I’m working on a piece along these lines for PM or PJM, but Jim Oberg beat me to the punch:
The plan to reshape the Orion spaceship as a standby rescue vehicle for station crews has profound implications for the requirements of the commercial taxi and its cost. This strategy means the taxis won’t have to last for six months “parked” in space, like Russia’s Soyuz spaceships. The simplification of the taxi’s mission will allow its hardware to be significantly less expensive to build and to validate.
The crucial systems for the taxis have mostly already been built and are available as off-the-shelf technology — which means the spaceships could be much cheaper, much smaller and much more reliable.
The FUD being spread by defenders of the status quo has been almost palpable, and it’s all unjustified.
[Update a few minutes later]
I should add that I doubt very much if the commercial contractors are going to use the Orion abort system. It’s overkill, in both weight and cost. In fact, for a much lighter vehicle, as a taxi would be, it would probably kill the occupants from the acceleration.
I’m really looking forward to your lifeboat article. If you can’t be first, you can be best (or at least, interestingly different.)
I suspect that one of the consequences of the shift to space taxis (and of widespread suborbital human flight) will be a real-world test of the Convention on Return and Rescue of Astronauts. A taxi needing to make a quick emergency landing may not have enough time remaining to be fussy about it landing site.
Thinking about VG’s plans to operate from the Emirates, I started to wonder whether Iran is a signatory of the Convention, and how they might react if a VG spacecraft has to make an emergency landing across the Gulf with an American, or, even more fun, an Israeli passenger on board.
I’d like to see some standard terminology…
Craft: any of the following.
Vehicle: a craft intended to transport humans.
Ship: a vehicle that may carry other craft and travels between planets or moons.
Station: a ship that remains in an orbit.
Tug: a craft that moves other crafts. May be robotic (not a vehicle.)
Taxi: a vehicle that moves people between ships.
Lander: a vehicle that brings people safely down a gravity well and where gravity permits is also an ascent vehicle.
Lifeboat: a lander minus ascent capability.
Shuttle: retired. The space shuttle ruined the traditional use of this term (see taxi.)
We then would not use the term spaceship for Orion unless it could at least take people to lunar orbit.
Does an Orion lifeboat add anything over a Soyuz lifeboat? It might if it were also available as a lifeboat for Bigelow habs. Would it be?
Does an Orion lifeboat add anything over a Soyuz lifeboat?
More crew capacity. Whether that’s a bug or a feature is unclear.
More crew capacity, at exorbitant expense. Obama isn’t serious about space, commercial or otherwise.
I don’t see Orion CRV helping commercial crew at all. In fact, I think it’s a huge impediment to it. The two most plausible commercial crew taxis (Boeing and SpaceX) are either harmed or at best unimproved by it.
DragonLab is designed to spend 270 days in space and then return, so Dragon doesn’t need the requirements lessened.
And after the all-around EELV fiasco, Boeing is unlikely to enter the market at all if Lockheed receives government funding to develop a vehicle to compete with Boeing’s 50% privately funded vehicle.
Orion CRV could very well be the death knell of commercial crew.
If the Orion CRV does not launch with a crew, then I don’t see it competing with commercial crew – they have to go up before the Orion can take them back down.
If they are derating the Orion from it’s current configuration, then I wouldn’t imagine there needs to be too much development done to get it ready ($M not $B). They already designed the capsule (two even- one aluminum, the other carbon fiber), and I would imagine they have a good start on the environmental and crew accommodations. The heat shield may need a complete redesign since it only needs to come back from LEO instead of the Moon.
Regarding Boeing, I do agree that they will be careful, but remember, they look at markets differently than Lockheed. If they see that the market is finally developing for commercial crew, they could decide to step in and establish themselves as a leader. But they would only do this with an LEO-only product, and probably as part of a parallel funded program. They have a tremendous amount of space system experience, and if they were to enter this market, I think it will validate the market and spur more outside investment. One could only hope… 😉
The more complicated this all gets, the better the robots look.
Anyone who actually makes money in space already does it without the humans present.
“I don’t see Orion CRV helping commercial crew at all. In fact, I think it’s a huge impediment to it. The two most plausible commercial crew taxis (Boeing and SpaceX) are either harmed or at best unimproved by it.”
Orion lifeboat solves two critical issues for commercial space. One, it helps NASA get the funding needed for commercial space projects by neutralizing LM opposition to the program. Two, all the on-orbit lifeboat requirements that would otherwise be levied on commercial taxis will be relaxed or eliminated.
Except SpaceX apparently doesn’t need relaxation of the on-orbit lifeboat requirements.
That said, appeasing certain Colorado members of Congress and Lockheed Martin does make political sense.
Ken, most launch *vehicles* don’t carry humans.. best redefine that term 🙂
Kirk, when it comes to commercial concerns, using humans when a robot will be cheaper (and if it’s more risk, acceptable) should obviously be the right solution. But until there’s highly articulate robots available for the same mass as a human with either AI or a mission target that is within teleoperation range, the human will win. Of course, *there are no commercial missions for humans*, so this is all academic.
I’m flexible. Scratch vehicle. Now where does boat fit in?
Why do we have a boat taking up a docking port for long stays when a modified taxi (AKA the Soyuz) can already stay on station for months at a time and return the same crew it delivered?
It seems entirely redundant to have a one way ship parked next to several two way ships that cost less.
Jim Bennett,
Yes. The UN website indicated that Iran was one of the original signers in 1968. So in theory they must obey it.
