Congress, NASA

Waiting for the stars to align for Orion

Nearly two months ago, the administration revised its plans for Constellation by reversing plans to cancel the Orion spacecraft, instead electing to retain Orion as a crew return vehicle for the ISS. Since then, though, NASA has provided few details about how that lifeboat variant of Orion would be developed, and now Congress is getting impatient.

Space News reports that the House Science and Technology Committee has demanded additional details about Orion, including its cost and schedule as well as whether the agency will modify an existing contract with Lockheed for Orion or hold a new competition for the spacecraft. The letter from committee chairman Bart Gordon to NASA, issued Thursday, demands answers by June 16. NASA administrator Charles Bolden did tell that committee last month that he estimated the cost of the Orion CRV would be $4.5 billion but has not offered additional details, including where the money would come from to pay for it as there was no money for Orion in the original budget request. At both that hearing and a Senate hearing earlier last month Bolden said a revised budget request was forthcoming, but apparently has not yet been released.

The lack of details about Orion’s future, as well as NASA’s push to cut back work on Constellation to over contract termination liabilities, has some members of Colorado’s congressional delegation nervous. The Denver Post reports that six members of the delegation, including senators Mark Udall and Michael Bennet, wrote to President Obama on Thursday, asking him to stop NASA’s effort to stop Constellation work. They write that they’re concerned that NASA is “jeopardizing the Orion workforce at a time when we need to be creating new jobs” by pushing to slow down work on the program.

120 comments to Waiting for the stars to align for Orion

  • Ben Russell-Gough

    IMHO, the Orion CRV was never a serious proposal. It was just a rhetorical flourish to further divide and delay opposition crystalising around a solid proposal. Without the ability to carry humans up, it was always going to be of limited and debatable usefulness anyway. It is real low-hanging fruit for inclusion in that ‘5% Cut”.

    Unless a ‘CxP Alternate’ plan emerges (perhaps based around either the Boeing SD-HLV or ULA’s EELV-based plan), then Orion will join OSP, Altair and VentureStar on the scrap-heap of spacecraft that never were.

  • Andy Clark

    That’s OK. Why on earth would we go backwards? This country (NASA) has a lot more experience with partially re-usable flight vehicles than it ever got with capsules.

    I’m not sure why capsules are considered to be so attractive as a solution for re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere. Perhaps it is because they hide the true magnitude of the “standing army” needed to effect recovery either on land or sea.

    Sure, Shuttle should have been replaced years ago but for a variety of reasons it only got attention when something went wrong. Our political leaders have failed us in this area too. There is no indication they are going to do anything except say NASA = JOBS = VOTES FOR ME!

    So, what do we do? The answer as far as I can see is to split cargo transportation away from manned flight. In some respects NASA has started to do this with the commercial cargo contracts and appears to be headed in that direction with manned flight – at least to LEO.

    Once the cargo aspect of transportation is split away from the manned component we are free to develop a small re-usable vehicle that can carry 6 or 8 people to LEO. Such a vehicle could be launched using a new vehicle (Falcon 9) or an EELV.

    Come to think of it; I have seen designs for such vehicles – now where were they?

  • GeeSpace

    The House Science and Technology Committee and Congress as a grouo should ask for financial and management specifics for any program.
    Specifically the costs pf the lifeboat variant of Orion. Spending $4.5 billion on an Orion “pod” seams a little high.
    There are probably better uses for the $4.5 billion within other NASA new and old programs

  • CharlesTheSpaceGuy

    Unfortunately, the Orion announcement made at KSC by President Obama was a last minute change. They should call the proposed version of Orion the “Colorado Democratic Party Rescue Vehicle” since it was inserted to rescue some Colorado political hopes. The Orion, as proposed, does not provide any needed capability and does not fit into a reasonable operational philosophy.

    Imagine if you were on ISS and there was a sudden air leak sufficient to make you want to retreat to a re-entry vehicle and isolate yourself from the ISS. Would you choose a known, reliable Soyuz – a ship you had extensively trained on, had flown on, with a long flight history? One that lands on the ground so you could expect a recovery crew to show up promptly? Or would you choose an unknown vehicle that no one had ever flown in? A vehicle that you had far less training in? A ship that plops down in the water, where you might wait for a long time in, as a recovery ship is sent to your location?

    The current version of Orion drops all of the attractive features of the earlier one, and retains all of the unfortunate compromises. The fact that it might fly up to ISS without having people on board is a major new compromise to save money. But when you rely on a rescue vehicle you want the one that you have the most confidence in.

  • Spending $4.5 billion on an Orion “pod” seams a little high.

    Yes, why is that?
    Especially when there is a test capsule Orion already constructed?; http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1400

  • amightywind

    Do you honestly expect fair dealings with Orion or anything else in Constellation from these leftist saboteurs? Congress just needs to play defence for 5 months before Obama is a lame duck, and then its ‘off to the races’ for Ares/Orion.

  • Coastal Ron

    Andy Clark wrote @ June 11th, 2010 at 7:56 am

    I’m not sure why capsules are considered to be so attractive as a solution for re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.

    Cheaper is the operative word here, not more attractive.

    Sure, Shuttle should have been replaced years ago…

    Agreed. Or at least go through an improvement plan to reduce it’s operational overhead and increase it’s robustness. I don’t know if that would have be possible, but that’s the only way it could have had it’s life extended.

    Once the cargo aspect of transportation is split away from the manned component we are free to develop a small re-usable vehicle that can carry 6 or 8 people to LEO. Such a vehicle could be launched using a new vehicle (Falcon 9) or an EELV.

    Come to think of it; I have seen designs for such vehicles – now where were they?

    You know why that sounds so familiar? Because NASA just awarded a CCDev contract to SpaceDev for their Dream Chase spaceplane (6 crew). It’s based on the NASA HL-20 research, so it has a chance to make it. Go Dream Chaser!

  • SpaceMan

    Cheaper is the operative word here

    Cheaper is an accounting construct (a political CHOICE) not something in the world of physical reality. Doing the best at a specific set of tasks is reality. That people need to be reminded of this constantly is part of the problem.

  • Ben Joshua

    Joining Andy Clark and Coastal Ron in rooting for Dreamchaser, despite its dark horse status.

    Nice to start reading more talk of FY11’s possibilities (and there are many) as it is only a few months away from approval, with most congressional hazards behind it.

    Whether Orion is ever used as a crew return vehicle, some of the money (where is that money?) may be used to essentially or indirectly subsidize Orion Lite development, giving a leg up to an alternative to Dragon, Boeing (?) and Dreamchaser.

    An HL-20 lifting body based Dreamchaser would seem to save money on the recovery forces standing by for a chute and plop landing. It also appears to mitigate some of the TPS challenges of a full fledged winged shuttle.

  • Vladislaw

    Dream chaser will be the military/NASA option. The capsules will goto the commercial sector, in my opinion.

  • common sense

    Hey Mr.Earl! Are you around? What do you think now?

  • common sense

    @ Ben Joshua wrote @ June 11th, 2010 at 12:06 pm

    “An HL-20 lifting body based Dreamchaser would seem to save money on the recovery forces standing by for a chute and plop landing. It also appears to mitigate some of the TPS challenges of a full fledged winged shuttle.”

    I think you have the usual misconception of what it takes to recover a capsule in the ocean (?). Unlike the 60s and 70s it does not require an entire armada. A simple tug-boat or a float-plane of large dimension or possibly a V-22 (don’t know for sure) might be enough. No need for an aricraft carrier and its support! As for the TPS, yes and no. It all depends how the leading edges of the “verticals” see the flow field, e.g. the angle of attack. This is not trivial. The CG location on these vehicles (like for capsule) will make or break the concept as you have to ballast them (like Shuttle and they got really scared on first flight as the body flap was not as effective as thought if I remember correctly).

    @Vladislaw wrote @ June 11th, 2010 at 12:28 pm

    “Dream chaser will be the military/NASA option. The capsules will goto the commercial sector, in my opinion.”

    Possibly and using the DoD might help leverage the cost for a lifting body (cannot compete on that with a capsule). But I fear the DoD already has the X-37 in the work so… I would agree though that it makes sense to keep on with lifting bodies but near term it may not happen.

  • Coastal Ron

    SpaceMan wrote @ June 11th, 2010 at 11:56 am

    Cheaper is an accounting construct (a political CHOICE) not something in the world of physical reality. Doing the best at a specific set of tasks is reality. That people need to be reminded of this constantly is part of the problem.

    Money IS a physical reality, and a necessity to do things in real life. Maybe you’re looking at it from the view of government programs? In the commercial world you can only succeed if you ultimately profit from your product or service, and competition tends wring out unneeded features as products & services mature.

    SpaceX did not develop the Dragon capsule to satisfy some politicians fancy, they did it to because it was the least expensive system to get a crew to LEO and back down. Where it returns to Earth is almost immaterial (land or water), as long as the crew finally gets home in one piece.

