The New York Times has a story on yesterday’s Augustine hearing, and this jumped out at me:
In an interview, Steve Cook, manager of the Ares Project at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., said that the cost estimate for developing the Ares I and seeing it through its first manned flight was $35 billion. Contrary to the claims of critics, he said, costs have not spiraled out of control.
Let’s ignore the tragic hilarity of that last statement, when we consider what the original cost estimate was when it was “simple, safe, soon.” He is admitting that the development cost, for Ares I alone, through first crewed flight, is thirty-five millibaracks. So how can that be reconciled with the Aerospace study which seems to imply that the total life cycle cost for fourteen flights is nineteen billion? If development alone is thirty-five, then using the assumptions I used in that other post, the LCC for fourteen flights would be over forty billion (almost three billion dollars per flight, for people who know how to divide). That compares to a cost of sixteen billion for the Delta option, or a little over a billion a flight (still ridiculous, of course). Why is it that we accept these kinds of numbers as though they’re perfectly reasonable, perfectly affordable? Particularly in light of the fact that SpaceX has gone a long way toward developing both the Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 for (at a guess) a percent or so of forty billion?
Anyway, I find that the most interesting thing about the Times reporting is that there is no mention of SpaceX or commercial alternatives. I guess they’re not worth covering. As for the “dueling power points,” my vote is “none of the above.”
[Update a while later]
OK, I was digging around to try to find what the original promises were for Ares I development costs, and I stumbled on to this. “Safe, Simple, Soon” is still up! And apparently being maintained and updated by someone (no doubt funded by ATK).
And it’s hilarious. It’s like reading Pravda in 1988.
Comrades! All is well!
The potato and beet crops were a record this year! Steel production is exceeding the Gorbachev five-year plan!
I’m going to save that page for posterity.
Anyway, does anyone have a link to an initial Ares I cost estimate, circa late 2005?
[Friday morning update]
“Rocket Man” has the numbers:
“In September 2005, NASA authorized the Ares I project to proceed with the development of a new human-rated crew launch vehicle with a 24.5-metric ton lift capability and a total budget of $14.4 billion for design, development, test, and evaluation (DDT&E), and production.” (GAO-08-51)
So the development cost estimates (including production? Of how many vehicles?) have more than doubled in less than four years. But the program is “under control.” And now the Aerospace numbers make sense. They were using the original DDT&E estimate for their trade, which (as usual) puts a NASA thumb on the scale in favor of Ares. The Aerospace study is now either worthless, or makes Ares look even worse; it does nothing to aid its cause.
It’s the audacity of fierce moral hope and changiness urgency, dontchaknow…
Seem to recall single digit billions for Ares. Orion was same order but somewhat larger?
Personally I would find it hilarious if Ares V launched for the Moon and the astronauts landed to find a welcoming party of Charles Simonyi, Sergey Brin, et. al. who landed in a Dragon capsule the day before (for 1/100th the price, of course).
If the news is accurate, it seems John Shannon is advocating a side mount shuttle derived launch vehicle, possibly similar to the Soviet Energia in layout, with SSME bolted to the underside of the ET. Supposedly 6.6 billion dollars and 4 years to develop.
If NASA must have a heavy lift cargo vehicle, this is the smart way to do it; by using as much of the existing STS hardware as practical, such as the SLWET and 4-segment SRB. The concept could be even more efficient if cheaper RS-68 replace SSME, combined with use of RL-10 replacing OMS and changing flight profile from 1-1/2 staging to 2-1/2 staging to LEO.
A side mount style CLV won’t have the payload of Ares V, but so what. The lunar architecture should be driven by affordable launch and not the other way around as ESAS did. If jumbo cargo to the moon is needed than use orbital fuel depots or nuclear EDS propulsion.
Like D. Wadsworth, I seem to recall single-digit billions for Ares I as well – the 35 billion number is pretty shocking.
