NASA Spaceflight has an interesting report on the status of the study.
It sounds about right to me. Retire Atlantis and make it a parts queen or a launch-on-need vehicle, and fly the other two vehicles once each per year. But at that low a flight rate, I wonder if the processing teams lose their "edge" and start to screw up? There's an optimal flight rate for both cost and safety. Too fast and you make mistakes because of the rush, but too slow, and you get out of practice. And of course each flight would cost over two billion bucks, assuming that it costs four billion a year to keep the program going.
And as noted numerous times in the past, this doesn't solve the problem of leaving US crew on the station. They still need a lifeboat of some sort. They discuss this as a "COTS-D Minus":
...several companies have noted the ability to make available a lifeboat vehicle from 2012 (names and details currently embargoed due to ongoing discussions).
Clearly, one of those companies has to be SpaceX.
But this idea seems to never die:
'There is some interest now in developing this (RCO) into a full mission capability, thus enabling unmanned shuttles to launch, dock to ISS, undock and land in 2011 and beyond.'
'While that's an interesting idea and would be a fun development project, we are working to understand the level of effort the program desires for this study.'
It's not an "interesting idea." It's a monumentally dumb idea. There is little point in flying Shuttle without crew. The ability to fly crew is its primary feature. It's far too expensive to operate to act as a cargo vehicle. If the point of the idea is to not risk crew, then we have no business in space.
And as noted numerous times in the past, this doesn't solve the problem of leaving US crew on the station. They still need a lifeboat of some sort. They discuss this as a "COTS-D Minus":
There's an inherent contradiction here. If NASA admits that private industry can build a manned capsule, it undermines the case for continueing to fly the Shuttle. Not to mention building Orion.
So, I believe NASA will find some reason to reject that option. The Shuttle Forever crowd and the Back to the Moon crowd will both oppose it.
An alternative might be to buy a Bigelow module stuffed with six months worth of supplies that can be separated from the station in an emergency. That would threaten fewer rice bowls.
I miss Gemini, All a lifeboat needs to do is deorbit and not crack up in the landing. Why could 1965 America do what 2008 America cannot? Reminds me of the CIA estimates on foreign nuclear weapons potential. That 1940s USA could invent the Bomb in under five years would be declared impossible by Langley's analysts today.
As interesting as it would be to use a Bigelow transhab as a lifeboat, the lifeboat analogy has it's problems. Bigelow is a liferaft, not a lifeboat.
A liferaft is designed to be stable, be rapidly deployed, and have as many people stuffed on it as that amount of inflated plastic can possibly displace. The result is a safe vessle that isn't going anywhere. A lifeboat will actually get somewhere.
A transhab isn't going anywhere, either. If for some reason the shuttles were grounded, or worse, one was lost, or a pad was destroyed while the other was already being modified for Ares, there would be a very delay on getting a crew to the liferaft. If we are still dependant on the shuttle and the worst of all situations arises, then we could be in the ludicrous situation of supplying the liferaft with resupply COTS cargo missions while someone figures out how to get the crew back long past the 6 month mark.
There's no reason to keep a crew stranded in orbit in a secondary station while their main habitat is, for whatever reason, unlivable. Likewise it would do nothing for situations where a crew member is injured or ill and needs to be sent to earth immediately. X-38 would have answered that call.
If we're going to have to use the shuttles to close the gap we might as well use them to get a lifeboat to the station, whether it is X-38, COTS vehicle, ARD, or BigGemini derived.
My take has always been that the ISS isn't enough in itself to justify continuing to fly the Space Shuttle, especially in its current state (with only three orbiters active). NASA's share of maintenance alone on the ISS is somewhere above a billion dollars as it is. Adding in the Shuttle will bump that up to somewhere around $4 billion a year. In 2011, when the ISS is more or less complete, what will go on that will justify $4 billion a year in cost? Orbital assembly and construction will cease. I see that as the primary value of the station over its lifetime and it ends in 2011.
We have microgravity research. I don't see the value of that going beyond around a few hundred million dollars a year. It like most basic research just isn't that valuable. To elaborate on that outrageous claim, I see basic science research as a combination of two types of value. There's the lottery ticket part. That is, the small amount of research that results in big jumps in scientific knowledge. A good example is the discovery of the Van Allen belts. The second benefit is that it keeps the current generation of educators sharp. I don't see the lottery tickets in microgravity research aside from one possible exception. If the ESA does some low gravity experiments in their centrifuges (I don't know if their equipment can do low acceleration experiments or not), then that's a good sized lottery ticket. I see as a myth the idea that one cannot distinguish between a lottery ticket and the usual incremental research. Most of the research just doesn't have a lot of upside to it.
The AMS (Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer) looks interesting, if it flies (which I suspect it probably will). That's some good value there.
The ISS could be a useful testbed for space-based technology. I'm not seeing a lot of progress here though. NASA seems quite happy testing one prototype at a time. There's no side-by-side testing of multiple life support technologies, for example. Only one NASA spacesuit. That sort of thing.