    A Minimum Viable Product has just those features (and no more) that allows the product to be deployed. This term mainly used in the software world, but the concept is probably universally understood by all successful product & service companies. The end result is a product or service that costs less to produce, and can be sold for less. I used the word cheaper, and that might have been inelegant, but you can see what I meant.

    The Shuttle, while wonderfully flexible, was overbuilt/overpriced for the ultimate task of getting people to & from LEO. Capsules are cheaper – not better, but cheaper for that task.

  • SpaceMan

    was the least expensive system

    In a specific accounting frame work.

    All accounting frame works are political constructs. The FASB is a political organization as are the other such organizations. These organizations write the rules for presenting information about the flows of monetary instruments (currencies mostly) in specific ways. Such monetary instruments are created by political groups to REPRESENT some set of values attached to things humans deal with. Most of the universe is not represented in any of this hence the term in economics “externalities”. Externalities are everything left out of the monetary accounting which is the majority of reality.

    You can’t launch money nor can you eat it and expect it to be nutritional. It is a representational token, a POLITICAL representation of a groups attachment of value to something. Change the political situation and the same physical object has a different value as expressed in monetary terms (notice the recent drop in home prices for instance; those houses are the same physical objects and all that has changed are some peoples belief in some numbers). Monetary values attached to things are (political) choices and are not permanent like the energy content of a liter of hydrogen at STP is for instance.

    One can chose to ignore the monetary delusion and look at things in real terms. Engineers do this when they build and operate systems but refuse to do so when they are considering “costs”. Strange that but it is considered a political necessity as in “to get something done”. Things do not have to work this way.

  • Coastal Ron

    SpaceMan wrote @ June 11th, 2010 at 3:20 pm

    You are deluding yourself if you think engineers design without considering cost. Their goals include monetary targets for both manufacturing infrastructure (both recurring and non-recurring) and product cost. No company could survive long if they didn’t make a product that was both desired by their customers, and provided them with a profit. To pretend otherwise means you’re living in some socialist or communist utopia.

    You as a consumer use cost as a consideration everyday to make your choices. Everything else you wrote is too etherial to debate, so I’ll use some real life examples to help you out.

    Shuttle (government owned) – costs at least $1B to launch for each flight, and it had a capacity for five passengers. That equals $200M/passenger.

    SpaceX (commercial company) – is offering their Falcon 9/Dragon for rides to LEO for a price of $20M/passenger, and their capacity is at least five passengers.

    Both deliver passengers to LEO, and both return passengers to LEO. Which would you rather the U.S. Taxpayer pay for?

  • goofy

    Hi Ron,
    So far I followed nobody was advocating the shuttle as a LEO vehicle instead they were discussing possibilities in using the Dreamchaser or other vehicles early developed by NASA as better alternative then a capsule (which I absolutely agrees with) and still at lesser cost.
    Bthwy- Personally I believe the shuttle cost us a lot but was a really fantastic work horse and just didn’t served only to transport people but also payload don’t forget that, I really doubt we would have build the ISS with capsules…

  • Coastal Ron, silly person. Private space cannot make a safe vehicle. The reason government costs so much is that their vehicle is the safest ever built. If we started flying people on Falcon 9 we’d have mission failures in every flight, it’d be like flying lemmings!

    (Sarcasm. But this is the sentiment. STS killed two crews and people still believe in government to deliver.)

  • Coastal Ron, btw, our discussions about Atlas/Delta: if they didn’t have to fly an Orion/Orion lite but rather licensed a Dragon from SpaceX (one of the 12 that will be reusable, just upgrade them?) we could see a significant price reduction. Assume $50 million for the upgraded Dragon module, if we go with the numbers for the Atlas 401 we can have flights to ISS at around 25-35 million per seat (depending on how many fly of course).

    Unfortunately if they go with Orion (Orion-lite for the 401) I doubt it’d be that cheap. But it does go to show that engineers, if they aren’t being continually fed by government, can reduce costs, even the guys who have been sucking at the government teat for so long.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Josh Cryer wrote @ June 11th, 2010 at 5:11 pm

    Coastal Ron, btw, our discussions about Atlas/Delta: if they didn’t have to fly an Orion/Orion lite but rather licensed a Dragon from SpaceX (one of the 12 that will be reusable, just upgrade them?..

    this is the unknown donkey in the room…what is SpaceX going to do with the “Dragons” that are reusable? one cannot help but imagine that these are going to be the “rides” to “The Bigelow place”.

    And the basis of DRagon lab and a few other things…

    Robert G. Oler

  • Coastal Ron

    goofy wrote @ June 11th, 2010 at 4:08 pm

    There are quite a few people that think we should keep the Shuttle running for crew transport, and cargo too, even though we have both covered through 2015.

    Josh Cryer wrote @ June 11th, 2010 at 5:05 pm

    Earthman humor – ar, ar, ar, ar

    Josh Cryer wrote @ June 11th, 2010 at 5:11 pm

    SpaceX will have twelve Dragons leftover after COTS/CRS, and I doubt they would have that much business flying private customers for a while, so yeah, maybe they would lease them out.

    Boeing has been in talks with Bigelow to build a commercial capsule, and I would imagine that’s what ULA has in mind for Atlas V. ULA only provides launchers and launch services, so they rely on outside companies to provide the payloads, whether it’s cargo or crew. Boeing seems to be willing to get into the capsule market, and I think they’ll come up with a capsule that addresses a slightly different market than what Dragon does (basic taxi).

    Boeing’s liability is not in creating a capsule and making it affordable, it’s that they have to use ULA’s launchers, which are significantly more expensive than Falcon 9. They can still get business, but they will have to find the right market niche.

    Exciting times!

  • Boeing’s liability is not in creating a capsule and making it affordable, it’s that they have to use ULA’s launchers, which are significantly more expensive than Falcon 9.

    Why? SpaceX’s launches are for sale to anyone, as far as I know. If not, it would be foolish on their part.

  • Coastal Ron

    Rand Simberg wrote @ June 11th, 2010 at 5:41 pm

    I would guess anything is possible, as long as there are overriding benefits to both parties.

    My thinking was that the cheapest price to beat right now is the Falcon 9/Dragon combination, which Elon has quoted for $20M/seat.

    Boeing could build their own capsule and contract with SpaceX for a Falcon 9 launcher, which is currently priced at $51.5M. Boeing would only get revenue from the capsule and service part of the arrangement, so I would think it would be a low margin product.

    If Boeing puts their capsule on a ULA launcher, at least they’re keeping their money within the company (or a joint venture in this case), but the overall costs may make it hard to compete with SpaceX. That’s why I think they will build a capsule with slightly different capabilities than Dragon.

    SpaceX does everything themselves, and gets to keep all the revenue. Boeing has to pay part of their revenue to other companies, so they have to compete on something other than having the lowest price.

    It will be interesting to see what happens, but I do hope that Boeing enters the market, since competition will be necessary to make space into a sustainable marketplace.

    FWIW

  • Ben Joshua

    Thank you, Common Sense, for the re-entry education, and for informing me with the respect a talented teacher gives a student. Appreciated.

    I’m assuming, with state of the art parachute landings, the type of impact damage found on Liberty Bell 7 would no longer be a concern.

    Your comments also serve as a reminder, despite the casual references on this and other sites to how we “know” how to do LEO, that return from orbit involves a critical and unforgiving thermal and dynamic environment.

  • SpaceMan

    Shuttle (government owned) – costs at least $1B to launch for each flight, and it had a capacity for five passengers. That equals $200M/passenger.

    SpaceX (commercial company) – is offering their Falcon 9/Dragon for rides to LEO for a price of $20M/passenger, and their capacity is at least five passengers.

    You are comparing two different accounting frame works. Check with your local auditor(s). Governments use different rules of accounting (accounting frame work) than do private organizations..

    There has been a long running debate about exactly how much a Shuttle launch costs. The honest answers always begin Well, it depends. What that means is depending how one works the accounting one gets different answers. Which is part of the point I am going on about.

    you’re living in some socialist or communist utopia

    I live in the real universe where human accounting systems lie in one form or another. Ask your accountant about the assumptions they have to make before they can give you an answer (and learn about the FASB and what it does). BTW, don’t fall into the trap of thinking I am claiming there is evil involved because I am not. I am simply stating how accounting systems work and that they hide some part of reality. They are simulations of reality, they are NOTreality. This is not etherial, just above your pay grade apparently.

    Everything else you wrote is too etherial to debate

    Solid evidence based on the real universe we all live in. A liter of hydrogen at STP is the same no matter what currency you use to get it. What it costs depends on the accounting frame work within which you are paying.

  • Coastal Ron

    SpaceMan wrote @ June 11th, 2010 at 7:02 pm

    You are comparing two different accounting frame works. Check with your local auditor(s). Governments use different rules of accounting (accounting frame work) than do private organizations.

