Hacker News Reader

Comment by hugh3 | Hacker News Reader

The Vehicle Assembly Building is an amazing sight, but is it also an example of how infinite budgets lead to non-optimal solutions?

SpaceX, who tend to be a lot more budget-conscious, assemble their rockets lying down and then hoist them to vertical, thusly:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrAr4ovtf9Q&feature=relat...

That seems a lot easier and cheaper. I'm tempted to think that maybe there's some factor that makes it more difficult to engineer a rocket that can handle sideways stresses as well as vertical stresses, but... heck, it's a rocket, they shouldn't be that fragile, should they?

View on HN

The launch vehicles themselves may not be that fragile, but payloads often are. Multimillion-dollar satellites can be damaged or completely non-functional from effects as small as being dropped 1 meter (see http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/2230 , for example).

Dropping 1m onto a hard floor is a lot worse than being slowly hoisted from horizontal to vertical.

If you disagree, I'll ride on the hoist and you can fall 1m headfirst onto concrete.

If the bolts holding the payload in place shear away under the lateral force of supporting the payload, the payload may fall and hit the hard inside of the launch vehicle, making the two events quite similar. (Indeed, the original drop I linked to occurred when the satellite was not correctly bolted to a table on which is was going to be tipped to one side in order to verify that it could withstand the stress of being in that physical orientation.)

That said, ugh's comment suggests my reasoning (as an explanation for vertical assembly) is either incorrect, incomplete, or both.

If your erection system fails it doesn't matter how it works, "bad things" are a likely outcome.

that's what she said

Ariane rockets are also assembled vertically [1]. Since assembly and adding the payload are two discrete steps, done in two different buildings [2], both of the times vertically, that tells me that there is more to it than the payload.

[1] http://www.arianespace.com/spaceport-ariane5/launcher-integr...

[2] http://www.arianespace.com/spaceport-ariane5/final-assembly-...

This does indeed suggest that there may be other factors at work. I could try tossing out other ideas, but they would be little more than hypothesis. (Bending during the tipping process damaging the joints in multi-segment launch vehicles? This might explain the difference with SpaceX's Falcons, which I believe do not have joints with O-rings.)

The main reason is merely tradition (really). Most systems are designed as evolutions of older systems, if the first system used vertical assembly, then so will the latest.

Note that the Russians have been doing horizontal to vertical launch vehicle assembly for decades (with manned and unmanned launches). There's no engineering reason why you must prefer one method or the other, it's a choice.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/world/russia/images/usta...

IIRC Russian rockets are also taken lying down to the launch platform and are rotated into vertical position. You can see a couple pictures of that happening at

http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2007/11/rare-photos-of-russi...

http://www.energia.ru/english/energia/launchers/vehicle_n1-l...

I did a bit more googling and Delta rockets are also built horizontally and raised. A Delta IV is bigger (or at least taller) than the space shuttle launch system, so size isn't the issue.

I think payload integration with the Deltas is done with the vehicle standing in launch position.

But my knowledge on this matters is, too, very much reliant on what Google can find me.

That's one career switch I would consider seriously.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com