Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) attended Friday’s launch of the space shuttle Atlantis on what is currently scheduled to be its final mission, and made the rounds of the press site before and after liftoff. He slipped into the post-launch press conference there and, afterwards, could be seen talking with NASA officials, including shuttle launch director Mike Leinbach, about prospects for adding an additional shuttle mission next year.
He then talked with reporters about that and other issues. “I keep recommending it, and I will keep asking the White House to go ahead and do that,” he said of an additional shuttle mission, which would use components planned for the “launch on need” support for the last currently scheduled mission. That launch, carrying the AMS instrument to the ISS, is now planned for late November, but Nelson said he believed that launch would slip into early 2011. That additional mission, if approved, would likely fly in mid-2011, according to NASA officials.
Turning to Congressional issues, Nelson said that his subcommittee planned to markup a NASA authorization bill by the middle of June. He said he didn’t know yet whether he would hold another hearing on the subject before the markup. Even if the authorization bill doesn’t make it through the whole Senate, he claimed, it would still provide direction to appropriators.
One key issue is likely going to be the emphasis in the administration’s plan to rely on commercial providers for crew transportation to the ISS. “You heard the skepticism among the members the other day about the commercial boys being able to man-rate their system without NASA basically having to do it for them,” he said, referring to Wednesday’s hearing by the Senate Commerce Committee. “I think, if I had to guess, I would say that you boys are going to have to show us that you can walk before you run,” he added, meaning that commercial providers first had to demonstrate the ability to transport cargo to the ISS before they could be considered for carrying astronauts.
In an earlier interview with a local television station, Nelson suggested that commercial crew funding in the budget proposal might be better used for continued testing of heavy-lift vehicles based on the Ares design. Nelson has advocated continued testing of Ares (or at least Ares-derived) vehicles as one way to mitigate job losses at the Kennedy Space Center with the shuttle’s pending retirement, as well as accelerate a 2015 deadline for a decision on a heavy-lift concept. “I think the question is out there whether or not we’re going to man-rate commercial rockets and instead use that $6 billion trying to do a shuttle-derived man-rated system such as Ares,” he told Central Florida News 13.
This is typical Nelson…a lot of talk but no real ability to act on any of his proposals. The “one more shuttle flight” thing is typical. Its an expensive gimmick that is typical of what legislators propose.
In the end Obama’s plan just keeps on rolling on.
there is no coherent opposition to it. (see Mark Whittington’s latest rant against it on his web page)
Robert G. Oler
there is no coherent opposition to it. (see Mark Whittington’s latest rant against it on his web page)
I have yet to see any myself, especially here in Upstate NY.
Even news of Atlantis’ launch was buried in the back pages of the newspapers here.
CxP supporters are reduced to space state and anti-anything Obama ideologues.
Nelson: “I think the question is out there whether or not we’re going to man-rate commercial rockets and instead use that $6 billion trying to do a shuttle-derived man-rated system such as Ares”
$6 billion isn’t going to get you anywhere close to having a crew transportation system using Ares. This suggestion amounts to the Constellation plan for crew transportation, namely Soyuz.
Anyone who pays attention to such things knows that when NASA is done leading a mishap investigation of a commercial unmanned rocket launch, that failed to successful launch a NASA rocket, the COSTS GO THROUGH THE ROOF for subsequent purchases of said rocket. Witness the jump in prices of the Pegasus after the mid/late 90’s failures, and pay attention the costs of the Taurus post OCO mishap board recommendation implementations.
In a similar manner, no matter what Elon and the Merchant 7 space boys are saying now about their projected costs, once NASA gets involved in the process of certifying rocket safety, reviewing qualification test program results, reviewing other procedures related to crew safety, etc. the COSTS WILL GO THROUGH THE ROOF.
Such endith the love affair with cheap commercial HSF access to LEO.
make that ….”failed to successfully launch a NASA payload’…..
red wrote @ May 16th, 2010 at 11:48 am
yeah
what I find amazing about folks like Nelson (and Olson) is that none of them seem to have the foggiest notion about trying to “fix” the program that they support. IE to make it affordable and completive in some reasonable time period.
It is a tribute to how much of the “Nanny state” folks like Shannon and all the other thunderheads at NASA think human spaceflight has become…that in the year run up to the 08 election NONE of them were trying to figure out a method of presenting a proposal to the “new person” (whoever it was) that recognized that the program had gone off track and how to get it back on track.
It seems to me (and how little corporate NASA cares about “the gap”) that as Constellation drifted farther and farther into the future…and it was clear that even under a friendly administration like Bush the last, the money that they claimed they needed never came…someone either in the political world or in the world at JSC would have said “OK when there is a new President how do we save the program?”
But no, they are as in to the nanny state as any social welfare folks are.
Robert G. Oler
NASA Fan wrote @ May 16th, 2010 at 11:52 am
Anyone who pays attention to such things knows that when NASA is done leading a mishap investigation of a commercial unmanned rocket launch, that failed to successful launch a NASA rocket, the COSTS GO THROUGH THE ROOF for subsequent purchases of said rocket….
I think you mean “successful launch a NASA Payload”…but…
maybe…but I can see how Musk or anyone else moves around this….and it will be sometime before the payload is a bunch of humans (at least on the NASA buck…I suspect Musk is thinking about a PR stunt sometime in 12 or 13.)
Robert G. Oler
Senator Nelson said”
“You heard the skepticism among the members the other day about the commercial boys being able to man-rate their system without NASA basically having to do it for them,†he said, referring to Wednesday’s hearing by the Senate Commerce Committee. “I think, if I had to guess, I would say that you boys are going to have to show us that you can walk before you run,â€
What was missing in all of their discussions was any mention or consideration of Boeing/LM United Launch Alliance, and their existing Delta IV and Atlas V launchers.
Last year, in testimony before the Augustine Commission, the President & CEO of ULA stated they could man-rate Delta IV Heavy for $1.3B (vehicle & facilities), and launch an Orion for $300M/per. They could also man-rate Atlas V for commercial, and launch for $130M/per (didn’t state upgrade costs). Boeing and Lockheed-Martin both know how to design and build complex aerospace systems, and through ULA, they know how to process spacecraft for crew & cargo.
Wouldn’t ULA be “one of the boys”?
Obama ordered Constellation canceled, but astonishingly NASA is showing no sign of following orders and is going on full speed ahead with Constellation!!
Constellation is using billions in “closeout” funds, not to “close out” but to plan at least five “test flights” including using the full Ares I and Orion capsule for a full-up manned flight to the ISS!!! They are planning to demolish the Shuttle launch complex at LC-39B this month to drive a stake through the heart of Shuttle extension and be able to say that there are now no obstacles to launching the Ares I. The goal, which no one is particularly reticent about, is to position Constellation as the only “man-rated” option for human spaceflight and force it once again to be accepted as the program of record.
Constellation supporters are whipping up congressional support using both the impressive lobbying power of ATK and the claim that more Constellation jobs are needed (despite the cancellation) to mitigate the massive job losses due to the cancellation of Shuttle, a bizarre claim since obviously NASA would have plenty of money to keep Shuttle flying if Constellation were actually canceled as ordered.
I have to admit I can’t ever recall a government organization so effectively countermanding a direct presidential directive. Bolden seems unsure what he wants to do, and opposed to Shuttle despite having flown on it. The new programs that have been announced, like “21st Centutry launch site” and “heavy lift launcher” and “Orion lite” seem like they were grabbed out of the air. At this point I see little hope for sanity to prevail.
Meanwhile, STS-132 is for the first time showing NO signs of ANY foam loss or tile damage. The Shuttle is finally, after 30 years, flying as it was meant to. And it is about to be destroyed, not by any technical failure, but by a management that wants to abandon a 100-ton reusable spaceplane for a tiny capsule that has to be hauled out of the ocean.
“I have to admit I can’t ever recall a government organization so effectively countermanding a direct presidential directive. ”
For me it is easy, Griffin doing the ESAS and destroying the VSE that President Bush gave us.
vulture4 said “And it is about to be destroyed, not by any technical failure, but by a management that wants to abandon a 100-ton reusable spaceplane for a tiny capsule that has to be hauled out of the ocean.”.
The question has never been “if” the Shuttle could be kept going, but whether it could be done so economically. It can’t. The shuttles have outlived commercial airliners of the same age, so they have done a pretty good. But remember, we only have 3/5 of our fleet left, and we are one accident away from only having 2/5. Since we’re not building anymore, we have to decide when the program is to end, and the completion of the ISS seems like a logical point.
Regarding the subject of “tiny capsule that has to be hauled out of the ocean”, it is a national shame that no winged replacement was consistently pursued. The Dream Chaser is the most near-term replacement, and I hope NASA provides follow-on funding for it. The Shuttle was a great all-in-one vehicle, but now that we have a foothold in space (the ISS), and can have multiple ways to get crew and cargo into LEO, the biggest missing piece is a horizontal lander for crew & cargo. Go Dream Chaser!
vulture4 wrote @ May 16th, 2010 at 12:14 pm
yes. at some point Charlie is going to have to do a serious amount of house cleaning particularly at JSC…
there are so many reasons to do it…but the most important is that the current “leadership” (a kind word) has no clue how to do R&D.
Robert G. Oler
It is tough to sort out the words that Sen Nelson throws out into “campaign statements” and “real ideas”. Most of his words are campaign statements, with few real ideas. This time it sounds like some are real ideas, however. Perhaps this is an indication of people doing the only things that they can do, given the situation. Adding a Shuttle flight or two is reasonable – especially with as reliable and safe as the Shuttle is today. I would slip Alpha Mag Spec out until next year, and add another Shuttle flight between now and then.
Certainly we need to encourage the SpaceX and Orbital efforts – to inject some new ideas – but also get ULA cranked up so they can apply their enormous corporate knowledge. Our best bet for a near term rocket to send people (even in a capsule) to ISS is Atlas or Delta. If Dragon proves to be a dependable rocket – over a four flight test period let’s say – then they could try sending a capsule of their design.
I would hope that we continue to test various technologies – larger solid rockets among them. But they should be for technology development only and our budget for that is probematical at best.
