An update on the ISS situation from the Space Access Society. Singing my long-time tune:
NASA should develop contingency plans to accelerate readiness of at least one Commercial Crew vehicle in a Soyuz availability emergency. At a House Appropriations hearing last March, Administrator Bolden stated NASA policy in the event of a cutoff of Soyuz access would simply be to evacuate Station (news story, video of testimony).
The statement was made in the context of a political rather than mission-failure Soyuz cutoff, but given the spate of other launch failures and an apparent recent general deterioration in Russian space vehicle reliability, we think it’s becoming obvious that NASA urgently needs a backup plan should Soyuz go down for an extended period.
If the US Commercial Crew contractors haven’t already been asked by NASA to lay out how much each could accelerate its first crewed Station flight in an emergency, what resources it would need to do so, and what increased risks might be involved, they should be, immediately. (Regarding the question of risk, there is nothing sacred about NASA’s current protracted Commercial Crew safety certification process. Some parts of it no doubt do provide cost-effective safety improvements – others, perhaps not so much. Given what would be at stake with a Soyuz failure, a hard look at which is which is warranted.)
Yes.
[Wednesday-morning update]
Here’s a detailed story on Elon’s remarks in Boston yesterday.
Meanwhile, ESA has learned their lesson, and isn’t letting the incident make them complacent:
Gaele Winters, who is expected to ask ESA’s check-writing body on July 16 to approve a nearly $3 billion contract with Airbus Safran Launchers to develop Ariane 6, said the June 28 Falcon 9 failure in no way changes ESA’s assessment of SpaceX.
“We have seen the outstanding success of Falcon 9,” Winters said. “Despite the issue of about a week ago, it is a fantastic track record for this launcher.”
Yup.
[Bumped]
Why does it take a crisis to make the obvious, obvious?
Because most human beings have a remarkable talent for ignoring the obvious if it’s in any slightest way inconvenient. (Right up until it bites them someplace painful.)
FWIW, that advice about having both Commercial Crew contractors look at early availability options was originally phrased “all three contractors”, because it was originally given in May ’14 (http://www.space-access.org/updates/sau135.html) along with a bunch of other policy advice – some now dated (the time for RD-180 cloning has passed), most not. (Also with a plug for Rand’s then-new book, Safe Is Not An Option.)
But the utter essentiality of the entire convoluted NASA safety certification process was being questioned two years ago, in http://www.space-access.org/updates/sau132.html, section “Commercial Crew, The Budget, and The FARs”.
And we’ve been bitching about excessive Old-NASA process a lot longer than that – see http://www.space-access.org/updates/sau111.html from 2005, section ” What We Want From NASA: Low Cost Hardware/Flight Demos – Pay For Results, Not Process”
Heh. I need a “Not Responsible For Advice Not Taken” sign for the office.
Why does it take a crisis to make the obvious, obvious?
Can you ask that, after 9/11?
Immediately after the attacks, politicians and pundits began saying that “No one ever imagined that airliners might be used as weapons of mass destruction” — even though Tom Clancy had written a best-selling novel about that scenario.
This is typical of the Beltway mentality: No one has ever thought of anything until *they* have thought of it.
As a minor point, IIRC Tom Clancy had a Japan Air Lines pilot deliberately crash a 747 into the Capitol building during a presidential address to a joint session of Congress. It wasn’t a terrorist using a hijacked plane. Still, the idea of using an airliner to attack a lot of people was a major point in the book.
In the x-files spinoff The Lone Gunmen, the first episode, aired in March 2001, had a hijacked plane deliberately flown into the world trade center. It is available on youtube – watch two minutes from 39:30 to 41:30 of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjbQ-BDh4PU
Faster please… 😉
Actually the blog title here is a little misleading, as this type of readiness update would also apply to Boeing/ULA. Question is, should ULA hold some RD-180’s in reserve for an emergency flight to ISS, rather then plan to expend them all on EELV launches for DoD? And what are the long-range implications of that? Should USAF be encouraged to book flights on Vulcan in advance to accelerate development of that vehicle. Hmm, more interesting questions arise from this side of the venture than SpaceX, which has a much more “straightforward” path forward….
