[Nesti (Mark)]

***I've added this note after the thread started: I've read many a post of what the future of space flight may be, or look like. I wanted to start this thread so that we could discuss space flight in a real physics related manner. To look at ideas and concepts which are doable and ones which are not possible...and why. You might be surprised that what's pushed in mainstream media (TV Docs etc) may not even be a realistic approach to space travel***


With the shuttle's service life almost at an end, I wonder what the next generation of vehicle - after the next phase of Russian Soyuz assistance - will look like; what it will be?!

Unfortunately it's not just costly to take payload to orbit, it's also costly to take anything you want to reuse up to orbit and back again. The additional size and mass of the vehicle which needs to be lifted and needs to reenter the atmosphere just adds-up and the fuel loads become obscene...and you cannot skimp on quality either.

I have always felt that lifting mass to L.E.O. (Low Earth Orbit) is more suited to expendable technology, rather than reusable. Reusable technologies are lifed and require scheduled service/repair cycles. One-off expendable technologies are often lighter and simpler in design, and if the Apollo program learned anything, it was that weight and design simplicity is everything in spaceflight. Even though the Apollo program utilised vehicles which were entirely expendable, perhaps future flights across to the moon and back might best suit a reusable (serviceable/repairable) vehicles.

Programs like the X-33 and X-34 were doomed before they even got off the ground, no matter how much romance was attached the the concepts and the overall look. The design philosophy was more befitting a maintenance/supply/repair contractors' dream than anything else...much the same as the space shuttle believe it or not!

So, what do you think will be;

1. The next heavy lifter of payload to L.E.O. ?
2. The next moon mission vehicle ?

(I've deliberately left out [safe return] Mars missions, as we are nowhere near ready to undertake such a journey)