Lou Friedman, like most sensible people, wonders why the Congress is insisting that NASA waste billions on a heavy lifter with no payloads. Of course, the real problem being solved here is job losses, nothing else.
14 thoughts on “A Solution Looking For A Problem”
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Am I mistaken, or hasn’t Congress voted to use the Shuttle derived systems as the heavy lifter? If so, why does it cost billions to implement this plan? Isn’t it the same system as the one that lifted the Shuttle into orbit? I know I am not an expert in this field. Inform me of what I am ignorant about, please.
Keeping the Shuttle infrastructure, including production lines of the components, costs roughly $2 billion per year whether the flight rate is zero or nonzero. Of course proponents of the shuttle-derived flavor of the month will claim they will save some of that money but I have not found the arguments persuasive. For example, money will be saved on orbiter processing facilities, but more money is required for SSME production, and so forth.
Therefore, if there were ZERO development cost (and of course that is not likely), a shuttle-derived booster that took five years to develop would cost $10 billion. In practice, one must add a rather substantial development cost to that.
The more important element of course is that the annual cost of keeping the shuttle infrastructure will be required as long as a shuttle-derived vehicle is operated — if in service 30 years, that’s another $60 billion or so that would not be required if a different booster solution were used.
By contrast, the ULA and SpaceX booster production industrial base is both less expensive and already paid for by other customers, so the additional annual cost over and above what U.S. government is already paying which is required for a booster that uses that industrial base is very near $0
Pennypincher:
I agree that $2 bill a year for launch / no launch is a lot of money for nothing. But what if you could find a mission that would be worthwhile? What if this mission didn’t interfere with any other mission that could be conceived of? Never mind what is actually planned or not planned. Just saying “what if”?
Let’s just say as a matter of speculation the following: if you could launch, say, 6 missions or so in order to construct a permanent flyable space station, not just another ISS, but a flyable one, what would that be worth? Anything?
Another thing: what if this flyable station could go anywhere, including Mars, the asteroids, or what have you. Would it be worth it?
Mind you, I am not claiming that this is possible or even likely, just asking “what if?”
So why would you want to send some monolithic “flyable station” anywhere? What about the energy required to move it out of LEO?
Didn’t we just prove that we can build something large in space (ISS) from small modules?
You’re failing to look at this politically, Rand. The Shuttle program is slowing coming to an end, creating the political problem of thousands of people losing their jobs. So, in time-dishonored political fashion, the solution is to pour money into “infrastructure.” Instead of paying over $200 million for the “bridge to nowhere,” they pouring billions into the Heavy Lift Vehicle to Nowhere (HLVN) to keep all of those votes, er, jobs on the payroll. Just like the infamous Alaskan bridge, the HLVN doesn’t have to actually do anything useful, it just has to let the politicians keep their phoney-baloney jobs.
Alan:
There was a study in the early 80’s which discussed some possible uses of the shuttle’s external tank. One of the uses discussed was to make one or more of them into a space station.
If this station could be made flyable and survivable over a 2 year mission to Mars, would it be worthwhile to develop it? For that matter, if it could support a crew for any 2 year mission.
Obviously, in order for it to be flyable, it would require a way to propel it. That would be one of the developmental challenges encountered in attempting to make this idea work.
It is speculation, or perhaps even foolishness on my part to think that this may be possible. But I’m just asking what if it could? How much would that be worth? Anything?
Louis Freidman and the Planetary Society have been (off and on) opposed to Human Spaceflight in any form for literally decades. He occasionally feints toward supporting some kind of HSF when it suits his political purposes.
Since your goal appears to be twofold (destroy the space program that exists, then build a new one out of the ashes) he may well be and ally for the first part, but if you really believe he will be there to support the second part you are in for a severe disappointment.
‘If you build it, they will come.’ is not an unreasonable gamble in some situations (especially when the builder already has some sense of who ‘they’ might be), but the kind of payloads for which an HLV might be most efficient (those that, for whatever reason, it might be impractical to break down for multiple smaller launches [especially wide-diameter ones], for LEO assembly, and a need to do so with reasonable frequency…the kind of thing that drives large military cargo planes) aren’t here, or on the horizon. Nor will they materialize, just because the HLV is brought into existence by fiat. Those kinds of payloads entail large projects themselves, for which the funding taps may not open so wide.