    If I was trying to determine the profitability of SpaceX, then I might be concerned with the accounting rules, but I’m not. I’m looking at $/seat or $/lb needed to accomplish a task.

    Yes NASA accounting is a black hole, but there are some hard numbers that we do know. The Shuttle Program Manager says that they consume $200M/month to run the Shuttle program, regardless if they launch anything.

    SpaceX publishes a price list for their launcher, so with those two pieces of information, and without needing to know which FASB rules they go by, we can start to see the difference between a 30 year old do-all spacecraft system, and a new generation launcher than does the basics for cargo (and soon crew).

    Originally you said:

    Cheaper is an accounting construct (a political CHOICE) not something in the world of physical reality.

    I agree that there are lots of funny accounting methods out there, but from the customers perspective, I don’t care how they keep their books as long as I get the price I want. SpaceX is pursuing a path to be the low-cost provider of cargo and crew, which is why they chose a basic capsule design (versus a winged vehicle).

    Besides, the government should not be competing with the private sector, and the VSE specifically calls out for using commercial providers.

    That’s as much as I want to talk about accounting…

  • Terry S

    I would remind those stating that Dragon can only do a water landing of recent statements made by Musk to the effect that the Dragon Crew:

    a. LES engines will be build into the lower rim of the spacecraft,

    b. use the fuel load for the Draco thrusters and,

    c. if not needed as an LES could be used for a Soyuz-style powered landing on ground

    Last I heard landing on ground was cut out of Orion long ago, making it the only water-baby still in the game.

  • Rhyolite

    Andy Clark wrote @ June 11th, 2010 at 7:56 am :

    “This country (NASA) has a lot more experience with partially re-usable flight vehicles than it ever got with capsules.”

    That’s not even remotely true. The vast majority of orbital reentry vehicles that this country has built were blunt body capsules for reconnaissance film recovery – several hundred between the late fifties and early eighties.

  • Rhyolite

    Andy Clark wrote @ June 11th, 2010 at 7:56 am:

    “I’m not sure why capsules are considered to be so attractive as a solution for re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.”

    Coastal Ron wrote @ June 11th, 2010 at 11:40 am :

    “Cheaper is the operative word here, not more attractive.”

    Capsules aren’t just cheaper – they’re better. Blunt bodies minimize the heat loading on the reentry vehicle. This was the classic result that Allen and Eggers in the early fifties. They’re a case of form following function and physics.

    Wings are only necessary if you need to do atmospheric maneuvering. People forget that the Shuttle design was dictated by an Air Force mission that it never performed – the once around reconnaissance mission – which required high cross range on reentry to return to the launch site. Shuttle might have been a cheaper more practical vehicle without the cross range requirement, which is ironic because the once around mission was never practical from a cost standpoint.

  • Rhyolite, classic case of “build it and they will come” not being true.

  • Paul D.

    I thought the “once around” requirement was from the need to be able to abort after going around once (AOA), not due to a mission where they’d plan to reenter after a single orbit.

    But they never launched into a polar orbit anyway, so it never came up.

  • Andy Clark

    For Rhyolite and all the others that have read way too much into what I said:

    This country has a lot of experience with small capsules but not with manned ones. We were talking manned vehicles. If you want to talk about re-entry vehicles I can go toe to toe with you. I spent several years making sure nuclear weapons came back into the atmosphere properly.

    Capsules, particularly if they land in water are going to need a standing navy to recover them. Consider the issues of tracking to impact, the risk of hatch opening once found etc. Apollo’s most dangerous moments for the crew were probably after the water impact. Land impact will have a similar standing army to support. The reasons for this will be dictated by political considerations not prudence or necessity.

    Now, back to the question in hand. I am not supporting Shuttle for extension. It’s a great vehicle – I also worked on it – but it is past its prime and ready for retirement and replacement. Replacement activity should have started 25 years ago but as usual the politicians let us all down – again! When will we ever learn?

    Somewhere along the line Griffin became the NASA chief and it was always obvious from his writings that he favored a new, Apollo style vehicle. The Bush administration, being Bears of little brain just went merrily along with this plan.

    Now we have Obama’s plan, again advanced by Bears of even less brain – which is actually quite logical and conservative, essentially returning NASA to its roots as an R&D agency rather than an operational one. However, this plan does have social costs in terms of sinecure loss to the NASA centers and contractors. This plan has really stirred the ire of certain senators and congressmen who see the impact to themselves as immediate and economic; i.e. they lose their jobs (but not their pensions).

    I believe that winged, orbital, reusable spacecraft are necessary precisely because of the increase in Cross Range capability that accrues to such designs. Such capability means that this type of vehicle can have some chance of being integrated into the air traffic system. Such integration will be necessary as we increase the number of flights and essential if we are to operate seamlessly with current or future systems. Only when we have this seamless integration will spaceflight to LEO have become routine and I think everyone in this business actually wants that to happen.

    As for vehicles; Dreamchaser is a good idea, a dark horse as noted previously but a possibility. So is the stuff that may one day come out of Xcor, Masten, Blue origin and Armadillo. There may be others out there that we do not know of yet. I have no crystal ball and I have no definite ideas about what will come out of the R&D labs but I do know that advances will be made in Propulsion, TPS, Life Support Systems etc. Commercial space will drive much of this development.

    BTW, for the record, I abhor the term; “New Space, Newspace” or anything of that ilk. It seems to imply that we have some kind of new physics but we only have new ways of doing things we already understand.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Paul D. wrote @ June 12th, 2010 at 6:31 am

    I thought the “once around” requirement was from the need to be able to abort after going around once (AOA), not due to a mission where they’d plan to reenter after a single orbit….

    the once around requirement was for launches into Polar orbit from Vandy and then land “once around”…that dictated the cross range. those missions were never flown

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert G. Oler

    Andy Clark wrote @ June 12th, 2010 at 8:47 am

    I dont agree with a lot of that.

    First off there is little or no need to “integrate” any returning space vehicles into the ATC system. The vehicles stay higher, faster, and out of most if not all Controlled (or transited) airspace for all but a tiny fraction of their flight time. The time any winged or “flying” returning crewed capsule is going to spend “subsonic” is a fraction of the time it is in atmosphere…and even in that period it has no chance of being “part” of the ATC system…ie it is going to always need to be “first” and always going to be incompatible with sub mach airplanes.

    Second, while I agree with you that a land vehicle (capsule or flight) is going to require “less” of an army then a water landing (someone has to drive the boats and then when the capsule gets to land it is going to require the same army on the land that a land vehicle did)…it isnt much more.

    To recover a crew capsule is not going to take much more of a sea infrastructure then what it takes to recover the SRB’s. A “boat” (ship) some helicopter (probably a Black Hawk or derivative) and something with a dry well. That capability is already there in “oil drilling support ships” these things have minimal crew and would not be that hard to acquire or lease. The heli is not to lift it just to drop divers quickly.

    It took an Essex class carrier (or an LHA) to do it (with all her escorts) in the Apollo days…it will take 1 boat/ship (depending on the size) in a todays world.

    the “good thing” about a capsule in my viewpoint is that it always has the capability for a water landing. I guess that is my background speaking, but in the event that I had to “punch” down quickly and I couldnt land on CONUS or some territory of The United States, I would much rather be a flagged capsule landing on the high seas.

    As the teenage sailor proved…help can be there and one does not have to deal with the “locals”. “feet wet” mostly beats “feet dry”.

    Robert G. Oler

  • common sense

    @Andy Clark wrote @ June 12th, 2010 at 8:47 am

    “Capsules, particularly if they land in water are going to need a standing navy to recover them.”

    Nope I disagree and yourself give the reason why there might be a standing army:” The reasons for this will be dictated by political considerations not prudence or necessity.” It might be true for a government program but no so much for a private program.

    ” Replacement activity should have started 25 years ago but as usual the politicians let us all down – again! When will we ever learn?”

    This is one of the reason why so many of us want to go the private route: To try and take it out of the politicians. Suffice to look at all the theatrics from those outraged Congress people who never funded a program, Constellation, so that it reaches its full potential. Not that I agree with Constellation but it certainly is true it never had the cash. Again notwithstanding that Mike Griffin chose to live above his means,

    “Somewhere along the line Griffin became the NASA chief and it was always obvious from his writings that he favored a new, Apollo style vehicle. The Bush administration, being Bears of little brain just went merrily along with this plan.”

    You may say it so but the Bush plan, the real one, was implemented under O’Keefe, not Griffin. Under O’Keefe all was supposed to be incremental and within budget. I guess we’ll never know. Or will we? The new plan has much flavor of the Spiral approach favored by O’Keefe.

    “Now we have Obama’s plan, again advanced by Bears of even less brain – which is actually quite logical and conservative, essentially returning NASA to its roots as an R&D agency rather than an operational one.”

    Politics show up now. So it is actually quite logical and conservative yet advanced by Bears of even less brain. Please… This kind of rhetoric is hurting us, not helping us. And I mean us who are actually trying to do something.