Re Griffin doing the ESAS and destroying the VSE that President Bush gave us, that’s exactly right, and deserves highlighting. Bush produced an important presidential directive in VSE. In fact, it would be nice to see this administration refer to that VSE and perhaps even endorse it. But the implementation of it suffered from the disinterest of the White House in it (with respect to both funding and policy), and also from trusting its implementation to a NASA administrator who took a very narrow view of what it was supposed to do, and committed to an architecture that was both unaffordable and by intent shackled technologically.
The advantage that Congress is now so strongly focused on the future of human space flight is that it’ll keep the administration engaged. The last Congress just smiled and signed checks and, as a result, the White House was encouraged to disengage. That disengagement sealed the fate of Constellation.
More on-topic, the point that commercial will have to prove itself to garner confidence is exactly right. It’s also right that the first commercial accident will blow their price models to smithereens. But what interests me most about commercial is that the risk avoidance equation may be rather different than what it is now, and the total paralysis that befell the program after each shuttle accident may be somewhat avoidable. That new risk avoidance picture depends on a commercial option, and it’s worth investment to gain that confidence.
If the commercial space initiative goes down in flames, the administration has only itself to blame. They way they approached it was dubious from the start. But the moment Charlie Bolden opened his mouth about bailouts, the thing ceased to be commercial and became another Obama-style crony capitalism scam. Very sad.
Mark R. Whittington wrote @ May 16th, 2010 at 1:19 pm
LOL
this coming from a person who supports a statist big government space program designed to support government employees (and contractors) whose only success is at spending money.
I see the mythical bailout theory has replaced as your hot button the “wmd went to syria” myth.
Robert G. Oler
A presidential directive is by no means law. Congress is the only branch of government that can terminate a program, or for that matter, start a new one. President proposes, Congress disposes.
Congress has directed NASA, both in the appropriations bill for FY2010 and in the new appropriations bill for the war in Afghanistan (this one is not yet law) for the funds dedicated to Constellation back in September 2009 to be used on Constellation, and not to cancel the program or start a new one.
Constellation can not, and will not, be terminated unless Congress says so.
CharlesHouston wrote @ May 16th, 2010 at 1:13 pm
Adding a Shuttle flight or two is reasonable – especially with as reliable and safe as the Shuttle is today….
that is the least reasonable of the ideas…the cost is astronomical…and literally there are no payloads for it.
All it would be is a dole to the workers involved.
As for the shuttle being “safe”…yeah right
Robert G. Oler
Vladislaw wrote @ May 16th, 2010 at 12:39 pm
I should actually go back and find it…but one of the predictions I am both most pleased with and saddened by is the one I made on this forum that the VSE as implemented (even before Griffin got hold of it) would flounder much like it has.
Why? Many years ago (in the late 80’s) and early 90’s I came to a hard truth; which was that NASA HSF had fallen into a mold (particularly after Challenger) that it simply could not break out of, and forced every single project to morph into.
What was impressive (and not very unexpected) is how they turned Griffin around!
Robert G. oler
Thiokol ties its wishes to bills addressing real and pressing national needs.
Obama has one vote, the veto. Thiokol’s goal is to prevent him from using it.
“Nelson suggested that commercial crew funding in the budget proposal might be better used for continued testing of heavy-lift vehicles based on the Ares design.”
“might”? Well gosh Senator, that’s a good reason to stop the industrialization and commercialization of low earth orbit. A chance for the United States to capture and dominate a new market for jobs of the 21st century. It would be better for you to stop the madness and allow American technology and the most skilled aerospace workers on the planet get to the business of developing these markets, god knows, America needs a market we can lead the world in.
Robert wrote:
“I should actually go back and find it…but one of the predictions I am both most pleased with and saddened by is the one I made on this forum that the VSE as implemented (even before Griffin got hold of it) would flounder much like it has.”
I have to admit, it took me a little longer, the first budget that included 450 million for the Promethus Project, I remember thinking, “FINALLY”. Then in the second budget and it was cut in half and Griffin switched from liquid boosters in his FLO design to the SRB’s and the cancelation of the Jupiter Icey Moons … That’s when my thought went to “oh christ, here we go, back to business as usual”.
Senator Hutchison has also been hinting that she may support using funds that were supposed to help develop private space launch capability. This may be sort of a backlash against companies like Space-X that have been trashing NASA and arguing how much more efficient they are compared to NASA– even though they’ve never launched a single human into orbit. Companies like Space-X may end up killing the goose that laid the golden egg.
Personally, I like the idea of distributing $1.2 billion a year to private manned spaceflight start up companies to develop their own innovative ideas to access space.
But I predict that the first– financially successful– private manned spaceflight companies will probably use man-rated space craft that were originally developed for the Federal government (Atlas, Delta IV heavy, or possibly Boeing’s new shuttle derived inline booster concept without the SRBs).
Here’s a pretty good paper on spacecraft reliability. It makes the point that the reliability of virtually all launch vehicles goes up with repeated launches, as more problems are identified and corrected..
http://www.aero.org/publications/crosslink/winter2001/03.html
In the case of Shuttle, the causes of the two failures were each corrected before return to flight. If anyone, including NASA leadership thinks the Shuttles are unsafe they should certainly insist that the remaining missions be canceled. To say they are safe enough for two more missions but will then become deathtraps is contrary to the basic principles of reliability engineering.
I am also skeptical about the belief that a LAS magically makes a vehicle safe. We lost one crew during Apollo and nearly lost two more, and the LAS would not have helped any of them. On Soyuz, the LAS saved one crew and was the cause of one fatal accident, both decades ago.
That is why I say Nixon was quite right to cancel Apollo; the embarrassing truth is that ELV launches and use-once spacecraft are simply much to expensive for human spaceflight to ever be of practical value. The answer isn’t to claim some infinite existential value for human spaceflight to justify its nearly infinite cost. The answer is the same as it was in 1974; we have to reduce the cost by at least a factor of ten.
And spaceflight is not inherently expensive. All the fuel, the energy that puts the Shuttle in orbit is less than 1/2 of 1% of the mission cost. LOX delivered to KSC is 60 cents a gallon. LH2 is 98 cents. Rocket fuel is cheaper than gasoline! Almost all the cost is in building a new vehicle. That’s why only a reusable system can be practical.
That was the goal of the Shuttle; to finally make human spaceflight practical. And despite the disparaging comments, the per-mission cost of Shuttle is clearly less than Orion, and it carries more than ten times the cargo. The central reason the Shuttle did not meet its design goals for cost and safety was the lack of any reusable prototypes to test the critical new technologies in actual spaceflight before design decisions were made. Consequently many of the cost predictions were vastly in error, and failure modes were unanticipated.
NASA seemed to understand this in the 90’s; that was why it initiated the Reusable Launch Vehicle program, to get real flight experience with the safety, durability and cost of the systems that could be used to make the next generation of reusable spacecraft both practical and safe. But between 2000 and 2004 all the RLV programs were canceled, not because of technical failure, but apparently because of lack of interest.
Today, in the press, there seems to be a battle between the newspace entrepreneurs and the NASA administrators as to who has the experience to safely fly people in space. The truth is the only workforce with real hands-on experience with human spacecraft in the US are the contractor engineers and technicians who maintain the Space Shuttle. These are the very people with the knowledge and experience we need to apply the lessons of Shuttle and make a new generation of reusable spacecraft that are safe in operation and practical in cost. And they are about to be fired and dispersed forever.
The dream we once had as space enthusiasts was not to make spaceflight spectacular for a few, but to make it routine for many.
The decision by the White House to cancel Constellation was not, as has been suggested, a “Presidential directive”. Presidential directives are formal instruments, and they do in many cases have the force of law. The VSE was, in fact, a Presidential directive.
Cancellation of Constellation was a lower level policy decision, and such decisions are much more easily open to challenge by Congress, especially to the extent that they countermand existing statutes. That lower level policy decision could easily be interpreted as an “until Congress gives some guidance here, this is what I want to do”. With regard to Constellation, Congress was pretty much out to lunch with regard to guidance and oversight.
Just to set the record straight.
“This may be sort of a backlash against companies like Space-X that have been trashing NASA”
Could you provide some quotes where SpaceX and other companies have been “trashing” NASA? I really don’t see it, Musk wants NASA as a customer and trashing them just doesn’t make good business sense. Please provide quotes of “trashing” NASA.
NASA has a basic operational cost of 200 million a month, no matter what they do. SpaceX and other companies that want to compete do not have to maintain that overhead, so they are going to be more cost effectively efficient, that isn’t trashing, that is just a fact.
vulture4 wrote @ May 16th, 2010 at 2:21 pm
In the case of Shuttle, the causes of the two failures were each corrected before return to flight…
in the case of the Shuttle the causes of the two failures were well known and understood by the management well before each failure….its just that they chose to ignore them
Robert G. Oler
Marcel F. Williams wrote @ May 16th, 2010 at 2:18 pm
Senator Hutchison has also been hinting that she may support using funds that were supposed to help develop private space launch capability. This may be sort of a backlash against companies like Space-X ,,,
no. Its just all the shuttle folks trying to figure out any sort of pot which would contribute money to one last shuttle mission.
KBH even more or less said that in the hearings
nice try
Robert G. Oler
FWIW, I suspect that the WORST possible thing we could do to the budding commercial LEO human spaceflight industry is for Uncle Sam to make it his primary means of going to LEO. Usually, when the USG shows up at your door and says, “Hi, I’m from the government and I’m here to help you,” entrepreneurs run for the hills, or an offshore haven in the tropics.
From a commercialization standpoint, I’ll be crossing my fingers that Virgin Galactic et. al. are wildly successful in suborbital space and spark enough non-government demand for applications to stimulate a demand for LEO. (Even now, I’ve begun to worry that once NASA starts sending researchers to suborbital space aboard a commercial craft, it’ll start crawling around on the insides as much as it wants to and making new design and operational demands.)
BTW: If I recall correctly, the RLV programs were canceled because they were performing poorly against the original cost-schedule projections, themselves based on extremely low confidence levels in order to fit a budget target. “Fixing them” was deemed prohibitively expensive for an agency that had just surpised everyone with an multi-billion annual shortfall in the ISS budget. That’s what happens to technology programs not directly associated with a focused mission, IMHO, and the reason Obama’s “game changing technology programs” as necessary and welcome as they are, will become bill payers for overruns elsewhere in the agency budget. Over time, the green eyeshades types will take over policymaking and ask why we’re developing technologies that we don’t have a plan to use. Happens every time.
