While NASA still waits for the final approval from the White House of its revised exploration architecture (not expected before the middle of the month at the earliest), the agency is making some changes in how it manages its exploration activities. Space News reported late yesterday [subscription required] that NASA is decentralizing the management of the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD) to some degree, transferring control of specific programs to field centers. JSC will get control of the CEV program while Marshall will manage development of the proposed CEV and heavy-lift launch vehicles. ESMD will contract from six separate divisions to two, Constellations Systems (CEV, launch vehicles, ISS crew and cargo services) and Advanced Capabilities (research and technology programs, including ISS, lunar robotic missions, and Prometheus).
SpaceRef · About Us · Advertising · Contact Us · Comments Thursday, September 8, 2005
…
NASA Exploration Systems Architecture Study Overview Charts
Editor’s note: These charts were part of a series of internal presentations made at NASA during June 2005 on the progress of the Exploration Systems Architecture Study.
( Also credit nasawatch.com here. )
Under “Technical Groundrules and Assumptions”:
* No more than 4 launches to accomplish a single human lunar mission
* Does not include infrastructure launches/supporting logistics once established
( Recall our discussion about how many EELV launches would be needed to accomplish a lunar expedition? )
Under “ESAS Intitial Reference Architecture”:
* ISS Launch Vehicle: 5 Segment Single RSRB with 4 RL-85 Upper Stage
And
* Lunar Launch Vehicle: In-line ET Diameter Core with four SSME’s plus two 5-Segment SRBs
David Davenport asks, is this “5 Segment Single RSRB with 4 RL-85 Upper Stage” off-the-shelf or Shuttle-derived? Not very.
Seems like what the Exploration Systems Architecture people are asking for are two new launch missiles, both smaller than a very heavy lifter.
ESAS also wants land recovery of a space capsule that may weigh thirty (30) thousand pounds mass. Could be a challenge to soften the landing impact of that thing.
I don’t like this proposed Exploration Systems Architecture. Those two new launch missiles, which are neither off-the-shelf nor an advance in the state of the art — there goes a lot of money to develop those two. And the very heavy launch system, the big missile, seems to be out of the picture.
Furthermore, I don’t like this big, elaborate space capsule. I suspect that it will have retractable landing gear, or at least retractable feet, and a lot of other complications. This crew vehicle design may lose one of the primary virtues of an Apollo type of capsule — simplicity.
Let’s go way, way, back to the year 2003:
Orbital Space Plane: Back to Apollo?
by Jeff Foust
Monday, May 5, 2003
Beyond the general shape of the capsule, however, the report reveals that little else from the Apollo CM would be retained. …
The spacecraft will also require the means to deorbit. The study proposes developing a separate deorbit propulsion module for the CRV that would be based on Apollo Service Module’s (SM) engine or the propulsion system Aerojet developed for the cancelled X-38 CRV prototype. …
A complicating factor in choosing reentry sites is the CRV’s deorbit propulsion module, which would also reenter to the west of the CRV itself….
The report also looked at land recovery options, ranging from air bags to parafoils to Soyuz-type retrorockets, but also concluded that any landing sites would have to be on islands or western portions of landmasses because of the propulsion module reentry. ( Huh? KSC ain’t on the western portion of a landmass. –DD) It’s likely that capsule reentry of any kind will be closely studied after this weekend’s Soyuz TMA-1 landing, where an unspecified problem caused the capsule to land nearly 500 kilometers short of its landing site, delaying recovery of the crew by several hours.
In the end, the report makes it clear that an “Apollo-derived” CRV or CTV will place far more of an emphasis on “derived” than on “Apollo”. …
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/19/1
I just can’t resist piling it on today. NASA’big plans have a demonstrated history of changing, as shown below. I think — and hope — that the proposed two new-but-sort-of-old launch missiles, neither of them a very heavy lifter, have about as much chance of coming to fruition as the OSP atop an EELV.
NASA to Accelerate Orbital Space Plane Schedule
By Lon Rains
Space News Staff Writer
posted: 01:00 pm ET
15 July 2003
DAYTON, Ohio — NASA Administrator Sean OKeefe has instructed the agency to accelerate development of the Orbital Space Plane and to have a vehicle ready to send to the international space station by 2008 to serve as a crew rescue vehicle. ….
