Here is a typical exchange in comments over at Space Politics:
We’ll need heavy-lift at some point, and it might as well be now. Then payloads can be designed around it. And Ron, just because the HLV is the only thing in the budget now, that doesn’t mean that things like hab modules, departure stage, etc. won’t show up down the road: they will, as the budget picture improves, as it surely will.
Here was my response:
We’ll need heavy-lift at some point, and it might as well be now.
Even if true, this is logically absurd. If it is very expensive, and we don’t need it now, but there are other things that we do need now, then it makes sense to wait until we need it. Do you not understand the concept of limited resources and time value of money?
just because the HLV is the only thing in the budget now, that doesn’t mean that things like hab modules, departure stage, etc. won’t show up down the road: they will, as the budget picture improves, as it surely will.
Let me elaborate. Tell me where I’m going wrong, here. We can’t get to the moon without a lander. We can’t get to the moon without a lunar insertion stage. We can get to the moon without a heavy lifter, if we’re willing to either design the stage to accept and store propellant on orbit, or put up a separate propellant depot. Given that we have finite resources, if one wanted to get to the moon as quickly as possible using those resources, and one was rational, one would want to focus on those elements that are essential to get to the moon, and put off those things that are not so. This is just basic critical path analysis.
When someone says that they want the latter now, even though it won’t be needed until “at some point,” with the hope (and hope is not a plan) that the other things will somehow magically “show up down the road,” one is demonstrating that the priority is not in fact sending people beyond earth orbit, or going to the moon, but just building cool giant rockets.
It’s fascinating to drill through the illogic of much of these arguments and try to figure out what it really motivating those making them, because it surely can’t be sending any significant numbers of people into space. It seems to be driven mostly by emotion, whether dislike of Obama, a nostalgia for Apollo, or just a big-rocket fetish.
[Update early afternoon]
Mark Whittington doubles down on the illogic (no, I’m not going to reward him with a link):
There are a couple of problems with Rand’s rant.
First, he assumes that the lander has to be developed in tandem with the heavy lifter. To be sure there are some small scale projects going on at JSC and Marshal, but a lander does not have to be ready the very second that the heavy lifter is. The SLS/Space Ship Formally Known as Orion can do flight testing to lunar orbit and the lagrange points while the lander is developed.
Second, Rand’s fixation on fuel depots as a panacea flies in the face of every study done on the subject, including the Augustine Committee, that concluded that shooting fuel tanks from the Earth’s surface does not buy one any savings but does assume a great deal more risk. Now, fuel from the Moon, deployed to one of the Lagrange points using a mass driver is another thing entirely. However, first one has to get to the Moon and for that one needs heavy lift.
Ignoring the nonsense that my post was a “rant” (or enraged, or leaping the length of my chain, or any of the other typically insane characterizations of my posts by him), no, I don’t assume that “the lander has to be developed in tandem with the heavy lifter.” No one sane reading what I wrote would infer such an assumption. I assume a fact — that no heavy lifter is needed at all. What I assume is that the sooner you have a lander, the sooner you will get to the moon. The longer you delay the lander, the longer it will take you to get to the moon, because you cannot get to the moon without a lander, whereas you can do so without heavy lift. (I note with amusement that, as in this comments thread, he still doesn’t understand the difference between “formerly” and “formally.”)
As for his comment about the Augustine panel, he obviously didn’t read the report (or as is often the case, he didn’t read it for comprehension), whose members described propellant depots as a “game changer.” Not to imply that I agree with all aspects of the report, of course, but since he chose to cite it himself, from the report summary:
Potential approaches to developing heavy-lift vehicles (Table 2-1) are based on NASA heritage (Shuttle and Apollo) and EELV (evolved expendable launch vehicle) heritage. Each has its distinct advantages and disadvantages.
In the Ares-V-plus-Ares-I system planned by the Constellation program, the Ares I launches the Orion and docks in low-Earth orbit with the Altair lander launched on the Ares V. It has the advantage of projected very high ascent crew safety, but it delays the development of the Ares V heavy lift vehicle until after the independently operated Ares I is developed.
