In an article in this week’s issue of The Space Review, I examine the media’s reaction to the release two weeks ago of NASA’s Exploration Systems Architecture Study (ESAS) report, explaining how NASA plans to send humans back to the Moon. That response, gauged by an analysis of editorials and columns, showed a significant negative reaction to the plan. Much of that is wrapped up in the $104-billion price tag that has become indelibly associated with the plan. However, a more fundamental issue is that many don’t see a reason why humans should go back to the Moon: after all, the arguments go, we went there 35 years ago, and robots can do everything humans can much less expensively. Now that NASA has explained how we’re going back to the Moon, the agency needs to do a much better job articulating why, if the ESAS plan is ever to come to fruition.
Now that NASA has explained how we’re going back to the Moon, the agency needs to do a much better job articulating why, if the ESAS plan is ever to come to fruition.
But ESAS plan’s description of how we’re to go back to Luna is itself the problem. A lot of people can perceive that that the ESAS space hardware is all yesteryear, retro-tek stuff. It’s almost as if IBM announced plans to compete with the personal computer competition by building System 370 mainframes “on steroids.” Instead of being THE agent of new technology development, Dr. Mickey Mouse Griggin’s NASA is peddling nostalgia … techically flawed, very expensive nostalgia at that.
Besides, NASA hasn’t offered any worthwhile sceintific reasons for putting people on the Moon again. Robots can probably handle the extraction of water from regolith at the lunar south pole.
I might suggest placing a pair of large interferometric telescopes on the Moon, as well as a large radio telescope, but such telescopes aren’t part of current NASA plans.
Since we have a permanent space station in orbit, the next step is to build a permanent base on the moon and learn what it is like to live on another planet. This is good practice for Mars. On the moon we could practice processing resources like methane,oxygen and search for water. This will allow the moon base to become somewhat self sufficiant, all good experiance for a mars base and eventual colony. The moon is only 3 days away so its a good place to practice living off another world before we goto mars. Back in the late 60’s and early 70’s, we only explored a small portion of the moon. 95% of the moon remains unexplored. Going back to the moon, mars and beyond is real space exploration and where this country ought to be, a leader in space exploration and the eventually migration of humanity into the solar system and beyond.
The above is the answer to the question “why”, and I think NASA and Mike Griffin have explained this to the public and the press. I have seen polls on the internet that say 68% of the american people support Bush’s VSE, but a bigger reason why we are going back to the moon and then on mars is because a lot of big aerospace corporations will make a lot of money from it. The Repulicians are in charge of the government today and most of them are in the pockets of big corporations, so I have not doubt america will be back to the moon and then onto mars. VSE has much, much more support by government then the space station had and we got the space station, so I have no doubt we will get this, especially since government could not even kill the space station at the time. The only way the moon program will die is if the US replaces it by going to mars. The media is negative about VSE because it helps sell news and thats their business, so we should not listen to the media or take what they say seriously.
Ray, none of that is an answer to ‘why’. An answer to why would be explaining why any of those goals are important to the ordinary tax payer on Earth. And, no, an axiomatic assertion that ‘space exploration is good!’ doesn’t cut it.
The reason NASA hasn’t been explaining why, I’m convinced, is that they tried to find a justification and failed. Indeed, I suspect much of NASA’s management has known for years the space program is basically a scam, and the ‘goal’ has been to keep the scam running until they can retire.
The primary responsibility for motivating and explaining to the American people the need to undertake any major project rests with the president, not with the agency takng orders from the president. This president’s actions to motivate the public to support human space travel have been almost invisible, even if, as some dispute, he has the actual ability to motivate. That’s the essence of leadership: pick a place to go and convince people to go there with you. That leadership is missing here.
That said, efforts to slam NASA’s plan as a retro-tech throwback to the 1960’s are misplaced and pointless. NASA was directed to return people to the Moon and go on to Mars, not to produce bleeding edge whizbang technology that serves no purpose other than to atract the public’s uncritical and ill-informed approval. As long as space missions begin on Earth’s surface and as long as those missions need to be launched into LEO or to escape velocity, they will be launched on long pointy things called rockets. It’ll stay that way until we figure out a better way to accelerate things that fast, that quickly.
But President Bush, in his original VSE speech in January, 2004, already told America why we are going back to the moon:
It was a direct national address. Why is everyone talking now as if Bush had nothing to say?
Jeff, the rationale has been explained — it’s just that no one’s paying any attention.
As mentioned above, the President outlined the value of the Moon in his Vision address in Jan. 2004. Basically, it is to use the Moon and its resources to create a true space-faring infrastructure. Its goal is not to “go to the Moon to show that we can do it” (Apollo); it is to learn the skills we need to learn to become a multi-planet species.
A lot of negative comments on the ESAS architecture focus on vehicle design, architectural choices, use of Shuttle-derived launch, etc. No doubt some technical choices could be argued, but that’s true for any space program. The fundamental argument of the Vision is: 1) the nation has a space program that’s been funded (more or less) at the 1% funding level for the last 25 years or so; 2) it is likely to continue to be funded at this level for the foreseeable future; 3) given that, what should be done for this level of spending? Shall we continue to have a non-directed, piecemeal program or should NASA attempt to focus their efforts on some directed goal? If the latter, should that goal lead to more capability with time, using incremental, stepping stones or, should some grand scientific objective be announced, focusing all agency efforts on that goal (e.g., search for life on Mars)? The latter was the pre-Vision NASA, the former is the Vision.
The wrong direction for our space program? Possibly. But I don’t agree. I think it’s the right direction and an achievable, valuable goal. If NASA screws the pooch on this, they have no future, something a lot of people would like to see. My attitude is that government will be in space in the future and they should be (we have important national interests to look after.) If that’s true, we should have as much space capability as we can develop. The vision seeks to do this by actually playing the hand of cards we’ve been dealt and begin to use the resources of near-Earth space to develop these capabilities.
That’s the “Why?” of the Vision. The editorial boards that inveigh against it wouldn’t be for it no matter how many times you explained it.
Davenport: “A lot of people can perceive that that the ESAS space hardware is all yesteryear, retro-tek stuff.”
That is only true of those who have only a simplistic and naive understanding of the ESAS concept. Anyone who is intelligent enough can see past the “it looks like Apollo” sound bite and know that the resemblance is purely superficial. What matters is what will be under the skin of the vehicle and the capabilities that it will have, not what its shape will be.
Basically, it is to use the Moon and its resources to create a true space-faring infrastructure. Its goal is not to “go to the Moon to show that we can do it” (Apollo); it is to learn the skills we need to learn to become a multi-planet species.
Are you kidding?
If that premise were put to a vote in a nationwide referendum, it is extremely unlikely that American taxpyers would vote “yes” to that dreamy, sci-fi bunkum.
Save that multi-planet species talk for Star Trek conventions. It’s much more entertaining to talk like that when wearing an appropriate costume.
I think it comes doen the the ‘E’ in VSE. It stands for exploration, and to alot of folx, we have already explored the moon. No need to repeate. If the E stood for exploitation (although not a Poltically Correct term) Lunar reasource utilization would come to mind faster.
( DD thinks to himself that the dreary, stuck in the past, manned spaceflight Establishment is attracting fewer and fewer smart, serious people. )
There is nothing wrong about sending humans to the moon. Robots can do so little.
Publication Date: 02-OCT-05
Price: $4.95
Description The NASA Kennedy Space Center will unveil a management reorganization this week to begin formal conversion of the U.S. manned launch infrastructure to a Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) launch capability.
http://aviationnow.ecnext.com/free-scripts/comsite2.pl?page=aw_document&article=100305p04
Oh, unveiling a management reorganization … so exciting. Gotta hurry up and get our personnel ducks is a row for the upcoming launch in 2018.
Please somebody, buy this article and share it with us.
Meanwhile, umanned space exploration is a happpenin’ place. This proposal is genuinely interesting:
NASA Study Recommends Airship For Exploring Titan
10/03/2005 08:52:33 AM
By Jefferson Morris
A recent study performed by Langley Research Center for NASA’s science mission directorate recommends an airship as the best vehicle for the future exploration of Saturn’s moon Titan.
The success of the Cassini-Huygens mission, which landed a probe on Titan earlier this year (DAILY, Jan. 20), has sparked considerable interest in the mysterious moon – the only moon in the solar system known to have an atmosphere.
…
The highly autonomous, helium-filled airship would be 18 meters (59 feet) long and 3.5 meters (11.5 feet) in diameter, carrying a science payload of 26 kilograms (57 pounds). Its normal operating altitude would be one to five kilometers (.62 to 3.1 miles), although it would also have the capability to land periodically and take direct measurements of Titan’s surface, Wright said. The study team picked a baseline mission duration of 90 days, the same as the original baseline for the Mars Exploration Rovers.
…
Paul,
Are you saying that the architecture released is in line with what the Commission was after? Based on what I saw you guys produce I would assume that this wasn’t what you had in mind….
-MM
I am glad that Paul Spudis also acknowledges the rationale in the original VSE speech. However, it is not quite right to elliptically rephrase what Bush said as “use the Moon and its resources”. The first reason that Bush gave was that we are going to assemble and provision spacecraft on the moon. That is what NASA does at Stennis, Michoud, Kennedy, and so on. Bush’s proposal is to add Bush Space Center on the moon to that list. (One virtue of which is that there are no hurricanes on the moon.)
It is true that Paul has previously supported and expanded on Bush’s second reason to return to the moon:
However, I can only see this as irresponsible hype, indeed more galling when it comes from geologists who surely know better. If you’re going to explain science to the public, you shouldn’t just polish the good news and ignore the bad news. If you want a bonanza of water on the moon, then you should acknowledge some bad news from Arecibo and Cornell. We don’t “already know” that there is “gold” on the moon. What we really know is a neutron signature that Bruce Campbell described as debatable. It could conceivably be ice in a useful form, but the VSE would then be hanging a $100 billion investment on a wish.
The third reason that Bush gave to return to the moon, and that Paul echoed, is that it will be a learning experience. Undoubtedly it will be, but you can say so about any venture, even a disastrous one. Napoleon’s march on Moscow was a “learning experience”.
“Are you kidding?”
Nope. I didn’t say we are going to colonize the universe in the next decade; I said that we will learn to do the things we need to do to use what we find in space to create new capability. That’s a legitimate engineering research project and one entirely within and relevant to NASA’s charter.
“Are you saying that the architecture released is in line with what the Commission was after? ”
In broad terms, yes. Undoubtedly, you can quibble with each specific decision, but that’s true for any architecture — one thing I’ve learned in 25 years in this business is that you can never please everybody.
However, what we require to do the tasks I describe is access to the Moon’s surface with people and machines and enough time to understand the magnitude of the tasks involved. No, it’s not “lunar-base-in-a-box”, but it is a system that can be evolved into a transportation infrastructure that can access cislunar space. That’s the real objective — if you can move freely throughout cislunar space with people and robots, you can go to the planets.
“However, I can only see this as irresponsible hype, indeed more galling when it comes from geologists who surely know better. If you’re going to explain science to the public, you shouldn’t just polish the good news and ignore the bad news. If you want a bonanza of water on the moon, then you should acknowledge some bad news from Arecibo and Cornell. We don’t “already know” that there is “gold” on the moon. What we really know is a neutron signature that Bruce Campbell described as debatable.”
It’s nice that Bruce has weighed in with his opinion, but I happen to have studied a bit of the Moon myself and what you repeat are his interpretations of data, not the data itself. We have three indications of water ice on the Moon — Clementine radar, Lunar Prospector neutron spectrometer data, and Earth-based radar data. Bruce prefers to interpret the Earth-based data as being negative, but in fact, the data are merely ambiguous. But all that argument is pointless — we will resolve this issue in 2007 because I am preparing a radar experiment for the Indian Chandrayaan 1 mission. We will directly image the polar dark regions, including the ~ 70% of them that we cannot see from the Earth and map the distribution of radar anomalous material from these data. NASA then plans to land a robotic spacecraft in the area to make measurements in situ.
But in truth, the ability to use lunar resources is independent of the existence of absence of polar ice. We already know that the Moon is 40% by weight oxygen, extractable by any number of well-characterized industrial processes. But in addition, solar wind hydrogen is present in the lunar dust. All you need to extract it is time and energy, two quantities in abundance on the Moon.
The whole “if there isn’t ice, we can use lunar resources” argument comes from people who seem to think that low concentration levels equals impossibility of extraction. If that were true, the terrestrial mining industry wouldn’t be possible.
“But in truth, the ability to use lunar resources is independent of the existence of absence of polar ice. ”
The above should read “existence OR absence.” Sorry about the typo.
>>Bush…already told America why we are going back to the moon…
>>…the rationale has been explained — it’s just that no one’s paying any attention.>/i>
One largely unwatched speech does not constitute leadership. Nor is it sufficient to blame everyone but Bush for not paying attention. It’s Bush’s job to get our attention and, then, convince us to spend the money to implement his VSE. It is not our job to follow the president around, waiting for him to try to convince us. Leadership means he comes to us.
Bush has certainly attempted to exert leadership on other issues that, arguably, play more to his political base than VSE. He hasn’t been reticent to traverse the country campaigning for his Social Security legislation, or the war in Iraq, or proselytizing about his version of state-church relations. Whether or not you agree with him on those issues, he has been out there actively trying to persuade. Not so with VSE. He’s not JFK and he can’t, and didn’t, sway the country with a single speech, eloquent or otherwise.
For most of us, the answer to the question “Why go into space?” is simply this: Because we want to. We, however, are in a very small minority, and that answer sounds selfish and inane to everyone else.
Jeff, very interesting article.
I have generally supportive Op Ed pieces on the VSE appearing in the next issues of the trade journal International Space Review, and, more importantly in this context, in the popular journal Astronomy Now. In the latter, although I was limited to five-hundred words, I defend it’s scientific value to astronomy.
Greg, on this narrow issue, you are correct. Even if it turns out that water is in fact at the lunar poles, it will probably be hard to get and it is likely to be a very finite resource. That is why we should learn to extract the oxygen in the rocks — there is more of it and you can find and use it anywhere.