    “However, this plan does have social costs in terms of sinecure loss to the NASA centers and contractors.”

    So what? Let’s never change anything then! Come on.

    ” This plan has really stirred the ire of certain senators and congressmen who see the impact to themselves as immediate and economic; i.e. they lose their jobs (but not their pensions).”

    Those who are not worthy of their jobs will lose it, but more certainly not because of NASA. The country is in much more dire straits than NASA is. Political theatrics.

    “I believe that winged, orbital, reusable spacecraft are necessary precisely because of the increase in Cross Range capability that accrues to such designs. Such capability means that this type of vehicle can have some chance of being integrated into the air traffic system. Such integration will be necessary as we increase the number of flights and essential if we are to operate seamlessly with current or future systems. Only when we have this seamless integration will spaceflight to LEO have become routine and I think everyone in this business actually wants that to happen.”

    Oh wow. Now we’re dreaming. Not that I disagree. But any idea of the cost of such an infrastructure? And you cannot integrate easily hypersonic “sail planes” that is not true. In any case you’re talking 50 or even maybe 100 years into the future. The current crops of privates are trying to make do with string budgets. Capsules are best at this. And that is that.

    “As for vehicles; Dreamchaser is a good idea, a dark horse as noted previously but a possibility.”

    It will most likely either be much later in the future or never be. The cost of DreamChaser will be very high. BUT: I agree it is good way not to loose the knowledge base with such vehicles. And if the government can afford it they ought to keep it alive one way or another. But not as a zombie where too little is invested and the corporate knowledge disappears!

    “I have no crystal ball and I have no definite ideas about what will come out of the R&D labs but I do know that advances will be made in Propulsion, TPS, Life Support Systems etc. Commercial space will drive much of this development.”

    Yes. Commercial will drive. At least that is where we are today. Constellation proved that the government no longer knows how to do that at a reasonable cost. It does not matter whether we like it or not. It is a fact.

    “BTW, for the record, I abhor the term; “New Space, Newspace” or anything of that ilk. It seems to imply that we have some kind of new physics but we only have new ways of doing things we already understand.”

    Absolutely and the new way essentially resides in the procurement approach, not the technology or much of anything else.

  • Why does everyone think parachutes are unflyable? With round, unsteerable chutes, Apollos came back from the moon within a mile or two of carriers (who actually backed off from the target so they wouldn’t have the chance of being hit!). With modern, steerable chutes, we ought to be able to put a Dragon down pretty much on the big red X. Doesn’t the military do that with equipment pretty regularly? And if the big red X was…say…a large pit full of some kind of impact absorbent material (think packing peanuts) the need for Soyuz style “thump down” rockets goes away.

    Is that the only solution? No. But don’t think the two alternatives are Apollo landings or Shuttle landings.

  • Coastal Ron

    Andy Clark wrote @ June 12th, 2010 at 8:47 am

    Shuttle … a great vehicle … is past its prime and ready for retirement and replacement. Replacement activity should have started 25 years ago

    I don’t think we knew what we had with the Shuttle for quite awhile. Because the satellite market was just starting to mature itself (TV, data, mapping, etc.), and we didn’t have a manned presence in space until the ISS, no one in the private sector really had any idea what kind of business plan would work for a replacement.

    I don’t know if we’re there yet, but there are a lot of possibilities. SpaceX would never have made it this far if they had worked on a winged vehicle (VTHL) instead of a basic rocket and capsule. There are too many unknowns and risks. Their Dragon capsule is the result of creating the least costly/risky way to accomplish a task, even though the landing is very retro (chuckle, chuckle).

    I think the Shuttle is a good example of a evolutionary dead-end. It was successful, flexible, and looked great on TV throughout every activity. Unfortunately, I think the need for it’s type of services are no longer needed, and could not be sustained by any commercial company.

    Instead I see us hitting the reset button, and starting over again with small vehicles like Dragon and Dream Chaser, and letting them mature as the market grows. I see the same argument for launchers, where we have a existing stable of medium and med-heavy launchers that are nowhere near overused. These can already lift the components needed to build another ISS, and there are modular spacecraft proposals (LM ACES for one) that support our near-term goals (Moon, Lagrange, maybe NEO too). Until we feel the pain of not being able to lift more, there is no need to pursue an HLV, and I would hope by the time we do, it will be a commercial company that develops and runs it.

  • Andy Clark

    Robert Oler disagrees that re-entry vehicles will be integrated into the National Aviation System. He is absolutely wrong. I refer him and any other doubters to the following link:

    http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ast/

    where he will find the following document;” Point to Point Commercial Space Transportation in the National Aviation System” dated March 10th. 2010.

    Sea recovery of an American Registered and Licensed craft will inevitably involve the Coastguard – pre-launch, to make sure it floats and everyone has a life vest and the Navy who will probably insist on being part of the recovery team just for shits and giggles – and to make sure no rules are broken! Just how many design hoops do you want to jump through?

    Common Sense, what are you trying to do in this business? I run a small company here in Florida and we are constantly looking at all sorts of aerospace things.

    I want commercial, I don’t want politics – it wastes too much time. We have wasted enough of that in the last few years because we all thought the lead could come from bureaucrats of one flavor or another. Have to help if we can. Well, I’m so over that as my daughters would say. Now it has to be purely commercial and I will take any data I can from the government to help me achieve our ends.

    I do not believe that vehicles like Dreamchaser etc are that far in the future, maybe 10 years if we get it right. Government can do one of three things to help; Lead, Follow or just get out of the way! Tax breaks for development would be nice too.

  • Coastal Ron

    Andy Clark wrote @ June 12th, 2010 at 1:26 pm

    I do not believe that vehicles like Dreamchaser etc are that far in the future, maybe 10 years if we get it right. Government can do one of three things to help; Lead, Follow or just get out of the way! Tax breaks for development would be nice too.

    I hope Dream Chaser is a near-term reality, but I think it can only happen if government money is part of the incentive. That could be a crew services contract, or a lifeboat-provider contract, but without a definite demand, I can’t see the private sector funding it – there are only so many Elon Musk’s in this world.

    The COTS/CRS program is a good economic model for the government to follow for many of the things we want to do in space, and it’s one way where NASA continues to drive the programs, but the costs are kept in line through firm-fixed price contracts. Inevitably there will be contract failures, just like there will be deaths on commercial transports, but I think this is the best way to build a robust and growing space industry.

    Getting back to the original topic, I think the Orion CRV should be turned over to the contractors, and let them decide if it’s the right vehicle for the job NASA needs done. The government funding it just to try and “salvage” some part of the Constellation program is not the right reason, and does not provide us the best value in the future. Besides, being a government owned CRV, who else could afford it? It will become another dead-end government product, one that does not meet the needs of the marketplace.

  • Patrick

    The document to which you refer deals mainly with the concept of point-to-point, suborbital, reusable vehicles, and assumes traffic substantial enough to disrupt controlled airspace operations. This has nothing to do with landing a few capsules per year in the desert or on the ocean. A capsule landing is a sporadic event that transits airspace in a few minutes in a defined and very geographically restricted area (i.e, from 60k ft, the top of controlled airspace, it’s pretty much vertical). The FAA will easily work the airspace around these sporadic and highly planned events with minimal impact to airline/military/general aviation traffic.

  • Patrick

    I should add, this is the situation we will have with SpaceX and any other commercial capsules for years to come. PTP operations will arrive sooner or later and I sure hope they will be extensive enough to warrant routine airspace attention.

    SpaceX has wisely followed a very conservative course in its hardware development. But I would bet good money they are studying, and will continue to study, lifting bodies and other advanced concepts as technology matures–and I believe that rate of maturation will increase substantially now that space technology is no longer confined to a monolithic government/cost-plus contractor establishment.

    Since first-stage weight has the least impact on payload, I expect their first “advanced” concept to reach hardware development will be a resusable first stage equipped with TPS and guided recovery.

  • UNT2007

    I wonder if Lockheed will ever try to start up the x-33 venturestar program again?

  • Robert G. Oler

    Andy Clark wrote @ June 12th, 2010 at 1:26 pm

    Robert Oler disagrees that re-entry vehicles will be integrated into the National Aviation System….

    Well terms are everything and I walked into it with the use of that word “integrate”.

    The “Ercoupe” and Boeing and Fighter that I fly (in my world) are integrated into the NAS. that is where they operate, where they gain the ability to go from point a to point b. they operate in the airspace below FL450.

    A space vehicle will spend minutes (if that long) in that airspace. The FAA will deal with that by forming (as they do now) a restricted area around the projected ops area which has a certain time and will probably be from “surface up”.

    that is how space vehicles will be “integrated” into NAS.

