I have a longish rebuttal to Tom Jones up at Popular Mechanics.
[Update a few minutes later]
In case you’re confused, there are a couple problems with the piece that I’m trying to get fixed. First of all, obviously, that was supposed to be two billion dollars per launch not two bucks per launch (if only…). And I’ve quoted Tom Jones in the first paragraph on the second page, and farther down the page, Charlie Bolden, but there are no quote marks right now, so it makes it look as though their words are mine.
[Late afternoon update]
Jeff Greason weighs in on fairing-size issues in comments, and Jon Goff has some thoughts on heavy-lift technologies.
[Update a few minutes later]
The quotes on page two have been fixed, but we still have dollar-store prices for Ares I flights.
[Early evening update]
Ken Murphy says it’s the dawn of a new space enterprise.
Nice article, Rand. But what’s your take on the HLV research portion of the new budget? That, along with some of Bolden’s recent statements, would seem to indicate that NASA is still very much interested in creating a new HLV.
I don’t know how interested they are. It’s not an HLV development program. It’s a technology development program, and probably a sop to Marshall and Shelby.
There was a typo on the first page that you probably want to fix. It currently reads:
Add in the fixed annual costs to fly a few times a year, and the cost of the hardware itself, all of which is currently planned to be expended each time, and now we’re probably up to a couple dollars per flight.
I’m pretty sure the word “billion” is missing from that sentence.
Good article.
A good article, as usual. But you didn’t mention the biggest arguments against HLV and against government owned launchers.
Why again do we care about depots and smaller commercial launchers?
1. They allow for exploration if we not be gifted with HLVs.
2. They give flexibility.
3. They will greatly advance the cause of commercial development of space
And now abideth exploration, flexibility, commercial development of space, these three; but the greatest of these is commercial development of space.
Rand, I agree with you when it comes to propellant. In fact I was the only one that presented the advantages of commodity based orbital propellant industry as a key part of DIRECT plan during the Augustine Commission Hearings. Everyone else, CxP, ULA, SpaceX etc was silent on this true game changer (both technical-performance and organizational-cost effectiveness)
You keep ignoring though the cost of stuffing spacecraft into the existing small diameters and volumes. While most of the mission mass is propellant it’s the Spacecraft and Mission that drives overall cost. For example, the cost overruns of JWST and MSL (in attempting to do more than past missions while constrained to the same launch capacities) are many times their respective launch costs. The cost overruns of just these two programs would have paid for half the development cost of the Jupiter. The Jupiter in turn would have eliminated these cost overruns from the beginning enabling the spacecraft designers more diameter, volume and mass latitude significantly lower development cost, time and risk. If the JWST doesn’t unfold or MSL crashes into Mars you will find the other half of the money we need to build the Jupiter. The workforce and industrial base of the Jupiter is also just as commercializable as any other approach.
How is it that spacecraft developers are going to become smarter ‘after’ we destroy our existing HLV industrial base and workforce? I contend that the state of the art will not change significantly in the next two decades because for the last five decades the cost effectiveness of trying to pack 10lbs of stuff into a 5lbs box hasn’t changed significantly.
The reason that the unmanned spacecraft industry has had such large cost overruns is because they can’t justify new missions based on just duplicating the capability of past missions. So they keep trying to defying the density law of spacecraft design forced on them by existing launch systems. Massive cost overruns that dwarf launch cost is the result.
In a DIRECT world the 75% of the Mass (ie propellant) would be delivered utilizing the competitive market you advocate while 25% (ie spacecraft) would be delivered using an HLV like Jupiter.
Stephen, those high costs aren’t a consequence of having to extrude through a small hole, per se. They’re a consequence of high launch costs, and high labor costs on orbit. It’s very expensive to make something capable of self deploying reliably. It’s much less so to make it capable of being assembled. The solution to that problem is not heavy lift, but cheap lift. Again, why would we make ourselves dependent on a single vehicle type being operational? We’ve seen the folly of that twice now, with Shuttle.
You make good points, and make good holes in Jones arguments. BUT your argument that this opens up a bold new path is another cargo cult.
>… all plans for human exploration beyond LEO have not been abandoned..
Yes Rand, they have been abandoned. Not rescheduled. Not differed. ENDED. The NASA administrator and assistant admin for NASA are talking about MAYBE in DECADES. That’s never in Washington speak.
>.. the president has laid out a dynamic plan for NASA to invest in critical and
> transformative technologies. — development of new launch and space
> transportation technologies, nimble construction capabilities on orbit, and
> new operations capabilities –
Really? What new launch capabilities? Other then the HLV enabling technologies – and you just outlined how HLVs aren’t necessary. Even if they were necessary – we built them before, so we must have the technology to build them?
