I have it on fairly good authority that one of the subpanels will have an interesting announcement this morning, that some readers may find encouraging. Don’t know much more than that, and I’ll be incommunicado until this afternoon, when we get back to Boca.
[Mid-afternoon update]
I see from comments that there was a strong endorsement of propellant depots for exploration beyond LEO (which, as Jeff noted, should have been so obvious that historians will look back dumbfounded in retrospect that we remained hung up on megalaunchers for so long). I haven’t seen the presentation yet, but Clark Lindsey has a summary.
[Update a few minutes later]
Jon Goff: “The most amazing twenty-five minutes in NASA history.”
Well, that’s probably a slight exaggeration — I think an event that happened a little over forty years ago probably tops it, but I know what he means. The question is whether or not the policy establishment will pay attention. I have an email from someone in the know who notes that everyone on that subpanel gets the Frontier Enabling Test.
I’m sorry I missed the presentation live, but I assume that it will be replayable, or Youtubed. It certainly should be — I think that it probably will prove to be quite historic.
[Update about 4 PM EDT]
What is Norm Augustine thinking about ISS?
If he was not playing devil’s advocate, then Augustine’s first question indicates a belief that the American public might not be so excited about funding a lengthy and costly mission to Mars that isn’t clearly an American mission. His second question suggests he believes that when you get right down to it, there isn’t much to the space station beyond the great international coalition it has wrought.
There are many strong arguments to keep the space station — most notably that it seems ridiculous to abandon it just five years after it’s completed — but if Augustine believes deep down that it serves no real scientific or exploration purpose, that will carry a lot of weight with Obama.
I think that for current planned uses, and in its current location, it’s not worth the money of keeping it going. If “international cooperation” is so important to Sally Ride and the other politically correct astronauts, let them scrounge up the couple billion a year to do so from ESA, Japan, and others. But I’d like to see some serious proposals to move it to a more affordable location at 28 degrees (it wouldn’t take long to save the money that it would take to move it in reduced launch costs) and use it as a base facility for depot operations and research, as well as a primary base for extended-duration crew research for deep-space missions, perhaps using coorbiting Bigelow modules. With a short-distance cargo-crew tug, this would eliminate the need for a back-to-earth lifeboat, for everything short of a coronal mass ejection or alien attack.
[Evening update]
Jon Goff has posted his white paper on propellant depots, which I would assume played at least some role in today’s results.
I saw some press yesterday that made it sound like the committee was going to recommend that access to Earth orbit should be handled by the private sector, not NASA. That may not be the exact recommendation they make officially, but if it is, it could be momentous. . .provided that the government encourages or at least doesn’t interfere with private spaceflight.
Not sure if this was it, but some interesting notes from the subcommittee so far:
* all their options now recommend propellant transfer/storage
* Jeff Greason is unsure now if 25mT is enough (for beyond-LEO? Mars?), although seems to be pending further analysis
* Chyba: we should choose goals, not destinations
* “Our ultimate objective is the exploration of, and eventual extension of human civilization within the Solar System”
Greason and Chyba were particularly good speakers, IMHO.
Two key points, IMHO
— depots are a very good idea; and
— Jeff Greason is unsure now if 25mT is enough (for beyond-LEO? Mars?), although seems to be pending further analysis
It seems Jeff Greason entered the A-team process believing 25mT chunks would be enough and now isn’t so sure.
If we believe Jeff, do we create an EELV derived HLLV plus depots or an STS derived HLLV plus depots?
Chyba was very good as well . . .
Becoming space-faring (does that mean settling down and having children out there?) is the ultimate “why”
The unanswered questions include “How do we pay for it?”
I am hoping that the announcement will be in relation to the confirmation of things that some of us know about the findings of instruments flying around the Moon.
Prop Deppo’s getting a lot of love!
A commenter at nasaspaceflight reports this:
General Lyles made the statement that depots make sense but are “technologically immature”
IE they will cost money to develop and may be the cart that comes after the horse.
As General Lyle made this statement there was energetic head nodding by the other depot supporter.
If there is a lot of water on the Moon, depots become less attractive.
I disagree, Dennis. Initially, depots in Earth orbit would be filled with propellant launched from Earth. However, if there is a lot of water on the moon, it might be practical in time to send it to Earth orbit for widespread use refueling tugs (to carry satellites to their desired orbits) and for vehicles bound anywhere. It makes no sense from an energy perspective to land on the moon, refuel, and then fly on to other destinations like Mars. Water on the moon could also be useful for refueling a lunar lander allowing for full reusability.
Not EML-1 depots, Dennis. Those become more attractive if abundant water exists on the Moon.
Lots of water on the Moon (if reasonably inexpensive to extract) would facilitate a single stage fully reusable lander and that will require a place to change trains. I think we all agree EML-1 and EML-2 are the best places to do that since the frozen orbits do not allow global lunar access.