    “Sea recovery of an American Registered and Licensed craft will inevitably involve the Coastguard – pre-launch, to make sure it floats and everyone has a life vest and the Navy who will probably insist on being part of the recovery team just for shits and giggles”

    The United States Navy will want to have as much to do with this as it does the oil spill. The USCG will license the ships.

    Thats it. The FAA will eventually run everything else.

    We are talking sometime into the future.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert G. Oler

    rich kolker wrote @ June 12th, 2010 at 1:11 pm

    I agree…recovery of capsules has come a long way.

    The military routinely “flies” large payloads on chutes down to folks in combat.

    hope you are well

    Robert G. Oler

  • I wonder if Lockheed will ever try to start up the x-33 venturestar program again?

    Only if they go nuts.

  • goofy

    UNT2007 wrote @ June 12th, 2010 at 3:07 pm
    I wonder if Lockheed will ever try to start up the x-33 venturestar program again?

    Well with all the tech advances in isolation material I certainly believe there might be a breaktrough where the initial “LOX” problems could be solved and that Venturestar might be back on track..I just wish they did give US defense a chance with the program..Im pretty sure we would have seen x-33 fly last month instead of x-37…what a waist of good advance technologies for capsule craps..so many years trhow away in research and we keep going backwards ..sigh..

  • someguy

    goofy wrote @ June 12th, 2010 at 5:09 pm

    “what a waist of good advance technologies for capsule craps..so many years trhow away in research and we keep going backwards”

    Perhaps we keep going “backwards” because we keep finding the first answer was the right answer all along.

  • Ben Joshua

    If memory serves, the unscheduled Gemini 8 return in the Pacific by Armstrong and Scott was not met by a carrier group. I don’t know if a single ship performed the recovery or if it was part of a larger naval contingent.

    The same might have been true for Carpenter’s Mercury recovery, I think a couple of hundred miles from target.

    So maybe the big naval recovery group was more for show than need, even then.

    btw, were any of the Vostok, Voshkod or Soyuz landings off target?

    On Orion, a COTS-like procurement of a crew recovery vehicle, leading to development of a fully capable manned capsule (Orion-lite-lite, or Orion scaled down a bit?), might be a better approach than the current unspecified notion.

  • goofy

    someguy wrote @ June 12th, 2010 at 5:14 pm
    goofy wrote @ June 12th, 2010 at 5:09 pm
    Perhaps we keep going “backwards” because we keep finding the first answer was the right answer all along.

    People with your mental state will bring our rides back to horses and donkey …as lomg we keep thinking backwards it never gonna happen. that is a fact..tink about it.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Ben Joshua wrote @ June 12th, 2010 at 5:15 pm

    Ben.

    there are quite a few Mercury and the “one” Gemini that were recovered by a vessel other then a CV or LHA ( ie a flattop).

    If memory serves John H. Glenn was recovered by the USS Noa a Gearing class…DD 8something. Glenn was later transferred to USS Randolph (?) but I have a model of the Noa with Friendship 7 aboard her at my office.

    The big question on a sea recovery is “lifting” the vehicle. Dragon is a bit heavier (grin) then Mercury…but a standard feature in the oil business these days are vessels that have ‘dry wells”…ie sterns that open and can flood allowing cargo to “float” in and out.

    An interesting vehicle design (if someone ever got all that busy) would be the “boat” L3 built for the USN or one of the vessels built for the interisland ferry in Hawaii that the green people shut down on behalf of the interisland airlines.

    Small crew, fast as you can go and they have a dry well that could easily float the Dragon in…and probably any engine package that SpaceX eventually recovers.

    I dont think that SpaceX is moving to recover the entire first stage…the engines maybe.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Rhyolite

    I would like to expand on what rich kolker wrote @ June 12th, 2010 at 1:11 pm. It is entirely possible to do a precision landing with a capsule.

    Remember that ICBM reentry vehicles have circular error probabilities of less than 100 m without wings. Capsules that can control their lift vectors in the upper atmosphere should be at least as accurate down where upper level winds start to affect the trajectory.

    At low altitude, a GPS guided parafoil can be used to get the capsule to within a 10s of meters of a target. A water landing capsule could easily be landed in the intercoastal waterway near KSC or clear lake near JSC. A capsule with airbags or retro rockets could be landed on Rogers dry lake bed. No armada required.

  • SpaceX wants to recover the entire first stage. How much (if any) of it will be reused depends on what happens after inspection.

  • someguy

    goofy wrote @ June 12th, 2010 at 5:21 pm

    If you are just going to be a snarky jackass and miss what I am trying to say, then I can’t have a reasonable conversation with you.

    My “mental state” is one of a software developer watching a lot of new solutions come along that solve the exact same problem over and over and over again, but not any better, and sometimes worse. (In this case, especially in the inter-process communication arena.)

    (I’m also in my 20’s, so you can’t just dismiss me as “some old guy on the internet” just hating on everything new.)

    Let’s state the problem:
    – Getting humans in orbit back to earth.
    – To close a business case, it also needs to be the simplest way to do so at the least cost, both development and operationally.

    SpaceX has chosen a capsule because I guess it is the simplest form for the job. It’s just a circle, with no wings that need special TPS consideration or anything like that. Meaning, there is the least number of different types of failure points. (At least, that’s my non-aerospace engineer view of things.)

    You also don’t need a standing navy to do the job, just a GPS beacon in the capsule and ONE minimal recovery ship with a big enough flat deck to hoist the capsule on. Maybe it also needs a helicopter, maybe not. Maybe you just rent a Coast Guard ship for the day.

    Also, the one basic form of Dragon can be used for cargo, crew, or DragonLab.

    Sounds like a business plan to me.

    To me, the problem all over in this space business seems to be that everyone has to have the biggest and baddest and “most advanced” way of doing something, even if it actually delivers no actual benefit whatsoever, especially economically.

    If Dream Chaser provides a better economic return then Dragon, fine, have at it. But, “more advanced” in and of itself is not a good-enough justification to say “capsules suck, lifting bodies awesome”.

  • Coastal Ron

    someguy wrote @ June 12th, 2010 at 5:52 pm

    I agree with you overall, and I tend to look at things from a manufacturing & logistics background (where I’ve worked).

    I like SpaceX both for what they’re doing, and what they’re not doing. As I’ve mentioned earlier in this post, SpaceX seems to be following the concept of a minimum viable product, and producing just what’s needed to do the job, without a lot of extra features. I also like their focus on reuse, and I would imagine that they’ll finally figure out how to recover and reuse some or all of their 1st stage.

    The Shuttle also tried reuse, but it was hobbled by being a 1st generation product, and also being a jack-of-all-trades, but master-of-none vehicle. I think we’re ready to move onto more specialized vehicles, and that should end up lowering the overall cost of doing anything in space.

  • amightywind

    I chuckle at the SpaceX fanbois on this forum. You are rationalize a childish, petty program and malign the state of the art. Lockmart’s upcoming Atlas 5 flight is over far greater technical significance that Falcon 9, yet all I read is SpaceX prattle. The sooner an election removes your kind national influence, the sooner NASA can recover from its current nightmare.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Rand Simberg wrote @ June 12th, 2010 at 5:30 pm

    SpaceX wants to recover the entire first stage. How much (if any) of it will be reused depends on what happens after inspection….

    yeah I know that is what they want to do, or at least claim that…but they are going to find that very very hard to do. I’ve watched the videos of their Falcon 1 and 9 first stage sep…and what can be seen is not very promising in terms of any tendency toward “natural stability”. They are going to need a Ballute or something pretty quickly deployed after sep to keep the thing from doing what the Ares 1X second stage did after the sep…

    the rumor from the folks with the high powered radars is that the first stage broke up very very quickly after sep.

    milage may vary on this

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert G. Oler

    amightywind wrote @ June 12th, 2010 at 8:12 pm

    I chuckle at the SpaceX fanbois on this forum..

    that is good because the act you had about SpaceX’s vehicle reaching orbit entertained not only all of us, but got some good mileage with other people. Being entertaining is being loved!

    man hug

    Robert G. Oler

  • Lockmart’s upcoming Atlas 5 flight is over far greater technical significance that Falcon 9, yet all I read is SpaceX prattle.

    In what way? They’ve been doing it for years. And SpaceX accomplished it for far less. And it’s not Lockmart’s vehicle any more.

  • amightywind, SpaceX is the one being bashed here. As Elon even said, Atlas is going to be important in the coming years.

    The various Ares I programs are losing jobs quick, there will, sadly, be no revival for Ares I. Hopefully those people can transition to new jobs as soon as possible.

  • vulture4

    Robert G. Oler wrote @ June 12th, 2010 at 5:25 pm

    An interesting vehicle design (if someone ever got all that busy) would be the “boat” L3 built for the USN or one of the vessels built for the interisland ferry in Hawaii that the green people shut down on behalf of the interisland airlines.

    Robert-

    Do you have any information on the any of these dry well vessels, i.e. name or owner? I was under the impression that the smallest ship available with a dry well was an LSD.

