But some people can’t get over it:
The Flexible Path tries to satisfy everyone with a long laundry list of destinations, but it is more noteworthy for what it pushes back to the end of the line. The Program of Record (Vision for Space Exploration) has the objectives of manned landings on the Moon and Mars. The Flexible Path does the opposite—an anti-Vision—and tries to do everything except manned landings on the Moon and Mars. Lunar landings are replaced with lunar orbits, and Mars landings are replaced by Mars flybys and possibly Mars orbits. “Look but don’t touch” eliminates the servicing of surface equipment, in-situ resource utilization, and sample return for the Moon and Mars. Manned flights are two-way missions, so removing sample return is particularly short-sighted. The Augustine report includes part of a quotation from President Kennedy: “We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard…” If the Flexible Path had been around during Kennedy’s time, all the Apollo landing missions would have been cancelled.
Sigh…
I’m sorry that Mark Whittington’s stupid “Look but don’t touch” phrase seems to be picked up by more and more people, because it’s so misleading. Not doing the planetary surfaces first is not an “anti-vision.” It is simply a different vision, and much more practical one. I will say that “flexible path” is not my preferred plan — I would in fact go chase the lunar rainbows sooner than later, but it’s the best path of any of the proposed Augustine alternatives, because the methods that NASA has chosen for lunar return are simply unaffordable. And it doesn’t eliminate planetary excursions — it just puts them off until they do become more practical, and we’ve developed more deep-space experience. The commission continues to see human Mars landings as an eventual goal. But if you’re going to do that, it makes a hell of a lot more sense to me to go to Phobos or Deimos first, which requires much less earth-departure propellant, with the potential for getting more propellant from those bodies for expeditions down the gravity well.
And suppose that instead of the lunar goal, Apollo had in fact been about beating the Russians to an asteroid, or Phobos, in an unsustainable manner (as the lunar missions were performed)? How would we be any worse off today? In neither case would it have been about opening up space.
The Flexible Path attempts to replace the Ares 5, capable of lifting 160+ metric tons to low Earth orbit, with a less capable launch vehicle, going as low as the 75 metric tons of the EELV-derived vehicle. The notion that the Flexible Path brings us closer to Mars is dispelled by this push for a less capable launch vehicle. Being physically closer to Mars, in terms of distance, does nothing if it runs away from the energy and mass requirements of a Mars landing. The variety of missions possible using the Ares launch vehicles is actually wider and more diverse than what the Flexible Path allows. The Ares launch vehicles are certainly more than capable of launching missions to Lagrange points, near-Earth objects, and any other destination on the list. Reduced capabilities make the Flexible Path decidedly inflexible.Sigh…
This is an extremely simple-minded view of “capabilities.” Is a vehicle with a larger payload better than one with a smaller payload? Yes, all other things being equal. But all other things are rarely equal. One has to take a total systems approach to determine the optimum, and not just focus on a single system element (this applies to safety as well as cost, by the way). If, for example, one can buy ten flights of the smaller vehicle for the cost of a single flight of the larger one, which is better? It’s hard to say, unless one looks at the total mission cost, including amortization of development, as well as legacy value toward the future. Unless one imagines that one will be able to do a Mars mission with a single launch of Ares V (and even its proponents admit that you can’t), then eliminating it does not necessarily affect ability to get to Mars at all.
Consider two alternate architectures. One invests in the development of a large launch system sized for (say) a lunar mission, and ignores the orbital operations necessary to assemble pieces in orbit, or to fuel them. The other takes the money that could be spent on launch systems and instead focuses on the latter technologies, using them to leverage the transport capabilities of existing or slightly modified vehicles.