New “..nimble construction capabilities on orbit..” we built the ISS on orbit and are now scraping out all the construction capacity NASA developed, and I see nothing in the budget or official statements that contradicts that, or suggests they are developing some new construction technologies.
“..new operations capabilities..”, Yeah we really need to go off and research how to do fuel depots for a decade or two.
“…Why would the administration be proposing and budgeting for these things,
> and advanced life support and other technologies, if it is turning away from
> the dominance in space technology America has enjoyed since Apollo?…”
Its called pork Rand. You know as well as I do, that after ripping the guts out of NASA funding plans, Obama would have to offer something to the Congressmen and Senators of those districts. So NASA gets nice study grants.
If Obama had plans to do something in space later – he’d say it.
Kelly: they have simply abandoned the dishonesty of the previous faux plans. This is a refreshing change. Operationally, we are no worse off, and there is less lying going on.
> The solution to that problem is not heavy lift, but cheap lift. Again,
> why would we make ourselves dependent on a single vehicle type
> being operational?
Actually your contradicting yourself. With such a small market. There’s not enough business for even one craft to operate efficiently enough to lower costs. Divide the market between multiples, just adds multiple times as much overhead and fixed costs. Given overhead and fixed costs are the bulk of launch costs…..
You keep ignoring though the cost of stuffing spacecraft into the existing small diameters and volumes.
If bigger unmanned spacecraft need a wider payload fairing, do we need a new, NASA-designed HLV just to pop them into orbit (where they can rendezvous with propellant and a kick stage launched by an existing rocket)? How difficult would it be to put a wide fairing on an existing launcher?
> Paul Says:
>
> Kelly: they have simply abandoned the dishonesty of the previous faux
> plans. This is a refreshing change. Operationally, we are no worse off,
> and there is less lying going on.
Less lying? Or just different lies – with no intention to go into space?
Please understand. I was in the Orion program. I know this ship and Ares never could have worked as advertised without a staging amount of money. It was a much worse LV systems then Shuttle, at much higher cost. I was VERY relieved that it was shot down, and feel the end of maned space exploration is a acceptable cost for that.
What I’m arguing is that this fantasy that Obama has opened up some new path, or is laying the groundwork for a later surge outward is nuts. Hes ended any maned space exploration program and pointed NASA into a 80%-90% reduced maned presence even in LEO. Then tried to sweeten it with a bunch of make work study programs. If you want to do commercial space exploration. Kill the studies and put that money into contracts to return to the moon on a fee for service basis. Commercials could easily do that. They don’t need NASA to lay any decades old ground work for them.
Kelly, if SpaceX succeeds in low-balling the big guys, the big guys will drop their costs, and fast. We will see how “fixed” those fixed costs really are.
The market works for everything else that is subject to a market. Why should the market make an acception for orbital rocketry?
There is no lesson from history on orbital rocketry because, until now, it has been developed in a very small hothouse of Cold War mentality, and not subject to the laws of the commercial market.
Then tried to sweeten it with a bunch of make work study programs.
You continue to repeat this, but the repetition doesn’t somehow magically render it true.
They are not “study” programs. They are technology development programs, and these are technologies that need developing.
With the $50M NASA is investing in new technologies, our nation can start to create a broad selection of options for getting people into space (and quicker than Ares I). We already have legacy launchers that are quite reliable, and big enough to launch what Ares I was too underpowered to do. For spacecraft, Boeing has more experience than NASA, and they had already started building a vehicle with cost in mind (customer = Bigelow). Add to that the environmental system that will be modular, and now you can start bringing in other companies for launch services (SpaceX after they prove reliability) and crew transport (SpaceX too, but others may see opportunity now).
The Ares I & V were single points of failure like the Shuttle, and their cost could not be spread over commercial launches like Atlas, Delta & Falcon 9, so they were always going to be a huge budget line-item hanging around NASA’s neck. This has strangled NASA’s ability to do what they do best, which is the research and development that individual companies cannot afford. With NASA spinning out the technology, and industry commercializing it, we will have a much better chance of staying in space than what Constellation was going to do (plant flags & footprints on the moon).
A “big enough” lifter for exploration can be built using the industrial base already in the U.S. for boosters shared with other customers (at ULA, SpaceX, and OSC).
The one piece which is missing for that is political more than technical; to do it you need a large hydrocarbon booster engine in the 750,000-1,000,000 lbf class and ideally with at least 1970’s class chamber pressure 1500+ psi). Currently the only engine in that size in U.S. use is the RD-180 which we buy from the Russians. It would be a lot easier to sell a booster like that for U.S. govt missions if there were a decent large hydrocarbon engine in U.S. production.
