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Wouldn't it be great if they offered a "prize", such as anyone that builds a comercially available launcher that can get 3 people to ISS for less than the predicted launch cost of the stick gets as an award half the remaining development budget.

I'm wondering how much a non-price-plus company could do with $1B in the offing.

Posted by David Summers at April 6, 2006 01:37 PM

The cost to modify the ATK stick? $3 billion

The value of not using Boeing for EVERYTHING? Priceless

Posted by Bill White at April 6, 2006 01:58 PM

Ever hear of Lockheed Martin, Bill?

Posted by Rand Simberg at April 6, 2006 02:04 PM

If NASA has been using Boeing for "everything" it would certainly come as news to them.

Posted by Rand Simberg at April 6, 2006 02:05 PM

A good friend of mine and I were conversing about the VSE recently. My friend, who just left his job at USA to move to ATK, commented on NASA's plan to "man-rate" the SRB. "It's part of NASA's new Shuttle-derived Launch Vehicle program," he explained.

"Yeah," I replied, "Or, as it is better known, the Thiokol ATK Full Employment Act of 2005".

He was not amused.

Posted by bchan at April 6, 2006 03:23 PM

Rand, do you have numbers for "man-rating" the Atlas or Delta first stages for use as a crew launcher? I don't remember seeing numbers for that, all I remember seeing was statements that modifying the SRB would be "cheaper". Well, obviously not.

Oh yeah...I just thought of something. Can you throttle down an SRB through max-queue?

(your filter did not like the letter q followed by a question mark)

Posted by Astrosmith at April 6, 2006 03:33 PM

Rand, do you have numbers for "man-rating" the Atlas or Delta first stages for use as a crew launcher?

Nobody has the numbers for that. Nobody even really knows what that entails. Man rating is a nebulous concept that we should have abandoned in the sixties (in fact we did, since no vehicle built since then has been man rated).

I wrote a primer on this a few years back.

Posted by Rand Simberg at April 6, 2006 03:45 PM

Astrosmith,

How is modifying the SRB "obviously not" cheaper (even at $3B) than modifying Atlas/Delta if you don't know what modifying Atlas/Delta would cost? If you don't know, who is to say modifying Atlas/Delta wouldn't cost $4B? Boeing/Lockmart might claim they could modify their respective vehicle for less than that, but if they got the contract you can bet the price would go up just as it evidently has for the SRB.

Posted by Cecil Trotter at April 6, 2006 03:45 PM

Lockheed Martin uses Russian engines for its Atlas V, right. If that is okay, then just buy a few dozen R-7s and be done with it.

Posted by Bill White at April 6, 2006 04:47 PM

"Can you throttle down an SRB through max-queue?"

Yup. More precisely, the thrust profiel is tailored to accomdate Max-Q.

As to the $3 Billion number:
1) I'd love to see the breakdown on that
2) I bet a lot of the increase is J-2 related, whereas before the Ares I used the SSME for the upper stage engine
3) The change from SSME to J-2, with the consequent change from the 4-segment RSRM to the 5-segment booster, was *NASA's* idea, not ATK's
4) The J-2 development and the 5-segment booster both play into the Ares V HLLV, so this *could* be a matter of simply shifting downstream accounting to nearer term.

Posted by Scott Lowther at April 6, 2006 04:49 PM

1) I'd love to see the breakdown on that

So would we all.

2) I bet a lot of the increase is J-2 related, whereas before the Ares I used the SSME for the upper stage engine

Could be, but if so, the story has it wrong, because it's describing the cost to simply modify the SRB to serve as the first stage of a CLV. No mention of the second stage. Unless you're saying that they had to change the SRB design to account for the fact that it's using a different second stage. If so, so what? The point is that it's still not what was originally sold.

Posted by Rand Simberg at April 6, 2006 04:53 PM

Astrosmith asked:

>...do you have numbers for "man-rating" the Atlas or Delta
>first stages for use as a crew launcher?

Well, considering all three existing variants of the EELV (Delta IV Medium, Delta IV Heavy, and Atlas V Medium) only cost $3.5 billion, how much more can it to be? The Delta IV Medium, for example, cost about $2 billion to develop, including the Common Booster Core, the RS-68 engine, integration of the overall vehicle, the launch infrastructure at Cape Canaveral, the launch infrastructure at Vandenberg, the brand new factory at Decatur, and the Delta Mariner boat to tote the rockets around in.

