posted 11-08-2007 11:16 AM               

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I think that building the space station is far more difficult, and certainly far more complex, than was executing Apollo. Apollo was an incredible leap from where we were. But it was simpler than what we are trying to do today.

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posted 11-08-2007 11:30 AM               

Not only is the space station much more complex in its design and execution, it also adds an international component, having to design systems in different countries (with different construction methodologies) to all work together.

posted 11-08-2007 01:00 PM               

The moon landing effort started with Kennedy's speech, where nearly every effort that followed was devoted to the moon landing goal. That includes Project Gemini, building the launch pads and facilities, building the VAB, building the Saturn rockets, building the Apollo Command/Sevice Modules, building the Apollo Lunar Module, building the space suits and other hardware, etc. Project Apollo was so much more than a one-week mission for Apollo 11. It was a decade-long mission to build a space program, hardware, and infrastructure...much of which is still being utilized today for the shuttle.

The ISS also has the benefit of already having a working shuttle and the accumulated knowledge (and spaceflight experience) to date. And while the ISS construction missions are very complex, I think their complexity with relation to available 1990s-2000s technology is no more complex/difficult than making Apollo work with 1960s technology. The act of keeping the ISS running 24/7/365 is, to me, not much more different than the round-the-clock efforts in developing hardware for Apollo. Work on Apollo was also essentially non-stop from 1961 to 1972, even if there wasn't always a spacecraft in orbit.

posted 11-08-2007 02:58 PM               

Certainly from a management and day to day standpoint, the ISS is more complex. With Apollo, the biggest challenges were in the leadup to the first landing. The infrastructure had to be built, the equipment tested and the plans verified with unmanned probes to gather the data. Once that was done though, things became a bit easier as the challenge then became getting more science out of the flights.

From a management standpoint and long term engineering, the ISS is indeed more complicated. Okay, so it isn't flying to the moon. But, you have five major international partners building hardware and supporting it. You have two major control centers in two countries doing day to day support from the ground. The station itself is way more massive then an Apollo CSM/LM combo and parts of the station have been up longer then the entire length of the Apollo program. Things age, break down and have to be fixed. The torn solar array was a prime example. At the same time, while parts of the station were designed with EVA maintenance in mind, others such as the solar arrays were not. Which is why it was such a challenge to fix. Then you have the other challenges associated with center of gravity, atmospheric drag and thermal loads on the thing and it really does require a bit more engineering support to keep things running smoothly from many standpoints.

posted 11-08-2007 04:35 PM               

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Originally posted by Jay Chladek:
With Apollo, the biggest challenges were in the leadup to the first landing. (snip) Once that was done though, things became a bit easier as the challenge then became getting more science out of the flights.

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Originally posted by Jay Chladek:
There is no denying Apollo with what it was, but in the final analysis, the benefit of that project is it the spacecraft was relatively simple and small compared to a structure the size of two football fields sitting in orbit. The challenge in Apollo is that nobody had done it before. It still took a lot of support from the ground to handle Apollo, but the missions were pretty short in duration compared to the ISS.

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The argument about maintaining a station on orbit and fixing things (especially via EVA) you didn't plan on fixing does have merit with me. But many of those capabilities were already demonstrated with an Apollo-related project...Skylab. And on-orbit repair technologies also made a giant leap with the Hubble repair missions. So I would argue that NASA already had a lot of that experience under it's belt before undertaking the EVAs for the ISS. (Not that I would underplay the complexity of those EVAs at all.)

posted 11-08-2007 06:23 PM               

The ISS is simply (not meant to be condescending) flying pieces back and forth on a glorified semi and assembled.

While no small task, it is in many ways a space program going through the motions and spinning it's wheels.

The inhabitants have spent 10 years simply maintaining and keeping the heap working.

posted 11-08-2007 07:30 PM               

We had 8 and 14 day missions in orbit in the Gemini program. Tell me those weren't boring, but it taught us. Just like the ISS is teaching us now how to live, work, assemble and repair in space because someday we won't be close enough to home to rely on others.

Like one of the gentlemen said at the news conference, "The ISS is hours away. The moon is days away. Mars is months away." Where else can we gain the experience we need to return to the moon TO STAY and then to the planets TO LIVE.

Edited by ejectr on November 08, 2007 at 07:35 PM.

posted 11-08-2007 07:32 PM               

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Originally posted by jimsz:
The ISS in my opinion will never amount to much and has irreparably damaged the US Space program.

