OK, it is mentioned but that isn’t a determined program. I’d guess we will get some research and a small VASIRM powered by solar. We need a space nuclear reactor to really get a good interplanetary HSF capability.

Concerning Lori’s charts on HLV, I learned a long time ago to discount what people advocate they want to do decades from now..

and this is why we should discount DIRECT…it has no mission unless one figures out that the mission is to return to the Moon or go to Mars or do something else that there is no political support for in the US (would you like the polls?)…and even at best those are ‘decades’ away.

I personally ditch DIRECT because your cost numbers are from fanatsy island…and that is why the AC shrugged as well.

Robert G. Oler

A 75mT High Volume SDHLV (ie the Jupiter-130) that will still make America second to none in the world, composed of largely paid for launch infrastructure, tooling, flight proven hardware, and workforce experience, from STS is not outrageously frivolous.

Actually its outrageously frivolous to destroy this taxpayer paid for $40 billion dollar HLV industrial base while planning to go back to them a decade later and ask them to fund the development America’s third heavy-lift launch system.

The true irony is that the specifications of this new ‘advanced technology’ (RP-1/LOX) HLV are little different than the SaturnV. You remember the first HLV we foolishly destroyed because it was also too expensive and didn’t have enough ‘advanced’ technology.

Back then the justification was that an advanced RLV with airliner like flight rates would save the day. We are a lot smarter now. Now its alt space will show use the errors of our ways by using the same technology only with better lighting and marketing materials.

Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.

It is a sad moment for the astronaut corps but also a reality check. These people are just that i.e. “people”. They have had often an execptional carreer and go to do extraordinary things. Still genetically they are only humans. Under enough stress they will break. Some can push the limit and some can fake they can push the limit. The problem often is you only know when they are past the limit. Usually astronauts are fairly sharp people and can figure to some extent what to or not to answer in a psychological assessment. And it is not becaue they put you in the “escape” contraption for a little while that they can find out your aptitude at stress exposure. I will even venture that combat pilots may have similar dispositions, especially after combat missions: Okay they survived but it does not mean unscathed… Anyway a long topic here…

NOT TRUE: Please read everything before posting things like that!

BTW: http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/428356main_Exploration.pdf

“Advanced In-Space Propulsion: NASA will work with partners in industry as appropriate, to conduct foundational research to study the requirements and potential designs for advanced high-energy in-space propulsion systems to support deep-space human exploration, and to reduce travel time between Earth’s orbit and future destinations for human activity. These technologies could include nuclear thermal propulsion, solar and nuclear electric propulsion, plasma propulsion, and other high-energy and/or high-efficiency propulsion concepts. One or more concepts may mature to the level of a demonstration on a robotic precursor or Flagship mission.”

Sorry, a monster HLV is not a balance between anything. It is an extreme, and an outrageously frivolous one.

Concerning the current financial situation I agree but the Space Program is responsible for less than 1% of how we got into this mess. It thereby represents less than 1% of the solution as well.

The Astronauts vs Robot debate is nothing new and is left unresolved even the President’s (Humans in LEO only for the next two decades) plan as well. Which I equate as reckless endangerment at great expense.

What we have proposed is a plan that attempts to find a balance between ‘all’ extremes in this debate. Unfortunately when one attempts to break up a fight between junk yard dogs your’re likely to bitten by all dogs in the fight. Along the trail you can always tell who the pioneers were because they have arrows in the front and the back.

Fire and bite away.

Back in this galaxy, Iceland is bankrupt. California, Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain are nearly so. Moody’s is warning that it may have to reduce the U.S.’s AAA credit rating on its debt, formerly known as “the risk free asset”.

Machines are far cheaper than HSF and getting less expensive every year. There will be plenty of robots going to Mars in our generation, but no people. Likewise, astronauts can’t do what may need to be done on the moon at reasonable costs, while robots and teleoperated machines often can and often will. All real commerce is unmanned and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

HSF is far less useful than the money we currently spend on it and in the coming decade or more of government financial crisis its budgets will be reduced accordingly. Since HLVs like DIRECT or Ares V are useless for anything other than vastly overfunded astronaut extravaganzas, they are economic fantasies. Astronauts and space tourists will fly on the same kinds of rockets satellites and robots use or they won’t fly at all. Get used to it.

Concerning Rocket Engines, throwing hot gasses out the back end of combustion chamber with a nozzle is ‘very’ old technology. My point is that all the tweaks the ‘people’ are calling advanced technology is in fact most definitely ‘not’ advanced technology. If it’s not a true game changers than why bother. What works is already paid for. Remember in any business case the future improvement must pay back the investment or you are loosing ground. You’re better off just putting that money in the bank and using the interest to offset future costs. Improving the existing cost/performance of existing of rocket engines by just a few percentage points (ie all you are going to get based on the limits of materials, manufacturing and physics at this point) is just not worth it.

I’d rather put that same money into propellant depots, ISRU, Propellantless engines, faster than light communication (ie using entanglement) etc. These are true game changers that if they work will significantly lower the cost and increase capability.