I doubt man-rating the booster would add 10% to that, but I've seen no numbers from even the trade press on that.

We knew the Stick wasn't going to be safe, but if it needs that kind of money, we know it can't be simple either. Anyone want to wager on soon?

Mike

Posted by Michael Kent at April 6, 2006 06:04 PM

We knew the Stick wasn't going to be safe

Why is the Stick not safe? Had the Challenger SRB not been next to a giant tank of liquid hydrogen, the O-seal malfunction would NOT have caused a catastrophic loss of vehicle. Somewhere I read that if the Challenger SRB defect had occurred during a single stick launch, the stick still would have had a chance to attain orbit.

Solids don't explode and in the event of major malfunction just blow some holes in the sides and the upwards thrust simply ends.

99.5%+ success rate with over 200 tries.

= = =

Next, if CEV were firmly established on Delta IV as its launch vehicle, then the Boeing lobby to NEVER move beyond it to something new would be overwhelming.

Thus, using the ATK Stick rather than EELV makes a future transition to a NewSpace vehicle easier not more difficult.

Posted by Bill White at April 6, 2006 07:10 PM

Some senior engineers ran the "Stick" through the standard aerospace cost modeler recently. It works because the stick is mostly off the shelf stuff repackaged. The number came out at $8-10 billion.

The stick itself has to be completely redesigned because the field joints of the SRB were not designed to be operated outside of the load paths of the Shuttle/Titan vehicles.

---

Posted by little birdie at April 6, 2006 07:25 PM

If the contract had gone to Boeing or Lockheed we would be seeing the same kind of cost increases, no matter how feasible it would be to modify EELVs or SRBs. The CLV program gives one company permission to hold NASA over a barrel until they squeeze out as much money as they can. I am surprised it's starting this early.

Posted by Matt Wronkiewicz at April 6, 2006 07:30 PM

Another problem with using Delta IV as CLV is pad congestion. Isn't there only one pad on the east coast (Pad 37?) capable of processing and launching Delta IV? If that is used both for DoD and NASA missions, that one pad will likely create schedule delays and conflicts, especially when we move to on-orbit assembly from multiple launches to do lunar missions.

We could start building new EELV pads and processing centers but then those billions need to be added into the total cost equations.

If the choice were between giving t/Space and SpaceDev a billion dollars for a NewSpace CEV and ATK, I'd vote for NewSpace. Heck, I'd be content to give Burt Rutan a billion dollars and say "Come back in a few years and impress us with what you've built"

But that is me.

Anyway, Between ATK & HLLV or Boeing & an EELV only program?

ATK all the way, in part because the U.S. already owns Pad 39A & Pad 39B and the new pads we'd need to mount a robust EELV supported lunar campaign would add substantially to the cost of going that route.

= = =

In any event, we either support Griffin and ESAS (with tweaks) or we decide to start over from scratch in 2009.

Posted by Bill White at April 6, 2006 08:03 PM

The stick is not the only politically feasible way during this administration. I liked Henry Spencer's suggestion of a two-stage ET/RS-68-based launcher that met the political constraint of using existing production facilities and major contractors.

But I like Bill White's point. Although solid rockets have many nasty issues (toxic exhaust, toxic oxidizer, fuel grain casting plants that explode, field joints in a vehicle-sized combustion chamber/pressure vessel, etc), they sure seem safe when launched. Where did the alt.space crowd get the idea that solids are less safe than liquids?

(BTW, your filter doesn't like my URL address at http://ambivalentengineer.b*gspot.com WTF? Movable Type doesn't like competition?)

Posted by Iain McClatchie at April 6, 2006 09:13 PM

Where did the alt.space crowd get the idea that solids are less safe than liquids?

Von Braun had a saying, "Liquids burn, solids explode. You might want to Google about the large percentage of a mountain that was lost at Edwards in 1991.

BTW, your filter doesn't like my URL address at http://ambivalentengineer.b*gspot.com WTF? Movable Type doesn't like competition?

No, I don't like spam.

If you're serious about blogging, get a real domain.

Posted by at April 6, 2006 09:27 PM

> The point is that it's still not what was originally sold.

The point is, the company that sold the design is not the one demanding changes. We were all rather stunned back in December and early January when we had to toss all our work and go to the 5-segment. ATK wanted to go with the existing RSRM for the CLV. Nice and easy transition... new product line with minimal facility and production mods.