If the $150b they’ve already spent on I.S.S. were real money (not OPM) they’d fund both Dream Chaser and CST-100. Dragon v1 would already be taking crew.
It’s worth citing the $100 billion-plus cost of Station because that gets peoples’ attention. But that’s sunk cost. The real figure of interest is, how much would it cost us to replace Station if we lost it?
The answer is binary – Station is pretty much irreplaceable if we tried to use the traditional Old NASA process to develop and fly the replacement. Not enough money in the world.
On the other hand, done COTS-style (the original bare-bones Commercial Cargo way) we’d be hard-pressed to spend 10% of the original cost. Even done modified-COTS style like Commercial Crew, with a lot of Old NASA process allowed to creep back in, it should cost more than 30%.
..should NOT cost more than 30%…
If ISS were suddenly lost, that would free up a big chunk of NASA’s budget. But Congress being Congress, it’s hard to imagine that money being spent on a replacement, much less a COTS-style replacement. Instead, I’d expect more spending on an SLS-based Apollo-style Mars mission.
That’s the scenario that seems to be emerging as the only way Old NASA might go to Mars in our lifetimes, yes. See the recent JPL study where they say that, if given every cent from Station plus increases matching inflation plus all going well with SLS, they might barely make Mars orbit by the 2030’s.
The SLS/MSFC faction obviously likes that plan. Never mind that the chances of that many different slices falling butter-side up are near-zero (especially all going well/on-budget with SLS), it represents a couple more decades of organizational job security.
The Station/JSC axis is less thrilled. Aside from the loss of control and funding it’d represent for their regional coalition, they’re way too aware of what happens to other parts of NASA that depend on MSFC for new transportation – ever more money gets eaten as first flight recedes at one year per year.
Why else would JSC, at the time only marginally less Old-NASA at heart than MSFC, have embraced Commercial Cargo? Their alternative was to count on Ares 1/CLV, and their embrace of something as radically non Old-NASA as COTS tells you what they thought the odds of THAT working out were.
Meanwhile, though, consider motivations in the matter of delaying Commercial Crew. Every additional year we have to depend solely on Soyuz is another year’s worth of chances Station will be lost, with the Russians as the obvious ones to blame. At which point, SLS gets the entire Exploration funding stream to play go-to-Mars for the next twenty years!
Moving money from Commercial Crew to SLS is a win-win for the SLS Congressional coalition – their home districts get the money, and if it ends up destroying Station, they think the Russians will get the blame AND their home districts will get more money. What’s not to like?
Aside, of course, from another generation of Old NASA space futility spending billions to go nowhere.
I have to agree with Jim that the Congress would not want to put up a COTS-style ISS replacement. I don’t think, however, that they would want an Apollo-style mission to Mars. We don’t really have to worry about this for quite some time, however, because the ISS has to be brought down safely. That is an unsolved problem, and I know the people who are working on it. That is almost a bigger problem than putting ISS in space to begin with. Forget going to Mars. We are stuck with getting ISS down, for perhaps the next decade.
Another figure of merit is how much it costs to maintain ISS. Currently $3 billion, projected to increase to $4 billion as the station ages.
But James Pura and Aaron Oesterle have called for NASA to double the size of ISS. If we take your figure of 30% of the original, that’s still $30 billion. Aaron’s boss, Mr. Muncy, has talked about a thousand people living and working aboard ISS. There’s also the parallel lobbying effort calling for what can only be called “ISS 2 on the Moon.” Either of those would open the floodgates to hundreds of billions in new spending.
That’s the cost side of the ledger. What about the benefit side? ISS huggers say the station is doing Something Of Value, but there is no agreement on what that is. Some say it’s microgravity research or CubeSats, others say it’s important (but vaguely defined) research for NASA’s humans to Mars program, still others say it’s to provide a destination for CCDev (the same circular argument once used for ISS/Shuttle).
