35 thoughts on “This Morning’s Space Hearing”

1. “The partners would probably have to shut the Space Station down…”

   The follow-up question that was not asked: “And what happens when Russia doesn’t agree to shut down the ISS?

   If I understand Bolden correctly, he just told the Russians that they only have to *say* they are no longer capable of taking Americans to the ISS in order to take sole possession of the $100B ISS, and also have the SLS program terminated. I see this as a torpedo to the magazines. I think this administration will view this as a win-win.

   1. The Russians can’t manage ISS without us. We and they are bound at the hip as long as it exists. The only issue is dependence on them for transportation. To shut it down because we’re afraid to fly without an abort system would be a dramatic demonstration of the thesis of my book — that we are completely irrational about human spaceflight policy.

      1. Yeah. You would think that question would be a perfect opportunity to mention Comercial Crew but it seems he missed it stupendously.

         1. He did talk about commercial crew. Brooks didn’t like it.

   2. AFAIK most of the power in the station is generated by the solar panels in the US side. While reboosts can only be done using the Russian Zvezda module. So if either side stops maintaining their end of the station it will become unusable. There were supposed to be redundant modules on both sides for this but they ended up being cancelled.

2. I thought SLS, among other things, was supposed to give us capability to return to the Moon. But Bolden said that, if the Space Station is shut down for an extended period of time, he would recommend that we terminate SLS and Orion. Does this not indicate that the only role he sees for the monster SLS and Orion is to go to the ISS? If this is the case, I think he blew it for SLS, because manned travel to and from the ISS can be accomplished more effectively, and sooner with Commercial Crew.

   1. I think his point was that ISS is critical for exploration BEO, and if we end it, then there’s no point in spending money on other hardware to do that. I don’t necessarily agree with that, but it was his point, and it was probably (as is generally the case with Bolden) inartful. Anyway, SLS’s fate won’t depend on anything that Bolden said in a hearing today.

      1. They only recently (this January) decided to extend the ISS mission beyond 2020, yet there was only going to be perhaps one crewed SLS mission within that window, so how does not having a space station that was supposed to be de-orbited prior to any serious SLS flights have such an impact on the program? Is this some sort of reflex “blame it on a Youtube video” stance?

      2. It’s a good thing we has a Space Station in the 60’s or we never would have done the necessary medical research to land a Man safely on the moon by 70.

         Of all the arguments against Orion and the SLS, this is the box-of-rocks dumbest I have ever heard.

         Charlie went Full Retard. You never go Full Retard. He has become the Joe Biden of NASA.

         1. Gen. Bolden wants to send astronauts to Mars, not just the Moon. And if NASA does return to the Moon, the idea is to build a base this time, not just do a quick touch-and-go like Apollo.

            If you don’t see the difference between a one-week Apollo mission and a six-month stay on the Moon, I have to wonder where you did your aerospace medicine residency. 🙂

            1. Well, it’s apparent you got yours at Strawman University. I don’t recall mentioning long-duration lunar stays.

               I know it may sound silly but would it not be better to study the effects of longer duration lunar stays by incrementally increasing time spent ON THE FRIKIN’ MOON and not on ISS in Zero G and under the Van Allen Belts? Hell, you could even send a Doctor and put equipment and stuff there and do like real-time observations and stuff!

            2. You may not have mentioned long-duration stays but everyone else has, while you were not paying attention.

               So, you think NASA should do the research on the Moon, at 10 times the cost, instead of LEO? Why not Mars or Europa or Alpha Centauri? Money doesn’t grow on trees, you know.

      3. That would be the Von Braun plan. I thought we had given up on that plan. Maybe someone forgot to brief Charlie on that.

         If the ISS was used as a staging area for BEO missions, as originally planned, we would not need SLS to begin with.

   2. Actually he did say that the ISS is fundamental for testing BEO hardware and especially life support systems. Without the ISS those systems could not be tested in space first.

3. I’d like to think that he wouldn’t actually do that

   You DO remember the sequester argument, don’t you, Rand? They closed off open-air parks to inconvenience people. I’m absolutely prepared to believe they’d do this–or at least threaten it–if it meant an opportunity to, say, raise taxes.