An EELV with a capsule on top woudl not ahve been what was originally sold either...

Posted by Scott Lowther at April 6, 2006 09:36 PM

> Von Braun had a saying, "Liquids burn, solids explode.

Von Braun also didn't like liquid hydrogen. He came around.

> You might want to Google about the large percentage of a mountain that was lost at Edwards in 1991.

Compared to having an N-1 go *foom* on your launch pad...

Posted by Scott Lowther at April 6, 2006 09:37 PM

Bill White wrote:

> 99.5%+ success rate with over 200 tries

If you're using success rate to measure safety, you're using the wrong metric. Success rate is a measure of reliability, not safety. Though the two are related, they are two separate things.

Solids have historically had better reliability than liquids, but when they've failed, they've usually failed catastrophicly. Liquids, while they've failed more often, have for the last 30 years or so usually failed more benignly. Failures are more often underperformance (such as last year's Delta IV Heavy anomaly) or an early shutdown. Even fairly bad failures (such as SpaceX's engine fire) often give ample enough warning to fire an escape system.

A case could be made that a less safe launcher with a better success rate would be better programmatically, but in this political climate, I doubt it.

Mike

Posted by Michael Kent at April 6, 2006 10:17 PM

Nice. So, you've got your 3 bil, plus probably another 2 bil as things develop. Then you've got the 5 bil? a year from the Shuttle program, amortized over maybe 3 flights a year from here until 2010-ish. So probably 40 bil total for maybe 15 (and probably

Nice.

Posted by at April 6, 2006 10:24 PM

As for the pad issues, it all comes down to cost. The Cape Canaveral launch pad and Horizontal Integration Facility cost Boeing about $250 million combined to build. So even using the $3 billion development cost for the Stick (I've seen accounts in the trade press peg the figure closer to $5 billion), NASA could have 12 Delta IV launch pads at the Cape. You could almost turn this into a cereal commercial.

The Decatur plant is sized to build 50 Common Booster Cores a year. The Air Force is buying two. Boeing has enough existing production capacity to build NASA 16 Delta IV Heavies a year at near marginal cost (though the Air Force would undoubtedly want a cost rebalance should that occur).

The Delta IV launch pad and Horizontal Integration Facility are so cheap compared to the Stick it's hardly worth considering.

Mike

Posted by Michael Kent at April 6, 2006 10:29 PM

"Solids have historically had better reliability than liquids, but when they've failed, they've usually failed catastrophicly. Liquids, while they've failed more often, have for the last 30 years or so usually failed more benignly."

Well, consider the two Shuttle failures. The first was clearly a solid rocket problem. But it was by no means a catastrophic failure of the *solid.* Both of them had to be blown up by range safety, while the rest of the stack turned into confetti. Were that exact same failure mode to occur on the CLV, the biggest problem the crew would have would be to determine if they were going to be able to make it to orbit, due to performance losses of the first stage. A Stick-configuration witha Challenger SRB burn-through would not endanger the crew. Just the mission.

But if, say, one of the RS-68's on the Delta IV heavy were to crap out, there would be substantially greater risk. A sudden thrust imbalance at supersonic speeds is *not* a good day.

Personally, I'd rather they had gone with an Orion launched from Gitmo. But people *do* complain about that place...

Posted by Scott Lowther at April 6, 2006 10:32 PM

I'm not sure how this got to be about Boeing. I mean, *I* talk Boeing because it's what I know. But my statements apply to Lockheed's Atlas V just as well. In fact, Lockheed's cost is likely to be even less than Boeing's* owing to the facts that they didn't have to design a new engine for the Atlas V and they got better subsidies.

But therein lies the beauty of the EELVs. There are two of them. Each can launch the other's payloads (mainly). If one gets more expensive, buy more of the other. If you're worried about salvo launches, buy some of each. If one suffers a failure, launch a backup on the other. It would almost be like competition or something, as opposed to NASA's "natural" monopoly.

And since in this scenario NASA is just a launch services customer instead of a provider, if someone like SpaceX (or even ATK) can develop an EELV-class launcher with a lower price than an actual EELV, NASA could easily switch providers or just roll them into the mix. From a system-level viewpoint, such a mix of launchers would be more robust as well as less expensive.