Personally, I don’t understand why it’s OK to buy rides on Russian spacecraft for U.S. astronauts so they can visit a station with Russian components but politically difficult to base a U.S. large booster on Russian engines (which keeps more of the value chain in U.S. hands); but the push-back against basing a booster on shared production lines with other U.S. boosters has a tendancy to fall back on that excuse.
Therefore, while I don’t have special knowledge to that effect, it seems likely to me that some of the “HLV R&D” line item is for a U.S. hydrocarbon boost engine. And public presentations to Augustine Committee were made by ULA showing that if using hydrocarbon booster engine one can derive “big enough” boosters from the existing production infrastructure. I’ve believe SpaceX can, given time, play in that arena as well, though probably not as soon as an Atlas/Delta derivative, and the engine needed would be the same. There would be benefit to other U.S. stakeholders (like DoD) in having an engine like that in U.S. production.
Fairing size does matter; you can get fairings in the 7.5m class with that approach rather than 10m. I found pieces difficult to stuff in 5m fairings but none I didn’t believe could be stuffed in a 7.5m fairing. Of course, reasonable people can disagree on this in part because they have different mission models in mind.
The various “shuttle-derived” boosters are based on the same logic: use the SRB and 8.4m Shuttle ET production capacity to derive a “big enough” (and somewhat larger) booster. While such an approach is interesting and has potential for lower development cost than a “mostly new” booster like Ares V was becoming, it does not share the overhead of keeping the production lines open with any non-NASA customers. NASA is the only customer for SRB, SSME, and 8.4m tanks and is likely to remain so.
“Big enough”, in my opinion, is a cost-optimized 25-30mT booster of which you can afford to launch a lot, and occasional capacity to go to 50-75mT for, at most, a few missions a year in a “heavy” variant. A reasonable mission model has few enough of the very big launches that maintaining all-dedicated production lines for that purpose is not as cost-effective as making a “heavy” version of a somewhat smaller booster with same engines, tank tooling, etc.
The decision on whether it is worth the extra cost in dollars to maintain independent production capacity because of redundancy, which states it is in, or the labels on the personnel badges is a political decision, not an economic or technical one, and will be made by the politicians.
I found pieces difficult to stuff in 5m fairings but none I didn’t believe could be stuffed in a 7.5m fairing. Of course, reasonable people can disagree on this in part because they have different mission models in mind.
Can you say more about what pieces you have in mind? And what about the 6.5m fairings ULA believes are possible on current EELVs?
> Patrick Says:
> Kelly, if SpaceX succeeds in low-balling the big guys, the big guys
> will drop their costs, and fast. We will see how “fixed” those fixed
> costs really are.
Yes, but musk said he can’t undercut them much at the market size hes seeing. As is, most of his savings is he doesn’t have to do the same level of paperwork and NASA “oversight” and political overhead.
For real launch cost cuts – you need a bigger, not smaller, market.
> Rand Simberg Says:
>
> They are not “study” programs. They are technology development
> programs, and these are technologies that need developing.
>
In some cases they are developing technologies already in service. In no case are they developing tech a commercial couldn’t do on their own cheaper if nASA or someone actually wanted to buy them.
In no case are they developing tech a commercial couldn’t do on their own cheaper if nASA or someone actually wanted to buy them.
You don’t even know how they’re going to procure the development, so this statement makes no sense.
> Jeff Greason Says:
>
> The one piece which is missing for that is political more than technical; to do
> it you need a large hydrocarbon booster engine ==
> Currently the only engine in that size in U.S. use is the RD-180 which we buy
> from the Russians. It would be a lot easier to sell a booster like that for U.S.
> govt missions if there were a decent large hydrocarbon engine in U.S.
> production.
>
> Personally, I don’t understand why it’s OK to buy rides on Russian spacecraft
> for U.S. astronauts so they can visit a station with Russian components but
> politically difficult to base a U.S. large booster on Russian engines ==
Yeah thats the other big “R&D” program to develop “needed HLV technology”. A rocket to compete with the Russian RD-180. Course Pratt could build the RD-180’s themselves. Or for that mater design a newer one on demand. Theres no need for the great wise men of washington to study it, or even help develop it.
If they have a mission for them, order them. Or better, just do a RFP for a mission, leave their hands off, and let the builders order the new engines.
> Rand Simberg Says:
>
> You don’t even know how they’re going to procure the development,
> so this statement makes no sense.
Was anyone suggesting they were going to procure anything in other then the standard NASA manor? This is Obama remember? Hes not big on privatizing things – so don’t expect a COTS like change.
