If you are, you’re not very shocked. Ares 1/Orion is looking at an eighteen-month schedule slip. And no, it’s not because it was starved for money:
The problem isn’t just funding – which has become problematic for CxP over the last few years – but also what is described as “serious disconnects” between related departments, such as Orion, Ground Ops and Ares.
While continued changes to the designs of Ares and Orion are part of the natural development cycle, issues such as Thrust Oscillation and vehicle performance have come at a price for both schedule and costings, despite fine work from the engineering teams tasked with mitigating the issues.
a314CxP attempted to protect the schedule and budgetary pressures by offsetting these additional strains by deleting test items – notably on the Upper Stage. However, this only proved to cause further disconnects throughout the program.
Gosh, who could have foreseen that?
I haven’t read through the whole thing in detail, and I can see at a glance that there’s a lot to chew on, but the main point that seems to be lost is that, even if it was on budget, and on schedule, it is an intrinsic programmatic disaster from the standpoint of affordability and sustainability. Each mission would still cost billions of dollars, not even attempting to amortize the development costs, and there would be no more than a couple a year, into the indefinite future. This is not something that any sane person should be willing to spend fifty billion dollars on.
Doing Apollo made sense in the context of the Cold War, if not in opening up the space frontier. Repeating it half a century later makes absolutely no sense at all.
the link is broken
It wasn’t broken, it was wrong. Fixed now, thanks.
Rand,
Do you have an opinion on the Direct 2.0 folks? That concept seems to be more workably, programmatically and politically.
I don’t know what concepts would be better operationally or technologically in support of the VSE than Direct 2.0 — but they might not make the initial screening of political feasibility.
I dont think Rand is a big fan of it but I suspect he is more favorably disposed to it than the paint mixer.
Just terminate Ares I. The thing has been a train wreck since the beginning. The optimum location for a solid is in someone else’s launcher. If the Russians can use Soyuz to launch capsules, and Proton to launch space station modules, why can’t the US use respectively EELV medium and heavy to do the same things? The Chinese are launching people from a Long March 2 rocket ffs!
How authoritative is that site?
What I find telling is that they dismiss COTS-D as “high risk”, and opt for extending the shuttle. Just like they dismissed COTS-D as “high risk” and worked exclusively on the Aries I architecture.
At what point does COTS-D get optioned? Is there a point at which NASA admits that having a third party “compete” with them is a good idea?
Obviously competition is not good for NASA – but from a getting humans in space perspective, the competition would help tremendously. Would they have chosen the Aries I architecture if they knew that it would have to compete head to head with COTS-D? My guess would be no – the practical matters would have mattered more to the decision makers than the political considerations in the presence of competition.
I think the ISS is highly dependent on COTS succeeding in at least reducing the cost of delivering unmanned cargo to the ISS. From what I gather, a key obstacle to private participation in ISS science is the cost of logistics, primarily the cost of bringing the experiment to the station. This provides an incentive for NASA to support COTS, at least through level C (COTS-C), which provides for unmanned payloads to the ISS as well as payload return and recovery.
Past that, I don’t know. COTS-D would compete with any manned vehicle that NASA happens to have. Currently, I’d have to agree that COTS-D is high risk unless they allow EELVs to compete.
The Jupiter 246 variant (4 SSMEs on the 1st stage and 6 RL-10s on the second) would allow J2X development money to be switched to Orion and Altair potentially allowing an Orion test flight before November 2012 (elections matter!) and a lunar landing before January 2017.
The DIRECT proposal also expressly calls for linking that architecture to propellant depot work.
Insofar as President Obama certainly appears to be a Keynesian in economist philosophy and because Senator Bill Nelson is a savvy Washington inside player, a plan to lay off the entire STS army and pour those savings into an EELV dry launch architecture is probably a non-starter, politically — regardless of the academic merits of EELV only plus dry launch.
The Jupiter 246 variant (4 SSMEs on the 1st stage and 6 RL-10s on the second) would allow J2X development money to be switched to Orion and Altair potentially allowing an Orion test flight before November 2012 (elections matter!) and a lunar landing before January 2017.