David, I think the population at large would be a lot more interested if the space program admitted that it’s ultimate goal was sending people to other planets and eventually establishing a multi-planet civilizations — but only if you are honest and state that this is a is a project for centuries, and only the earliest beginnings (a lunar base, a Mars mission) even could happen in our lifetimes. The current “science for science’s sake” justifications for spending sixteen billion dollars are exciting only to a limited number of people, mostly other scientists. The missions that gain the Internet hits are those that show a real landscapes (the MERs, Titan lander). Another distant picture of a battered moon somewhere or a colorful-but-indecipherable scientific image does not cut it for most people. People are interested in landscapes because they can imagine someday going there, and if we are making real visible progress toward that goal, the space program might see somewhat greater support. However, realistically, spaceflight of whatever form is a minority interest and that is unlikely to change.
I once interviewed John Pike about the Space Station (last section of the article). While I rarely agree with much that Mr. Pike says, here I think he hit it on the head:
John Pike, [then] aerospace analyst for the Federation of American Scientists, agreed with Goodenaugh’s religious analogy. He said, “You have this very small minority of people who have had this personal ‘revelation’ that [human] spaceflight is important and means something. They have to trick the other ninety-five percent of taxpayers into paying for their own private, religious obsession.” Does Pike share this ‘religion’? He laughed, and said, “Yes! My first conscious memory was when I was four years old and went out into the back yard and saw Sputnik-1.”
— Donald
As water is primarily oxygen by mass (those 2 H atoms weigh very, very little after all) I believe a good case can be made that the in situ extraction of lunar oxygen combined with importation of terrestrial methane will provide lunar facilities with abundant water at a far lower cost than extracting water from the regolith or cold traps.
Besides, you can combust the methane for power, giving not only power and water but also carbon dioxide and even carbon monoxide which is useful if we find any of Dennis Wingo’s Ni-Fe asteroid fragments. The carbonyl process uses CO and therefore deliveries of methane together with lunar LOX kills 3 or 4 birds with one throw.
(Power, water, CO2 and CO)
= = =
If there is gold to be found on the Moon, it’s really platinum.
Thanks, Bill White! Speaking of living off the land, carbon is also a key component of any medium to grow plants in.
— Donald
Paul: What you said in the Washington Times was the we already know that there is a bonanza of ice on the moon. Now you say that you plan to resolve the issue in 2007. You banged the drums for a $100 billion space odyssey by claiming a known bonanza that will not actually be known until 2007 at the earliest. If it exists at all.
You’re also now saying that besides, even if there isn’t an ice bonanza, there is still plenty of oxygen on the moon. Sure, that is the province of terrestrial mining. But NASA is not planning on putting this on the moon, or anything like it. This argument is bait and switch.
As is the claim that time and energy are two abundant quantities on the moon. Neither time nor energy have ever been abundant quantities for astronauts in the entire history of spaceflight, only for robots. But the bulk of the expense of the VSE will be human spaceflight.
Paul Spudis – can be 2008 Indian mission equipment be tweaked to look for signs of intact Ni-Fe asteroid fragments?
Well, I hapopen to believe that there is a bonanza of water there. My point is that even if I’m wrong, we have what we need on the Moon in finite quantity and we also know about techniques to extract these resources. The water just makes it a lot easier.
This is not “bait and switch” — which activity we do depends on what we finally find when we get there. What is pointless is continuing to argue about whether there’s ice on the Moon or not — why don’t you ask Campbell why he’s so adamant against flying a radar to the Moon to find out which one of us is right?
In addition to the specific, perhaps technical, answers to “why?” that Paul Spudis and others have outlined, there is a more philosophical reason. The public is excited by exploration – be it of the Arctic, Antarctic, sea bottom, wherever. Space is the ultimate venue for exploration and the fact that the US Government is spending less than 1% of federal largess on space exploration to (if nothing else) excite the imaginations of the public, especially students, seems worth every penny. There is also perhaps a more practical reason. Failing a long term goal for NASA – there will be no NASA. The Shuttle will be grounded sooner or later and the pointlessness of the ISS will become increasingly apparent. Without some rationale, the agency will disappear.
“can be 2008 Indian mission equipment be tweaked to look for signs of intact Ni-Fe asteroid fragments?”
It depends on the concentration of fragments of such objects. Our radar will only see the surface at a resolution of about 150 meters. Anything smaller than this won’t be visible. In theory, highly electrically conducting material (as Fe-Ni would be) should stand out like a sore thumb in the reflectivity maps, but as I understand Dennis’s model, he’s predicting isolated fragments, of unknown sizes and strewn field density. I suspect that we would be unable to see it, but who knows?
Other sensing techniques, such as gamma-ray or X-ray spectroscopy, tend to have low sensitivities and/or lower resolutions than our radar, so I wouldn’t count on them.
I would be very surprised if Ni-Fe asteroid fragments were not found on Earth’s moon. They’re found on Earth, aren’t they. One of the MERs found one on Mars. However, they’re likely to be scattered and hard to locate. I’d put my money on trying to locate the remains of a Ni-Fe asteroid under its crater.
— Donald
> Its goal is not to “go to the Moon to show that we can do it” (Apollo);
> it is to learn the skills we need to learn to become a multi-planet species.
What “species” is that, Paul? Government is not a species separate from the people. Remember Lincoln: “Government of the people, by the people, and for the people”?
Contrast that with the words of your Commission: “Human spaceflight will remain the province of government.”
Incredibly, those words were contained in a report released just days after Mike Melville earned the first FAA civilian astronaut wings. It seems that no one on the Aldridge Commission was paying attention, or no one cared.
The White House and the Aldridge Commission were supposed to be developing a space policy for the entire nation, not just NASA. Instead, it ignored all of us who are outside the brotherhood of NASA and NASA contractors and offered a vision that was entirely NASA-centric.
Not only does this vision exclude private citizens, it even excluded other parts of the US government such the military.
> The fundamental argument of the Vision is: 1) the nation has a space program
> that’s been funded (more or less) at the 1% funding level for the last 25
> years or so; 2) it is likely to continue to be funded at this level for the
> foreseeable future; 3) given that, what should be done for this level of spending?
That’s exactly the point, Paul. That 1% is a huge amount of money. Spent properly, it could do great things. It could stimulate the private sector to dramtically reduce the cost of space transportation, so that more people (from within NASA as well as outside) can go. It could pay for the development of a Planetary Defense system to guard against collisions that might lead to global extinction events. It could finance the development of a military space plane to protect Americans against enemies abroad.
Instead, the White House and the Aldridge Commission proposed a program that offers us nothing more than reruns of a few astronauts walking on the Moon.
Paul: You are within your rights to personally believe that there is a bonanza of ice on the moon. But when in the Washington Times, you did not say believe, you said know. That makes all the difference.
I don’t know or care whether or why Bruce Campbell is for or against Chandrayaan 1. Chandrayaan 1 is at least plausible as sound science. But the issue before us all is not that mission, it is the VSE, which is 1000 times larger. It sounds like what you are really after is your own ham sandwich, something which could perhaps be defended on its merits, but you just don’t mind if the government delivers it with 10 tons of pork slurry.
“The White House and the Aldridge Commission were supposed to be developing a space policy for the entire nation, not just NASA.”
Actually not. Our charter (Appendix B, p. 50 of the report) states:
I believe that you’ll find that each of these topics was addressed in the report.
Donald: I would be very surprised if Ni-Fe asteroid fragments were not found on Earth’s moon. They’re found on Earth, aren’t they. One of the MERs found one on Mars. However, they’re likely to be scattered and hard to locate. I’d put my money on trying to locate the remains of a Ni-Fe asteroid under its crater.
I recall Dennis Wingo saying something in Las Vegas at the Space Frontier conference about a particular variety of orbital imagery that might work very well for finding those Ni-Fe fragments. Sadly, the details escape me.
Be that as it may, finding platinum for fuel cells to reduce pollution, fight global warming and reduce dependence on Persian Gulf oil is a very tangible benefit from space exploration. Not to mention better, cheaper laptop batteries.
We need to be careful not to overpromise this to the American people, but looking for Ni-Fe asteroids to harvest might be a very popular thing to be doing.
“You are within your rights to personally believe that there is a bonanza of ice on the moon.”
Thank you.
” But when in the Washington Times, you did not say believe, you said know. That makes all the difference.”
To what? Are you suggesting that President Bush conceived the Vision in response to some quote from me?
Amazing pedantry.
Without some rationale, the agency will disappear.
Yes that might happen.
The manned flight part of NASA might also disappear if the Shuttle is terminated and the ISS is abandoned to non-Americans — unless they ride Soyuz — and NASA has nothing to fly people in … and offers no hope for Americans to have a useable manned spacecraft.
No hope. This Apollo on steroids proposal is incompetent. The proposed new capsule will weigh on the order ot TEN TIMES the 6100 kg splashdown weight of Apollo. In order to accomplish one lunar mission, Apollo on steroids will require earth orbit rendezvous of two Saturn V-sized launches. That is Dr. Griffin’s proposal, to be accomplished Real Soon Now in 2010. This plan is screamingly incompetent!
Seriously, I will bet on Mr. Rutan’s Spaceship 3 to arrive at the ISS before the Steroids Capsule has its first test launch … Actually, I doubt that the Steroids Capusle will ever actually be built.
Maybe another mockup for a museum. That big capsule mockup, maybe it could be converted into a restaurant. Put it on the roof on a revolving platform. Such Space Needle restaurants were popular in the 1970’s … fits in perfectly with the retro-tek theme.
Paul: Yes, I believe that Bush conceived of a delusion of space exploration in response to a relative handful of people, you being one of them.
Not you single-handledly of course, and certainly not just because of your Op-Ed in the Washington Times. But Bush and O’Keefe and so on really did have in mind your results from Clementine. O’Keefe referred to them specifically in his VSE pamphlet. So it is your responsibility to explain that your results are a thin excuse for their grandiose plan. You’re doing the opposite of that.
The proposed new capsule will weigh on the order ot TEN TIMES the 6100 kg splashdown weight of Apollo.
Not that I’m impressed with the plan myself, but this statement is either foolish, or disingenuous. Why are you comparing a launch weight, in one case, with a splashdown weight in the other case? Talk about putting your thumb on the scales…
And even ignoring that issue, where do you get your figures? The Command Module (the capsule portion) doesn’t weigh anywhere near sixty metric tons.
Paul, much as I’m on your side in the wider picture, as a journalist I have to agree with Greg on this one. Inflating results, even in a popular newspaper, in support of a political goal like the VSE is fraud (morally, if not legally). It seems especially unwise when we don’t require water in order to go forward.
— Donald
About water on the moon: this is not itself a reason to go to into space. It is, at best, an enabler for a program that has some other primary goal. As such, it utterly fails to answer the ‘why are we doing any of this?’ question.
Paul Bietz, while I agree with your wider point, your comment made me think of something else. Wouldn’t any water at the poles be a scientific target beyond any resource use it may have. I could imagine its isotope ratios welling us something about where it came from and when it was deposited. It would probably be too disrupted by the impact, and subsequent sublimation and deposition at the poles, to be a useful way to learn much about comets, but maybe not. . . .
Since something similar seems to be going on at Mercury, studying it on the moon might tell us a bit about the former world.
— Donald
I agree completely with this comment:
About water on the moon: this is not itself a reason to go to into space. It is, at best, an enabler for a program that has some other primary goal. As such, it utterly fails to answer the ‘why are we doing any of this?’ question.
Asserting a “need” for lunar ice reminds me of the Jon Stewart skit on ISS / STS.
“Why do we need the shuttle orbiter?”
“To complete ISS, Jon. Everyone knows that.”
“So tell me, why do we need ISS?”
“Jon, Jon, Jon. If we cancelled ISS what would the orbiter do?”
= = =
Terran methane plus lunar LOX may very well supply lunar astronauts all the water they can use, whether or not we ever harvest lunar ice. Ee need a better reason to go.
Michael Griffin knows this perfectly well. His answer? Becoming multi-planet species is the real goal. The only goal that matters in the long run.
>> “The White House and the Aldridge Commission were supposed to be developing
>> a space policy for the entire nation, not just NASA.”
> Actually not. Our charter (Appendix B, p. 50 of the report) states:
[long list of objectives, none specifically mentioning NASA]
“Actually not”??? Paul, nothing that list you’ve quoted says your recommendations must be limited to NASA.
It uses terms like “human and robotic science activities” and “sustainable human and robotic exploration” — it doesn’t say those activities must be carried out only by NASA using humans employed by NASA and robots owned by NASA.
The assumption that “human spaceflight will remain the province of government” was not in your charter. It was made by your Commission. In a year when private enterprise sent more humans into space than NASA did, saying human spaceflight would “remain” the province of government showed your Commission to be out of touch. Didn’t anyone notice what was happening outside the Beltway?
> I believe that you’ll find that each of these topics was addressed in the report.
As a professor I’m sure you know that just “addressing” the questions is not enough to guarantee a passing grade. The charter you quoted said you were to recommend a strategy for *sustainable* exploration. A rerun of Project Apollo is not sustainable.
Okay, so fast forward to 2018-2020, a few astronauts land on the moon and discover lots of water and bring back more rocks. The public collectively yawns. Meanwhile, the United States gets involved in another budget-draining war, or maybe there is an energy crisis. Congress decides that it can’t afford to buy the megaboosters needed to send those astronauts to the moon. So all that water and any other resources sit on the moon, untouched, for another 50 years until the momentum can be built up to send a few more astronauts to the moon.
The weakness of an Apollo approach is that it is not self-sustaining and is too big of a target during the budget cycle. I think the money would be better spent on building public infrastructure to support a private space launch industry. That way, maybe, someday, it won’t have to cost $100 billion to go back to the moon.
Okay, so fast forward to 2018-2020, a few astronauts land on the moon and discover lots of water and bring back more rocks. The public collectively yawns. Meanwhile, the United States gets involved in another budget-draining war, or maybe there is an energy crisis. Congress decides that it can’t afford to buy the megaboosters needed to send those astronauts to the moon. So all that water and any other resources sit on the moon, untouched, for another 50 years until the momentum can be built up to send a few more astronauts to the moon.
The weakness of an Apollo approach is that it is not self-sustaining and is too big of a target during the budget cycle. I think the money would be better spent on building public infrastructure to support a private space launch industry. That way, maybe, someday, it won’t have to cost $100 billion to go back to the moon.
You know, to the degree that most of the posts in this thread are debating the merits of different ways to explore and exploit space, they won’t go far to persuade an electorate that isn’t convinced we need to be in space at all. If you don’t want to go someplace, you aren’t going to listen to arguments about the best way to get there.
We’re forgetting the importance of the “What’s In It For Me?” principle. What’s the average guy going to get? A new job? A better house? More money? A chance to move someplace and start over?
