Von Braun used figures from 1948 for all the incarnations of his architecture, just scaling it down for the Disney specials (thanks to Mark Wade for the research.) Of course none of that architecture assumed heavy-lifters, nor did it have a realistic TPS analysis, or cryogenic propellants. I think it's reasonable to conclude that, as originally envisaged, it would've failed. His Mars mission probably would've crashed (though Wade argues otherwise), his launchers would've burned up on re-entry and so on.
What von Braun's space station and circumlunar flights and all the rest assumed was that only humans could do exploration - he was wrong. The redeeming feature was that from the very first landing missions to the Moon and Mars an actual base would've been established, and they had enough gear on board to handle all sorts of contingencies. But those big cluster-engine boosters probably would've been as cranky as the Soviet N-1 which kept blowing up on the pad.
Von Braun gave us Saturn and I think his reusable boosters - at least for Stage 1 - could've been implemented through a Saturn-style booster. TSTO which cannibalised all the bits of the second stage would've allowed his Station - at a lower altitude - to be built, and a reusable personnel vehicle would've been pretty straight forward, boosted on a Saturn first stage. A real "von Braun" program could've happened with LOX/LNG instead of the hypergolics he loved. Soft cryogens can be stored for a lot longer in space than finicky LH2. I'd say half the mass could be shaved off his architecture and the same payload delivered. His low initial accelerations for the Moon and Mars ships incurred a massive g-loss penalty for TLI/TMI.
Still it's an asthetic dream that never happened, like the Stuhlinger Disney Mars Fleet.
Space/Science » in reply to Transportation costs
Old 1948 designs...
The whole thread (27 posts)
- We aimed for the stars...and stopped