Anyone who thinks that NASA could meet a schedule like this with a completely new system, does not understand NASA today.
This is one of the reasons for pushing for Shuttle-C. It is a small enough delta from the existing system that it could be ready by 2012-2013.
EELV is the best solution for Orion, along with the heavy cargo capability of the Shuttle C (165k lbs to ISS or 174,000 lbs to LEO 28.5 departure orbit) will get us to the Moon far quicker and cheaper than some completely new vehicle.
An RS-68 powered J-120 with no new upper stage sounds like the best non-EELV solution to me. I think this is no more expensive than Shuttle-C and more capable.
Combined with an existing Delta IV upper stage, J-120 will get a fully fueled Orion to L1. If you use an all hypergolic lander and L1 rendez-vous, you don’t need a bigger launcher. Hypergolic refueling exists today. Hypergolics may be inefficient, but if you only use them for the lander, it’s not so bad. Especially since hypergolics allow you to take very efficient (but slow) trajectories for the Altair + hypergolic propellants. In this way, you can recoup most (not all) of the inefficiency losses. And on top of that the hypergolic lander is safer: it has more reliable ignition, it would be more squat so it won’t tip over and so it will have better visibility.
The whole Ares/Orion mess looks to be a superb example of Conquest’s Third Law:
The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.
Insofar as President Obama certainly appears to be a Keynesian in economist philosophy
To the degree that President Obama has any coherent economic philosophy (a dubious proposition) it goes far beyond Keynes. On the evidence, it appears to be “to each according to his need, from each according to his ability.”
What I find telling is that they dismiss COTS-D as “high risk”, and opt for extending the shuttle. Just like they dismissed COTS-D as “high risk” and worked exclusively on the Aries I architecture.
Given Space X’s launch record this is actually a good point. I mean 3 failures and 1 successful dummy launch? That sounds disturbingly like the launch record for Delta III. As they launch COTS payloads successfully, I think NASA will consider them for this role. Atlas V, on the other hand, has had a pretty good track record. As did Atlas III before that. IMO the EELVs are the only options at this point.
Hypergolics may be inefficient, but if you only use them for the lander, it’s not so bad. Especially since hypergolics allow you to take very efficient (but slow) trajectories for the Altair + hypergolic propellants. In this way, you can recoup most (not all) of the inefficiency losses. And on top of that the hypergolic lander is safer: it has more reliable ignition, it would be more squat so it won’t tip over and so it will have better visibility.
AFAIK RL-10 has no issues with ignition. DC-X used modified versions of it quite successfully. Using methane would make the tanks slightly smaller. I agree it will still be low density, but the fact these aren’t hazardous fuels would probably actually simplify fuel transfer. What I cannot fathom is why they can’t use an hypergolic in the first version of the lander and move to a methane RL-10 later in the program.
David: “What I find telling is that they dismiss COTS-D as “high risk”, and opt for extending the shuttle. Just like they dismissed COTS-D as “high risk” and worked exclusively on the Aries I architecture.
Godzilla: Given Space X’s launch record this is actually a good point.”
SpaceX doesn’t have the launch record yet, but they’ve demonstrated enough success and seriousness to put up some COTS-D or similar incentives for them, perhaps subject to SpaceX meeting some relevant demonstrated hardware milestones. That strikes me as a much better investment than the Ares or Shuttle alternatives, and would be small enough to make little difference in funding for those 2 if they were kept.
Also, there’s no reason why NASA couldn’t have another COTS-style competition to encourage commercial ISS crew transportation services. EELVs could compete and possibly win in such a competition. A number of the original COTS proposals involved existing launchers. Again, such a competition could be done with funding levels that are miniscule compared to either Shuttle or Ares/Orion, so it would have little impact on those options in terms of funding.
Ares supporters should view commercial crew transportation for ISS as their best hope. Having a couple viable crew alternatives with prospects of coming online in 2013 or so would take pressure off Ares/Orion for ISS crew access, and allow that effort to concentrate on the Moon. Without COTS-D, the seriousness of the Ares/Orion schedule and budget problems is greatly magnified.