In a different, related architecture, the Orion and Altair are launched on two separate “Lite” versions of the Ares V, providing for more robust mass margins. Building a single NASA vehicle could reduce carrying and operations costs, and accelerate heavy-lift development. Of these two Ares system alternatives, the Committee finds the Ares V Lite in the dual mode the preferred reference option.
The more directly Shuttle-derived family consists of in-line and side-mount vehicles substantially derived from the Shuttle, providing more continuity in workforce. The development cost of the more Shuttle-derived system would be lower, but it would be less capable than the Ares V family and have higher recurring costs. The lower launch capability could eventually be offset by developing on-orbit refueling.
The EELV-heritage systems have the least lift capability, so that to provide equal performance, almost twice as many launches would be required, when compared to the Ares family. If on-orbit refueling were developed and used, the number of launches could be reduced, but operational complexity would be added. However, the EELV approach would also represent a new way of doing business for NASA, which would have the benefit of potentially lowering development and operational costs. This would come at the cost of ending a substantial portion of the internal NASA capability to develop and operate launchers. It would also require that NASA and the Department of Defense jointly develop the new system.
All of the options would benefit from the development of in-space refueling, and the smaller rockets would benefit most of all. The potential government-guaranteed market for fuel in low-Earth orbit would create a stimulus to the commercial launch industry. In the design of the new launcher, in-space stages and in-space refueling, the Committee cautions against the tradition of designing for ultimate performance, at the cost of reliability, operational efficiency and life-cycle cost.
Emphasis mine. Note that the only disadvantage claimed is the “addition of operational complexity.” Whether this is a sufficiently bad thing as to result in the deliberate avoidance of it, requires deeper analysis not presented in the summary, but clearly, they are not recommending against it (and indeed, if one reads between the lines, they are hinting that it would be a damned good idea in the final paragraph). It is in fact very clear from that paragraph that, contrary to Mark’s nonsense, it does in fact buy savings, and there is no mention of risk.
In the table of recommendations, every launch system option presented, for constrained, moon first, and flexible path, other than Ares V, utilizes orbital refueling. All of these were options presented, and nowhere did they say that the Ares V was to be preferred because it avoided refueling, or that any of the other options were undesirable for that reason. In other words, there is zero basis in the report for his characterization of it as “offering no savings,” or “assuming a great deal more risk.”
Here’s a hint, Mark. We know that, given your training and experience (and other issues), you’re unable to coherently argue the technical issues on your own, but if you’re going to make arguments from authority, you should at least make sure that the authority agrees with you.
Instead, once again, he prefers to live in his own alternate reality.
[Update a while later]
Just to reemphasize — the report says pretty much the opposite of what Mark claims it does, and in fact the last paragraph quoted above implicitly assumes that in-space refueling will be “designed.” Yet the Congress has completely ignored this, and has provided zero funding for it, instead pouring billions into a new rocket that isn’t needed.
It isn’t just the fact that it makes no sense to build the SLS when there are no payloads for it. It’s the fact that once built, you’ll have to maintain the typical “cast of thousands” to support the vehicle with nothing for it to carry. The money needed to pay for all of those support people will eat up the funding needed to build the payloads. It becomes nothing but a jobs program like when the Shuttles were grounded following the Challenger and Columbia accidents. The support people were kept on the payroll even though there were no flights for more than two years in each case.
Actually there is a payload for SLS. It is the space ship formally known as Orion. There are lots of missions that can be run while the development of the lander takes place, to lunar orbit and the lagrange points.
Really, Mark? What does it do there? How long can it stay there? How does it get back? Do you have the design reference missions, and the additional hardware they will require, that is not in the budget? Are those missions worth (at least) a couple billion each, because they won’t cost any less than that?
In fact, I recall that a lot of us thought that we should go along with the lousy Shuttle design they came up with in the ’70’s, because although it had solid boosters, surely they would upgrade to more reliable liquids in a few years and then a fully reusable system, and tho it would have no space station to go to, surely that would come along just a few years after, and oh, BTW the space tug would come along in just a few years and then just a few years later we could lash those together to return to the Moon, and all of these would be reasonable, affordable and logical because the shuttle would cost $10million per flight.