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/osp_okeefe_030715.html
The OSP was The Plan just 26 months ago.
It is tedious to see so cutting and pasting in the comments section, when a hyperlink would do just as well. If you want an active hyperlink in your comment, just use this syntax:
<a href=”http://space.com/”>active hyperlink</a>
The preview will show you if it works.
It could be a giant leap for space policy if our benevolent host, Jeff, encouraged this practice.
What the hell is an RL-85?
David: “Seems like what the Exploration Systems Architecture people are asking for are two new launch missiles, both smaller than a very heavy lifter.”
Which, with the eventual HLV, makes three new vehicles, plus the two large EELVs that we will maintain anyway. How in hell is this country going to get the money to maintain five large launch vehicles? Or, if we eliminate one of the EELVs, four?
I’ve been catching up on my reading and there is an article in the 20th June AvWeek about Lockheed Martin’s plan to incrementally upgrade the Atlas-V to greater than Saturn-V performance that everyone should read. (Morphing Rockets, William B. Scott, pp 62-63.) Key innovations include changing only one element of the vehicle at a time to make first-launch success more likely (something LM has been very good at lately), and all human missions are on a single stack vehicle, avoiding the complications of side-mounted boosters. The latter are used only for cargo. Unfortunately, there does not seem to have been any thought of engine-out capability — but the Russian-designed engines have proven very reliable and Mr. Griffin’s SRB certainly does not have engine-out capability.
I especially like the ending quote from LM’s director of advanced programs and strategic development George F. Sowers, “Is this an exploration program, or a technology program? . . . If you want an exploration program, don’t put your risk in the first step. Make the launch part as low-risk as possible and go for the end result. Let’s get back to the Moon and [on] to Mars.” You’d expect him to say this, but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong and I couldn’t put it better myself.
For many reasons I prefer the Delta-IV, but LM is clearly doing some good thinking.
I am getting more and more disillusioned with Mr. Griffin. He may be a good engineer, but his politics are buried in the sand (or in the clouds?). We’ve been down this path before and it has always — one-hundred percent since Apollo — led to discontinued programs and no vision.
Maybe I’m just depressed today, but my hope for all this is rapidly dissipating. Maybe I’ll go read some more about the upcoming Chinese mission. . . .
— Donald
Thanks for the link syntax, Greg. I’d been wondering how to do that.
— Donald
One of the things that bothers me about the shuttle-c type of derivation NASA is proposing is how they’ve neglected the aerodynamics. If they buy an axi-symmetric crew vehicle to sit on top of the cargo/engine module, the tip of the cone will extend in front of the shock wave. This will produce a huge amount of drag and other nastiness shortly after it goes supersonic. The follow on options with the 5 segment SRBs will have an even worse problem because the tip of the longer SRBs will extend in front of the shock wave sooner than the CEV.
It is no-brainer stuff like this that seriously detracts from the credibility of their proposals. How can they be so ignorant of aerodynamics? I guess they might just as well get rid of Langley, they obviously aren’t big contributors now.
Did I miss something, I thought crew was not going to fly on a side mounted Shuttle-derived. It looks like an escape towers in the artist concept which I believe were done before the official separation of crew and cargo. Those were only conceptual pictures demonstrating the flexibility of a Shuttle-derived system.
I think Safe, Simple and Cheap should be motto adopted for the new CEV. Keeping it simple can reduce cost to make it safe. It would seem to me that the cost of the Saturn V power should be much cheaper with the current technology than the original Saturn V.
Has NASA released or will they release the cost analyst for heavy lift vs. medium lift?
Whether that’s a CEV up there or not, it is the axi-symmetric shape that screws up the aerodynamics. You certainly don’t want to encourage flow into that area between the orbiter and SRBs. In fact, a little aero tailoring of the orbiter itself and the modification of a couple of angles would go a long way to improving the aerodynamics over the current shuttle configuration. On the other hand, a few bad aero decisions could severely limit the effectiveness of the extra segment on the SRBs. I would think they’d be doing those studies now, instead of waiting until hardware is under contract. As we’ve seen with the foam shedding problem, NASA’s aero capability isn’t that hot.