This CBO report (pdf) from Oct 2006 shows 4.8 billion in development costs for a five-segment Stick (Table 2-3), although Figure 2-4 shows 13.4 billion in projected cost through 2017 … I guess that includes ISS launches?
In any case, the total projected cost back then, for BOTH Ares I and V, up to 2017 (one year before the first lunar mission was to take place) was 30 billion. Either apples and oranges are being compared, or the costs didn’t “spiral”, they exploded.
At $10,000.00 per pound to LEO, $35B would purchase 1,750 tons of launch service.
How many tons will Aries place in its’ lifetime?
How much would competing launch providers cut prices for a share of $35B?
How many tons could be delivered to LEO at that discount rate?
This is nuts! The entire Delta IV product line — medium and heavy — only cost $2.5 billion to develop. That included full development costs of the RS-68 engine ($1 billion), launch pads and horizontal integration facilities at the Cape and Vandenberg ($500 million total), the Delta IV Heavy variant ($500 million), the new factory in Decatur, the common booster core, the upper stage, integration of the whole vehicle, and even the Delta Mariner barge used to tote around all the pieces (all for the remaining $500 million).
These are not projected costs. The Delta IV exists and is flying now. That NASA is even willing to spend $35 billion to develop a launch capability nearly identical to the existing $2.5 billion Delta IV is absolutely mind-boggling.
That NASA is even willing to spend $35 billion to develop a launch capability nearly identical to the existing $2.5 billion Delta IV is absolutely mind-boggling.
You haven’t been working with NASA long enough…
It really is amazing that someone could spout out 35 billion with a straight face. I predict this commission will have many very stern words and warnings for NASA then approve the plan virtually as is. Anyone want to bet?
I predict this commission will have many very stern words and warnings for NASA then approve the plan virtually as is. Anyone want to bet?
I won’t necessarily take the bet, but I’d also bet that given (if nothing else) that Jeff Greason is on the commission, there would at the least be a very strong minority opinion issued, as with a Supreme Court case. I think that if it is necessary for the commission to reach a consensus, that is not what it will do.
Anyway, does anyone have a link to an initial Ares I cost estimate, circa late 2005?
I haven’t found anything definitive yet, but NASA Watch had this gem on 06 Apr 2006:
According to reliable sources NASA’s initial internal estimate of what it would cost to modify the current SRB used for Shuttle missions to serve as the first stage of the new Crew Launch Vehicle had been around $1 billion. That estimate has been revised up to around $3 billion.
http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2006/04/clv_cost_escala.html
So $1 billion for the first stage in 2005 would be consistent with “single digit billions” for the whole vehicle.
That NASA is even willing to spend $35 billion to develop a launch capability nearly identical to the existing $2.5 billion Delta IV is absolutely mind-boggling.
Sounds like grounds for a taxpayer tea party at Cape Canaveral.
The only way this whole Ares I catastrophe makes any sense whatsoever is if NASA manned spaceflight is primarily just a jobs program for certain well connected constituencies.
Oh wait…
john hare, I vague recall hearing that the plan was for around 100 Ares I launches over the lifetime of the program. That’s probably around 2,000 tons of payload.
Why? Why Ares I?
Oversized Orion was always just to excuse the oversized Ares I. (Why must TEI propellent be included with crew launch vehicle payload?)
Ares I was always just a means to subsidize the development cost of Ares V. (Why must crew launch vehicle use solid rocket?)
Why Ares I? It’s always really been about the Ares V, the desire to recreate the Saturn V. What was originally supposed to be an easy shuttle-derived development has morphed into the gigantorific Ares V which dwarfs the Saturn V and is all but a clean sheet design using cutting edge technology.
But NASA’s too clever manipulations have not only endangered the CEV Orion and the crew launch vehicle Ares I, but by busting the bank may have doomed the heavy launch vehicle Ares V as well.
Can anyone tell me if there are any drawbacks to simply using a Delta IV or an Atlas V apart from not using the preferred political patronage vendors?