Maybe commercial space firms will provide good answers to some of those questions. But, right now, they haven’t. They’ve told people it costs $20 million to buy a ticket to LEO and that’ll cost $100k to take a 20 minute flight 60 miles up. Nor will watching rich people get richer off of space convince many people that it’s worthwhile.
Convince individuals that they will benefit, as individuals, from human space flight and they’ll likely agree to pay for it, by paying taxes or buying stock or buying tickets. Don’t tell them what’s in it for them, and they’ll do something else with their money.
Okay, so let’s do fast forward to 2018-2020, and a few astronauts land on the moon. After the first couple of proving missions, geologists do extended traverses in multi-week missions. Photos show what people now watch science fiction films to see: people exploring a strange new world. Discoveries are made, a few of them surprising and accessible to the public. Sometime in the first ten or so missions, a crew is almost lost or actually lost and politicians and the public rally around.
Meanwhile, astronauts deploy experimental systems to mine oxygen from the regolith, and possibly hydrogen from solar wind. Ten missions in, these are operational, removing one of the heaviest elements in the Earth-to-Luna logistics train.
The Shuttle is history Space Station is now supported by the alt.space crowd. As the VSE development money tails off, the $6 billion operational initial cost of six flights a year does not seem so outrageous. The vehicles are adapted to attempt a few true deep-space missions to practice for interplanetary flight, perhaps a demonstration flight to the JWST and / or a nearby asteroid (or even one of the Martian moons).
The lunar missions have been accumulating the material to assemble a base, and missions morph into semi-permanent stays. Finally, the first Mars flight is being assembled in LEO, possibly oxidized with oxidizer imported from the moon.
It is at least conceivable that all of this could stay within NASA’s current funding envelope. If so, a lot of it could occur below the political radar. Back on Earth, the Air Force, the aerospace industry, and the alt.space crowd continue developing alternative options to lower long-term costs, especially as the lunar “market” becomes increasingly certain.
The key observation is to compare the simple landing of Apollo-11 to the complex scientific operations Apollo-17. A very strong case could be made that we learned more about how to live and work on airless worlds in four years of practical experience than we have learned in the intervening thirty of paper studies and technology development.
You learn by doing. You learn to get to the moon by going there. You learn to live there by doing just that. I believe the alternative to Mr. Griffin’s plan, or some politically indistinguishable version thereof, is to continue flushing dollars down the aerospace toilet dreaming about new launch vehicles that never will be developed and pretending to explore the Solar System with robots.
— Donald
The Command Module (the capsule portion) doesn’t weigh anywhere near sixty metric tons.
Reports say thirty-plus metric tonnes for the new Aplollo On Steroids Capsule (TM), which is order of magnitude 10x of 6000-plus kilograms.
Perhaps that thirty-plus metric tonne figure includes the mass of the Service Module or the tractor rocket escape system. Otherwise, the takeoff-weight of the Command Module itself should be only a little bit more than its splashdown weight, unless the jettison-able heat shield weighs many tonnes.
The larger point is that the entire Apollo On Steroids (TM) hook-up is so massive that it needs Earth orbit rendezvous of two (2) Saturn V-size launches to perform one mission. This does not seem like the original Apollo missions, imho.
Why so much take-off weight? That tractor rocket escape system may be a hefty hunk in itself. They may be planning to use three or four Solid Rocket Booster segments arranged in a tripod or quadrapod for the tractor rocket. it’s a case of: A becomes heavy, so B also gets heavier, which means that C ( the launch missile, in this case ) isn’t enough.
Launched separately, the CEV and LSAM would dock in Earth orbit. They would then dock with a third vehicle, the Earth Departure Stage (EDS) – also launched separately. The EDS would ignite to send the trio of docked vehicles to a translunar trajectory. The EDS would fire its propulsion system in a braking maneuver to insert the trio into lunar orbit. The EDS would undock and fire to leave lunar orbit, possibly for storage in a high L-1 staging base, or to reenter Earth’s atmosphere in a destructive maneuver.
Whatever the ultimate fate of the EDS, all three spacecraft could not be launched into parking orbit above Earth together aboard a single launch vehicle. While the CEV would most likely not exceed 30 to 40 metric tons in gross weight, the LSAM would bring substantial cargoes itself to the surface.
As of the spring of 2005, ESMD planners were considering two versions of the LSAM: one in manned lunar flight to carry a four-person crew to the lunar surface. A second version would be capable of launching and flying to the moon alone (unmanned) and landing large cargoes on the surface. Some follow-on extended stays on the moon envisioned by the Apollo program in the 1960s also considered such an approach.
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1057
“The larger point is that the entire Apollo On Steroids (TM) hook-up is so massive that it needs Earth orbit rendezvous of two (2) Saturn V-size launches to perform one mission. This does not seem like the original Apollo missions, imho.”
Wrong! It is the rendevouz of a a Saturn V and Saturn IB Class mission, not two Saturn V’s.
“Paul, much as I’m on your side in the wider picture, as a journalist I have to agree with Greg on this one. Inflating results, even in a popular newspaper, in support of a political goal like the VSE is fraud (morally, if not legally).”
I did not “inflate” any results — I wrote what I believe the data indicate (and so testified to both Senate and House committees last year). We are doing the orbital experiment to map the deposits in high resoution with a more favorable viewing geometry. Better data may convince the the skeptics, maybe not. But better data are needed in any event to plan for mining and extraction.
” It seems especially unwise when we don’t require water in order to go forward.”
No one ever said we require water to live on the Moon; it just makes things easier. It takes 2 orders of magnitude less energy to extract water from icy regolith than to bake out solar wind hydrogen from dry, equatorial regolith. But we can get hydrogen from both places.
I sense that Greg and Edward are not really interested in the details of lunar ice distribution or my variety of salemanship, but rather, oppose the Vision from political or ideological grounds. I really don’t care one way or the other, but accusing me of fraud while promoting their own agendas is pure sophistry.
Even Apollo Veterans see Apollo Redux as a waste because nothing new is being truly done. I had thought this was a view only the relative young people held, but it does seem that even some of the old veterans who were right in the midst of designing and building the rockets for Apollo feel the same way.
Now, I may be wrong, but I saw nothing in the plans revealed a few weeks ago that talked about establishing a Lunar base. I believe the VSE does talk about setting a Lunar base, but having a vision to do so and a concrete plan are two very different things. If we’re not establishing a lunar base, then we’re doing nothing but recap history, without the excitement. Kind of like a fat middle age guy trying to relive the excitement of his youth by doing some of the things he used to do.
…A heavy-lift rocket blasts off, carrying a lunar lander and a “departure stage” needed to leave Earth’s orbit (below left). The crew launches separately (below, center), then docks their capsule with the lander and departure stage and heads for the moon (below, right).
Whooee, I made a mistake. The pic accompnaying this text shows the capsule atop the corndog missile — the skinny one with a single SRB for a first stage. I suppose that’s a Saturn IB-sized launch.
…
The new crew vehicle will be shaped like an Apollo capsule, but it will be three times larger ( by volume, even more by mass ), allowing four astronauts to travel to the moon at a time.
The new spacecraft has solar panels to provide power, and both the capsule and the lunar lander use liquid methane in their engines. ( Along with LOX for oxidizer, presumably. It will be a challenge to control liquid oxygen boil-off. — DD. ) Why methane? NASA is thinking ahead, planning for a day when future astronauts can convert Martian atmospheric resources into methane fuel.
…
The Flight Plan
In just five years, the new ship will begin to ferry crew and supplies to the International Space Station. ( Five years from when? ) Plans call for as many as six trips to the outpost a year. In the meantime, robotic missions will lay the groundwork for lunar exploration. In 2018, humans will return to the moon. Here’s how a mission would unfold:
A heavy-lift rocket blasts off, carrying a lunar lander and a “departure stage” needed to leave Earth’s orbit (below left). The crew launches separately (below, center), then docks their capsule with the lander and departure stage and heads for the moon (below, right).
…
Three days later, the crew goes into lunar orbit (below, left). The four astronauts climb into the lander, leaving the capsule to wait for them in orbit. After landing and exploring the surface for seven days, the crew blasts off in a portion of the lander (below, center), docks with the capsule and travels back to Earth. After a de-orbit burn, the service module is jettisoned, exposing the heat shield for the first time in the mission. The parachutes deploy, the heat shield is dropped and the capsule sets down on dry land (below, right).
…
With a minimum of two lunar missions per year, momentum will build quickly toward a permanent outpost. Crews will stay longer and learn to exploit the moon’s resources, while landers make one way trips to deliver cargo. Eventually, the new system could rotate crews to and from a lunar outpost every six months. ( Sounds like a second ISS. — DD )
Planners are already looking at the lunar south pole as a candidate for an outpost because of concentrations of hydrogen thought to be in the form of water ice, and an abundance of sunlight to provide power.
…
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=17836
Wouldn’t any water at the poles be a scientific target beyond any resource use it may have.
Yes, and if this scientific information were the primary reason for accessing it, then unmanned landers would be the way to start. Even if you plan to mine it, unmanned landers are very likely required first to characterize the resource before setting up the base.
I doubt that science alone could justify sending people to the moon at this time, though (or even unmanned spacecraft). Terrestrial science still gives much more science per dollar.
I am not a scientist, engineer, writer, or politician… just a taxpayer who wants to walk on the moon, and this is what I think.
The new VSE is just a re-hash of ideas that I have been seeing for forty years. I believe in space exploration, and I believe we should spend more, not less, on making humanity a space-faring species. I just wish it was a private, non-government program taking us back to the moon, and not NASA.
Personally, I would like to see a new Saturn type launch vehicle, (call it a Saturn 3), with a fully reusable liquid fueled first stage. Build a light version upper stage for crew transfer, and a heavy version upper stage for cargo, and forget using SRB’s. No space transportaion system based on SRB technology will ever be cheap, safe, or simple.
Paul Spudis: I never used the word “fraud” and I don’t have anything to do with Ed Wright. My only “ideology”, if you want to call it that, is scientific integrity.
NASA has proposed a $100 billion program to send people to the moon for no clear purpose. One of the several dubious reasons proposed is that we “know” that there is a “bonanza” of ice there. In this forum you concede that you don’t know it, you just believe it. Some other lunar geologists aren’t convinced at all. Even so, you think that this is excusable salesmanship.
It would be a little closer to excusable if it were $100 million and not $100 billion. If Sean O’Keefe had not explicitly cited your work. There is a very strong chance that either there is no ice on the moon or that it isn’t forseeably useful. If so, I don’t know how many billions of dollars will go by before the public realizes it. If it comes to that, you’re setting up the public to mistrust scientists and ven to mistrust science.
Paul Deitz: There is a place for compromise between optimum use of scientific resources and the popular fancy. Even when the budget is a train wreck in slow motion, NASA truly can still afford several pricey but popular science missions. As long as they aren’t Potemkin science, and as long as they aren’t so expensive as to run away with the store.
If you can think of an exicting $100 million lunar exploration mission, and if the public wants it, then why not do it? I agree that if it were directly funded by NSF, it would be a terrible idea. But if it is funded by NASA, it is at least somewhat at arm’s length from bread-and-butter science funding.
On the other hand I agree that if such a $100 million mission is politically controversial, it is no great loss not to do it. The whole point is to popularize science, not to stir up a fight.
>>Even Apollo Veterans see Apollo Redux as a waste because nothing new is being truly done.
Why?
The job is to return people to the Moon and go on to Mars, not to invent whizbang new ways of doing that. The primary purpose of human space travel is putting people in space, not technological innovation. Innovation is only a means to an end, and unnecessary when existing technology can get the job done.
People didn’t stop flying on PanAm Clippers or Constellations or the DC-6 while they waited for newfangled jet airliners. They wanted to get someplace and propellers did the job just fine.
OK, I have had it with all the WHINING!!!
I have been following the Space Program since 1962, I worked on the Shuttle program for 13 years. I attended most of the SSI conferences in Princeton. All of you “so called Space Advocates” are reaping what you have sowed. For years you pissed and moaned that the Space Shuttle was a piece of crap, regardless of the fact that it has been THE ONLY REUSABLE SPACECRAFT every built. I remember all the complaining about the Saturn V, that is was such a waste of money to be throwing it away every time. Only to discover that the shuttle would be just as manpower intesive. I remember all of the complaining about the space station, that it was’nt good for anything, and that it was just a waste of time to be “going around in circle”. Well those circles are orbits, and as Heinlin state in orbit “your half way to anywhere”. Every one seems to forget that the shuttle has been able to do make orbit over 110 times successfully. Yes, it is old and needs to be replaced. Everyone seems to forget about the lessons we have learned with both Shuttle and Station. Shuttle: (a)A fully reusable Earth to Orbit aerospacecraft can be built and flown, maintiance and manpower needs to be a top concern from the begining. SSTO is possible, all the parts of the technology are there, they just need to be put together right. Station: Large pressurized and unpressurized structures can be built piece by piece in orbit. (b)Usefull work can be done, by humans on site. (c) Weightless is not that much of problem, but other health concerns may be. (d) Logistics costs are everything. (e) International Cooperation can be a two edged sword.
We need to ask ourselves this question 1) Are we going to physically move off the Earth with humans and into space or not? If not, then send the robots and forget everything else. If so than we need to keep doing the ground work, including work with people in Orbit on some kind of space station. Mars will be a long way in weightless interplanetary space. 2)How do we solve the Logistics problem. Logistics is the biggest headache of any human habitation in space, and will continue to be until In-situ resources are developed. 3) What kind of access to orbit do we need. For humans to be living in space, access to orbit is the #1 priority. NASA tried and failed to do this with X33, alot of really good technology was developed in that program and was just walked away from. It should not have been just left to rot. Rutan and Company may yet provide this, but it will be very limited at first.
The so called “pro-space” community needs to get its act together and quit the whining and the back bitting. I heard Bruce Murry the other day complaining that we dont need to be doing anything on the moon, and learning how to use resorces there is just a waste of time and effort. HE IS WRONG! If we dont learn how to do things in orbit and on the moon, going to Mars with humans will be a disaster. We need to do a step by step approach. The moon is only three days away, Mars is at least 180.
“I sense that Greg and Edward are not really interested in the details of lunar ice distribution or my variety of salemanship, but rather, oppose the Vision from political or ideological grounds.”
No kidding. Both engage in ad hominem attacks on a regular basis. Both are rather nasty. They have issues. After a while, you realize that it is best to simply ignore them.