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That Mercury, Gemini and Apollo was able to be accomplished in 10 years underscores those programs relative lack of complexity when compared with modern spaceflight systems, including the ISS. The fact that Mercury, Gemini and Apollo came to a halt after less than 15 years illustrates how much of it was a blunt force effort.

That's not to degrade anything that was accomplished by those programs, as I have nothing but the highest degree of respect for the teams that made it happen, but they did little to set us up for long duration, if not permanent space settlement.

Flag and footprint programs are sexy in that they deliver a lot of excitement in a short amount of time, but when it comes to actually establishing a foundation by which we can build upwards (or in this case, outwards), it involves a lot of 'grunt' work or as Jim refers to it, a "glorified semi and assembl[y]".

We needed to gain the experience of hauling equipment to orbit, assembling it, maintaining it over years of service and repairing it as necessary if we ever hope to establish settlements on the Moon and (especially) Mars. We needed to learn what the human body could sustain and what is required to insure a safe return to Earth after long duration exposure of microgravity. And we needed to learn how to work with international partners as long term work on the Moon and Mars cannot be done alone.

posted 11-08-2007 08:00 PM               

But as for the hardware being more complex and this a signal of progress, has ISS assembly really been more practical and safer today than lofting the whole thing up on 4 or 5 "crude" Saturn Vs?

Decisions were made to discard the space infrastructure created for the Apollo moon goal not because it wasn't still useful, but for other considerations, and Griffin has acknowledged that decision as a "mistake." That same infrastructure could still have been useful today, especially through incremental improvement.

We depend upon the Russians for part of the access to this "complex" program, using a launch vehicle originally developed in the late 1950s and a spacecraft derivative from a vehicle first flown in the late 1960s. And when our complex machine is in the hangar from time to time their old and simple vehicle keeps us in business.

My point is that while it may be tough to compare "difficulty," the aspect of complexity may not, in the end, be the way we move farther into space. To benchmark progress on complexity may lead one far from an intended goal.

posted 11-08-2007 11:45 PM               

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Originally posted by Robert Pearlman:
That Mercury, Gemini and Apollo was able to be accomplished in 10 years underscores those programs relative lack of complexity when compared with modern spaceflight systems

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I prefer to think these programs accomplished what they did because they had very dedicated and talented people that made them work. By most logic, the moon landings were well ahead of their time and shouldn't have been possible given the available technology of the 60s. Instead of waiting for technology to catch up, they created the technology to make it work.

You may call it "lack of complexity" but I'll choose to call it "genius."

Edited by mjanovec on November 08, 2007 at 11:48 PM.

posted 11-09-2007 12:00 AM               

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Originally posted by mjanovec:
You may call it "lack of complexity" but I'll choose to call it "genius."

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posted 11-09-2007 12:50 AM               

When Kennedy put the moon as the prime target, it pretty much derailed those plans as Apollo became something of a crash program for a single goal rather then a program for the future of the space program after Apollo. As such, when the budget cuts came after Apollo 11, there wasn't much to fall back on. Skylab was doomed to get cutback due to it being so closely tied to Apollo. NASA could only fly one or the other, but not both. It was a brute force strategy as Jim Webb considered Apollo to be something more akin to FDR's New Deal public project works from the 1930s, or the massive infrastructure buildup of World War 2 with factories churning out thousands of planes, ships and tanks each month.

After Apollo, things got back to the Von Braun strategy as the next logical step was shuttle, then the station. But the funding for both projects was piece meal and it took almost two decades after the shuttle first flew before it had a NASA destination to fly to (Mir became a destination of convenience).

I don't think of Apollo as something that shouldn't have been possible in the 1960s. Even before Kennedy was in office, there were already some great strides in aerospace research. Heck, the X-15 was built during the late 1950s! Boeing was building the Dyna-Soar X-20. The F-4 Phantom and F-8 Crusader had set speed records and they were aircraft designs in production, not research planes. Boeing 707 and DC-8 jet airliners were criss-crossing the country. The technology level had been at just the right point to start the Apollo project, but it needed A LOT more work to finish it and a lot of money to fund it. I am proud that we did accomplish it and that it happened before I was born.

The accomplishments of Apollo were great as some great people accomplished them. But part of Apollo's engineering appeal was the goals were paired down to the bare minimums to accomplish the job safely in the shortest amount of time. This kept the engineering challenges to a somewhat manageable level to be achievable (even if the time span computer prediction programs crashed when too many factors were entered into the system).

posted 11-09-2007 08:12 AM               

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Originally posted by Robert Pearlman:
I'm sorry you feel that way Jim, as it demonstrates a lack of understanding of what the ISS program represents.

