The latest major project assessment is out:
Three of the largest projects in this critical stage of development—Exploration Ground Systems, Orion, and the Space Launch System—continue to face cost, schedule, and technical risks. In April 2017, we found that the first integrated test flight of these systems, known as Exploration Mission-1, will likely be delayed beyond November 2018.
NASA concurred with our findings and is currently conducting an assessment to establish a new launch date. Because NASA’s assessment is ongoing, the cost implications of the schedule delay and its effect on the projects’ baselines are still unknown. However, given that these three human space exploration programs represent more than half of NASA’s current portfolio development cost baseline, a cost increase or delay could have substantial repercussions not only for these programs but NASA’s entire portfolio.
You don’t say.
[Update mid afternoon]
Bob Zubrin isn’t happy with NASA’s current Mars plans:
During the Apollo program, the NASA’s mission-driven human spaceflight program spent money in order to do great things. Now, lacking a mission, it just does things in order to spend a great deal of money.
Why is NASA proposing a lunar-orbiting space station? The answer to that is simple. It’s to give its Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion capsule programs something to do. The utility of such activity is not a concern. As a result, nothing useful will be accomplished.
Because Congress isn’t serious.
[Update a few minutes later]
Bob Zimmerman has some caustic thoughts on the GAO report.
[Thursday-morning update]
Bob Zimmerman isn’t happy about the cost overruns on the engine test stands. Neither am I. These aren’t the costs, they’re the overruns. On test stands for engines for a rocket we don’t need, and can’t afford to operate.
Also Ethan Siegal agrees with Bob Zubrin that a cislunar station is a waste of time and money.
[Bumped]
[Update mid-afternoon]
NASA doesn’t have any good answers as to why the test stands were being built in Alabama. We know the answer. It’s not a good one.
I think we know the answer to that. And Shelby doesn't care about the overruns as long as he gets his campaign contributions. https://t.co/h4vIKCoN2q
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) May 18, 2017
Orion is designed to meet the evolving needs of our nation’s deep space exploration program for decades to come. Its versatile design
will allow it to safely carry and sustain a crew of two to four for 21 days and can evolve to support a six-person crew on extended-duration missions.
How deep in space will 21 days get ya? Note that EM-1 is a 25 day mission that doesn’t really leave earth orbit.
…can evolve… : there it is, the pork justification clause.
21 days is too long to travel to/from the Moon and too short to travel to/from Mars. IMHO it is a much better idea to make a LEO capsule, like the Dragon, and attach it to a separate module to increase endurance according to the mission requirements.
We do not need a lunar-orbiting station to go to the Moon. We do not need such a station to go to Mars. We do not need it to go to near-Earth asteroids. We do not need it to go anywhere.
We don’t need any of this stuff. It is just a matter of competing alternatives to achieve the same goals.
Also, not sure why he had to Godwin his op-ed.
Zubrin was trying to emphasize risk/reward (forgive me for stating the obvious.) If you leave radiation protection what is the reward for taking that risk? Unfortunately, Nazis left us a lot of useful analogies.
There is a real crisis in government not just doing things with no utility, but with negative utility.
We only need stuff when it furthers a goal. NASA has a need to keep the pork flowing and we need to stop them. Any rational being would have to regard today’s civilization as insane. One other need… the dinosaurs need to apologize for turning the planet over to a bunch of myopic idiots.
There is a real crisis in government not just doing things with no utility, but with negative utility.
A cislunar station would hardly have negative utility. Of course that depends on how it is used, but there is many details right now on the proposal.
We only need stuff when it furthers a goal.
Zubrin’s problem is that he thinks NASA’s goal should be everyone’s goal. Rather than picking the Moon or Mars, NASA should be trying to enable our populace to pursue either or both or even another destination altogether, if that is where the populace wants to go.
Locking all of NASA’s limited resources into a one track program where all activities are controlled by NASA can surely accomplish some great things but it is unlikely to unshackle the American spirit to colonize space.