“We need to do a step by step approach. The moon is only three days away, Mars is at least 180.”
And that first step is incremental order of magnitude improvements in launch capacity and costs, because the earth, and low earth orbit, and geosynchronous orbit, and the cosmos itself, is right here, right now, and natural disasters are right here, right now, and asteroids and comets are wizzing around out there, right here, right now.
Apparently my priorities are a lot different than your priorities. I’m more interested in finding enough to eat and drink, and finding employment, and animal control and waste management, and suffocating in jammed traffic, and where the hurricane is going to be in the next 96 to 120 hours, and what global climate is going to be doing in the next 40 years, and then finally, how am I going to get my pathetic unprepared butt into low earth orbit. I can see the cosmos almost perfectly clearly, with a large enough mirror, and sensitive enough instruments, so I don’t feel that I have to go out there, because I’m already there. I would prefer to go into low earth orbit to a hotel, and geosynchronous orbit, where there are revenue and salvage streams available, within my lifetime. The moon and Mars aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, but the Earth is in great danger right now.
George, I don’t blame you for being annoyed. Much of the bickereing here sounds like so much chatter among fans of some obscure sport that no one else cares about.
Internecine disputes about how best to accomplish something that other people are expected to pay for –through taxes, investments, tickets or freight charges — are stupid at best and suicidal at worst if those “other people” aren’t convinced the thing needs to be accomplished at all.
Rather than preach to an increasingly small choir, the best thing space advocates, and I’m one, can do is develop a popular answer to the “Why?’ question. Obviously, whatever motivates us doesn’t motivate most people. Until that changes, we’re not going anywhere.
billg writes:
Rather than preach to an increasingly small choir, the best thing space advocates, and I’m one, can do is develop a popular answer to the “Why?’ question.
(A) I agree with this.
(B) This thread started from the WaPo editorial which says Mike Griffin agrees that “science only” is not a sufficient why for spending the billions needed for manned (don’t say crewed) space exploration.
Griffin does say that becoming a multi-planet species is the only why that really matters in the long run. That can only mean bearing children out there. A safe and successful live birth – – out there – – is the test for being a spacefaring species.
In the meantime, sell a little lunar platinum for some revenue on the side.
I think a big problem is that the implied and official “whys” obviously conflict.
Bush’s VSE was openly mentioned as having the official why of refocusing NASA on exploring out there, but it was directed to the moon to basically re-verify NASA still has what it takes, before they direct them out to Mars. NASA history of problems over the past couple decades makes that a reasonable, but embarking, goal.
Further the new set of equipment introduced now to get us there, Griffin’s “Apollo on Steroids”, very blatantly has as a high priority objective – FREQUENTLY stated by Griffin – of minimizing staffing cuts of Shuttle personnel. Obviously this does not help, and dramatically hurts (due to the high costs), the goal of supporting VSE. Anyone remotely familiar with the last couple decades of launcher studies and programs knows there are vastly better and cheaper ways to get to space and do VSE. So if your major goal was supporting VSE, you’d adopt one or more of those and easily save 90% of that $104 billion.
The very design used for Apollo (and now to be replicated) has frequently been listed as why manned space flight was unaffordable post Apollo, and hence terminated. I.E. space travel was to expensive to be sustained with Apollo program designs (Saturn-V, CSM, SM, LEM). Shuttle was supposed to be the first step to deal with that, by reducing costs and complexity of launching people and cargo to orbit, but Griffin in a recent interview described that and ISS as a mistake. Which implies he’s not making a sustainable presence in space as a objective.
A business as usual, maintain the head count at all costs, focus for NASA is not going to work for them now. The publics not going to be excited by a 13 year, $100+ billion program, to replicate what was done in 8 years in the ‘60’s! Especially when about the only rationale for the program Griffin is clearly stating, is maintaining the employment rolls at NASA centers.
If We really want to get the public behind us we need to agree on a set of why’s. Personally I’m coming up with whys that environmentalists can get behind, and stated in such away its not scary. Though I really don’t have the skills. (I’m better at computer engineering then social engineering.)
This is what i find wrong with alot of the advocacy groups. they are designed to preach to the chior, not preach to the unconverted.
We need to find a message and stay on it and not bicker among us.
Griffin does say that becoming a multi-planet species is the only why that really matters in the long run.
The problem with this is that ESAS doesn’t make us a ‘multi-planet species'; it is at best the barest initial step in that direction. The disconnect between the rhetoric and the actuality is just too great for this goal to have any power. It invites the observation that if sending a handful of people to the moon (and not even setting up a base) is going to cost $100 B, then what’s the price tag for the far more gradiose vision that’s supposed to be the justification for all this?
The vacuous bombast that’s accompanied past space boondoggles doesn’t help either.
> No, it’s not “lunar-base-in-a-box”, but it is a system that can be evolved
> into a transportation infrastructure that can access cislunar space.
How can it be “evolved”? NASA has deliberately designed a closed architecture, with a giant heavy lifter and big CEV that are dependent on one another. You cannot replace one component without the other.
> That’s the real objective — if you can move freely throughout cislunar space
> with people and robots, you can go to the planets.
“Freely”? The taxpayers may be footing the bill, but that doesn’t make it free, Paul.
Matthew Corey Brown writes: Personally I’m coming up with whys that environmentalists can get behind, and stated in such away its not scary.
Care to offer a rough draft?
Edward Wright: I read Griffin to be saying, CEV is to go further out there than commercial lift can go.
I also believe Griffin is sincere when he says that once t/Space flies, NASA will buy rides to LEO on a fixed price per ticket basis. Can it get better than that for alt-space, other than here are some tax dollars, spend away?
> I read Griffin to be saying, CEV is to go further out there than commercial lift can go.
Yes, Griffin’s saying that. Saying it doesn’t make it true.
Commercial lift sends satellites to GEO all the time. In terms of delta-vee, that’s as far as the Moon. Commercial lift can (and does) send NASA spacecraft to Mars, Saturn, and the asteroid belt.
NASA’s own launch capability does not reach beyond Low Earth Orbit.
Griffin knows that.
There’s no force field that prevents commercial vehicles from going beyond LEO.
> I sense that Greg and Edward are not really interested in the details
> of lunar ice distribution or my variety of salemanship,
Correct. I’m not interested solely in the details of lunar ice distribution. I’m interested in the cost of accessing it — a problem you stubbornly ignore. Nor am I interested in any salesmanship that asks me to spend $104 billion to return a few kilograms of ice that might result in a few research papers. I want to develop space, not just study it, and that will only happen when we can access those resources affordably.
> but rather, oppose the Vision from political or ideological grounds.
Yes, I oppose any vision that says “human spaceflight will remain the province of government.”
Have you stopped to consider that allowing private enterprise to reduce the cost of space transportation would allow you to do *more* science than trying to keep space an ultraexpensive government preserve?
Why do you prefer to send just four astronauts to the Moon when the same money, invested wisely, could send hundreds?
> I really don’t care one way or the other, but accusing me of fraud while
> promoting their own agendas is pure sophistry.
I never accused you of “fraud,” Paul. If you can’t argue honestly, don’t argue at all.
> All of you “so called Space Advocates” are reaping what you have sowed.
> For years you pissed and moaned that the Space Shuttle was a piece of crap,
> regardless of the fact that it has been THE ONLY REUSABLE SPACECRAFT
> every built.
There’s a reusable spacecraft hanging in the Smithsonian right now, and it’s not the Shuttle. Another is about to join it. The X-15 and SpaceShip One proved highly reusable. The Shuttle is marginally reusable, at best. “Repairable” would be a better term, given how much maintenance it requires.
> I remember all the complaining about the Saturn V, that is was such
> a waste of money to be throwing it away every time.
And it was.
> I remember all of the complaining about the space station, that it was’nt
> good for anything, and that it was just a waste of time to be “going
> around in circle”.
Some people may have complained about that. I haven’t. My complaint about ISS is not the shape of the orbit but the cost and the fact that so few people get to visit it.
> Every one seems to forget that the shuttle has been able to do make orbit
> over 110 times successfully.
Who has forgotten that? The problem with the Shuttle is not that it’s *only* flown 110 times, over a period of two decades, and it has never led to anything else. Compare that to the Wright flyer, which led to hundreds of airplane designs and hundreds of thousands of airplane flights within 20 years.
> Station: Large pressurized and unpressurized structures can be built piece by
> piece in orbit. (b)Usefull work can be done, by humans on site. (c) Weightless
> is not that much of problem, but other health concerns may be. (d) Logistics costs
> are everything.
True. Unfortunately, some people are intent on making the same mistakes by building ISS 2 on the Moon, while reciting the mantra that “launch costs are not an issue.”
> The so called “pro-space” community needs to get its act together and
> quit the whining and the back bitting.
There is no “pro-space” community. Space is a place. It’s not something you can be for or against any more than you can be for or against land or sea. You can be for or against doing certain things in space. Bruce Murray is one of the “unmanned space” guys who thinks space is only something to be studied by robots and perhaps a few token NASA astronauts.
George from Jersey: You apparently have not read my posts. Rightly or wrongly, I have consistently defended the Space Station here (and here). I do think that we tried to take too big a step with the Shuttle, and that it is now definitely time to move on, but I don’t under-play the Shuttle either. In spite of the failures, it has been consistently one of our most reliable launch vehicles (albeit, at great expense), it did make human spaceflight more “routine” than it had ever been before, and it was an amazing technological achievement.
Paul: if you plan to mine [water], unmanned landers are very likely required first to characterize the resource before setting up the base.
I disagree. Any water is probably widely scattered through large volumes of regolith. I expect that even finding it on site, let alone mining it, will require the ability to move large volumes of regolith and sift it for ice grains, most of which, if they survived sublimation, are probably well underground. If so, a human mission is probably far more appropriate than trying to automate such complex, and high-energy consuming, operations in a single lander. If we send a lander, I predict that it just may confirm that the ice is there via remote sensing (e.g., radar), it will fail to actually “touch” it with an instrument, nor will it succeed in bringing any back for examination here. I’ll gladly be proven wrong, but that is my prediction, based on an archaeologist’s understanding of what it takes to actually find something, even if you know it’s there, and the abysmal performance to date of most attempts to automate complex operations.
I doubt that science alone could justify sending people to the moon at this time.
This I strongly disagree with. We have already done most of the science on the moon that can easily be automated; trying to answer specific questions with multi-hundred million dollar robots is not remotely cost effective. On scientific grounds alone, it is time to send a crew of geologists who can do long traverses and answer thousands of times the questions at tens (or even hundreds) of times the price.
Finally, the scientific community is not anywhere nearly as united on this as Greg likes to make it sound. This is from an interview with Ed Weiler in 18th July’s Space News, now administrator of NASA Goddard and once ultimate authority behind the current Mars rovers and Chief Scientist for HST.
Without a hint of irony, he said, I can tell you, when I heard Mike Griffin was going to get the job, I went from down in the dumps to Cloud-9. . . . His view of human spaceflight is just like mine. I love the Shuttle. I love the Station, but why did I get in this game? I got in this game to go places. That’s exploration. Getting to the moon faster, getting to Mars faster, who can be against that?
Just to set the record straight, I am the one who said that if Paul had in fact done what Greg accused him of doing, it was fraud. To the best of my knowledge, no one but I have brought up the word. I take full responsibility for its use. (And, I found his answer at least partially satisfactory. The fact is, in an Op Ed piece, you’re supposed to advocate and you can say anything you want. Saying something demonstrably false is probably unwise, but getting excited and overstating your case is hardly something unique to Paul on this list, or elsewhere.
— Donald
Donald: Except it’s not just an op-ed piece (in a single unreliable right-wing newspaper). The “ice bonanza” idea went all the way to the top, for example in the O’Keefe VSE document, page 7. It was further echoed in Bush’s speech and can therefore be taken as genuine national policy. This exercise in hype has crossed the line from words to deeds.
On scientific grounds alone, it is time to send a crew of geologists who can do long traverses and answer thousands of times the questions at tens (or even hundreds) of times the price.
Want this AND lunar water?
Send a small caravan of rovers powered by Terran methane and lunar LOX produced by strategically placed robotic LOX plants. Drive from place to place and collect the tail pipe exhaust. Voila! – -> Water.
Lunar LOX? Vapor phase pyrolysis initiated by passive solar. $100 sheets of light-weight reflective mylar on inflatable parabolic framework will require little up-front capital to buy and deploy.
Passive solar should get you up to 2000 / 2500 F.
Go the rest of the way (higher temps) with electric heat (various) generated by Sterling engines powered by the heated regolith / slag left over after the LOX is extracted. Nuke power would be VERY nice but is pricey and politically controversial.
3000 F heated regolith at the hot end and near absolute zero in the lunar shade should make those Sterlings purr quite nicely.
= = =
Money? Send IMAX gear and real time VR cameras and charge Detroit Motor Works a huge sum to put their hood ornament on the rovers.
Reality is, NASA is a political agency that depends on specific congressional representatives for its health. And those representatives depend, in part, on at least job-maintaining levels of support for NASA in order to remain in Congress.
So, I think it’s safe to take as a given that NASA isn’t going away, and is not going to alter itself in any way that might cause widespread job losses and resulting loss of congressional support. It is right, and pragmatic, to accept that NASA is going to spend $16B/yr no matter what, and that the vast majority of those dollars are going to go to the same folks as always.
Think you can vote out those Congressmen, and replace them with space Libertarians? Be my guest!
Given political reality, and not Libertarian fantasy, I believe the best hope for private space is to piggyback on the INEVITABLE wasteful and relatively pointless government program that WILL take place, whether putting humans on the Moon or sending up GoreSats (painted up like hippie Vanagans, no doubt) to scrutinize our collective navel.
This is exactly what is taking place now, in the real world. Where did Bigelow get his inflatables? From a project originally funded, and then tossed aside, by the government. What real destination can David Gump point to on his PPT slides to sway potential investors? That government boondoggle the ISS, which now forms the only investor-visible near-term destination and market for any manned orbital spacecraft.
NASA is the 800lb gorilla. It will do what it will do. For those wanting to make money in space, create a spacefaring civilization, travel to Budget Suites LEO etc., it is pointless to rail against the unfairness of it all. (Not that I don’t sympathize and engage in it myself.) The better course is to view NASA’s efforts as an enabling infrastructure. The VSE will bring many benefits, from increasing the number of graduating engineers to providing ready-made destinations/markets on the surface of the Moon for enterprising companies like t/space.