Back to the point. In no case are they developing technology a commercial couldn’t do on their own cheaper if NASA or someone actually wanted to buy them. This is not complex or subtle. if NASA does the R&D, it will cost more and take longer. Historically for NASA programs about a factor of 4 more.
The fairing size debate very quickly gets too technical for a forum like this, Martin. It’s a judgement call rather than a black or white issue. Every time someone says “piece XYZ can’t fit”, someone else can say “but if you solved the problem differently it would fit”. So the bigger the fairing, the less clever you have to be in designing the pieces, and cleverness costs something in time, complexity, or because you only have so many of your best system designers to go around.
Cryogenic propulsion stages with long-duration coast capability need to be very well insulated and so even if the tanks are 5m diameter the fairing needs a lot of clearance around the tank because the insulation won’t stand aero loads. A 6.5 m fairing would probably work for that but might be a little tight.
Planetary landers can be done in a variety of overall designs and NASA did a nice study recently of all the variants. Some of them fit in 5m fairings but most of them don’t and so you’re restricting your other design options if you push the fairing too small (and we don’t know everything in advance….). As above, 6.5m might work, 7.5 covers most cases. IIRC, only very large landers that look “LEM-like” and that use LOX/LH2 tanks and that land very large payloads push in to the 10m class and it wasn’t clear to me that those had a mission need.
Mars entry, descent, and landing vehicles (EDL), are a sticky problem. Here, again, different people have different ideas about how big the “lump” is that you have to land on the Martian surface in one piece, and it makes a big difference whether or not you plan for refueling at phobos/deimos. I think its clear that by the time we do a Mars mission, the architecture will look different than DRM 5.0. Still, regardless of the details, you do need to land a fairly large piece on mars (at least 20-25mT, and some people think 40mT), and an aeroshell for that really, really doesn’t fit in 5m fairing. At 7.5m there are many solutions, at 10m fairing you can do it in a very non-clever way by brute-force scale-up of Viking style aeroshell. Given that we have …. some time to work on the problem I was convinced 7.5m fairing range was big enough, and I’d rather have 7.5m boosters that we can afford and work on the EDL problem than 10m boosters we can’t so that the EDL problem takes less work, but your mileage may vary.
Advanced in-space propulsion is (regrettably) likely to be solar-electric rather than nuclear-electric; there are paths to solar supplies light enough to do the job but they get bulky. Getting the arrays up there for a large mission will probably take multiple launches. Now you have to look at which limit do you run in to first, the throw weight of the booster or the fairing volume. 7.5m is a good match for 60-70mT booster and 10m is a good match to 125mT booster so no obvious win there. Somewhere south of 7.5m you are running in to “scale down” problems for very large deployable thin film arrays, but it’s very uncertain since those haven’t been flown yet.
Bottom line: 5m probably too small, 6.5m maybe big enough if you’re very clever, 7.5m probably big enough but a few pieces need some thought on packaging, 10m obviously fits everything with no special thought given to packaging.
And of course this isn’t a free choice; only some possible technical paths go with some fairing sizes.
Realize I’m abstracting down a very, very complex topic here!
> so this statement makes no sense.
Was anyone suggesting they were going to procure anything in other then the standard NASA manor?
Yes. For all you or I know, they may even do it with prizes.
Kelly Starks writes:
Yes Rand, they have been abandoned. Not rescheduled. Not differed. ENDED.
The Constellation program has ended. The Vision for Space Exploration has not (though this administration may not call it by the name given it by the hated Bush administration). They are two different things.
The NASA administrator and assistant admin for NASA are talking about MAYBE in DECADES. That’s never in Washington speak.
That’s still sooner than would be possible by the program of record. The POR was not going to fly the Ares I / Orion until 2019, the Ares V until 2028, and the EDS / LSAM until 2035. That’s *31 years* from go and *25 years* from now, just to do a flags ‘n’ footprints mission without either a lunar base or even a manned rover.
It was the POR that killed our manned space program. This budget tries to get it back.
With this budget we are likely to have commercial cargo delivery and return within 2-3 years, commercial crew delivery and return within 4-5 years, and alternate orbital destinations (Bigelow space stations) within 6-7 years. This will give us the robust, fault tolerant orbital infrastructure that this nation (or any nation) has never had.
With this budget we will be able to develop autonomous rendezvous and docking, propellant transfer, and on-orbit fuel depots, eliminating the need for an HLV. We will also be able to test advanced propulsion technologies such as ion and VASIMR engines for deep space.
We don’t know what the future will bring, but this budget does more to brighten the future of manned spaceflight than any budget I’ve seen in my lifetime. We should celebrate it (and help to get it passed!).
Mike
None of the above seem to get it. I herd Tom talk and I’ve read his article.