The current meme says that “ISS is finally showing a return on investment.” But the people saying that fail to distinguish between gross returns and net. Launching a few million dollars worth of CubeSats from a station that costs $3-4 billion a year is not a positive net return on investment. Even if you add up everything ISS is doing, it’s doubtful that the net ROI is positive. (Then, however, the argument changes, and we are told that “government isn’t supposed to show a return on investment!”)
Then there’s the opportunity cost. Many space activists opposed the Shuttle, not simply because of its direct costs, but because it competed with proposed commercial launch systems that were trying to get investment. The fact that NASA subsidized Shuttle users was particularly troubling. Now, many of the same people tell us that NASA’s subsidizing ISS users is a *good* thing. Projects like Bigelow Alpha, Dragonlab, Dreamlab, etc. will have to compete with a government station that offers free rides, free astronaut time, etc. — a price that’s pretty hard to beat.
But James Pura and Aaron Oesterle have called for NASA to double the size of ISS. If we take your figure of 30% of the original, that’s still $30 billion.
Not that I favor that idea, but I’m sure it could be done for much less than that. Much of that original cost was Shuttle.
I’m sure it could be done for much less than that. Much of that original cost was Shuttle.
Henry’s “more than 30%” already took that into account, but feel free to use your own percentage.
Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if NASA found a way to spend *more* than they did on the original station. (You can laugh if you like. People laughed when I predicted JSF would end up costing more than the F-22.)
Hey, Ed – how’s things?
I’m not going to get involved in SFF internal theological disputes. I will point out though that you’re taking that “30%” WAY out of context.
To clarify: My informed guesstimates for the cost of a functional replacement for the current Station, under three different sets of circumstances, are:
– Potentially infinite, done the Old NASA way, which I define as planning to use SLS to launch the major elements, possibly with a new son-of-Ares-1 for support flights, and redesigning the major Station elements from scratch (why? because it’s their nature) using the established Old NASA development process. Call it the entire NASA exploration budget of about $9 billion a year for the next fifteen years, with only a 50-50 chance of having something resembling a Station at the end of that.
– Perhaps 30% of what Station cost, done Commercial-Crew “COTS-plus-limited-Old-NASA-Process” style. They’d use commercial launchers, but the Station elements would again be redesigned from scratch to NASA spec. Call it half NASA’s Exploration budget, $4.5 billion/year for ten years.
– Perhaps 10% of what Station cost, done pure COTS-style. NASA defines the requirements, commercial industry develops the systems to meet them, and NASA pays a share of development costs depending on the degree of NASA-uniqueness versus commercial sales potential. Then NASA buys the systems and pays for launches commercially. Call it less than a quarter of NASA’s Exploration budget, $2 billion a year for seven years.
The problem, Henry, is that NASA started with “COTS-style” several years ago and evolved toward “COTS-plus-limited-Old-NASA-Process” (with several stops along the way). The trend is in the direction of more bureaucracy and centralized control. Bureaucratic inertia says that the trend will continue in the same direction, unless some force acts to change it.
So, if 30% is where NASA’s at today, it’s logical to assume it will be at 30% or greater in the future. Unless someone makes a concerted effort to beat back (not merely limit the growth of) the bureaucracy.
Right now, no one is willing to do that, and everyone in DC knows it. Time and time again, activists have drawn a line which NASA and Congress must not cross, declaring some proposed change to be unacceptable (e.g., using FARs instead of SAAs). Each time, NASA and Congress crossed the line. Each time, activists shrugged and said, “Oh, well, it’s not ideal, but we can live with it.” At this point, the powers in DC believe (probably correctly) that there is no line they cannot cross without risking more than the mildest possible rebuke from the activist community.
“Time and time again, activists have drawn a line which NASA and Congress must not cross…”
You must know some seriously unrealistic activists then, Ed, if they think they can give Congress orders rather than advice.
(What did I start this all off with, again? Right – I need a sign for my office, “Not Responsible For Advice Not Taken.”)
I agree that the trend from COTS to Commercial Crew is negative, with ever more traditional Old NASA process creeping back in. (FWIW though, I factored that trend continuing into the “30%” guesstimate – Commercial Crew currently looks like bringing in two vehicles for under 20% of what Old NASA would have spent.)