At completion of development, the former has a lunar transport system (as long as it doesn’t go down for some reason) that has no other capabilities, because it is too small to go anywhere else, and there was no investment in the orbital technologies necessary to do multiple launches with it. And if it goes down for some reason for some significant period of time (as every launch system has to date, other than the EELVs, and it may just be a matter of time for them), the entire enterprise is shut down. If one wants to go to Mars, it will be necessary to either develop those technologies originally spurned, or to develop a (perhaps impossibly) larger-yet launch system. And each flight will be horrifically expensive, and the vehicle will never develop high reliability, because its flight rate will be too low. This is taking the fundamental mistake of the Shuttle (which was not reusability) and tripling down on it.
On the other hand, the latter course provides a system which can assemble arbitrarily large interplanetary missions in orbit to any destination, using a variety of launch systems, ensuring that any one of them standing down does not prevent human space missions beyond LEO. So which one is truly flexible, not to mention resilient?
The Flexible Path replaces set destinations and set dates with a hazy cloud of uncertainty. NASA did not achieve Apollo like this. If the Flexible Path is as good as its proponents say, why will it be applied to human spaceflight exclusively? The entire space agency should have a chance to experience this new transformative policy. But with lesser objectives, lesser launch vehicles, and a lesser budget, it is unlikely the rest of the agency would enjoy the experience.
Let me say it one more time. It doesn’t matter how NASA achieved Apollo, for two reasons. First, Apollo had nothing to do with space. Second, NASA had an essentially unlimited budget with which to accomplish the goal, which was not to open space to humanity, but to beat the Russians in a technological joust. Until we understand this, and stop yearning for something that never was, and never will be, we will continue to waste billions of taxpayers’ money on Cape spectaculars, and never make much progress in space.
I would add one more point, for those who fear the Yellow Menace on the moon, or any other nation that follows the Apollo paradigm. Space will not be opened by throwing large vehicles away a few times a year. If we couldn’t afford it, at the height of our power and influence in the sixties, why should we believe that any other country can?
[Update in the late afternoon]
Incoherent in his apoplexy, seething with unreined rage, foaming at the mouth and eyes bulging, beard afire, Mark Whittington leaps so hard at his chain that he breaks it, and pounds out incomprehensible gibberish on his keyboard about this post and the previous one.
What?
I’m exaggerating? You don’t say…
I also think it’s hilarious that his permalinks still have double page markers, after all these years of running that blogspot blog.
[Update a few minutes later]
Ray from Vision Restoration blog makes a very good point over there:
The Program of Record has virtually nothing to do with the Vision for Space Exploration except at the most superficial level, such as the initial destination (the Moon). The Flexible Path as outlined in the report is a lot closer to the Vision for Space Exploration than the Program of Record. Check out the Vision for Space Exploration documents, the Augustine Committee report, and the status of Constellation – or see some (of many) examples here of how far the Program of Record is from the Vision for Space Exploration.
It is really annoying to have to deal with commentary by people who have no idea what they’re talking about, and don’t even bother to read the class assignment. Including Mark Whittington.
Another vote up for chasin lunar rainbows, but not necessarily with manned sorties at first. Deploying a polar prospecting rover with a suitable power system ( beamed, nuclear or battery, whatever works ), untended ISRU experiments and life support tests would be the first priority IMO.
Apart from that, the understanding of “flexible path” in this article is .. nonexsistant. Just a regular “we need heavy lift” shouting.
I agree that we should take a small amount of the money being wasted on Ares I and do more interesting lunar robotics up front.
I think Altair is a waste because by the time we are ready to land on the moon, there will (hopefully) been thousands of VTVL suborbital hops here on Earth in vehice that must operate in a much higher gravity field.
We should be an a far better position to contract out a reusable Lander from these folks than being stuck with the .gov lander.
What if Blue Origin, Masten, Armadillo et seq, decides to make it inexpensive for NASA to put the touch back into ‘Look, don’t touch.”?
I wonder how many geologists, if given the choice of not going at all or being able to run a rover in near real time from Mars orbit, wouldn’t choose staying in orbit. You could have the rovers bring samples to unmanned launchers that just need to go into orbit let alone all the way to Earth. When you do land eventually you have a good idea of the really interesting places to visit rather then a crap shoot.