1. Nope, I am not shocked at all. We all saw that coming, didnt, we?
2. NASA should do both, fund COTS-D and a whatever is required to get the ELVs to work for Orion.
That should still cost a lot less than Ares1 and they would even have two potential solutions.
I dont think Direct has a chance of happening in time. One reason for that is that it would be a NASA project. As soon as NASA is involved everything takes forever. One would have to fire their entire management and start over with some iron fisted hardliners to push a project like DIRECT through on that timescale. Otherwise, NASA would not even get the paperwork for it done until then. Hey I mean look how long it took them to get the paper rocket Ares1 to the point that it is at now.
Elongating the shuttle might get hard, given that they broke down all the facilities and the tooling (or didnt they?).
Do you have an opinion on the Direct 2.0 folks? That concept seems to be more workably, programmatically and politically.
My opinion is that it’s a better design than the shaft. My other opinion is that NASA should not be in the business of developing launch systems, given the mature capability in private industry for this, and their utter inability to successfully do so, despite many attempts, since Apollo. That was not what they were told to do five years ago.
They should have focused on how to get to beyond LEO with what they had, or could be reasonably expected to have in the future, with private LEO transportation. That’s what they should be doing now.
Seeing as how the past four years have been spent (squandered?) chasing the dragon known as Ares I, NASA is left with precious few options and even less time to close the gap.
The name of the game is “jobs retention,” and in that vein I think that Shuttle C is the best option. Even if it’s only flown unmanned for ISS resupply, it still keeps the shuttle workforce employed while keeping development spending at a minimum. NASA could even fly the first block of Shuttle C’s with old SSME’s left over from the shuttle program, discarding them at the end of each mission. Block II could incorporate RS-68’s, perhaps with the regen nozzle that PWR wants to develop.
Orion-on-EELV still looks like a good option for manned missions, but there’s always the issue of slimming Orion down to fit on an Atlas V 401. A single-stick is safest, but the astronauts would probably accept the risk of flying on a D4H if that’s what was required to lift Orion’s mass. I don’t think NASA has the money to fund Phase 1 or Phase 2 Atlas upgrades; they certainly don’t have the time after pursuing Ares for four years.
Direct 2.0 is just a slightly better version of the
Ares Failure. While Direct avoids some of the
obvious faults in Ares 1, it still maintains the
2 biggest problems in it.
1) There is wildly insufficient margin.
2) The systems engineering team is just as incompetent
and inexperienced as the Ares team.
Insuficient margin?
The whole selling point of Direct was surplus margin.
Remember, it is a dual-launch, not a 1.5 launch system.
What insufficient margin?
Isn’t launching on a “man-rated” (whatever the means) Atlas 5 one of those things that’s abritrarily not-in-the-cards, simply because the Atlas uses the Russian RD-180 engine?
If it does have to be a Delta IV, is the Delta Heavy, as-is, capable of injecting a six-man, 5m Orion?
If it does have to be a Delta IV, is the Delta Heavy, as-is, capable of injecting a six-man, 5m Orion?
Why would you even want to inject a six-man, 5m Orion?
If you try that and suffer a major failure on the way to the Moon, 6 people die.
It would make far more sense to build three smaller capsules, each carrying 2 people and some non-essential cargo. If one capsule fails, the crew can transfer to the other capsules, jettisoning the cargo to make room for them.
Isn’t launching on a “man-rated” (whatever the means) Atlas 5 one of those things that’s abritrarily not-in-the-cards, simply because the Atlas uses the Russian RD-180 engine?
No. Whatever NASA thinks “man-rating” means this week, it has nothing to do with where the engine was designed or manufactured.
NASA should do both, fund COTS-D and a whatever is required to get the ELVs to work for Orion.
It’s impossible to get EELV to work for Orion. NASA and Lockheed deliberately made Orion too big to fly on anything except Ares (just as NASA and Boeing made ISS modules too big to fly on anything except Shuttle).