Meanwhile, if you have any better idea how to deal with that trend other than fight it every step of the way, as I and others have been doing since the start, I’d like to hear about it. Those of us who have fought have at least delayed the process to the point where Commercial Crew still has a decent chance to succeed.
(Or did I imagine that we got the FARs delayed till the final phase instead of the one before that, and even for the final phase we headed off Cost-Plus and kept them fixed-price?)
Delaying actions aren’t glamorous, or immediately gratifying, no. But if at the end of one you’ve won one battle and are in better position for the next (SLS is only going to look worse by comparison when CC does fly) don’t knock it.
You must know some seriously unrealistic activists
No argument about that.
Meanwhile, if you have any better idea how to deal with that trend other than fight it every step of the way, as I and others have been doing since the start, I’d like to hear about it.
Nothing original, but as George Nield said to me a few years ago, NASA isn’t the only agency in DC.
Right now, Congress perceives space activists as weak, desperate, begging for crumbs from NASA because they have no place else to go. That does not make for a great negotiating position. But there *are* other places we could go. Why do we ignore them?
Delaying actions aren’t glamorous, or immediately gratifying, no.
Delaying actions are premised on the notion of a superior force that will eventually arrive and carry the battle. Who is the superior force in this case? It appears to me that the entire army is holed up in the Alamo. No one’s fighting on the other battlefields: tax incentives, technology prizes, data purchase, regulatory and liability reform, etc. Those battles would be easier to fight — the entrenched self-interests don’t care about those things. “Go where the enemy isn’t.”
Ed, I love ya, dude, but your Monty-Python specious argumentation mode, not so much. I figure you must do it for fun because I know you know better, but I neither enjoy it nor have the time.
>> You must know some seriously unrealistic activists
>
> No argument about that.
Strawman. You imply that believing they can dictate to Congress is common among activists. Nonsense and you know it. You have to be a bit of a dreamer to take up this cause, and some of us are more practical than others – but almost none are the sort of delusional idiot you imply here.
>> Meanwhile, if you have any better idea how to deal with that trend other than fight it every step of the way, as I and others have been doing since the start, I’d like to hear about it.
>
> Nothing original, but as George Nield said to me a few years ago, NASA isn’t the only agency in DC.
Yes, but it’s the one that gets nine billion a year to nominally do human space exploration. Ignoring it because it “isn’t the only agency in DC” (and because NASA change initiatives meet powerful opponents and results are slow, waaaahhhh) meanwhile actually is delusional, if you expect to eventually produce real changes in how the nation does space.
You also commit an implied strawman here, namely that anyone sensible in the field ignores the other DC agencies concerned with space, such as FAA, and, oh, some minor ill-funded outfit called DOD. Again, nonsense.
>
> Right now, Congress perceives space activists as weak, desperate, begging for crumbs from NASA because they have no place else to go. That does not make for a great negotiating position. But there *are* other places we could go. Why do we ignore them?
>
See previous about strawmen. What do you mean, “we” ignore them? As for the attempt to invoke self-pity over how Congress doesn’t *respect* us, boo-effing-hoo. It used to be a good year when 1% of NASA’s budget was spent in ways we think useful. Now we’re in the double-digit percentages and rising. Must be doing something right. Hint: It doesn’t involve self-pity or worrying about what Congress thinks of us.
>> Delaying actions aren’t glamorous, or immediately gratifying, no.
>
> Delaying actions are premised on the notion of a superior force that will eventually arrive and carry the battle. Who is the superior force in this case? It appears to me that the entire army is holed up in the Alamo. No one’s fighting on the other battlefields: tax incentives, technology prizes, data purchase, regulatory and liability reform, etc. Those battles would be easier to fight — the entrenched self-interests don’t care about those things. “Go where the enemy isn’t.”
Tactically, uh, less-knowledged there. Delaying actions also apply when you have an enemy who’ll run out of resources and/or destroy themselves if given enough time. As is very much the case with Old NASA.