Uh the Chinese are not going the Apollo way. Their new launch system is a family of rockets using clustering like Angara or EELV. Their manned space program is going for space stations before the Moon. They will probably spend the next decade doing that.
I am happy to be recognized for establishing a useful meme. Look But Don’t Touch, by itself, is a dead end.
Their new launch system is a family of rockets using clustering like Angara or EELV. Their manned space program is going for space stations before the Moon.
Then there are no worries about them doing anything serious there any time soon.
I am happy to be recognized for establishing a useful meme.
Then as is often the case, you’re delusional, or can’t read, because that’s not what you were recognized for.
“Look but don’t touch” is a fallacy. There are more astral bodies than the Moon and Mars. Phobos and Deimos, as well as several asteroids, do not require the same amount of delta-V to reach as the Moon or Mars and are just as suitable for in-situ exploration if not more.
I still think it is a good idea to do Moon exploration. Besides being a short distance from Earth, which makes remote control of machines easier, it has plenty of materials to use. If you get a suitable infrastructure in the Moon, which enables fuel production, super heavy lift isn’t necessary any more. You need about as much delta-v to go from Earth to LEO than to go from the Moon to Mars.
There’s no reason to send humans in the first place. Explore and do ISRU robotically. Far more accomplishment at a fraction of the cost.
Yeah, but we want to go, Kirk. Plus we’re not asking you to “send” us anyway. Anyone “sent” by the collectivist hive is going to be so tethered he might as well be a robot.
We’re perfectly happy to “send” ourselves, if you’ll just get the hell out of the way, which includes not taxing away the private capital we need to pursue our dreams and wasting it on public boondoggles and union job security programs.
Kirk:
That might be true to a point but sometimes the human factor can do more in a few hours then a bot can in weeks of work. Bots can do a lot of preliminary scouting and surveys so you don’t waste time on the ground. I think Jack Schmitt would have loved to have had pictures like the LRO’s of the Taurus-Littrow to plan where to stop at let alone a mini rover prowling around checking things out as well. By using humans and machines together you can do so much more then each alone.
Right now in Mars orbit you have two ready made space stations called Phobos and Deimos. Dock, not land, with them and burrow in and you’re safer from radiation then if you were on the surface of Mars.
The availability of energy on Mars is far worse than on even Earth (where its absence, even with hydrocarbons gushing out of the ground, is so severe as to cause wars). The temperature and radiation environment are bad and it takes a whole lot of energy to get to and from. About the only value it has is in science – so let scientists pay for going there on its own science merits.
The moon is far more attractive – much closer and requires far less delta v, but the only real reason to go there is to ship large quantities of raw materials back into space.
Living in space is far easier than living on another planet, people have been doing it for decades.
I like “look but don’t touch” it is a good reminder that touching high gravity bodies has deadly consequences.
Considering we’re probably looking at NASA on a very tight budget over the next decade, I’d actually find “Look and See” a pretty good alternative. And for a lot of reasons:
1. Assuming it uses currently-available EELV derivatives and/or Falcon 9’s, you’ve just jump-started a pretty tidy little Surface-to-LEO transportation industry.
2. Seems that fuel depots would eventually become a critical-path item, a good thing.
3. I really like the idea of NASA having the ability to relatively “up and go somewhere” that looks interesting, just because they *can*. Sending guys out for a couple months to check out an asteroid sounds pretty cool. Or a comet, maybe? And they wouldn’t necessarily need a lander: wouldn’t MMU’s do a decent enough job at a low-enough gravity body?
4. Rand (I think) once mentioned how much more effective Mars rovers would be if they could be controlled “live” by astronauts in orbit, maybe on Phobos. Again, sounds cool to me.
My personal preference has always been that if we’re going to have a government space program, then let’s GO SOMEWHERE COOL and leave private enterprise to service LEO along the way. They’ll eventually find a way to follow the trails NASA (hopefully) blazes. That, to me, seems like the appropriate role for a guvmint space program. I’d certainly rather see this than another 30-odd years of literally going in circles.