Pity that NASA wants all the glory for itself.

Mike

* Now that's something you can't often say with a straight face.

Posted by Michael Kent at April 6, 2006 10:48 PM

I'm not sure how this got to be about Boeing.

Don't mind Bill. He seems to think that it's the only American aerospace company in existence, and irrationally uses that fantasy to work up some kind of antipathy toward it.

Posted by Rand Simberg at April 6, 2006 10:51 PM

Lasik at Home might be a useful link for snarky blog posters. A trivia question - what is a really funny detail about the doctor in this web site?

= = =

If new "Pad 37s" can be built at a trivial cost that does support the EELV argument. I won't argue that. And I agree that horizontal integration works pretty good, I didn't know it was a cheap as $250 million to build a new Pad 37. Good politics would have been to trumpet that fact. I still suspect that the EELV makers are less interested in firing the shuttle standing army and more interested in changing the color of the shirts (and employer logos) worn by the army. In that respect, Boeing, Lockheed and ATK are probably about equal.

But anyway isn't the idea to replace whatever carrier rocket we choose for CEV (whether EELV or Stick) as soon as possible? In other words move beyond anything that exists today in favor of a NewSpace Earth-to-LEO system as soon as possible?

Using the Stick to ferry crew to ISS is SO VERY ridiculous that it calls out for another solution. Using Delta IV to ferry crew to ISS can be defended as subsidy for DoD purchases and that fills a market niche that NewSpace should be filling ASAP.

Long term, I like the idea of building big ships in LEO that stay in LEO (or beyond) and using something like t/Space or the SpaceDev HL-20 variant or another tiny LEO taxi to ferry crew.

= = =

US lunar space policy (IMO) should be to test and deploy lunar LOX production and a re-useable LSAM as soon as possible to meet those NewSpace vehicles halfway and forge a rubust link to/from the moon. Getting to LEO is "halfway to anywhere" but as ISS proves, merely being halfway is pretty useless and boring.

Doing this with Russian stuff would be "cheaper" than with either EELV or ESAS stick but either way to work in both directions in parallel would seem advisable:

(1) Develop NewSpace to LEO then EML-1;

(2) Simultaneously develop lunar LOX & a re-useable LSAM for the Luna to EML-1 leg; and

(3) Have a "Golden Spike" moment at EML-1 as a robust Earth to Luna transport system is forged.

Posted by Bill White at April 7, 2006 05:12 AM

No Rand, Bill presented some excellent points in a well-written manner and in response all you can do is attack him.

Sadly, that seems to be typical.

Posted by Cecil Trotter at April 7, 2006 05:12 AM

Bill presented some excellent points in a well-written manner and in response all you can do is attack him.

Really?

Like this one?

The value of not using Boeing for EVERYTHING? Priceless

Or this one?

If the choice were between giving t/Space and SpaceDev a billion dollars for a NewSpace CEV and ATK, I'd vote for NewSpace. Heck, I'd be content to give Burt Rutan a billion dollars and say "Come back in a few years and impress us with what you've built"
But that is me.

Anyway, Between ATK & HLLV or Boeing & an EELV only program?

He's obviously got Boeing on the brain, for no discernable reasons, since there are two EELV contractors. Someone else noted this, also. I was simply responding to that.

He presents no evidence either for his apparent fantasy that Boeing gets everything, or his apparent belief that Boeing should be excluded.

If you want to call that well reasoned, or well written, fine. I call them the way I see them.

Posted by Rand Simberg at April 7, 2006 06:02 AM

I see you chose to ignore the direct reference he made of LockMart as well as several indirect references with "either EELV".

Posted by Cecil Trotter at April 7, 2006 09:01 AM

The Boeing lunar architecture - - PDF file here - - appeals to me in many ways, especially the proposal for extensive use of EML-1. That said, a NASA facility at EML-1 fills a niche I would prefer filled by a privately owned facility. If Boeing chooses to fund their own EML-1 facility NOT managed by NASA or DoD I would cheer, loudly.

Thus, I deny being anti-Boeing in general. I just don't like Delta IV for the CLV.

Atlas V? Politically there is no way Atlas V beats Delta IV in a head-to-head contest to be selected as CLV. Why? Russian engines. Boeing lobbies Congress about using Russian engines to fly US astronauts and its game over for Lockheed.