Private industry just isn't interested in spending a lot of money just to play in microgravity. My take NASA should eliminate almost all costs and auction the slots off. That is, free rent, free ride up and down (or at least the first 50 kg are free, let's say), a bit of free astronaut time, and maybe even ease up on the requirements that the experiment has to satisfy in order to get on the ISS. If the auction only goes for pennies on the dollar, well that just reflects the actual value of the ISS for this purpose.
Finally, there's all the bogus intangibles like international cooperation and feelgood for US students. You can get that on a space station for a lot less than $4 billion a year. That's my take.
And let us not forget that all that money spent on the Shuttle could be used to put manned capsules on EELVs and close the gap. If it came to a choice between delaying manned spaceflight for another five years while we support the ISS and the Shuttle (and that might very well be the choice here), I'd rather splash the ISS and take chances on a new station down the road.
Imagine what 4 companies like SpaceX could do with a billion dollars a year.
A transhab isn't going anywhere, either. If for some reason the shuttles were grounded, or worse, one was lost, or a pad was destroyed while the other was already being modified for Ares, there would be a very delay on getting a crew to the liferaft. If we are still dependant on the shuttle
Are you assuming a fire would simultaneously destroy the Soyuz pads, too? Or that the US wouldn't be willing to buy Soyuz flights even in an emergency? How much are we willing to cut our face just to spite Putin?
That desire for self-defacing is not universal, even among politicians. Even KSC's Congressional delegation is divided. Dave Weldon is calling for an end to Soyuz purchases while Senator Nelson is calling for an extension.
There's no reason to keep a crew stranded in orbit in a secondary station while their main habitat is, for whatever reason, unlivable. Likewise it would do nothing for situations where a crew member is injured or ill and needs to be sent to earth immediately. X-38 would have answered that call.
If there's no reason to keep people in orbit on a secondary (cheaper) space station, then there's no reason to keep them on ISS, either.
The paradigm you're arguing is very limiting. NASA will have to change that paradigm if they ever want to send astronauts to Mars or an asteroid or even establish a base on the Moon. It simply will not be practical to have an immediate evacuation back to Earth in case of an emergency.
As for X-38 and medical evacuation, that would have meant evacuating the entire space station if one crewman had a medical emergency. Think about that for a moment. Do we evacuate an aircraft carrier because one person has a heart attack and has to be evacuated? Or an arctic research station? Or even a cruise ship? Of course not.
The fact that NASA would seriously propose a vehicle that required evacuating the entire ISS if one crewman got ill is simply another demonstration that ISS is not doing anything important.
The ability to fly crew is its primary feature. It's far too expensive to operate to act as a cargo vehicle. If the point of the idea is to not risk crew, then we have no business in space.
A modest alternative to the Remote Controlled Orbiter:
If NASA doesn't want to risk any of their employees, why not allow a private company to operate the Shuttle? A private operator would have no trouble finding qualified ex-NASA pilot astronauts to fly it. They could offer each pilot a million dollars per flight, then sell the remaining five seats to "Dennis Titos" for $5-10 million each. NASA could continue to pay the maintenance costs and run mission control, and the Shuttle could continue to haul whatever valuable cargo the RCO is supposed to haul.
Yeah, it's a bad deal from the taxpayer's point of view but not quite as bad as the RCO.
Edward: Why not just privatize the whole spaceflight operation while we're at it? I think that'd simplify logistics immensely for the buyer, which is probably a good thing. Not to mention that it'd spur development of enhanced efficiencies at *every* stage of running the Shuttle, not just Orbiter turnaround (again, a good thing). At the risk of invoking sci-fi, there's a lot going for the "AresSpace option" if we ever decide we're sick of tying national politics and spaceflight together. And as an added bonus, privatization would help ensure an interest on the buyer's part to make whatever replaces the Shuttle to be truly "Shuttle-derived" as opposed to the mess that is the real-life Ares.
"Imagine what 4 companies like SpaceX could do with a billion dollars a year."
Thats easy: they would spend it. As to what they would accomplish, thats a different matter.
By spending billion dollars a year, you will get expensive spaceflight by definition. Simply throwing more money at the problem ( in this case, achieving affordable spaceflight ) only rarely solves the problem.
Ask Armadillo for instance what would they do if their available budget was 100x larger. I doubt that they would do many things very differently.
Just a shot in the dark but how about the SpaceX Dragon capsule? Last I hear SpaceX was much farther along with the Dragon capsule than they were with the Falcon 9. Could you bring one up in the Shuttle payload bay and leave it attached to the station? How long could a Dragon sit on orbit? It's suppose to hold up to 7 passengers.
Last I hear SpaceX was much farther along with the Dragon capsule than they were with the Falcon 9
I'm sure they are. SpaceX was working on the Dragon design long before they announced it publicly. It was SpaceX that went to Sean O'Keefe and sold him on the idea of replacing the Shuttle with capsules and ELVs so NASA could go to the Moon, Mars, and Beyond. Dragon was already being designed, so SpaceX naively assumed that NASA would give them the contract to build it. COTS was merely a consolation prize.
You make a good point Kert, so how about 40 x $100m x-prizes? Most will go unclaimed at first, but when they day comes that most all are being claimed... WOW!!!