A few years ago, NASA had not the slightest institutional clue that it would need or want commercial resupply of ISS. Right now, it has no plans for commercial resupply of its lunar sites, either. My prediction is that, if t/space et al gets a few successful, routine, amazingly cheap ISS flights under its belt, NASA will be unable to escape the logic of analogous lunar operations.
Patrick: I agree with almost every word and could not have said it better myself. The exceptions? “Amazingly cheap.” While I suspect that the alt.space crowd will ultimately succeed, they have yet to deliver the promised goods, and until they do neither Dr. Griffin nor anyone else is going to count on their products for an essential service.
— Donald
Personally I’m coming up with whys that environmentalists can get behind, and stated in such away its not scary.
Environmentalists are supposed to “get behind” the use of SRB’s putting hydrochloric acid into the atmosphere for decades and decades throughout the 21st century?
///////////////////////////
Regarding the trade studies that cause Dr. Griffin to rule out using EELV’s for renewed lunar voyages to the Moon:
EELV Derivatives
Growth versions of the Delta and Atlas families were reviewed, with positive results. Planners found in their trade analyses that scaled up variants of both families could lift in excess of 40 metric tons, to as much as 80 metric tons. The latter figure was believed to be the smallest payload envelope a heavy lift design would need to carry in order to participate in a lunar mission.
In other words, the trade study was rigged by specifying `a priori that the minimum acceptable payload size for lunar exploration missions to be 80 metric tons.
The increased lift was achievable by adding engines to the booster stages or core segments, adding core sections, or adding strap-on solid boosters. The rockets could beef up both launcher families’ upper stages, replacing the variations of RL-10 engines now used on both Delta IV and Atlas V vehicles with other advanced Pratt and Whitney designs, or possibly J2S and SSME candidates, as had been studied separately for the crew launchers.
OK, heavier EELV’s might be useable if they used SSME’s, instead of the engines the EELV’s already use successfully. Very logical.
As interesting as the technical options for EELVs were, negatives associated with the cost of implementing these technical options were considerable. Human rating an EELV would result in additional costs.
But how much is developing two new, human-rated large launch missiles going to cost, even if the two new missiles use Shuttle-derived components?
Any EELV that would be enlarged for heavy lift cargoes would require entirely new launching pads and associated facilities in Florida.
But the two new Shuttle-derived missiles will require extensively modified strongbacks and lauch towers.
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1057
That trade study is phoney, dishonest, rigged!
Sorry, “launch” towers.
Oh, come on Greg. The text says, Additionally, during the 1990s, robotic missions identified potential evidence of water ice at the Moon’s poles, a resource that could make exploration further into the solar system easier to conduct..
Nothing in that goes beyond the evidence, in fact, it strikes me as pretty conservative. Likewise, you are arguing that this statement justifies billing the entire $104 billion estimated cost of the VSE to the search for water on the moon. This says nothing of the kind, and you are being extremely disengenuous or, to quote someone we both know, “it’s spelled L-I-E.”
— Donald
Some comments on other posts:
The job is to return people to the Moon and go on to Mars, not to invent whizbang new ways of doing that. The primary purpose of human space travel is putting people in space, not technological innovation.
But perhaps you can’t do the former successfully without the latter.
Innovation is only a means to an end, and unnecessary when existing technology can get the job done.
But I sincerely doubt that Apollo On Steroids (TM) is going to get the job done, as a practical matter. I might also argue that the proposed two new launch missiles are unnecessary innovations, and that existing EELV’s might suffice.
People didn’t stop flying on PanAm Clippers or Constellations or the DC-6 while they waited for newfangled jet airliners. They wanted to get someplace and propellers did the job just fine.
That is factually wrong. Airliners with propellers fell into disuetude very rapidly when the Boeing 707 and the Douglas DC-8 appeared on the market.
Piston engine airliners were relegated to Third World use in a span of time of a few years.
//////////////////////
Griffin does say that becoming a multi-planet species is the only why that really matters in the long run. That can only mean bearing children out there. A safe and successful live birth – – out there – – is the test for being a spacefaring species.
Did he really say that? That “multi-planet species” wacky talk ain’t likely to persuade the general public to give NASA the budget it wants.
By the way, “multi-planet species” sounds like Left wing code for “gay,” or something like that.
//////////////////////////
I read Griffin to be saying, CEV is to go further out there than commercial lift can go.
That’s because Mickey Mouse G. and his posse arbitrarily declared that 80 metric tons is the minimum acceptable payload for lunar exploration.
//////////////////////////
I disagree. Any water is probably widely scattered through large volumes of regolith. I expect that even finding it on site, let alone mining it, will require the ability to move large volumes of regolith and sift it for ice grains, most of which, if they survived sublimation, are probably well underground.
That sounds expensive, rather like extracting oil from tar sands in Alberta.
Water might be obtained more economically by scooping tankfuls of H2O out of Europa’s liquid oceans.
///////////////////
Griffin does say that becoming a multi-planet species is the only why that really matters in the long run. That can only mean bearing children out there. A safe and successful live birth – – out there – – is the test for being a spacefaring species.
Ummhmm. Try selling that to the tax-paying folks back home. ( DD thinks to himself that some Space Politics posters sound kind of cult-ish. )
And once again, did Griffin really say that?
…
So, I think it’s safe to take as a given that NASA isn’t going away, and is not going to alter itself in any way that might cause widespread job losses and resulting loss of congressional support. It is right, and pragmatic, to accept that NASA is going to spend $16B/yr no matter what, and that the vast majority of those dollars are going to go to the same folks as always.
Oh, there are alternatives, and I don’t mean alt.space.
If NASA manned space were eliminated, Boeing and LockMart and the other usual suspects and their political pimps might do just fine. That $16B/yr could be channeled to them through additional NRO, DARPA and other DoD projects.
Donald: I have said all along that ice on the moon was never meant as the justification for sending people there. But as of 2004 it was clearly intended as a major justification. Let’s say that it was 10% of the reason. That’s a pretty conservative assignment of blame, given that it was O’Keefe’s only specific example of Bush’s notion of “abundant resources” on the moon.
10% of $100 billion is still $10 billion. It’s all well and good for O’Keefe to hedge with words like “potential” and “could”, but they are embarking on this mission as if it really is there. Or otherwise that some forseeably useful resources on the moon really exist. Although again, ice is their only specific example.
In some quarters, lunar resources are to the VSE what weapons of mass destruction are to Iraq. Admittedly the VSE is a little different in that it is much more likely to be cancelled. But if by some fluke it isn’t cancelled, the astronauts will show up on the moon and the vaunted resources almost certainly won’t be useful at all. It will just be a wild goose chase.
> they have yet to deliver the promised goods,
> neither Dr. Griffin nor anyone else is going to count on their products
> for an essential service.
Not true, Don. Other parts of the Federal government can and do count on the private sector for essential services. The Defense Department just gave SpaceX a large contract to launch a classified military payload. Can you tell me with a straight face that national security is less “essential” than flag and footprint missions?
You don’t trust private enterprise because, in your view, it “hasn’t delivered the goods.” Yet, you would give NASA and its contractors $104 billion before they have delivered any goods. Do you regard government and government contractors as much more trustworthy? Why? Where is the evidence?
Six years ago, Mike Griffin went to Capitol Hill requesting money for NASA’s X-34, which his company (OSC) was building. Griffin said X-34 would demonstrate technologies that could be used to build a 2nd Generation RLV.
NASA didn’t deliver the goods on X-34. They spent $150 million trying to build a suborbital spacecraft and failed. Burt Rutan spent $30 million to build SpaceShip One and succeeded.
I don’t know any company that has spent $150 million in private money trying to build a suborbital spacecraft and failed. Do you?
Why do you assume the agency and contractors that failed to build X-34, X-33, NASP, etc. are inherently more trustworthy?
When I said “amazingly cheap,” I was speaking in relative terms.
But I will bet heavily on, for instance, SpaceX coming in at or near its advertised price schedule, forcing the biggies to either compete, or abandon commercial (and possibly DOD) launch services and work strictly on VSE.
It is worth remembering that while Bigelow, t/space and SpaceX are run by mavericks, they have been hiring old aerospace hands–guys that have years or decades of experience at Boeing, P&W, Lockheed and such. At this point, I consider SpaceX very solid, Bigelow slightly less so, primarily because their principals are footing the bill and their technical stuff looks sound. I would bet against t/space falling down technically, but I can imagine them languishing with insufficient financing to do the CXV if NASA yanks the ISS resupply carrot.
So I would agree with Mr. Wright that there is little reason to hang “track record” over alt.space and dismiss them out of hand. But I do worry for any company that doesn’t have a Musk, Bigelow or Allen to stay the course. Outside of true believers like these guys, there just aren’t many investors courageous enough (or foolish enough, if you prefer) to make a viable capital pool for alt.space.
Kelly:
>>>Bush’s VSE was openly mentioned as having the official why of refocusing NASA on exploring out there…
I don’t think Bush’s VSE has come anywhere near answering the “why” question. It assumes the question is answered to everyone’s satisfaction. It isn’t. VSE is a mission, an objective, not a reason.
>>…(VSE) was directed to the moon to basically re-verify NASA still has what it takes…
I don’t think so. To agree with that assertion, I’d have to think that the 6 Apollo missions covered the waterfront in terms of lunar exploration and exploitation. That’s obviously not the case. Whether or not it is appropriate to use the Moon as a test case and resource for Martian missions is debatable, but the reality that the Moon remains essentially unexplored is not debatable.
>>…there are vastly better and cheaper ways to get to space and do VSE.>The very design used for Apollo (and now to be replicated) has frequently been listed as why manned space flight was unaffordable post Apollo, and hence terminated. I
VSE doesn’t look like replicated Apollo to me. Different launch vehicles; different crew vehicles; different mission profiles and objectives. (Yes, they’re using rockets. How else do you suggest they get there?) Nor have I seen Apollo’s cost as a reason for the suspension of American manned flight between Apollo-Soyuz and Apollo. The cost that frightened everyone was the projected price of NASA’s initial post-Apollo plans, which included a large space station and Martian missions in the 1980’s.
Bill White wrote:
The vapor pressure of rock at that temperature is nonnegligible. How are you going to keep your passive solar concentrator (or the transparent optics between it and the material being heated) from quickly being ruined by deposits of recondensed silicates?
David: But perhaps you can’t do the former [spaceflight] successfully without the latter [technology development.
Nonesense, we know how to get people to the moon and keep them alive there. No technology development is required. Technology development may lower the cost and make it more efficient, but it is certainly not a pre-requisit, and the arguement that it is best done once a base is already there is certainly a reasonable one. Likewise, your response to propeller versus turbojet fails to address the issue. Sure, the instant turbojets came out, props were forgotton (though the fact is they are still in use). But propeller-driven planes were used and developed until the turbojet was invented. Likewise, we should use the technology we have now rather than wait for something else to be invented. If you wait, you’ll never do it because there will always be something better on the horizon. (Its the same argument as for buying computers: sure, there’ll be a better one next year, but in the meantime you’ve foregone the benefts of having a computer this year.)
Edward, I’m SpaceX’s biggest fan, but that contract was not “just delivered.” It was delivered a year or two ago (I forget just when) and they are the better part of a year late in delivering the goods (not entirely their fault, I know). When SpaceX does deliver the goods, as I still expect them to, I’ll be in the front row offering praise. The fact remains that to date, alt.space-to-orbit is all promise and no delivery.
Speaking of no delivery, Patrick, what is your opinion of Kistler? Again, I agree with pretty much everything you said.
— Donald
Greg: the astronauts will show up on the moon and the vaunted resources almost certainly won’t be useful at all. It will just be a wild goose chase.
Again, this is disingenuous. We know right now that oxygen can be separated from the rocks, probably more easily than any ice at the poles. Oxygen is the one of the heaviest elements likely to be required by a long-term lunar base (or the Space Station, or any number of other applications throughout the cis-Lunar system). Right now, today, there is a largish market for oxygen in space. So, there is one know resource on the moon that is not economic to deliver to orbit today, but may well be in the future, and certainly will be useful the instant there are astronauts on the moon again.
Now, I will agree that there are huge barriers to using that resource right now, but the resource is there whether you want it to be or not.
— Donald
Donald: You don’t know that oxygen in the lunar rocks will be useful the instant that there are astronauts on the moon again. After all, it wasn’t useful when astronauts were there the last time.
Actually I’m getting the strong feeling that NASA is just going to scrap the new moon program before they make it back. It was clear from the beginning that there will be no moonbase (in the forseeable future); now I’m thinking that they will give up before they make footfall. “Apollo on steroids” sounds like remaking a classic movie that doesn’t need to be remade, e.g., the Wizard of Oz.
Technology development may lower the cost and make it more efficient, but it is certainly not a pre-requisit …
Are you a current NASA employee, by any chance?
and the arguement that it is best done once a base is already there is certainly a reasonable one.
No it’s not. That’s the logic of the ISS: Start building it, never mind if the means of completing and sustaining the ISS is technically and economically sound.
Likewise, your response to propeller versus turbojet fails to address the issue. Sure, the instant turbojets came out, props were forgotton (though the fact is they are still in use).
Obviously not forgotten by all, else unducted actuator disks would not still be in use by some.
But propeller-driven planes were used and developed until the turbojet was invented.
So let’s hurry up and deploy the earth to orbit extension of the “jet” engine: a supersonic ramjet integrated with a turbojet.
Likewise, we should use the technology we have now rather than wait for something else to be invented. If you wait, you’ll never do it because there will always be something better on the horizon.
So you agree with me and with NASA under Sean O’Keefe that the heaviest version of the Atlas or Delta EELV would be a suitable launch missile for manned lunar missions?
Am I contradicting myself here? Nope, if I were running NASA I would try to sell a low cost Return
To the Moon using existing launch platforms. I would announce a target date a lot sooner than 2018.
I’d also try to put some money into new propulsion system development. The new systems would include scramjets integrated with turbojets, linear aerospike engines, and fission/thermal propulsion.
The contractors for these programs? Try to get some newer, smaller firms.
How would I save money? I would promise no more than eight more Shuttle launches to the ISS. I would also look hard at using the Atlas and Delta EELV’s to deliver Shuttle components to the ISS. To make more ISS deliveries happen, I would tell the Japanese and the Eurolanders that they’d have to chip in more money. Ariane? Yes, I’d encourage the Euros to try to use Ariane, too.