Dfens, so what would be the aerodynamic constraints on launching on an EELV heavy? Much as I like the idea for political and economic reasons, it seems intuitive to me that the already complecated issue of having three side-mounted boosters would be further complicated by a capsule sticking into the slipstream?
What if the capsule were more-or-less the same shape as the current faring, or inside the faring?
— Donald
The aerodynamics isn’t as big a deal with a Titan or Delta configuration because they don’t have such a huge cross sectional area. Having 3 boosters with a large diameter payload fairing or whatever doesn’t increase the cross section very much and everything is clearly behind the shock wave. Of course, there is a huge impact structurally to adding that third booster.
The shuttle-c layout works ok if you tip the nose of the orbiter toward the tank like a shuttle orbiter fuselage. When they start adding segments to those boosters they really need to add them to the bottom instead of the top. That would mean a substantial change to the launch pad to deal with the new location of the booster nozzles and it changes their environment in flight because they’d be exposed to more stuff coming out of the main engines. It would also have a bigger impact on the overall vehicle dynamics.
I never liked the idea of using hydrogen as the main stage fuel. It has a great impulse, but most, and probably more than all of it is eaten up by the additional structure required to hold the stuff. The shuttle main tank is so fat to optimize weight, but then you have the drag to deal with. It’s energy density is low, even in a liquid state, and it’s hell to deal with as a liquid. It’s boiling point is 20 K.
Reading your argument above reconfirms me in my opinion that Mr. Okeef’s original VSE plan was the correct one.
Keep the human capsule less than twenty tons, and technologically and aerodynamically simple (I thought we had learned the lesson of overly-complex human spacecraft trying to be all things to all people). That way, it can be launched on any medium-class launch vehicle — the EELVs, Ariane, possibly SRB, the SpaceX vehicle Cecil linked, or any other in its class. If your mission requires more than twenty tones, off-load it to a separate vehicle, launch it separately, and dock in LEO. This gives you maximum flexibility, maximum competition, increases launch reliability, and probably lowers costs, possibly dramatically.
In addition to maximum flexibility, this replicates or replaces much of the Shuttle capability with almost no new launch vehicle development. It allows you to send human crews to geostationary orbit, deep space NGST-type orbits, possibly Earth-approaching asteroids, and the lunar surface before you _have_ to develop another launch vehicle. While all this is already underway, you can be developing a clean-sheet HLV, possibly with private money, at your leasure.
I _still_ think this is the most politically, economically, and durable plan, since it gets you results in the very near future and only delays heavy payloads to Earth’s moon by a few years. Since you’re developing only one major project at a time, or at most two, you can keep year-on-year costs low. You’ve always got somebody doing something in deep space, so you’ve always got something to point to. Since you’re increasing utilization of common launch vehicles, you can lower medium-class launch costs without greatly cutting into the science budgets and keep scientists happy. Since incremental costs are relatively low, you can fly a lot of missions, not only looking busy but really getting somewhere.
It’s the cheapest way to go, so in today’s political and economic environment (for better or worse, largely created by the current Administration) it’s the only way to go.
— Donald
Or, to put my argument a different way, the mistake I think Griffin is making is to do what NASA always does: figure out what each element of a safe plan to establish a lunar base and develop commercial supply will cost, add them up, present the total to the President and Congress — or cut the estimate until you can pretend that it will fit and fix the financial disaster later. That will not wash in today’s political and economic environment.
Griffin needs to do what O’Keef did (and he’ll probably get much the same result): Take the total amount of money available (circa half NASA’s current buget), figure out what minimum effort is required to make good progress toward your goal, then somehow stuff that into the budget available. The reality is, you’ll be doing one project at a time, and everything else has to use current technology.
If Griffin can make Shuttle-derived HLV, CEV, new SRB, closing out Shuttle, commercial supply of the Station, and everything else fit in to circa $8 or 9 billion, more power to him. Otherwise, he has to make some hard choices. As I argued before, HLV and Shuttle are the things you can take out without delaying your initial goals of lunar base and commercial supply; take out anything else and at best you delay your initial goals.
Politically, it’s not going the happen any other way.