4. You are looking at dumping the ISS on Russia as something bad. It would probably be the best thing ever to happen to the American space program and space industry.

   First, t would free up billions (3-3.5 billion a year) in the NASA budget to rent space on one or more Bigelow Aerospace habitats.

   Second, no longer being distracted as a NASA contractor SpaceX could more forward with DragonLab and a commercial Dragon to serve the needs of the habitats Bigelow Aerospace would be launching. And Yes, I mean habitats, as in more than one. With the billions that would be saved from getting free of the ISS Tar Baby NASA and its ISS partners would be able to afford to rent space on a polar orbiting B.A. habitat, one in a low inclination orbit (28.5 degrees) and perhaps even one in the Earth-Moon L1.

   Meanwhile not only with Russia be stuck with ALL the costs of the ISS tar baby without the U.S. bank rolling their space program, they would also have to spend more money on Progress flights to support it, and even get some tracking ships to keep in touch with it since the U.S. relay satellites currently used wouldn’t be available anymore. it would make the Russia space program a lead weight on their economy, one that Mr. Putin would not be able to dispose of because of bad political image it would send out about Russian industry if they couldn’t keep it orbiting. And just as the ISS was seen as a symbolic end to the Cold War with the U.S., Europe and Russia working together in space, the U.S. leaving the Russians to run the ISS alone would be a symbol of how their actions have isolated them from the world.

   Really, if President Obama really wanted to send Russia a message on the Ukraine he wouldn’t wait for the Russians to refuse to fly Americans to the ISS, he would pull NASA out of it now.

   1. How can you be so sure that money wouldn’t go toward food stamps or Obamacare commercials?

   2. I don’t think you can assume NASA wants to free up billions a year. Bureaucrat thinking is not straight forward.

      1. Of course NASA would find excuses not to do it. After all NASA and the New Space Contractors need to keep their rice bowls filled.

         But its the Administration’s call and its a great way to make a political statement about how the free world view Russia after its land grab. And lets not forget, NASA was created primarily as a policy response to Sputnik, and its greatest glory beating Russia in the Moon race while the ISS only exists because the Clinton Administration saw it as a way to show the Cold War was over. In short, NASA and the ISS have been a foreign policy from day one. Space science and technology develop is just a excuse to keep it funded during times its needed to make a political statement.

5. My take is this; even *if* it’s true that if we lose Russian ISS access we’re shutting down our entire manned space program, saying so is a manifestly stupid thing to do; it hands the Russians more leverage.

   So, IMHO, the obvious solution would be, in case of need, to use the cargo Dragon as an interim system. It lacks life support, but that’s easy to do for a crew of two (all we really need to replace Soyuz, as that’s the max number of Americans per flight) with that kind of upmass and volume.

   My biggest concern was thermal loading; dumping crew body heat. BUT… the CRX-3 flight will have several refrigerators, and those too have thermal disposal issues (as well as pulling a lot of amps), so if they are being handled (and they must be) then two crew should be no problem at all. (My guess is three or four crew would be fine, but two is the essential minimum capacity).

   Launch Abort System? Not needed, BUT, nice to have… and cargo Dragon already has the intrinsic capability to abort in some circumstances, via its existing Draco thrusters. It would require LV thrust termination as well as being high enough to avoid air drag issues, but Dragon, as is (save for at most a minor software change) could fire the bolts and pull free of a non-thrusting stack. And that is an abort mode, one Shuttle never had. (there were several “black zones” in the shuttle launch profile, where losing all three engines put shuttle on a non-survivable reentry trajectory – too steep an angle of incidence with the atmosphere. ).

   Adding a joystick (a video game controller would do) plus setting up a laptop to act as an emergency control interface with Dragon would be, according to one person I spoke with (I can’t evaluate whether she’s correct) a fairly trivial exercise, as Dragon already has interface ports.

