I'll probably have some commentary on this when I get more time (i.e., when relatives aren't visiting for the weekend), but Jon Goff has an interesting post on some candid comments by Doug Stanley on ESAS. I'm sure that Doug is sincere in his beliefs that a) Mars is more important than the moon and b) ESAS is the best way under the political circumstances to make it happen. But I think he's wrong on both counts, and more importantly it is not his place (or even Mike Griffin's) to make policy. If he has problems with VSE as stated, and wants to do a touch and go on the moon (ignoring the president's directive), he should work to get the policy changed, rather than pervert the architecture in his preferred direction without such a debate.

[Update on Monday morning]

More interactions with Dr. Stanley, from Keith Cowing.

Congress was briefed on ESAS and an authorization bill was subsequently passed. That confers substantial legitimacy on the program.

It confers no legitimacy on the agenda behind it.

Unfortunately, neither Congress or the White House seem much inclined to see the vision through at this point. Congress is happy as long as the jobs stay in place, and the White House has too much on its plate to spend much time managing something as unimportant as space policy. They laid out a vision, they hired an administrator, and they don't want to be bothered now, since there's no electoral consequences, either way.

I asked the question to Doug and was frankly surprised at the answers that he gave. I don't think that he realizes the ramifications of what he said on that site.

Dennis

The entire thread is worth reading. On page one Dr. Stanley makes this comment:

There is plenty of oxygen and hydrogen in the lunar regolith that can be extracted. There could be water ice in Shackleton or other permanently shadowed craters. These could of course be used for propellants, or (more easily) for life support and power. At the flight rate we are talking about any time in the near future propellant ISRU is not really economically viable, but it is a Mars-forward technology of great interest to NASA...

On the other hand, the Chris Bergin started it off with this:

This Study concluded with the decision to keep Hypergols on the Service Module, put Methane - while studying LH2 - on the LSAM ascent stage - and keep LH2 on the LSAM descent stage.

and that makes the lander ISRU compatible.

And Dr. Stanley also wrote:

Mike has said, and I agree, that if a commercial system does come around that can meet NASA's requirements, NASA will "stand down" in favor of it. NASA is investing $500M in COTS already, and it may yield no fruit...we shall see. The EELV's are far from a "commercial" system. We did an extensive analysis, discussed on an earlier thread and documented during ESAS that showed there was no net cost advantage to NASA in using an EELV-based CLV and CaLV architecture. Options with more than 3 launches looked lousy from a reliability/safety perspective. This was covered in an earlier thread of Q&A and I don't want to rehash it here, because it seems to be a religious thing among some on this site...But I sincerely hope Bigelow, Musk, you and others succeed, and NASA can rely on you (and propellant depots) for future human exploration, but, based on past performance, I am skeptical, and agree with Mike that it would be irresponsible to bet the whole program on it happening. Rather, we will try to encourage it (e.g., COTS) and stand down if it does...Ad Astra

The thread at NASASpaceflight got moved/frozen "due to a major breach of site rules".

Meanwhile Mr Cowing is whining because Dr Stanley disagreed with some of his NASAWatch postings.

Since the move/freeze happened shortly after Stanley stated that NASAWatch got some things wrong is there anyone who wants to bet that there is not a link between the two?

Bill,
The whole "we'll stand down as commercial industry stands up" line sounds great in theory...but do you really think that they'll shut down the Ares I line if LM had a better vehicle? Or a way with on-orbit refueling to do the job? Look how hard canceling the shuttle has been. Look how politically difficult the process is. How easy do you think it's going to be to actually "stand down" Ares I or Ares V, or EDS once they get into existance? It's hard enough trying to get change to happen now, before they are even close to existing.

There'll always be some excuse found for keeping the capability. And keeping the capability implies over 1/6th of the NASA exploration budget every year from now till the thing is finally ended, even if they don't fly it.

The rest of Doug's statements about on-orbit propellant transfer I thought were very good. The fact that the EDS/LSAM descent stage are only being designed for a 15 day window before they start cutting into operating margins is kind of scary. They might be able to go as long as 30-60 days before the mission has to be completely scrubbed (at the cost of several billion dollars worth of launch costs and hardware and mission planning), but there's a really non-zero chance that some snag or delay could end up costing a mission or two. If you had on-orbit cryogenic propellant transfer, that issue would go away....

But so would the justification for the current architecture. As I've already pointed out, with drylaunch, you can use EELVs and still keep the number of mission-critical launches and dockings down to the same level as ESAS. Individual propellant transfer flights are nowhere near as critical. It's ironic that he seems to not see the potential (or the critical flaws in their analysis methodology).

~Jon

Cecil,
The "breach of site rules" bit has me scratching my head, since I had received permission to blog about this...but maybe it was something someone else did. I'm sure we'll find out one way or another.

~Jon

Jon -

One "weakness" of Ares I is also its strength from the private sector's point of view and that is the finite number of RSRM segments. After each launch those segments are fished out of the Atlantic and sent to Utah for refurbishment. As I recall, Thiokol has already stopped making new segments and to re-tool that production line would be very expensive.

A limited supply of RSRM segments puts an upper limit on Ares I and Ares V launches and assures that Ares I cannot compete with a high volume NewSpace Earth-to-LEO launch capability.