“Certainly we need to encourage the SpaceX and Orbital efforts – to inject some new ideas – ”
Actually Charles, neither firm is pursuing “new” ideas either in technology or operations. Both use slightly modified USAF or NASA launch pads with no provision for portability. The Taurus II relies upon 40+ year old Rocket engines and Solid motors whilst Space X are trying really hard to operate like a “legitimate” NASA-style contractor, whose only new idea- the pintle injector – was also used by PWR on some of their canceled engines. The aim it seems to me to supplant the ULA’s etc of the Space business. They might succeed but I predict will eventually cost just as much; but for an inferior(except for the self-promoting hype-a Musk specialty) product.
The cost of a Falcon 1(e) launch has risen since 2006 from $6.6milion per launch to $10.8billion, while neither the F1e or the F9(scheduled for first launch in 2008 on their own manifests) has yet to make their first(test only of course) flights. OSC is also experiencing unforeseen delays.
Not that that this is unusual. Rocket Engineering takes no prisoners at any stage. Only the Russians seem to be able to do it with any regularity, but by accepting less exacting engineering standards unless necessity dictates.
The only space company worthy of the terms new and innovative: Kistler Aerospace, were either bedeviled by financing problems, hi-cost subcontractors and competitors dedicated to their destruction. Thus cheap re-useable access to Space remains a pipe-dream unless other new ideas suddenly appear on the horizon.
Supposedly the new dedication to R&D characterized by “The New Plan” will bring it to fruition. If it doesn’t…
“The only space company worthy of the terms new and innovative:”
Although they didn’t actually take the ideas anywhere, I thought T/Space and Scales air launch design was innovative and I believe it was Kelly space? that proposed the towed launch system? Both systems did away with the ground based launch facilities and most of the operational ground forces. Whether they were actually workable is a different matter.
“Meanwhile, STS-132 is for the first time showing NO signs of ANY foam loss or tile damage. The Shuttle is finally, after 30 years, flying as it was meant to. And it is about to be destroyed, not by any technical failure, but by a management that wants to abandon a 100-ton reusable spaceplane for a tiny capsule that has to be hauled out of the ocean.”
100 tons of spaceplane was a mistake- a tiny capsule hauled out of the ocean was and still is the very best design. Reusable components hauled out of the ocean and an empty second stage fuel tank wet workshop is what the shuttle should have been. The shuttle IS a failure on every count.
“The Shuttle is finally, after 30 years, flying as it was meant to.”
It was meant to be cheaper then disposable rockets and fly once per week.
Kris, why can’t you spell SpaceX? There’s plenty of examples on this page. I recommend that you cut&paste the name until you can train your fingers not to insert unnecessary spaces.
The $276M that Sen. Nelson wants to steal from NewSpace development to use for pork-pie Ares1 test flights is a joke and one that will be a slow, sausage grinding effort by the Congress-critters unnoticed by the voting public.
And that’s what CxP idealogues are hoping. It’s like watching fingernails grow, then getting pulled out one by one.
Eric Sterner: “FWIW, I suspect that the WORST possible thing we could do to the budding commercial LEO human spaceflight industry is for Uncle Sam to make it his primary means of going to LEO.”
I’m not sure I would call the LEO human spaceflight industry “budding” without the government customer, at least in the sense of getting crew to and from LEO. I don’t see much activity at all in this area. I wouldn’t count any of the COTS cargo companies, suborbital RLV companies, or CCDEV winners yet, since the LEO crew ambitions some of them have are either a bit down the road or dependent on the government incentives you’re worried about.
Setting that aside, though, why would this scenario be objected to by a budding LEO HSF industry? The government isn’t going to force any of them to take it as a customer. The scenario you described is similar for U.S. cargo to the ISS. Do you think that’s a bad scenario for the budding “U.S. space station cargo” industry? Also, how would the scenario be better for the commercial HSF LEO access industry if that industry wasn’t NASA’s primary means of getting to LEO?
“From a commercialization standpoint, I’ll be crossing my fingers that Virgin Galactic et. al. are wildly successful in suborbital space and spark enough non-government demand for applications to stimulate a demand for LEO.”
That would be good, but I don’t see it as a reason not to pursue commercial LEO access now.
“(Even now, I’ve begun to worry that once NASA starts sending researchers to suborbital space aboard a commercial craft, it’ll start crawling around on the insides as much as it wants to and making new design and operational demands.)”
Again, the commercial suborbital RLV companies don’t have to take the government as a customer. If the government’s terms are too onerous, they won’t. So far I don’t see the problem you’re talking about starting to happen. It seems like the bigger potential issues with the government in that industry aren’t from the part of the government that wants to use the suborbital RLVs services.
“That’s what happens to technology programs not directly associated with a focused mission, IMHO, and the reason Obama’s “game changing technology programs†as necessary and welcome as they are, will become bill payers for overruns elsewhere in the agency budget.”
I could certainly see this happening if Griffin were NASA Administrator, but he isn’t any more.
The new approach doesn’t have a giant development program like Constellation or ISS supported by Shuttle, so there’s somewhat less worry about the type of budget raids you described. If one robotic mission or ISS experiment or technology demonstration or research investigation goes over budget, we would have an easier time shutting down the culprit rather than an innocent technology program.
Also, there is room in the new technology budget for a loss here and there. The most troubled technology effort could be picked if a budget problem shows up.
“Over time, the green eyeshades types will take over policymaking and ask why we’re developing technologies that we don’t have a plan to use. Happens every time.”
I don’t see these technology research, development, and demonstration efforts continuing on the scale they are in the 2011-2015 budget permanently. I don’t think that’s the intent. On the exploration side, I think the idea is to make a big push to demonstrate enough new cost-reducing technologies to make a certain level of deep space exploration affordable. Once we get to a certain point where such exploration is affordable, we can scale down the technology development and demonstration budgets and move towards operational deep space missions.
For example, if we can demonstrate propellant depot technology, NASA can then use this technology in an operational deep space architecture. This can spur commercial use of this technology, too. Hopefully, after getting over the initial “hump”, depot capabilities and improvements will be self-sustaining and need little or no additional NASA technology money.
“Nelson suggested that commercial crew funding in the budget proposal might be better used for continued testing of heavy-lift vehicles based on the Ares design. Nelson has advocated continued testing of Ares (or at least Ares-derived) vehicles as one way to mitigate job losses at the Kennedy Space Center with the shuttle’s pending retirement, as well as accelerate a 2015 deadline for a decision on a heavy-lift concept”
Of course continuing down the Ares path to a heavy-lift vehicle is completely unaffordable. We already know this from the CBO, GAO, and Augustine Committee, as well as the devestation this Ares path has already caused to other areas of NASA.
Nelson shouldn’t be looking to raid the commercial crew budget, which is probably going to result in launches of crew (and cargo) from Florida. The Ares path is not going to result in a self-sustaining launch operation for Florida, since it’s never going to get past the test phase. Even under full funding Augustine had Ares V operational in 2028. It would take even longer trying to scrape by with little morsels like the $6B commercial crew effort, and the whole time you’d have the pressure to abandon that Soyuz approach to get U.S. crew access to LEO.
He also shouldn’t be looking to the dead-end Ares path for an HLV. He should be encouraging propellant depots first. Imagine the number of Florida launches and associated jobs to fill those depots. Wanting to push earlier operation of an HLV (launched from Florida of course) makes sense for him, though. He shouldn’t try a dead-end path for this, though; he should try something easier and quicker to deploy like a Phase I EELV HLV or Shannon’s block 1 Sidemount.
Kris Ringwood wrote @ May 16th, 2010 at 3:29 pm
What SpaceX is trying to do has really never been done in the space industry…putting together a rocket that is affordable.
Robert G. Oler
Kris Ringwood wrote @ May 16th, 2010 at 3:29 pm
“…SpaceX… The aim it seems to me to supplant the ULA’s etc of the Space business. They might succeed but I predict will eventually cost just as much; but for an inferior(except for the self-promoting hype-a Musk specialty) product.”. I have no doubt that they would like to become the dominant U.S. launch provider, but I think you are off base about their technology and costs. Their innovations are using existing innovations, but producing them with modern tooling and low overhead. Being a new company, they do no have any legacy costs they have to carry over, nor do they have to make do with inefficient equipment.
Regarding your comment “Only the Russians seem to be able to do it with any regularity, but by accepting less exacting engineering standards unless necessity dictates.”, the Russians use appropriate technology, which is not the same as “less exacting engineering standards”. You can gold-plate a toilet, but that doesn’t mean it will work better, and the same is true in engineering. SpaceX uses a simple pintle engine, which they manufacturer to keep cost low, and then cluster them as needed to scale payloads. Maybe they loose some efficiency over larger engines, but they make up for it by de-rating their payload capacity. They are charging $51.5M to put up to 23,050lbs in LEO. Compare that cost to Atlas & Deltas, and you’ll see that by watching their costs, they gain a competitive advantage. The Russians do the same by using the same design for decades, although I think if Dragon becomes crew rated, they will have to develop their Angora line of launchers.
Payton: Constellation Cancellation Would Have “Trivial Impact†on Military Space Program
“USAF Deputy Undersecretary For Space Programs Gary Payton has told Defense News that President Obama’s proposal to cancel the Constellation program would have a “trivial†impact in terms of solid motor production costs. He also said the Air Force could benefit if NASA decides to use an existing expendable for human missions.”
Ultimately, this new White House requirement for future destinations: That they be 100% virgin territory, before we could ever send crewed vehicles to, totally guarantees that anything we do in deep space from now on will be Flags, Footprints & Nothing More. If we can never go back to where we’ve been—even if it’s 40,50,or 60 years removed—then NO resource utilization NOR development will ever take place!! Under Flexible Path all of our space endeavours become nothing more than a Guinness Book of World Records highest altitude stunt! Under FP the destinations never count for anything. Just that we never re-visit a planetoid…ever. Just plant a flag there, and never deal with the place again! This is no way to run the enterprise of manned deep spaceflight!
Chris, you got all that from one quip from the President? Wow, you must hang on his every word.
