eder@ssc-vax.UUCP (Dani Eder) (10/13/88)
In article <1988Oct3.172838.8828@utzoo.uucp>, henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: > The Soviets say that all of Energia, the core as well as the strap-ons, > is designed to be recoverable. Sounds like a tall order to me, but there > is nothing fundamentally impossible about it. I believe they haven't yet > tried recovering the core. Good photographs of the Energia on the launch pad showed squarish bumps on the liquid strap-on boosters. I could easily see those bumps containing parachutes. > Sticking a shuttle on a Saturn V would have been a hell of a lot better > than sticking it on segmented solid boosters! And it would have flown > sooner, and probably have been cheaper, too. It was also proposed by the Boeing/Grumman team early in the development of the `Shuttle. We would have put engines and a wing on the Saturn first stage, to make it recoverable. May I also point out, for those netters who are amazed at the lift capacity of the Energia, that the Space Shuttle Orbiter plus cargo weighed 253,693 lb at launch on STS-26, and 194,800 lb on landing, the difference being TDRS-C/IUS deployed payload and maneuvering propellants used during the mission. Subtracting about 20,000 lb for the three Space Shuttle Main Engines, leaves about 220,000 lb (100 metric tons) of net payload capacity. It's just that most of the payload capacity (80%) is the Orbiter itself. -- Dani Eder / Boeing / Space Station Program / uw-beaver!ssc-vax!eder (205)464-4150(w) (205)461-7801(h) 1075 Dockside Drive #905 Huntsville, AL 35824 34 40 N latitude 86 40 W longitude +100m altitude, Earth
henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (10/13/88)
In article <2316@ssc-vax.UUCP> eder@ssc-vax.UUCP (Dani Eder) writes: >> The Soviets say that all of Energia, the core as well as the strap-ons, >> is designed to be recoverable... > >Good photographs of the Energia on the launch pad showed squarish bumps >on the liquid strap-on boosters. I could easily see those bumps >containing parachutes. I believe the Soviets have, in fact, officially said that that's what the bumps are. Recovering the strap-ons shouldn't be a big deal. What I'm a bit dubious about is recovering the core. That, I want to see. >> Sticking a shuttle on a Saturn V would have been a hell of a lot better... >It was also proposed by the Boeing/Grumman team early in the development >of the `Shuttle. We would have put engines and a wing on the >Saturn first stage, to make it recoverable. Ah yes, the Flyback F-1. The liquid-fuel booster the shuttle almost had. Sigh. (Boeing, as the manufacturer of the Saturn V first stage, had a certain commercial interest in the matter, but the idea nevertheless made a lot of sense.) >May I also point out, for those netters who are amazed at the lift >capacity of the Energia, that the Space Shuttle Orbiter plus cargo >weighed 253,693 lb at launch on STS-26... Ah, but this is (sort of) equivalent to counting the final stage of an expendable as part of the payload. The payload capacity of Energia or the Saturn V would go up still further if you did this. It's not quite a fair comparison, since we're not counting the shuttle tank, but it's close. (Of course, if you're going to *use* that final stage for something, then it's fair to count it as payload. See, for example, the original "wet workshop" Skylab concept, which called for moving into a spent rocket stage. Actually, if you really want a good example, look at the old proposals for moving into a spent Saturn V *second* stage. If you folded it a bit, you could fit the entire NASA space station inside that thing. The second stage of the Saturn V that launched Skylab was the single largest object ever orbited, much larger than Skylab. It came down several years earlier; nobody much noticed. Alas for opportunities lost...) -- The meek can have the Earth; | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology the rest of us have other plans.|uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu