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America to launch humans to the ISS tomorrow for the first time in almost a decade


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2 minutes ago, outsida said:

The most interesting thing in all of this is they reused that very booster within 50 days to launch a Korean satellite. 

 

I think it beat the turnaround time for the quickest relaunch of a shuttle too.

 

Some may say that isn't a fair comparison, because the Falcon 9 booster is much simpler machine that encounters a much less severe thermal environment compared to the shuttle.  HOWEVER, the Shuttle had a standing army of thousands of technicians and managers who inspected and prepped the shuttle for it's next flight.  I don't know how large the refurb crew is on the Falcon boosters, but it would be a fair statement that it's a much smaller crew. 

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9 minutes ago, mclumber1 said:

I think it beat the turnaround time for the quickest relaunch of a shuttle too.

 

Some may say that isn't a fair comparison, because the Falcon 9 booster is much simpler machine that encounters a much less severe thermal environment compared to the shuttle.  HOWEVER, the Shuttle had a standing army of thousands of technicians and managers who inspected and prepped the shuttle for it's next flight.  I don't know how large the refurb crew is on the Falcon boosters, but it would be a fair statement that it's a much smaller crew. 

It's not a fair comparison, but that's kind of the point. The whole idea is that reusing a much simpler machine makes these turn arounds easier, faster, cheaper, and hopefully, safer.

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7 minutes ago, TwinIon said:

It's not a fair comparison, but that's kind of the point. The whole idea is that reusing a much simpler machine makes these turn arounds easier, faster, cheaper, and hopefully, safer.

 

Yeah.  The shuttle was a compromised launch system from the start because you had too many organizations (NASA, NSA, CIA, USAF, Etc.) all asking for certain capabilities.  So it became a complicated machine that had way to many single points of failure. 

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1 hour ago, mclumber1 said:

 

Yeah.  The shuttle was a compromised launch system from the start because you had too many organizations (NASA, NSA, CIA, USAF, Etc.) all asking for certain capabilities.  So it became a complicated machine that had way to many single points of failure. 

 

Too bad the marines didn't get involved, or we'd have had a VTOL version!

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