— Donald
I think the shuttle-c concept could work. I don’t think NASA is currently showing the expertese required to implement it. Since a single contractor would probably be responsible for the cargo orbiter, they would probably do the analysis required to shape the vehicle correctly. Aerodynamic design is a lost art in the contractor arena too (thanks to the death of the matrix organization), but they still have some basic capability. NASA can probably make the first couple of steps in their evolved vehicle program work, but the rest of them are, in my opinion, not worth chasing. They should take a clean sheet approch instead.
Cecil, under another topic has found an article on NASA’s test of a 5 segment booster. If indeed the pressure containment loads are the limiting factor on that design (speculation on my part), the 5 segment crew launch vehicle makes pretty good sense to me, assuming our current operational experience base has caused their reliability to goup from what recent experience has shown.
On the subject of the aerodynamics, shock waves etc., I wouldn’t take those graphics as being final designs but only generalized graphical representations of possible designs.
If I had a dime for every time I’d heard that… If they can’t get the big stuff right, like the placement of the SRBs, or the nose cone on the cargo orbiter, why should I trust them with the details? It certainly won’t be because they have such a good track record.
“If they can’t get the big stuff right”
That’s not “the big stuff”, it’s only a graphic.
That’s a pretty sad way of looking at things, and unfortunately typical of the way people think today. It’s just a matter of whether the concept works or not. No big deal. If it doesn’t work, then you have to spend millions changing things you didn’t plan on changing, like the launch pad. No big deal. Just a detail. I guess the important things are the types of fasteners they use, and what type of bus interface the avionics use to communicate. Amazing.
I truly am an anachronism. I remember a time when that’s all the chief engineer thought about was little details like where the engines go. Maybe if someone had done that kind of top level engineering on the shuttle it wouldn’t be such a piece of junk. Of course, today we would settle little issues like the shape of the vehicle in a meeting. That’s why everything now looks like it was designed by committee, it was.
It’s “just a graphic” if you don’t plan on building it. If you do plan on building it, it’s a hell of a glaring mistake that makes NASA look like a bunch of amatures. If they really want to change that perception, there’s no time like the present.
I think you are being hypercritical, first of NASA and now of me for contradicting your point. I’m no aerospace engineer but I have worked in automotive engineering long enough to know that there is a difference between a design sketch and a final design. Sometimes it is a huge difference. And although NASA has done some dumb things in the past I don’t think they’re stupid enough to start building a launch vehicle based on a PowerPoint slide graphic without some design review, or do you not think there is no one at NASA who is as bright as you are that can catch this glaring error as you did?
In fact you yourself stated basically the same thing above: “they would probably do the analysis required to shape the vehicle correctly”. You were speaking of a contractor but the point still stands that the graphics released/leaked in this study are not final designs. No one is going to construct hardware or modify launch infrastructure based on these design sketches that lack even basic dimensions, specifications, tolerance, materials definitions etc.
Greg wrote:
“It is tedious to see so cutting and pasting in the comments section, when a hyperlink would do just as well.”
I like the fact he posted those articles instead of having to open up another page to read it.
This is the kind of design I used to do. I largely quit because of this attitude within aerospace that these designs were just pretty pictures. There is a big difference between a design and a pretty picture which is not obvious to someone without expertise. Aerospace vehicles are not the same as cars. The margins are much tighter. They are designed with function as the top priority, not form. Aerodynamics are only an after thought in aerospace vehicles that are marginal to poor.
Let’s look at these “PowerPoint slide graphics,” as you call them and see what is being implied in the slide. As I’ve said, the shuttle-c concept can be made to work and probably the bare minimum required change, the nose cone shape, would be picked up by the contractor in their design process. They would not figure out the the other tricks I mentioned because they have no one left working for them that knows what to do.
The next iteration of that vehicle is the one with the 5 segment boosters. This vehicle is being used as part of the justification for going to a 5 segment booster rather than using an EELV as a launch vehicle for astronauts. If it is not feasible to use them in the shown configuration, it potentially changes the balance of the trade study that swings the decision to go with the 5 segment booster. Is that not enough justification to do a little design work? If it is not, I don’t know what is.
Should NASA be allowed to propose a series of vehicles based an incomplete or incompetent design basis? To me, a chart like that illustrates exactly what is wrong with NASA. Putting a man on the Moon is not just a matter of having a vision and a pile of PowerPoint charts. It involves real engineering. If they can’t do the real engineering, get them out of the way and let someone who can step up.
