Thank you for the links.

To gauge the cost of Ares I we need to subtract Orion development costs out of the ESMD totals. I believe that Lockheed’s 2006 contract for design, development, testing, and evaluation (DDT&E) contract was for $3.9 billion. This contract runs through 2013 so only a portion of the funds have been spend so far. There were also pre-contract study funds and internal NASA expenditures for Orion that I don’t have figures for. However, unless I am missing something major, that still leaves well over $10 billion in ESMD funds to date after Orion is subtracted off.

To put the Ares I costs in perspective, the Air Force’s total research and development expenditures for EELV (both Atlas V and Delta IV) came to $1,837.2M as of August, 2007. See page 75 of the following:

http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA479603&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf

I think that Lockheed and Boeing may have self funded a portion of their development in anticipation of a robust commercial market but I can’t find any data on this. The total procurement funding for EELV as of March, 2008 was $25,155.1M but that included the cost for 109 vehicles.

The debate about human versus robotic exploration is long past. I do not know what you have been reading of late, but the far majority of those who have been discussing human spaceflight in scientific, engineering, and political circles have supported moving beyond low Earth orbit. And they are every bit intelligent and well-informed. Your characterization of Buzz Aldrin and Harrison Schmitt is rather maladroit. I may not agree with Buzz Aldrin’s view of Mars, but that does not mean I think he is and idiot or a crank. Harrison Schmitt is a scientist and he performed rather brilliantly on the last manned lunar mission, so to say that his ride to the Moon was free or that he uses his celebrity status to push for more manned spaceflight is rather disingenuous. Perhaps your circle of friends snicker at the concept of human spaceflight, but that simply shows how small your circle is and how small-minded they are.

Buzz Aldrin and Harrison Schmitt are two gentleman who got FREE RIDES to the moon 40 years ago, and now feel free to use their celebrity status to make public anti-science statements about things they know nothing about, in support of further unsustainable and unaffordable jaunts back to the moon and Mars for no good reasons at all. Among scientists, physicists and engineers who do know what they are talking about, and do understand the challenges and costs of these kinds of vanity human space flight missions, the giggle factor and behind their back snickering is palpable. If you want to join these cranks in discussing things you are intellecutally and educationally ill prepared for, by all means, feel free to do so. This is America. Stupidity is legal, and encouraged, apparently.

1) Extending the Shuttle as long as possible,

2) Dumping Ares I and substituting a human rated Delta IV Heavy for trips to the ISS,

3) Use a Shuttle derived heavy lift vehicle ( the “Shannon Shuttle”) for a cargo carrier,

4) Immediately institute serious studies on how to mitigate lethal space radiation hazards to our astronauts and cosmonauts for long term deep space travel.

Just saying . . .

I know what you mean but (un)fortunately that is how an open process has to work: The informed and the uninformed, the believers and non-believers must participate. Believe me, I do fume too quite often about some of the nonsense posted here and there. On the other hand as you say, I myself had very polite and constructive arguments with those you mentionned and most of the time those who know just don’t brag or don’t try to mislead but rather tend to listen and argue well constructed thesis.

However I disagree when it comes to anonymity as not everyone of us can afford to have their names in the open; goes to say on how sad it is to have an opinion that may be contrary to potential employer/manager/etc. Also an argument must stand on its facts and logic; if it does then it really does not matter who you are.

