RE: DIRECT Rocket and human rating

Regardless of the “human rating requirements” having 2 giant solid boosters strapped to your rocket will always, ALWAYS, make it inherently UNSAFE. There is no possible control of those SRBs without major redesign. A pad abort would spell catastrophe. Why in heck would we need any analysis here? It is obvious that an exploding SRB on the pad will detonate the central tank and at the very least damage the other SRB sending sharpnel at very high velocity all around. How many Gs would we need to escape anything like this? On ascent how would we control the SRBs after LAV bailout? How do we prevent recontact with SRBs going full thrust? It’s not like we’d have 10 or 20 seconds to do anything. The lead time on Apollo was about 2 seconds to bail. How long would we have if an SRB fails? Do we need extra vehicle life monitoring systems? Shuttle does nto need that they can not bail anyway.

So please all think a little harder about crew rating a SD HLV especially if a LAS is a requirement!

I disagree somewhat about Heavy Lift. It is not wrong, right now we have other options as you point out. However, there will come a time when we do need to build larger launch vehicles.. They will be expensive but if done correctly they could significantly reduce the cost per kilo to orbit. Flight rate and design for single use are probably the most important pieces of this puzzle but in order for any of this to be accomplished we need to have a much more elastic market for space services. I don’t see that happening any time soon.

I do not see the Space-X vehicles helping that process much in the long run. Yes, they are commercial but their pricing is going to reflect the costs of doing business on a US Range that really does not like or want commercial stuff. I really don’t know where they can go to reduce prices much more. Their engineering and manufacturing seems to be efficient and competent, the costs seem to come from interfacing with bureaucracy.

It would seem that the only constant in this argument about the future of NASA and Space Exploration – human or otherwise – is the dedicated resistance to change!

So the HLV fans ignore everything you’ve said and start talking about Direct, or Side mount or this or that HLV, totally ignoring the central point that has been demonstrated by multiple HLV’s over many years,
HLVs cost too much.
Period.
And it’s the persuit of heavy lift that has kept us trapped in LEO.
Don’t get me wrong we will need HLV one day, but the longer we can put it off the better.
We have the EELV’s. With them, and a little ingenuity we can visit, mine settle both the Moon and Mars. see
http://www.ulalaunch.com/index_published.html
and read the paper on the “Affordable Exploration Architecture 2009″
All I ask is that please, please, please don’t
“Yes but if we had heavy lift…” me.

I’ve been asking you to do this for months. If you are incapable of figuring out basic HTML, could you at least learn to use quote marks intelligently, instead of randomly?

Oler,
I’ve asked for those studies you refer to about the cost structure for an inline HLV based on present shuttle hardware and have yet to have anyone tell me where to find them.
The majority of the cost associated to the shuttle is the man power for the care and maintenance of the orbiter….

end of quote

“The majority” might be correct…but two points are in order.

First the cost to reprocess/salvage the SRB’s are substantial…last I heard from John Shannon’s public statements (and sorry I dont have the quote) is that at the current flight rate it is a wash as to recovering them or just building them new

Second the cost to process etc any payload on any shuttle derivative are likely to be as high as the shuttle orbiter.

Robert G. Oler

The last time I checked that budget spreadsheet it cut a lot of the 2011 plan, including almost all of the commercial crew budget, some general space technology funding (i.e. not specific to HSF), robotic precursors, and exploration technology demonstrations. It struck me as cutting these things too far to consider it a compromise. It’s basically throwing out the 2011 plan.

I suspect it can be improved by getting rid of crewed DIRECT Orion launch, and sticking with the current Orion super-lite CRV plan. The DIRECT rocket would then not have to be human-rated. All of this should save a considerable amount of money through 2015, and might, if the Jupiter development figures in the spreadsheet are accurate, allow a real compromise budget to be built that includes an actual commercial crew competition and more funding for the other items like robotic precursors and exploration technology demonstrations (although I suspect that the cuts to those areas would still be severe). The DIRECT rockets could be used for non-crew jobs like launching robotic precursors, technology demos, science missions, and the like.

It will be really hard for DIRECT to compete with the development and operations costs of something like a Phase I EELV HLV that shares infrastructure costs with rockets that are going to be used anyway. I wouldn’t burden the DIRECT budget concept with expensive Orion development and rocket human rating efforts, which will only make DIRECT even more expensive, put DIRECT in competition with commercial crew (Bolden says he will not allow government competition with commercial crew), and only gain political support from the Orion side which should already be satisfied with Orion super-lite CRV, the opportunity to compete for commercial crew, and the chance to feed CRV technology into beyond-LEO spacecraft.

It may be viable, but it’s extremely expensive. As others have noted, it’s also dangerous.

MrEarl: “They also suggest modifying the Constellation program to better fit budget and schedule constraints.”

Good luck with that. The Constellation program managers have been pulling their collective hairs out trying to fit the budget and schedule for years. They’ve lost a lot of capabilities, but the budget and schedule are completely out of control in spite of their efforts.

Space Shuttle external tanks only cost between $40 to $80 million.