“Does an Orion lifeboat add anything over a Soyuz lifeboat?”
The Orion would dock with an American airlock, Soyuz docks with a Russian airlock design. Bigelow is using the Russian airlock design because the American one is hidden behind ITAR, so Orion wouldn’t be available for Bigelow habs.
But until there’s highly articulate robots available for the same mass as a human with either AI or a mission target that is within teleoperation range, the human will win.
If you follow the robotics industry at all, which by the way has been undergoing a quiet revolution over the past decade, it can be argued that we are past that point.
Not with space-qualified hw, granted, but down here on earth and underwater robots often go where humans wont.
The more regs that JSC piles on to do human spaceflight, the more they incentivize everyone else to figure out how to do what they want to do in space without people.
Robots don’t need to be as capable as humans. Because they are significantly cheaper, and they can be onsite for a much longer period of time, they end up doing enough significant work to merit using them before sending humans.
Imagine landing two-ton rovers on the Moon that have the GM/NASA Robonaut2 on an articulated boom. With the short time-lag between us and the Moon, we’ll be able to do lots of detailed exploration. Later we can land robotic construction equipment to start prepping an area for our first lunar outpost.
Manned exploration will be inevitable, but in the meantime, some enterprising company could probably make a lot of money by letting earth-bound adventurers race each other with ruggedized tele-operated rovers on the Moon… 🙂
I’m with Gary. Converting Orion into a lifeboat is a great idea. I have been rather worried that the complete cancellation of Constellation and shutdown of Shuttle would cause NASA to glom onto and completely smother the nascent commercial human spaceflight industry. Certainly the statements coming out of NASA since February about how they would “ensure” the safety of commercial spaceflight should have been quite alarming to anyone who has ever dealt with Range Safety.
An Orion lifeboat kills several birds with one stone. Orion is not canceled, but it’s requirements have been simplified so much that finishing it will be a lot easier and cheaper. With luck this generates enough entropy (sacrifices enough money to the powers-that-be in Congress and at NASA) to move both government and commercial spaceflight forward. You might even say that balance has been restored to the force.
You might even say that balance has been restored to the force.
And Constellation is the dark side?? 🙂
While a taxi spacecraft will be lighter than Orion, it’s not clear that the taxi capsule would be lighter than the Orion capsule, and that’s what the abort system has to haul. Yes, heat shield would be lighter, but the taxi is likely to have more seats than lunar Orion, and a taxi might add mass for a nominal landing on land, and move systems from the service module to the capsule for greater reusability.
AIUI, one of the constraints that goes away with a CRV is the need for crew taxis to be able to rapidly depart the space station, even if the station is unpowered. This would allow them to just use the same CBM or other sort of berthing connection instead of something fancier.
~Jon
Imagine landing two-ton rovers on the Moon that have the GM/NASA Robonaut2 on an articulated boom.
No, imagine any of the far more advanced robots that are being built by South Korean, Japanese and Chinese robotics experts. Toyota is already thinking along these lines.
So we now take a vaporware spacecraft and redesignate it as a CRV. Correct me if I’m wrong here, but aren’t we turning Orion into the role of the X-38/CRV which was canceled after test articles were completed?
How would the cost/time to complete for Orion as CRV stack up against X-38 as CRV if that got restarted?
it can be argued that we are past that point.
Not if the you parse the whole statement. …or making a BAD argument.
If the Orion CRV does not launch with a crew, then I don’t see it competing with commercial crew – they have to go up before the Orion can take them back down.
You’re missing the point. Orion currently exists as a behemoth requiring a Delta IV Heavy at a cost of $250 million per flight to get a four-man crew to LEO. Boeing’s capsule is much smaller, requiring only an Atlas V or Delta IV Medium at a cost of $150 million per flight to get a seven-man crew to LEO. Boeing can easily compete against Orion, so much so that it’s doubtful Lockheed would even enter the market with a full-fledged Orion. They would have to completely re-design Orion so that it could be launched on the less-expensive medium-class EELVs. If they did so under CCDev or the commercial crew derivative contract, they would be competing on even terms with Boeing. I suspect Boeing thinks it can win that competition.
However, if NASA funds an Orion-lite as a CRV, Lockheed would be receiving taxpayer money to do the complete Orion redesign needed for them to compete commercially. Lockheed would only have to fund an upgraded life support system with their own money, not 50% of the entire project like the CCDev competitors have to. Boeing has a substantially lower cost structure than Lockheed, but it’s not that much lower, and Boeing would likely exit the market.
There are at least two precendents for this. Lockheed got about 50% of its EELV development cost paid for by the taxpayers, whereas Boeing got only about 20%. This is the reason that the Atlas V can be sold at a lower price than the Delta IV. Also, NASA’s funding of Lockheed’s X-33 Venturestar prototype to the tune of $1.3 billion ended all prospects of then McDonnell Douglas funding Delta Clipper with its own money. The history is there, and I’d rather not see that history repeated.
How the other possible commercial crew entrants would react is not as easily forseen, but they could have similar problems.
If they are derating the Orion from it’s current configuration, then I wouldn’t imagine there needs to be too much development done to get it ready ($M not $B).
No, it is almost certainly in the $billion plus range. Re-sizing the capsule will cause nearly every part to be re-designed, re-analyzed, and re-released.
Mike
I keep thinking a billion could fund 5 to 10 SpaceX type of startups. All we need is a few growing settlements to have the needed market (which might be started for a few tens of billions.)