To have positive utility a cislunar station must be either useful, profitable, or beneficial.
It certainly would not be profitable. Would it be beneficial or useful. I think you can argue that both ways, but I think Zubrin mostly makes his case.
All people are going to have different focuses. But not all focuses move us forward. Zubrin, like anyone, is probably not focused on the exact right target, but that’s not the standard. Does it move us forward? I think he always hits a good bit of that target.
Often the debate seems to be about “what’s the best dog?” overlooking that any dog probably has more utility than an aardvark.
I am not seeing any substantive criticisms in the linked articles. They just come off as wanting an Apollo program to do something else that locks all the stakeholders into a single track while wasting time pushing technological boundaries.
A cislunar station could be great way to expand our capabilities and broaden possible destinations for other missions. Cislunar space is much more approachable for the population at large, regardless of what presence NASA chooses to have their. I have always been fond of basewalking because of how robust the strategy is in the long term.
I would prefer a variable gravity station, a Nautilus X type of space ship, or a cislunar cycler. None of which built with the SLS. I can see cislunar space being a great place to get our sea legs but after that, I think the destinations of importance for humans and our robot friends is longer than a list with one planet on it.
“Zubrin’s problem is that he thinks NASA’s goal should be everyone’s goal. Rather than picking the Moon or Mars, NASA should be trying to enable our populace to pursue either or both or even another destination altogether, if that is where the populace wants to go.”
The moon could be a viable destination [for various purposes] if there is minable water in lunar polar region.
Mars could a viable destination if there is usable [minable] water.
Minable lunar water would be minable if water cheap enough that it lowers exporting costs from the Moon. One thing which could be exported from the Moon is rocket fuel. If lunar rocket fuel could exported to Lunar orbit and be competitive with earth transported rocket fuel to Lunar orbit- then lunar water can be minable and it requires the lunar water be priced around 500 per lb. And allowing for lunar rocket fuel [H2 & LOX] to priced around 2000 per lb at lunar surface and about 4000 per lb in Lunar orbit.
At lunar surface one could have lunar water at 500 per lb, LOX at 1000 per lb and LH2 at 4000 per lb.
9 lbs of water gives 8 lbs of LOX and 1 lb of LH2, and rocket fuel is generally about 6 lbs pf LOX per 1 lb of LH2. So from every 9 lbs of water, if used for rocket fuel one has 2 lbs of oxygen left over. And in beginning of exporting lunar rocket fuel one might just sell Lunar LOX and have Earth shipped LH2.
And for human travel to Mars, one could buy lunar LOX and lunar water at EML 1/2 [or any other Earth high orbit] and this also extends to selling lunar LOX and water to Mars orbits for return trip. Astronauts on ISS using about 10 tonnes of water per year, per person. And water is good substance to block radiation during trip to and from Mars.
In terms minable mars water, it’s use would related to life support, growing food, etc. And to allow Mars settlement, water would need to cheaper than $500 per lb.
The price of water on Mars or the Moon would related to yearly demand or use of water. Water needs on the Moon in terms of making rocket fuel is low. Or could start at 100 tons of water per year produced. Or if there was enough market for 1000 tons of lunar water, one could expect the price to be halved [or lower].
For a mars settlement, 1000 tons of water per year, isn’t enough.
Any site on mars with abundant and cheap access to mars water- say water which can pumped from a well- would a place one would choose to go to. So say 1 million tonnes of water which can pumped from a well [and not a deeper well which requires more electrical power] would where one would go. This could mean that pure glacier ice could be too costly- or your water bill could be quite expensive.
I would think one needs somewhere 200 tons of water per settler per year and probably want to double settlement population every 5 years [at least].
Anyways, what NASA to do is find minable water in space.
These discussions about what NASA should do seem to me like discussions of what color the Emperor’s clothes should be.
