Want to become a rocket scientist?
For the next few days you can get the ebook “How to be a rocket scientist” for free, by an engineer who has been one. As Hoffstadt correctly notes,
We are still very far from having all of the answers and seeing all of the possible technologies that can help humans travel through the air and space, and to live beyond our planet Earth. There are important questions to ask, problems to solve, and things to build. We haven’t figured everything out yet and don’t know where the next ideas and accomplishments are going to come from. In other words … we need more rocket scientists! [emphasis in original]
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
For the next few days you can get the ebook “How to be a rocket scientist” for free, by an engineer who has been one. As Hoffstadt correctly notes,
We are still very far from having all of the answers and seeing all of the possible technologies that can help humans travel through the air and space, and to live beyond our planet Earth. There are important questions to ask, problems to solve, and things to build. We haven’t figured everything out yet and don’t know where the next ideas and accomplishments are going to come from. In other words … we need more rocket scientists! [emphasis in original]
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Hi this is OT to the post I suppose but the question below is I think right in your wheelhouse, and you are my go-to guy on all things space. I was curious to see what you could add to the answers given. Thank you for all your great reporting here and on the Batchelor show!
http://space.stackexchange.com/questions/6281/why-not-build-saturn-vs-again
I’m going to go with the answer that we want to move forward, not backward. We have learned several lessons since then, and these should be incorporated into our rockets and spacecraft. Problems that existed with the Saturn, the Shuttle, and with Apollo should be corrected. They worked, but the had their problems.
Saturn was a quickly developed rocket that was designed before we knew much about the pitfalls that come with sticking incredibly powerful, high temperature, high pressure, lightweight engines (each of which burned more than a ton of fuel and oxidizer per second, the equivalent of the output of 36 one-gigawatt power plants — per engine!), and finicky turbopumps on lightweight structures right next to the fuel tank. (You have my permission to be impressed.)
Typically, we want to design hardware that is appropriate for the mission at hand. For Apollo and the Saturn V, that mission was going to the moon and returning safely. For the Space Shuttle, that mission was to explore man and material in micro-gravity in low Earth orbit (LEO).
For SLS, we still don’t know, so SLS may not be the best design for us. The general idea is for SLS to take Orion beyond LEO, possibly to a high orbit around the moon (at one time a return to the moon’s surface was the mission), or possibly to a “local” asteroid. If only we knew.
Even if the mission were to go back to the moon, we would want to do more than just walk around for a while, we would want to move forward, such as build some serious infrastructure, like a permanent base or even a colony, and that could require more than a Saturn can lift (or an SLS, for that matter).
I would argue that a better design than the SLS would cost less so that we could launch it at least once a year, and preferably several times each year. More missions means more exploration, which is NASA’s purpose, and why we had intended for the Space Shuttle to fly a dozen or two flights each year.
I understand your frustration about the direction that NASA has been directed to take, but going back to old 1960s technology is not the best solution.
My recommendation is for you to become a rocket scientist and help take us into the space age.