The reaction to yesterday’s announcement that Lockheed Martin will build the Orion (née CEV) spacecraft for NASA was fairly muted and broadly supportive of the selection. Some highlights:
- Sen Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) issued a press release congratulating Lockheed Martin for winning Orion. Not surprisingly, she brought up the issue of the “gap” between the 2010 retirement of the shuttle and the introduction of Orion (currently slated for 2014, although NASA officials said at the press conference yesterday that both competitors has offered unspecified proposals to move up that date.) “I look forward to the timely completion of the CEV which will hopefully reduce or even eliminate any gap between the retirement of the space shuttle and the start of operations for these new systems.”
- Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) pointed out the benefits the Lockheed win will provide to Florida in a speech at the Gainesville, Florida airport. (The article in the Gainesville Sun doesn’t mention when on Thursday he gave the speech; presumably it was after 4 pm or else the people there got a minor scoop.) “This is the right decision for America,” Nelson said. “It is certainly a big boost for Florida. It is a big boost for all the universities, including the University of Florida, that participate in the space program.”
- Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA) also issued his congratulations, even though his home state will likely miss out on the bulk of the work to be doled out for the project. He also called for additional funding for NASA, saying, “I am hopeful that NASA funding will be restored to the level I included in our NASA authorization last year, $17.9 billion.”
- Rep. Mark Udall (D-CO) pointed out in a statement that the selection of Lockheed Martin means “at least 300 high-paying engineering jobs in the Denver area”. adding that the Lockheed win also “will be a boon to Colorado’s aerospace industry.”
- The AP tracked down a famous former member of Congress, Tom DeLay, who also lauded the award. “I had no dog in this fight, but Lockheed Martin has a long history here at Johnson Space Center and the thing that excites me about it is they will do most of the work in Houston because it is Lockheed Martin.”
At the state level, the award is a big loss for California, which had been hoping to win some part of the work if Northrop/Boeing won; prior to the announcement Lockheed had already announced that much of the Orion work would be split among Colorado, Texas, and Florida, but not California. It will also make it harder for proponents of tax credit legislation for CEV work to get the bill passed in the state legislature. That bill, AB 2033, had stalled out in the Assembly.
… prior to the announcement Lockheed had already announced that much of the Orion work would be split among Colorado, Texas, and Florida, but not California.
Jeff, would you please explain this very interesting aspect of the deal, which is: how did #@$(&^# on California help LM win the contract?
Can one simply conclude that the Congressional pull of CO, TX, and FL outweigh that of CA? Why wouldn’t Lockheed’s pull have been even stronger if LM had offered California some of the Apollo 2.0 work?
After all, LM Misiiles and Space Div. is located in Sunnyvale.
— David Davenport
It’s all about jobs, it has nothing to do with either space or science, or any of the other political catch words that they use nowadays.
At this point we could just terminate NASA entirely.
The goal is wise expenditure of the taxpayers’ funds in order to achieve a national mission directed by the executive branch and confirmed by Congress; given that, the team most likely to succeed – that with the best track record – should have been chosen.
So the fact that NASA chose LM, which:
A) Has no experience building man-rated spacecraft of any type;
B) Spent $900 million+ of the taxpayers’ funds on X-33, but was never even able to complete the prototype, much less get it to the pad and launch it;
C) Has such sterling achievements as Mars Climate Observer, Genesis, and POES (whups! forgot to replace the bolts) on their resume;
SHOULD lead to very real and pointed questions about NASA’s decision-making here – LM’s track record on the only remotely comparable NASA program they’ve ever been awarded, the X-33, should be making red lights go on all over Capitol Hill, frankly.
That being said, that political power is being exercised by the Administration on the behalf of Texas and Florida is obvious; from the most nakedly cynical point of view, Congressional support of NASA’s HSF program from Texas (Johnson), Florida (Kennedy), Louisiana (Michoud), Alabama (Marshall), Mississippi (Stennis), and Maryland (Goddard) is a given; chosing NGC-Boeing would, if anything, have been a more politically astute choice by NASA, given NGC’s facilities in California and Boeing’s corporate headquarters in Illinois.
So the choice of LM suggests that in fact NASA was not looking for:
A) Technical track record, or
B) Wide-spread and bipartisan political support in Congress.
Following that, Occam’s Razor would suggest a much simpler explanation for NASA’s choice of LM…Republican politics generally and the upcoming mid-terms in particular.
I’d lay 50-50 odds that a manned LM-built CEV never sees the launch pad, for both technical and political – ie, Democratic opposition in the next Congress/esses – reasons.
Also on the political front, it is another black mark for the Republican governor of California.