And a strawman again to boot. Plenty of us are fighting on those other battlefields too. You, I happen to know, included, Ed, and you do a good job at it too.
Anyway, enough. You seem to find this sort of Alice-logic argumentation amusing, but I don’t and I have work to do. See you around, and I’ll leave deconstructing any last word you may leave on the field here to others.
Ed doesn’t get out much. He talks to a handful of people who call themselves “New Space,” and actually believes that they represent the views of everyone in the New Space community.
Now, now. We all have a tendency to get wrapped up in our own immediate circles and forget who else is out there.
Every so often, something happens to amaze me at just how many of us there are, in how many different places. The DC-X 20th reunion a few years back was like that – lots of people finally met and traded stories who’d had no idea at the time they were on such a large and various team.
You imply that believing they can dictate to Congress is common among activists. Nonsense and you know it.
Really? In 2004, I was told that the space activist community had to unite behind the Bush Vision of Space Exploration or “the Administration might simply walk away from it, and NASA will never get another chance.” The leadership of NSS, SFF, ProSpace, PoliSpace, etc. all said that. Are you telling me you never heard it?
None of them asked whether walking away from BVSE would be a bad thing.
I question whether activists really had the power to stop BVSE, by withholding their support. But if they ever had a chance, that was the time — before the snowball started rolling down hill and picked up all the special interests.
Instead, activist community helped push the lever to start the snowball rolling. Now that they’ve finalized that the SLS snowball is headed toward the village, we’re asked to throw our bodies in front of it. No, thank you.
Yes, but [NASA] is the one that gets nine billion a year to nominally do human space exploration.
So what? DARPA is likely to accomplish more with the $150M they’re spending on XS-1 than NASA is with the $9B a year they’re spending. Increase funding so they can afford multiple prototypes, and they could accomplish even more. As a former manager of mine liked to say, don’t confuse effort with results.
You also commit an implied strawman here, namely that anyone sensible in the field ignores the other DC agencies concerned with space, such as FAA, and, oh, some minor ill-funded outfit called DOD.
Really? I’m not sure who you consider sensible, but can you point to any major activist group that has not been at least 98% focused on NASA’s manned space programs for the last 10+ years? I lost track of how many times I heard that activists shouldn’t bother with Centennial Challenges, Zero G Zero Taxes, etc. because “COTS is more important.”
One exception: This year’s ProSpace agenda was more balanced, but that is a recent development (and I haven’t any sign of other groups heading in the same direction).
See previous about strawmen. What do you mean, “we” ignore them?
Ask any Congressional staffer. If you ask them what “commercial space” means, 98% will tell you it’s NASA’s Crew and Cargo program, because that’s all they ever hear about. Staffers actually get confused when I talk about other issues, because they *assume* I’m there to talk about SpaceX, the same as everyone else.
It used to be a good year when 1% of NASA’s budget was spent in ways we think useful. Now we’re in the double-digit percentages and rising.
Is that because NASA’s spending improved, or because your standards have changed?
Ten years ago, COTS supporters said it would enable the development of *multiple* reusable launch vehicles. We were told that it would support *multiple* startup companies and the money would not be gobbled up by traditional players like Boeing.
So, what happened? Instead of multiple RLVs, we’re getting a couple of capsules. Most of the money is going to established companies (Boeing and OSC), and only one new company (SpaceX) directly benefits from it.
If anyone predicted that outcome 10 years ago, he would have been branded as a hopelessly pessimistic opponent of COTS. What would have been considered failure, beforehand, is now considered a great success.
Delaying actions also apply when you have an enemy who’ll run out of resources and/or destroy themselves if given enough time. As is very much the case with Old NASA.
I wish you luck, Henry, but I suspect you will run out of resources before NASA does.
Yes, Rand – thanks for the plug! But it’s not a “SpaceX Update”, although they do figure in it. (Let me guess – autocomplete on a portable device? Dontcha just hate that? First thing I turn off when I’m bringing up a new gadget…)
The whole question of what the RD-180 situation does to Boeing’s Atlas 5-based Commercial Crew project hasn’t seen a lot of discussion (at least not that I’ve seen in public.)