Given that Delta IV is not commercially viable for non-government launches why are NewSpace people so much in love with it? When did any Delta (II or IV) last launch a non-governmental payload?

Posted by Bill White at April 7, 2006 10:20 AM

Sorry I didn't chime in sooner. These items are mostly OBE:

1. I witnessed the "rapid deconstruction" of the Titan IV SRMU on the ridge at Edwards live. Impressive. I made 600+ photo reprints of the series I took of the incident.

2. I took a tour of Pad 37, and the Boeing public affairs type said that there was room to build another pad - they'd actually done some studies when the launch rates looked like they were going to be much higher.

3. The "make it to orbit" option with a Challenger-type burn through doesn't make a lot of sense to me, given the size of the hole in the SRB found in the wreckage, and the control torques that the thrust from the hole would impart. I agree, though, that such a failure should be survivable with an escape system.

Posted by Tom at April 7, 2006 10:24 AM

Scott Lowther wrote:

Personally, I'd rather they had gone with an Orion launched from Gitmo.

You are the Denny Crane of the rocket biz. The VSE needs fewer porkmeisters, more steely-eyed missilemen like you, amigo.

Posted by B-Chan at April 7, 2006 11:17 AM

Iain, try using this as your URL instead:

http://tinyurl.com/f8q3o

It still redirects to your blog, and doesn't get clogged up in Rand's filter.

Posted by Ed Minchau at April 7, 2006 11:58 AM

> The "make it to orbit" option with a Challenger-type burn through doesn't make a lot of sense to me, given the size of the hole in the SRB found in the wreckage

One of my co-workers has done quite a number of simulations of the Challenger SRB burn through and the effect it was having on the stack. Had the burn through been outboard, the stack *probably* would have made it intact to SRB sep. The exact rate of growth of the hole over time is a matter of some debate, so that plays into how it wall would have turned out. Were this to occur on a CLV, it would obviously present both performance losses and unpleasant torquees... btut here'd be nothing for the plume to burn through except the RSRM case.

The chances of another Challenger-type seal failure are, of course, far lower for CLV. Re-designed seals, knowing not to launch in the cold, new materials, and no great big liquid hydrogen tank right upwind help here.

Posted by at April 7, 2006 01:22 PM

"The "make it to orbit" option with a Challenger-type burn through doesn't make a lot of sense to me, "

Good point Tom, The main engines were already haveing trouble taking out the torque and the moment is huge

I've got a few pieces of that SRMU failure they burn real good.

Posted by brian d at April 7, 2006 01:29 PM

Wait a minute, this whole argument that the initial SRB mod estimate was only $1 billion or so--who did that come from? who is 'reliable sources'? AFAIK, the original estimate for the CEV mods was assuming 2 things
1. a 4 segment SRB w/ one J2S or J2X and
2. a lighter CEV.

When ESMD said the CEV had to be nearly 20 mT, that mandated a 2-J2 or 1-SSME soln instead; the airstart SSME, while reasonable at first glance, was on the whole a dead-end, which is why it was dropped in favor of the more architecture-friendly J2X.

So it would seem the root cause of the problem here is the excessive weight of the CEV, not a Darleen Dryun style contractorfoolery.

Posted by cuddihy at April 7, 2006 02:10 PM

So it would seem the root cause of the problem here is the excessive weight of the CEV, not a Darleen Dryun style contractorfoolery.

No one said that the root cause was the appearance of the conflict of interest. Nonetheless, there is an appearance of a conflict of interest.

Posted by Rand Simberg at April 7, 2006 02:13 PM

And Tom, I know this will get me listed as a tin foil hat sort in your book, but IIRC, wasn't the CEV originally sized so that it could fit on either of the EELVs, but only upsized after Griffin came on board? At the time a lot of people noticed how it conveniently pushed the size of CEV so high that it could only be launched on the larger version of the Stick, and not at all on either of the EELVs.

~Jon

Posted by Jonathan Goff at April 8, 2006 08:45 PM

My attempts to verify the 3 billion number, or even the 2.2 billion number, have utterly failed. They are usually greeted with laughter and the occaisional "They don't know what they're talking about" followed by colorful metaphors. Wherever these numbers are coming from... they don't seem to be coming from ATK.

So if these numbers are coming out of NASA, then you can rest assured that the EELV would have had similar cost growth.

Posted by Scott Lowther at April 13, 2006 09:01 AM

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