Donald, I really don’t know what to think about Kistler. I never cared that much for Kistler, and to echo your comment about SpaceX, I was Rotary Rocket’s biggest fan. But they both developed and tested hardware, and they both went down in the constellation bust.
In the case of Kistler, I wonder if their deep managerial and contractual connections to old aerospace hindered them. There’s an analogy in the general-aviation world: certificated airframes and homebuilts (and the new Light Sport Aircraft). Parts and maintenance are OUT OF SIGHT on a certificated airframe like a C172. You have to pay an A&P to do almost anything on the aircraft; the most insignificant mods must be signed off; a simple piece of plastic or aluminum may cost a thousand bucks. But a homebuilt or LSA can do basically the same thing as many certificated planes, often with a substantial performance boost, at far lower cost and with pretty much the same accident rates.
I really think there’s a mindset, a way of doing things old-school without regard to technological, managerial and manufacturing advances that have taken place in the last three decades, that really hurts aviation and space. But I don’t know if that’s what brought down Kistler, or if they would have gone down anyway like their more innovative (imho) competitor Rotary Rocket.
Know who manufactured the Rotary Rocket fuselage?
Scaled Composites.
> Edward, I’m SpaceX’s biggest fan, but that contract was not “just
> delivered.” It was delivered a year or two ago (I forget just when)
If you want to be “Number One Fan,” you should keep better track of their announcements.
Check the news for September 8, 2005. A month ago, not a year or two.
> and they are the better part of a year late in delivering the goods
And yet, DoD was still willing to give them a contract to launch a major classified payload on Falcon 9.
Yet, you argue that “neither Dr. Griffin nor anyone else is going to count on their products for an essential service.” Do you think the US military is a nobody? Or that military satellites are non-essential?
> The fact remains that to date, alt.space-to-orbit is all promise and no delivery.
“All promise and no delivery”???
Tell me, Donald, how many contracts has NASA signed for Alt Access deliveries? How many RFPs have they let for such contracts?
Zero?
So, you’re going to blame companies for not delivering payloads for NASA when NASA hasn’t even offered to pay for those deliveries?
Paul Dietz writes that Bill White wrote:
Lunar LOX? Vapor phase pyrolysis initiated by passive solar […] should get you up to 2000 / 2500 F. – – – The vapor pressure of rock at that temperature is nonnegligible. How are you going to keep your passive solar concentrator (or the transparent optics between it and the material being heated) from quickly being ruined by deposits of recondensed silicates?
This reminds me of a joke my brother (a theoretical physicist) once told me. [ grin ]
Visualize three people – – an engineer, an experimental physicist and a theoretical physicist each staying (alone) in a three different hotel rooms. In each room a small fire breaks out.
The engineer wakes up, sees the fire, and proceeds to spray water wildly until the flame is extinguished. Satisfied, he goes back to bed.
The experimental physicist wakes up, sees the fire, makes numerous precise calculations and douses the fire with the minimum quantity of water necessary for the task. Satisfied, he goes back to bed.
The theoretical physicist wakes up, sees the fire and goes to the sink. He splashes water on his face and says “A-ha, a solution does exist!” Satisfied, he goes back to bed.
= = =
I cannot answer your question except to say that ultra-cheap mylar can provide much of the energy needed to extract oxygen from lunar regolith. To solve these others issues we need good engineers.
To say we need nuclear reactors, however, rather than ingenious engineering, is the wrong way to go, IMHO.
= = =
After I wrote this, I started wondering about transparent aerogels which apparently can be manufactured in zero-gee. If you have robotic assistance (Dextre on wheels) you could swap in new aerogel panels every time one fogged up too much from the recondensed silicates.
For Paul Dietz: Solar forge.
Aim passive reflectors at the fresnel lens of a solar forge. Perhaps use a long cooled (shaded) cylinder to collect as much of the silicates as possible along the walls of the cylinder before the gas can reaches the transparent screen protecting the fresnel lens.
Steadily evacuate all gases into another chamber at the opposite end of the solar forge (before separating for O2) and perhaps inject a non-reactive gas into the forge cylinder to create air flow away from the lens.
Just typing out loud here. . .
I think any scheme that has a free space line of sight from the hot rock to the optics (even a transparent window) has problems, since the recondensed vapor will quickly block the light.
The only good solution I can think of is having an opaque absorber made of some refractory, low vapor-pressure material (tungsten?) interposed between the optics and the material being processed. Heat deposited in the absorber would be conveyed to the rock by reradiation, perhaps. Even then, sublimation might be a problem — notice how incandescent light bulbs become darkened at the ends of their lives. This might be overcome by periodically cleaning the optics, say by sputtering, or by periodic redeposition of a clean layer of aluminum on the mirror.
“…I never cared that much for Kistler, and to echo your comment about SpaceX, I was Rotary Rocket’s biggest fan. But they both developed and tested hardware, and they both went down in the constellation bust.”
Do you really think Rotary Rocket’s biggest problem was the collapse in the demand that had been projected for telecomm constellations?
If so, let’s talk bargain bridges…
Haven’t you seen the news? NASA is going alt space. Ames is teaming with Google and the shuttle program is teaming with NASCAR. It seems like a perfect technological fit. I’m excited already.
Note on thread relevance – – extracting lunar LOX with minimum capital investment as the target variable will cause the hunt for water ice to be far less important on NASA’s initial “Must Do” lists. That lets us get to the real “whys” sooner.
Okay, Paul Dietz writes:
The only good solution I can think of is having an opaque absorber made of some refractory, low vapor-pressure material (tungsten?) interposed between the optics and the material being processed. Heat deposited in the absorber would be conveyed to the rock by reradiation, perhaps. Even then, sublimation might be a problem — notice how incandescent light bulbs become darkened at the ends of their lives. This might be overcome by periodically cleaning the optics, say by sputtering, or by periodic redeposition of a clean layer of aluminum on the mirror.
Okay, now I envision a cement mixer type device with a rotating tungsten core that is heated by passive solar. Clear line of sight to the tungsten core can be maintained at all times without the focused sunlight striking the regolith directly, thus no regolith vapor or deposition within the line of sight.
Add tungsten vanes to the core and perhaps alternate forms of heating (electric) as well. Tumble the regolith at whatever speed best outgases O2 and dump the slag on your Sterling engines.
The goal is to use in situ energy to extract in situ oxygen with as little expensive equipment as possible. Theoretical efficiency is irrelevant. Low capital investment and minimum imports of energy are the keys.
Think “return on investment” as the controlling metric.
Passive solar with off the shelf mylar maybe less satisfying from a scientific or engineering perspective but lower up-front capital investment translates to high return on investment.
> Do you really think Rotary Rocket’s biggest
> problem was the collapse in the demand that
> had been projected for telecomm constellations?
>
> If so, let’s talk bargain bridges…
This is what I love about online forums–the amateur mind-readers.
Didn’t say what you imply I said, for the record. But I’d be happy to hear your version about why Rotary failed.
Edward: No contracts from NASA? Why should you need any? The alt.space community has largely been opposed to the Space Station, so obviously they don’t need contracts from NASA’s biggest market. Since government productions are so incompetent (not to say evil), you should have no need of NASA, the government, or anyone else. Let’s see the alt.space community deliver a working lunar base, then I’ll change my song — but not before.
David: I do agree with you about the EELVs, and have done so loudly and often on this list. If the VSE fails, I believe it will be because we’re spending our money on launch vehicles rather than getting to Earth’s moon.
That’s the logic of the ISS: Start building it, never mind if the means of completing and sustaining the ISS is technically and economically sound.
Yes, and it is working for us. If alt.space-to-orbit has any market at all, it is the Space Station. The reason a lot of the alt.space community is getting its funding is because of this very market. SpaceX and Kistler are already fighting over it.
If alt.space is to succeed in deep space, we need to create exactly that kind of market on Earth’s moon.
— Donald
Donald: By the way, I think that you’re really laying it on thick in accusing me of lying. We may have radically different interpretations of the VSE, but since I prominently link to plainly readable sources, I’m not hiding anything from anybody.
The one time that I accused anyone of deliberately lying is when I said that Bush’s promise in the VSE to complete the space station is a kind of resolve that is spelled L-I-E. What I meant is that his promise is completely insincere. I think that everything that Griffin is doing bears this out. It’s just like what you would get if they promised to “complete” the Bay Bridge renovation by January 1, 2006.
Patrick: Never mind Bill White’s version, you should look at the test pilot’s version: “I Survived the Rotary Rocket”, by Marti Sarigul-Klijn. (It’s not on-line but you can Google it to find the citation.)
This is what I love about online forums–the amateur mind-readers.
Yes, please leave the mind reading to the professionals. After all, these guys have been building the same satellite for 30 years. If you could do that, you would have license to be pretentious too.
Greg, I am mystified by your comment. Except for t/Space, I do not believe ANY alt-space start up is anywhere near attaining LEO.
Next, take the prospect of permanent colonization “off the table” and I would become a robots only guy. My brother (the physicist) is a “robots only” guy because he believes colonization is impossible for a few hundreds years, if ever. I disagree.
For me, the prospect of spreading human life throughout the solar system is the ONLY reason that can justify the risk to life and treasure needed for human spaceflight purchased on the taxpayer’s dime (Almost typed crewed spaceflight)
If private folks want to do it just for kicks, without plans to colonize? No problem here, just let ‘em pay for it themselves.
Whatever Griffin’s other flaws may be (we can argue) I find that his willingness to advocate permanent settlement as THE reason for human spaceflight earns him my total support. How? Okay, we can argue and will.
Lunar platinum? That is like a professor moonlighting at a side job, a little extra revenue to help pay the bills.
= = =
By the way, all of this would be orders of magntitude cheaper if we were willing to buy Soyuz and Proton, today.
Bill White: I’m not sure which of my comments mystifies you. I do recommend listening to your brother though.
Well, there you go. Let’s beat our rockets and missiles into plowshares right now. Our buddies, the Russians, have our backs.
Greg: Bill White: I’m not sure which of my comments mystifies you.
Rotary Rocket. I do not recall posting anything about Rotary Rocket.
As for colonization, I favor paying for it with media and marketing revenue with only a few drops of tax revenue. Unfortunately, tax revenue is the only game in town, today.
I’d rather buy rockets with ad money, in preference to paying Brittney Spears or sports stars. /snark
USA Today interviewed Mike Griffin on lunar resources. Number one was LOX, not water:
Possibly, one of the most useful (resources) we will get from the moon is liquid oxygen. It can be extracted fairly easily from the lunar soil. If shipped from the moon to other storage depots, it will have very high value because it is half of the propellant needed for any exploration or any other rocketry activity over the next few decades
Greg, you are probably correct in that I was laying it on too thick, however I used the term “lie” in exactly the way you did regarding those promoting the VSE. In this thread, you have been perfectly willing to mis-quote the documents you linked (regarding water, you linked to a document that did not say what you said it did) and to state something that is demonstrably untrue (no potentially useful resource on the moon, c.f., Bill White’s quote immediately above). All of us distort truth, consciously or unconsciously, in order to support passionately held beliefs, but after repeatedly accusing others of doing it, in this thread you have been blatently dishonest in order to support a political / technical position that is by no means inarguably true.
I admit to sometimes over-stating my case, to arguing something I didn’t fully understand (and backing down when confronted), and to being wrong, but I have never stated something that I knew to be wrong. You have done so at least twice in this thread alone. Your position may or may not be correct, but if it requires this kind of defense, I think you need to seriously go back to first principles and make sure that you really believe your own position.
— Donald
Donald: No I don’t know that anything that I said was wrong. Some of what I said is a matter of opinion, but otherwise I stand by all of it.
And I didn’t use the word “lie” in regard to anyone promoting the VSE. The lie is in the VSE itself. Bush said that America will complete the space station and I think that it’s tantamount to a lie. If not when it was first uttered, certainly by now it is. That’s the only thing that I’ve ever called a lie in this forum, as best I can remember.
Really I don’t think it’s your place to tell me that I am deliberately dishonest about any of this. It’s within your First Amendment rights, but that’s as far as it goes. If you want to stick to reason, you should quote me verbatim, and leave the door open to different interpretations.
For example I never said that the moon has no potentially useful resources. In fact it does. Lots of things are potentially useful. I said that the moon has no forseeably useful resources, except for perhaps some negligible conveniences. I stand by that. NASA has no tangible plans to do anything remotely practical with any lunar resource. It’s all in the unforseeable future.
> Edward: No contracts from NASA? Why should you need any?
Donald, I’ll gladly forego NASA contracts if you are willing to forego raiding my wallet.
But as long as you do raid my wallet to pay for your space program, I have a right to a say in how that money’s spent. and you have an obligation to spend it in a manner that returns value to the taxpayers.
And no, buying votes for Democratic politicians, as advocated on your web site, does not count. If you want to use the space program to promote the Democratic Party, then let the Democratic Party fund the space program.
> The alt.space community has largely been opposed to the Space Station,
> so obviously they don’t need contracts from NASA’s biggest market.
So, shut down ISS. I won’t shed any tears, but if you insist on keeping it, that doesn’t mean you have the right to run it in the most wasteful, inefficient manner possible.
> Let’s see the alt.space community deliver a working lunar base, then
> I’ll change my song — but not before.
Nah.
You’ll just say the Moon isn’t “real” space exploration and the government needs a really big rocket to go directly from the surface of the Earth to Alpha Centauri. Just like suborbital isn’t “real” space exploration today. You guys only know one song. 
Kelly:
>>…(VSE) was directed to the moon to basically re-verify NASA still has what it takes…
billg
>I don’t think so. To agree with that assertion, I’d have to think
> that the 6 Apollo missions covered the waterfront in terms of lunar
> exploration and exploitation. ==
You seem to assume Apollo, or any NASA program of significance since, was about exploration and exploitation. That’s what generations of space buffs desperately want, but that has NEVER been what NASA been directed to do. Never what Congress wanted.
During Apollo NASAs then head Jack Webb was EXPLICITLY told by JFK that Apollo and the space program was about beating the Soviets to the moon. Past that Kennedy had NO interest in NASA, and wanted no funds wasted on any such efforts. I’ve seen the transcript
After Apollo NASAs official directive was to “maintain the space infrastructure”, shuttle was generally funded for that. The very labor hog nature of the flawed design became its greatest political strength. You’ll notice Griffin frequently talks about how his plan will maintain the shuttle workforce size.