Back in reality, what the NASA policy *actually* was motivated by, was the desire to do something inspiring *sooner*. Building a crew transport vehicle, a capsule, a heavy lift vehicle, an earth departure stage, and a lander before you go anywhere or do anything beyond LEO just takes way too long. It’s decades and decades of “where’s the beef?”
Chris Castro wrote:
” If we can never go back to where we’ve been—even if it’s 40,50,or 60 years removed—then NO resource utilization NOR development will ever take place!!”
I agree with Chris, and we shouldn’t stop there. The government should explore for oil and drill, they should mine our coal and also mine our copper and iron. The government should run the steel mills while they are at it. Also the copper mines. We need the federal government to explore for everything and do all the developing not only in space but on terra firma as well. I think commercial is over rated, only the government can explore for oil and minerals.
This plan of President Obama’s to pursue commercial space is a fools folly. The government should not only explore but do all the mining and development and ban commercial resource extraction in total. Everyone knows that if the government is going to pay for the exploring that they should say screw you to the commercial sector and not only explore BUT do everything else too.
Trent Waddington wrote @ May 17th, 2010 at 2:31 am
Trent, I’m with you all the way on the need for a flexible path and the need for NASA to get out of running a gold-plated LEO taxi service. But the president does NOT help matters when he says we should not go somewhere because we have already been there. This is not only a lousy reason, but it communicates an overall boredom with human spaceflight on the president’s part that was evidenced just as badly during his phone call to the ISS a few months back when he struggled to ask anything intelligent of the astronauts with whom he spoke. I cannot help but feel that he sees little value in human spaceflight and that it will be any easy budget for him to cut (or allow to be cut) in the lean years ahead.
Oddly enough, that lack of concern may just be what it takes to clean house at NASA and return the organization to its roots. I say this because a dose of reality (even if administered by neglect) is exactly what is needed to remake NASA into a leaner, meaner, more efficient organization that can help lead the way for industry to take the rest us to the heavens.
NASA is currently mired with a way-over bloated workforce and it is way too beholding to old-space special interests that keep it paying out the big bucks for nothing but treading water. We need a slap in the face to wake us up and show us that spending billions to send heroes on flags and footprints expeditions to nowhere does not help bring any of us closer to the stars as a nation. It helped us win the cold war, but the same model will sink us as far as building up a space-fairing society goes.
The irony is that a president who is actively pro-space would probably never allow this painful remake to happen and doom the space program to thirty plus more years of mediocrity. So yes Trent, I support the president’s plan; but not for the reasons he does!
“I cannot help but feel that he sees little value in human spaceflight and that it will be any easy budget for him to cut”
YAWWWNNN.. What Obama “feels” about or “sees” in the HSF program is entirely inside his own head. You can’t state a single fact about it, so I dont *care* about it. I don’t participate in speculation about feelings. When he says he’s a great fan of the space program and has fond memories about Apollo astronauts returning to earth off the coast of Hawaii I’m happy to accept it at face value because it’s *irrelevant drivel* which you too should be above.
“a dose of reality (even if administered by neglect)”
If you agree that it doesn’t matter what motivations the administration has to enact good policy, why do you bother to bring it up? I think its because you’re trying to appeal to simpletons who care what you think the President “feels”.
[some babble about “flags and footprints expeditions to nowhere” with no coherent point that I can see]
What are you talking about? I’m vaguely guessing that you’re trying to suggest that the NASA HSF program should be doing “real work” not wasting time landing on an asteroid just because it’ll be exciting. And again I have to point and mock your obvious ignorance of the discussion that preceded the policy. It’s really annoying. We had a big public hearing of the issues last year. Over 10,000 people sent in email. Over 100 people made public comments. There’s 90+ hours of video on youtube that a small army of people worked hard to make available. (http://bit.ly/bwr3gz) Go watch it.
I remain frustrated that the argument appears to remain SpaceX vs. Ares-I/Orion. Why has no one specifically mentioned putting Orion on an alternate launcher? Or brought up ULA’s EELV/ACES plan for lunar exploration? I suspect that using Delta-IV, Atlas-V and the ACES upper stage, we could easily have an Apollo 8 hemicenteniary Orion in lunar orbit in December 2018.
I said this over on nasaspaceflight.com a while ago, but I suspect that ULA wants to keep out of this argument except as subcontractors (launch services to whoever can pay in cash). If they don’t come in and oppose someone’s blue-eyed program, then their own bridges remain un-burnt. It is possible that they are waiting until the two warring parties destroy each other and then quietly step into the resulting gaping opening in the market.
As for the politicians, their behaviour suggest that, with a few honorable exceptions (Sen. Hutchinson, especially), their main interest is maintaining jobs in their districts, not whether those jobs will be doing anything useful for human spaceflight.
Ben, I agree, whatever ULA wants to do in their commercial crew offering is their hand to play… and NASA hasn’t put out RFPs for it yet cause it hasn’t been funded yet, so ULA is playing that hand very close to the chest. On the other hand, SpaceX has videos of their crew vehicle concept up on their website.
“I think, if I had to guess, I would say that you boys are going to have to show us that you can walk before you run,â€
Finally, sanity fro Senator Nelson. He said what we already know. I hope you proponents of Obamaspace understand how disruptive this nutty ‘transformational plan’ roll out really was. No one of authority consulted in industry or the congress. Just a few dangerous leftists and tree huggers in the Whitehouse and political wannbees in the NASA leadership. It is hard to see how Garver and Bolden can survive, but I will enjoy watching them implement Constellation..
can someone tells me what an additional mission of the 35 yr shuttle program will help us with?
“can someone tells me what an additional mission of the 35 yr shuttle program will help us with?”
I dunno. It would be nice to see the ‘rockets red glare’ one more time before the dark ages of Obamaspace kick in.
“But the president does NOT help matters when he says we should not go somewhere because we have already been there.”
That’s a reasonable view. But that’s not what the President said. He said
“Now, I understand that some believe that we should attempt a return to the surface of the Moon first, as previously planned. But I just have to say pretty bluntly here: We’ve been there before.â€
Which is exactly true, and is consistent with the new plan, which puts many destinations, including the lunar surface, on the table. But the President clearly recognizes that what the American public wants to see out of our space program is doing new things. Sure, an outpost on the Moon could be seen as a “new thing”, but it’s not obvious that this new thing is actually going to do great new things once it is there. It’s not obvious that this needs to be done first. The template for a space outpost in the public eye is ISS. In all truth, the grand accomplishment of ISS was putting it there, but not (at least not yet) in using it. That unfortunately makes the public look somewhat askance at the idea of lunar outposts. Is it all about doing something important with a lunar outpost, or is it all about putting it there?
To be blunt, commercial space is doing something new and exciting in the greater interest of economical access to space. It’s certainly a challenge for our nation to try to pull that off. No other nation could do it. If Nelson is concerned that there might be headaches from human space flight by going commercial to LEO, then so be it. It’s an investment in a future that could be bright.
Doug Lassiter wrote:
“We’ve been there before.â€
There you have the Obamaspace argument in all of its banality.
An Ares V Earth Departure Stage can just as readily be fitted with an asteroid cruise habitat , propulsion system, and lander as it can be with an Altair lander. Please lets stop pretending it is about the mission.
adino wrote @ May 17th, 2010 at 9:06 am
can someone tells me what an additional mission of the 35 yr shuttle program will help us with?
it is hard, given the 200 million dollar a day tab to start with to see anything that would justify yet one final mission. And those are just the start cost…there doubtless are going to be a lot of other cost…for instance some provision would have to be made to use the Soyuz as a safety bucket…that wont be cheap.
this is mission looking for a reason.
like the entire program
Robert G. Oler
“I dunno. It would be nice to see the ‘rockets red glare’ one more time before the dark ages of Obamaspace kick in.”
Those are bipartisan dark ages. Even in the best of predictions both Cx and the Obama plan involve heavy invenstments into the Ruissian space program for the first few years of this decade. Even the rosiest early predictions of Bush, et al called for a 3 years blackout for US manned space, long before the headers were labelled “Ares”. It wouldn’t matter if the president were Bush, Obama, McCain, or Buck Rogers, there would be a gap of at least a few years. So let’s disengage the notion that any one plan “owns” the problem more than any other.
The question of how long that gap is amounts to pure speculation based on two plans that have equally never flown a complete rocket. Commercial claims a 2014 first flight with a buffer estimated at 2016. Cx claims a 2015 first flight (their words, not mine) with a buffer estimated at 2017. Both sides have people who claim, with numbers and anecdotal evidence backing them, that the opposing plan will never fly and/or never fly economically. And though I really am in support of commercial, I acknowlege that neither of the two arguments is more likely than the other.
That said, the question is more what we expect to get out of the plan when the blackout is over moreso than which plan owns the blackout or which plan will fly.
Cx some advantage in having some hardware already in mind (note: in mind, not in development). But like the gap between the announcement of the VSE and the announcement of the ESAS results over a year-and-a-half later, there will likely be an architecture announcement for the HLV, at least for the new plan sometime on the relatively immediate horizon. Given that Bolden has already done some HLV studies at Obama’s direction and the HLV idea has become more well-defined each press announcement, I expect it will be a good bit sooner than the 2015 end date on the decision.
So then we’re left to look at destinations. Cx offers us Moon bases and an eventual trip to Mars. The Obama plan offers NEO visits and an eventual trip to Mars. Unlike Cx, the Obama plan doesn’t exclude the Moon or LaGrange and, in fact, has offered them as intermediate destinations on a few occasions.
All arguments for either side go from there. I argue that Cx wasn’t going to get us to the moon in the time frame stated. Furthermore even the plan as currently stated eliminates the sort of ‘moon base’ idea originally touted, replacing it with Apollo-style sorties. And it pushes the hardware necessary to complete that mission (Altair, the EDS) out to well into the next decade, not 2020 as previously stated. I also argue that commercial can and will perform LEO crew missions likely by 2014, but certainly by 2016. And given the HLV studies already done and others suggested in draft appropriations to date, I expect we’ll see an architecture that is more well-defined as each month goes by with the HLV/crew capsule pieces answered by 2011 or 2012 due in part to congressional pressure/legislation.
Unlike Cx, the new plan looks to reboost science budgets (only a small piece of which is climate science) and put actual scout missions on the books to the chosen destinations.