One amusing possibility: CST-100 launched on a Falcon 9. Although that would be a hit on redundancy.
More likely we’ll continue to buy RD-180 as needed, and the Russians will continue to sell them for needed cash. (Does the current RD-180 buy restriction legislation even apply to non-DOD uses?)
The RD-180 ban being pushed by the not-so-honorable Senator from Arizona only applies to DOD/NSS launches. NASA/NOAA are unaffected.
Nobody who knows him says Senator McCain is not honorable.
Not amenable to reason once he’s gotten his teeth into a cause, perhaps. An old Arizona pol told me once that McCain is just not very inclined to listen. The way he put it: “McCain won’t pick up the phone for anyone less than God Himself. But even then, he wouldn’t actually listen.”
I’m going to stand by my characterization.
I live in Virginia Beach. There are still people here who remember LT McCain. The stories they tell are not complimentary.
And that helps get better policy implemented, how?…
If he wasn’t stubborn like that he would have probably cracked while incarcerated.
I read in some place that SpaceX is now willing to sell their Merlin engines to 3rd parties. That some guy from SpaceX told it to a commission in response to the RD-180 issues. The advice I give is for SpaceX to sell engines to Orbital contingent on that Orbital only uses these engines for DoD missions (no commercial comsat missions). I know at some time Orbital looked into buying the Merlin but SpaceX wasn’t interested back then.
As for Vulcan it is premature to put too much into it. Developing that first stage engine is going to take several years still. Right now it needs more time than money. Only after ULA get a good enough engine can real work on the first stage begin. Right now ULA can’t do a whole lot except waiting.
I think, right now, the best option is to accelerate the Commercial Crew program by providing them with full funding. SpaceX already got the Super Dracos working and the Dragon v2.0 capsule is mostly done. They can get it working by the end of this year. That plus a launch and installation of the backup docking module and we don’t need a temporary interim solution anymore.
I think they should just launch a couple more Dragon v1.0 capsules so they can get the docking adapter on ISS and then switch to Dragon v2.0 on the Commercial Cargo flights so they can use that robotic cargo experience to certify the Commercial Crew Dragon v2.0 faster.
Hence they could test most systems right now in the Commercial Cargo version of Dragon v2.0 and leave the life support and pilot controls and seats and so on for a later version.
I thought the current plan was to continue to use Dragon V1 for cargo because the PMA docking adapter gives more clearance for cargo than does the IDA which will be used on Dragon V2. Hence I thought I had read somewhere that even after Dragon V2 is flying crew, V1’s will still deliver cargo. Is that correct?
You may be correct. It may be that SpaceX keeps both versions of the Dragon capsule. If they do, I expect they’ll upgrade the cargo version to be more in common with the crew version. For example, while you don’t need a LES for the cargo version, they might want to put Super Draco thrusters on it to enable soft landings on land. SpaceX is likely upgrading several of the current Dragon systems for the crew version. It would likely make sense to use as many of those systems in the cargo version as well if for no other reason than simplifying the supply chain. There is good precedent for this. I’m sure there are a lot of common systems between the Progress and Soyuz capsules. Dragon cargo and crew could end up with even more in common than Progress and Soyuz.
You assume assured access to ISS matters more to Congress than graft and pork.
You have to be careful comparing Merlin to RD-180. SpaceX made a design choice early on to go with the gas-generator engine cycle. The result is a lighter, simpler, cheaper, more robust engine than RD-180’s staged-combustion cycle – but about 10% less propellant-efficient.
So you can’t just swap Merlins into a rocket designed for RD-180 (or NK-33, also staged-combustion) without losing a lot of payload. You need to do a major redesign to carry more propellant to feed the less efficient engines.
Mind, the bottom line is overall cost, and so far it looks like SpaceX made the correct tradeoff. Propellant and tanks are cheap, but that last 10% of engine performance can cost a LOT.
Meanwhile, there just might more politics than business involved in SpaceX’s offer. They probably don’t expect to actually be taken up on it.
