Comments on: Congressional reaction to the Augustine report

By: Robert Jones

Robert Jones — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:40:20 +0000

Humans visiting places is not exploration. Science is the real
exploration. Given the financial problems we should only
fly people when we can’t do the job with robots. A new
manned spacecraft able to do things like the old Hubble
servicing mission makes sense. An experiment in earth orbit
with artificial gravity makes sense. A project to fly humans
in earth orbit for perhaps 2 years with zero resupply from
the ground makes sense. Otherwise put most of the money
into robots at least until we either get a more robust
economy OR perhaps an international launch vehical. (Say
the US funding the russian Angara/PPTS programs.)

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[…] growing Washington consensus (albeit with continuing rear-guard and ultimately doomed battles from some of the authorizers in Congress) that NASA needs to get out of the earth-orbit space transportation business for personnel, and at […]

By: Who are the US Congressional Space Supporters? « Space Issues

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[…] So which members of Congress support the efforts to further fund the US human spaceflight program. According to Space Politics: […]

By: Robert G. Oler

Robert G. Oler — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 03:08:23 +0000

Donald. Ares 1X is a fraud. It has little or nothing to do with actually working up Ares…it was an attempt to cement the program by a test which would prove little but have a lot of visuals and NASA could say “moving on”.

The first real military program to use “state buy in” was the B1B bomber…having seen Carter (correctly in my view now…not so much then) the B1 when the redo came around the work was farmed out to just about every state…and there were endless flight demonstrations that had little to do with the weapon system.

All the 1x was designed to do was to cement the program

Robert G. Oler

By: Donald F. Robertson

Donald F. Robertson — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 20:46:08 +0000

Robert, given the many delays in Ares-1X, I wonder why they didn’t add a fifth live segment and make it a much more realistic test. As it is, I’m afraid this test won’t tell us a whole lot more than the ground test — which at least showed us that a five segment rocket of this enormous size could be made to work.

— Donald

By: Ellegood

Ellegood — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:40:56 +0000

In his remarks yesterday before Congress, Dr. Ed Crawley revealed an Augustine Panel departure from one of NASA’s “Key Exploration Objectives” for Constellation: to “separate crew from cargo delivery to orbit”. (I believe this objective/requirement was born in the CAIB report.) NASA has been developing two different launch vehicles, Ares-1 and Ares-5, to do this. Based on Dr. Crawley’s remarks, the Augustine Panel interprets this not as a requirement for two different types of vehicles, but rather the use of a single vehicle type, with separate launches for crew and cargo.

By: Major Tom

Major Tom — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:30:20 +0000

“What surprises me is that Space Politics has not posted about an article that appeared in Florida Today about the results of the 5-segment SRB test last week. Preliminary test results have so far indicated that TO was 8-10 times less”

Is this a joke?

Of course the thrust oscillation for the ground test is much less than the flight models (or Shuttle flights) because the SRB is attached to a large mass (the Earth or the ET) at several points, which greatly dampens the oscillations. We won’t know if a 5-segment SRB can work in the Ares I configuration until one actually flies. And that won’t happen until the Ares I-Y flight in late 2013.

And at this point, it doesn’t matter now that Ares I/Orion are so behind schedule and over budget. Even a working Ares I doesn’t do the gap or ISS any good if it doesn’t show up until 2017 or 2019.

If you’re really this ignorant about rocket engineering, then please don’t post on the topic here. You’re wasting our and your time.

FWIW…

By: Rocket Stuff

Rocket Stuff — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 04:59:58 +0000

That none of the Ares I critics such as NasaWatch, the Orlando Sentinelâ€™s Write Stuff, and Space Politics are carrying Florida Todayâ€™s story is surprising.

I guess you must have missed the fact that the test was conducted sideways, on the ground, with no loads.

By: Robert Oler

Robert Oler — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 04:18:08 +0000

Jim…the operative paragraph from the article

“”This is preliminary — less than 24 hours after the test. So the truth is more tests will help us verify this. But, boy, it looks like a nice path we’re headed down,” said former NASA Chief Astronaut Kent Rominger, vice president of test and research operations for ATK Space Systems.”

everyone at ATK seems pleased with the test…which was very flight like…

not

see how Ares 1X does…

Robert G. Oler

By: Jim Hillhouse

Jim Hillhouse — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 04:06:12 +0000

What surprises me is that Space Politics has not posted about an article that appeared in Florida Today about the results of the 5-segment SRB test last week. Preliminary test results have so far indicated that TO was 8-10 times less than what the models predicted and that, depending on further testing, TO mitigation may be unnecessary on Ares I. If the final data analysis points to TO being an 1/8 to 1/10th of what was predicted, two things will stand-out--the models are pretty poor predictors. And Ares I does not suffer from at least one of what the Augustine Committee so nicely called "technical challenges". That none of the Ares I critics such as NasaWatch, the Orlando Sentinel's Write Stuff, and Space Politics are carrying Florida Today's story is surprising.