What? A lowly Atlas 5 or Delta 4, or a Falcon 9 for that matter, couldn’t put a nuke-powered VASMIR into orbit and then send us on our way to Mars? Well, maybe several launches. We don’t need King Kong rockets.
M. Gallagher
Burt Rutan said it was “tragic” that NASA was going back to the same place they had been 40 years before and “deliberately doing it in such a way as to not learn anything new.”
Mark, one the other hand, believes it would be tragic for NASA astronauts to go someplace they hadn’t gone before and learned something new. 🙂
Ultimately, of course, where NASA astronauts go will be much less important than Mark Whittington believes.
There is no danger that “human spaceflight will come to and end” without Constellation, as Mark is fond of saying. On the contrary.
Earlier this month, Charles Bolden spoke to the National Association of Investment Companies. He didn’t mention Ares or Constellation at all but talked about “hundreds of people of all nations traveling into space each and every year” in the near future — on rockets that are not built by NASA.
I wonder what will shock Mark more, that statement or the fact that Bolden says it’s NASA’s job to help make that happen?
Oh, no! What will Mark will do now that NASA is run by a member of “the Internet Rocket Club”?
Well, I guess he can still root for Communist China. 🙂
“Incoherent in his apoplexy, seething with unreined rage, foaming at the mouth and eyes bulging, beard afire, Mark Whittington leaps so hard at his chain that he breaks it…”
Beard afire? That is an arresting image. But you left out laser beams shooting from my nostrils and lightning bolts from my finger tips and the Earth shaking from my footsteps.
When you propose to write purple prose, for God’s sake man, write purple prose.
That is an arresting image. But you left out laser beams shooting from my nostrils and lightning bolts from my finger tips and the Earth shaking from my footsteps.
That would credit you with powers far beyond your meager foot-stomping and hyperbolic abilities.
When you propose to write purple prose, for God’s sake man, write purple prose.
I always appreciate lessons from the master, Mark, even an idiot savant apparently capable of little else. I’ll remember that the next time.
A lowly Atlas 5 or Delta 4, or a Falcon 9 for that matter, couldn’t put a nuke-powered VASMIR into orbit and then send us on our way to Mars?
With propellant transfer you don’t even need nukes.
Here is an analogy for everyone.
If you lived in California and were putting together a family vacation that involved a road trip to Disney World, but then realized that it didn’t fit into the budget. Would you go back to the drawing board and come back with a money saving approach that still drove across the country, but only to visit the parking lot, stay for a couple of hours and then turn around and drive home?!?
And if as a member of this family, you accepted this reduced form of an excursion on the context that, “Well at least it is still a car ride,” have you not demonstrated the depths to which being “practical” and “pragmatic” are despite the widely accepted view today, actually destructive forces? For giving teeth to such an irrational argument makes it all that much harder to dispell.
Sorry, but that analogy is flawed on several levels.
It might make more sense if there were no gas stations, restaurants, or motels on the way across country, and you had to take a motor home with a large enough tank to get all the way to the Disneyland parking lot and back. Not to mention that you need a different vehicle to actually get into the theme park, and it and its fuel to get there and back to the parking lot have to be carried all the way across country as well, making your RV even bigger and needing even bigger fuel tanks. So big, in fact that it doesn’t have enough power to get them out of the driveway.
But of course, if you use an accurate analogy, then Flexible Path (which includes building gas stations, restaurants and hotels out there, makes a hell of a lot of sense.
I agree with your posture on the inadequacies of my analogy, but that was not my intended context. You make a cogent analogy for a space exploration architecture, but all of NASA’s previous and current, implemented and proposed human space exploration initiatives have been debated primarily on the basis of their destination-centric objectives.