David: I cannot answer your question, and I suspect few can at the moment (although many may speculate) since NASA hasn’t disclosed the factors that led to the selection of the Lockheed Martin proposal over the Northop-Boeing proposal. It’s likely that Texas and Florida would have still gotten some share of the Orion work had the Northrop-Boeing bid won, because of the presence of JSC and KSC, but the division of labor may well have been different, leaving open the possibility that California (where both companies have major facilities) would have gained a significant share of the work, and resulting employment.
It’s premature at this point to speculate what role, if any, influence from Congressional delegations in the affected states had on the selection process.
Sam,
That was a nice selection of criticisms against LM (past experience). Why don’t you also list some of the outstanding accomplishments of current Northrop/Boeing; say,
1. $1.5B-$3B cost overrun on James Webb (Northrop)
2. $3.0 B cost overrun on NPOESS (Northrop)
3. >$1B cost overruns on ISS (as os 2000) (Boeing)
4. 3 for 3 failures of the Delta-III (Boeing)
5. $615M fine for stealing LM EELV proprietary data (Boeing)
This performance doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in a budget and schedule challenged program like Orion. You also fail to mention many of the outstanding successes of LM, namely Stardust, MRO, Odyssey, MER entry, etc. I haven’t seen Northrop/Boeing design, build, and successfully re-enter any blunt-body spacecraft recently. Have you? LM isn’t perfect, but their overall track record looks a lot better than N/B’s.
Jeff,
I don’t understand why LM didn’t advertise, at least as a matter of political marketing, that California wouldn’t share an itty bit of the Apollo 2.0 work. To publicly cut CA out entirely sounds like a political decision made with predjudice. I suppose we’ll hear more about this.
Btw, I am a red state, right wing voter, so please, I don’t sympathize with “Impeach Bush” posts here. It would suit me just fine if they moved the whole deal to Huntsville.
Note that the new Apollo on Steroids capsule will be confined to landing at Edwards AFB or at one of the Nevada airfields, so I suppose California can claim that part of the glory.
Also, it’s my perception that Lockheed is in the process of moving out of CA. They’ve got a presence at Sunnyvale and at Edwards/Palmdale, but LM is largely gone from the Los Angeles area. Correct me if I’m wrong here.
Maybe present day Lockheed is biased against CA, but I’m puzzled as to how LM got the contract without offering CA a share of the work.
…
Technical merits? I’m agin’ space capsules launched on one shot rockets. That might be part of the thinking: either Boeing or LM can build a ho-hum enlarged Apollo, so why worry about the technical strengths of either firm?
And please, don’t say Boeing or Northrop has more experience with Apollo-type craft. I doubt if there’s anyone still employed at Boeing or Nrothrop who was involved in designing or building Apollo I. Entirely different generations of techno-nerds are working at those lean and efficent aerospace enterpreneurships now.
Thanks to “GuessWho” for giving some balance. The corporate partisans’/flag-wavers’ rhetoric is getting fairly deep. The smart commentators will wait at least until the debrief is complete and details of the proposal differences surface before casting stones.
> Thanks to “GuessWho” for giving some balance. The corporate partisans’/flag-wavers’ rhetoric is getting fairly deep.
Why do you assume any criticism of Lockheed Martin is a vote for Boeing-Northrop?
There are other options besides Brand X Apollo on Steroids and Brand Y Apollo on Steroids.
By the way, I’m pretty sure I know who “Guess Who” is. He’s a LockMart employing working on Guess What.
>Why do you assume any criticism of Lockheed
>Martin is a vote for Boeing-Northrop?
>There are other options besides Brand X Apollo
>on Steroids and Brand Y Apollo on Steroids.
>By the way, I’m pretty sure I know who “Guess
>Who” is. He’s a LockMart employing working on
>Guess What.
You are assuming that I am assuming that any criticism of LM is a vote for NG/B.
That’s not true. Maybe SpaceX Dragon is a good alternative. I hope they are successful. But between LM and NG/B, we don’t have any information yet for a valid comparison. Both have a long history of successes and great technical accomplishments. Both have projects and episodes that maybe they’d like to forget. I don’t care who “GuessWho” works for because the points raised were valid, regardless. (disclosure: I have worked for LM. So what.) As I said, we ought to wait and see what details emerge (if any) before launching into any tirades because we really don’t know squat about why one proposal won over the other.
> But between LM and NG/B, we don’t have any information yet for a valid comparison.
So? You just said you aren’t assuming the comparison was between LM and NGB.
> As I said, we ought to wait and see what details emerge (if any) before launching into any
> tirades because we really don’t know squat about why one proposal won over the other.
The fact that Lockmart headed the Aldirdge Commission was a good indication.
That aside, what details do you think we need? We know how much NASA is paying and what they’re hoping to get. We know that it won’t reduce the cost of access to space (quite the contrary). Does it really matter what kind of radios and upholstery they’re putting in?
