Transterrestrial Musings

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Congress cares abotu ORS, Nobody in DoD does.

Posted by anonymous at March 14, 2007 08:27 AM

After the fiasco that was Shuttle, I'm surprised that *anyone* would be surprised that NASA would "abandon any synergy" with DoD needs. A reusable launcher without the DoD requirements for 1000 mile crossrange and a 65' payload bay might (might) have been less of a boondoggle -- although we'll never know for sure...

Posted by snellenr at March 14, 2007 09:33 AM

Doesn't the military get enough of our tax money as it is without mooching off NASA?

Posted by Brian Swiderski at March 14, 2007 11:15 AM

No one is saying that the military should "mooch off NASA." (Why am I not surprised that you'd erect a straw man? And an anti-military one at that. It's what you do.)

In fact, if anything, we're saying it should be the other way around, if NASA were smart. Mainly, we're saying that the taxpayer would be better served if there was some synergy between the goals of the two entities.

Posted by Rand Simberg at March 14, 2007 11:20 AM

anonymous shows what an idiot he is .

Three Star General Armor certainly cares about ORS and helped to set up the ORS office at Kirtland.

Also, I hear that Orbital Express is having problems.

Posted by Dennis Ray Wingo at March 14, 2007 11:22 AM

A reusable launcher without the DoD requirements for 1000 mile crossrange and a 65' payload bay might (might) have been less of a boondoggle

And it wouldn't have been built. NASA needed the DOD payloads to have made their fantasy shuttle traffic model even vaguely plausible.

Posted by Paul Dietz at March 14, 2007 12:19 PM

"In fact, if anything, we're saying it should be the other way around, if NASA were smart. Mainly, we're saying that the taxpayer would be better served if there was some synergy between the goals of the two entities."

That's certainly reasonable on the surface, but what evidence is there of any "synergies" being likely, rather than simply resulting in the same old drumbeat of capability-limiting compromises? The fact is the two organizations have fundamentally different needs, and even that is probably an understatement.

Unless Congress explicitly changes the primary mission of NASA to colonizing the solar system, they aren't going to focus on seeding space economies, just building Battlestar Galactica to satisfy their risk aversion and make footprints in a few new places. Extremely low flight rate, manned LEO and TLI shots, and as close to zero risk as possible, essentially useless to the military.

The military's interests, however, are far more modest and parochial, and they may have to rely on the development of commercial space interests to really get the efficiencies they're looking for. Much higher flight rate, entirely consisting of satellite or related deliveries, risk not really an issue given the purpose of ORS, and limited to the kinds of orbits you'd expect. And maybe I'm missing something, but it would seem they would prefer very simple, mid-sized launchers that would have zero applicability to NASA's manned operations.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at March 14, 2007 12:29 PM

> NASA is basically ignoring those parts of the VSE that state national
> security as part of the overall plan

The problem goes deeper than that. The original White House vision statement is pretty weak when it comes to national security, which is only mentioned once:

*> The fundamental goal of this vision is to advance U.S. scientific,
*> security, and economic interests through a robust space exploration
*> program. In support of this goal, the United States will:

*> Implement a sustained and affordable human and robotic program to explore
*> the solar system and beyond;
*> Extend human presence across the solar system, starting with a human return to
*> the Moon before the year 2020, in preparation for human exploration of Mars
*> and other destinations;
*> Develop the innovative technologies, knowledge, and infrastructures
*> both to explore and to support decisions about the destinations for human
*> exploration; and
*> Promote international and commercial participation in exploration
*> to further U.S. scientific, security, and economic interests.

Griffin would undoubtedly say he is "advancing US security interests" by sending robots to image Jupiter and Mars, sending astronauts to plant flags on the Moon, and going out on "first dates" with Communist leaders.

I don't believe those are effective ways of advancing US national security, but they are what the Vision says NASA should be doing to advance national security. It's an echo of the old Apollo-era notion that equates national security with prestige and showing the flag, rather than the development of icky weapons and military capabilities.

Posted by Edward Wright at March 14, 2007 02:28 PM

> The military's interests, however, are far more modest and parochial, and they
> may have to rely on the development of commercial space interests to
> really get the efficiencies they're looking for. Much higher flight rate,
> entirely consisting of satellite or related deliveries

The military's interests go far beyond satellites. Recent magazine articles on prompt global strike and small unit insertion reflect that.

> it would seem they would prefer very simple, mid-sized launchers
> that would have zero applicability to NASA's manned operations.

Manned operations do not require huge launchers. NASA astronauts do not weigh any more than the troops the USMC wants to transport.

Posted by Edward Wright at March 14, 2007 02:39 PM

Looks like Delta IVH may be off-line for a while.

Very informative thread at nasaspaceflight about a LOX leak and significant launch pad damage:

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=5996&start=1

Also, deleted photos of cracked concrete that allegedly violate ITAR.

Posted by Bill White at March 14, 2007 08:46 PM

"The military's interests go far beyond satellites. Recent magazine articles on prompt global strike and small unit insertion reflect that."

Yes, but operations like that would involve suborbital point-to-point flights: Spaceplanes or mid-sized launchers, whereas orbit entails much more energy and a much heavier vehicle. Elon Musk had described in an interview why SpaceX doesn't really have any competition precisely along those lines: the surborbital energies other Newspace companies are aiming for are hundreds of times less than what orbit requires, and p2p flights are still nowhere near it. And that would be true even with the lowest tenable orbits.

"Manned operations do not require huge launchers. NASA astronauts do not weigh any more than the troops the USMC wants to transport."

Yes, but orbital vehicles need heavy heat shields, retro rockets, docking, and life support systems capable of sustaining the crew for days at a time. A point-to-point suborbital vehicle needs no airlock, no docking mechanism, minimal shielding, no retro rockets, and active environmental control would be optional. Even on-board controls would be optional if we're talking about capsules rather than spaceplanes.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at March 15, 2007 12:46 AM

> Yes, but operations like that would involve suborbital point-to-point flights:
> Spaceplanes or mid-sized launchers, whereas orbit entails much more energy and
> a much heavier vehicle.

You obviously haven't read the articles. Basing Marines in orbit would require more than suborbital energy.

> Elon Musk had described in an interview why SpaceX doesn't really have
> any competition precisely along those lines: the surborbital energies
> other Newspace companies are aiming for are hundreds of times less
> than what orbit requires

Yes, and the Wright Flyer required hundreds of times less energy than a 747. You don't understand the power of exponential growth.

> "Manned operations do not require huge
> launchers. NASA astronauts do not weigh any
> more than the troops the USMC wants to transport."

> Yes, but orbital vehicles need heavy heat shields, retro rockets, docking,
> and life support systems capable of sustaining the crew for days at a time.

Sorry, but Gemini had all those things, and it did not require a Saturn V-class launcher. And there was nothing stopping Gemini from going to the Moon, except politics.

> A point-to-point suborbital vehicle needs no airlock, no docking mechanism,
> minimal shielding, no retro rockets, and active environmental control would be optional.

Which is irrelevant, since the USMC is looking at both orbital and suborbital options.

Posted by Edward Wright at March 15, 2007 11:54 AM

Basing Marines in orbit?

Soak them in zero gee for how long? Days? Weeks? and then drop them into combat?

Posted by Bill White at March 15, 2007 01:27 PM

> Soak them in zero gee for how long? Days? Weeks?

Bill, have you ever seen "2001"?

Let me guess. You're going to tell me artificial gravity is too risky because it's never been done, and Mike Griffin told you it would be irresponsible to ever try anything that hasn't been done before?

Posted by Edward Wright at March 15, 2007 09:11 PM

"Basing Marines in orbit would require more than suborbital energy."

Yes, but that would be incredibly stupid and wasteful if you can deploy with p2p suborbital flights from ground bases.

"Yes, and the Wright Flyer required hundreds of times less energy than a 747."