Orion could fly on an EELV derived rocket but “EELV-derived” is still a new rocket, like “Shuttle-derived.” There’s no reason it couldn’t work in theory, but it would be equally susceptible to delays and development problems and might not be much cheaper.
Why should the US spend billions of dollars developing a new ELV just to launch Orion when SpaceX is already building a capsule that could be launched on a Falcon, Atlas, or Delta?
SpaceX has been working on Dragon longer than Lockheed has been working on Orion, and Dragon is expected to fly years earlier. There’s nothing Orion can do that Dragon can’t.
Even if you belong to the “capsules forever” school of space exploration, why is it necessary to continue Orion?
The whole selling point of Direct was surplus margin.
Remember, it is a dual-launch, not a 1.5 launch system.
What insufficient margin?
Just off the top of my head:
Two SRBs. If either one fails, they lose the vehicle, the mission, and likely the crew. The entire program shuts down for two years, just as it did after Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia. If NASA has established a base on the Moon, that has to be evacuated and shut down because there’s no transportation system for the next two years.
Not sure if they can tolerate a first-stage engine failure or not.
TLI. Dependent on a single transfer stage. No rescue capability if something goes wrong.
Lunar descent/ascent. Dependent on a single lander. No backup. No rescue capability if something goes wrong. If a lunar lander crashes, it’s the same as losing a launch vehicle. Program shuts down for two years for an investigation.
Alex: “Isn’t launching on a “man-rated” (whatever the means) Atlas 5 one of those things that’s abritrarily not-in-the-cards, simply because the Atlas uses the Russian RD-180 engine?”
That’s a lot less Russian hardware than NASA will be using for many years (5? 7? 10?) given the current Ares plan … Soyuz.
The current ISS crew transport gap situation caused by Ares is so bad that some COTS effort that combined existing Russian and U.S. components for that task looks pretty good even from a U.S. job perspective, if it can be done fairly quickly.
You’re confusing margin with redundancy, Edward.
“TLI. Dependent on a single transfer stage. No rescue capability if something goes wrong.”
Orbital mechanics will return you in the event of an incomplete TLI burn Ed. You are just going to short your apogee.
You can also use the LSAM and service module to speed that up.
Edward Wright Says: “It’s impossible to get EELV to work for Orion.”
Ok, I must have missunderstood what the others said then. I kinda assumed that it would be possible to make a few adjustments to Orion and the ELVs to make them work together.
I do fully agree that SpaceX and Dragon probably are the better bet anyway. They definitely are for station support. From what I know and from what I heard from people that are smarter than me, the Dragon does not have the capability to do a lunar mission. The return to the moon is the main reason Orion was developed, or so we have been told anyway.
Getting Orion ready for station support in time is totally delusional anyway.
Some points in reply to the first half of Edward Wright’s post above concerning EELV inability to loft Orion, which is incorrect:
1. The Delta 4 Heavy is getting a payload capacity boost due to an undergoing upgrade program on its engine, the RS-68. This engine upgrade will increase the launchers payload capacity to a point where it can loft the full lunar Orion payload mass, and this upgrade is planned to come online prior to Orion finishing development. The idea that Orion is too big for existing EELVs is out of date.
2. The Atlas V rocket line has a Heavy variant of its own, that would be of modest expenditure to bring online compared with the development of a new launch vehicle. This Atlas 5 Heavy can loft the full lunar Orion payload mass.
3. Much of the mass of the Orion is comprised of propellant necessary for the TEI burn of a lunar mission. This is not explicitly necessary for missions to the ISS, and with its removal the mass of the Orion falls below the capacity of the existing versions of both EELV lines, the present Delta 4 Heavy and the Atlas V series with srbs. The Orion will not be undertaking lunar missions until the remaining components of a lunar architecture are in place.