Sorry Sam,
I am not with LM, not working CEV, not even with an aerospace firm. I just don’t care to hear that company X is far, far better than Y when everyone involved has had successes and failures. Jon is right, the general public does not yet know why LM won and NG/B lost and won’t until work is started and NASA begins to release design details. Personnaly, I think CEV is a complete waste of time and money and NASA is solely to blame on this one. They haven’t been successful on any next gen shuttle/shuttle replacement since day one.
“Personnaly, I think CEV is a complete waste of time and money and NASA is solely to blame on this one. They haven’t been successful on any next gen shuttle/shuttle replacement since day one.”
GuessWho, so where should someone who aspires to build better rockets and space systems generally try to find work? NASA, Northrop, AF, Scaled, XCOR, DARPA??
“… so where should someone who aspires to build better rockets and space systems generally try to find work? NASA, Northrop, AF, Scaled, XCOR, DARPA?”
Great question. Tough to answer. From my perspective, NASA (at least the current version) is the wrong place. Too much of a bureaucracy and too much turf war mentality exists within the NASA organization to effectively accomplish large, long-term goals. In-fighting between the centers has typically been the downfall of most programs. Once a center has won the lead role in a major program, the others begin chipping away at the program to carve away dollars, political support for their pet/strong program, etc. Congress listens and begins to dilute the original program until it dies a slow, quiet death. Examples; Shuttle-C, ISTP, SLI. Success is measured in how many dollars they get and how many people they keep employed, not whether anything eventually flies.
I tend to come down on the side of private industry to design and build systems for an end-user. On the space-science side, this approach looks to be far more successful (historically) with NASA and the science community the end-users. There are well-defined missions with well-defined objectives. This model doesn’t exist on the manned-space side of the house. NASA is trying to be both the end-user and the provider and they compete with themselves on both sides of the equation. They don’t have a well-defined mission with well-defined objectives. They build a space-station for no apparent reasons other than to say we can do it, sort of. They build a Shuttle (and now CEV) to go to that station to do nothing more than build and maintain it. Now they want a 10+-year commitment to repeat the exercise with the nebulas goal of going to the moon to do … what? Oh, that’s right, to let someone else figure out what might be saleable. Sounds like the ISS argument all over again. (Sorry, this paragraph has wandered off-topic)
DoD tends to the end-user model with pretty good success and advances in technology to meet their mission set are extensive. Unfortunately, their mission set in space is fairly narrow but it is well focused. (Note, all these comments are relative as everyone chases a blind alley on occasion and DoD is no exception.)
Given these cases, LM (space science and defense) and Boeing (defense) do a relatively good job. Northrop is a strong defense firm that is trying to become a strong NASA space organization. I don’t think they are there yet compared to the other two. Note, you only tend to hear the negatives on space programs as these draw outside attention (Congress, media, etc.). Successes go on about their business outside of public scrutiny. The downside to these organizations is that they are big, slow to react, adverse to new technology, etc. In short, a typical large business. The upside is that they can throw tremendous resources at a problem to solve it. It may not be highly innovative, but it will work and it will cost you money to get there. I think this is why you see highly developmental programs go way over budget and way over schedule. These companies aren’t developing new technology on a regular basis and thus they struggle when they must. They prefer to assemble systems of existing technology that yield more data, more performance, etc.
I am glad to see the small start-ups trying to make their mark. This is competition and it can only lead to better systems. But, they have to be successful. And not just one time. Once Musk can demonstrate a successful launch 10-15 times in succession, then he can be taken seriously. If his product offers the same or better performance, with the same reliability at a lower cost than what LM/Boeing brings to the table, then the end-user will knock on his door. The biggest obstacle to any of these companies is the Government (i.e. NASA).
GuessWho, so where should someone who aspires to build better rockets and space systems generally try to find work? NASA, Northrop, AF, Scaled, XCOR, DARPA??
You’ll find work wherever you can … until they lay you off.
Aside from electronics — I take it you’re not an EE or a Computer Science major — aerospace and missile systems are stagnant, slow growth occupational sectors.
Seriously, a good starting place for an aerospace carrer is the US military. They’re hiring just now, and after you’re honorably discharged, you’ll always be able to claim veterans’ preference points when applying to a civilian aerospace firm.
Guesswho:
1. $1.5B-$3B cost overrun on James Webb (Northrop)…which is it? If you can’t even fix it within $1.5 billion, apparently your source may be a “tad” uncertain.
2. $3.0 B cost overrun on NPOESS (Northrop) … not on the bus, and the instruments are as close to GFE as one can get without being GFE; blame NOAA and the USAF for that, not NGC.