Delta IV uses those 3-way parallel common core stages. This is essentially three rocket stages just bolted together, unlike the Saturn I (Cluster’s Last Stand) that combined tankage from other stages but cross connected propellant feeds to the 8 engines to allow for engine shutdowns. Is the Delta IV approach a problem? If one of the three common core stages develops a problem, do they have to fire off the abort/rescue rocket?
On an early launch of Delta IV, I saw in Av Week how the flaming hydrogen gas from the engine start set the tank insulation on fire, and the rocket was charred as it went up. The rocket was OK and the burning and charring of the foam insulation was apparently only a cosmetic concern. But does the Delta IV essentially catch fire every time it is launched, have they solved that problem, or does it happen, and is this a problem?
The upper stage on both the Atlas and Delta IV, I believe, is powered with the RL-10, which is a pretty small engine, limited in thrust by something they call an expander cycle in how they run the turbopumps. I understand that you can get the upper stage with either one or two RL-10’s. The common use of these rockets is to launch a smaller payload to geosynchronous orbit where they use one RL-10, with two RL-10’s used for heavier payloads into lower orbits.
I heard that to use this low-thrust upper stage, the booster “lofts” the vehicle into a high trajectory, and then the upper stage sort of dive bombs back towards the ground to pick up orbital speed with the amount of thrust they have. I heard this Kamikaze trajectory would do the same for crews in some kinds of failures. Is all of this true? Or would a crewed version of the upper stage be developed using multiple RL-10’s for more thrust, kind of like the original Saturn I upper stage? Is it a simple matter to simply use more RL-10’s for more thrust, or is this a big change requiring big development bucks?
I am not trying to troll or anything. I just had these technical questions about the Delta IV in particular and EELV’s in general, and I may have gotten some of this info from the Ares I “Stick” partisans, but I am curious about technical answers on those issues.
Over at cosmiclog I found this comment by Jim McDade who supposedly witnessed some testimony at the Augustine hearing and has some really harsh words to say,
“The Direct proposal is a joke. I just watched Dircet presenter Steve Metshcan go down in flames before the panel. I realize that some will think my critique blow is “mean”. It might be a bit mean, but it is also honest and it uses Metschans own words.”
That’s just the first paragraph, you should click over to cosmiclog to read the rest of the gory details.
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/06/17/1969240.aspx
I don’t know if what Jim says is true, but it does seem to comport with the other news stories I have read about the hearing.
Bear in mind that Jim is extremely biased. He is a big fan of Constellation in its current form.
If one of the three common core stages develops a problem, do they have to fire off the abort/rescue rocket?
It probably depends on when during ascent it occurs, but if they can’t cross feed, then I’d say it means an abort for sure, whether to earth or orbit would again depend on when it occurred. The other issues you mention were concerns during OSP days. They can be resolved, but it may require some upper stage redesign, which seems to have been the focus of the Aerospace study. Atlas is probably a better launch vehicle for that reason. Concerns about the RD-180 are spurious, in my opinion.
Supposedly, adding cross-feed to the Delta IV is one of the proposed upgrades. I think it is to allow the center core to stay topped off and drop the two outside cores faster.
But could the three core delta survive a loss of an outboard core with cross feed? If the center goes, it seems it would be toast no matter what unless it was very close to the second stage going hot.
Seems like a lot of gimbal authority would be needed to compensate for the loss of an outboard core, not to mention you are losing a third of your thrust capability.
So the Direct dude got stage fright. What does this have to say pro or con about the concept?
From what I have heard about trouble with the Stick, it may have been a great idea at the cocktail napkin stage, but those solid rockets were never intended to be used as anything except as strap-on stages to another structural member — the ET or a core stage as it were. It seems to me that if you are wedded to solid rockets for whatever political, technological, or other reason, the idea that you can solve the leaking O-ring vulnerability by placing a single solid rocket underneath is unworkable without spending vast amounts of money. So if you are talking solids at all, you are back to Direct or Shuttle C or something, and the mechanics of segmented solid rockets dictate that, not whatever state of preparedness the PowerPoint dude is in.
