I suspect a good fraction of the remaining desperate defenders of the concept are drawing a paycheck from it, in one way or another. It’s hard to change someone’s mind when their livelihood depends on their current stance.

Oops, arguing the posters. Never mind.

This argument misses or ignores the whole point behind a “block” development strategy to maximize vehicle commonality and contain costs.

The fact remains that the mass/performance shortfalls are now so big that the ISS and lunar Orions can no longer share a common design. It’s no longer a matter of simply changing the interior layout to create the lunar-capable Block II. The lunar Orion, assuming the next White House or two ever give NASA a shot at it after this fiasco, will now be a fundamentally different vehicle design than the ISS Orion, with all the associated new development costs and time.

The alternative is for NASA to redesign Ares I a third time. But doing that also entails all new development costs and time.

Either way, NASA has to design and develop at least one more vehicle than originally planned to create the lunar architecture. And that means more costs and more time than planned and promised, which will mean more cuts to other NASA programs, going back to a future White House and Congress for more money, and/or a substantial delay in the human lunar return effort.

“Its a moot point that in 2007 the conceptual design for Ares V does not meet the conceptual requirements for lifting the conceptual design of the Lunar Lander for a conceptual mission in 2020.”

It’s not a moot point when the Ares V can no longer leverage or share element commonality (e.g., 5-segment SRB) with Ares I. That’s going to drive additional design and development costs over and above those mentioned above. Maintaining two different sets of vehicle element elements, instead of one common set, is also going to drive operational costs.

And again, that assumes that the next White House or two even lets NASA get that far after this fiasco.

“Trying to analyze this whole process externally ”

It’s not a matter of process and it’s no external analysis. Internal documents that state the problems in very plain language are available on both NASAWatch and nasaspaceflight.com.

Where are the current, internal, confirmable, publicly available sources stating otherwise?

“Studies are performed by small groups of engineers to investigate alternatives, risks and to refine definition. It’s not unusual that such studies discover problems,”

The Ares I/Orion performance/mass shortfalls are not the result of a “small group of engineers” doing studies to “discover problems”. The entire Orion program stood down for weeks to get a handle on the shortfall.

“However some have their own agenda to find fault and undermine the work,”

How can we know what anyone’s agenda is on an internet blog? Does posting here give us clairvoyant superpowers?

“they latch onto every negative rumor as proof of their own view,”

Again, publicly available internal documentation articulating the mass/performance shortfalls and schedule problems in very plain language is hardly “rumor”.

And again, where are the current, internal, confirmable, publicly available sources stating otherwise?

“a view based on incomplete knowledge and often llittle understanding of basic engineering.”

Please, argue the facts, logic, and opinions, not the posters. It’s fine if you don’t have any facts or logic to back up your opinions. But don’t resort to broad personal attacks on everyone who disagrees with your opinion. That doesn’t help your argument and only makes it look desperate.

NASA has in fact determined that there is zero margin for the Block 1 Ares 1 and Orion to support lunar missions. Furthermore, I have heard from MSFC senior personnel that the current Ares 5 conceptual design does not meet requirements for delivering enough mass to lunar orbit and therefore a fully-fueled LSAM to the lunar surface.

Hello and thank you for your response. IIRC Block 1 Orion is the ISS variant, it was never intended to support lunar missions. Its a moot point that in 2007 the conceptual design for Ares V does not meet the conceptual requirements for lifting the conceptual design of the Lunar Lander for a conceptual mission in 2020.

An engineering enterprise of this scale involves many engineers and projects and few have the complete overview. Studies are performed by small groups of engineers to investigate alternatives, risks and to refine definition. It’s not unusual that such studies discover problems, solving them is what engineers do. Trying to analyze this whole process externally is fascinating for those of us who are genuinely interested in following this extraordinary endeavor. However some have their own agenda to find fault and undermine the work, they latch onto every negative rumor as proof of their own view, a view based on incomplete knowledge and often llittle understanding of basic engineering.

My two-bit take on quantitative safety analysis in ESAS is that it’s driven by GIGO (garbage-in, garbage-out). ESAS uses the same quantitative models and analytical techniques that were telling us Shuttle LOM/LOC was on the order of 1-in-1000 before Challenger and 1-in-250 before (and after) Columbia. Those models and analysis have been proven to be off by orders of magnitude versus the real world. We’re kidding ourselves to claim anything (good or bad) with respect to the reliability or safety of any launch vehicle using that piss-poor of an analytical track record.

“Quick question. I know that it’s an article of faith among many that O’Keefe and Steidle were “forced out because of their all EELV architecture”,”

O’Keefe wasn’t forced out at all. He left NASA HQ. to become the head of a university back in Louisiana, a position that combined his love of teaching (prior to taking the Deputy Director position at OMB, O’Keefe taught at Syracuse) with his love of policy and administration (in his home state of Louisiana to boot). It was an offer he could not refuse. And even without such an offer, O’Keefe was way too politically powerful, between his connections to Cheney and Stevens, to get forced out.

There are two stories on Steidle. One, Griffin visited Steidle when Griffin was still heading APL and, in Griffin’s usual apolitical way, threw insults Steidle regarding Steidle’s aerospace engineering knowledge, to which Steidle leaned forward and surprised Griffin on a point or two in no uncertain terms. When the other shoe dropped and Griffin became NASA Administrator, Griffin had little choice but to get rid of Steidle after butting heads with him.