3. >$1B cost overruns on ISS (as os 2000) (Boeing)…and yet, it flies and can hold atmosphere, which is more than anything LM has put into LEO since, well, before the Lougheed brothers left the company.
4. 3 for 3 failures of the Delta-III (Boeing)…CEV, of course, is not a launch vehicle, but if you want to make that play, Delta IV works, and – amazingly enough – actually fulfills the requirements of the USAF RFP; a heavy-lift version, VAFB launch pad, and US-built engines. When is LM and Atlas going to provide any of that, again?
5. $615M fine for stealing LM EELV proprietary data (Boeing) … and yet, Boeing’s bird works AND fulfils the requirements of the USAF’s RFP; L-M’s revolving door in DoD gets exactly what LM pays for…not what the taxpayer pays for, of course, but that’s never really been the issue for the boys from Bethesda, has it? How are the Petes (Aldridge, for example) doing these days, anyway? Lots of stock options, I expect…
And as far as Apollo, Skylab, Shuttle, and ISS experience go, based on what I have seen and read, the NGC/Boeing team had quite a few graybeards on hand, ranging from SEIT to launch operations to end-users.
Watching Scotty H. and the rest of the NASA gang justifying the X-33B to Congress will be entertaining, if nothing else.
Sam,
Do you work for Boeing? C’mon, we want to know.
… 3. >$1B cost overruns on ISS (as os 2000) (Boeing)…and yet, it flies and can hold atmosphere, which is more than anything LM has put into LEO since, well, before the Lougheed brothers left the company….
So what? You could use that meaningless rhetoric to try to block any new space comapny from getting any work.
As to greybeards, whether at Boeing or LM or the tenured faculty at your U., give ‘em a decent pension and make way for a younger generation.
Consider BMW:
Panke is a CEO most boards would die to keep. So why let him go? BMW’s controlling shareholder, the Quandt family, has an abiding belief in giving talented people responsibility early and moving them up the career ladder at lightening speed — when the prove they can cut it. Panke’s 24-year career is a classic case. The 60-year limit keeps people moving steadily up the ranks and motivated, creates an incredibly strong bench and refreshes the company’s vision. It’s a kind of balanced eco-system.
Perhaps most important, a regular changing of the guard keeps companies nimble. … Car chieftans today must be able to innovate and change course faster than ever before as tastes shift and competition from Asian automakers intensifies. Ossification at the top is a subtle but real danger.
http://www.businessweek.com/autos/autobeat/index.html
Part of the reason why American Establishment space efforts are so senescent is simply that Establishment rocket science is a game for old men. Nobody ineligible for AARP membership has any real say-so inside Establishment rocket science.
Ever thought about that?
Throw Grandpa over the side!
The biggest obstacle to any of these companies is the Government (i.e. NASA).
No, the biggest obstacle to anyone building anything for space is that there’s very little demand in absolute terms: typically a few hundred tons per year to orbit worldwide. That wouldn’t have been enough to drive the development of galleons, or steamships or railroads or automobiles or aircraft, yet we act puzzled that it hasn’t been enough to drive space technologies from ICBM artillery to cost-effective routine.
I didn’t notice NASA being much of an obstacle to the privatization/commercialization of weather, communications and remote sensing satellites. When you call it an obstacle to heavier payloads with longer payback times (which is what manned spaceflight, settlement, and space resources boil down to), what you’re really saying is “NASA hasn’t provided enough of a market to bring down the cost of What We Want”… which is mistaking a symptom for a cause.
Remember when Pan Am was taking “reservations” for moon flights, and Kubrick put a Pan Am orbital shuttle into 2001? Are we to believe that NASA and its nascent STS program was the “obstacle” to that? Just a few years later it was quite clear that US airlines and aircraft builders had no serious intention of developing even a much less ambitious SST on their own dime. Occam’s razor suggests that they didn’t see a way to make it pay off.
Has NASA made its share of mistakes? Sure. But describing it as “the biggest obstacle” says more about spacers’ accumulated frustration over the years — and about a “government is the problem” ideology that’s as cartoonish as the “government is the solution” ideology that preceded it — than it does about the real dynamics of space activity.
“No, the biggest obstacle to anyone building anything for space is that there’s very little demand in absolute terms: typically a few hundred tons per year to orbit worldwide.”
In total, I would agree. But how much of this is for manned space? Who is the primary “user” of manned space? Your right in the statement that NASA has not provided enough market pull to support a commercial entity for manned operations. But, NASA sold the ISS based on the argument of a low-cost space science platform for commercial development and the SSTS as a low cost vehicle to the station. They then failed to deliver as promised resulting in a price tag that was too high and availability that was near zero. Secondly, NASA is now developing a CEV for transport of men and supplies to the station, in direct competition with the COTS winners. Are we to believe that two relatively small companies with limited investment raising capabilities can compete with the US Government? One of these sets of players will fail. Care to guess who?