The point of my analogy was to convey that while people love to debate policy on the merits of “where to next?”. This destination-centric mentality makes the Flexible Path option of orbiting other celestial bodies ludicrous. If the Flexible Path led ot the creation of an architecture for us to levy for future exploration then great, but those that are touting the merits of taking a road trip to the parking lot are going to find no joy with that argument.
The Where? has been debated long enough. I believe that the best thing space advocates could do is begin giving as much if not more credence to the What? Who? How? and especially the Why?
Forget the Flexible Path. Let’s have the Golden Path.
Make a suit out of the juvenile form of the indigenous fauna and become a man-whatever symbiont with near immortality, superhuman strength, and tolerance of space vacuum or other environmental extremes.
HLV is never meant to fly. NASA knows it can’t pay for both an exploration mission and exploration overhead with all the strings it has attached. The choices are simple:
1. Get rid of 95% of the overhead and buy the mission components at fixed price, or
2. Get rid of the missions and just pay for overhead.
Obviously, #2 is more amenable to congressworms and senators. OF COURSE an EELV-derived HLV is the better technical and architectural option versus anything NASA could do. And OF COURSE no HLV at all is needed. But that doesn’t keep the voters in the pocket.
The best we can hope for is that congress sees some point to civil manned space besides whatever jobs it provides in Florexabama – in that case, they might release some LEO money to a COTS type program or sponsor a technology program. Otherwise, we will be paying for experimental rockets at experimental flight rates until the next round.
With the rumours of impending budgets cuts some staunch SDLV proponents over on nasaspaceflight.com have started to embrace concepts they were previously opposed to: EELVs or further evolved EELVs, Lagrange rendez-vous, flexible path, incrementalism, hypergolic landers, ISS first.
JFK is often incorrectly seen as a space enthusiast. The enormous boost in funding for Apollo did produce impressive results but was unsustainable. Worse, the legacy of Apollo is a big government bureaucracy that has become an obstacle to commercial development of space.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if Obama, who is sometimes seen as a new JFK, and not a space enthusiast, ended up inadvertantly doing the right thing by cutting NASA’s budget and forcing a more commercial approach?
My take on it was a little different. The Apollo program was designed with long-term presence on the Moon as a goal. What happened was that after the near-death-experience of Apollo 13 Nixon lost the political will to continue the Moon program beyond 17. It was expensive, risky, and as a JFK legacy project provided him no immediate political advantage so he let it die and subverted NASA for political gain – that idiotic Apollo/Soyuz hookup. Once Nixon decided to kill the moon program the remaining flights became all about collecting rocks instead of scouting for moonbase sites. Once NASA selected a site they could have easily and reasonably inexpensively built up a supply dump with unmanned rockets and started rotating research crews through there in the mid-70s.
NASA snuck SKYLAB through by offering to use up now-surplus hardware from the Lunar program and that appealed to the green-shade types in the Nixon and Ford Administrations. But they also stuck themselves with the Space Brick – er, Space Shuttle and that eventually sucked them under.
The Apollo program was designed with long-term presence on the Moon as a goal.
Sorry, but no, it wasn’t. It was designed to beat the Russians to the moon. Sustainability was not a requirement.
What happened was that after the near-death-experience of Apollo 13 Nixon lost the political will to continue the Moon program beyond 17.
No, that’s not what happened. The Democrats in Congress, with the acquiescence of Lyndon Johnson, ended Apollo in 1967. The most that Nixon could have done with the hardware available after the lines were shut down were one or two more missions. Your theory makes no sense. If Nixon lost his will after XIII, then why fly any more at all? Why go until XVII?
Wishful thinking is not a substitute for a knowledge of the actual history.
Your theory makes no sense. If Nixon lost his will after XIII, then why fly any more at all? Why go until XVII?