   So, that leaves seats. Dragon has deck attach points for cargo, refrigerators, etc, so all that would be needed would be to use simple canvas with a tubular aluminum frame. A high school shop student, plus a student who knows how to sew, could make seats like that in an afternoon, or just buy a lawn lounger for about $70. Or, have NASA make the seats if you want to spend 2 billion plus a year and a half.

   There’s one technical barrier that was pointed out to me a few weeks ago that I haven’t been able to see a workaround for yet; how do you get the crew into the Dragon on the pad? You’d either have them inside for the raising (and thus fueling) or, have to get them in 200 feet up. I don’t see (I can’t be sure) that the strongback even has a ladder (though installing one in the strongback would not be hard). I don;t think there’s a cherry-picker in current existence with that kind of height capability… so that leaves a tower crane, plus adding an access platform on the strongback? Any thoughts?

   1. I don’t think you want fully-suited astronauts climbing a 200 foot ladder. A crane might work, Realistically, for normal operations you need a tower next to the rocket with an elevator.

      1. Initially, you could drop them with a chopper.

         1. You don’t just need to be able to get the astronauts into the capsule. You also need to be able to get them out in a hurry before takeoff. There was some sort of zipline system which was never used for Shuttle, but I can pretty much guarantee NASA will insist on an emergency egress system for the window between fueling and launch. That implies a tower. I think Dick Eagleson has it right about 39-A.

            1. Imagine they do it the NASA way at 39A and the SpaceX way in Brownsville.

               I say they just get in before they tilt up. What kind of pansies are they?

   2. Your point about crew ingress is a good one. A related issue is SpaceX not currently having the ability to vertically integrate unmanned satellite payloads onto an F9 because their existing integration facilities at Canaveral and Vandenberg are horizontal. Most of the USAF, DoD and NRO payloads that SpaceX is angling after require vertical integration with the booster.

      I think the answer to all these issues is LC 39A. I believe there is still a large rollback service tower structure on that pad left over from Shuttle days. Perhaps it is Elon’s intent to kill the crew ingress and vertical payload integration birds with the single stone of LC 39A by rehabbing and modifying this service tower instead of demolishing it as part of the planned makeover of the pad for F9/FH operations? Just a thought.

      1. IIRC, the Delta IV uses horizontal integration. If true, then that shouldn’t be a problem for SpaceX if it isn’t for ULA’s Delta IV.

      2. Did some quick searching and found this:

         Each Delta IV rocket is assembled horizontally, erected vertically on the launch pad, integrated with its satellite payload, fueled and launched. This process reduces on-pad time to less than 10 days and the amount of time a vehicle is at the launch site to less than 30 days upon arrival from the factory. This reduces costs associated with launch site operations and increases customer schedule flexibility.

         So, the rocket stages are assembled horizontally but the payload isn’t attached until the rocket is vertical at the pad. This is different from how SpaceX does it but I don’t know if that represents a serious problem. If SpaceX can horizontally integrate Dragon capsules as well as satellite payloads (with associated fairings), they should be able to do the same for government payloads.

         1. The Dragon has no problem being horizontally integrated because it was designed to be from the get-go. Comsats are designed to be agnostic about their integration orientation because, up to now at least, their launch options were mainly ILS (horizontal integration) or Arianespace (vertical integration). To be able to play these launch providers against each other, comsat builders and operators had to design their birds to be able to accommodate being handled as required for either system.

            USAF, DoD and NRO payloads, though, have been designed on the assumption that payload integration will always be vertical as this is what both Atlas V and Delta IV require. The same is also typically true of NASA deep space probe missions, which have also been an Atlas V/Delta IV monopoly up to now. SpaceX has said that it will provide vertical payload integration capability for all such payloads on its own dime. This was part of their pitch for being allowed to bid for launches of such payloads.

            I’m not privy to SpaceX strategy, but a pretty obvious way to provide such capabilities at Canaveral, at least, would seem to be to modify existing LC-39A infrastructure as part of modifications SpaceX must undertake anyway once a lease deal is actually signed. That will take care of a lot of their current vertical payload integration capability deficit, but not all. What they’re intending to do about vertical integration for polar/high inclination missions that must be launched out of Vandenberg, I don’t know. SpaceX will, it seems to me, have to do something to address this question because a goodly fraction of those national defense payloads they want to be able to compete for have to be launched into such orbits.