As for communications and remote sensing (which includes weather) satellites, as much, if not more, of these technologies were born out of DoD and not NASA. Different part of govt., but also a different mindset as to development of space systems. These are also robotic missions so my statements before are still to the point. It is the manned-space arena, that NASA has held reign over since the beginning, that has failed to produce. And now we have the 5.5-m CEV, oops make that 5-m, oops, maybe 4.5. Now we have the 5-segment stick with SSME’s. Oops, can’t make the SSME’s start-up without ground equipment. Let’s try the revamped J-2 that has poorer performance (Isp standpoint) and the 5-segment stick really isn’t just a reconfiguration, it’s a whole new launch vehicle. But wait, didn’t the taxpayers just fork out billions to develop two families of evolved launch vehicles with heavy-lift growth capability? So where do the wanna-be launch providers stand? Ask Andy Beal. I am sure he will sing the praises of the US Govt involvement in launch vehicles. And are we to believe that the failure of X-33 (and X-34, and X-37) are solely on the shoulders of the industry contractor who has to work to the revolving requirements of the Government sponsoring agency? Give me a break.
Truly it’s a big loss to CA, how so ever you look at it.
GuessWho, many thanks for your perspective on who to work for! Your comments on NASA are well taken, I’ve been working with NASA Ames for the past few weeks…
I’ve decided to take a short break from advanced launcher work to recover from my PhD. I do note, however, that the price of launch is dictated by market forces and in particular the inelasticity of demand in the neighborhood of the historical price over the past 40 years. Suffice it to say, the next time the government decides on program x,y, or z with respect to launchers, it will be with a better understanding of whether or not that moves the long-term launch market in the right direction.
And why NASA? Well, AF is in the process of a self-labotamy (which is very sad BTW) and no longer needs qualified space people. And I don’t believe in immediateley going back into academia (similar to NASA being its own customer); real-world experience and values need to enter the loop somewhere. Big industry isn’t doing anything new (or at least new enough to be interesting for me), and newspace was probably something I should have looked more closely at.
But as it turns out, the most important thing is to choose the right boss, and the best boss I could find is at Ames. If you’ve been following the trials and tribulations at Ames, then you’ll know I’ve been learning a lot already
Well, AF is in the process of a self-labotamy (which is very sad BTW) and no longer needs qualified space people.
“Self-labotomy?” Hmmm
The USAF is reducing the the number of non-deployable science and engineering nerds on its payroll. What’s wrong with that? Why not outsource as much Air Force as possible to private industry?
Why should it be the Air Force’s responsibility to provide make-work desk jobs for sissies who won’t go overseas to do an airman’s job in time of war, when their country needs them?
… But as it turns out, the most important thing is to choose the right boss, and the best boss I could find is at Ames.
I.e., the womb of civil service.
Getting back on topic:
http://www.aviationnow.com/avnow/news/channel_awst_story.jsp?id=news/aw090406p2.xml
Selection of Lockheed Martin Starts Shuttle Replacement Clock
By Frank Morring, Jr.
09/03/2006 09:55:09 PM
NEXT UP
NASA’s selection of Lockheed Martin to build the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle kicks off an intense race to fly a CEV as soon as possible after the last space shuttle mission in 2010–without repeating the schedule-driven mistakes that caused previous fatal spaceflight accidents.
Under congressional pressure to minimize the “gap” in U.S. human access to space, NASA chose Lockheed Martin last week over Northrop Grumman/Boeing partly because the former promised to fly sooner under a budget NASA has said wouldn’t support a first flight before 2014. The losing proposal made a similar promise, and NASA says exactly when humans will fly an Orion into space is unclear.
“We challenged them to do better,” says NASA’s Jeff Hanley, who manages the Constellation Program that is building Orion and the other vehicles needed to return humans to the Moon. “They both came forward with plans that would do better. We are going to now sit down with them and establish what we jointly can agree to as a workable schedule.”
As it stands, that schedule indicates that the first human flight of Orion will be in September 2014, exactly four years after the currently planned final flight of the space shuttle. Lockheed Martin stands to draw $3.9 billion by September 2013 for design, development, testing and evaluation of the spacecraft, plus a sum not to exceed $3.5 billion for production of an unspecified number of Orions from 2009 to 2019, and another $750 million in sustaining engineering by 2019.