On other SpaceX news:
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/617851905969127425
“Expect to reach preliminary conclusions regarding last flight by end of week. Will brief key customers & FAA, then post on our website.”
Less than 2 week from accident to preliminary conclusion is a lot faster than we’ve been seeing in rocket post-mortims.
Apologies if this is a duplicate comment, but my last one vanished.
Excellent post, Henry!
Your post at the Space Access Society, plus this thread here, prompted me to write up a post detailing how we can achieve emergency manned access to ISS utilizing existing, in service, currently flying hardware and systems, and do so in a matter of months at minimal (under 50 million) cost. (In the post, I assume that Dragon 2, CST-100, etc, don’t exist)
http://tinyurl.com/q2dqxwu
I’m not saying your concept wouldn’t work technically, but my best guess is that politically speaking the bolt-lawn-chairs-into-a-Dragon-1 approach would probably be a bridge too far with memories of watching an F9 booster blow up fresh in everyone’s mind.
Chances are a barebones Dragon 2 with the LAS could both satisfy the politics and be ready in time, if Soyuz hit the fan. Keep in mind that “in time” might actually be a fair portion of a year. Given crew already aboard, I would expect there’d be considerable flexibility to extend their stay and delay replacements.
(Worst-case rush might be if for some reason Soyuz had a return/reentry failure. At that point, the Soyuz still docked to Station are all suspect, and giving the Station crew a reliable ride home becomes urgent.)
The one counter to that is the fact that the Dragon survived the explosion, and returned data for quite some time. In fact, if they had programmed it to recover, we would still have it. The same could be said of crew.
About the only place a launch abort system seems to be necessary is before max-Q. After that, the capsule will survive a breakup or explosion that is less energetic (and less likely to damage the capsule) than one on the ground.
Has anyone at SpaceX actually said it would have been fine if the chutes had just been deployed? I haven’t seen anything specific beyond that it was still sending telemetry and seemed to be largely in one piece as it came away from the booster. Things were getting fairly violent around the front of that rocket toward the end.
Regardless, even if it was in recoverable shape, there’s no way to tell how much luck was involved. It’s not a recovery mode I would want to count on, never mind what NASA might think about it.
Keep in mind that the one time the Soyuz abort system was used, one crew member suffered long-term debilitating injuries that ended his cosmonaut career.
Escape systems are not a magic bullet for safety. Even aircraft ejection seats, which are much more mature than space-launch escape systems, remain very dangerous.
With or without an escape system, you should assume that a catastrophic accident means someone is likely to get badly hurt and quite possibly killed. When you hear NASA say otherwise, that’s just the salesmen talking.
Ejection seats are so dangerous that I’ve heard using one described as “attempted suicide to avoid certain death.” Injuries during ejection such as spinal compression are common. From military pilots I’ve talked to, you can easily end up about an inch shorter after an ejection. You can easily end up dead, too.
Launch escape systems definitely fall into that category.
In the hospital beats incinerated.
Put another way, given a booster that’d kill you one flight in fifty, adding a Launch Escape System that’ll kill you one time in ten still improves your overall odds to surviving 499 times out of five hundred.
Yeah, yeah, that’s oversimplifying; the LAS would have to be effective throughout the booster flight envelope, etcetera. A ballpark 10x improvement in survival odds is nevertheless very worthwhile, given historical expendable reliabilities.
Spinal compression happens to everyone, everyday, as long whenever we sit or stand. If you measure yourself in the evening, you’ll find you’re a good fraction of an inch shorter than you were in the morning. The difference with aircraft ejection is that it happens in a fraction of a second. But if all you end up with is a sore back, you’re lucky.
That’s true as far as it goes, Henry. The problem is when people start to think they’ve solved safety completely because they have an ejection capability. Or tell Congress that, even if they don’t believe it themselves. (We hear statements like that all the time concerning Orion.)
There’s a difference between ejection as a last resort and ejection as a first resort. I recently sat in on a safety briefing with a USAF test pilot who said, “Fire? Airplanes are always on fire. We aren’t going to eject unless something really bad happens.”