    Thanks.

  • Coastal Ron

    The Hawaii Superferry was built by Austal (www.austal.com), which is an Australian company, but has facilities in the states too. The ferry is a catamaran, which does not have a dry well, but that type of vessel would still have advantages for capsule recovery. The Hawaii Superferry is also too big, but who knows what kind of deal they could get for it… ;-)

    The SpaceX website had a movie of a helicopter picking up the capsule and delivering it somewhere, which could be the deck of a ship, or for a catamaran, drop it nearby, and the catamaran could pick it up with a crane.

    The Austal catamarans are pretty modern, and their advantages are high speed, stability, and lots of deck space.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Coastal Ron wrote @ June 12th, 2010 at 9:50 pm

    I have not been on them, but when I was in Mobile looking into one of the LCS both of them were docked “nearby” and I was told that they have capabilities of dry welling…thanks for correcting that I will talk to the person who told me that because he/she seemed quite sincere…as in even talking about “alternate uses” for the “boats”. They might have meant the use of a crane…we didnt go into it all that much…my mission was to see the LCS.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert G. Oler

    vulture4 wrote @ June 12th, 2010 at 8:48 pm

    Many years ago I went out to the MARS (Mars is a shell rig with URSA and JACKEL) ….and while I was there got the pleasure of doing an “emerg evac” which consisted of going down in the appropriate “sling” to a tender boat. The boat was under 150 feet and had a dry well. As we were coming over by the sling, they had divers going in and out on speed rafts.

    I dont know who makes them…have to find out I guess.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Coastal Ron

    Robert G. Oler wrote @ June 12th, 2010 at 10:28 pm

    The LCS have the capability to launch and recover boats, but more like the type Navy Seals use I think. To swallow a capsule, you’d want more room, like what they use for the Marine hovercrafts on the Dock landing ships (LDS class).

    However, catamarans might offer the ability to “run over” the capsule, and then hoist it up. I guess we’ll see what SpaceX uses as it gets closer to demonstrating Dragon.

  • I hate to bring this back on-topic… but $4.5 billion… really?

    Any idea why it costs that much? Is it wrong to suggest that NASA could do so much more if they demanded SpaceX sized prices from contractors? It kinda makes you think about the $6 billion for CCDev does it? Considering that Atlas/Delta are probably the vehicles of choice for it, what’s all those billions for? The vehicles already exist…

  • Robert G. Oler

    Coastal Ron wrote @ June 12th, 2010 at 10:40 pm

    concur

    Robert G. Oler

  • Bennett

    However, catamarans might offer the ability to “run over” the capsule, and then hoist it up.

    Cool idea. I ran it through my internal movie theater and in calm seas it could be great. In rough seas I’d want some serious netting to eliminate contact between capsule and boat. Same with dry well boats I would think.

    All of this banter about wet or dry landing and delivering the capsule to it’s destination has been an eye opener for me. Although I watched a few of the Apollo splashdowns back then, I took it for granted that “the ships were waiting”.

    The logistics and expense facing Commercial Space make this debate incredibly germane, and it makes me wonder what the legal limit is (miles) for targeting a splashdown off the coast of CA, the Gulf (all those rigs), or Eastern Florida? Is there an ideal location that offers calm seas and cheap access/transport to wherever the capsule should go next?

    I say drop it into a different place every time, depending on the season. SF Bay, up and down the East Coast, The Keys, Lake Superior, Puget Sound, off Portland or Sand Diego…

    Involve the people. :-)

  • Robert G. Oler

    Trent Waddington wrote @ June 12th, 2010 at 11:49 pm

    I hate to bring this back on-topic… but $4.5 billion… really?…

    if they really want Orion as a lifeboat (and I am not oppossed to it) then what they should do is come up with a number that they are willing to pay and then go from there…see who would do it for that money and what they give…

    4.5 bils is a lot of money considering this is either Big G or Apollo’s CM

    Robert G. Oler

  • common sense

    Re: Armada for recovery

    You have to remember that the US and the USSR were at (cold) war back then. It was a demonstration of the might of the US to show how great the nation was. And they did not want anyone to recover the then state of the art technology. So they sent the cavalry, er fleet. That is all there was behind the armada thing.

  • common sense

    Re: Air traffic and hypersonic reentry vehicles.

    The scenario that was put forth is that dozens of such events might happen. It will have to be a very well orchestrated ballet to get all those things down without disruption of the ATC. Is it possible? Maybe, probable? Certainly not short term, we can barely address the problems of modern day ATC, never mind those dead stick reentry thingies falling off the sky…

  • common sense

    @ Andy Clark wrote @ June 12th, 2010 at 1:26 pm

    “Common Sense, what are you trying to do in this business? I run a small company here in Florida and we are constantly looking at all sorts of aerospace things.”

    Sorry too small a business, can’t say.

    Dreamchaser is not far off in the future IF they get the funding. Hypersonic vehicle routine integration with ATC on the other hand is far off in the future.

  • snarky jackass

    someguy wrote @ June 12th, 2010 at 5:52 pm

    Listen someguy it is a lot of philosophic blablabla but it brings us back to the same problem..we (or NASA) will keep doing things like our grandpa’s have been doing!
    Let me make it clear I don’t have anything against SpaceX and what they are doing, furthermore I think they are on the right path in taking over that routine capsule crap from NASA and do it better which is great..and that is my main point here…

    NASA should be focus in R&D on propulsion tech to move us more efficiently into orbit and deep space instead of sending heavy “cans” of fuel into the sky with marginally payload and “swinging” around with parachutes looking for a spot to land. EFFICIENCY ->less fuel->less cost-> more payload. easy to say but it doesn’t come by itself (neither by keep flying capsules as a viable “shortcut”) ..and there lies my frustration with NASA , while acknowledging their budget constrains, yet it looks like they are turning back on each research attempt instead of combining the lessons learned to move us forward…I believe the new approach for NASA might eventually bring us back on track…

    Bthwy-by keep trying other ways to write that piece of software code more efficiently I’m sure pretty soon they WILL figure out a way in doing it, and that is breakthrough and that is the spirit we need in this era-not a lay back conservative “keep doing like we have being doing” one.

    With your pace we will reach deep-space in a few billion yrs…

  • common sense

    And I mean hypersonic reentry vehicles dead stick. Powered hypersonic reentry or otherwise today is closer to SciFi. Not as much since X43 and next X51 but still…

  • snarky jackass

    This is what NASA should have been doing a couple a years back and we might have had a more efficient vehicle today than stage rockets and capsules…
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9ANuMV0ybQ

  • J201

    Orion as a CRV is a bad idea, especially now that we know (or think we know) just how expensive it will be.

    Downgrading a spacecraft that was engineered with deep space and interplanetary travel in mind to a one-time emergency escape vehicle that would sit dormant for the majority of it’s usefullness ( if you could call it that) completely changes the design parameters, beyond simply switching out the avionics and life support.

    The reason it will cost $4.5 billion, my guess anyway, is that now the Orion team has to start from scratch, reconsider every aspect of the spacecraft, and optimize it for it’s (proposed) new role.

    The Orion team also has to consider that if the administration’s proposal passes and Orion is needed to be un-downgraded to it’s original mission that it can be done quickly and relatively painlessly.

  • someguy

    snarky jackass wrote @ June 13th, 2010 at 1:12 am

    “Listen someguy it is a lot of philosophic blablabla but it brings us back to the same problem..we (or NASA) will keep doing things like our grandpa’s have been doing!”

    Why do cars have four wheels?

    That is what I am saying. Adding more wheels to a car doesn’t make the car work any better. There may be some niche applications where adding more wheels works better (18 wheelers), but for a passenger car, 4 wheels is about it. And it’s been about it for the last 150 years.

    “and “swinging” around with parachutes looking for a spot to land.”

    They don’t “look for a spot to land”. They have a preplanned area that is factored in all the way back to the initial deorbit burn.

    “yet it looks like they are turning back on each research attempt instead of combining the lessons learned to move us forward…”

    What I am saying here is that sometimes each research attempt keeps telling you the first answer was correct. 2+2 = 4. Researching it more doesn’t change the fact that the first answer of “4” was correct. It just keeps telling you in more and more pages of text that you had it right all along the first time.

    Now, obviously the capsule should not be used for living in for long transits. You would need a separate habitat module for that, like a Bigelow module, but the capsule seems to be for many reasons the best solution for transportation of humans from Earth to orbit and back.

  • I used the word “know” for a reason.. I can easily speculate myself as to why it will cost so much. My best speculation would be that the salaries of lots of unnecessary workers need to be preserved for the political purpose that the Orion CRV is obviously intended to achieve. Here’s a wild idea: you want budget cuts? Cut all the pork. Call the GAO and set em loose on the contractor’s books.