Nope.
This why commercialization of space is so key to us actually getting out of LEO and doing something relevant. The means of orbital access will vary, depending on the company and the market they serve. If there is truly a need for heavy lift, then a company will provide it. Mandating it first, then planning around it hasn’t worked out so well, beyond the one-off success of Apollo.
To me, the real Holy Grail is cheap access to orbit, which seems less likely with an emphasis on HLV.
“The spaceship formally known as Orion”? It’s formally known as the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle and formerly known as Orion.
The only “heavy” lift that’s ever made the slightest sense to me would be the Shuttle External + solid boosters + upper/capsule plan. You managed to dump the expensive piece – the shuttle. Yet all the political infighting over constituent labor forces is a big null because you’re still using the same tooling and technicians for the bulk of the vehicle. With the added bonus that it isn’t -quite- large enough, and will -still- require a depot or in orbit refuelling.
But Falcon Heavy seems to make even that a complete non-starter.
I’d like to be a fly on the wall if Rand and P.J. O’Rourke were to discuss the Shuttle’s last flight and the future of space exploration. 😉
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/last-shuttle-launch_576918.html
Mark doesn’t know how to use a spell checker, but even if he did, it wouldn’t tell him the difference between “formally” and “formerly.”
It’s fascinating to drill through the illogic of much of these arguments and try to figure out what it really motivating those making them
Yes, and not just illogic, but dishonesty too. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an honest rebuttal to the main arguments put forward by advocates of commercial development of space. I’ve seen lots of twisting of facts, misrepresenting or ignoring others’ points of view, trying to rule crucial questions out of court (“of course we need an HLV, “the” Senate / “all” the experts says so”), pretending to be friendly to commercial space or critical of NASA while secretly shilling for the status quo, pretending to be open-minded while shilling for the status quo etc.
The problem with the argument of SHLV not having a payload is really that it is an argument about whether to develop the launcher and payload in series or parallel. It is very likely that if NASA doesn’t have the money to develop SHLV and payload parallel to each other, that they wont have the money to do it in series either.
Simply saying there isn’t a payload, isn’t a very effective argument. This is especially true if the plan was to develop the payloads after the SHLV. They don’t have a payload because they are not supposed to have one for x years down the road. It is similar to people saying that SpaceX hasn’t launched people into space and therefore they can’t be trusted. Well ya, SpaceX hasn’t launched people into space because they are not supposed to do that yet according to their development plan.
Aside from that, I agree with Rand’s response. The most convincing part of his response is that we don’t need to wait for a SHLV to build the infrastructure that would allow a return to the Moon, a trip to Mars, or a NEO. Probably more important is that the payloads for EELV’s would likely be cheaper than the SHLV.
I think your basic point is valid, but I feel obligated to point out “do the essential things first” IS NOT the lesson of critical path analysis.
Whittington,
You are demanding that NASA spend 30 billion dollars(MPCV + SLS budgets continued over ten years) for the maximal achievement of doing a manned flyby of the moon during that time period.
You are demanding that they do so through awarding uncompeted contracts to locked in shuttle contractors. You support funneling tens of billions of dollars to these companies indefinitely. In a time when competitors to these companies are existent, and capable.
That money does not come out of thin air. It comes out of the budget that NASA has to build exploration systems, and other projects that NASA pursues with its shrinking budget. You defund these things, to fund the above. A rocket that sits around, sucking up money for the benefit of the few, year after year, regardless of its usage. Usage that only occurs with the allocation of funds for payload development from the same pool that the SLS sucks money from year after year. By its own very existence, the SLS defunds exploration actualization, its supposed rational.