One typical schedule-buster–the engine–may have been mitigated by Lockheed Martin’s selection of a modified space shuttle orbital maneuvering system (OMS) engine generating 7,500 lb. thrust as the main propulsion system for the four-part Orion vehicle. ( Note, the more expensive alternative to the Shuttle or Apollo I OMS using hypergolics that have to be replenished from Earth would have been a freshly designed methane/LOX OMS. -DD) From the top, Lockheed Martin will supply a solid-fueled launch abort system, able to pull the capsule off its Ares I launch vehicle at any point on the way to orbit, and the capsule-shaped crew module.
Just aft of that will be the service module carrying the OMS engine and 100 lb. thrust “non-toxic” reaction-control system jets; tanks for hypergolic propellants and oxygen; the solar arrays and related hardware, and the vehicle’s radiators. The contract also covers a 1,281-lb. aluminum adapter that attaches the service module to the Ares I upper stage.
Briefing reporters on the winning bid Aug. 31, Hanley and other top NASA exploration managers outlined Lockheed Martin’s approach to building a ballistic capsule that Administrator Michael Griffin has described as “Apollo on steroids.”
…
It’s so exciting. Play it safe, make it as much like Apollo I forty years ago as possible.
OK, one thing must be different this time: NASA’s Apollo II launch missile simply HAS TO, MUST USE Thiokal solid rocket boosters. Alternatives to those lovely SRB’s will not be considered.
Well, David, now that I am able, I decided to be constructive and fix the things I think are wrong, rather than simply criticizing them. Critcism is healthy, it’s just that if it’s the only thing you do…
And who knows, the wise men at AF may share your sentiment exactly, but actually that’s not what I was referring to. I was referring in part to changes in the way officers (decisionmakers) are chosen and promoted.
Returning to Orion, I liked Lockheed’s original non-capsule concept. It’s just a capsule, it really shouldn’t be such a big deal. A lunar base is a big deal, this is small potatoes.
My contructive, affirmative proprosals for lunar mission architecture:
(1) Do not design two new missiles for lunar launches, one a heavy lifter, the other the “single stick” corn dog looking thing using a single SRB as the first stage.
Instead, NASA, the Air Force, and NRO should agree on a common, modular family of launch missiles, probably using the Boeing Delta IV. The Delta IV can be upscaled to Saturn V size by strapping more common booster modules together.
Launcher common module commonality is a big opportunity for cost savings.
Boeing, btw, spent company money to dunk a Delta first stage into the sea, fish it out, and then demonstrated that the engines restarted. Boeing has proposed recovering and re-using Delta first stages the same way SS SRB’s are recovered now. Even better, since liquid fuel engines wouldn’t have to be disassembled and rebuilt after every launch.
(2) Having saved some money on launch rockets, spend more money on the functional replacement for the Apollo I service module Orbital Maneuvering System. Build a refuelable, reusable space tug that will stay in orbit. Build the space tug in such a way that it can grapple other payloads in addition to the Apollo 2 capsule.
(3) A capsule is an inelegant way to get up and down from Earth. But why does the new capsule have to return to Earth after every lunar trip? Why not have the capsule aerobrake and maneuver so as to dock at the ISS, where it could be refurbished? This will at least give the people at the ISS something useful to do.
(4) Why does the new capsule ever have to be luanched on a bespoke, “man-rated” launcher? Why not launch it to low orbit — maybe to the ISS – sans astronauts? More cost savings here, because the need for an escape tractor rocket is obviated.
Heck, as many other guys have noted, an orginal Apollo is small enough to fit into a Space Shuttle cargo hold.
Astronauts can travel to rendezvous with the capsule via Shuttle, and eventually some newer winged replacement for the Shuttle.
You say the Shuttles won’t be there past 2010?
My serious prediction is that Shuttles will be flying long past the year 2010 or until another Shuttle disaster, whichever comes first.
If Shuttle flights go well during the next year or so, I think we’ll even see a third Shuttle come back from retirement.
You say Shuttles are unsafe? My reply is that after n many and ongoing successful launches and only two failures, one has to conclude that the STS is safe enough.
“D” said:
{My serious prediction is that Shuttles will be flying long past the year 2010 or until another Shuttle disaster, whichever comes first.}
D,
Some argue that Griffin makes stupid decisions, but nobody I know thinks that Griffin is stupid.
The supply chains, needed for additional Shuttle flights beyond those already on the manifest, will be shut down by January 2009 when George W. Bush (and presumably Mike Griffin) leave office.
The cost of rebuilding those supply chains will be astronomical.
It is likely, if not highly probable, that a few of the remaining Shuttle flights will slip to the right, beyond 2010. But it is very unlikely that the next President will make the decision necessary to pay the price necessary to extend the Shuttle beyond the existing flights on the manifest.
– Al
The cost of rebuilding those supply chains will be astronomical.