But critically it keeps the ISS alive. ISS has cost us a lot and delayed other projects, certainly, but there’s a factor we don’t consider. ESA/Russia/Japan already have plans and long term budgets on the books to keep their modules in orbit and even expand the station further if the US nodes are de-orbited in 2015 or even 2020. So not only would Russia be likely running the transportation through 2017 when Ares I comes online, but they will be the majority owners of the destination as well from 2015-2020. And with no US hardware aboard, they’d have no specific reason to offer us rides to get there. Without the US road block, China likely would then have access. ESA, and JAXA would, in reality, have more of a manned space program than we would. And given that we are the #1 obstacle to China’s involvement in the ISS, chances are we’d be the only country with a manned space program that had no long-term manned hardware beyond the Karman line. Canada would have more manned-related equipment in space than we would. So to me the real surrender of near-term capability is de-orbiting ISS in 2015. It would be 5 years by even the rosiest pictures before we’d have any claim to manned space capabilities on par with the other nations.
@ almightywind
“An Ares V Earth Departure Stage can just as readily be fitted with an asteroid cruise habitat , propulsion system, and lander as it can be with an Altair lander. Please lets stop pretending it is about the mission.”
I agree. It isn’t about the mission. It is about the cost. Ares-V is an unaffordable behemoth and it is paired with a horribly-inadequate and nearly-completely-dissimilar crew launch vehicle whose sole virtue is a set of totally hypothetical safety figures. CxP in its current form is unaffordable; it is as simple as that. If it is to endure, cheaper launch vehicles are required so funding can be spent on other stuff such as spacecraft and missions.
The inability of the pro-CxP faction to realise this single overwhelming fact is probably the reason why Robert Oler thinks that ObamaSpace will pass. There is no workable alternateive on the table right now – They are talking about “Ares-I or bust” and that means “bust”.
“But critically it keeps the ISS alive. ISS has cost us a lot and delayed other projects, certainly, but there’s a factor we don’t consider. ESA/Russia/Japan already have plans and long term budgets on the books to keep their modules in orbit and even expand the station further if the US nodes are de-orbited in 2015 or even 2020.”
The power, cooling, stabilization, life support systems belong to the US. International habitation modules would be space junk in less than a day if the station were no operated by the US. ISS is not a critical program. It’s scientific value is dwarfed by the money poured into it. If the ROTW wants to operate ISS let them buy the US out. Seems to me $100 billion is a fair price. The mistake Clinton made with ISS is that it is grossly oversized. We would get the same results from a station assembled in 5 shuttle flights, not 35. Kill the ISS and use the ‘station dividend’ to fund Constellation. When we have a permanent heavy launch capability we can entertain the idea of operating space/lunar stations.
Ben Russell-Gough wrote:
“It is about the cost. Ares-V is an unaffordable behemoth”
Great. What 400,000 lb to LEO class booster do you propose? Obama’s unicorns don’t count. I do not wish to quibble about Ares I. Direct is fine with me.
@ Almightywind,
I won’t get onto a technical discussion on a political board. However, there are questions as to whether the lifting capability of Ares-V is or ever realistically was needed. The concern is that the mission requirements were driven by the perceived need for the rocket rather than the other way around.
With propellent transfer (either from depots of from ‘buddy-buddy’ tankers), the Atlas-V Phase 2 or a mid-weight version of the D-SDLV In-line would be sufficient for most missions DRMed to date.
I repeat: Cost is the problem. NASA has to get the cost down or the program will virtually self-terminate. Ares-V in its currently accepted form (10m core, 5- or 6-seg SRMs and 6 x RS-68 Regen) is simply too expensive. I suspect that the D-SDLV In-lines such as the DIRECT Jupiter represent the very upper limit of what is affordable under a reasonably-expected budget.
No matter how much support there is for CxP in Congress, remember this: It is a guy who wanted to cancel it who proposed to increase NASA’s budget. Don’t expect a single extra penny from those ‘friends’ of space exploration.
Ben Russell-Gough wrote @ May 17th, 2010 at 1:16 pm
The inability of the pro-CxP faction to realise this single overwhelming fact is probably the reason why Robert Oler thinks that ObamaSpace will pass. There is no workable alternateive on the table right now – They are talking about “Ares-I or bust†and that means “bustâ€.
yes.
to be clear I SUPPORT the Obama plan because I agree with its key elements. There are some things I would quibble with, but in the scheme of his one or two terms they are inconsequential …
but the politics of it are that it will pass because 1) in the end Presidents always get their way on this (I laugh at the various measures defined by Congress to try and save Constellation Presidents can always get past those) and 2) there is no suitable alternative that has formed a coherent base of support.
In the end all alternatives are stuck with two very unpleasant realities. The first is that there really is NO MONEY or Will on the part of this or any other Congress to generate the funds necessary for any NASA managed big plan space program. Even if the opposition were to say center around “DIRECT” (and they wont the NASA bureacracy doesnt want it) there is no way that NASA JSC could execute a program of any size for any defined amount of money or on a time schedule.
Hanley’s “fall back” plan will falter when everyone sees the cost figure. NASA JSC cannot do anything on a schedule or for a budget. They are just incapable of doing it.
Second there is no appetite in The Republic to spend a lot more money on HSF. And any other effort then Obama’s takes a lot more money.
Then there is the killer third. KBH wants to fly shuttle, Nelson wants a heavy lift, Olson is unsure what he wants…Bobo the space bear wants this or that…
all the groups of “save our jobs” cannot figure out which jobs to save…and there isnt enough money to save all of them.
I’ll comment more on where the poltiics of The Republic are going as Tuesday’s primary draws near. But here is a sample of things to come. Imagine Rand Paul wins the Kentucky Senate Seat now being held by Jim bunning. How much you want to bet Paul is willing to spend more money on HSF?
I will take any amount you want to offer (grin) as long as I get to bet that he wants to cut it. Thats where most of thenew people in Congress will be.
Robert G. Oler
Ben Russell-Gough wrote:
“Atlas-V Phase 2″
Replace one vapor rocket with another less suited for the task. There is no Atlas V heavy, and Centaur is not suitable as an Orion upper stage. The whole discussion about orbital refueling shows great confusion. It may be a good way to extend satellite lifetimes by refueling storable propellants. It is a lousy way to store LH2/LO2 for high energy upper stages that are need for beyond LEO exploration.
As for the money, it is a question of will to reapportion NASA’s budget. $18G is a lot. of jack.
There is no cheap. LH2/LOX for beyond LEO exploration? There are some things going on here that are reminiscent of the mistakes made in the shuttle program. First, there is no sense of proportion. Let us consider man in space as an enterprise requiring an “astronomical” initial investment. What is going to make a profit in space? A place to live. When people start going out there to live in self-supporting communities then maybe there will be some payback. Do any of you understand the enormity of this question of “cheap?”
Second, chemical energy is great for getting us into orbit without polluting the atmosphere but it is next to worthless for going other places. Nuclear reactions have ONE MILLION times the energy of chemical reactions. It just has to be taken as a given that nuclear propulsion is the only way to travel in space. Now nuclear rockets are not much better than chemical rockets because of internal temperatures. It is hard enough keeping chemical rockets from melting. A nuclear rocket is incredibly inefficient because almost all of that one million times the energy simply melts the engine. So that leaves external propulsion- external plasma pulse propulsion (bombs). This kind of propulsion requires a huge surface for the plasma to push against- or a smaller dense plate weighing thousands of tons. So what you have is a very big woven steel alloy parachute. This works out because to voyage through the solar system you have to have massive radiation shielding, artificial gravity, and a close loop life support system. All that water on the moon they just discovered is both shielding and a life support medium. So how do we build these big atom bomb propelled space ships? With heavy lift vehicles that put their empty second stage in orbit as a component of the spaceship and reuse everything else. The spaceships go out there, build the places for people to live, and way down the line there is business and profit. This is reality.
The news from Nelson is THE Best news I have heard yet! First, the Congress wants to save Shuttle and Constellation but unfortunately both can’t be saved. Not if there is going to be some compromise with Obama’s vision at least.
All Obama really wants (I speculate) is to get his boy at SpaceX some money since he contributed to his campaign. Of course the $6 billion over 5 years accomplishes that. I think that may pretty much stand although Congress could reduce that amount commercial will still get a decent chunk and Obama paid his buddy back.
Now, I would say most of the other money is up for grabs.
That money can’t support both Constellation and Shuttle.
So, we’ve done shuttle for 30 years now and it’s kinda been there done that. It looked cool and all but is inherently unsafe without an ejection mechanism.
It’s time to go to deep space and everyone knows it, and shuttle will never get us there. So, the obvious choice is Constellation or some version of it. The shuttle and those workers knew for a while that shuttle was going away so that is no surprise to them.
I think Congress can save Constellation and they are smart to do so. However, if they get split over shuttle or constellation then they might lose both. So, I think if they align on the same side which appears to be Constellation then they will have the momentum to save it.
CI wrote @ May 17th, 2010 at 3:29 pm
really funny…made me laugh
Robert G. Oler
Yeah, no ejection….time to go to deep space; and congress is smart. I do not anthropomorphize bodies like congress, exxon, enron, etc. They are not people. They are processes that create, destroy, or do nothing.
No problem Oler, glad to return the favor
What I wrote is what’s happening, it’s what Nelson said, not me.
Just saying…
but the politics of it are that it will pass because 1) in the end Presidents always get their way on this
Really? I think that George Herbert Walker Bush would disagree with you. Or did that Space Exploration Initiative in 1989 get funded and move forward and I just missed it?
Obama’s plan may survive, but if so, it won’t be for that reason.
CL wrote:
“It’s time to go to deep space and everyone knows it, and shuttle will never get us there. So, the obvious choice is Constellation “
No the obvious choice is to not build Ares I and V. The obvious choice is to launch a unfueled, REUSABLE earth departure stage (EDS) from an EXISITING rocket. Saving 100 billion dollars. A habitat docks with the eds, fills up the tanks at an orbital fuel station and then going to the moon. The obvious choice is to NOT drag your earth return capsule with you on your trip. Do an aerocapture return to LEO disembark your space based reusable space craft and enter your commercial crew return vehicle.