Yes, I believe Ares I would "stand down" if Musk's efforts succeed for the simple reason that Griffin desires those 5 segment SRBs for use with Ares V in preference to using them for ISS taxi missions. If COTS can take over ISS re-supply, that would free up both money and those RSRM segments for doing heavy lift launches.

Sorry, Jon, a further response:

The current service module is proposed to use hypergols -- that is just screaming out to be replaced.

Ares V? That gets into the whole heavy lift debate. Griffin is a HLV guy and I doubt anyone can knock him off that position.

But note that Musk will not be building true heavy lift any time soon and if Ares I is stood down in preference to NewSpace light/medium lift (because Griffin craves those RSRM segments for a Mars mission) the NASA launches will not compete with any product NewSpace has to offer.

If NASA uses EELV and EELV derived HLV then Congress has incentive to use smaller Atlas or Delta for ISS taxi missions to help hold down the HLV costs. That closes the COTS market niche to innovative players.

Cecil,
In follow up, your initial guess was right. The little scrape between Doug and Keith was what got things temporarily locked up. Chris said he's trying to get it back up as quick as he can.

~Jon

Bill

Recent posts by NASA teams indicate that LOX/Methane is back into the baseline as they need the performance, at least for the LSAM ascent stage.

Dennis

My understanding is that the current plan is this:

This Study concluded with the decision to keep Hypergols on the Service Module, put Methane - while studying LH2 - on the LSAM ascent stage - and keep LH2 on the LSAM descent stage.

Dr. Stanley had a detailed explanation for hypergols on the service module, an explanation that is now frozen (hopefully temporarily).

> Mike has said, and I agree, that if a commercial system does come
> around that can meet NASA's requirements, NASA will "stand down" in favor of it.

Mr. White, can you tell us the difference between a promise and a contract? Can you explain why you think Dr. Griffin's promises are binding on the current administration, let alone a future administration that he will not even be part of?

Would you advise a client to invest the billions of dollars necessary to develop a vehicle large enough to meet NASA's "requirements" (launching the CEV and LSAM), a vehicle so large it has no commercial applications, based on nothing more than promises from a NASA administrator? Promises similar to those that have been made and broken by numerous administrators in the past? Could you defend a client against the breech of such promises in court or do you expect a client to simply gamble that NASA will decide to keep Dr. Griffin's promises?

Please enlighten us with your erudition.

Professor -

I would suggest that is about all you are going to get from our current Congress. Long term, the private sector should not rely upon NASA contracts to close their business case.

Bigelow intends to make money whether or not NASA buys a single product from them.

= = =

That said, I do believe the Direct concept

http://www.directlauncher.com/

does need to be considered seriously as an alternative to ESAS.

> I would suggest that is about all you are going to get from our
> current Congress. Long term, the private sector should not rely
> upon NASA contracts to close their business case.

Suggestions are not evidence, Mr. White. All you actually know is that Congress approved exactly what NASA asked for. That does not support your suggestion that Congress would not approve something else, if NASA asked for something else.

> That said, I do believe the Direct concept does need to be considered
> seriously as an alternative to ESAS.

Then, you do not believe your claim that ESAS is the only alternative Congress would accept?

In light of that admirable admission, why does Congress need to seriously consider only the alternatives that you advocate, Mr. White?

You want the private sector to support the near term development of expensive government launch vehicles, in exchange for the vague promise that those vehicles will "stand down" and NASA will buy private launches at some unspecified date in the future. Maybe fifty years from now, maybe a hundred, maybe never.

Do you think that is an equitable deal, Mr. White? If the terms were reversed, do you think NASA would be willing to start buying private launches in the near term, in exchange for a vague promise that the private sector would "stand down" and support the development of new NASA launch vehicles at some unspecified future date? A date that private sector spokesmen readily admit may never come?

If the answer is yes, why do you not advocate that Congress seriously consider the alternative of buying private launches in the near term?

If the answer is no, why do you think the private sector should leap at terms that the other side would never accept?

Do the math....the ARES V has always been designed to carry over 200 Metric tons to LEO for Mars missions. ARES V can "only" take 125 metric tons to LEO right now, because they are currently assuming a 6-meter diameter upper-stage with only 1 J-2X engine inside of that massive 10-meter fairing. It is an easy and inexpensive ARES V upgrade to over 200 Metric to LEO, after they spend all the money on new infrastructure, tooling, 5-segment boosters, and J-2X engines. NASA will only have to widen the upper stage and add additional J-2X engines to get performance over 200 tonnes.

If the ARES V rocket has 5 RS-68 engines upgraded with regen nozzles, higher Isp, and higher thrust (of 800,000 lbs each and 4 Million lbs thrust total) and 2, 5-segment solid rocket motors of 3.7 Million lbs thrust each, then I calculate that the ARES V starts with 11.4 Million pounds of thrust on the ground. The diameter of the ARES V is 10 meters, so it is a waste to use less than 2 J-2X engines on a much larger upper-stage. Conclusion: The ARES V is designed to carry over 200 Metric Tons to LEO, and this means that it has always been designed to the Mars requirement.