Compared to what? Do you think the cost of designing, manufacturing, and certifying that corndog missile and an Apollo 2 to service the ISS won’t also be ass-tronimical?
But it is very unlikely that the next President will make the decision necessary to pay the price necessary to extend the Shuttle beyond the existing flights on the manifest.
In that case, the next Potus will have to make the decision not to complete the ISS. … Actually, that’s not the worst decision a guy could make.
The ISS will not be “finished” on M. Griffin’s schedule, and the Apollo 2 rollout will roll further and further to the right.
Face it, the Shuttle’s hard to kill. It’s like Dracula or Frankenstein’s monster. Just keeps coming back from the undead.
“The supply chains, needed for additional Shuttle flights beyond those already on the manifest, will be shut down by January 2009″
People on nasaspaceflight forums were saying that some irreversible shutdowns have already happened so it cant fly past 2010. Ray of hope.
Ray of hope.
Yes, that’s our space program – kill space science, retire the shuttle, decommission the ISS, and then terminate VSE for lack of funds. We have so much to look forward to, with our national space program.
“The supply chains, needed for additional Shuttle flights beyond those already on the manifest, will be shut down by January 2009″
Here’s the possible trick: I recall reading three or four years ago that NASA was contracting with United Space Alliance/Michaud to build something like three or four dozen more External Tanks. I’m going to guess that Thiokal was given a similar contract to build a corresponding number of additional Solid Rocket Boosters within a specified time frame. I can’t remember the time frame for the ET’s.
So, when Jan. ’09 arrives, the nominal Space Transportation System supply chain shutdown date, NASA may have enough Shuttle system components left over for two or three dozen more flights.
Your tax dollars at work.
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Here’s the result of a quick Google search:
Graphic for news release banner
For release: 06/12/02
Release #: 02-150
NASA extends Shuttle External Tank contract with Lockheed Martin to September 2008
NASA has extended its six-year $1.15 billion contract to September 2008 with Lockheed Martin Space Systems of New Orleans, to provide 35 Super Lightweight External Tanks. The contract modification calls for production of six External Tanks per year vs. the current eight per year. The External Tanks are managed by the Marshall Center.
NASA has extended to September 2008 its six-year, $1.15 billion contract with Lockheed Martin Space Systems, New Orleans, to provide 35 Super Lightweight External Tanks for the Space Shuttle Program.
Under the modified contract, the 35 tanks will be produced at a rate of not less than six per year, versus the eight per year agreed upon in the original contract issued in October 2000. The modification adds $341 million to the contract.
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http://www.msfc.nasa.gov/news/news/releases/2002/02-150.html
All right, so it was 2002 and 35 more ET’s to be manufactured post year 2002. My question is, how many of those ET’s will have been expended by 2010?
Here’s a related question: with the Shuttle “fleet” reduced to a dynamic duo, how many launches can NASA perform per year?
Inference: They be launchin’ Shuttles well past 2010 wi’ de stockpiles o’ Shuttle stuff dem alreadys got.
He…he…just like the movies, it’s the requisition officer who has the brains in the outfit.
Assuming that the new congress doesn’t starve VSE (i.e., CEV/CLV) outright in the next FY budgetary process and CEV/CLV gains enough political traction over the next year or two, you know that the project should follow the historical trend of stretching out schedule. Space Station development stretched out 10-15 years, so CEV/CLV wouldn’t likely come on line until 2020…probably configured a lot differently than what we see today (e.g., scaled down Crew and Service module on a Delta or Atlas stack).
Until then NASA will probably try to continue flying the Shuttle at a flight rate of 2-3 missions per year.
See that below? Eleven (11) existing External tanks as of two launches ago? There’s maybe 44 Super Lightweight External Tanks either built or under contract as of today.
In addition, there’s probably some older Lightweight ET’s stored at Michaud. The Lightweights are 7,000 lbm heavier than the Super Lightweights, but they might do for crew change and empty the trash Shuttle missions to the ISS.
As for Solid Rocket Boosters, the five segment version will stay in production. The larger five segment SRB’s are what the Shuttle people have wanted to use with the Shuttle system. Five segment SRB’s aren’t just for the proposed two new launch missiles, oh no.
So no sweat. Plenty more STS components for Shuttle missions well past 2010.
The design will be retrofitted on the 11 existing tanks and incorporated into the manufacture of all new tanks.
Source: National Aeronautics And Space Administration
Date: July 27, 2004
A Critical Design Review Board of NASA managers, engineers and aerospace contractors last month approved the new design, a significant milestone in the effort to return the Shuttle to safe flight. The approval allows workers to begin incorporating the new fitting on External Tank No. 120, the tank slated for flight on the next Shuttle mission, designated STS-114.
