Yep and yea verily. This is why the Shuttle C is a good alternative. It is close enough to the existing design that the infrastructure changes are minimal, the development time is short, and it provides a smooth transition between today’s STS and the Shuttle C.

The J2-X is probably the best thing to survive out of the existing program as a good upper stage and if you want to keep Pratt happy just say the heck with it and build more SSME’s. Yep they are expensive but you can buy a hell of a lot of them for the $35 billion that they want to waste on Ares (and now the Ares is looking at SSME’s to close their performance shortfalls).

If we end up with Ares I, I very honestly hope it works well for us.

But there are two problems with this study. One, I cannot find it anywhere on line.

Second, and more importantly, Ares I does not exist. The first orbital flight isnt scheduled until 5 years from now. Same goes for the first flight test of the 2nd stage engine. And based on NASA’s track record for hitting milestones on schedule, 5 years is probably optimistic.

How many Delta IV Heavies will have flown by then? The Falcon 9 Heavy will probably beat the Ares I to orbit.

Im sure there are lots of brilliant, well-meaning engineers working on the Ares I, but as a practical matter the US public is not going to tolerate development cycles that are this long. The Ares is supposed to be a reuse of existing technologies, infrastructure, skilled employees – yet it will take at least 3x as long as the manhattan project took. Not okay.

The Aerospace study was very restricted. Given the exact desired payload for Orion and the NASA stated performance for the Ares 1, how will EELV stack up. Not hard to see where that will play out. Open up the trade space differently to the architecture level and see what happens.

In fact, the Aerospace Corp. Ares I/EELV study prelim results were such that Doug Cook invited ULA to submit their own data, in place of the EELV data NASA originally submitted. ULA might be able to BS the Obama NASA transition team, but that act won’t work with the Aerospace Corp.

When the Aerospace Corp. Ares I/EELV study is done, it is going to be a fair part of what sways those in DC who make funding decisions about whether the Ares I program will continue or not.

But I’m sure many here believe that they, not Aerospace Corp., have insights and knowledge that would tilt the engineering balance to their side. My recommendation would be to write the Aerospace Corp. folks doing the Ares I/EELV study and submitting your data. I have friends who work there and they are as smart as they are open-minded.

And if the Aerospace Corp. study does come down on the side of Ares I being the optimal launcher for Orion, can all of us accept that, stop the back-biting and anti-NASA bashing, unify behind the Ares project, and get behind our nation’s Space program? All of the infighting that the Space advocacy community engages in only confuses the public, thus aiding those who want to kill the nation’s Space program.

Then lets deal with your plumber boy (that is what we sparkies call rocket engineers since without each other neither one of us is getting to orbit)

You make the claim that the Shuttle C has only marginally greater lift capacity than the EELV. Well here are the numbers from the “Shuttle-C Users Conference Executive Summary”, chaired by Terry Mitchell from MSFC May 25-26, 1989.

Shuttle C Three engine payload to various orbits.

220 nautical miles, 28.5 degree orbit (space station freedom orbit)

145,200 lbs

110 nautical miles 28.5 degrees

155,000 lbs

30 x 220 nautical miles

167,400 lbs

This does not include any of the improvements in mass to orbit brought about by the Aluminum/Lithium ET which happened well after this program died but it can be considered to be about 75% of the gain that the ASRM numbers gave (if my memory of this serves)

With the ASRM

220 nautical miles, 28.5 degree orbit (space station freedom orbit)

156,600 lbs

110 nautical miles 28.5 degrees

166,500 lbs

30 x 220 nautical miles

179,400 lbs

What is the EELV performance to similar orbits?

The EELV Number to 45 degrees circular 220 nautical mile orbit is 55,000 lbs (page 2-42 of the Delta IV payload planners guide)

If you drop that down to 28.5 degrees you will probably pick up about 3000 lbs of performance for a mass to orbit at 220 nautical miles of 58,000 lbs. Scale for the rest of the numbers for comparison.

One would think that a “real” rocket engineer would use real numbers rather than the fuzzy ones that are tossed about by the DIRECT fanboys for their launcher.