Lots of water on the Moon and an EML depot will also facilitate shipping lunar propellant back to LEO – especially if “caught” by tethers to import both the delta v and the fuel.
Depots remain very valuable. But by lowering the cost of reaching the Moon with conventional rockets the potential leverage provided by RLVs is reduced.
Larry
It makes little sense to send up large quantities of water from the Earth. It takes more than five times the amount of water that you send up to get water into orbit. If we had a big dumb booster whose purpose is to send up water, it does make some sense.
Bill
I agree with EML-1, but I would prefer that it come a bit later in the process and that the money in the near term spent on developing the resources of the Moon.
I don’t care how good the Commission’s announcement is – I’m not getting excited. All things considered the VSE wasn’t bad either, and look where that got us. Where’s all the COTS-D sexiness?
I’ll get excited when the NASA Administrators say “We’re going to spend money on that.”
Dennis,
If there were enough traffic to demand it, would you suggest developing something like a sea launched mega-booster (like Sea Dragon) making weekly deliveries just for that, while humans & cargo go up on Falcons?
@Dennis:
It was good to see you make an appearance in the lion’s den yesterday!
It seems to me that depots and an exploration program are the quickest way to establish a thriving launch market. Add man-rated launchers and Bigelow and we basically have what we need. ISRU is certainly crucial and should be the focus of a lunar program if we get one, but it only helps you go beyond LEO, you still need a good way to get people into LEO first. Until that happens we’ll still be watching a handful of government employees playing with our tax dollars. I think depots + commercial propellant launches + government exploration are the best way to RLVs and cheaper access to space.
I am hearing that unfortunately, ISRU is being minimized as an option. A good friend told me a great quote from Neils Bohr today that is applicable:
Science progresses one funeral at a time. Engineering of space exploration architectures is following that same path.
I know for a fact that most of the young people involved say “Of course ISRU” while the old codgers poo poo the idea.
All of you that support ISRU need to make your support known at the Augustine website. Do it with hard numbers and engineering knowledge. We probably won’t win, but we can at least push the ball in the right direction.
That’s good, but still slightly off IMO. Should be “…choose capabilities…”
Whatever was intended to be meant by “goals” is undoubtedly better than being focused on destinations, but it’s a vague word. When the necessary capabilities are realized, it won’t matter what the goals or the destinations are, because they, whether old or new, would be achievable with just a little additional planning and adaptation.
Larry
It makes little sense to send up large quantities of water from the Earth. It takes more than five times the amount of water that you send up to get water into orbit. If we had a big dumb booster whose purpose is to send up water, it does make some sense.
Dennis,
I never said we’d launch water from the Earth. I said that when the depots are first launched, they’d be filled with propellant launched from the Earth. However, if large quantities of water exist on the moon, the best place to refuel vehicles is likely to be in Earth orbit or perhaps one of the LaGrange points. From an energy perspective, it makes no sense to refuel vehicles other than a lunar module on the moon.
Propellant depots will be a good step toward ISRU (if the propellants chosen are not difficult to make in space, as say hydrazine derivatives would be). After all, if you make propellants in space, you’re going to have to be able to store and transfer them to refuelable vehicles.
How difficult would it be to generate NTO from ammonia and lunar oxygen? On Earth this is considered to be a very simple process and it has been proposed for use on the moon before.
From an energy perspective, it makes no sense to refuel vehicles other than a lunar module on the moon.
But from a cost perspective it might be a wash since landers are so expensive. In that case it is vastly preferable to reuse the lander and refuel it at L1/L2 with propellant from Earth until ISRU comes online. This could give an enormous boost to the launch industry. I’ll keep saying this: market forces in the launch business are more important than ISRU, important as that is. We need to get into LEO before we can go beyond it.
NO2 is produced by catalytic oxidation of ammonia, but it could also be produced by arc discharge in N2/O2 mixtures (this has been done on Earth in places where electricity was very cheap, for example in Norway.)
Rand,
Yeah it was a little hyperbolic. I tweaked the title to tone it down a notch.
~Jon
Sally Ride is saying that the Shuttle needs to fly past 2010 and that NASA needs more money.
http://www.space.com/news/090729-nasa-shuttle-delay.html
I am afraid that the Shuttle nuts will end up pulling enough heart strings to get their money and their extensions and we will continue to kick the can down the road.
I do agree with Sally though that the ISS should be extended to 2020. 25 years to build a fully operational Debt Star and then to just trash it after 5 years seems beyond stupid.
I am hearing that unfortunately, ISRU is being minimized as an option.
If so, that’s very good news for ISRU. NASA has no particular experience or expertise in mining or processing operations. If you really want to see ISRU succeed, you should be arguing for NASA to become a *customer* for in-situ resources, rather than a government monopolist.