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The benefits and progress in my opinion have simply not been worth it. The ISS is a worthwhile goal and project as one leg of the manned space program, not the majority focus of the US manned space program and the shuttle. Other than the ISS the Shuttle could have been closed down 10 or more years ago.

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Perhaps the true complexity of the ISS is underscored by how little of the program the general public can or do grasp of its design, execution and operation.

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posted 11-09-2007 08:32 AM               

The 2nd has all color portraits of male & female astronauts who performed an EVA to help constructing the ISS:

• The International Space Station Vol 2
  
• The International Space Station - From Imagination to Reality

posted 11-09-2007 10:07 AM               

Complexity does not equate to progress.

I'm sure that if, hypothetically, it was decided that we would dig a giant 1 mile diameter hole in the middle of the desert and then fill it back in again, that would be an incredibly complex undertaking, too.

Who cares if the ISS is complex. What will it accomplish? Let's get real. It is a make-work project (as the Shuttle has become in the last several years, if not before) and will never amount to much. I'm counting the days until these two programs come to an end and we get on with real manned exploration again. The Shuttle and ISS remind me of a 24K gold squirrel cage, except that a 24K squirrel cage is much safer.

Apollo was a miracle, not so much IMO for what it accomplished, but for when it accomplished it. To this day I have not really gotten my mind around the fact that we actually orbited (and later landed) on the Moon in the 1960s. Incredible. Every time I think about it, it amazes me. I feel almost the same way about Viking (and the newer MERs).

Apollo's accomplishment casts an ominous shadow over today's manned program, a shadow which is perhaps uncomfortable for some.

posted 11-09-2007 02:01 PM               

Imagine trying to fly 250,000 miles (the equivalent of 20 times around the world) without Sat-Nav... and knowing there was no-one at the other end of your journey to repair your craft should a fault develop... or have any means of being recovered should your machinery suffer a catastrophic failure. The world was SO different back then... that was the time of hero's and also boldly going where no-one had gone before. Lets hope we get back to those heady days.... and SOON!

posted 11-09-2007 04:24 PM            

The "end of the decade" deadline focused the Apollo program into the most efficient way of getting to the moon. One launch vehicle, lunar orbit rendevous, disposable spacecraft, no time to endlessly debate or agonize over decisions in the private or public divisions of the program.

If the Space Station Freedom proposal from 1984 had been followed through with,instead of having been redesigned by Congressional decree time and time again, we would have had an operational space station in orbit at 28 degrees orbital inclination for the past 20 years. One of the great tragedies of the Shuttle program is that it only got to start doing what it was really designed to do almost 20 years after it started flying.

When the first element of the ISS finally made it to orbit, Newsweek ran an article about the ISS and it had a quote from someone that the only reason that someone would want the ISS is that they wanted Star Trek to really happen.

I think that the ISS should have been a orbital transit hub/spacecraft construction facility, similar to the Spacedocks from the Star Trek films and series. It isn't in the best orbital inclination, and it should have the US Habitation Module. Pete Conrad said Skylab was really scrimped on by NASA - doing ISS on the cheap doesn't make any sense either.

posted 11-09-2007 04:34 PM               

Some rough numbers, given as: Apollo / ISS

Development time: 8 years / 20 years
Program operations: 3 years / 7 - 15/20 years
Launches: 13 / 60
Astronauts: 20 / 100
EVA time: 100 / 600+ hours
modules: 3 / 20 (labs,nodes,airlocks,truss,MPLM/ATV/HTV)
Space Agencies: 1 / 6
Computers: 1 / 100

posted 11-09-2007 05:11 PM               

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Originally posted by cIclops:
Computers: 1 / 100

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I am curious what single computer you are referring to for Apollo? The computer on the CM? The computer on the LM? Or some other computer?

Also, let's not equate the amount of "stuff" with the difficulty of the program. Nobody will argue that the ISS is filled with more stuff or is taking longer to build or is taking up more time as an exercise in "babysitting." But is it really more difficult than Apollo, in RELATIVE terms?

posted 11-09-2007 05:22 PM               

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Originally posted by spacecraft guy:

If the Space Station Freedom proposal from 1984 had been followed through with...we would have had an operational space station in orbit at 28 degrees orbital inclination for the past 20 years.

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I wonder if anybody could put a price tag on what changing the orbital inclination cost the US taxpayers?

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Kind Regards

Douglas Henry

posted 11-09-2007 07:39 PM               

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Originally posted by mjanovec:
In the end, I guess all that really matters is the question, "What program accomplished more?"