Maybe the HSFR panel read this to think about somethiong else… ;o

@common sense

I cannot be sure if you read the first section of comments posted but most of them were nothing less than partisan snipes having nothing to do with the ongoing review. That nonsense does little to foster any real discussion about current issues. Dennis Wingo, Paul Spudis, Keith Cowing, Jim Muncy, and many others have made critical assessments of the Constellation and even thought I do not agree with them on some of that I can respect them because they are willing to put their names on the comments and stand behind what they say. What is more they do not engage in the partisan mudslinging even though they differ politically. In fact, they make efforts to avoid. Keith Cowing does engage in frivolity from time to time, but then who doesn’t? But too many commenters put stuff out there that is simply made up or provide no basis for their claims and what is worse are not willing to put their names to their statements. It is hard to accept anything that they say. I am more than aware that a number of people within the industry read these blogs and perhaps even some members of the review panel though given the amount of work and pressure that they are under I find it hard to believe that panel members would have the time. I used a blog name at one time too, but I realized that using my real name has advantages as well. If you want to be taken more seriously, then be willing to use your real name. It shows that at least you stand by what you say which may not be realistic or sensible but at least those panel members may be willng to take you more seriously.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but Augustine hasn’t said anything about any Sentinel articles. And although the Sentinel has reported that NASA managers and contractors are pulling personnel from Constellation because they think the Augustine Committee is going to recommend a different program, the Sentinel has not stated that the Augustine Committee will kill Constellation.

Here are some links for you to goto. The first is for the Orlando Sentinel post written by Robert Block. Interestingly this post is no longer listed on their archive website. I had to pull this through a cached link.

http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:OHKqH3o_r10J:www.orlandosentinel.com/news/space/orl-nasa-ares-moon-mission-changes-071409,0,2316961.story%3FFORM%3DZZNR6+orlando+sentinel+constellation+ares+I+augustine+robert+block&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

Here is a direct quote from the story written on July 14:

Members of the presidentially appointed panel reviewing the future of America’s manned-space plans have asked NASA to design a new way to send astronauts back to the moon.

The request could result in NASA ditching the controversial Ares I rocket design that the agency has spent the past four years and more than $3 billion creating and defending. And any redesign would almost certainly delay NASA’s first-launch deadline of 2015, though most critics no longer consider that deadline realistic.</blockquote?

I can also cite Michael Huang’s opinion columns written in The Space Review that has made claims that the intent of the Augustine led HSF Review was to rubberstamp President Obama’s intention of killing the Constellation program and human spaceflight altogether. Do you want me to give those links? There are plenty of other articles I can pull off of Google anytime stating that the HSF Review will likely call for ending the Constellation program as well as hundreds of comments made on this blg and over at NASA Watch that make those claims. I am not the one making the claims or intimating that Augustine panel will be directly responsible for what happens to the Constellation program. You are right that they will be providing Congress with several sets of options and the Constellation program will be among those options.

Here is a link to Norman Augustine’s comments he made on July 17 that directly refuted such insinuations as made by Robert Block, and no he did not specifically name Mr. Block but there is little question as to who he was refering to:

http://www.floridatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090718/NEWS02/907180320

and here is a quote from that article made by Norman Augustine:

We’ve looked at various versions of Ares, derivatives to Ares, alternatives to Ares, and I think it would be a totally incorrect characterization to describe it in any way as dead in the water, or modified, or alive at this point,” he told reporters Friday during a conference call. “We’re looking at a whole bunch of possibilities.

So yes in fact Mr. Augustine felt that was what was being implied and that people were jumping to the wrong conclusions.

“It depends on what type of failure you’re talking about. A testing failure is one thing. An operational failure is another. And project/program failure is yet another. Some of the former is usually a good thing. Too much of the latter is a very bad thing.”

Since Ares I is currently in testing and development, you should be able to figure that one out when we are talking about failures. Since Ares I is currently not operational such failure is nonexistent at this point as is program failure since program has not yet been completed and current law requires NASA to complete Constellation program development.

True, but this obscures the differences in how easy or hard it is to deal with the problem on liquid versus solid engines.

The Saturn V did not happen overnight. That rocket was the result of over 30 years of liquid fuel rocket development. It is a descendent of the A-4, also known as V2, created by Wernher von Braun’s rocket team. And over that time, that team experienced no less than hundreds of development and testing failures. Wernher von Braun was even arrested and threatened with execution for the delays caused by Germany’s rocket program. General Herman Goering had to step in and save von Braun’s ass several times.