And if your purpose is to fly one person a few dozen feet off the ground, the Wright Flyer is vastly superior to a 747.

"You don't understand the power of exponential growth."

I have no reason to believe an exponential curve will apply, at least for several decades. Mining, energy, and other industries that slowly incubate over the coming decades will eventually make that possible, but until that time every bit of progress that's made will have to be fought for.

"Sorry, but Gemini had all those things, and it did not require a Saturn V-class launcher."

Nor could it have been launched on a Redstone.

"Which is irrelevant, since the USMC is looking at both orbital and suborbital options."

There is no orbital option, and no reason to look for one. Suborbital options won't likely become available until civilian carriers begin offering p2p. A Pentagon program to develop the capability would be leapfrogged before it was even committed to paper, and they know that.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at March 15, 2007 09:48 PM

Edward, rotational generated artifical gravity is a terrific idea. Zubrin wants to use it for a Mars mission. However we are currently a long ways of deploying such a station.

Also, rudimentary ASAT capabilities would cause any on-orbit military station to be highly vulnerable. As low cost sub-orbital technologies proliferate, the ability of non-state actor terrorists to acquire ASAT technology will only increase.

A LEO station with a platoon of Marines would create a very high value target (for PR purposes).

Far, far more effective and far, far less expensive to pre-deploy a few hundred Marines at dozens of locations world-wide (with helicopters that can provide fire support) than to seriously consider funding a Starship Troopers scenario for the near or intermediate future.

Posted by Bill White at March 16, 2007 08:02 AM

> rudimentary ASAT capabilities would cause any on-orbit military station
> to be highly vulnerable.

That is the same argument used against every weapons platform. Fighter airplanes would be highly vulnerable to rudimentary SAMs. Aircraft carriers would be highly vulnerable to cruise missiles.

An orbital platform would be defended just as other high-value platforms are defended. This hypothetical "rudimentary ASAT" would not be invulnerable, and if the United States is the first nation to develop low-cost launch we will have the decisive mass advantage in orbit.

> A LEO station with a platoon of Marines would create a very high value
> target (for PR purposes).

By that logic, we should not have Marines anywhere, since they can be attacked anywhere.

> Far, far more effective and far, far less expensive to pre-deploy
> a few hundred Marines at dozens of locations world-wide

Do your financial calculations include everythrowing scores of governments so we can deploy Marines to every location we might need them?

Wouldn't those predeployed Marines still be high value targets (for PR purposes)? Wouldn't they be more vulnerable to terrorist attack in, say, Tunisia, than in space? And what happens in Red China develops weapons that can destroy those Marines and their helicopters from space?

Posted by Edward Wright at March 16, 2007 10:32 AM

Bill: "Far, far more effective and far, far less expensive to pre-deploy a few hundred Marines at dozens of locations world-wide"

Imperial garrisons?

Edward: "And what happens in Red China develops weapons that can destroy those Marines and their helicopters from space?"

Weapons that couldn't hit a multi-billion dollar military space station, which could be obliterated with a bowling ball?

Posted by Brian Swiderski at March 16, 2007 12:41 PM

> Edward: "And what happens in Red China develops weapons that can destroy
> those Marines and their helicopters from space?"

> Weapons that couldn't hit a multi-billion dollar military space
> station, which could be obliterated with a bowling ball?

No, weapons that could easily hit a military space station -- which is why any military space station would have defenses against such weapons.

No one ever said a military space stations would be left undefended. That is an assumption you and Bill made, and a ridiculous assumption at that. The military does not build multibillion dollar weapons platforms and leave them undefended.

The question is not whether your hypothetical "non-state actor terrorists" could build a "rudimentary ASAT." The question is whether your hypothetical terrorist's rudimentary ASAT could get past the very non-rudimentary anti-ASAT systems that would be developed by the US military.

Terrorists are not 10 feet tall. I see no reason to assume they could win a technological weapons race in space.

