New Horizons Design Reuse? |
New Horizons Design Reuse? |
Sep 22 2006, 05:04 PM
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8784 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
Hopefully this thread is located in the right place...if not, my apologies, Doug.
It occurs to me that one of the fundamental problems with UMSF from a funding/project management perspective is that each spacecraft is usually unique, which pretty much zaps any savings that might be realized via economies of scale. It would sure be nice to drive down costs & fly more missions. Of course, each spacecraft usually HAS to be a little--or a lot--different in terms of payload in order to answer the investigative questions that justify the mission. However, why don't we at least standardize the spacecraft bus for specific classes of missions? For example, the NH design should prove to be an extremely robust outer system platform for flyby/orbital operations anywhere at or beyond the orbit of Jupiter. If we could produce, say, twenty NH busses for use over the next twenty years or so, then the payload design would be driven in part by a fixed set of interfaces, thus simplifying systems engineering considerably, decreasing lead-time, and therefore enabling far better long-term mission planning. Also, we could always go to Congress during hard times & say something like "we built all these NH clones...it would be a shame not to use them" (an old DoD trick)...and then we'd have orbiters for all four of the gas giants, plus lots of other cool things.... This sort of schema would also provide a rapid-response capability for new discoveries or unique events. For example, let's say that another comet like Shoemaker-Levy 9 was found that was gonna crash into Saturn or pass through its ring system in about ten years. A standard outer-planet bus could conceivably allow us to fly a mission on short notice, provided that other circumstances like launch window/trajectory availability are favorable. -------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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Sep 22 2006, 10:49 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 220 Joined: 13-October 05 Member No.: 528 |
Polar Lander and Pathfinder had some connections, although more obscure. The plan was to re-use the Aeroshell, cruise stage, and anything else they possibly could. My point in mentioning it at all was that when Pathfinder was accomplished for about 275 million, Dan Goldin pushed for an even lower budget on Polar Lander. If Polar Lander really had been signifigantly based on the Pathfinder design that might have been at least somewhat reasonable, but it ended up having very little in common with Pathfinder.
At least the designs of Mars 98 lander and 2001 Lander were nearly identical, but by that time it was too late... 98 failed miserably and 2001 was put in storage (to be reborn under the Mars Scout program). As for mcaplinger's points, I couldn't disagree more. MGS was built with Mars Observer spares? I don't think that is precisely correct. If you even glance at a diagram of the two vehicles, you will see that MGS and Mars Observer don't even look remotely similar. The spares you are reffering to are the instruments (a major investment to be sure). NASA wanted to refly as many instruments as soon as possible, so the Gamma Ray Spectrometer (very heavy) was flown on Odyssey, and the Atmospheric sounder was flown on Climate Orbiter. The rest were put on an entirely new spacecraft bus and design, avoiding the re-use of an Earth orbital design that Observer had used. And the failure of MCO has nothing to do with the debate over Faster-Better-Cheaper????? It was the failure of MCO, followed by Polar Lander, that caused a lot of internal debate and review of the entire Faster Better Cheaper implementation at NASA. I would say they are VERY connected. |
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Sep 22 2006, 11:43 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2520 Joined: 13-September 05 Member No.: 497 |
The spares you are reffering to are the instruments (a major investment to be sure). Every electronics box in the MGS spacecraft, with the single exception of the solid-state recorder, is a Mars Observer spare. If we're going to have an argument, perhaps you could state your qualifications. I worked on one of the instrument teams for each of Mars Observer, MGS, MCO, MPL, Odyssey, Phoenix, and MRO. -------------------- Disclaimer: This post is based on public information only. Any opinions are my own.
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