Of course, the same is true for launch services, also, and yet the Moonies are dead set on having NASA remain in the launch business.
Ed, give it a rest. Dennis is being realistic, Congress likely wants an SDLV. Personally I’m still hoping for EELV Phase 1 and the death of the shuttle stack, but I don’t think it is likely.
@Jon:
For those of use who are too young to remember Apollo (and that includes me, and I’m 36) these were the 25 most exciting minutes we’ve had from NASA. I think that is a very, very sad fact which deserves a hyperbolic headline. I was gonna say hypergolic headline but I won’t. 😉
Why move it to a different orbit? Are a couple of percentage points of performance that important? If you put a depot up there, propellant launched from Russia would be cheaper. And if you want to go to the moon a plane change at L1 isn’t that much of a problem.
But I’d like to see some serious proposals to move it to more affordable location at 28 degrees (it wouldn’t take long to save the money that it would take to move it in reduced launch costs) and use it as a base facility for depot operations and research, as well as a primary base for extended-duration crew research for deep-space missions, perhaps using coorbiting Bigelow modules.
I’m surprise you wrote this. The energy required to change the ISS’s orbit from a 50 degree inclination to a 28 degree inclination would be enormous. Unless you’re talking about some as yet unproven technology like tethers, you’d need a tremendous amount of propellant to do the job. Once you lowered the inclination below 50 degrees, you just wrote off the ability to launch Soyuz and Progress missions from Tyuratam. Even when the new launch site in French Guiena comes on line, you’d have to build a lot of specialized payload processing facilities to support the Soyuz and Progress vehicles.
Moving the ISS’s orbit isn’t a viable solution. Using Bigelow modules in the correct orbit would be a lot more cost effective.
I believe they are talking about using some sort of electric propulsion system to change the inclination. Color me skeptical too.
At the very end of the day, Jeff raised the idea of possibly using the ISS to (test?) propellant depot technologies, also noting that there were very good ideas against it. I’m not so sure about that one, myself….
The ISS itself as a depot doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. But having a depot nearby sounds like an excellent idea. It would help with man-tending and could be used in combination with ISS staging. In that case you could launch your crew first and have them wait for the EDS safely inside the ISS, thus reducing schedule pressure due to propellant boil-off.
I think the marginal increase in cost in fuel imposed by ISS’ inefficient orbit for conducting cislunar operations would be much less costly than moving the entire complex to a better orbit. Just build larger tanks on the Earth orbit to Moon orbit shuttle!
Martijn at NSF made this observation: in light of budget constraints, it becomes evident that the choices narrow down to shutting down at least 1 out of 3 : ISS, Shuttle stack or beyond LEO plans.
In an ideal world, we’d have a ( informed ) voting and referendum on this.
In a less than ideal world, we’ll have politics and can guess the answer.
Are a couple of percentage points of performance that important?
It’s a lot more than “a couple of percentage points of performance.” With Shuttle, it’s several thousand pounds per flight. Also, if it’s at lower inclination, it’s more affordable to put it at a higher altitude, allowing less reboost propellant.
If you put a depot up there, propellant launched from Russia would be cheaper.
The Russians will launch plenty cheap from Kourou.
The energy required to change the ISS’s orbit from a 50 degree inclination to a 28 degree inclination would be enormous.
Station has lots of power for either an ion drive or electrodynamic tether. No shortage of energy, and no big hurry. Even using Progresses doing plane change instead of just reboost could allow it to happen for a couple billion. I ran the numbers a few years ago.
I think the marginal increase in cost in fuel imposed by ISS’ inefficient orbit for conducting cislunar operations would be much less costly than moving the entire complex to a better orbit.
Is that thought based on an actual engineering calculation? Mine are.
Well, if you’re using it to develop large ion propulsion, I wouldn’t be opposed to it. But there’s something to be said for having it at a location everybody can reach from their own launch sites. Especially if you want to bring in China and Korea.
Martijn,
Being 28 (going on 29 a week from Saturday) myself, I know what you’re saying.
~Jon
I’m biased of course, but I believe there is no reason to maintain the shuttle stack to begin with, let alone if all you are using it for is to go to LEO. The commission was tasked with finding options to go beyond LEO and to stimulate commercial space. Maintaining the shuttle stack and using it in LEO goes against both goals. So that would mean having to shut down the ISS, which nobody in Washington or even NASA seems to want anymore.
Especially if you want to bring in China and Korea.
I don’t value international cooperation sufficiently to increase costs for everyone else. If China and Korea want to play, they can lease low-inclination sites, or do their own sea-launch ops.
I’m with Rand–move ISS. The talk seems to be revolving around using an ion drive for the task, though everything is speculative at this point.
