NASA's Next Rocket May Shake Too Much

I bet this problem will push the expected 5 year gap between the Shuttle and the Orion even further. So if this is described as Apollo on steroids and we have used the Saturn V, why do we have this problem?

www.space.com...

reply to post by harddrive21


Meh... I don't think this is much of an issue at all. So they found a problem while it's still merely a design on paper. This is why it's called Research and Development. I imagine the Saturn Ib and V had all sorts of issues durring its R&D period. I know the Saturn V's S1-C Stage had issues with Pogo oscillation. The Ares 1 has gone through many changes already and there's still time to solve them before the design is finalized and construction begins.

That is a valid point. The only difference is they had a working launch vehicle a heck of a lot faster than we did. Our R&D should be years quicker thanks to computer simulations, but it seems longer.

reply to post by harddrive21


Maybe its like driving in the dark, your mind receives less information and you usually end up going faster.

With the computer simulations and the amount of information NASA is driving in broad daylight have have to be more cautious.

reply to post by Now_Then


Exactly.
NASA was very 'Gung-Ho" during the 1960s. The politcal environment dictated that NASA proceed at break-neck speeds, thus taking risks (and spending LOTS of money).

Things are different today. NASA tests, retests, and tests again. They cant afford (politically nor financially) to move at the same speed as in the 1960s, becuase if something went wrong, the whole program would be shut down for years while congress held hearing after hearing to attempt to find the root MANAGEMENT cause of a problem.

If the same political environment that's in place today was in place during the Apollo 1 fire tragedy, we would have never got to the moon in the 1960s.

That's why the constellation program is taking so long.

[edit on 1/21/2008 by Soylent Green Is People]

Originally posted by Soylent Green Is People
If the same political environment that's in place today was in place during the Apollo 1 fire tragedy, we would have never got to the moon in the 1960s.

So true...

As to the simulations: with present day tools they'll be sure to weed out a lot of problems that previously would go unnoticed. So it's good to have somebody being on top of their game as far as R&D goes.

Thanks to modern technology, we will less-likely have Apollo 1 and 13 repeats.

The reason 1 and 13 had issues was design flaws that modern day designers COULD have weeded out during R&D if Apollo had modern-day tech in R&D.


Shuttles are different stories. Maintenance of older designs with flaws resulting from that, are not related to advanced R&D, just age and management errors.

I'm all for finding and fixing problems. But there's no way that R&D can cover everything with a computer simulation. Life doesn't work that way. At some point you just have to go ahead and fly the damn thing. Otherwise, all progress gets bogged down in endless "fixes" for ever more imaginative problems.

Technology itself seems to be part of the reason for this. The more we know in theory, the more we can imagine going wrong. To a certain extent, we need to follow the old KISS method.

I hope we don't delay so much that nothing ever gets done for fear that "something" might go wrong.