The problems weren’t the design, but the HUMANS who mishandled the machines.

Challenger should not have flown. It was proven that the O-Rings were installed DRAWKCAB! And Apollo 13 was banged up and bruised before assembly, and no one double checked that anything was ship shape!

Human Error or Murphy’s Law

Because it was hugely expensive. Saturn V was built to get humans on the moon before 1970, costs not to be considered. And it only flew 13 times, one of which barely reached orbit (Apollo 6) and another had very serious trouble (Apollo 13, forgotten because of the other famous “problem” on that flight.) The Shuttle was perfect, too, until Flight 25.

Konar go to a politics forum please, thank you.

“Pardon me, but aren’t the vibration profiles of the atlas and delta-iv heavy WAY too severe for humans to endure? ”

No, you have it backwards. NASA’s new Ares I rocket, which uses a solid propellant first stage, will be a much more severe vibration and acoustic environment. NASA has been struggling with this problem for over a year now, and it is one of the main “killer arguments” against Ares I.

The Delta IV-Heavy, which is the “favorite” to replace Ares I if President Obama so orders, has no solid boosters whatsoever. Solid boosters are inherently more dangerous than liquid engines, since they have no ‘off’ switch.

The main strike against either Atlas or Delta at the time NASA first decided to go with Ares I (in 2005), was that there are “blackout” periods in their launches when a safe abort is not possible. However, that problem was widely seen as being overstated by a NASA that badly wanted its own new rocket. Lockheed has already closed that “blackout zone” with Atlas V, for example, at a fraction of the cost of Ares I development, and the same is easily possible for Delta IV (an improved engine for Delta IV is already in development for first flight in 2011.)

“Not to mention the delta-iv hasn’t been particuarly reliable (they got my advisor’s satellite in an orbit that didn’t make it all the way around once!).”

This is only sort of true. There have been no launch failures of the Delta IV. The only serious malfunction was an “under-performance” of the first test flight of the big three-core Delta IV-Heavy. It ended up in a lower than expected orbit, but the dummy payload still made orbit. However, two small “microsatellites” were also riding on that mission, and they were lost because the Delta IV under-performed. Presumably, your advisor’s satellite was one of those.

Atlas V also had an under-performance, Leaving its primary satellite payload in a lower than planned orbit (from which the satellite was able to boost itself the rest of the way to the destination orbit.) Generally, it is accepted that Delta IV has the better record of the two EELVs, but Atlas V is cheaper and easier to launch. It’s dependence on a Russian-built engine makes Atlas V a long-shot for use by NASA to launch Orion.

“At a time when commercial companies are about to prove modern NASA is a lethargic dinosaur,”

Lets not start counting chickens. Falcon 1 is a pathetic launch vehicle with a 1-for-4 record, The much larger and much more complicated Falcon 9 has not flown yet, and if it follows Falcon 1’s profile, it will fail at least three times before successfully reaching orbit. This is actually pretty underwhelming, as launch vehicles go.

Sorry. But it’s those seemingly innocuous comments — usually repeated verbatim after being overheard from another source without any real thought or investigation that are the hallmark of the new consevative mindset — and I use the term “mind” loosely since the one qualifying characteristic of the movement seems to be suspicion and distrust of people with ideas and education.

our friends seem to agree, Thorny ;))

http://thorstenwulff.com/Atlas.jpg

NASA alien secrets and old Wernher in one thread,
fascinating!

My man Sam Kineson challenged all space p&ssies with, “There are six American flags on the moon, just bring ONE back.”

Until they do, WE rule.