The why we want and need to go to space, is not the why NASA is doing what its doing.
Kelly
>>…there are vastly better and cheaper ways to get to space and
>> do VSE. The very design used for Apollo (and now to be
>> replicated) has frequently been listed as why manned space
>> flight was unaffordable post Apollo, and hence terminated. ===
billg
> VSE doesn’t look like replicated Apollo to me. Different launch
> vehicles; different crew vehicles; different mission profiles
> and objectives. (Yes, they’re using rockets. How else do you suggest
>they get there?) ==
The engines are rockets, which are what you’d use for most any design, but not a saturn 5 class expendable booster for cargo – and a insane SRB based man launcher! Not a system that like Apollo throws away everything but the capsule! And the capsule, service module, LEM configuration and shape are virtually direct replicas. Except the Shuttle based booster design is cruder and more labor intensive then the old Saturn-V. [Sad statement of NASA progress over 40 years.]
How else?
DC-X and T/Space design concepts have SSTO or TSTO craft that refuel in orbit. Go to the lunar surface and return to earth. Fully reusable.
In the shuttle era NASA and others developed designs that carried up the earth orbit to lunar surface craft in the shuttle bay. Fueled there it went to the moon and returned, where a shuttle could carry it back down for refurbishment. Course that might drive you to fix the shuttles. [Technically easy, but politically impossible since it would unemploy thousands of shuttle servicing techs.]
There are dozens of cheeper concepts dating back Von Brauns 1950’s two stage to orbit shuttle design. Reusables ranging from Boeing’s 1970’s 500ton cargo capacity fully reusable SSTO or TSTO designs for building space solar power sats, to the ‘60 SeaDragon monster reusable TSTO built with a thick steel hull and cheep pressurized engines, to all the Alt Space designs. SpaceX is fielding their first Falcon booster. Its costs are a fraction of current launch costs. Its successor with be two stage fully reusable booster they are projecting a 95% cost reduction for a start.
In general there are lots of options, in general a good start is don’t throw everything away after each flight.
billg
> Nor have I seen Apollo’s cost as a reason for the suspension of
> American manned flight between Apollo-Soyuz and Apollo. ==
A Apollo mission cost about a billion $ per, in 1960’s money. At that price, and with the political risk of losing a crew, it was unfundable. Though to be fair they had another 3 missions worth of gear already delivered (The 3 Saturn V’s became lawn ornaments at JSC, KSC, and Marshall) but given Apollos mission was satisfied as soon as the first crew returned safely from the moon, what was the point?
The very labor hog nature of the flawed design became its greatest political strength. You’ll notice Griffin frequently talks about how his plan will maintain the shuttle workforce size.
You hit the answer to the “why” question right on the head. What we need is someone to put NASA’s house in order first. Griffin is nothing. He’s not a designer. He knows nothing about business. He is an academic with a big ego trying the same tricks others have tried, expecting a different result. I think he’s going to be the last NASA administrator, or maybe I should say I hope he is.
(The 3 Saturn V’s became lawn ornaments at JSC, KSC, and Marshall)
Nit: One of the three Saturn Vs was used to launch Skylab. The other two became lawn ornaments at JSC and KSC, though neither has all three stages from the same rocket, and KSC’s S-1C stage was a test stage. The other S-1C flight stage is a lawn ornament at Michoud. The Marshall lawn ornament was all test stages, no flight stages.
By the way, all of this would be orders of magntitude cheaper if we were willing to buy Soyuz and Proton, today.
This is what Bill’s friends are up to today. I’m sure the Iranians are only interested in “peaceful” uses of nuclear energy.
Dfens, I am convinced that Iran covets nuclear weapons. Commerical use only? What a joke. And Iranian A-bombs are bad, bad, bad, no argument but chest pounding is not helpful.
Okay, so we don’t buy Soyuz. Wow. Look at all the leverage that has given us. ITAR? Unless the EU joins in boycotts of weaponry to China, ITAR is full of holes, from a secuirty perspective.
= IF = not buying Soyuz and Proton assured us there would be no Iranian nukes, I’d say okay its a worthwhile trade. Say no to Soyuz. But to have no access to Soyuz and Proton AND still face Iranian nukes is lose-lose.
= = =
Heh! If you favor boycotts let’s stop buying Saudi oil. Moving to Montana gasified coal and nuclear and getting OFF oil dependence will have a far, far more positive effect that not buying Soyuz.
snark on
After we invade Iran and tip over the mullahs, then can we buy Soyuz and Proton?
snark off
Snark on
So can we instead of buying a soyuz, can we instead buy a Shenzhou knockoff. Or is there some other agreement too that prohibits this as well.
Snark off
Dfens: I don’t see how you can say that Griffin is not a designer or that he knows nothing about business. According to Johns Hopkins, Griffin helped design the Delta 180 satellite series and he served as CEO of Magellan (the GPS navigation unit of Orbital Sciences). Do you have some reason to know that these credentials are fake?
On the other hand, your criticism would be true if you had meant it for Sean O’Keefe. O’Keefe really is just a management professor who played common bureaucratic maneuvers as head of NASA.
We should go to the Moon so we can have the coolest colony in the history of humanity. We should go to the Moon every 50 years until we get it right. If not now, when?
Would a thousand foot mine shaft on the Moon outgas?
David,
FYI, there is a technical paper on using medium-class launchers to send a human Mars mission in the JBIS I received yesterday.
— Donald
Dfens>
> You hit the answer to the “why” question right on the head.
Thank you!
Dfens>
>What we need is someone to put NASA’s house in
> order first. Griffin is nothing. He’s not a
> designer. He knows nothing about business. He
> is an academic with a big ego trying the same
> tricks others have tried, expecting a different
> result. I think he’s going to be the last NASA
> administrator, or maybe I should say I hope he is.
Agree.
In a way O’Keefe was what NASA needed – someone to force them to clean up their act, and pushing to change the status quo, with political abilities in Washington. Griffens the worst thing NASA could get. He loves NASA, and beleaves in going back to the worst of the old ways, old procedures, status quo. Driving NASA back into the safe fantasies they had about their own past — away from new advances and efficencies.
>> all of this would be orders of magntitude cheaper if
>> we were willing to buy Soyuz and Proton, today.
Guys those are not great birds. Overall Soyuz has a slightly worse safty record then Shuttle, and damn little capacity.
If you want a quick order of magnitude cost improvement – buy into Falcon for launchers, or fund a DC-X based launcher. Hell fix the shuttle adn get rid of the tiles and Some odds and ends and you could drop its costs nearly a order. A new fully reusable shuttle could easily beat that, and could carry a could Soyuz in the bay. All for maybe 10-20% of the CEV budget of $15 billion. Savings for VSE could easily be several tens of billions.
Hell fix the shuttle adn get rid of the tiles and Some odds and ends and you could drop its costs nearly a order
Isn’t this the definition of a shuttle C?
Folks, if you want to go to Moon/Mars, you need a real HLLV. If you want a sample return mission done right–you need HLLV. Want a solar Foci scope? Or a Europa lander that must burn its way down as opposed to using chutes and aerobrakes—you need HLLV.
Kelly: Past that Kennedy had NO interest in NASA,
That’s true of Kennedy, but it was in no way true of Johnson, who wanted an expansive space program for a number of political and ideological reasons. Unfortunately, he got rather side-tracked.
— Donald
Greg, he “helped”? What’s that? People help me all the time. It doesn’t make them a designer. It could, however, make them the janitor. Oh wait, we don’t have those anymore. They can’t bill the taxpayer $200/hr to have a janitor clean the building, but they can if an engineer does it. Having that Orbital fiasco on his resume doesn’t help him much either.
Shuttle-C is what NASA should be building right now. The plan should be to build a Shuttle-C in 3-5 years and use that to complete space station and to launch the lunar mission hardware. The plan should be to start on a more cutting edge vehicle right after they finish development of the C. That would give NASA both elements their plan currently lacks. It would give them a near term success, and some long term excitement. A designer would know that.
Instead they chose to build a long term snore no one believes will be built on time or on budget, and even if they do ever build it, who cares? If they were building a clean sheet design, even of an old fashioned expendable, there would be a little excitement. The POS they decided on was the next to the worst option possible. It will be an MCOTs f’ing nightmare, with costs skyrocketing because of the inane reuse constraints. Griffin, in the long tradition of NASA managers, is a savant idiot.
Donald: “Johnson…wanted an expansive space program for a number of political and ideological reasons. Unfortunately, he got rather side-tracked.”
Yep, he (and his successors through Carter) got hit by a perfect storm: a big tax cut (Kennedy-Johnson 1964), big new domestic spending commitments, a long-running war, [then-]record deficits, a weakening dollar and balance of payments, sagging public belief in the competence and good faith of government, and energy price spikes.
Fortunately, that was all long ago and things are very different today. VSE Ho…!
Yep, he (and his successors through Carter) got hit by a perfect storm: a big tax cut (Kennedy-Johnson 1964), big new domestic spending commitments, a long-running war, [then-]record deficits, a weakening dollar and balance of payments, sagging public belief in the competence and good faith of government, and energy price spikes.
Fortunately, that was all long ago and things are very different today. VSE Ho…!
Nope, none of that potted political-economic history gets at the heart of the matter, which was the decision to cancel the Dyna-Soar project in 1965, and the Nixon admin. decisions to build Shuttle and kill Saturn V.
After that further bad wrong decisions were made to build the ISS and make the Shuttle the only American craft that can fly to the space station with either passengers or large or small cargos.
Please tell me how “sagging public belief in the competence and good faith of government” caused any of these bad decisions to be made? On the other hand, one can certainly understand how these NASA mistakes might have helped cause sagging public belief in the competence and good faith of government. Perhaps you are confusing causes with effects.
I believe the that current Apollo On Steroids (TM)
design proposal is another crummy NASA idea.
However, Apollo On Steroids (TM) may not be a big problem long term, because I doubt that Apollo On Steroids (TM) will last past 2008, the end of this current Presidential administration.
I reject the premise that NASA manned space is in its present parlous candition because NASA has been starved of funds in the past, or becasue of foreign wars or sociological turmoil or whatever. Instead, NASA is in trouble now because NASA has bet on the wrong flying horses in the past.
NASA has made big mistakes, and that’s that .. and that’s why some deep peeple don’t trust NASA now.
In D. Davenport’s bizarro world alt.manned. spaceflight.history, the Saturn V missile would still exist, with appropriate updates to electronic systems and to engines and fuel tank methods of construction. No revolution, but evolution.
Skylab I would have been saved for a time, along with Mir. Skylab II would have replaced Skylab I by now. Skylab II would be located at an inclination angle of 28.x degrees, optimum for launching from Kennedy. The main hull of Skylab II would consist of two or more modules derived from Sat. V second stage H2 tanks. Each module would require one Saturn V launch.
There wouldn’t be too many Skylab II modules, because this American space station wouldn’t be a big deal. The Moonshack outpost on the Moon would get more play in the news media. Both Skylab II as well as Moonshack would be occupied only intermittently, not continuously, at least since astronauts’ two year stay at the radiation-shielded Moonshack in the early 1980’s had answered the big questions about the health effects of prolonged habitation in 0.1 g gravity. Nowadays, about the only reason for humans to visit the Moon
would be maintenance missions to repair the large interferometric telescopes on the Moon. Recall that, unlike Earth, Luna has no seismic activity whatsoever. No shaking.
Depending on the findings of robot explorers, there might be projects underway to place another manned base on the Moon’s south pole. Purpose: to extract water from the lunar soil there. Some law-‘n’-order right wingers would be arguing that a bigger lunar south pole moonbase should be built to house maximum security convicts, who could usefully spend their time toiling in the mines of the Moon. However, the ACLU would have lawsuits pending under the theory that lunar penal colonies are a form of cruel and unusual punishment.
There’d be a Mir II in polar orbit. ( Note, back in the 1980’s the Rooskies really did propose a Russian space station in polar orbit as an alternative to their participation in the International Space Station. ) . In the post Cold War spirit of camaraderie, Americans and Russians would visit each other’s space stations from time to time. Americans would use their Dyna-Soar II spaceplane for quick jaunts up and down from the space stations.
There’d be controversy about retiring the venerable Apollo system. Dynasoar II’s would be engineered for deceleration from Earth escape velocity. There’d be a refuelable, re-useable Lunar Excursion Module II to replace Apollo’s classic and venerable but outdated LEM. However, the California and New York state Congressional delegations would be fighting hard to prevent retirement of the Apollo system.
The big propulsion systems debates going on right now would be whether or not to replace DynaSoar’s vertical launch missile with a horizontal launch system, and whether or not the working fluid could be manufactured on the Moon for nuclear/thermal motors for Mars spacecraft.
Some spoilsports would be arguing that, since robotic systems had discovered living microorganisms on Mars, humans should never try to return to Earth from Mars, lest they bring back a deadly plague. Other people, thinking outside the box, would want to fix the Mars infection problem by going ahead promptly with the terraforming of Mars, terraforming Mars in such a way that existing life on Mars would be sterilized and killed.
Shuttle-C is what NASA should be building right now. The plan should be to build a Shuttle-C in 3-5 years and use that to complete space station …
Which Shuttle-C, top mounted or side mounted? The various Shuttle-C proposals also dither about whether or not the main engines will come back to Earth for reuse.
I’m not sure any Shuttle-C, as proposed, would be able to carry ISS component payloads, which are all intended to be mounted along their ventral side in a Shuttle payload bay. We’d have to address that problem.
There are also questions about the delivery precision of Shuttle-C’s top stage. In the absence of a separate space tug or an orbital maneuvering system on Shuttle-C’s terminal stage, Shuttle-C might have no more ability than an Atlas or Delta missile to put a structural module in place on the ISS.
In sum, the Atlas or Delta EELV might be about as useful as Shuttle-C for completing the ISS. In either case, there’d have to be some sort of adapter sleeve to hold payloads originally intended for a Shuttle cargo bay, and a space tug based at the ISS to collect and position large component modules on the International Space station.
As best my flawed memory can recall, there was only one Shuttle-C, which was a payload container mounted where the orbiter is now, with the SSMEs mounted in a pod below. All the load paths remain the same. I don’t see why you couldn’t put astronauts in a capsule on the nose. I think that was the original proposal. There is no reason the capsule couldn’t sport an escape rocket as was used on Apollo.