And, to add one last point, if you think what I’m talking about is trivial, look into the history of the X-29, which was a NASA X plane for many years. The thing that kept it from going much faster than Mach 1 was the impingement of the wing tip shock on the fuselage, espcially once the nose shock cleared them. It would have been interesting to see how Grumman worked around that problem with their ATF candidate, had the idiot USAF general in charge not arbitrarily decided there would be no canard airplanes in his Air Force. That kind of form first decision making has no place in this business.
“Keep the human capsule less than twenty tons…”
When the OSP and CEV were at that level, the current EELVs could provide the nation with the capability of launching these vehicles. However, this was not palatable to the SDV and CEV proponents. The ever increasing mass of the CEV (now ~ 40 tons) was actually part of a set of political maneuvers designed to prevent the current EELV configurations from participating and thus forcing the “need” for a new LV development.
A substantial part of the CEV/SDV activities is about keeping JSC and MSFC in business.
“Aerospace vehicles are not the same as cars.”
I was waiting for that sort of responce. I see preliminary power steering line prints all the time that if built as first drawn could result in your death if it were installed in your car. Why? Simply because not enough clearance was considered for some other component. Same sort of situation as a drawing where an SRB extends too far forward, IE bad stuff will happen. You are right that aerospace vehicles are not the same as cars, millions more people’s lives are at stake in cars than in aerospace vehicles.
Should NASA be allowed to propose a series of vehicles based an incomplete or incompetent design basis?
Yes, but there should be a step in between the proposal and full funding. Which is where the design is worked out in detail and models are run so we are reasonably assured it will work.
I think it is crazy that nearly 2 years since the President announced MM&B we still have no vehicle proposal publicly on the table. Why are we dependent on leaks?
I think it is important that we have a reasonable concept before we spend a dime on actuall design. This can only be done if NASA airs its plans before working them out all the way.
I don’t agree with you on this one, Karen. I think these pictures should not be released anonymously. I think someone’s name should be attached and their professional reputation should be at stake for releasing something with obvious errors. Certainly if those errors effect the outcome of a significant trade study, there should have been at least some cursory analysis performed.
Cecil, you can put the best power steering system ever (and I have no doubt you would) on a Gremlin, and it is still a Gremlin.
Mr. Walker, I believe the size of the CEV is driven by the size of the egos they have to fit in it. They have grown significantly larger since Apollo.
I think Karen is correct; I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a design proposal that went into production at “Revision A”. And don’t forget that this team had dozens of design proposals to study; I assume once the choices were narrowed down to a certain number a more detailed design study would be done on the finalists. And since it seems that the side mount design lost out to inline how the side mount was drawn is now pretty much a moot point. For that matter the stringent aerodynamic studies that would be required with a side mount design could very well have played a role in the inline winning. Unless NASA went with a pure Shuttle C design that is, as that design has already underwent considerable very high-speed aerodynamic study.
As for the 2 years that have elapsed since the Bush VSE announcement, NASA’s primary task during that time has been returning the Shuttle to flight, not to design hardware for VSE.
“Cecil, you can put the best power steering system ever (and I have no doubt you would) on a Gremlin, and it is still a Gremlin.”
And more peoples lives have been put at stake in Gremlins than in all the space vehicles ever built.
Mr. Walker: “The ever increasing mass of the CEV (now ~ 40 tons) was actually part of a set of political maneuvers designed to prevent the current EELV configurations from participating and thus forcing the “need” for a new LV development.”
This sounds depressingly like the way we ended up with the compromised (to put it mildly) Space Shuttle design. My depression deepens.
Karen: “I think it is crazy that nearly 2 years since the President announced MM&B we still have no vehicle proposal publicly on the table. Why are we dependent on leaks?”
My strong suspician (admittedly on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, but that is kinda the point) is that this is because nearly two years after, there is no vehicle design. As usual, it is being re-re-re-designed at vast expense. In this case, I strongly believe that Mr. O’Keef’s original plans were the correct ones and much of the work since has been pointless redesigns of the sort that doomed the Space Station.
If I’m proven wrong in this, I’ll gladly state so and be a very happy man, but . . . I’m very afraid that I’m correct.