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Whether it's an apocryphal story or not, there's an anecdote about the early days of the International Space Station regarding how science would be conducted between the United States and Russia.

It was said that in all the years that Russia had been operating space stations, its on-board computer needs were limited because in Russia, it was the result of the experiment, and not the data collected to reach that result, which was important. Thus the only information they retained was whether the experiment was successful or not, and if successful, what that result was.

In the United States, the data collected while conducting science was viewed as important, if not more so, than the result. Data storage capacity was a priority, because without the data collected over the length of the experiment (whether that was months or years) was absolutely critical to being recorded.

It was described as one of the first culture clashes that impacted the design of the ISS. In the end, the U.S. system of collecting all the data won out, and the Russians changed the way they viewed science results, or so the story goes.

posted 11-09-2007 08:28 PM               

In one sentence or less, can anyone state the goal of the ISS, how attaining that goal is or would be measured, and whether it has been achieved or at what point we'll know it has been?

I can with Apollo.

The goal of Apollo was to land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth before 1970, which was achieved with full success.

As Yogi Berra said, "You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there."

posted 11-09-2007 08:52 PM               

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Originally posted by spacecraft films:
In one sentence or less, can anyone state the goal of the ISS, how attaining that goal is or would be measured, and whether it has been achieved or at what point we'll know it has been?

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posted 11-09-2007 08:56 PM               

So if the ISS had to be abandoned tomorrow for a week, the program would be a failure?

Edited by spacecraft films on November 09, 2007 at 09:01 PM.

posted 11-09-2007 09:10 PM               

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Originally posted by spacecraft films:
What counts as permanent?

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So if the ISS had to be abandoned tomorrow for a week, the program would be a failure?

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Your stated goal for Apollo does not account for the flights after Apollo 11.

Edited by Robert Pearlman on November 09, 2007 at 09:12 PM.

posted 11-09-2007 09:23 PM               

So it is going to go on forever? This is what I mean by not being measurable.

If the goal was "for 10 years" or "Until 2015" that might be closer to a measurable goal.

If you are referring to the Apollo 1 fire as violating the safety portion of the goal, then yes, the goal was still achieved (This does not violate the goal). The goal was clear: A crew was landed on the moon and returned safely to Earth. The goal wasn't that no one would die in the process of achieving the goal, only that a crew would be landed and returned safely (it being the same crew is unmistakably implied). That is the point - the goal was clear, specific, and measurable.

After Apollo 11? What a great bonus! All the post-Apollo 11 stuff, and Skylab, was bonus experience learned as part of an original clearly defined goal. So you can still get great extra data even though your original mission is very simple and measurable.

Robert, We're probably more in line with our thinking than it appears. I'm not so much against ISS (any time people go into space I am for it) as questioning whether this is the best use of our effort today? I'm not denying that it is not complex, but whether we are really learning anything additional at this point.

Edited by spacecraft films on November 09, 2007 at 09:52 PM.

posted 11-09-2007 10:21 PM               

I would suggest that by those same standards Apollo 1 was a failure, because it neither landed men on the Moon or safely protected the astronauts' lives.

But to rephrase the question, had Apollo landed men on the Moon in 1971, would the program have been considered a failure?

I agree Mark, we're probably closer in agreement than we are at odds, as I believe most of the participants in this thread are: debates like these tend to emphasize the extremes, especially in written rather than spoken format. However, I do disagree that we have ceased learning from the ISS.

posted 11-09-2007 10:49 PM               

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Originally posted by Robert Pearlman:
I would suggest that by those same standards Apollo 1 was a failure, because it neither landed men on the Moon or safely protected the astronauts' lives.

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Has anyone claimed that Apollo 1 was a success? The goal of the Apollo program was successfully met, but this one mission was not a success. As Mark points out, the goal does not state that nobody is allowed to die in pursuit of the moon landing.

To make a similar comparison, is the ISS a failure because one component required to complete the ISS (the shuttle) has failed twice?

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Originally posted by Robert Pearlman:
I truly believe we have learned more toward establishing a permanent presence in space by the shuttle and station programs than we did during Mercury, Gemini and Apollo combined.

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posted 11-09-2007 11:02 PM               

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Originally posted by mjanovec:
As Mark points out, the goal does not state that nobody is allowed to die in pursuit of the moon landing.

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To make a similar comparison, is the ISS a failure because one component required to complete the ISS (the shuttle) has failed twice?

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The goal of M-G-A wasn't to establish a permanent presence in space. Just like the goal of the ISS isn't to land on the moon. So the comparison isn't valid.

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