@ Almightywind,
Atlas-V Phase 2 is slightly closer to reality than Ares-V, IMHO at least. I’m pretty sure that everyone except the most viriluent EELV-hater would agree that Atlas-VH is much closer to reality than Ares-I. The Dual-Engine Centaur is closer to reality than the Ares-I upper stage. Between them, launching Orion would be routine. NASA and ULA, two agencies whose credibility is certainly greater than an anonymous poster on a blog, certainly thinks that orbital cyrogenic propellent transfer is a viable technology.
Your arguments really don’t hold water. One of the bitter truths that have emerged from the Augustine Commission is that the funding does not exist for BFR. You can rage against that all you like but it won’t change.
Ever notice that Oler keeps telling anyone who reads what he posts that we’re not really seeing what we’re seeing and what is actually happening is not happening… because he says so.
The question then comes up, is he an expert or just a drip under pressure?
Oh… and BTW, Robert, I post on these threads, state my opinion and then leave and never come back to the thread- so anything you say there after is never read by me. Thus, by default, giving you the last word… I know how you leftest liberal Obama zealots absolutly must have the last word, so be my guest. I’ll see you on the next thread.
I read the post by Max Peck and have to admit that I have met a lot of guys like him. I could be incredibly cutting and insulting about him by using every bit of irony, sarcasm and bitter, satirical wit that my British heritage has given me. However, I will not. He mocks himself far more effectively than I ever could. The horrifying thing, though, is that he doesn’t know it.
Rand, I wasn’t paying attention back then so I only have the historian’s recollections to go on… but did Bush Sr ever put in budget request for the SEI? Was it crazy huge?
Well considering Elon is friends with I’d say Ares has tough competition.
^Tony Stark
“It’s time to go to deep space and everyone knows it, and shuttle will never get us there. So, the obvious choice is Constellation “
“No the obvious choice is to not build Ares I and V. The obvious choice is to launch a unfueled, REUSABLE earth departure stage (EDS) from an EXISITING rocket. Saving 100 billion dollars. A habitat docks with the eds, fills up the tanks at an orbital fuel station and then going to the moon.”
Hmmm. I would not consider the moon deep space. I would say deep space starts out past Mars in the Asteroid belt. And these little toys you are talking about are not going to get astronauts to Ceres and back healthy or within months instead of years.
Nothing new from Nelson, he is a NASA fan. He will always oppose commercial. The only thing he ever says is something to the effect of “I don’t think commercial vehicles will be successful.” What is the story here?? He “thinks” it won’t work, well I “think” spaghetti is delicious, is that newsworthy?? I “think” so…
Obama knows how to be bold, just the other day his WH blog said it was time for “bold action” to save teacher jobs with a $24 billion dollar BAILOUT. If NASA was filled with union types that had a history of funding Democratic causes and the Obama campaign I have no doubt whatsover that Constellation would be fully funded in a way to blow the socks off of the Augustine Commission.
All the talk about “game changing” and new destinations(that quickly become old destinations the minute we arrive) is just talk. He doesn’t care that much, unlike all the other folks he does care about and will bailout.
This debate is really window dressing by Obama. He just doesn’t care. Congress does though and sooner or later Obama will have to get serious to agree on something Congress will support. Whatever it is, it’s for the next Congress to decide. ULA, Ares I or some other concoction will be decided next year. Regardless, Obama won’t care all that much.
Eric Sterner wrote @ May 16th, 2010 at 3:20 pm “If I recall correctly, the RLV programs were canceled because they were performing poorly against the original cost-schedule projections, themselves based on extremely low confidence levels in order to fit a budget target. “Fixing them†was deemed prohibitively expensive for an agency that had just surpised everyone with an multi-billion annual shortfall in the ISS budget.”
The overrun was not annual, it was $5 billion in the entire twenty-year, ~$100billion ISS budget, all the way out to 2020, not much when you consider that Griffin would order the entire ISS and Shuttle programs terminated in 2010. However O’Keefe was an accountant who had little interest in technology. He wanted to get the overrun off the books, he didn’t think he could cancel ISS because of the international agreements, or Shuttle because it was needed to support ISS, so he canceled the RLVs. Interestingly, the NASA bio of O’Keefe extols the cost savings but leaves the impression it was achieved by magically making $5 billion appear out of thin air; it does not even mention the cancellation of the RLV program.
The fate of the X-33 is described in detail by Chris Bergin , avalable at
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2006/01/x-33venturestar-what-really-happened/
Briefly, the X-33 was required to have a lifting-body design that required an unusually complex three-lobed hydrogen tank. The Skunk Works engineers believed that a composite tank of this shape would fail, and even showed that due to the unusual shape an aluminum-lithium tank would actually be lighter, but they were overruled.
NASA Advanced Programs director Ivan Bekey insisted the X-33 use the composite LH2 tank even though it would be heavier. His reasoning was that NASA was paying Lockheed to build a true SSTO launch vehicle, an SSTO would require a composite tank, and if the X-33 wasn’t going to lead directly to SSTO it was worthless and should be canceled. The Skunk Works engineers did the best they could with the tank and built a subscale model that was sucessful, as well as a full scale composite LOX tank, but the LH2 tank developed leaks after several cycles, as expected. For years afterward NASA insisted that this proved that all composite LH2 tanks were impossible, although this was demonstrably false since the DC-X was flying with just such an all-composite tank. I remember being at the Space Congress when the cancellation of the X-33 was announced. One of the European engineers pointed out that the X-33 was obviously an experimental technology development vehicle, not a final design, and that NASA was wasting a major opportunity to discover things that were currently unknown, but the comment fell on deaf ears. I do not wish to criticize Mr. Bekey without the opportunity to discuss the issue directly, but his position seems symptomatic of a large group of NASA managers with little or no hands-on experience who do not understand the difference between R&D and procurement.
The DC-X program was so underfunded under NASA that only one technician was left to do the preflight preparation of the vehicle. It required a cumbersome detachment of pneumatic lines during servicing and he neglected to reconnect one of them, resulting in a failure to deploy one of the four retractable landing gear. The vehicle landed properly but tipped over and damaged the fuel tank, resulting in a fire that destroyed it. The vehicle was not particularly expensive and another could have been built, but the NASA leadership had little interest in doing so. The X-34 was canceled after NASA insisted on major design changes but refused to pay for them; NASA then characterized this as “cost growth”. Burt Rutan, who had built the airframe and put a lot of work into the project, published a letter to NASA in Aviation Week in which he stated that the X-34 prototypes were nearly ready to fly. If NASA would simply give them to him, he would fly them at his own expense. NASA inexplicably refused, and at least one of the X-34s is apparently still deteriorating and covered with bird dung in a leaky hangar at Dryden. Appalled by this stupidity, Rutan has so far as I know refused to deal with NASA since.
Finally, the X-37 was picked up by DOD after being abandoned by NASA, which apparently could not figure out how to drop-test it. Rutan did the drop test for the DOD in short order, and the X-37 is now in orbit, America’s first new reusable spacecraft to be launched in almost 30 years. So although NASA failed with the X-37, the vehicle itself appears to be fully capable of its mission.
I remember a European at the Space Congress when the X-33 cancelation was announced; he commented that the program could still be very valuable if NASA remembered that its goal was technology development, not instant SSTO flight. His comments fell on deaf ears.
richardb, I’m curious what its like to live with the kind of cognitive dissonance that makes “bailouts” bad but $35B government rockets good. Assuming of course that you’re not trying to say that the government should be nationalizing instead of doing “bailouts”. Maybe I’m just assigning too much depth of thought to your Pavlovian responses.
SSTO? Dead end- just like spaceplanes that waste all their payload putting wings and landing gear in a vacuum. !st stage using dense fuel, 2nd stage using liquid hydrogen and oxygen; keep it simple stupid. TSTO is as good as it is going to get unless they figure out how to store atomic hydrogen (H1).
richardb wrote @ May 17th, 2010 at 8:13 pm
. He doesn’t care that much, unlike all the other folks he does care about and will bailout.
that maybe the viewpoint you have but there is no data or actions by Obama to support this.
Robert G. Oler
Rand Simberg wrote @ May 17th, 2010 at 5:22 pm
I dont recall bush pushing a budget for SEI…but that was a long time ago.
Robert G. Oler
I dont recall bush pushing a budget for SEI…but that was a long time ago.
Do you really think that nothing happened before you can remember it? Learn a little history. Not to mention a little capitalization. Not to mention “President.”
For someone who is so eager to ignorantly lecture others, you are certainly full of yourself.
NASA Fan, heh, when a launch on Falcon 9 to commercial space is $8,500 / kg and when a similar launch on Falcon 9 to NASA is $22,000+/- / kg, the costs are already “astronomical. NASAs premium is already accounted for in the costs!
Rand, I wasn’t paying attention back then so I only have the historian’s recollections to go on… but did Bush Sr ever put in budget request for the SEI? Was it crazy huge?
He wasn’t “Bush Sr.,” but I don’t recall what the budget request was, because the policy announcement was made in July (on the 20th — I’m sure it was just a coincidence), and it set off a lot of political furor, opposed by NASA itself, and it eventually fizzled out after the agency came up with a half trillion dollar budget estimate for it, and Truly had his congressional liaison lobby against it, because he wanted to concentrate on Shuttle and Station, instead of that crazy exploration stuff.
And so it died. As did (later) Truly’s career.
And as did Robert’s historically ignorant thesis.
The SEI was a three parter, Space Station Freedom, a base on Luna and a trip to Mars to include a landing. The price tag was 471 – 541 billion.
President Bush had appointed the Vice President Quayle to oversee it and he headed the National Space Council. The NSP, in a plan once again to try and streamline NASA, got rid of Administrator Richard Truely.
In 1988 President Reagan had approved a new National space policy but that was classified. A fact sheet laying out 6 principles were made public and it basically called for humanity to expand into the solar system. Anyone know if that full policy paper was ever made public?
Rand Simberg wrote @ May 18th, 2010 at 12:15 am
I love it when you try and be insulting…you are so “right wing then”.
man hug
Robert G. oler
I love it when you try and be insulting…you are so “right wing thenâ€.
It’s “right wing then” (whatever the heck that means) to correct historical ignorance?
Rand
lol
this is what I wrote “I dont recall bush pushing a budget for SEI…but that was a long time ago.”