I hate to waste energy on hope that this possible new direction will pan out, but it beats the nonsense we’ve been hearing from the government on space. Access, access, access. Oh, and cheap. Get that, and everything else will work out. The best way to do it is to clear the way for the private sector–e.g., SpaceX, etc.
While I agree that 51.6 degrees is probably too high of an inclination for a depot, I probably wouldn’t put it all the way down at 28.3. I’d move it to some intermediate location that’s still reachable by as many existing launch sites as well as potential US RLV sites. Somewhere in the 30-40 degrees range.
~Jon
I’m not sure moving the ISS is such a great idea. As has been pointed out, it will limit the ability of commercial users to reach ISS to only US providers and Ariane in the near term, since Russian launch sites can reach 28 degrees. This has the effect of restricting the launch market somewhat since Japan, India and China are unable to take up the slack for a variety of reasons. In addition it means that while there are three US active sites that can access ISS now (WFF, ETR and WTR with a minor dogleg) we’d go down to 2, eliminating WTR, which is the least busy of our two major ranges.
Well, I posted the small comment the Commission’s website allowed, and it was accepted. Unfortunately, the hard numbers and engineering concepts to support ISRU that Dennis suggested were not possible, given that the comment window refused to scroll more than 2 cm. If there is room for 500 words in a window that small, it must be done in 2 point type fonts! I hope others have better luck getting substantive numbers on ISRU through to the Commission.
Actually, the penalty for 51.6 vs 28 is around 8 percent for a Florida launched EELV. Zero for Russians (they can’t get to 28 from Baikanour). Not sure about ESA, Japan, or China. The reason the Shuttle has such a large penalty is that the Orbiter is part of the payload mass, so when you pull that 8 percent penalty out, you are pulling it out of about 25 percent of the actual payload mass. That makes it look huge in comparison to an EELV. If you check out the payload users guide for Atlas and Delta, you will see for example that the upgraded Delta IV heavy can launch 29 mt to 28 degrees and 26.5 tons to 51.6.
If you check out the payload users guide for Atlas and Delta, you will see for example that the upgraded Delta IV heavy can launch 29 mt to 28 degrees and 26.5 tons to 51.6.
To the same altitude? Even if it is, that’s a roughly ten-percent penalty, not “one or two percent.” At tens of millions a launch, eventually, that adds up to real money, even in the trillion-dollar era.
If Polywell fusion reactors work like we hope they do, colonizing the Solar System could become a reality almost overnight.
Right now, 99% of launch weight is fuel. With a fusion drive, that could drop to under 1%.
The U.S. Navy is now building a WB-8 Polywell machine with .8T magnets, which should tell us a lot about power/gain scaling.
Bill White, my apologies, but because you had a link in your comment, it was trapped, and then I accidentally and irretrievably called it spam. Please repost, and I will approve.
Moving the questionably economic ISS for only a few billion? This sounds like an ISS subsidy, a few billion could pay for a lot of propellant depots in multiple orbits. Using the ISS as a propellant depot would be like using the space shuttle as a launch vehicle.
I was just thinking that propellant depots also provide a very direct pathway to a full on general store. A general store that can stock propellant can probably also stock tugs, satellites, solar power systems, reentry vehicles, Bigelow habitat modules, etc., at little extra cost.
They might be a far bigger game changer/enabler than they may first seem.
While I agree that 51.6 degrees is probably too high of an inclination for a depot, I probably wouldn’t put it all the way down at 28.3. I’d move it to some intermediate location that’s still reachable by as many existing launch sites as well as potential US RLV sites. Somewhere in the 30-40 degrees range.
If the depot is at EML-1 the inclination of ISS is irrelevant.
If you want ion propulsion systems to move fuel around, the current orbit of ISS is BETTER than at 28.5 degrees (due to beta angle considerations). For lunar polar orbits 51.6 degrees is about 100 meters per second delta v lower than from 28.5 degrees. That translates in to fairly substantial payload gain going from LEO.
The deficit for going to 51.6 degrees is 6.3% payload according to the Delta IV payload planners guide. BFD.
Bottom line is that this fixation on the inclination has very little merit.
I’ll get excited when Congress say “We’re going to spend money on that.”
Fixed it for you, Brock. And I agree. We’ve been in this sort of situation before. The real power behind this committee is that it is possible that the new NASA administration and Congress will work to implement some of these ideas. There are a lot of powerful forces that either don’t care or have some degree of conflict of interest with a useful space program. So I’d consider it quite uncertain that these recommendations go through.
The deficit for going to 51.6 degrees is 6.3% payload according to the Delta IV payload planners guide. BFD.
All rockets are not created equal. And that’s not an insignificant number, over many launches of as expensive a vehicle as Delta IV.