— Donald
Donald: “This sounds depressingly like…”
Sounded more like an opinion to me, not a statement of fact.
Donald: “…nearly two years after, there is no vehicle design. As usual, it is being re-re-re-designed at vast expense. In this case, I strongly believe that Mr. O’Keef’s original plans were the correct ones…”
There is no vehicle design because, as I stated above, NASA has been focused on RTF not vehicle design for VSE. And there has been no re-re-re-design, because there was no prior design to “re” design. I certainly don’t understand how O’Keefes “original plans” were correct when he never gave a detailed explanation as to what those plans were, again because detailing his plan was not the agencies focus at the time.
The plans to which I was refering was the goal to design a CEV light enough to launch on many existing launch vehicles. I still believe that is critical to the political success of the VSE.
Since when is NASA incapable of doing two things at once? If things are truly going to be different this time around, at the very least two years in, I would expect a defined plan for going forward. It doesn’t need specific vehicle designs, but I do want to know what the path is. At the very least, I want to get far enough down whatever road is selected before the current President leaves office to make it technically and financially difficult for the next President to change those plans. . . .
We’ve got to come up with a plan and stick to it and not change it every time a new Administrator shows up at NASA.
— Donald
Donald: “The plans to which I was refering was the goal to design a CEV light enough to launch on many existing launch vehicles.”
I may be wrong I don’t recall that ever being criteria.
Donald: “Since when is NASA incapable of doing two things at once?”
They’re not incapable of doing two things at once, but RTF was and still is the biggest, most important, highest priority issue NASA has (for good or ill) and second is figuring out to what degree ISS will be completed and how. Then comes VSE planning.
Donald: “We’ve got to come up with a plan and stick to it and not change it every time a new Administrator shows up at NASA.”
I’ve seen that charge time and time again and have yet to see any evidence to substantiate it.
The “evidence” was in today’s main entry by Jeff: “Cramer is also concerned that the _revised_ NASA exploration plan may be too expensive to fund within NASA’s current budget.” [Emphasis mine.] Whether this is true or not (and I think it is true), the political perception is that we have a new plan taking shape under Mr. Griffin that is different from that under Mr. O’Keef.
— Donald
But what you seem to forget is that O’Keefes “plan” was never fully developed and set in stone! You and most others seem to believe that O’Keefe had “the plan” squared away and that Griffin came in and upset everything.
Funny, when O’Keefe was still admin I recall everyone complaining that he/NASA had not decided anything.
Now all of a sudden O’Keefe had everything figured out and Griffin is screwing it up.
Not quite. O’Keef had a general plan to develop a CSV light enough to launch on any medium-class vehicle, and thus create greater transportation assurance and flexibility what keeping costs within what realistic politics was likely to make available. That does not require specifics, at least not yet. As a “bean counter” he did what he needed to do to fit the goal into the likely budgets. In fact, I believe this was the key innovation of the VSE and why it has my support — the Administration found a way to go forward with what we had and within achievable budgets.
That plan, to keep the CSV light and launch it on existing rockets, has been abandoned. I believe it shouldn’t have been; you believe, as I understand it, that Mr. Griffin made a technically good decision. I don’t really dispute that, but I do think that the only way to get this going is to stay close to within NASA’s current human spaceflight budget ($7-8 billion per year) and not piss off too many people, especially in Congress.
I think the Mr. O’Keef’s ideas at least tried to fulfill both of those goals. I see little evidence that Mr. Griffin is even thinking about them. And, if those who have reported that Administration officials are looking allarmed at the costs of Griffin’s plans and reconsidering them are correct, we’re already paying the price.
— Donald
I don’t recall this requirement you say O’Keefe had, but I’ll take your word on it. But that is only one change, SRB rather that EELV for launching the CEV. That is hardly “re-re-redesign at great expense”.
But if an SRB launcher is cheaper, and can lift more, what is the problem?
I’ve still not seen any “real” dollar figures on DIVH vs SRB, but I think it is a real good bet that an SRB costs less than the DIVH $250 million.
And even if NASA started using a dozen CBC’s a year, I doubt that would bring the piece price of the EELV down by more than 10-20 percent. It would never get down to the orginal estimate of $170 million.