The Soyuz 18a in-flight abort didn’t use the escape system. Like Apollo, the Soyuz escape tower was jettisoned after Stage II ignition. The service propulsion system on the Soyuz was used to separate, as the Apollo SPS main engine would have been in a similar situation. The acceleration for the Soyuz separation is far less than 1 g. It’s debatable whether it is really needed. Both the Soyuz and the Dragon were banged around the same way (the Soyuz II/III separation hadn’t completed due to half of the staging latches failing prior to engine start). But in the case of Soyuz, the injuries to the crew were due to the facts that the separation happened at a high flight path angle, resulting in 21.3 g, and then the capsule rolled down a hill after landing. One of the cosmonauts, Larazev, never flew again, but the other, Makarov, flew three more times.
I don’t know what accelerations the Dragon experienced, but I’m willing to bet that the landing would have been better than that of the Soyuz just because it would have been in water.
Oh, I agree that there is approx zero chance of my concept being done even if not doing it meant losing ISS.
I agree a barebones Dragon 2 would be a better, and certainly more politically viable, choice.
However… in the scenario you outline, a Soyuz reentry failure with the remaining Soyuz suspect, my guess is they’d react with more haste (lives in peril). In that scenario, Dragon one would be ideal; it could get there far faster (it has the advantage of currently existing), and due to launching unmanned, no need for a LAS.
Hrmmm… do you think my concept for crew transport up and down via Dragon 1 would be more politically viable if we let NASA make the seats (it’s take about a year, and 300 million) instead of purchasing basically the same thing for $40 and installing it that same day? 🙂
The problem with not having a LAS is that the Super Draco thrusters are dual-purpose: if not used for abort, then they are the final stage of the landing sequence, cushioning the blow. The Soyuz uses something similar, solid rockets that fire just before landing so the cosmonauts don’t suffer the equivalent of a car crash.
Ed, Cargo Dragon splashes down just fine without superdracos. They’d only be needed in that role on land (or for propulsive landing) in Dragon 2. Dragon 2 also does not need the superdracos to land in water (which is the normal abort mode).
Soyuz needs touchdown rockets due to landing on land. (Well, usually… it’s landed in water before, and even salt water, once).
One of those misshapen Soyuz landings was the reason why they pack a gun on the capsule. I think they landed off-target in the middle of the wilderness and there were wild animals around. Plus the recovery took quite some time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TP-82
I think you mean “packed a gun,” past tense. That was before Jim Oberg’s gun-control campaign.
Arizona CJ, when the Cargo Dragon splashes down it’s full of cargo. It is by no means gentle. It doesn’t do you much good if you get the astronauts back and break their necks when they hit the water.
@ Ed Minchu,
I couldn’t reply in-line as the thread branch limit was reached, so I’ll quote and reply here.
Ed Minchu said,
Arizona CJ, when the Cargo Dragon splashes down it’s full of cargo. It is by no means gentle. It doesn’t do you much good if you get the astronauts back and break their necks when they hit the water.
Ed, I have to both agree and disagree. Yes, it’s true that splashdown is by no means gentle. The Apollo, Gemini, and Mercury astronauts all said so; it’s rough sometimes. However, Dragon (either version) has a smaller surface area at impact relative to weight, so it should have lower G-loading. A clue IMHO can be found in the Cargo Dragon design load spec sheet, which specifies that downmass cargo needs to be secured to handle a design max of 7.49 G (0r 9.64 if a chute fails). Even if we assume max is what they can expect on splashdown (it’s not,) that puts it in the same range as Apollo, actually a bit less. Heck, Gemini pulled around 8 on ascent near MECO. A further lead is that SpaceX and NASA have said a Dragon 2 abort pulls around 5G, and I assume that means peak G for the entire abort.
The long and the short of it is that even if we assume the design max is what is experienced on splashdown, it’s quite survivable, and without significant injury risk. Which, IMHO, is more than good enough in a case of an emergency such as a need to use a Dragon cargo to evac the station. Also, as far as I know, they don’t plan to use superdracos to cushion a Dragon 2 splashdown, and they do plan on landing the early crewed Dragons at sea.