It’s not commercial vs. NASA, Ares, and Griffin’s warped spin on Constellation that is not the point that Tom is getting at. What Tom is getting at is FLEX vs. VSE that is where Obama has screwed the pouch. It is the FLEX plan that lacks focus, that opens the door for China to leap through and that stymies commercial and future US manned space program development. Going commercial would be embraced by many more if it we’re not for the “FLEX” spoiler plan. FLEX is where the problem lies giving up an outward focused, driven goal oriented VSE program for a random vague earth bound future? And what if anything happens beyond 2020 with the FLEX program worries many. Had Obama pursued a rewound VSE commercial based moon program many more would have lined up behind it. By commercial VSE I’m not referring to Griffin’s Apollo style VSE I’m referring to a ULA space depot Atlas/Delta based type of VSE. The loss of VSE is a tragic blow one which will stifle both NASA and commercial developments and allow China to steal the show within the next 10 years. China is LOL at FLEX they see the opening the gash in our space program and they are going to jump right through it. While the US twiddles its thumbs and commercial companies wage war with each other China will continue to leap frog its way to the moon. They will settle the moon and own the door to the solar system in the process. Check mate! Game over and China rules the 21st century.
Every time someone says “piece XYZ can’t fit”, someone else can say “but if you solved the problem differently it would fit”.
Heheh, so true. I’m sure Rand will warn us if he feels we are getting off-topic or too technical. Here’s my try. I believe everything can be done comfortably with existing EELVs and even without increasing complexity. I’ll agree EELV Phase 1 (but no higher) would still be nice, especially since it would reach down to commercial payload sizes.
1. Cryo stages
The problem could be avoided by using relatively small EDSs. This can be done easily if you off-load propellant from things like landers and transfer stages and use Lagrange points as staging and refueling points. As you know, ULA and our very own Jon Goff have published papers on how to do this. This has advantages for the size of the stages, the amount of thrust that is needed (no need for high thrust upper stage engines that have no commercial use) and for the thermal environment. The Augustine Commission has recommended, no doubt in large part due to your efforts, visiting Lagrange points and using depots. For best effect you would put depots at Lagrange points, which conveniently provides you with an excuse to go visit them early on, even though they are just empty points in space.
2. Landers
Here the problem can be solved without extra complications by using dense propellants, noncryogenic ones even for which propellant transfer is very mature technology. Performance would be quite acceptable. A more advanced solution might use a crasher or uncrasher stage. A refueled EDS could fill that role, so this wouldn’t really add complexity either.
3. Mars EDL
Mars EDL can be done fully propulsively, and will have to use a significant amount of propulsion anyway. Large heat shields really aren’t necessary. Some believe inflatable heat shields could be used, which would be nice if they work out but not strictly necessary. NTR, ISRU and SEP could be used to reduce the cost of orbit insertion and deorbiting.
4. SEP
SEP can be restricted to propellant which is most of the mass anyway. Current technology suffices for this. An ISS solar array would be good enough for a small propellant tug and these fit on an EELV easily. You’d just need lots and lots of them, which also gives economies of scale and redundancy.
There’s another issue that others sometimes mention:
5. Large habs
This can be solved with inflatables, which are better for MMOD and radiation shielding too.
It looks as if propellant transfer is so powerful that it actually reduces the complexity compared to some of the schemes that only work with larger payload fairings. All of this could be done with existing technology! R&D would remain very desirable of course to reduce costs, both through lowering IMLEO and by reducing launch costs.
Bottom line, just my two cents: 5m is plenty, and 6.5m would be great.
I’m sure Rand will warn us if he feels we are getting off-topic or too technical.
Would that the latter were the worst problem I ever have with my comments section.
China is LOL at FLEX they see the opening the gash in our space program and they are going to jump right through it.
China is not “jumping,” or “leaping” anywhere. At best, they are crawling, and will continue to do so absent a big change in direction (as the administration proposes for NASA).
> Rand Simberg Says:
>> Was anyone suggesting they were going to procure anything in
>> other then the standard NASA manor?
> Yes. For all you or I know, they may even do it with prizes.
Had they any intention to even consider a non standard bid, that would be big news – adn out of charcters for this admin.
Jeff, I agree with a lot of what you have said. If given a blank sheet of paper the development of a common RP/LOX engine useable by the current Atlas core and new HLV core (perhaps using the existing 8.4m tooling) would be the lowest cost (development, fixed, variable) all things being equal. This is what I believe is in the current budget from the President.