In this particular argument, Cecil, I’m not disputing the SRB decision, although I am concerned that it requires the nation to maintain two or three medium launch vehicles (EELVs + SRB) as opposed to one or two (EELV(s)). It also is taking a vehicle that the Air Force pays for and replacing it with one that NASA gets to pay for.
My real problem is with the Suttle-derived HLV, as you know. Again, this is something NASA gets to pay for by themselves, it adds to the number of launch vehicles we have to maintain, and under no conditions is it likely to have a high launch rate. Worst of all, the costs have to come before the Lunar Base, not after.
The key innovation of Mr. O’Keef’s idea, which has now been effectively abandoned, is to spend money on exploration, not launch vehicles, and to keep the whole thing within current budgets.
If you can develop Shuttle-derived HLV, medium-class SRB-derived, the CEV itself, lunar transfer vehicle, lunar lander, and lunar surface infrastructure all at once and keep the peak spending below $8 billion, more power to you. I am _extremely_ dubious.
— Donald
NASA will pay for the launch vehicles it uses regardless if they’re EELVs, SRBs or something else. I doubt that the cost of developing an SRB derived CEV launcher will be much more if any more than adapting an EELV as a CEV launcher. Given the SRB’s nearly 50% lift capacity advantage, if it cost a little more it will be worthwhile. As for the HLV, it doesn’t need a high launch rate because it will do the job of at least 4-6 EELV’s with one launch from one pad on one day. And using EELV’s would certainly entail spending money on launch vehicles, many launches at $250 million each.
Of course we’ve been over all this before……
Your’re still ignoring the overhead, i.e., maintaining three or four launchers (EELVs, SRB, HLV) instead of one or two (EELVs); launch pads; supplier bases; standing armies, additional complexity, etc., etc. All of those are sunk costs that are not applied to establishing your first bases in the near Solar System. In the case of the EELVs, the Air Force pays the overhead, or at least a major contribution; the VSE would pay the incremental cost of their additional launches plus a share of the overhead — much less than the overhead to maintain two launch vehicles exclusively for VSE use. Also, the EELVs could be replaced by truly private launchers relatively easily when those come along (I’d advocate for them now, but I don’t think we’re quite there yet); if the Shuttle infrastructure is retained, it is unlikely to ever be commercialized. Likewise, if we have four government launch vehicles, there’s not going to be much pie left for the entrepreneurs. If we are going to use an HLV in the future, we’ll need a clean sheet design anyway. Why build two HLVs, when you can wait a few years and do your clean-sheet design when you have a justifiable, measurable, marketable reason for an HLV and may even be able to get private interests to pay for it?
— Donald
But if an SRB launcher is cheaper, and can lift more, what is the problem?
What if neither if the two assertions above re SRB’s is true? Would that be a problem?
By the way, a five segment Solid Rocket Booster would be the first stage of the smaller of the two of Dr. Griffin’s proposed missiles. This missile would have an L2/O2 second stage. This newest NASA vision does not call for an all-SRB launch missile.
I’ve still not seen any “real” dollar figures on DIVH vs SRB, but I think it is a real good bet that an SRB costs less than the DIVH $250 million.
Since you have not seen any “real” dollar figures, how can we be confident about your bet?
Given the SRB’s nearly 50% lift capacity advantage
Show us some data that backs up that alleged 50%.
Also, Cecil, your back-of-the-envelope figures assume no benefits from economies of scale. Remember, a Delta-IV Heavy is not the same as 3 x Delta-IV. It’s probably got one avionics package; one faring; one satellite support structure, et cetera. The “common booster” was proposed precisely because it is common to take maximum advantage of mass production. The more Delta-IVs we launch — of whatever size — the more common boosters we produce, and the cheaper they become. None of that is likely to be true of Shuttle-derived vehicles.
Donald: “Your’re still ignoring the overhead, i.e., maintaining three or four launchers (EELVs, SRB, HLV) instead of one or two (EELVs); launch pads; supplier bases; standing armies, additional complexity, etc., etc.”