The second, more well-known, story is that Griffin was genuinely displeased with the rate of progress towards a highly defined lunar architecture and gave Steidle his pink slip ASAP as a result. Personally, I’d take Steidle’s deliberative, highly competitive, procurement-driven, and militarily-prove approach to developing a human space flight architecture over Griffin/ESAS’s 60-day jump-to-a-conclusion on the basis of bad data, inadequate analysis, and in the absence of any competition or real deliberation.

I suspect the real story on Steidle involves some of both of these stories –both personally motivated as well as genuine professional disagreements on the best approach to program development.

“and that therefore a Shuttle Derived architecture is a hard requirement from NASA…”

It became a hard requirement for Griffin after ESAS and may have been requirement for Griffin before ESAS. Although I can speculate that Senators Hutchison and Nelson made Shuttle workforce retention a pre-condition of Griffin’s Senate confirmation, I have yet to see any evidence that Shuttle-derived per se was a hard requirement for anyone other than Griffin. Even then, a Shuttle-derived requirement does not explain some of the stupidity exhibited in ESAS, like totally missing the superior Shuttle-derived hardware combination embodied in DIRECT 2/Jupiter 120.

Never attribute to ill intentions what is easily explained by idiocy.

So then why did you phrase that response as you did? The rhetorical question being asked didn’t require that the majority necessarily be right, only that it often be right.

You seem to be disagreeing with the conventional wisdom regarding O’Keefe. Would you be able to elaborate your reasoning? I’ve never heard anything actually solid ever produced to show that O’Keefe was kicked out because of supporting EELVs, but it’s an idea that seems to be the conventional wisdom in spite of the paucity of evidence.

~Jon

according to nasaspaceflight.com’s reports of actual Constellation program documents & meetings, NASA has in fact determined that there is zero margin for the Block 1 Ares 1 and Orion to support lunar missions. Furthermore, I have heard from MSFC senior personnel that the current Ares 5 conceptual design does not meet requirements for delivering enough mass to lunar orbit and therefore a fully-fueled LSAM to the lunar surface. In this engineer’s own words: “it doesn’t close”.

I’m not saying NASA can’t fix this. I’m not saying that these engineers are incompetent. What I am saying is that by developing Ares 1 instead of using the highly-reliable Atlas V (with those evil-but-reliable Russian engines), we are pushing off all development of Ares 5 or EDS or LSAM until after the Shuttle stops flying.

Then, when you hear Congress asking why can’t we fly the shuttle a few more times… perhaps for two years or so… to reduce the “gap”, one has to conclude that 95% of the focus of Constellation has been put on recreating Apollo VII, not Apollo XI.

And even if you accept Donald’s Macbethian “it’s worse to go back and start over” — which I heard from 1985 through 1993, only to watch ISS become something very different than Freedom — then we’re stuck on a track that doesn’t appear to get us out of LEO.

THAT is a bad thing, if you support the basic goal of VSE.

On what basis? Demonstrated flights? Nope, still a paper design. Heritage? Nope, threw that out with the 4-segment and air-start SSME. ESAS calculations? Nope, they couldn’t even get blackout periods and thrust levels right.

Curse you, Anonymous, and the differing time zones between Australia and the US!!

You beat me to it.

This sort of “ol’ time religion” that supporters of the ARES architecture have just baffles me. How can ANYONE claim greater reliability and safety from a computer-aided design that has never been built..?

Oh, wait – I get it now.

Since it’s never been built, it’s NEVER FAILED.

If it’s never failed, it must be better in terms of safety and reliability than something which has had 1 or more mishaps (even if they weren’t complete failures).

See? With the right coaxing, you can logically make the argument that was made about the ARES.

And on that note, I have this great, 100% reliable reusable space transportation system that i’m willing to sell to NASA or the DoD for only $1 billion. It has the lowest failure and unreliability rate of any space system out there.

On what basis? Demonstrated flights? Nope, still a paper design. Heritage? Nope, threw that out with the 4-segment and air-start SSME. ESAS calculations? Nope, they couldn’t even get blackout periods and thrust levels right.

“and lift.”

Ares I is underperforming by several tons for the lunar architecture (well below three-stick Atlas V and Delta IV capabilities that could actually put the big Orion into orbit and not some suborbital hop) and Ares V by over ten tons. How is that superior “lift”?

“Ares V is in very early development,”

Ares V has not even started development, not by a long shot.

“the Lunar Architecture is even less well defined”

How is four astronauts to the lunar south pole for a week with EOR and global lunar access an “undefined” architecture?

“”There is no basis for saying they can’t close this mostly undefined architecture;”

Then why was LockMart considering drastic changes to Orion’s lunar requirements like forgoing global access?

And why has NASA now directed LockMart to forgo Orion’s lunar requirements altogether and focus on ISS?

The reality is that the shortfalls in Ares I and V performance for the lunar architecture are so big that either Orion’s basic requirements will get revisited with consequent changes to the Orion design or NASA is going to have to substantially redesign the Ares vehicles for greater lift (or adopt different launch vehicles). Shortcomings this large in mass margin cannot be fixed by just shaving a design here and there — NASA will have to fundamentally start over from scratch with one or more of these vehicles to create a lunar-capable system.

Or NASA can forgo a lunar-capable system altogether, which is what’s currently happening.

FWIW…

I’d like to hear Lockheed Martin’s side of this argument.