4. Although it is independent from the point you were making, EELVs could indeed loft modules like the type used in ISS, which were designed to the Shuttle’s payload bay since that was the delivery system preferred by NASA. ULA, the company that provides the EELVs, proposed a frame that mimics the Shuttle Bay’s mounting points and would enable the EELV to serve in the role of lofting legacy payloads tailored to the Shuttle, but future payloads can be designed for the more voluminous EELV type fairings. The EELVs payload capacity range from around 8mt to 22mt, nearing Shuttle maximum payload, or 27mt with the D4H upgrade and 29mt with the A5H, exceeding the Shuttle.
***
I would agree that the Dragon should be considered as well in fulfilling NASA ISS human spaceflight needs, or whatever the outcome of a COTS D that focused on a manned payload system would end up with. We have the existing lift capacity, what we don’t have are the payloads to be lofted.
Orbital mechanics will return you in the event of an incomplete TLI burn Ed. You are just going to short your apogee.
Exactly how does that help the guys on the moonbase who are waiting for their groceries?
This is not ISS we’re talking about, Mike. They are not going to have Soyuz and Progress to fall back on while NASA’s investigating a transfer stage failure for two years.
Yes, the Direct guys have done very little systems engineering and their lunar architecture is probably too ambitious.
But.
In 1991, the last time the US had an ambitious launch vehicle development program, they came up with NLS. It was going to use Shuttle SRBs, ET-derived tankage, and a to-be-developed LH2 engine called the STME that would be cheaper and higher thrust than the SSME. There was going to be a 100klb HLV with SRBs and four STMEs, a stage-and-a-half MLV with six STMEs, and a “small” launch vehicle with one STME and an upper stage. It wasn’t a bad concept, but with no payloads there was no point.
Since then the STME has been built (the RS-68), the Small NLS vehicle has been built (Delta IV), and the MLV has been sort of built (Delta IV Heavy). And we think we might actually have heavy payloads.
Going back to the last known good plan for these requirements – NLS – could be a good idea.
I kinda assumed that it would be possible to make a few adjustments to Orion and the ELVs to make them work together.
Yes, but what you ended up with after those “adjustments” would no longer be Orion or EELV (even if they kept the same name).
from what I heard from people that are smarter than me, the Dragon does not have the capability to do a lunar mission. The return to the moon is the main reason Orion was developed, or so we have been told anyway.
Don’t believe everything you’re told, especially when it’s one company (like Lockheed) talking about a competitor (SpaceX).
When the Bush Administration began its civilian space policy review, it was Elon Musk and Frank Sietzen (SpaceX’s Washington representative at the time) who went to Sean O’Keefe and told him NASA should retire the Shuttle and buy expendable rockets and capsules to send astronauts to the Moon and Mars. SpaceX was already designing Dragon and Falcon for that purpose and hoped NASA would buy them. O’Keefe sold the idea to the White House but SpaceX did not get the contract to build the CEV or the launcher. COTS was created later as a consolation prize so Elon wouldn’t make a fuss.
Lockheed’s claiming Dragon was not designed to go to the Moon is like the Apollo program claiming Gemini was not designed to go the Moon. Both are false but history is rewritten by the winners.
Why not use the Ares V as the heavy lifter to build a power satellite? I suspect that would generate more than enough revenue to cover the development cost.
I think focusing on this makes a lot more sense than sending human crews to the moon right now.
Forgot to mention we’d also need a mini shuttle and an OTV to transport work crews to and from the powersat in geosynchronous orbit. Still it would be worth every penny.
I recommend the book “Powersat” by Ben Bova. Bova has the right idea. This is what we should be doing right now instead of going back to the moon.
Why not use the Ares V as the heavy lifter to build a power satellite?
1. Not enough of a market for such a large solar power satellite.
2. For most places on Earth, it can be done cheaper by other means.
3. Ares V is not a good vehicle due to high launch costs. For the cost of a Ares V launch, you probably could buy a power plant of similar capability to what the solar power satellite will deliver to the ground for the region in question.
IMHO, it’s clear that even if these vehicles aren’t used for manned space flight, they will continue to evolve over the decades
Great. If it’s clear, Boeing and Lockheed ought to be willing to invest the money to do it.
Yet, they haven’t invested a dime trying to evolve rockets bigger than Delta IVH. For good reason: there are no customers.