The word that describes NASA is “pretentious”. They pretend to have a space program that means anything, and politicians pretend to support it, but all it’s really is is a conduit for graft.
Continue to puncture the pretense.
“Why is NASA proposing a lunar-orbiting space station? The answer to that is simple. It’s to give its Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion capsule programs something to do.”
Of course that raises the question of why it needs something to do in the first place. Which is:
1) Obama refused to authorize any mission hardware, either to the Moon or Mars, and Congress was content to follow his lead. (And Trump has yet to attempt to alter course.)
2) And Obama and Congress declined to fund such hardware because it would have cost a good deal more than they wanted to spend.
Want to go to the lunar surface? Charles Bolden estimated that resurrecting Altair from the ruins of Constellation would have run about $10 billion, and would have taken about a decade to develop. Odds are, on FAR contracting, he was being conservative.
Of course, this Cislunar Gateway will cost money, too. But if NASA goes with one of the more “off the shelf” options, it might still cost less than a lander and all the related surface systems. Unless, of course, it leverages commercial capabilities heavily.
But Zubrin pretty well identifies the underlying problem: There’s just no real political will for NASA to do anything serious. What will there is focuses on keeping the jobs it provides intact.
But if NASA goes with one of the more “off the shelf” options
Continue the COTS approach with each segment being supported by the commercial activities of the providers. Pushing the economic sphere of influence out will do more to help NASA than an Apolloesque program to Mars.
A cislunar gateway station need not rely on SLS either.
You’re right that NASA (and they are ignoring their charter on this) should be promoting commerce. COTS vs mars isn’t the issue because doing mars right, does promote commerce. NASA isn’t serious about mars (not the way they’re proposing.)
The irony is if NASA were serious about mars, it would cost them a lot LESS money while vastly stimulating commerce.
If NASA spent only $1b per year, rather than SLS/orion, they could pay for about 7 to 15 red Dragons (14,000 to 30,000 kg) to mars every 26 months. Make the terms a competition with no vendor getting more than half the business.
In one stroke we’ve promoted commerce and cut NASA spending by more than 4 times. Auction off the payload mass to anyone that wants to put stuff on mars.
It’s fine not to like this plan. Modify it into something better. But just as described it accomplishes more than NASA has in decades.
Mars is cool. The moon is cool. Why do we have to choose one, the other, or someplace else?
Rather than looking at what is the best way to get to Mars or the Moon, what is the best way to do both while also enabling other destinations? There may be some tradeoffs in transit time or mass but I think space nerds are min/maxing with the wrong goals in mind.
In the meantime SpaceX is knocking off missions once every two weeks. I hope they can keep that up; that alone would be a game-changer.
They actually have the next few scheduled three within a month, one at Vandenberg and two in Florida (according to spaceflightnow launch schedule). Don’t know if that’s for real.
The subject of this post may be NASA’s dysfunctions, but you are correct to bring up SpaceX. NASA is becoming less important by the day. Commercial space becomes more consequential by the day. Lather, rinse, repeat. NASA is well along the path to terminal irrelevance. The only sporting proposition is picking the day and year it runs out of gas.
As to SpaceX, it actually has four June missions on the Spaceflight Now calendar. CRS-11, Bulgariasat 1 and Intelsat 35e from Kennedy and Iridium 11-20 from Vandy. The remainder of 2017 is nearly as jam-packed. Gonna be interesting to watch.
Instead of a cis-lunar station, why not tape blow-ups of lunar slides to the windows of the ISS so the astronauts would look like they’re orbiting the moon?
Wouldn’t that accomplish the same thing?
They’d also need to irradiate them.
And funnel 10x the funding to BigOldAerospace
Isn’t radiation an issue we would need to deal with on a journey to Mars? Seems like something solvable especially if we want to conquer the universe or whatever.
Anyone have a link to the proposal or a youtube video?
NASA proposes all kinds of stuff, I wouldn’t get too worked up over this one. Not too long ago they wanted to do a lunar village.