And you are ignoring the costs of building enough EELV pads to support a launch rate that would enable us to build a Moon base in a reasonable period of time at 20 tons per launch. There would need to be 4-6 EELV launch pads to enable that number of EELVs to launch on the same day (in theory) to loft the same mass that one HLV could lift on that same one day. And then you still have the task of assembling those 4-6 “modules” while the HLV lofted payload is already on its way to the Moon. The supplier base for Shuttle derive vehicles is already in place (and with considerable political backing as I’ve stated before) and there is no reason to believe that the task of launching numerous EELV’s to get a require tonnage in orbit will require less of a standing army that one HLV would require. As for additional complexities are you saying a Delta IV is less complex than an SRB? Somehow I doubt that. Launching 20 tons at a time and assembling in orbit, even assuming no launch delays, is certainly more complex than launching everything on one HLV.
David: “What if neither if the two assertions above re SRB’s is true? Would that be a problem?”
The SRB designs thus far proposed do have greater lift capacity than any current EELV, that is a simple fact. As for being cheaper, that’s my guess. Do you have anything to refute my belief that an SRB is cheaper than a comparable (capacity wise) EELV?
David: “By the way, a five segment Solid Rocket Booster would be the first stage of the smaller of the two of Dr. Griffin’s proposed missiles. This missile would have an L2/O2 second stage. This newest NASA vision does not call for an all-SRB launch missile.”
An EELV based CEV launcher would in all likelihood require a second stage as well. Your point is…?
David: “Since you have not seen any “real” dollar figures, how can we be confident about your bet?”
Show me some real figures and we’ll see.
David: “Show us some data that backs up that alleged 50%.”
Delta IV Heavy 20-25 (depending on source) tons to LEO, 5-Segment SRB with SSME upper stage 29 tons to LEO. Do the math yourself; it comes to approximately 25-45% more capacity.
Donald: “Also, Cecil, your back-of-the-envelope figures assume no benefits from economies of scale.”
The more we buy the cheaper they become, but how much cheaper? To be truly affordable there would need to be at least a 50% reduction in the current $250 price tag on a Delta IVH. I just have very serious doubts of that ever happening.
Cecil, I think you’re are making the EELV’s unnecessarily complex and glossing over some of the complexities of using Shuttle-derived. The only things that need to be launched in the same day are cryogenic fuels and the crew. Everything else can be launched at leasure and stored until use. Yes, the SRBs are probably cheaper to launch; but the EELVs are being maintained anyway. You’re still back to developing and maintaining (at least) two launch vehicles, as opposed to one.
Also, you and Karen both keep ignoring one key aspect of my argument. I am not saying that we should stick with EELVs forever, or even for very long. Even if we continued to use medium-class vehicles, I would only advocate using the EELVs until the SpaceX crowd come up with something better.
What I am advocating is using EELVs to get a start, either while (or more realistically before) developing the optomised transportation system and all the other stuff that engineers want to develop. Send a hand-full of crews there with the inefficient method, but get them there soon. They can use a small lab to develop the knowledge and equipment that Karen needs to do her mining, and get a lot of science done in the process. Then, you’ve got something to show for the VSE that justifies further investment.
I am not against your HLV, only against making it the first step of what will, in either case, be a long and drawn-out project lasting decades to thousands of years. But only if it gets started. Every journey starts with a single step; if you take ten at once you only trip and fall.
— Donald
You’re talking about the technical end of launching at leisure over weeks or month’s time, my biggest problem with that scenario is the political ramifications. Every anti-space politician and media outlet in the country would immediately begin to make comparisons to ISS.
Yes the EELV’s are available, but they are not ready to launch a CEV. There has only been one launch of an EELV that would have the capacity to lift even a “small” CEV; that is hardly a proven vehicle. So I don’t see the development gulf between SRB launcher and EELV launcher for CEV being as great as you believe it would be.
_IF_ we were to abandon the EELVs and go with just the SRB (a “solution” I would not advocate for a host of political and environmental reasons), I would agree with you. But, the Air Force is not going to abandon the EELVs for the SRB, so we’re still stuck with a NASA-unique launch vehicle that we can, technically, get by without.
Also, if we had spare resources, I’d agree with you. We don’t. _Anything_ that is not absolutely, unavoidably in the critical path to a minimum Lunar Base needs to be delayed until after the base is deployed. Even then, this is going to be almost impossible in the budget we have. . . .
— Donald