“And how much funding is enough? Ares I/Orion development has gone from $28 billion and to more than $40 billion. NASA’s own estimates for Constellation through first lunar landing have almost doubled — tens of billions of additional dollars — according to CBO. This nation and other countries around the world have been developing equivalent launch vehicles — some for just a few billions of dollars — for decades now. There’s no excuse for this kind of cost growth on this kind of development — especially when NASA’s Exploration Systems Mission Directorate has received $2.5 billion MORE over the past five fiscal years than what the Bush II Administration promised in the first VSE budget in FY 2004.”

Here is another quote from another article about Norman Augustine:

“The budget at this point is clearly driving the program, without question,” Augustine told reporters after a hearing Thursday in Cocoa Beach, Fla.

There is enough money in next year’s budget request for a “conservative” crewed program beyond low Earth orbit, but that would require immediately scrapping the space shuttle and International Space Station, Augustine said.

Here is the link:

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0907/30augustine/

Augustine clearly was acknowledging that the budget is affecting the space program. Sally Ride is also on record over this last week as saying that one of the biggest problems with Ares I development was underfunding. You keep claiming this 2.5 billion, where do you get this from? The increase from stimulus funding? Cite me the links that show this. NASA funding from 2006 was frozen in 2007. John Glenn has said that the program was underfunded putting much of the blame on President Bush. Here is a link to another article which includes both Harrison Schmidt and Norman Augustine:

http://khaleejtimes.ae/displayarticle.asp?xfile=data/todaysfeatures/2009/July/todaysfeatures_July24.xml&section=todaysfeatures&col=

here is a quote:

Astronaut Harrison Schmitt, part of the last Apollo mission to the moon in 1972, told AFP that the Constellation was conceptually “excellent” but had been underfunded.

“The underfunding is massive. It’s not the program that is wrong, it’s the way that has been funded,” he said.

Meanwhile, a group of active and retired NASA engineers who are critical of the Constellation project, have been working in their spare time on a parallel project dubbed DIRECT Jupiter.

It envisions using the Orion capsule but replacing the Ares launchers with a family of launchers with common components based on existing shuttle technology.

The group has presented proposals to Obama’s commission on human space flight saying their project would cost less to develop and get astronauts back to the moon more quickly.

The commission chairman, respected former Lockheed Martin chief executive Norman Augustine, said it comes down to money.

“With a few exceptions, we have the technology or the knowledge that we could go to Mars if we wanted with humans. We could put a telescope on the moon if we wanted,” he said.

“The technology is by and large there. It boils down to what can we afford?”

TBC…

Sorry, I am not aware of any publicly available document that I could point you to that breaks down the current costs.

As far as I know, the jump from $28 billion to $40 billion was first reported back in early May, in articles like these:

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/may/06/nation/na-shuttle6

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2009180675_nasa06.html

But as early as April, the Associate Administrator for ESMD was quoting a figure of $36 billion:

http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_space_thewritestuff/2009/07/what-are-the-real-costs-of-nasas-constellation-program.html

And after those reports, in early June, the Ares I program manager quoted a figure of $35 billion for the Augustine Committee:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/18/science/space/18nasa.html?_r=1

The bottom line is that NASA probably doesn’t have a good handle on what the specific, total development figure or breakout is given the program’s multiple technical issues, shifting requirements, lack of completed PDR, and slipping schedules. Given the above, it’s likely somewhere in the $35-45 billion range if the program delivers by its target date of 2015, but more like $55-65 billion (my guesstimate) if the program doesn’t start flying operationally until 2017, which the independent Aerospace Corp. told the Augustine Committee is much more probable.

The cost growth on Ares I/Orion is consistent with an independent CBO report from earlier this year which noted (on page 17) that NASA’s cost estimate for Constellation through first lunar landing has risen from $40-57 billion to $92 billion:

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/100xx/doc10051/04-15-NASA.pdf

CBO estimates the Constellation figure will more likely be $110 billion through first lunar landing.