Had they immediately canceled the program it would have made them look bad. Instead they let it drag out a few more flights so no one could accuse them of cowardace and then announced “budget cuts force us to suspend future missions”. In fact most of the money had already been spent: the per-mission cost actually wasn’t all that bad once you amortize the infrastructure. Anyway that’s just my take on it. Yeah, there were calls to kill the project even before it began but there were competing interests from industry and the public to keep the missions to continue and even expand. Nixon didn’t *have* to come down on the side of killing the lunar program and he had the political capital to press on if he wanted (at least until he screwed the pooch with Watergate). I’ve always thought that 13 was the tipping point in his decision making process. That’s just my opinion based on how I’ve seen politicians operate.
Anyway that’s just my take on it….I’ve always thought that 13 was the tipping point in his decision making process. That’s just my opinion based on how I’ve seen politicians operate.
The fact that you’ve “always thought” something, or have an uninformed “take” or opinion on it, does not require it to conform with historical reality. The decision to end Apollo was made before Nixon became president. It had nothing whatsoever to do with Apollo XIII.
> Martijn Meijering Says:
> November 19th, 2009 at 7:03 am
> JFK is often incorrectly seen as a space enthusiast. The enormous boost
> in funding for Apollo did produce impressive results but was
> unsustainable. Worse, the legacy of Apollo is a big government
> bureaucracy that has become an obstacle to commercial development
> of space.
More then a obstacle to commercial development of space – it was a major obstacle to NASA doing anything in space. NASA first and foremost had to figure out excuses to carry all the bloated Apollo legacy centers and staffing. A cripling load that pretty much assured they couldn’t get anything done. To many cook..etc
> Wouldn’t it be ironic if Obama, who is sometimes seen as a new JFK,
> and not a space enthusiast, ended up inadvertantly doing the right
> thing by cutting NASA’s budget and forcing a more commercial
> approach?
Obama doesn’t care about space – but he seems to LOATH private busness – and love huge gov bureaucracies. I can see him canceling Apollo on steroids, even Maned US launch — but I can’t see him supporting commercials filling in.
> Rand Simberg Says:
> November 20th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
>==
>== The decision to end Apollo was made before Nixon became
> president. It had nothing whatsoever to do with Apollo XIII.
As I remember, Webb resigned from being the head of NASA out of protest of congress cutting funding for each phase of the pipeline – just after enough got through to get folks to the moon and back. It was clear to him they wanted to shut down NASA as soon as it beat the Russians. As JFK had said, the only thing was beating the Russians – nothing else about the space program mattered.
Hi Rand, it’s good to see someone taken the spacereview article to task. Been sitting on this rant since I read it, and now there’s a forum to post it!
I’d like to say that we simply do not need heavy lift. The low frequency of launch and specialised manufacturing equipment required simply don’t make it worth it.
Every individual section of craft that is to function in space is pretty much within the EELV’s launch to LEO payload range. Why lose everything on board an Atlas V if it explodes on launch?? Lose an EELV and perhaps you lose a lander, or some fuel, but not most of a mission!
With multiple providers for launch vehicles you allow competition and the evolution of rocket designs. With one HLV you need to reinvent it everytime you want to upgrade it. Weren’t the shuttle solid boosters meant to be a stopgap solution afterall…
Also there are lots of experimental craft that could be launched neatly within the EELV, or two, launch framework. Think solar sails, various ion rockets, new power supplies etc etc. Would each of them justify a single Atlas V launch? Would you risk one or more of each on a single launch vehicle?
Also one massively important side to the flexible path is that it can continue to encourage public support! I’ve always been surprised by the amount of public support any individual probe gets, as long as it’s doing something new. If you go to Mars you essentially spoil the public with one great big, and not terribly useful mission. Then people will get bored, and start to complain about what a great expense each mission is.
If you go to the asteroids, martian flyby, Phobos Deimos etc, then you stretch it out. You give things that Nasa can go to congress with and say ‘look at this and continue funding us!’. It may diminish the impact of finally setting foot on mars but you’ll have a decade or two of a space program with momentum, rather than the momentum dying the moment the astronauts foot touches the martian surface