  • J201

    You asked for “any idea”, that was just mine. But you’re right, saving Orion as a CRV was purely a political move, one that, as far as I can tell, hasn’t scored any points with either side. but then again, this whole mess is a political move…

  • someguy

    snarky jackass wrote @ June 13th, 2010 at 1:33 am

    OK, so you are really referring to scramjets to get to orbit.

    Well, if you trust wikipedia on such subjects, it seems far from clear if that will actually work better or not, if it can be made to work at all, for space vehicles.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramjet

    And I am not saying that we shouldn’t do research, but sometimes you really have found the best answer for a given dollar amount for a given problem the first time, and you really should spend your limited research dollars on other things, like closed loop life support and better in-space propulsion.

  • Rhyolite

    Bennett wrote @ June 13th, 2010 at 12:19 am

    “I say drop it into a different place every time, depending on the season. SF Bay, up and down the East Coast, The Keys, Lake Superior, Puget Sound, off Portland or Sand Diego…

    Involve the people. :-)

    I like your idea.

  • Somewhat off-topic …

    SpaceX was the major sponsor of last night’s Florida State League All-Star Game held at Space Coast Stadium in Viera. Within the last month, SpaceX became a major sponsor of the minor league Brevard County Manatees, who are about 20 miles from CCAFS. SpaceX banners on the outfield fences, their logo on the All-Star game uniforms, SpaceX tote bags given away at the All-Star banquet Friday night.

    I was at those events because I’ve been webcasting some of the Manatees games, as they won’t have a radio contract.

    The SpaceX personnel got quite the nice round of applause when introduced during the pre-game ceremonies last night.

  • If you need an ISS lifeboat, even as a political expediency, tie it into the big picture and make it part of the human-rating of the Atlas V. United Launch Alliance would be very happy to see Obama push that as would a few other private space-concerns.

  • Paul D.

    Snarky: there’s a reason we don’t have scramjet powered launch vehicles. They comprehensively suck. The whole concept is just bad. Scramjets, if they are used at all, will be in long range hypersonic cruise missiles
    .

  • Gary Church

    Snarky Jackass and Goofy are made-up characters so the infomercial gang will have someone to respond to. You see, people will not post here for the same reason I quit; this website is an infomercial for nasa haters and tourist scams. No one wants to waste time on a bunch of lying con artists.

  • Land-Locked Reginald

    Gary Church wrote @ June 13th, 2010 at 2:10 pm

    Just an observation, but your alter egos were more articulate than you normally have been – maybe you should keep them?

  • Bennett

    “Snarky Jackass and Goofy” as well as “Junior” are obviously of the same lame ilk, thus ignored by most. Debating with a moron proves nothing.

  • someguy

    Gary Church wrote @ June 13th, 2010 at 2:10 pm

    So, according to you, disagreeing with you and making a case for my disagreement about capsules, and providing links that describe the advantages and disadvantages of scramjets makes me a lying con artist.

    I guess all that’s left to say then is “guilty as charged”. :P

  • Moron

    Bennett wrote @ June 13th, 2010 at 2:40 pm
    “Snarky Jackass and Goofy” as well as “Junior” are obviously of the same lame ilk, thus ignored by most. Debating with a moron proves nothing.

    ..it always hard to hear the truth Gary/Bennett, I know…but Orion sucks, capsules sucks…parachutes are things of the past..NASA has been sleeping all those years…the new direction for NASA should have been taken years ago for us to be on track now… Commercial Must take capsule rides over the soonest possible and make space for NASA to concentrate on the core business..

    Scramjet is an interesting technology to replace some of that rocket crap… at-least for the atmosphere part of the travel.. once we are in orbit we should switch over to other type of interesting propulsion tech (like VASMIR)..but we HAVE TO advance we need to keep trying..that is the only way to advance space travel to aviation routine standards…in the future (less then 15 yrs) we will need to fly more frequent with quick turn a rounds, take more payloads (more then the shuttle did) and not more “fuel cans”..The more payloads we can take -lesser will be the spacewalks needed to assemble a spacecraft/habitat in Orbit(we can assemble more on the ground)-> lesser might be the time needed to accomplish the targets ->the sooner we will be ready to go deep-space exploration
    They might have some disadvantages but Space plane operations are much more flexible then capsule rides and still I haven’t seen any concept of a capsule that can take considerable payload like the shuttle did…

    Maybe there is another approach I can live with in certain point.. sending payloads and manned vehicle separately..yet It doesn’t seem really efficient to me…it is basically the same constellation crap approach..

  • Something Rick Tumlinson said at the Orphans of Apollo premiere explains a lot of the sniping here and elsewhere, the division of space enthusiast into three different space philosophies: von Braunians, Saganites, and O’Neilians.

    It makes a lot of sense. It makes the “humans vs. robots” debate into a debate between the von Braun and O’Neil groups on one side with the Sagan group on the other.

    And the end of the Constellation program pits the von Braun idea against the O’Neil idea. I would go further than Tumlinson and suggest that what he calls O’Neilian is really a Heinleinian group – free enterprisers.

  • Scramjet is an interesting technology to replace some of that rocket crap… at-least for the atmosphere part of the travel

    Not to anyone who understands the issues of launch costs.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Ed Minchau wrote @ June 13th, 2010 at 5:02 pm

    Ed. good post. It goes a little farther with me. What I dont understand is why we cannot treat “space” and “human spaceflight” like aviation or medicine or anything else in The Republic.

    Look there is in my viewpoint a binary solutions set. Either we can export free enterprise with government regulation and government investments into human spaceflight or its going to die. The Countries that depend completely on a socialist model of economies either do not really do human spaceflight (the Europeans) or do it as a function of cold war relics (the Russians).

    In the end as the economy sours the Europeans are starting to tone down their descretionary space spending, the US is tiring of it, The Russians keep it going at a very minimal level…and the Reds seem to have adopted the Rand Simberg model of the space station which is to keep everyone employed and have a program on paper.

    If we cannot get the model of the US economy to work period again and get human spaceflight to follow it then I would suggest the rest of the story is pretty grim. NASA HSF has demonstrated that it has so priced itself out of the market that as the US economy does its rattle the US can no longer afford it.

    People who argue “lets explore” simply to me seem tone deaf.

    Robert G. Oler

  • the Reds seem to have adopted the Rand Simberg model of the space station which is to keep everyone employed and have a program on paper.

    The what?

    That’s not my model. It’s NASA’s.

  • vulture4

    Orion was designed for the lunar mission and is inappropriate, unneeded and absurdly expensive as an ISS lifeboat, a role that can be performed at far lower cost by either Soyuz or SpaceX. I am sorry to have to say this, because there are many hard-working and capable people involved, but the mistake was made by Mike Griffin five years ago, and now every day millions of irreplaceable tax dollars are going into a project that serves no useful purpose. The most useful thing we can salvage from the entire Constellation program is the billions of additional dollars that we are about to waste on it.

  • Gary Church

    moron, goofy, snarky jackass, and the rest; you people new to this site should know that these are made up names. The infomercial crew advertising for Spacex and the nasa haters pushing their tourism scam cannot get anyone to post here anymore so they have to make up people to reply to.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Rand Simberg wrote @ June 13th, 2010 at 5:28 pm

    at one point you had a humerous line which was along the lines (Kolker knows it better sorry I am a little hot having been moving hay) …but you noted that at one point NASA could save money by just keeping everyone employed and pretending to build a space station…something like that. It was I thought quite funny!

    Robert G. Oler

  • but you noted that at one point NASA could save money by just keeping everyone employed and pretending to build a space station

    That’s essentially what they did for the first ten years of the program. No one got fired or lost an election over it.

    NASA human spaceflight hasn’t been important since the mid sixties. And opening up space to humanity has never been.

  • Excellent article in today’s Florida Today detailing how the $1.9 billion proposed by the Obama Administration to upgrade KSC would be spent:

    http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20100613/BUSINESS/6130312/1003/Upgrading-KSC

    Among the ideas are a project to modify the VAB to process multiple vehicle designs to handle commercial craft, and to raze Pad 39B so each commercial company can use its own proprietary launcher instead of being forced into the government’s design.

    Lots of great ideas in the article. I’m more in favor of this than ever.

  • Vladislaw

    Just read the comments there Stephen, they sure didn’t like what you had to say. I think it’s time for them to get out a fork and figure out it’s done.

  • Gary Church: I brought up Tumlinson’s three space philosophies in part because of you – you and probably a dozen other commenters of varying viewpoints whom I have read over the last few weeks.

    Viewed through the lens of the von Braun philosophy, Neil Armstrong and Paul Spudis make perfect sense. Even your own comment about (paraphrase) wanting Falcon 9 to blow up on the pad (/paraphrase) makes sense in a way, as a metaphor for the whole private launch industry. Of course the von Braun philosophy would want private spaceflight to fail and only the von Braun-style Enormous Government-Run Program (like Constellation) to be implemented. Why? Because it’s the only way NASA knows how to do anything.

