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Robert (Butch) Day
Galactic Ambassador
Joined: 19 Sep 2014
Posts: 1377
Location: Arlington, WA USA
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 Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2016 3:04 am Post subject: The Future of Space Flight That Was |
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The Future of Space Flight That Was ... And Wasn't
In order by date. A model of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky's rocket:
Two pre-NASA space station concept designs from 1952. A 4-man satellite:
and a 50-man satellite:
Project Gemini:
Early Soyuz:
Apollo 18 and Soyuz:
Skylab. There was only one Skylab but they were given different numbers because of the Apollo capsules. Skylab 1 was docked by Apollo 18, Skylab 2 was docked by Apollo 19 and Skylab 3 was docked by Apollo 20.
The Apollo - Soyuz Test Project. This used Apollo 21, the last one.
Soyuz docked with the Salyut 4 space station.
The European Space Agency's module that was supposed to be launched by a variation of the Dynosoar:
The ESA module that was supposed to be in the space shuttle:
The Buran, the USSR abandoned space shuttle concept:
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Bud Brewster
Galactic Fleet Admiral (site admin)
Joined: 14 Dec 2013
Posts: 17637
Location: North Carolina
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| Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2016 3:00 pm Post subject: |
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Nice presentation of historical facts, Butch. Thanks! 
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958) |
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Brent Gair
Mission Specialist
Joined: 21 Nov 2014
Posts: 466
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| Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2016 7:02 pm Post subject: |
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In my opinion (and am I ever wrong?), manned space started to go downhill when we became a risk averse society.
322 people have died at Edwards AFB in flight test related accidents. In the year I was born (1958), 10 flight crew members were killed in flight test operations.
That's just the way things were. It was the price of progress...everybody understood that.
Neil Armstrong ejected from the Flying Bedstead...and then went to his office that afternoon to catch up on paperwork.
https://youtu.be/mBlNfFcV6ns?t=40s
We didn't stop for anything. 50/50 was good enough odds.
Then we all turned into little girls. Accidents became finger-pointing parties. People became intolerant of risk. If it wasn't safe, people weren't on board. Suddenly projects took tens times as long to complete and the price of everything quadrupled. Nobody does anything without a feasability study. This is why the Chinese will beat us to Mars...and that should disgust us. |
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Bud Brewster
Galactic Fleet Admiral (site admin)
Joined: 14 Dec 2013
Posts: 17637
Location: North Carolina
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| Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2019 3:46 pm Post subject: |
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| Brent Gair wrote: | In my opinion (and am I ever wrong?), manned space started to go downhill when we became a risk averse society.
Accidents became finger-pointing parties. People became intolerant of risk. If it wasn't safe, people weren't on board. Suddenly projects took tens times as long to complete and the price of everything quadrupled. Nobody does anything without a feasability study. This is why the Chinese will beat us to Mars...and that should disgust us. |
Brent, I agree completely.
Accidents are tragic, and the loss of the people who risk their lives to test new technology is very unfortunate.
But as you pointed out, too much too caution results in too little progress. During the space race of 1960s the Russians were less cautious than we were, but we still beat them to the Moon. So it IS possible to walk the fine line between foolhardy and better-safe-than-sorry.
Hopefully things will change someday . . . but we're not holding our breath, I guess. 
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958) |
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