Frankly, I don’t see any real problem with autonomous docking. It hardly seems like a demanding technical challenge. The biggest problem it has to overcome is the astronaut lobby that works tirelessly to kill every program that dares diminish their already questionable value. Taking for granted, the learned stupidity of NASA and their contractors, of course.
Another trip to yesteryear, the far distant past of 2003, in Google’s Wayback machine.
Enlightenment will be yours when you realize that all Shuttle/ISS operational plans have been rejected except for the plan that maximizes the number of manned Shuttle flights needed to assemble the International Space Station.
Cargo-Only Shuttle Still Possible in NASA’s Future
By Jim Banke
Senior Producer,
posted: 07:00 am ET
14 November 2003
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — After building its new Orbital Space Plane (OSP) to ferry astronauts to Earth orbit and back, NASA very well may turn to its aging space shuttle fleet for continuing service as the nation’s heavy-lifting, cargo-only launch vehicle.
“It’s an area that we are looking at,” Gary Martin, NASA’s space architect in Washington, told SPACE.com. “But it’s not the only one.”
…
The idea of a cargo-only shuttle is not new. During the 1970s and 1980s the idea was studied and developed somewhat by the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. The spacecraft was known as Shuttle-C.
The plan was to use the same external tank, solid rocket boosters and main engines to lift a wingless cargo canister to low Earth orbit, where awaiting astronauts could use an orbital maneuvering vehicle or robot arm-equipped spaceship to handle the load.
Like the shuttle program, the external tank would be discarded and the booster rockets recovered. But with this concept the spacecraft’s main engines also would be recovered, returning to Earth as part of a pod equipped with a heatshield and parachutes.
A full-scale mockup of the cargo element and its propulsion pod was built at Marshall, with plans to send it to the Kennedy Space Center for fit checks at the launch pad. Initial launch capability was expected by 1995.
But in 1990, as NASA sought for ways to pay for a new shuttle (what became Endeavour) and space station Freedom, the agency called off its Shuttle-C work.
…
According to Martin the cargo-only shuttle idea remains on the table, but not necessarily in the way as originally proposed for Shuttle-C.
The autonomous orbiter
“Everyone uses the term Shuttle-C, including myself. But it really means a much more generic look at the pieces that make up the shuttle,” Martin said, noting the improved shuttle main engines and recent test firing of a five-segment solid rocket motor help make the shuttle more attractive.
“It’s a whole family of capability based on the reliable shuttle parts that we know and understand very well,” Martin said.
In fact, Martin said, the shuttle is so well-known that even after it is no longer needed to carry people, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour still could be pressed into service flying in a robot mode — what NASA is calling the autonomous orbiter.
Although never proved in flight, the shuttle is capable of landing by itself except for one critical detail: the landing gear must be lowered by an astronaut. That switch has never been automated, allegedly to ensure job security for the astronauts.
“If there are any out of the ordinary disturbances there’s no way to deal with it very easily,” Martin said, talking about a shuttle flying its final approach to the runway. “That’s where a human can make some really quick decisions. However, it is a doable activity”
But landing isn’t necessarily the toughest part of flying a shuttle without a crew. The rendezvous and docking portion of a flight to the space station is more worrisome.
“What we’re trying to do is to understand how hard that is,” Martin said. “These are not trivial questions. Docking autonomously with the kind of mass the shuttle has, well, you know the risks are high.”
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/rtf_shuttlec_031114.html
There is an interesting read, with drawings, about Shuttle-derived lifters at Mark Ward’s astronautix.com
http://www.astronautix.com/lvfam/shuttle.htm
Among other things it sez there that:
… With construction of the international space station beginning, NASA is looking forward to finally using the shuttle for its intended purpose. Due to the lower than planned flight rate, NASA’s contractors are confident they can keep the existing shuttles flying through 2030. The real test will come when (inevitably) another shuttle is lost.
Keep the existing shuttles flying through 2030. Tee hee hee, That’s the real plan.
Click on Shuttle-C, and we find:
http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/shuttlec.htm
… As a result a Request for Proposal was issued for the Expendable Cargo Element – a payload fairing for the Shuttle-C to be mounted on the side of the external tank. ( Not very clear as to how the payload would attach. — DD ) This could accommodate 4.6 m x 22 m payloads weighing up to 47,000 kg and would be delivered into a 407 km / 28.5 deg orbit for docking with Space Station Freedom. The system could also deliver 52,000 kg to a 300 km / 28.5 deg orbit. The CE (Cargo Element) was equipped with 2 Space Shuttle Main Engines, and 2 Orbital Maneuvering System pods. The payload would either be released attached to the planned Orbital Maneuvering Vehicle transfer stage, or an OMV already in orbit would dock with the CE and take the payload away; or the OMS itself would be used to put the payload in its final orbit, release it, then retrofire to return the CE to earth. …
Click on the last Shuttle variant on the page, “Heavy Lift carrier 2015,” and we find:
http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/hear2015.htm
Orbital launch vehicle. Family: Shuttle. Country: USA. Status: Design 2004.
ATK Thiokol concept for a shuttle-derived heavy lift vehicle with a lift equivalent to the Saturn V. The radical reconfiguration would put all elements in-line. Four SSME engines would be at the base of a stretched external tank, flanked by two shuttle RSRM motors with a fifth segment added. Atop this would be an 8.7 m diameter Lox/LH2 stage, followed by a 10-m diameter payload fairing. Availability would be ten years after go-ahead. …
That year 2004 Thiokal proposal is Dr. Griffin’s proposed new heavy lifter design. Those sneaky Latter Day Saints stole Dr. Griffin’s intellectual property! And Mickey Mouse Griffin is such a refined gentleman that he won’t even protest this theft of his and the ESAS committee’s original design.
This is Shuttle-C the way I remember it. From the what I saw, it had the same sort of clamshell doors as the current oribter. All the load paths were identical, externally and internally. I’d change the shape of the fuselage near the external tank if it were me, but otherwise this is a workable design.
David,
“…the Atlas or Delta EELV might be about as useful as Shuttle-C for completing the ISS…”
The idea has been studied by the EELV contractors, and appears very do-able. However, the information will probably never reach the space community, or the policy makers and lawmakers in DC. Mikey has been very active in suppressing any information relating to the use of EELVs for exploration.
Those sneaky Latter Day Saints. . .
will probably make excellent space colonists.
I was reading this article by Keith Cowing on SpaceRef.com, and was mystified by these two statements:
“The CLV will be built using a standard 4 segment Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) currently used by the space shuttle.”
and
“This [heavy launch] vehicle will use a modified Shuttle external tank, 5 Block II SSMEs and two 5 segment SRBs.”
How stupid is that? They are going to spend the money to redesign and requalify the solid rocket boosters to handle the additional pressure of a 5 segment burn, and then only use it on one of the two vehicles? Amazing! Of course, the whole concept of calling these “shuttle derived” designs is beyond belief. Their “derivation” is nothing more than an arbitrary constraint placed on a design that might otherwise benefit from the technology advances of the last 30 years. I doubt even the most uninformed public believes their heavy launcher is “shuttle derived”. That’s like installing a hand full of bolts out of the current external tank on your car and calling it “shuttle derived”. But the EELV simply would not do at all.
“…the Atlas or Delta EELV might be about as useful as Shuttle-C for completing the ISS…”
> > The idea has been studied by the EELV contractors, and appears very do-able. However, the information will probably never reach the space community, or the policy makers and lawmakers in DC. Mikey has been very active in suppressing any information relating to the use of EELVs for exploration.
So why didn’t Sean O’Keefe propose EELV to help finish ISS?
But the EELV simply would not do at all.
Why not?
A question about Shuttle-C: could it lift more than one ISS structural payload at a time to ISS rendezvous? Define one payload here to be the payload a winged Shuttle Orbiter can carry.
( The weight of individual ISS modules is not a challenge. I don’t think any of them weigh more than roughly 25,000 pounds mass. )
If yes, I expect that a separate space tug, a.k.a. Orbital Maneuvering Vehicle, would be needed to mate the two or more structural modules with the Space Station.
If Shuttle-C could deliver only one payload per launch, same as a winged Shuttle Orbiter, then why not build another Shuttle Orbiter, leaving the crew compartment unfinished with the intention of operating the new Orbiter unmanned?
That might be cheaper than building a heat shield and reusable back end for Shuttle-C. The unmanned Orbiter might also be able to mate its payload with the ISS without a separate space tug.
Here it is. Three Orbiters left, nineteen (19) more Shuttle launches between next July and 2010. STS-121, rescheduled to fly next next July, is a “validation” mission only. Return to Flight II. No big hardware to be delivered.
Revised NASA Shuttle Plan Includes Most Station Hardware
By Brian Berger
Staff Writer
NASA expects to fly 19 space shuttle missions between 2006 and the orbiter fleet’s planned retirement in 2010 …
According to the preview of the S/SCOT study results, NASA thinks it can accomplish 18 flights to the space station beginning with STS-121 — the second so-called Return to Flight mission it now hopes to launch in May — plus one mission to service Hubble, for a total of 19 flights. One of the assumptions underlying the new station assembly plan is that the shuttle orbiter fleet will be retired before Oct. 1, 2010, the start of the U.S. federal government’s new budget year.
Building the international space station is taking much longer than NASA and its partners ever expected. An assembly plan finalized in September 1997, one year before on-orbit construction actually began, envisioned completing the orbital outpost by late 2003.
…
The space shuttle fleet made 13 flights to the space station before the Space Shuttle Columbia’s fatal accident in February 2003. NASA has deployed no major hardware at the station since November 2002, when the Space Shuttle Endeavour delivered the outpost’s first U.S.-built solar arrays. NASA does not expect to resume space station assembly flights before July 2006, the agency’s current planning date for attempting its third post-Columbia flight. Although STS-121 is bound for the space station, the mission’s primary purpose is to validate changes made after the Columbia accident, not deliver major hardware to the station.
http://www.space.com/spacenews/businessmonday_051010.html
If Shuttle-C could deliver only one payload per launch, same as a winged Shuttle Orbiter, then why not build another Shuttle Orbiter, leaving the crew compartment unfinished with the intention of operating the new Orbiter unmanned?
I believe shuttle-c could lift about 3 times the mass of what the current orbiter can carry. The biggest problem is, if you don’t lengthen the cargo area, your cargo density becomes unrealizable. That was why the shuttle-c design NASA was recently proposing in their little “trade study” was so ridiculous. It looked like they lengthened the cargo bay significantly without checking its impact on the vehicle aerodynamics. Just one more example of the uselessness of trade studies. It would most likely be possible to lengthen the cargo area some without screwing up the aerodynamics, which would allow at least two shuttle payloads to be stacked into the bay. Additional mass could be added by increasing the cargo density. In a station module, this might mean adding a few racks to the interior.
The shuttle reacts payload loads through the rails that run longitudinally along either side of the bay. A payload fairing could be produced for an EELV that would react the loads in the same way allowing them to carry space station hardware aloft. They could do that, but won’t because of the control issue. NASA wants control of the vehicle. They don’t want the USAF involved.
why not build another Shuttle Orbiter, leaving the crew compartment unfinished with the intention of operating the new Orbiter unmanned?
The reason a shuttle-c carries more payload is because it does not have to carry wings and landing gear to orbit. Also, without these, it is not vulnerable to foam or other projectiles shed by the tank.
By the way, did you notice this little bs item in that article by Cowing?
“While the Shuttle has a 1/200 loss rate (crew and vehicle) on ascent, Connolly said that NASA has calculated the CLV/CEV system as having a 1/2000 loss rate.”
Are they seriously trying to pitch this? They can claim they will increase the safety of the new vehicle by an order of magnitude by integrating an escape system, but they cannot claim any improvement in vehicle reliability. This is probably one of those PR lies they are trying to propogate like they did the safety rate for the shuttle prior to Challenger. The 1 in 200 rate for shuttle is bogus. The real number is 1/78, and it has come darn close to that in actual experience.
The reason a shuttle-c carries more payload is because it does not have to carry wings and landing gear to orbit. Also, without these, it is not vulnerable to foam or other projectiles shed by the tank.
My thought is, flying winged Orbiters umanned might mitigate fears about the thermal protection system.
Unless Shuttle-C could ascend with more than one ISS structural module at a time, I’m sorry, but I’m skeptical about the value of Shuttle-C. Buidling a large diameter spherical section heat shield to return the three main engines and two Orbital Maneuvering pods and have the payload-bearing rails attach at the edges of or behind the heatshield — that sounds like a challenging design assignment.
Building a reuseable Shuttle-C might actually cost more than building another winged Orbiter.
I can’t find a Web link to back this up, but I think NASA Marshall has considered a Shuttle-C with a disposable, non-recoverable terminal stage — no heat shield and no parachute for the main engines. This disposable Shuttle-C makes a certain amount of sense to me, provided that it could carry more than one ISS module at a time.
I suppose the main engines could be left in space, with the intention of disassembling them and bringing back to Earth in Shuttle Orbiter cargo bays.
They can claim they will increase the safety of the new vehicle by an order of magnitude by integrating an escape system, but they cannot claim any improvement in vehicle reliability.
I agree. The proposed Apollo on Steroids will have two safety features that the Shuttle doesn’t, which are the escape tower tractor rocket system, and a sturdier heat shield.
Aside from the foam shedding and thermal protection system issue, the launch vehicle for the capsule and its service module will be less safe than the present Shuttle system. Why? Because it will be a three stage missile, instead of being a two stage missile as is the Shuttle, so there will be two stage separation events instead of one. ( That’s one argument for single stage to orbit spacecraft — no stage separations to malfunction. )
Furthermore, there is no valid way to estimate the safety of the parachute landing for the big new crew capsule. I believe it will be a record-sized weight to land under steerable parachute. That’s uncharted territory.
If you want to compare to Soyuz, Soyuz has had one fatal parachute malfunction and at least a couple of nonfatal but scary parachute incidents, most recently in 2003.
They could add ejection seats. In fact, despite the small weight penalty, it would seem like a good idea to have them. If instead of a tractor rocket escape system they used integrated rockets above the heat shield, they could use these in combination with parachutes to soften the landing. A beefed up reaction control system would do the trick. Forget about making the CEV smaller. The astro-egos won’t hardly fit in there now.
I don’t remember what the Shuttle-C plan was regarding the engines. I wish they’d replace those overly complex, maintenance nightmare SSMEs with something simpler. Maybe something with a plug flow nozzle. Yes, I know, that would be waaay too cutting edge for NASA. I shudder to think how much money they could waste on something like that.