Jupiter on the other hand was reversed engineered to take maximum advantage of ‘existing’ industrial base and workforce (ie the exact opposite of PoR) It was believed that this would be the least disruptive to the workforce and therefore more politically viable. On the cost effectiveness side we can also directly leverage the progress already made on the Program of Record and proven systems of the Space Shuttle. Approaches that align with past decisions/commitments tend to have advantages that go well beyond hardware based cost estimates. So I can understand both sides of this argument. The decision will ultimately come down to finding the political center of gravity.
My biggest fear is that if we don’t get our foot in the door for HLV ASAP we won’t get it ever because all I see is tighter budgets year over year for the next two decades. So we get the RP/LOX engine but no money for the HLV.
Regardless of which HLV path we end up going down the Santa Claus conundrum will eventually confront any approach in the future if constrained to existing technical and organizational paradigms. What that tells me is we need a systemic approach to shifting the cost curve of existing approaches by finding game changers, both organizational and technical. Simply rearranging the existing hardware, technology and organizational deck chairs isn’t going to cut it ultimately.
At present the domination of the large sole source contracts provides zero incentive to find ways to lower cost over time. One idea is to break this up via ‘competition’ but unfortunately that requires the government to support the ‘competition’ until the next bid cycle. True commercial competition is only possible when the government is not the dominate customer and the demand volume (private+government) is sufficient to support multiple suppliers of a similar product or service. Until that point what we really need is a way to create internal competition within the sole source contracts themselves.
> Michael Kent Says:
> The Constellation program has ended. The Vision for Space Exploration
> has not (though this administration may not call it by the name given
> it by the hated Bush administration). They are two different things.
No they explicitly did both. No beyond LEO exploration is planed or even promised as a follow on. Explicitly both Garver and Bolden closed that door for a generation.
>> The NASA administrator and assistant admin for NASA are talking
>> about MAYBE in DECADES. That’s never in Washington speak.
> That’s still sooner than would be possible by the program of record.
> The POR was not going to fly the Ares I / Orion until 2019, the Ares V
> until 2028, and the EDS / LSAM until 2035. That’s *31 years* from
> go and *25 years* from now, just to do a flags ‘n’ footprints mission
> without either a lunar base or even a manned rover.
Bolden was talking about a HLV program starting perhaps in the 2020’s or 2030s. Garver “believed” a return to the moon before mid century was possible.
> With this budget we are likely to have commercial cargo delivery and
> return within 2-3 years, ==
It was already scheduled for later this year.
>==commercial crew delivery and return within 4-5 years,
> and alternate orbital destinations (Bigelow space stations) within 6-7 years.
They are already booked to fly crew to the Bigelows in 4 years.
> This will give us the robust, fault tolerant orbital infrastructure that
> this nation (or any nation) has never had.
But a laughable fraction of what we have today, and nothing toward beyond LEO.
And again. That’s all pretty much of the shelf systems. If NASA or Obama really wanted to use this stuff to go to the moon. They could just use it to go now. SpaceX has already offered to bid on deliveryt contracts to lunar surface for cargo adn crew. Certainly the major commercial could just as easily.
So if the point of this is to lay the ground work for something they intend to do later — why arn’t they doing something new?
> With this budget we will be able to develop autonomous rendezvous
> and docking, ==
Also in flight tests this year.
> propellant transfer, and on-orbit fuel depots, ==
Never used before, but a couple firms already offered to build and launch them. Again. Not something neading research – it just needs a market.
>== We will also be able to test advanced propulsion technologies
> such as ion and VASIMR engines for deep space.
Both have been developed, and in the case of IOn flight tested. Vasmir is suppose to have been flight tested on the ISS in a year or two already.
Of course theirs no one studying power suplies for it.
> We don’t know what the future will bring, but this budget does more
> to brighten the future of manned spaceflight than any budget I’ve
> seen in my lifetime. We should celebrate it (and help to get it passed!).
By this logic you must have loved the gutting of NASA after the apollo program.
Were ending the shuttle era adn loseing both its abilities and safety (better then anything else that flew – which sucks) and our on orbit construction abilities. Cutting the vast bulk of our person in orbit work, and limiting it to ISS operations. And following it not with (as we hoped) a commercial exploration program at least, but with nothing.
The more I see of this, the more I think it is the president’s way of killing what he perceives as American preeminence in space.
> MfK Says:
>
> The more I see of this, the more I think it is the president’s way
> of killing what he perceives as American preeminence in space.
He said early in his campaign that NASA was worthless, uninspiring, etc and he would cut it down and shift the money to other things. Then he was reminded he needed Floridas elctorial votes, so he changed his tune.
Now coincidentally maned exploration is shut down for the foreseeable future. The launch groups shut down, on orbit repair and ops shut down, most flight planing, astronaut training, etc. So you’re pretty well ending NASA. This is far more dramatic and complete shutdown then after Apollo when at least their was the shuttle program a in development, and shuttle flights a couple years down the road.