So if you are going with a two-solid rocket design, you will have extra payload for the CEV into orbit mission, which means you are back to a lunar mission with two mid sized rocket launches instead of a big freight rocket and a smaller passenger rocket. I mean none of this is rocket science . . .
Paul:
IIRC the Soyuz and Proton rockets do not use cross-feeding either. Soyuz has a pretty good launch record.
$35 billion for the first flight of Ares I is insane. You could develop several launch vehicles, each more complex than Ares I is supposed to be, for that price even at typical government prices. I wouldn’t be surprised if you could develop a TSTO + RS-84 for a third of that.
Regarding solids, the problem with O-rings could be solved by simply making a huge single piece solid. IIRC Aerojet actually proposed this, but Thiokol won the contract. Aerojet manufactures the single piece Atlas V solids.
I wish the DIRECT guys all the luck in the world, and the side-mount Shuttle-C fan too, but they miss the point.
The problem with NASA’s launcher program is not this or that engineering choice. The problem with NASA’s launcher program is that it has one.
The entire point of VSE, simply stated, was that NASA stops operating its own launcher fleet, and uses the money instead on lunar landers and other beyond-LEO exploration hardware.
Launchers or lunar landers; you can build one, but not both. That’s budgetary reality, not an engineering one, but reality nonetheless.
So, thanks, Griffin, for trying to stuff the launchers back in, then complaining there wasn’t enough budget for that and the landers both. No kidding! The $35b is beyond scandalous, but Ares would’ve been unaffordable if it had cost a tenth that.
Erik is right, but some of us support architectures that include SDLV because we believe it is a political necessity. I’d be thrilled if that turns out to be not the case.
Any plan that begins with, “First, we’ll spend 3B+/yr in all the right districts on a NASA-only launcher fleet” is a plan that ends in LEO, period.
The “sand chart” illustrated this well enough; the past 4-5 years have proven it to my entire satisfaction.
That leaves only plans that spend the money on landers instead. They may have to be designed and built in all the right congressional districts and may still be unaffordable as a result, but that’s the only architecture that could possibly comport with political reality.
I suspect that the compromise that comes out of the Augustine Commission will be the morphing of Ares 1/5 into something that looks just like Direct and possibly the moving of Orion onto Delta 4 Heavy. I think that is the best thing we can hope for right now.
The political reality cannot be ignored at this point.
Well.. $35B is certainly more than enough to
1) pay off the entire STS workforce to quietly retire and go away once the STS winds down
2) Fund a couple neat prizes for humans to LEO and humans to lunar surface.
Can we make this a political reality, pretty please ?
John Shannon’s Shuttle-C variant, perhaps with 5 seg boosters is also a possibility, although I think it was intended as a red herring and a very subtle and well-executed strike at DIRECT. Shannon essentially agreed with Dennis Wingo’s arguments for Shuttle-C, in that this sidemounted vehicle is more direct than DIRECT itself, reusing the ET unchanged, and Shuttle’s flight software and ground handling procedures with minor modifications. Shannon subtly undermined DIRECT’s claims J-130 could help close the gap by claiming even his Not-Shuttle-C couldn’t do that. It also hinted subtly that if you were prepared to wait longer, you might as well go for Ares V.
some of us support architectures that include SDLV because we believe it is a political necessity.
Political correctness is a poor subsitute for financial sense.
Not political correctness, but a judgement, perhaps a faulty one, of what is politically possible. If I had my way, NASA wouldn’t be in the launch business and MSFC would be razed to the ground.
I have just one question: Why is Steve Cook still working for NASA?? Fire this incompetent asshat now!!
Not political correctness, but a judgement, perhaps a faulty one, of what is politically possible.
Okay, then. A judgement of politically correctness is a poor substitute for financial sense. 🙂