I said “I dont recall” I didnt say “there was none” I said “I dont recall” because at the time I didnt. Ignorance is people like you claiming that Obama was not born in the US or buying into HRC killing Vince Foster or the goofy claim you make that the Iraq war was justified not on WMD but other things.
that and your reply makes you right wing…(there are goofy left wingers as well)
have a great day
Robert G. Oler
Gary Church wrote @ May 17th, 2010 at 11:49 pm
SSTO? Dead end- just like spaceplanes that waste all their payload putting wings and landing gear in a vacuum. !
The constraint in spaceflight is not mass, it’s cost, and the dirty little secret is that even with simple ELVs human spaceflight really does cost far more than it is worth. But most of the cost is in building a new vehicle for each flight. The energy that puts the Shuttle’s wings in space costs almost nothing. LOX at KSC is 60 cents a gallon, LH2 is 98 cents. Rocket fuel is cheaper than gasoline. All the energy that puts the Shuttle in orbit is less than 1/2 of 1% of the mission cost.
The Shuttle wasn’t nearly as cheap to fly as had been specified, but it was our very first attempt at a reusable spacecraft and there was a lot that wasn’t understood. The Shuttle really is cheaper to fly than Constellation, and carries much more. With the lessons we have learned from it and from the technology demonstrators, if they get to fly, and most of all with the knowledge in the heads of the hundreds of engineers and technicians who actually maintain the Shuttle and have finally made it fly flawlessly, we could certainly build a next generation of reusable spacecraft that would be practical and safe.
However this will be delayed by generations, since the only workforce in the world with the knowledge of how to do the job right is about to be fired and dispersed.
Trent, let me spell it out for you. I point out the priorities of the Obama admin. Its lavishing our money on his favorites. Teachers get the bailouts. Unions of many stripes do. GM and Chrysler did. Homeowners who can’t or won’t pay their mortgages did as well. Countless others favored by the Obama administration are getting theirs too. But Nasa?
All they needed according to the Augustine Commission was an extra 3 billion per year.
All of these bailouts dwarf what Nasa needs for a viable HSF over the next 10 years, with or without Constellation.
If it was my choice, I wouldn’t have gone down the path Nasa did back in 2004. At that time I thought it was crazy to build a new Ares I when EELV’s were launching off the pad. I thought I understood why Griffin picked Ares I, it was to get the key hardware needed for Ares V funded early in the Bush admin. That way, if they get Ares I flying they could do Area V at leisure because J2X, 5 seg and the tooling for tanks would be in place. Now with billions spent and nothing to show for it, the game is fast passing by Nasa and I don’t think Nasa will be able to start BEO for the next 2 or 3 decades. This administration is putting Nasa on ISS to MIR path. With luck, ISS will still be useful till late in the 2020’s and as a result there will be no money for BEO till the ISS is too worn out to use. Throw in the likely budget cuts Obama and Congress do in 2011 and beyond, Nasa will have to see their budgets decline for years to come leaving little for anything outside of ISS, robotics and the climate change stuff near and dear to Obama.
Ignorance is people like you claiming that Obama was not born in the US or buying into HRC killing Vince Foster
I’ve never made such claims. Why do you make up lies about me?
or the goofy claim you make that the Iraq war was justified not on WMD but other things.
I’ve never claimed that it wasn’t justified by WMD, but I have claimed, correctly, that there were multiple justifications for it. Sorry that you can’t handle the truth.
Apparently anyone who disagrees with Robert G. Oler, or points out his historical ignorance, or objects to being lied about, is a “right winger.”
The Shuttle wasn’t nearly as cheap to fly as had been specified, but it was our very first attempt at a reusable spacecraft and there was a lot that wasn’t understood.
It’s nutty to draw any general conclusions about reusable vehicles from the Shuttle, because a) it’s illogical to draw general conclusions from any single data point and b) Shuttle wasn’t fully reusable.
However this will be delayed by generations, since the only workforce in the world with the knowledge of how to do the job right is about to be fired and dispersed.
They know how to do the job wrong. It’s less clear that they know how to do it right. I think that the people learning that are developing suborbital vehicles right now.
“The Shuttle wasn’t nearly as cheap to fly as had been specified, but it was our very first attempt at a reusable spacecraft and there was a lot that wasn’t understood.”
I think there is alot of fudging on terms; reusable, spacecraft, spaceship, launcher, space station etc.
Perhaps some better definitions would help the discussion. I think the shuttle was a weird bird in that it was a spaceplane- the only one hopefully. Reusable means nothing is expended except fuel- definitely not the shuttle when the biggest part of the system, the external tank, was wasted. My point is that any spacecraft is reusable if only fuel gets burned- and that means parachuting alot pieces into the ocean to be recovered and the second stage being used in spaceship or station construction. I could go but this thread seems about dead and I don’t know if many people are still reading it.
It is +3 billion to make constellation viable, maybe. Does anyone think congress is going to approve +3 billion NASA budget? Even with +3 billion we would be lucky to have a LEO spacecraft by 2017. Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket. Also the +3 billion didn’t include an extension to ISS, Shuttle extension, commercial development or advance R&D.
I’m sure big aerospace will suddenly come up with cheaper alternatives if they know they aren’t going to get big cost plus contracts. True competition will be created.
@RandSimberg-“Really? I think that George Herbert Walker Bush would disagree with you. Or did that Space Exploration Initiative in 1989 get funded and move forward and I just missed it?”
GHWB had no intention of fighting to get it funded, especially in that environment as the Cold War ended. He openly joked about a ‘peace dividend’ that he knew did not exist. And the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Dubya underfunded his own space initiative which was forced upon him by the Columbia accident. Just lip service. Only presidents can push for this kind of long-term investment for the country. That has not existed since the Kennedy-Johnson era.
The solution is to fully fund Orion, perfect a general purpose manned space vehicle to phase in as shuttle is extended for limited flights then phased out; fly Orion to LOE a top existing LVs; scrap Ares- solids are not the way to go. Develop a liquif-fueled LV for the mid-out years along with a lunar lander and long term lunar living facility to pepper the moon for habitation and expand the human presence to lunad distance. Them in the out years, extrapolate the experience and technologies from this enterprise to for an expedition to Mars. Let the robots probe the asteroids. There’s your space program for the next 40 – 50 years.
The only place the private sector can do this is in the movies (see Destination: Moon, 1950 for a business plan.)
GHWB had no intention of fighting to get it funded, especially in that environment as the Cold War ended.
So he made a big policy announcement on the National Mall that he had no intention of fighting to get funded, so it would be an embarrassment to his administration when it died with a whimper? Really? That was his political strategy?
Only presidents can push for this kind of long-term investment for the country. That has not existed since the Kennedy-Johnson era.
It only existed in the Kennedy era. Johnson cancelled it. And even then it had nothing to do with space, and it wasn’t a “long-term investment in the country.” It was a battle in the Cold War.
John F. Kennedy was very clear about the rationale and the goal of Apollo. “The non-aligned nations are looking to the US and the USSR to see what path they will take, and we cannot ignore the effect that the Soviet’s accomplishments in space have had on men’s minds. Therefore I believe this nation should set itself the goal, before this decade is out, of sending a man to the moon, and returning him safely to the earth.” Period. The geopolitical goal was achieved the moment Apollo 11 landed. NASA was aghast when public support collapsed after the first landing. They had gone to the moon, and they did not, and do not today, understand why.
This isn’t the Sixties. Another Apollo will fail, and it doesn’t matter if the goal is the Moon, Mars, or an asteroid. The bitter truth was that human spaceflight to the moon, or even into LEO, with expendables and capsules was, and is, too expensive to be practical. Only fully reusable systems can carry people into space for a price that will be worth the work they can do.
Robert G Oler: “Even if the opposition were to say center around “DIRECT†(and they wont the NASA bureacracy doesnt want it) there is no way that NASA JSC could execute a program of any size for any defined amount of money or on a time schedule.â€
You are assuming that a ‘commercial’ industry consortium isn’t what is being planned. A ‘commercial’ consortium say willing to sign up to a COTS like progress payments based on achieving well defined milestones utilizing proven/man-rated boosters and engines built using existing tooling, transported using existing equipment, assembled using existing facilities and launched using existing pads with processes honed over thirty years of operations. A $40 billion dollar value plus we can leverage most of the $10 Billion dollars of progress already made on the PoR.
The big advantage of the SDHLV is five fold;
One, all the difficult stuff that tends to blow your schedule/cost estimates out of the water (ie largely things that make fire and can go boom if you aren’t careful) are already flying with thirty years of proven operational history.
Two, a great deal of processes and hardware to be used are already well understood from a cost perspective by the contractors (ie low risk to signing up for firm fixed price).
Three, it provides an immediate path of gainful employment for the experienced contractor workforce which just so happens to be located right where the political support base is (ie an important safety tip for any program that will actual be approved/funded after the Congress gets involved).
Four, a SDHLV option uniquely shares the STS extensions fixed cost (better known as paid for industrial base and hard won workforce experience), an extension absolutely required if we don’t want to shut down the ISS for the foreseeable future. A $100 Billion dollar investment that we have now risked the lives of almost a hundred astronauts building. If it was worth building at all it seems to me we can risk a few more to actually use it, what do you think?
Five, all for a price that Bolden 2009 HLV study, CBO study, and Boeing said will cost about $8 Billion (FY2010), ie Jupiter-130 configuration or what I also called the Ares-3 as well during the Augustine hearings, take your pick. Plus the Jupiter-130 can be fully upgraded to the Ares-V classic or a Jupiter-252 Heavy Stretch (ie the version that actually came out of ESAS) if resources and needs dictate.
So in summary option 4B ‘uniquely’ saves/leverages $160 Billion dollars of the tax payers money, all other Augustine options don’t even come close, any questions?
As Buzz pointed out to a member of Congress during a meeting we had together “just do the math, Ares-1+Ares-5 = 6 but so does 2 x Ares-3.â€
Concerning the question of Jupiter-130 (Ares-3) vs Jupiter-252 HS (ESAS Ares-V) though I’m with Jeff Greason on the how much performance is enough performance. I share his stated belief that at this early stage (ie before we know which game changers will actually work) that a 75mT and 10m diameter payload fairing HLV (ie Jupiter-130) should be large enough to launch the “largest smallest piece†of a 100% ground integrated spacecraft as one unit dry. In Phase 3 the EDS with spacecraft on top is tanked up by the propellant depot in orbit. This depot could be commercially supplied opening up 75% of the mass need for VSE to open competition and innovative approaches not hindered by the significant barrier to entry of launch insurance cost associated with the expensive spacecraft customer base.
