[AR] Re: SpaceX F9 Launch/Update -- Live Link
- From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 26 Dec 2015 01:03:53 -0500 (EST)
On Fri, 25 Dec 2015, Derek Lyons wrote:
> > ...designed to meet political requirements (hence were segmented...
> The extent of that is, in my opinion, exaggerated...
Another concern was handling the big mothers. They had to be cast nose
down, and had to be uprighted without damage. The grain could also 'flow'
under it's own weight.
Indeed an issue; even much smaller solids, like the Delta II strap-ons,
can turn around and bite you if you don't handle them just right, as
witness the 1997 Delta failure. And nobody had any real experience with
it for SRB-sized solids -- precisely what wasn't wanted when the whole
point of solids was to minimize up-front cost.
It would have meant a fair bit of new infrastructure, too. Even the VAB
cranes would have needed considerable beefing up.
(The operational concepts for putting 260in strap-ons on the Saturn V
could politely be called strained. First the crawler takes the SV itself
out to the pad. Then it goes and picks up a handling frame, and the
combination picks up *one* solid and takes it out to the pad. Then it
goes back and brings the second one. And so on. Just what was supposed
to happen if an off-shore hurricane took a sudden swerve and you had to
get the bird back into the VAB quickly, was not clear...)
Henry
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