Right before this was announced, the Obama AND Biden went to FL to give the state an $8 billion grant for a bullet train. So that “makes up” for the jobs lost in FL (people are interchangeable in his world). And while the bullet train won’t be built any more than we would have made it back to the moon, at least its wasted $8 B will provide lots good old fashioned local graft, corruption, and union jobs — the kind of thing this president can get his mind around.
The launch groups shut down, on orbit repair and ops shut down, most flight planing, astronaut training, etc. So you’re pretty well ending NASA.
Only launches would be shut down. With indefinite ISS extension and without a spacecraft for exploration it’s going to be LEO missions for a long time to come. The astronaut corps can remain much larger than it would have been under Constellation. Astronaut training would continue. Orbital servicing would continue. ISS mission control and payload processing would continue. You’re certainly not eliminating manned spaceflight. And NASA does so much more than just manned spaceflight.
> MfK Says:
> ==And while the bullet train won’t be built any more than we would have
> made it back to the moon, at least its wasted $8 B will provide lots good
> old fashioned local graft, corruption, and union jobs — the kind of thing
> this president can get his mind around.
Amen brother.
😉
> Martijn Meijering Says:
>> The launch groups shut down, on orbit repair and ops shut down,
>> most flight planing, astronaut training, etc. So you’re pretty well
>> ending NASA.
> Only launches would be shut down.
Well obviously with no shuttle, no on orbit assembly or serious servicing.
>With indefinite ISS extension and without a spacecraft for
> exploration it’s going to be LEO missions for a long time to come.
Not that long. 2020 is the scheduled shuttle down of the station. That’s 4-8 flight slots a year. (Down from over 40 with shuttle.) With VSE shutdown – nothing past 2020.
>== Orbital servicing would continue. ==
Not really without shuttle. Got no way to carry upmajor parts or support major construction or repairs. Nothing like the Hubble missions obviously.
> ISS mission control and payload processing would continue. ==
Mission control yes, but not payloads — nothing to carry anything much in. Just Russia and SpaceX ferrying up supplies.You’re certainly not eliminating manned spaceflight.
Reading through this thread, I guess I have two things to say. First, I’m glad Ares I was gone. It’s too bad about the rest of the program, but I don’t see that Constellation (the implementation of the VSE) could have stayed given how the entire program was wrapped around that launch vehicle. Second, Kelly Starks has a damn good point. There’s a lot of stuff that sounds great to me: end of Ares I, more commercial launch, etc, but there’s a lack of long term goals that may well screw up (perhaps deliberately) whatever progress is made.
Given the mendacity of the Obama administration in many other areas, the people at the very top may well be intent on destroying manned space flight (or at least NASA’s portion). I can’t rule that out even given that 2010 appears to be one of the better years for NASA so far. My view is that we’ll have a better idea of what’s going on in 2011. By then NASA will have started spending on these various projects. Further, it’ll have time to suggest future goals and reduce some of the dangerous ambiguity we currently see.
In my view, this is a time of great uncertainty. In one year, we’ll have a better idea of whether the direction NASA ends up going in is any more viable than the program that looks to die in the near future.
I would like to commend you for observation about cargo cult’s in politics. I find that a lot of dubious projects come about from such a mode of thinking. The notion that having mass transit like the old established cities, will enable a small city to become a big city, is one that I have seen. The need for non growing cities to plan and manage growth like a big city is another. Cargo cult thinking is a odd misunderstanding of cause and effect that populates fuzzy thinking about how to get a end goal. Most of the time I think that most of the politicians that know that such things are not necessarily true but push the logic as a way of getting other projects done, that they desire.
There was a time I used to think that NASA was the only way for these things to get done. I think that there are several other people out there that just need to have the veil lifted from the eyes to really connect the dots. “OH, you mean I CAN do this!” not in a surreal internal “Yes I can do anything!” self esteem sense but a real and focused “I see how we do it now,” kind of revelation. Here is the opportunity for the power of free markets to show us if it can develop the incentives needed to build a wide scale Newspace industry. This should be interesting that is for sure.
re: payloads and fairing size:
Just out of curiosity, I looked up the size of Node 3 (4.5m D x 6.7m L) and compared it to the payload section of the standard Falcon 9 5.2m fairing (4.6m D x 6.6m L). Pretty close.