    It is very hard to discuss topics about which people feel passionately if their axioms are markedly different. The three (or four) different major space philosophies have different axioms – statements that are taken as true without rigorous proof. Everything else about that philosophy is derived from those axioms, which is the reason for the divergence of the philosophies.

    I doubt if these different philosophies have been explored much deeper than Rick Tumlinson’s little talk, or if the axioms of each have ever been expressly stated. So, we carry on these discussions colored by these unstated axioms and we talk past each other. It’s funny, because there’s maybe only one in a thousand people out there who feels passionate enough about space to give a damn about any of the arguments we have, whether it is over Constellation or ISS or or manned-versus-unmanned or free enterprise in space.

    Most people don’t care and some of the most vocal of those of us who do care are too busy calling each other poopy-heads to get anything done.

    Perhaps the only way to resolve many of these arguments is to take them to a deeper level, to the axioms in disagreement.

  • Post 100: Cx is dead. Long live Cx!

  • amightywind

    “Perhaps the only way to resolve many of these arguments is to take them to a deeper level, to the axioms in disagreement.”

    Agreed. The liberals need to be thrown from power ASAP.

  • John Malkin

    I guess the assumption is NASA has enough money in the 2010 budget to continue Constellation at this time in a meaningful way.

    Has anyone heard anything more about the markup?

  • common sense

    @Paul D. wrote @ June 13th, 2010 at 12:41 pm

    “Snarky: there’s a reason we don’t have scramjet powered launch vehicles. They comprehensively suck. The whole concept is just bad. ”

    They don’t suck even though they require a somewhat large inlet to work… It’s just they are not really adapted to any launch application in the Mach > 6 range. The reason is that you’d have to use hydrogen to go faster and it results in gigantic vehicles. So in the really distant future they may work for an ascent stage where you don’t need as large a vehicle as you’d need for a cruise vehicle but the question becomes then: Why?

    “Scramjets, if they are used at all, will be in long range hypersonic cruise missiles”

    Maybe. Even so you’d have to wonder about the cost vs say a subsonic drone stealthy, armed, and orbiting where the action is…

  • stackable nut

    Just a couple points,

    Caveat wiki, of course, but FWIW:

    Recently Lockheed Martin has been testing a new and different 1/5 scale rocket described to be similar in capabilities and design, known now simply as a “Space Reusable Launch Vehicle”. Two tests were conducted secretly at the Spaceport America in New Mexico. The first on December 19, 2007 was billed as a complete success, while the August 12, 2008 launch ended in an irreparable crash after 12.5 seconds of flight. A third test on October 10, 2009, was another success.

    w/r/t Orion CRV as a dead end, I was under the impression that the intent was to get the Orion CRV up and running as a baseline IOC, and then spiral it up for deep space missions.

  • Ben Russell-Gough

    @ stackable nut,

    It was my understanding that the stated objective of the Orion CRV was skills continuity and to get actual operational experience with several systems that, eventually, would be part of the BEO crew system, whatever that is. I got the impression from the wording that Orion could be considered a systems test bed but wouldn’t appear as an operational system (other than the escape pod version).

  • Bennett

    @ Ed Minchau “I would go further than Tumlinson and suggest that what he calls O’Neilian is really a Heinleinian group – free enterprisers.”

    Both of your comment along this line were fun to read and contain quite a bit truth in them. We should keep the concept in mind as we go forward. It’s important to recognize the shared visions, despite the political flavors of the month that may divide us.

    Thanks for that.

  • Even so you’d have to wonder about the cost vs say a subsonic drone stealthy, armed, and orbiting where the action is…

    What if it’s got the wrong armament, and what if the action isn’t where you think it is?

  • Major Tom

    FYI… Sen. Nelson has essentially endorsed all the human space flight/exploration elements of NASA’s FY 2011 budget request — including ISS to 2020, commercial cargo and crew, early HLV development, new sustainable exploration technology, and early exploration missions to Lagrange points and lunar orbit eventually leading to Mars — in a letter to Sen. Mikulski. HLV development start, but not a design decision, in targeted for 2011, which NASA is arguably doing anyway via engine work. HLV is suppossed to leverage Shuttle, Ares I, and Orion contracts/workforce, which again NASA is arguably doing anyway via the remaining Ares I J-2X work and Orion CRV. Gone are Nelson’s proposals for more Ares I tests or an Ares I-derived HLV. KSC upgrades get no mention. The only significant difference is holding out the possibility of one additional STS mission.

    spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=34305

    Nelson’s letter suppossedly represents a consensus with Sen. Hutchison, Sen. Vitter, and Sen. Rockefeller. Also gone are Hutchison’s proposals for a lengthy Shuttle extension or a Shuttle-derived HLV.

    FWIW…

  • fyi

    Commonsense will prevail at last…

  • Bennett

    Major Tom wrote @ June 15th, 2010 at 12:15 am

    That’s good news. Thanks!

    Now off to bed after spending the last hour catching the escaped ducks and geese and getting them back into their fenced yard. Dang, country life has it’s moments..

  • Bennett

    …yeah, no apostrophe on “its”.

  • Ferris Valyn

    Major Tom,
    Concerning the letter, I have a few concerns

    The bill would also require NASA to complete a number of studies, assessments, and milestones as we progress from a commercial cargo capability to commercial crew services. Astronaut safety will be the core component of all of these requirements, as with any human space flight program.

    Concern 1 is right here – how do we ensure that NASA doesn’t demand that the only surefire way to “safely” fly is to do it the NASA way? And how do we ensure that there is a push to actual development, rather than a “death by a thousand cuts” attempt?

    The authorization will propose that both the heavy-lift and crew exploration vehicles leverage the workforce, contracts, assets, and capabilities of the Shuttle, Ares I, and Orion efforts.

    That sounds an awful lot like a “I want an SDLV”, rather than being open-ended about HLV (IE an EELV based HLV). If we couldn’t afford Ares I & Orion, how are we going to deal with the fact that an SDLV is going to be a lot more expensive?

  • Bennett

    Ferris, I think that the phrase “The authorization will propose” gives Mr. Bolden license to go his own way, if he so decides…

  • kert

    That sounds an awful lot like a “I want an SDLV”,

    No, it sounds exaclty what its written like : i want to preserve as much of these contracts as jobs as possible.

  • Ben Russell-Gough

    I agree with kert that Senator Nelson’s first priority is to save as many Shuttle jobs in FL is possible. However, seriously, as their Senator, isn’t that in some ways his job?

    Personally, I find much that is good in his proposed plan. It isn’t perfect but it is a great deal more conservative and achievable than most alternatives. Frankly it has fewer questions and leaps of faith than President Obama’s proposals and, IMHO at least, that is a major selling point. I’m sure that those who believe that orthodox CxP is a necessity and those, like Robert Oler, who believe that the NASA model is inheritly flawed and needs to be set aside will demur and set our their reasons for their viewpoint.

    Ultimately, I suspect that any vote taken on this plan will finally settle the question of just how much bipartisan and universal support NASA has in Congress.

  • Major Tom

    “Concern 1 is right here – how do we ensure that NASA doesn’t demand that the only surefire way to “safely” fly is to do it the NASA way? And how do we ensure that there is a push to actual development, rather than a “death by a thousand cuts” attempt?”

    There isn’t any way to “ensure” that these things don’t happen. But what Nelson wrote in his letter isn’t any different from what Bolden has said in testimony. Bolden (or his successor) is going to have to be satisfied about the safety of any commercial crew vehicle before NASA astronauts fly on it, and that will mean some level of insight/oversight and checks/balances.

    That said, COTS has set good a precedent in terms of how NASA can manage its human rating requirements in a way that is consistent with a more commercial contracting mechanism. And if NASA wants to get the Soyuz monkey of its back and close the gap ASAP, they won’t have much incentive to screw around, anyway.

    “That sounds an awful lot like a ‘I want an SDLV’, rather than being open-ended about HLV (IE an EELV based HLV).”

    It could be — we’ll have to wait to see the actual authorization language. But Hutchison’s draft authorization only asked NASA to study Shuttle-derived options — it didn’t direct such a solution. Nelson’s letter appears to back off even from that position — it just asks NASA to leverage the workforce they’ve got, whatever the solution.

    FWIW…

  • common sense

    @ Rand Simberg wrote @ June 14th, 2010 at 8:19 pm

    “What if it’s got the wrong armament, and what if the action isn’t where you think it is?”

    The point is: cost. What is the cost a hypersonic cruise missile? What is the cost of a drone? How many drones can you afford per hypersonic missile? If you pick a large drone you can put several types of war head on different missiles. You could dedicate x drones on a given area. The only real application is your second statement about where the action might be, or not. A hypersonic cruise missile on submarine(s) could buy you some flexibility. But that would have to be for highly valued target… I think.

  • […] week the House Science and Technology Committee asked NASA for more details about its Orion plans, including the cost and schedule of the “lifeboat” version of the spacecraft that the […]

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