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“This is a fix that really gets to the root of the technical problems that caused the loss of Columbia,” said Michael Kostelnik, NASA’s Deputy Associate Administrator for International Space Station and Space Shuttle Programs. “By eliminating this debris source, as well as potential debris from other areas, we are making the Shuttle a safer spacecraft.” ( Kostelnik resinged to pursue other opportunites after July 2005’s STS 114 launch. )
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The design will be retrofitted on the 11 existing tanks and incorporated into the manufacture of all new tanks. Lockheed Martin Space Systems will do the work at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. Delivery of the retrofitted tanks to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Florida, is expected in October.
For still photos on the Internet of the redesigned bipod fitting, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/returntoflight
Video b-roll of the new bipod will air on NASA Television during the Video File segment starting at noon EDT today. Beginning July 24, NASA Television will be seen in the continental United States on AMC-6, at 72 degrees west longitude, Transponder 9, 3880 MHz, vertical polarization, audio at 6.8 MHz. If you live in Alaska or Hawaii, NASA TV will now be seen on AMC-7, at 137 degrees west longitude, Transponder 18, at 4060 MHz, vertical polarization, audio at 6.8 MHz.
For information about NASA TV, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv
More information on NASA’s human space flight programs is available at: http://www.nasa.gov
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/07/040727091306.htm
There is some initial information about why LM was chosen over NG/B for CEV:
http://www.aviationnow.com/avnow/news/channel_aerospacedaily_story.jsp?id=news/LMCE09076.xml
Both teams’ cost proposals for building the CEV were deemed “very realistic,” but Lockheed’s final price tag turned out “appreciably” lower. “I determined that the difference in cost between the proposals is a compelling consideration in my selection decision,” Cooke wrote. “I have determined that the lower-cost [Lockheed] proposal represents a substantial savings to the government.”
A low ball bid.
GuessWho is on the right track with the issue of the demand for payload in LEO. Most all of the traffic to date has been uncrewed, for robotic payloads destined for further out. Control of crewed access to orbit has been the sole domain of NASA, RKA and now the Chinese space agency.
This has strongly delimited, by shuttle capabilities and flight possibilities, what crew-related stuff can go to orbit. GASCan opportunities were limited and expensive, and when I came along in 2002 (I was thinking of a Hitchhiker can for a commercial idea) there was a waiting list of over 60 payloads. Even paying my own freight would not advance me ahead of those for whom NASA was paying the way, and if NASA later found a ‘more scientifically interesting payload’ it could be moved ahead of mine. That I paid for.
There was always the option of a mid-deck locker. A lot of really interesting stuff came out in the 1980s, but most of the commercial stuff struggled after Challenger and died off in the early 1990s. But there were still academic payloads (not like NASA makes grants to universities or anything). Highly automated boxes where a NASAnaut pushed a button and it had to work 100% perfectly the first time, because you never knew when it would be possible to refly a fixed package if your box went wrong.
There is untapped demand for transport to LEO. Untapped because it requires crewed operations, and for that there is only one game in town, one that is rigged against commercial efforts (a/k/a filthy lucre). We need scientists sitting at lab benches in orbit running and re-running experiments, fixing them when they go wrong, tweaking the parameters. Materials scientists running experiments in containerless processing, directional solidification, electrophoretic separations (which may have application in Lunar materials processing), vapor phase crystal growth, metallic foams, ceramics and any number of other technology areas in which the U.S. still has something of a competitive advantage that we can bring to world markets.
What is needed is regular/frequent access to orbit and in-orbit facilities in which to operate. We’re supposed to have both and really we have neither. This is why the American public is so skeptical about ‘Orion” (cue dramatic pipe organ). They’ve seen this dog and pony show before. They know there’s other stuff out there that NASA’s not really talking about (like asteroids), but they don’t know where to find the information because NASA is off blabbing about its own vision for space and the media is totally weak and doesn’t do its homework. Some of the smart money guys may have figured out by now that it is actually the space folks outside of NASA who really have their $pace $hit together. This may be why there has been a bit of partnering up of late, as well as Bigelow’s change in plans.
Dr. Peter Diamandis predicted at the ISDC in 2005 that private humans would be in orbit in five years, and folks would start stockpiling fuel in LEO for a jaunt to the Moon three years after that. Thankfully that’s beginning to look less and less like a wild prediction, but the industry still needs to perform with launches and test articles. That will attract a lot more money than powerpoint slides promising 20%+ returns in 5-7 years. Seeing success is critical right now for the public. Anything else is empty rhetoric.
It’s so exciting. Play it safe, make it as much like Apollo I forty years ago as possible.
And remember that last time they also ‘played it safe’, and didn’t go with the optimal solution.
If I recall, the optimal Apollo capsule design has also been flight tested and the aerodynamics well understood.