(On anther blog, I’ve seen speculative drooling over the kind of space telescopes an HLV could launch if we get one, and yes, they *would* be cool. But it doesn’t follow that the bucks for such a project will be there, just because ‘someone else’ has paid for the launcher. JWST’s current management and cost problems aren’t about its launcher, either.)
On the other hand, I clearly recall (and have walked around one of them) that we once had built a number of copies of a respectable HLV for a program that was already well underway…and never used them all up, because said program was wound down first.
That, alone, should speak volumes about what merely ‘having’ an HLV will do for you, without at least one real requirement for it.
If the time I described above comes, it’s far more sensible to approach the launch vehicle providers of the day, and see what they think would be the most efficient way to get serious per-launch tonnage done. SpaceX already has expressed ideas on this, and growth versions of Delta may also be adequate. But payload demand rationally (yeah, I know) should drive launcher development, not the other way around.
Otherwise all you may get out of it, are yet more expensive lawn ornaments…
Even during the heyday of Apollo, it took years to develop the Lunar Module. With less money to go around today, there are no 130 MT payloads under development anywhere. So, they’re planning on spending billions to develop the booster and not anything for it to carry. This is an utterly stupid waste of money. Given the tight budgets for the foreseeable future, what real systems will be sacrificed to pay for this abomination?
It doesn’t end there. Once they build the HLVN, they’ll have to maintain a standing army of people and facilities to service it even though there’s nothing to launch. That’ll likely cost another couple billion dollars a year down the drain, further delaying doing anything in space.
This kind of fiscal insanity should be criminal but the clowns that write the laws are the same ones committing the crimes.
It is indeed insanity.
The real frightening part of this is that the affordable commercial cargo and crew programs will be sacrificed first to pay for this HLVN monstrosity.
Bigelow, commercializing NASA’s TransHab technology, has shown how to make a habitat of sufficient volume for a quite comfortable Mars mission fits in the Delta-IV fairing and throw weight.
The issue in enabling human space exploration is NOT how big a piece we can throw in one launch — it is how MUCH mass we can launch for a mission WITHIN THE BUDGET. At current launch prices for ULA launches, it isn’t even worth discussing a 130-ton class shuttle derived lifter unless you have a mission that requires more than two such launches every year. That’s comparing hoped-for future NASA price to proven, can buy it right now, most reliable launcher we have price.
ULA stated publicly that for $2.3B they would build the upgraded Atlas that launches 35 tons single core or 70 tons triple core. $2.3B is rather a lot less than the development cost for a shuttle derived vehicle (less than 1/4 as much). At that point, a shuttle derived vehicle makes no sense unless you plan to launch more than, on average, FIVE of them per year — 650 tons per year!
If SpaceX continues to make good on their promises, then a shuttle derived vehicle will make even LESS sense.
When NASA’s budget for human exploration is large enough to run two Apollo programs in parallel (which is how much mass it would take per year before a heavy lifter MIGHT begin to make sense), then we can consider building one. Until then, taking all the money we COULD use to build spacecraft that actually FLY HUMAN EXPLORATION MISSIONS and using it to build boosters in the HOPE that someday we’ll have spacecraft to launch is folly.
And remember, it’s not enough to create new jobs that the shuttle workforce can transition to, or even just let them go and create more new jobs in that district for people entering the workforce.. no.. we need to keep the same people who are working on shuttle now employed doing that same thing they’ve been doing for the last 30 years. Oh, and that includes everyone who is retiring.. we need to keep people who are retiring employed.
Space politics is stupid.
Trent,
The problem is that too many in Congress willingly mistake inertia for leadership.
~Jon
They’re not using the lift capacity they have now, which makes any discussion of heavy lift stupid. When it makes economic sense, private companies are prepared to provide it at less than a tenth the cost of anything shuttle derived. Anyone still working on the shuttle isn’t smart enough to have found a new job yet.
Politicians supported by stupid people. That’s a situation with a lot of positive potential.