            When SpaceX gets going on their all-but-certain “greenfield” private spaceport build at Brownsville, TX, I assume they will provide for both vertical and horizontal payload integration facilities from the start.

6. Rand,
   I had the same thought you did, but really it’s not just the transportation to the station. It’s also the fact that the station as is requires both the USOS and the Russian half in order to function. We might be able to reduplicate the capabilities that the Russian half has that the USOS lacks (I think reboost propulsion is one of the biggest pieces, but there may be others), but that would take a non-trivial amount of time.

   ~Jon

   1. I’m not worried about the ISS itself. Russia won’t mess with that, and there’s a mutual dependence. Transportation is the issue. We shouldn’t be dependent on them for it. And we need to get to seven crew ASAP to maximize productivity.

7. I am not snarkin’, just askin’

   What important research on the ISS is starting to ramp up? Is any of it engineering research on things pertaining to future space travel such as, say fluids in microgravity pertinent to propellent transfer? Growing food for space missions or space colonies? Is the “growing crystals in space” thing starting to give results?

8. It would be a huge loss to lose ISS right now, the commercial and other research and applications work is in fact just ramping up. As Jeff Manber of NanoRacks said, people were hesitating about buying experiment space before the 2024 extension.

   You bring down (or off-line) work on the ISS now, you can’t just happily go along and launch a Bigelow module a couple years down the line and expect a switchover. People who are just now getting interested after great efforts will have been scared off of space-based work and systems, which could cause damage lasting decades. People can’t just loose what they’ve invested and twiddle their thumbs for a few years. They’ll move onto something else.

   1. you can’t just happily go along and launch a Bigelow module a couple years down the line and expect a switchover.

      Oh, Bog!

      Bigelow has said he will be ready to launch his Space Station Alpha in 2016. Even if you expect that to be delayed by a few years, how does that require extending ISS to 2024?

      A rational organization would do a cost-benefit analysis, comparing the cost of extending ISS to renting space on Bigelow’s Space Station Alpha, a SpaceX DragonLab, and any other option that might be out there.

      Of course, to do that, you would first need to define the purpose of ISS — and NASA still hasn’t done that. There are a lot of people at NASA who will tell you what *they* think ISS is for, but no common agreement.

      What is the dollar value of that “commercial and other research and applications work,” Charles? If you can’t say it in numbers, it isn’t science (or commerce), it’s opinion. Are you really getting billions of dollars in returns? Right now, I’ll bet, the net return is negative, even if you write off the $100B investment.

      You’re still operating under the “NewSpace” fallacy that government space systems will be cheap if NASA just subsidizes the development costs. In the real world, government specs lead to high upkeep and operating costs as well. Harry Stine tried to tell you that 20 years ago. ISS is not going to turn into “Alphatown,” no matter how much you wish it.

      1. Edward,

         I actually agree with you.

         Actually Bigelow Aerospace has been ready to place habitats in orbit since 2010 on two year notice. They would be flying now if NASA’s COTS program hadn’t outbid his America Prize and grabbed all the available spacelift for years into the future.

         And TRUE commercial research, and not “show” ventures, would welcome not only the flexibility of the Bigelow Aerospace habitats, but especially the reduced regulations and shorter cycle times of not dealing with NASA to do microgravity research. Bigelow Aerospace problems are not finding customers, but finding spacelift NASA has monopolized. This is a wonderful opportunity to get NASA out of the space station business and let private enterprise take over.

   2. Funny. When that argument was used to justify NASA flying its own Zero-G aircraft the New Space community was very vocal arguing that NASA should be forced to buy its Zero-G flights from a private firm.

      Yet, now space advocates are defending NASA running a space station, one that unlike NASA’s Zero-G aircraft is actually taking business away from potential private stations while monopolizing the launch support needed to service private space stations like Bigelow Aerospace. I guess the Borg (NASA) have truly assimilated the New Space movement by using the deep pockets of tax payers to turn firms like SpaceX into New Space Contractors…

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