Posted by Edward Wright at March 16, 2007 04:29 PM

Edward: "No, weapons that could easily hit a military space station -- which is why any military space station would have defenses against such weapons."

Defenses that couldn't also be employed or exceeded by ground installations at much lower fixed costs, much lower marginal costs, much higher reliability, and in far greater numbers? I mean, what are you going to do, put in a giant nuclear-powered laser? A specially programmed phalanx gun that takes orbital mechanics into consideration, can fire in vacuum, and has massive gyro arrays to offset the recoils and torques? Such a base would dwarf the International Space Station just to sustain its own defenses, nevermind whatever else you want it to do.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at March 17, 2007 03:13 AM

> Defenses that couldn't also be employed or exceeded by ground installations at much lower fixed costs,
> much lower marginal costs, much higher reliability, and in far greater numbers?

Yes. Your hypothetical ground installations would still need to reach orbit (or at least orbital altitude) to attack an orbital target. So they would not have "much lower cost" except in some hypothetical world where our enemies have low-cost launch and we do not.

Now, I admit that such a world is possible, if we are stupid enough, but it is not what I am advocating. Nor, I'm sure, is Rand.

> I mean, what are you going to do, put in a giant nuclear-powered laser?

Maybe someday, but lasers are not necessary for your hypothetical rudimentary ASAT.

> A specially programmed phalanx gun that takes orbital mechanics into consideration, can
> fire in vacuum, and has massive gyro arrays to offset the recoils and torques? Such a base
> would dwarf the International Space Station just to sustain its own defenses

I wasn't thinking of guns, either, but since you mention it, such a gun was actually built by the Soviets for a military Salyut space station. Some reports say it was actually tested on Salyut 3. That's still debateable, but there's definitely a flight article (both the station and the gun) sitting in storage over in Russia.

Salyut did not dwarf the International Space Station, so your conclusion is obviously wrong.

The DARPA Space Cruiser was designed to fly esccort* for high-value orbital assets (among other missions). It was under 10,000 pounds, including the pilot. Again, that hardly dwarfs the International Space Station. (*Deliberately misspelled to circumvent Rand's spam filter.)

Of course, I don't see building space stations that dwarf ISS as a bad thing, once launch costs come down.

Posted by Edward Wright at March 17, 2007 01:26 PM

Of course, all of this discussion is rather off target, because DoD already has launchers that are much larger than Redstone (i.e., Delta and Atlas). All NASA really needs to do is buy those.

As Burt Rutan said, "If all you want to do is send a capsule to the Moon, why not do it next Tuesday?"

Posted by Edward Wright at March 17, 2007 01:32 PM

Ed: "such a gun was actually built by the Soviets for a military Salyut space station."

This is the Salyut "space gun":

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/almaz_gun_2.jpg

This is a SMALL phalanx gun:

http://www.montysminiguns.com/smallphalanx.jpg

Any questions?

Ed: "The DARPA Space Cruiser was designed to fly esccort* for high-value orbital assets (among other missions). It was under 10,000 pounds, including the pilot."

Space Cruiser was designed to inspect or sabotage Soviet satellites, not defend US assets. It was also vaporware, which naturally makes it a better technology than anything subjected to testing.

Ed: "Of course, I don't see building space stations that dwarf ISS as a bad thing, once launch costs come down."

Neither do I, but a military station that has to be bigger than ISS just to defend *itself* clearly isn't a very worthwhile investment. Nor do I agree with the underlying concept of weaponizing orbit if we have a choice.

We need to keep space demilitarized as long as possible: Even a war limited to space itself would be disastrous for our ability to function out there, turning near-Earth orbits into a No Man's Land of massive, high-energy debris. Any sort of space travel would be vastly more dangerous and costly for decades after the fact, and (even with low-cost access to orbit) commercial satellites would become impractical given how often they would be destroyed or disabled.

