Comment Re:Ah, but we are discussing DreamChaser (Score 1) 127
Also, you ignored the assertion I made that Apollo would have also killed the crew if its launch vehicle had exploded and ripped it apart in the process (as happened to Challenger). We all ASSUME the Apollo LAS would have worked, but this was never proven (tested on Little Joe II, but NEVER on Saturn).
Sounds like you should have ignored what you were thinking too.
DreamChaser has an integral launch abort system, so this shortcoming of the shuttle is not a generic "spaceplane" shortcoming
Indeed. Notice I never said anything to disagree. I didn't speak at all of DreamChaser's features which would mitigate or evade the Challenger and Columbia disasters.
Except of course that Apollo 13 very nearly put the nail in that coffin. Had the Apollo 13 explosion been a tad more energetic, it could well have cracked or holed the heat shield (and indeed nobody knew it had not at the time) whereas a shuttle-type arangement would have been safer in THAT incident (its TPS in a less-vulnerable position and the by-that-point-in-the-mission inert main engines being in the position to be hurt).
Not at all. Keep in mind that Apollo 13 accident happened just prior to a propellant burn to insert the capsule in lunar orbit. The Shuttle under the same situation would have propellant on board and some sort of active rocket engine for conducting the burn (though not necessarily the Main Engines). In that situation, damage to the heat shield is still possible depending on where everything happens to be. For example, if the Shuttle is still piggy backing on the side, then the heat shield is still exposed to potential damage.
In the case of the capsule scheme, there's generally another severe and dangerous limitation: separation from the service module must happen so close to reentry that there is no time to do ANYTHING between when the shield is exposed and inspectable and the time when plasma begins to surround the vehicle...
And not much of a reason to care either since the heat shield has been inspected on the ground. But I suppose we could stick a couple of cameras on the service module to image the heat shield, should this ever become a problem.
Your final note about size is exactly why DreamChaser (the POINT of this discussion) is so much smaller than shuttle (NOT the subject of the discussion). DreamChaser is sized for the same number of crew as CST-100 and Dragon, and has three more seats than the (now crippled) version of Orion LockMart is spending BILLIONS and more than a decade building for NASA...
So what? Lockheed Martin would spend more than that, if we let them. The cost of their projects tend to be sized to the available funding. None of the other capsule builders have this sort of problem.