It isn’t clear to Boeing and Lockheed. Neither of them have invested a penny trying to evolve launchers bigger than Delta IVH. Boeing would not even have attempted Delta IVH if Uncle Sucker hadn’t picked up the tab.
When EELV contracts were announced, the Air Force General making the announcement said it was the last expendable rocket they would ever develop. A few years later, they came back to the well for Delta IVH. Now people look forward to being dependent on expendables for decades to come?
Sometimes I think space enthusiasts deserve to fail.
In response to Jake’s earlier post:
RS-68 is *NOT* STME. The deisgn philosophy is similar (gas generator cycle, similar design specs compared to SSME in an expendable package, etc.) but STME, at least on paper, was a higher-performing engine. Higher chamber pressure, regen-cooled nozzle, higher Isp (around 430-435 sec vacuum.) The current RS-68 has an ablative nozzle, lower chamber pressure, and less than 409 sec vac Isp. That’s not top say that PWR couldn’t make up for some of the lost perfomance thru a nozzle redesign and new injector plate with higher element density and better turbopumps.
“Yes, but what you ended up with after those “adjustments” would no longer be Orion or EELV (even if they kept the same name).”
Well, that is nitpicking. Orion as it is now, does not have much in comon with the very first design of Orion either. Right now Orion is not a spacecraft it is a project that will eventually result in a spacecraft (or if NASA keeps doing like that maybe not ;)).
The question is what is more cost efficient and what can be done quicker.
That is interesting information about the Dragon. I had not heard that before. Anyway, I think one can savely assume though, that most people here have roughly the same opinion regarding SpaceX and Dragon: It should get a go ahead funding for COTS -D and maybe should get consideration for other parts of the moon project?
Doing Apollo made sense in the context of the Cold War, if not in opening up the space frontier. Repeating it half a century later makes absolutely no sense at all.
It’s cargo-cult style homage to a magical time. Like Titanic the movie–which cost more in inflation adjusted dollars than the Titanic did. Or like Gulf War II.
As an astronaut once told me, “NASA costs about what we spend on Halloween candy.” (if everyone spends $50 per family member that is).
This engine upgrade will increase the launchers payload capacity to a point where it can loft the full lunar Orion payload mass, and this upgrade is planned to come online prior to Orion finishing development. The idea that Orion is too big for existing EELVs is out of date.
I don’t think the term “existing” covers things that “will” be developed in the future. Although, it does appear that Delta IVH is closer to being able to launch Orion than I thought. It seems I forgot about the mass savings when they cut the service module in half.
2. The Atlas V rocket line has a Heavy variant of its own, that would be of modest expenditure to bring online compared with the development of a new launch vehicle. This Atlas 5 Heavy can loft the full lunar Orion payload mass.
That argument was also used for Stick, which was a “variant” of the Shuttle and therefore could be built for a “modest expenditure” compared to a new launch vehicle.
An interesting point of comparison: A few years ago, NASA was estimating $5-6 billion to build 2nd Generation RLV, which was justifiably criticized as too expensive, over designed, and over engineered. Today, NASA’s talking about spending more than that to develop the Orion capsule alone, not even including the launcher.
Assuming a 2 percent risk of catastrophic failure, NASA only has an 85 percent chance of getting through the existing manifest without another disaster.
Shuttle will end either by design or by tragedy.
Hard to believe a ground based solar power station could deliver anything like the power output of a space based one.
I’m talking about a BIG powersat, with an output on the order of 10 Gigawatts, like in the Bova book. It would be several miles across. That’s why I thought the Ares V might work.
I found an article titled “Solar power satellite—Life-cycle energy recovery considerations” by S. Weingartner and J. Blumenberg. You can read the abstract at sciencedirect.com. If you put in the authors names in the search box and hit Go it will come right up. The abstract is only a couple of paragraphs but it has some good information.
I still think we should do this, if not with the Ares V then with some other booster, preferably American.
I’d hate to see somebody else get it done first.
Check out http://biglizards.net/blog/archives/2008/08/a_solarpower_sy.html