“I am astounded by that number and would like to understand what is driving it.”

Usually the biggest driver of cost growth in any engineering development project is schedule slippage. The longer it takes to build something, the longer you have to keep the development team together, and the longer you have to pay them. The operational date for Ares I/Orion has slipped from 2012 to 2014 to 2015 and now likely 2017. Ares I-X, Orion PDR, Ares I PDR completion, and and Ares I and Orion CDR dates have similarly slipped. To first order, that is what’s driving the costs through the roof. (See the cost increase on the Mars Science Laboratory that resulted from slipping its launch date from 2009 to 2011 for another example of schedule slips and workforce driving total program costs.)

Of course, you have to ask why the schedule is slipping, and that goes to the technical issues on the project. I won’t point you towards the dozens of press articles on thrust oscillation, launch abort, mass margin and other issues, but for a couple years now, GAO has warned that many of these issues would come back to bite the program. Here’s one such report:

http://gop.science.house.gov/Media/hearings/space08/april3/chaplain.pdf

Finally, some press reports have repeated NASA management complaints about budget reductions being the driver of the schedule slips and cost growth on Constellation. This is simply not true. Between FY 2004 (the first fiscal year for the VSE) and FY 2009 (the last budget of the Bush II Administration), NASA’s Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD — the division within NASA responsible for building Constellation) received almost $2.5 billion more than than what the Bush II Administration promised in the FY 2004 budget.

Here’s what was promised in the FY 2004 budget:

FY 2004 $1,646.0M
FY 2005 $1,782.0M
FY 2006 $2,579.0M
FY 2007 $2,941.0M
FY 2008 $2,809.0M
FY 2009 $3,313.0M

Total $15,070.0M

And here’s what ESMD actually received in each fiscal year:

FY 2004 $2684.5M
FY 2005 $2209.3M
FY 2006 $3050.1M
FY 2007 $2869.8M
FY 2008 $3299.4M
FY 2009 $3505.5M

Total $17,618.6M

The total difference is $2,458.6 million. So the Bush II Administration and prior Congresses provided almost $2.5 billion more for ESMD than what the Bush II Administration promised to develop systems and technologies to return to the Moon. This doesn’t include the $400 million that ESMD received in the Recovery Act (passed after the Bush II Administration), which would increase the total difference to $3 billion.

There is no way that budget reductions or deferments are the cause of the schedule slips in Constellation/Ares I/Orion because there have been none. Other parts of the NASA budget have been cut, but not ESMD. In fact, ESMD’s budget has been larger than the Bush II Administration’s original VSE budget commitments.

Like most engineering development projects, the cause of Ares I/Orion cost growth is schedule slippage brought about by an underestimation of the technical challenges involved in the selected design.

Not exactly what you were looking for, but I hope it helps.

FWIW…

I am a little perplexed here of what I read from you. There is an on-going government appointed self proclaimed public review of HSF. Whether I like others’ opinions or not does not matter. What matters is that they express their opinions and if they have a case then be it, hopefuly based on facts not wishful thinking or delusion.

I would not discount the fact that HSF review members may read this and other sites. Some people who post here are very well informed but may not have the opportunity or time to go to any of the public meeting. I am sure though that some may have already posted on the HSF review site. And btw if the HSF review decided to have a website I would surmise that it is probably to attract those people who actually are on the Internet.

As to whether Constellation is or is not the way to go, we will know soon. I think the premises of Constellation were flawed at the very least: Easy, soon and affordable. It is neither. And if you have worked from up close or from afar on CEV/Ares you MUST know that. Am I saying that any program would come easier or more affordable? I don’t know for sure and the HSF review hopefully will tell.

Note I would love though that at least the HSF review includes workforce issues in their options and be upfront about it with the public. It would be ludicrous to provide technical-only options. We shall see.