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.

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?

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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. 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.