Is that a meritable and justifiable spending of other people’s money on space? Not to me. To me, it turns human spaceflight into something ugly. And you, ugly in turn for cheerleading such corruption and flagrant waste. The space program for an entire nation of 307 million people perverted, so that NASA can play launch company, rather than use the domestic American commercial launch industry to service its needs. That increased utilization would benefit all other users of that launch capability, including both other government demand like space science and national defense needs, and private demand like comsats and any businesses that are enabled by the new conditions. That lost so that you can spend 30 billion dollars to send a few select men around the moon.
Simply saying there isn’t a payload, isn’t a very effective argument. This is especially true if the plan was to develop the payloads after the SHLV. They don’t have a payload because they are not supposed to have one for x years down the road.
The problem is that the SLS will suck up most of the funding needed to develop the payloads. It will truely be a rocket to nowhere. Once SLS is developed, it’ll require a large support infrastructure that has to be maintained year after year. If you wait until after the SLS in built before you start building the payloads, the delays could be many years while SLS support costs keep sucking up a substancial percentage of the available funding, all for nothing.
Instead of rushing to develop an expensive heavy lifter with no defined payloads, they should first determine what payloads are needed to fly different missions. Once you’ve determined the requirements, then you can look into booster alternatives. For example, consider a hypothetical moon or Mars mission. Once you’ve determined the destination, duration, crew size and other critical parameters, then you start specifying the hardware needed to accomplish the objectives. You then look at the largest indivisible component of the mission and that defines your booster requirements.
SLS does this precisely backwards. Congress has dictated developing a large booster. However, is it large enough or too large? If it’s too large, you’ve spent a lot of money developing something you don’t need. If it’s too small to carry the required payload, you’ve wasted your money developing the booster. You’ll have to spend a lot more money increasing the lift capacity or developing an entirely new booster.
And, once again, the issue of ongoing operating costs is ignored.
The core problem with the Senate Launch System is NOT that it will waste 10, 15, 20 … and counting billions of dollars. It is NOT that it will take many years. Those are just extra dollops of wrong-headed policy, the spoiled cherry on top of the poisoned pork-flavored sundae.
The core problem is that SLS is DESIGNED to MAXIMIZE the ongoing operating cost by keeping as many centers and contractors busy as possible. That is not (to the Senate) a bug — that is the PURPOSE of SLS.
The means that if SLS should ever be developed, NASA will NOT HAVE THE BUDGET TO DEVELOP THE OTHER PIECES (like landers) NEEDED FOR EXPLORATION UNTIL AFTER SLS IS CANCELED. Not “later”. Not in series. Not in parallel. Not in a house. Not with a mouse. It will not build them here or there. It will not build them anywhere.
The reason why neither Congress nor NASA can put together a plan that shows how SLS leads to exploration is not due to foot-dragging by NASA — it is because any attempt to draw up such a plan WILL NOT FIT IN ANY BELIEVABLE BUDGET. The whole Kabuki dance between the Senate and NASA is that the Senate knows this and wants NASA to lie about it, and NASA is refusing to lie about it.
The heavy lift sounds to me, at best, like a repeat of building the SS Great Eastern, a ship that at least had some commercial passenger prospects.
At the risk of being accused of asking “how long is a piece of string?”, or “how high is up?”. What do people think is the minimum individual payload mass that would be required to return to the Moon?
I’ll go for the dry mass of a lunar descent stage, maybe 10 tonnes.
The Augustine panel said 25 tons, but I don’t know the basis of that estimate. Note, though, that it puts it in the reach of a Delta IVH.
The Apollo LEM descent stage weighed only about 2 tonnes, so maybe much less than 10 tonnes individual payloads to LEO is reasonable?
Just another example of the typical mindset behind government planning. Imagine that the problem is 100% fully understood so you have exactly the information and knowledge you need to build precisely what is necessary. Hell, why bother building merely the next generation vehicle when you can build a vehicle 2 or even 3 generations ahead? You’re going to want that eventually, why not build it now?
Anyone familiar with engineering in the real world knows exactly why you don’t build it now, because you haven’t the foggiest idea how to build it now, or even what the major issues will be. Commercial engineering tends to be incremental. Build something. Then make it better. Then yet better. Then better still. Eventually you end up with something truly excellent, you don’t start trying to build a 787 in 1965 instead of a 727 because you haven’t explored that solution space even remotely, and if you just picked a design that was like the way the 707 improved on its predecessors only much more so then you wouldn’t end up with a 787 either.
