all the pieces to
reach orbit and then ride up on an Ares I.

>Alternately could NASA come up with its own rocket to launch the lot?

That was essentially what we did in the 1960s with the Saturn V and then
in the 1970s with the Shuttle - try to make one vehicle that can do
everything.  That doesn't work very well.

NASA is now trying to build a Honda Civic to carry people and a MAC
truck to carry hardware.  They'll share some design pieces, but they are
different vehicles.  What you are suggesting is instead trying to use a
Ford Expedition to do everything, but it pretty much sucks at all jobs
(can't carry as much hardware and is rather inefficient at carrying
people).

This is actually one of the proposals for the original Moon mission:
build a people lifter and a heavy lifter.  You launch the heavy lifter
(possibly multiple times) to get a long-range vehicle in orbit, then
launch the people to take a ride.  That's probably the best way for
long-term use, but there were too many unknowns in the 1960s with
docking that could have caused the US to fall behind and miss the
deadline (fully automated docking is still a challenge).

-- 
Chris Adams <cmadams@hiwaay.net>
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.
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