However, I'm all for putting as much civilian and commercial hardware up there as possible, and as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. Orbit, LE + ES Lagrangians, Lunar surface, MO, Phobos + Deimos, Mars surface, Main Belt, Jupiter moons, Jupiter trojans, Saturn Moons, Uranus Moons, Neptune Moons, KBOs, Oort Cloud, maybe even go back and figure something out with Mercury and Venus. What's more, I don't see any reason we have to do this sequentially--we can work on all of it at the same time.

Ed: "All NASA really needs to do is buy those."

The question of ULA vs. Stick is a separate debate from ORS vs. Stick. Atlas V and Delta-IVH will never be ORS launchers, no matter what flight rates they achieve.

Ed: "As Burt Rutan said, "If all you want to do is send a capsule to the Moon, why not do it next Tuesday?"

Because that isn't all NASA wants to do. In their bumbling, Mr. Magoo bureaucratic way, they are trying to expand capabilities and create a scaleable Lunar exploration architecture. Unfortunately, they are institutionally unprepared to understand how to approach it, and can't make radical departures given all the interests they have to please to keep their funding.

Four people on the Moon rather two looks like progress to NASA, even if the money spent getting them there could have been used to get six people there on two 3-person missions. They see things in the rigid, mechanistic terms of perfectionist engineers, not in the dynamic terms of people looking to settle a frontier.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at March 18, 2007 02:53 PM

> This is a SMALL phalanx gun:

> http://www.montysminiguns.com/smallphalanx.jpg

> Any questions?

No questions, Brian. Although I do wonder why you think the gun in that picture weighs more than the International Space Station.

> Space Cruiser was designed to inspect or sabotage Soviet satellites,
> not defend US assets.

It was designed to do both. Read the project reports.

> We need to keep space demilitarized as long as possible

You are 60 years too late. The Nazis started using space to deliver weapons in 1994.

> Even a war limited to space itself would be disastrous for our ability
> to function out there, turning near-Earth orbits into a No Man's Land
> of massive, high-energy debris.

Not if we develop the capability to remove debris.

Besides, I don't agree with your assumption that military weakness is the way to avoid war.

> In their bumbling, Mr. Magoo bureaucratic way, they are trying to expand
> capabilities and create a scaleable Lunar exploration architecture.

There is nothing scalable about the ESAS architecture.

Posted by Edward Wright at March 19, 2007 12:46 AM

Ed: "Although I do wonder why you think the gun in that picture weighs more than the International Space Station."

Forgetting all other requirements, you'd need to absorb the momentum of a charging rhinoceros every *minute* to fire that gun in space, and do it robustly enough that multiple gyro failures wouldn't send the entire station careening at fatal accelerations. Then it would have to repeatedly survive passing through the debris field of whatever it had just destroyed until debris orbits had spread the wreckage into rings.

All the while, it would have to support the occupants--whom I imagine would number considerably more than 7, even in a light reaction force--provide power for life support, their equipment, detection and targeting, propulsion to maintain orbit or maneuver, all of which either make up the majority of ISS mass or are in addition to it.

Basically, the station would have to be an orbital Yamamoto just to have 20 soldiers in space and defend itself against bowling balls thrown out the hatch of a Shenzhou.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at March 20, 2007 04:04 AM

Ed: "It was designed to do both."

Yet it did neither. There's a gremlin that lives at 100km, and it eats simple plans for breakfast.

Ed: "The Nazis started using space to deliver weapons in 1994."

Ground-launched ballistic missiles are not space weapons, any more than a bullet fired into the ocean is a torpedo.

Ed: "Not if we develop the capability to remove debris."

We've been this close () to losing our toehold in the final frontier for three decades, and only now the slightest glimmers of hope have crested the horizon in Virgin Galactic, SpaceX, and Bigelow. Hope, pray, and beg all the gods of mankind past, present, and future that absolutely nothing more stands in their way than already does.

Ed: "Besides, I don't agree with your assumption that military weakness is the way to avoid war."

Nor do I agree with your assumption that the size, expense, and ostentation of military assets constitutes "strength." Ask Darius.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at March 20, 2007 04:58 AM

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