Concerning Lori’s charts on HLV, I learned a long time ago to discount what people advocate they want to do decades from now. There is no time like the present. I just pay attention to what they are advocating doing today. What Lori advocates doing today is that we should shut down the STS and thereby starve the ISS, destroy a perfectly adequate $40 Billion dollar HLV infrastructure and walk away from over $9 billion dollars worth of beyond LEO development progress. Either we choose support the ISS mission, build upon the existing beyond Earth capable Orion and SDHLV Jupiter now or we choose to abandon all the above until the baby boomers, like Lori, are in the ground, there is no third path available to us over a decade from now.

Concerning NASA Overhead, this is precisely why you need a critical funding threshold in order to make progress on ‘any’ front whether it be warmed over rocket technology, Jupiter/Orion development or space propellant depots supplied using Lunar ISRU. This overhead saps the life out of your development if you have 100 different things you are trying to do all at once. It’s better to focus your funding on a smaller well thought-out sequence of capabilities that all build upon one another over time.

Concerning KSC, this is 100% true. I’m sure you don’t seriously believe that DC/NASA politics is some kind I love Barney after school special, do you? I have first hand and second hand accounts of significantly more damming stuff that makes this look like some kid hitting up another kid for lunch money. You may think this stuff is beneath the DIRECT team and I agree with you since our objectives are clearly stated in full view of the public and provide no personal financial benefits to us, but I assure you these tactics are definitely not below those who stand to lose face or billions of dollars on how this ultimately plays out. What’s funny is to see how happy, smiling and magnanimous some these same people are in front of the camera and what little egotistical monsters they become after the press leaves. It’s not unlike a battered wife after she manages to convince the police that her phone call was all just a big mistake and overreaction by her. This unfortunately happens thousands of times a day in some people’s personal lives, why don’t you believe its close cousin happens at national political level as well? I’m still holding out hope that Charlie Bolden can clean up this mess where no one can state what they honestly believe for fear of their jobs or in my case NASA contracts.

Concerning Augustine Cost Numbers, do think its ‘reasonable’ to produce a cost estimate for the development of a SDHLV that approaches the total from scratch development cost of the Space Shuttle? I think the CBO’s number for of $12 Billion for a Jupiter-241 equivalent was much closer to the mark. Since in our plan we delay the EDS development $8 Billion is the number we are carrying for the Jupiter-130 which just so happens is close to what a reasonable modification of the Space Shuttle development cost actuals would predict ‘with’ a cost safety margin. You can download our letter to the Augustine commission regarding this whole twisted affair from the link below.

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/383305main_CostEstimates_SDHLV_Rev1.pdf

Concerning ‘inefficient’ Heavy-Lift, this canard is simple not true based on basic facts and math I have shown over and over again. STS is ‘less’ expensive than the COTS-CRS contracts right now on a $/kg to ISS basis alone even if one doesn’t consider the value of the crew rotation now going on the spot market at $80 million/seat. STS gets even less expensive in the form of the Jupiter/Orion systems once the dead weight and expense of the Orbiter is removed. In fact the cost per kg to LEO with crew (at no extra charge) falls to less than $5K/kg at only four flights per year ($2Billion/(4×100,000kg)).

Look if the Government really wanted get the launch services cost to orbit down they could do it with a stroke of pen. All they would need to do is to stop forcing commercial customers to pay a portion of the Government’s strategic fixed cost (i.e. ULA important role in our Nation’s Security) every time they fly. The Government will pay this fixed expense regardless of whether there is a commercial flight or not. If the Government did that then the price for launch services would drop to below $1K/kg based on what the true incremental cost of each launch is once the fixed costs are paid for. Since the government is the dominate customer this is an arrangement they could bake into the contact if they wanted to (i.e. incremental cost plus 10% profit for all non-government launches). The significant expansion in the utilization of Space (i.e. the other 90% of the Space Industry not related to launch services of which both ULA parent organizations also participate in) would more than offset in the form of new payroll taxes and trade balance that the incremental strategic cost savings to the Government now enjoys by forcing the commercial sector to pick a portion of their strategic cost when these commercial applications manage to close their business case at these high $10-20K/kg to orbit prices.

The above is yet another message I’m trying to get across to our Nation’s policy makers. Maybe you can help?

In terms of HSF I don’t disagree with this. The problem is that what Exploration Directorate is expecting to do in the next forty years is not all that different from what it has been doing or trying to do for last forty: using oversized rockets to blast astronauts off on gold-plated spectaculars that don’t accomplish much of anything actually useful, accompanied by nonsensical hype about hypothetical markets that really only constitute fat NASA contracts. The recent budget does have some steps in the right direction:

* Smaller rockets with finer granularity launches to increase flexibility and allow HSF on smaller budgets.

* A better kind of government contracting (not really “commercial”, but better than cost-plus).

* More research, to lower costs and increase capabilities in the future.

* More robotic missions directed at least in part towards applications rather than pure science.

But these are just baby steps. It’s like painting over a hole in the wall rather than replacing the wall. What the Exploration Directorate needs is a full reboot. We have a long way to go before economic reality meets the E.D. Meanwhile, the Loral/SpaceX deal being the latest example, real commerce is humming along fine regardless of the weeping and gnashing of teeth at the E.D.