One would also think that before making claims that the EELV is almost as good as the Shuttle C that you would at least consult some real documents and not internet rumors about performance.

This is with the plain jane volume limited 15 x 85 ft cargo bay.

Sorry but before castigating someone for a mote, you might want to think about the beam.

That seems extremely unlikely.

As for heavy cargo launches, this is something else neither the private sector nor the DoD seem interested in.

Because they don’t need it. Neither does NASA.

This is probably harder to sell, but if we stop maintaining this capability it will be hard to get it back.

Fortunately, it’s entirely unnecessary.

Russia has been “re-doing Soyuz” for more than 40 years. Hard to argue they haven’t made any progress as a spacefaring nation over that time.

Not for me. It’s trivially easy to argue. What are they doing in space that they weren’t doing decades ago? In what way have they advanced in terms of being able to send people to other bodies, or divert other bodies, and do so regularly and affordably, in large numbers? What does “spacefaring” even mean to you?

There are no spacefaring nations by any useful definition of that word, and there is nothing in NASA’s current plans to make the US one. Fortunately, the private sector is more ambitious.

No worries about your questions. To answer your question, as to what I’d like to see, Jon Goff and myself wrote something for the transition team.

The Case for Becoming a Spacefaring Society:
Proposals for an Integrated US Space Policy

The Case for Becoming a Spacefaring Society:
Recommendations for Space Technology Investment

Thats a pretty good start. Beyond that, I’d like to see Orion be launcher independent, among other things.

I cannot defend NASA on an economic ROI basis, and all the questions you raise are, of course good ones.

The ability to launch satellites is, of courses, a vital national priority. This is something that is supported by the private sector (and DoD), and really no longer requires NASA support.

But NASA is necessary for maintaining an infrastructure that can put Americans into orbit. The private sector may never be able support this, and the DoD has no need. I dont think maintaining this capability is terribly hard to sell to taxpayers, particularly if we do it in a smarter, cheaper, safer way than the SST.

As for heavy cargo launches, this is something else neither the private sector nor the DoD seem interested in. This is probably harder to sell, but if we stop maintaining this capability it will be hard to get it back.

As for re-doing “Saturn and Apollo” – Russia has been “re-doing Soyuz” for more than 40 years. Hard to argue they haven’t made any progress as a spacefaring nation over that time.

I honestly want to learn more about this stuff. What would you consider a better path to a good ROI? Seems we could make some good progress as a “spacefaring race” over the next few decades if we had a reliable vehicle for getting 1/2 people at a time into and out of orbit, plus the ability to launch 100,000-200,000kg into LEO in a few individual shots per year. Lunar Base, Mars Visit, dozens of unmanned probes scurrying all over the moons of Saturn, Jupiter – all of this would be possible.

I apologize for de-focusing this board, but I will submit one big shift I’d like to see. We need to get away from this massive solar panel garbage. No way we’re sending people to Mars with some huge solar panels for electricity. Same goes for powering a lunar base. Im not an engineer, but I do have a masters in Atomic Physics, and I believe the dangers associated with nuclear power (both reactors and batteries) are overstated. Imagine a Mars rover with a small nuclear battery, or rover base station with a small reactor that could beam energy to dozens of rovers 10s of km away. No more of this 5in per day garbage – they’d be doing wheelies. Solar makes sense for very small, remote applications (i.e. communication satellites). Everywhere else its a waste of materials, weight, money.

Just my opinion.

Whatever we do will be expensive and time consuming. The question is, as Ferris suggests, whether what we have purchased is worth the money. Heavy lift in general is a very expensive way to go from a marginal cost standpoint. What we need is low-cost launch, not heavy lift.

And, if you are willing to accept that standpoint, then the question is, if we are redoing Saturn and Apollo, is that actually moving us closer to becoming a spacefaring race, or is it nothing more than a large amount of showmanship, without much moving forward towards the point of becoming a spacefaring race? I would submit, and I suspect that Rand agrees with me, that Orion, as is, doesn’t actually move us towards that destination.

If we are going to spend that money on space, we need the best ROI, and Orion as is isn’t the best.