This Phase 3 approach would enable TMI masses up to 150mT using existing LH2/LOX engine technologies for the departure stage (ie no need to base our success or failure on NTR or other unproven/undeveloped approaches). Besides sending up a low/zero boil-off large EDS with propellant onload/offload capability sound fairly straight forward plus it does open up the commercial market nicely.
So in summary, $8 Billion gets us to Phase 1 (Jupiter-130) in 2015. We have about eight mission slots using a Delta Upperstage for the EDS for Beyond LEO missions of all types (civilian, military, commercial) and modes (manned/unmanned). Mission Time frame of Phase 1 is 2015-2020.
Phase 2 adds a 8.4m EDS, using a dual launch 2xAres-3 (Jupiter-130, EDS followed by spacecraft). We can then do the NEO, Mars vicinity missions provided the international partners pick up most of the tab on the deep space hab (ie their ticket to ride, might also help bring China into our sphere of influence plus the Hab is very ITAR friendly and builds from the ‘international’ ISS knowledge base). Plus this could replace what will be a very old ISS at this point in time. Mission Time frame for Phase 2 is post ISS, 2020-2025.
Phase 3 sees the incorporation of the Propellant depot which opens up the Beyond LEO throw capacity of a single launch up to 150mT for Mars/NEO and up to 200mT for Lunar missions, 2025-2030.
All the above was summarized in our presentation before the Commission a little less than a year ago and described in even greater detail over the summer last year before the Aerospace Corporation. Somehow this comprehensive fully phased and costed plan got ‘distilled’ into just a this or that rocket engine trade comparison. Go figure, talk about complicating the obvious and trivializing the momentous.
To add insult to injury, once it was found that DIRECT actually exceeded the NASA TLI performance requirement (a point that the ESAS Appendix 6a proves and we have been making for almost five years now), a performance level that the PoR 1.5 approach couldn’t do even with an Ares-6 (ie 6-RS-68 + 6 Segment SRB) they changed the mission mode ‘requirement’ from the more efficient baseline EOR-LOR approach to LOR-LOR thereby ‘requiring’ a dual launch Ares-5 to meet the ‘same’ Lunar surface payload ‘requirement’ as the EOR-LOR approach.
Unfortunately after having the ground rules rug ripped out from under us DIRECT now need ‘three’ launches to meet the new lunar surface performance ‘requirements’ using LOR-LOR mode. All while the only true requirement was which plan could simultaneously meet both the budget and political requirements? Ironically the PoR clearly fails the first test and the Feb 1st plan clearly fails the second test. Only DIRECT can meet both.
Long story short the Ares holdouts at NASA shot themselves in the foot time and again by continuing to attack, dumb down, obscure (ie Sidemount) the comprehensive DIRECT plan at every opportunity and fork in the road during the review last year.
When the inevitable happened and the Whitehouse told them that Ares in any form or variation was DOA due to excessive cost and that no amount of lip stick would save it they attempted to back track and re-tool to a DIRECT approach. Their efforts began in earnest during the Bolden HLV study November 2009 but it was too little too late as the basic formulation of the President’s plan was begun before the ink was dry on the Augustine report, itself a product of the desire to find justification for killing the PoR. The Whitehouse/OMB was fed up with the PoR or the highway mentality at NASA and decided to basically tip over the entire apple cart and start over.
Which brings us to this point in time in which hopefully, Congress working with the Contractors can save the day in the end from the confluence of bad ideas, roads to Abilene begun on the back of bar napkin obviously after one too many drinks and serious errors in basic logic/miscalculations made up to this point by both well funded extremes represented in this debate.
My hope is that the remaining PoR holdouts can finally get with the program and get behind the compromise authorization/budget currently in circulation. Basically a flexible path variant of Augustine option 4B. Which looks a heck of a lot like the comprehensive DIRECT plan as presented to the Mike Griffin in the Spring of 2005 (rejected because it didn’t require the Shaft) and the Augustine Commission in Summer of 2009 (obscured in the final report because it was the product of honest ordinary citizens, concerned about our nation’s future and unapologetic about the truth and where it lead to and not the DC anointed).
Not bad for a bunch of “janitors†working in their spare time, huh Mike? For the record we much prefer the title that Popular Mechanics gave us as “renegade engineers†if you must put a label on us though “citizen engineers†would be more fitting as to motive and skill base.
Whatever happens it has been a real interesting ride. Hopeful this isn’t the beginning of the end but the end of the beginning. Under the compromise plan now forming (that brings together the best aspects of both sides in this debate) the next fifty years will easily out do the last fifty years. Our best days in Space Exploration and Development can still be in front of this generation. Only time will tell.
Stephen Metschan: “My hope is that the remaining PoR holdouts can finally get with the program and get behind the compromise authorization/budget currently in circulation.”
Let’s assume for the sake of discussion that the Administration is willing to consider a compromise budget, but that they’re not willing to go as far as the one you’re talking about. How could you scale it back, while still addressing enough of the goals of their opposition?
For example, how would the budget look if Orion were replaced with something else as the payload (technology demos, robotic precursors, etc)? [The door could be left open for launching Orion or some other spacecraft in later years.] Would this allow more of the Administration’s objectives to be met? What about their opponents?
How would the budget look if the schedule were stretched out to fit more Administration elements in 2011-2015? Would this be feasible?
Are there other forms of budget flexibility in the plan that would allow items like a full commercial crew competition and/or more funding for technology demonstrations and robotic precursors?
Red, good questions.
Concerning Orion we could have a development program that more closely approximates the Jupiter’s capabilities evolution, ie we target beyond LEO Orion for the 2018 time frame. Under this plan Orion would have LEO only service module (Hypergolic) that would be designed to accept a LOX/Methane service module below it for beyond LEO missions.
With this reduction in Orion mass a simple non-SRM single core Atlas would work just fine for ISS crew rotations. Since the Jupiter would still be part of the plan any threat by the Russians to cut off the Atlas engines would result in them shooting themselves in foot. Having the Beyond LEO Service module follow the basic Orion capsule would also save development time getting us a ISS crew rotation capability via Atlas/Orion in the 2013 time frame. With a minor STS extension to 2012 plus using the Russian flights we have already paid for the ISS support gap should be zero. I think 2012 is also a safer planning date for COTS-CRS to finally be at full capability as well.
The Jupiter development schedule could then be pushed for completion in the 2018 time frame since it is no longer on the critical path for ISS support. I wouldn’t want to stretch the Jupiter development out to more than seven year cycle though due to program efficiency and political risk though.
Concerning ‘man-rating’ of the Atlas, as long as we have a health monitoring system and a LAS we should be at least as safe as the Russians. Anything beyond that is waste of money since the three fatal events the US has had were a direct product of the safety culture and not the margins we designed into the hardware. The serious issues engineers had with the Apollo-1, Challenger and Columbia were well documented and forcefully argued to management ‘before’ the disasters but ignored. Solve that problem and all three accidents we have had wouldn’t have happened.
While STS is definitely a complicated system odds are if it was still flying with hardware that was still just a little too close to the margin it would have reared its ugly head by now. Better the devil you know. Which is why I don’t fear a ‘minor’ STS extension because John Shannon is very open and non-threatening to anyone who brings up safety concerns and at launch pace of only two per year there is plenty of time to track down any issue that does arise from the prior flight. I think that is why John couldn’t bring himself to believe that the environment for NASA engineers under CxP was the extreme polar opposite of the environment he has worked so hard to create for the STS (a point he made to me after my presentation before the Commission).
Anyway some ideas of how to save some more money and bring forward more of the President’s R&D plan sooner than under the compromise budget we sent to Congress and OMB. The problem though is this debate is now in the political big dogs’ camp and pretty much beyond the realm of engineers to effect is far as I can tell. Ideally a solution that comes out of this sausage making process will be one in which the engineers will be given enough time to recraft a plan that works technically within the budget while meeting key political objectives set by our elected representatives.
The danger right now, given how high emotions are running on both sides, is that the political class may once provide support for a program that is not executable like the PoR. Look how long that went despite attempts by NASA engineers behind the scenes to get their attention as to how FUBAR the PoR was. As I have found, getting off the road to Abilene using basic logic and engineering common sense is not easy regardless of who is at the steering wheel or where they are trying to go. Once the management reaches a certain GSA level and the contracts are cut it’s nearly impossible for anyone at any level to do anything more than spout/follow the party line even if they know in their hearts that its 100% FUBAR.
We absolutely need a function within the federal government that counters this natural and understandable tendency towards group think that rewards conformists and punishes honest individuals. Maybe something like technical version of GAO paired with an anonymous mechanism to bring serious engineering concerns to their attention. In many ways the DIRECT team was product of a lack of a working policy/budget execution oversight.
What came out of Mike’s mouth was regarded as the gospel truth since after all he had five PhD, though I might add zero product development experience, and it showed. He is very brilliant guy in many aspects but this brilliance/ego blinded him to some serious blind spots that can’t be learned from book but must be experienced first hand to really sink in. That is the problem with life by the time you get a good working knowledge of it you are pretty darn old.
[…] Bill Nelson (D-FL) has made it clear, including last week at KSC, that he would like to see additional tests of the Ares 1 (or at least of an Ares 1-like rocket) to […]
why can an SSTO program like the X-33 or DC-x not been resurected atleast in an attempt to have a vehicle cabaple in transporting astronauts? or better yet can this be build in space and use as a “real” spacecraft for deepspace travel instead? they have everything to resume work quickly and the technology is far advanced now, right? is this also cost related?
I’m sorry I might be asking stupid question but I’m trying to make sense out of this all..I have a son really dreaming to go spacetech studies but asking me questions and so disapointed seeing us going back to capsules and crap..
[…] for NASA for some time. At the Kennedy Space Center earlier this month for the launch of Atlantis, he talked up the benefits of the additional mission to reporters. “I keep recommending it, and I will keep asking the White House to go ahead and do […]