Cryogenics aside, there are a lot of ISS module-sized building blocks that we could launch using our current family of launchers. If we used ISS modules, with little modification, I think we could build ourselves quite a bit of the infrastructure we would need for LEO or lunar/lagrange missions. We would still need some new hardware built to launch on non-shuttle carriers (solar panels, external tankage, structural sections, etc.), but my point is, we have already built space-qualified hardware that we could reuse. It won’t be “optimized”, but the money you save using existing hardware can be used ferrying the extra fuel you would probably need because of the extra weight. Oh, and you get there quicker… 🙂
Fairing size and JWST
people are complaining that they are trying to cram 6.5m telescope into a 5.5m fairing, but if you had 12m fairing wouldn’t the scientists have an urge to “fold and go for 14m mirror?”
You’ve never expressed yourself better Rand. Well done. I still believe starting a Mars colony would be the fastest way to jumpstart the off-world economy, but the government doesn’t need to take the lead on that. Independent visionaries will do the trick just fine.
The point that landers should be put in orbit unfueled is just sanity. You’d think it would be obvious to anybody coming up with an architecture. I would think transfer of fuel from one vehicle to another should be standard and simple (as it is possible to be.) If so, fuel depots are a natural outcome and free enterprise can rise to the challenge.
Just doing some quick numbers, it looks like a bare bones inflatable hanger 15m in diameter and 30m long could be launched in one go on a say Falcon IX heavy (could also be launched in sections on smaller launch vehicles). No windows, and power, station keeping, life support, etc., would have to be added separately, presumably this hanger would be added onto a space station much like any other module. It would use multiple redundant pressure shells and a clip/zip together seam system to enable opening the interior to space. Some tricks can be used to shuttle the air around during these maneuvers, maneuvers which may also want a large robotic arm. The external shielding layers would be constructed something like like tent flies, and would mass less than the pressure shells. Maybe ~$100 million development costs with units costing ~$20 million there after, depending on how it is done.
So would such a hanger be a game changer on the HLV front? Would the need for a HLV then be as great?
Cryogenics aside, there are a lot of ISS module-sized building blocks that we could launch using our current family of launchers. If we used ISS modules, with little modification, I think we could build ourselves quite a bit of the infrastructure we would need for LEO or lunar/lagrange missions.
All of the Mir modules were launched on Proton boosters, as were one or two of the ISS modules. It can be done but at a price. To launch modules on an expendable booster, you have to either equip each module with the systems that allow for unmanned rendezvous and docking (propulsion, attitude control, TT&C, etc) or you need some form of space tug to do the job. The ISS modules carried up in the Shuttle didn’t need all of those extra systems because the Shuttle did all of the work.
Actually, a space tug refueled at an on-orbit depot probably makes the most sense for doing things like this.
“Fairing size and JWST
people are complaining that they are trying to cram 6.5m telescope into a 5.5m fairing, but if you had 12m fairing wouldn’t the scientists have an urge to “fold and go for 14m mirror?”
OMG, JV, you are so right. As an astrophysicist I can tell you that astronomers have for generations had a name for that very condition from which we all suffer. It is called “aperture fever”.
““Big enough”, in my opinion, is a cost-optimized 25-30mT booster of which you can afford to launch a lot, and occasional capacity to go to 50-75mT for, at most, a few missions a year in a “heavy” variant. A reasonable mission model has few enough of the very big launches that maintaining all-dedicated production lines for that purpose is not as cost-effective as making a “heavy” version of a somewhat smaller booster with same engines, tank tooling, etc.”
Sounds almost exactly like the Atlas Phase II study.
jeff greason makes so much sense my head is spinning
I guess 2 points to remember. Constellation is funded through next year. Congress mandated that.
This proposal guts Constellation and all its contracts in all its districts. That’s a lot of political Oxens to gore. Especially in a election year.
— and next years odds are very very high they’ll be a lot of very different faces in town and in charge of committees.
Obama has spent his political capital lavishly. He won’t spend a lot trying to get this budget through congress.
Who said VSE would have to be Apollo style…not. VSE is the path to the cosmos it is exploration. Apollo was great for the sixties not the 21st century. This is an example of how VSE could have been done no HLV or Apollo needed.
http://www.ulalaunch.com/docs/publications/AffordableExplorationArchitecture2009.pdf
No need to chuck the dream, this plan the dream pulls the commercial sector outward in a defined goal and synergy…not Apollo HLV style but commercial innovative low cost style. All water under the bridge now Obama pulled the plug and the FLEX fix is in. All this innovative speculation and discussion here sounds great but it is just that. FLEX does not promise anything beyond ISS the rest is just random unfocused innovative energy. Worthy concepts yet all marching in diffused directions. The Chinese are leapfrogging to the moon. Granted at a turtle pace but still organized and focused. Yes it is too early to tell where FLEX will ultimately lead. However why risk it all and chuck the VSE path to find out.