If you look at one of the most successful government programs in history, the Manhattan project, you’ll see that it embraced iterative development extensively. It pursued 2 different methods for assembling a bomb, both of which were engineered and developed. It pursued 2 different fuel sources for a bomb. It pursued 5 different methods for producing fuel for a bomb. The goal was to explore the solution space, find the easiest routes toward producing a bomb and exploit it.
In contrast, most big government programs try to pick winners before the race is even run.
The whole debate about HLV launchers is in some ways entirely beside the point. Not only do we not have any payloads for HLVs yet but we don’t even have the slightest bit of confidence that NASA will be capable of building the damned thing. How much hardware is built? How many test flights have there been? The only tangible progress that’s been made has been the incredibly pathetic Ares I-X test launch. I fully expect that if the SLS is funded that it will take more than a decade before we see any real progress. And by then SpaceX is likely to already be flying the Falcon Heavy, let alone the Falcon X or XX.
At this point I’d rather see them dump money into developing an Atlas V or Delta IV HLV, the SLS is nothing more than a jobs program, anyone with even the slightest tinge of engineering savvy should realize that.
G’day,
The whole SLS project is ridiculous. Lets get real people.
1) The United States has a 14 trillion dollar deficit and is adding 1.6 trillion to that debt this year. This can not continue. Sooner or latter the axe will fall on NASA and every other government agency. Like every other rocket project NASA has run since 1981 chances are SLS will fail.
2)There is no current need for a Super Heavy Lifter. NASA does not have any serious project to get people to the moon. It may have plans to do so, but hell , so do I, but no real project. The only organisation that does is Space Adventures with their Soyuz moon shot.
3) Lets assume this changes and NASA is serious about the Moon. There are several ways that can be done. Orbital refueling as Rand suggested is one way. It could be done by multiply launches of a Falcon Heavy as Mr Musk suggested or maybe a big rocket is really the way to go. That’s a question best settled by competition and experimentation. In either case the SLS is not required. There have been Super Heavy lift designs for the Deltas and Atlases for years and I’m sure SpaceX could do one real cheap if asked. If you want affordable, sustainable, Moon missions tender the SHLer to the private sector . It defies common sense to give the task to losers like NASA and ask them to build it with 1970’s technology.
4)The United States has a 14 trillion dollar deficit and is adding 1.6 trillion to that debt this year. This can not continue. Sooner or latter the axe will fall on NASA and every other government agency. Like every other rocket project NASA has run since 1981 chances are SLS will fail.
ta
Ralph
“do the essential things first” IS NOT the lesson of critical path analysis.
You’re picking nits BBBeard (one of our favorite things around these parts.)
CPM is about scheduling and costs. It is presumed these two are related.
It’s not going to happen, but this is why I’d like to see a powered descent (not using atmospheric assist) mars lander developed. It is on the critical path to one destination and would eliminate a critical path item from many others. Imagine we had an SSTO mars lander capable of carrying three to six passengers with cargo to the martian surface safely and with refueling take them back to mars orbit to rendezvous with a waiting general purpose ship.
This would be quite a large capacity lunar lander. It might be argued that this is too big or too soon but it makes a lot more sense than doing a heavy lift project just to keep the politicians happy wasting the taxpayers money.
Larry J Says:
“The problem is that the SLS will suck up most of the funding needed to develop the payloads.”
That is a different, and more effective argument than saying we don’t need a SHLV because there is no payload to go on it.
pennypincher Says:
“And, once again, the issue of ongoing operating costs is ignored.”
Not just the operating costs of a SLS but whatever mission a SLS or EELV would support.
Anyone who thinks NASA’s budget is ever going to go up has already lost their grip on reality and isn’t worth listening to.
I really wish the people who make the decisions on what to spend on *now* based on the idea that the budget will be bigger *later* would just go away.