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A reader asks...
Oct. 5th, 2007 08:02 amLJ friend ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
platofish asks, in a comment to yesterday's Sputnik post:
There is no doubt in my mind that the Apollo project put humans on the moon and returned them to the Earth, and not once, but several times, and that this was done with - by contemporary standards - very primitive tools.
And I don't doubt this was a strong contributing factor to the success of Apollo.
Recall that the goal of the program was pretty simple: put a man on the moon and return him to Earth. To do this, a hugely wasteful but hugely effective scheme was adopted of constructing a gargantuan launch vehicle, parts of which would be discarded when no longer required. The original vehicle was 36-stories high; the part that left Earth orbit for the moon was about the length of a semi-trailer, and the part that finally returned to earth was about the size of a Volkswagen minibus.
By comparison, flying a reusable vehicle is a lot more complicated because there's lots more to worry about, hardware-wise, which is further burdened by the fact that you're trying to accomplish more things (deliver station modules, conduct science and medical experiments, and deploy, capture, and repair satellites, among others). More flexibility means more headaches. Reusability means more headaches.
Project Apollo was also not subject to the kinds of budgetary constraints that the Shuttle program has had to operate under, and when money is no problem, fundamental flaws in project concept or design are more easily alleviated, in my opinion. I have in mind here the rework that occurred in Apollo after the fire that killed Grissom, Chaffee, and White. (Had the same approach held for the Shuttle program, the auxiliary SRBs would never have been designed to be reusable, of if they had been, such a design would've been scrapped pronto after what happened with Challenger.)
And finally, the kind of sclerosis that develops in bureaucratic organizations had not yet developed in the NASA of the late 1960s. Apollo 7 flew in space a few months short of two years after the Apollo 1 crew died in what amounted to an beta version of the spacecraft; the revamped Apollo featured a new hatch design, new cabin materials, properly insulated plumbing and wiring, and almost 1500 modifications to correct wiring problems.
The first Shuttle return-to-flight took place a few months short of three years after Challenger died with its crew, and while the list of changes implemented is impressive, besides completing an extensive redesign of the O-ring system that ostensibly caused the accident, a number of other changes were made as well, to improve landing safety, reorganize project management, and identify and reduce risk in general. I haven't really followed the changes implemented in the second return-to-flight procedure, but it bore fruit 2-1/2 years after Columbia was lost with its crew, and I wouldn't doubt it was as broad-ranging, as bureaucratic efforts are wont to be.
By comparison, despite some early problems, the Russian Soyuz design has been remarkably reliable, and I think this has quite a bit to do with its inherent simplicity, but I think I've blathered on for quite too long. Hope this answers your question.
Cheers...
platofish asks, in a comment to yesterday's Sputnik post:
The Apollo project resulted in man setting foot on the moon - do you agree with that statement? Did we really manage this feat with relatively primitive tools, given the problems we seem to have with the current fleet of shuttles, etc.
There is no doubt in my mind that the Apollo project put humans on the moon and returned them to the Earth, and not once, but several times, and that this was done with - by contemporary standards - very primitive tools.
And I don't doubt this was a strong contributing factor to the success of Apollo.
Recall that the goal of the program was pretty simple: put a man on the moon and return him to Earth. To do this, a hugely wasteful but hugely effective scheme was adopted of constructing a gargantuan launch vehicle, parts of which would be discarded when no longer required. The original vehicle was 36-stories high; the part that left Earth orbit for the moon was about the length of a semi-trailer, and the part that finally returned to earth was about the size of a Volkswagen minibus.
By comparison, flying a reusable vehicle is a lot more complicated because there's lots more to worry about, hardware-wise, which is further burdened by the fact that you're trying to accomplish more things (deliver station modules, conduct science and medical experiments, and deploy, capture, and repair satellites, among others). More flexibility means more headaches. Reusability means more headaches.
Project Apollo was also not subject to the kinds of budgetary constraints that the Shuttle program has had to operate under, and when money is no problem, fundamental flaws in project concept or design are more easily alleviated, in my opinion. I have in mind here the rework that occurred in Apollo after the fire that killed Grissom, Chaffee, and White. (Had the same approach held for the Shuttle program, the auxiliary SRBs would never have been designed to be reusable, of if they had been, such a design would've been scrapped pronto after what happened with Challenger.)
And finally, the kind of sclerosis that develops in bureaucratic organizations had not yet developed in the NASA of the late 1960s. Apollo 7 flew in space a few months short of two years after the Apollo 1 crew died in what amounted to an beta version of the spacecraft; the revamped Apollo featured a new hatch design, new cabin materials, properly insulated plumbing and wiring, and almost 1500 modifications to correct wiring problems.
The first Shuttle return-to-flight took place a few months short of three years after Challenger died with its crew, and while the list of changes implemented is impressive, besides completing an extensive redesign of the O-ring system that ostensibly caused the accident, a number of other changes were made as well, to improve landing safety, reorganize project management, and identify and reduce risk in general. I haven't really followed the changes implemented in the second return-to-flight procedure, but it bore fruit 2-1/2 years after Columbia was lost with its crew, and I wouldn't doubt it was as broad-ranging, as bureaucratic efforts are wont to be.
By comparison, despite some early problems, the Russian Soyuz design has been remarkably reliable, and I think this has quite a bit to do with its inherent simplicity, but I think I've blathered on for quite too long. Hope this answers your question.
Cheers...
