That question is already out there, so this shouldn’t be a show-stopper.”

For you and me, but not for Griffin and Horowitz.

Unfortunately…

That question is already out there, so this shouldn’t be a show-stopper. Having a smaller Orion that could be switched to other (existing or reasonably possible future) launchers without totally redesigning them – if that can be done – actually makes Ares 1 much more palatable. If Ares I doesn’t work out, there’s always the alternative launchers. If Ares I is built but has a failure, the other launchers could step in during the 3 year downtime. The other launchers would probably improve Ares I in the sense that the potential competition would help NASA get better performance out of its workforce and contractors. The reduced performance stress on the Ares I design with a smaller Orion would allow Ares I design decisions that tend to improve development cost, operational cost, or safety. To the extent that Ares I costs are reduced, this also would allow NASA to stop going after other parts of the agency, which would reduce the political opposition to Ares/Orion. The smaller payload may also be a driver for in-space refueling, so it should be popular among the crowd that supports that possibility and the commercial launch business it might inspire.

I don’t see the average taxpayer worrying too much about how many people Orion can get to ISS or the Moon, so I really don’t see NASA looking bad if it made that decision. I actually think they’d be praised in the media, if any paid attention at all.

TBD, per NASAWatch. ESMD management denies making the decision. (Although they’re not denying analyzing such a radical option or making such a decision in the future to bring Orion mass into line with Ares I performance.)”

I should have also mentioned that even if NASA adopts ocean landings as the baseline, the removal of the Orion airbag landing system only saves about half of the shortfall in Ares I/Orion performance/mass for the lunar architecture. Other changes are still needed.

As an aside, it’s unclear whether all the changes being contemplated (removal of the radiation shielding, deletion of various redudant safety systems, etc.), in combination with the airbags, are enough to address the shortfall. Even then, although the lunar architecture may technically close, the mass safety margin for Orion in the lunar architecture may still not meet the 20% dictated by ESAS.

“My 2 cents is that would be sad if NASA went this route instead of dropping the current underpowered Ares I configuration. Orion would lose any practical reusability if exposed to seawater on every landing, driving operational costs considerably higher. And ocean retrieval itself would kick operational costs higher as well.”

I should also have mentioned that shrinking Orion’s requirements (e.g., 4-ISS/2-lunar crew instead of 6/4) and dimensions would be another way out of the current mess. I personally would prefer that or a redesign of Ares I to losing reusability and driving operational costs higher. But I doubt NASA will go down either route. Too much ego is invested in Ares I to redesign it a third time, and a smaller Orion begs the question of why NASA is not using EELVs. My 2 cent prediction is that Griffin & Co. will go the route of a large but operationally limited Orion on the current Ares I, which may or may not be capable of technically closing the lunar architecture but almost certainly without adequate mass margin.

FWIW…

Why not? We have never learnt to “physically cope with the effects” of living in salt water, yet we traverse the oceans with ease. True, it did take us 10,000 years to learn to do that, and we still lose somewhere between 500 and 1,000 people a year to accidents at sea, but we do traverse an alien environment in which we cannot survive. As in sea travel, there are plenty of options for workarounds (e.g., rotate your spacecraft, wrap your fuel around you, keep trips short).

until then we will have astronauts doing a max of six months in space rotations. so any missions we do will have that as a time limit. that puts anything except the moon and near earth astreroids (NEOs), outside our ability to visit let alone colonize.

Again, so what? We should not be trying more difficult projects until we’ve established early scientific bases on Earth’s moon, NEOs, [and, I would add, the Martian moons], and those have begun to grow into trading colonies, anyway. We can worry about harder destinations once we can deal with the (relatively) easy ones.

would rather see nasa invest in robot explorers and bigger astronomy missions. that would bring the best science return.

As I’ve argued before in this venue, that is very unlikely to be true, but I’ll spare everyone repeating myself here. If you’d like an alternative view, check out some of my earlier posts here, or my Op Ed in Space News called “Space Exploration: a reality check” (6th March 2007 p. 19).

TBD, per NASAWatch. ESMD management denies making the decision. (Although they’re not denying analyzing such a radical option or making such a decision in the future to bring Orion mass into line with Ares I performance.)

My 2 cents is that would be sad if NASA went this route instead of dropping the current underpowered Ares I configuration. Orion would lose any practical reusability if exposed to seawater on every landing, driving operational costs considerably higher. And ocean retrieval itself would kick operational costs higher as well.

While keeping a pulse on development cost estimates has been pretty straightforward because they’re in the budget, it’s been harder to keep track of where future Ares I/Orion operational cost estimates are at. But if NASA makes enough decisions to trade operational costs for development costs in order to make the low-performing Ares I/high-mass Orion combination work, they’re going to end up with another Shuttle that eats the future human space flight budgets just getting to orbit and leaves little money on the table for anything else.

FWIW…

i don’t really know how much of a lunar base is practical. lunar visitors will not be able to live there year round. so there will be rotations and periods when a lunar base might be un manned. you can do some science but you don’t really need people for that. you can go because of political reasons, but that kind of support can dry up fast. i am not sure what manner of useful economic exploitation can be done from a small outpost with a few visitors per year. maybe. you can go because its cool. i’m ok with that. but that does not support a lot of activity.

i would rather see nasa invest in robot explorers and bigger astronomy missions. that would bring the best science return. i am not sure if there is a good reason to establish a perminant base on the moon considering the dust, radiation, low gravity and expense. mars is a pipe dream for anthing but robots.

but we should also do some short manned visits to NEOs with orion because there is a lot of science to do. it is also an attainable first. as in first man to leave the earth moon system.

Looks like CEV will now be using water recovery only.

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/content/?cid=5187

Orion landings to be splashdowns – KSC buildings to be demolished

The way things are going, the U.S. isn’t likely to get to the moon. First, Ares/Orion seems to have gotten off significantly off track. The massive overspending of the bush-cheney govmint coupled with underfunded entitlement liabilities in the next decade are likely to shrink non-defense related discretionary spending. It’s almost as if the whole plan was to build government up to unsustainable levels and then use that as an excuse the cut everything absolutely unnecessary (like lunar and martian trips – D’OH!).

I imagine some other country might get there first. Or private companies will do it. Although Space Adventures lunar excursions are looking less likely now given the financial difficulties at Energia. I’m not sure it’s a good idea to send tourists swinging around the moon unless they do a couple of test flights first (not all the Zond missions went well, and they haven’t done anything like this for 40 years). That would cost some money, and it doesn’t look like Energia has it to spare.

The military requires its development managers, even former fly-boys and ops types, to get their “cards punched” on smaller programs before elevating them to leadership of multi-ten/hundred billion programs. There’s no reason NASA shouldn’t either. Experience and competence are precious commodities that need to be nurtured and spent wisely.”

I agree with this, and unfortunately ESAS and the other big NASA human spaceflight programs are dissolving even more of the smaller programs that not only have a better record, but that also seem to be necessary training grounds before even attempting the bigger programs. I had a post on Space Prizes a few weeks ago on a report “Building a Better NASA Workforce” that covers this. My post is at http://spaceprizes.blogspot.com/2007/07/education-for-nasas-vse.html, but for the discussion at hand you’re better off going straight to the source, http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309107644, perhaps starting at p. 38 if the whole thing’s too big.