“No asteroids need apply — U.S. space policy is on a collision course with itself,” is the lede of a Washington Post editorial Sunday about the current space policy debate. The editorial’s key concern is that the White House’s proposal tries to do too much in human spaceflight with not enough money, and is thus “a poor use of limited resources.” (The editorial goes too far with that, though, when it claims the new policy would call for a human mission to Mars by 2025; that’s the date of a human NEO mission, with Mars orbital missions to follow about a decade later.) “If the administration and Congress truly want human spaceflight, they need to fund it adequately,” the editorial concludes. “Piecemeal funding that dooms programs to failure is a waste of money — especially when so many truly vital space functions, from the satellites that supply maps and communications to the telescopes that allow us to glimpse distant worlds, could benefit from such support.”
Some other random notes about various space policy issues at the state level:
In New Mexico, gubernatorial candidates Susana Martinez and Diane Denish offered somewhat differing takes on Spaceport America in response to questions from NMPolitics.net. Denish, a Democrat and the current lieutenant governor, calls the spaceport “a visionary idea”, saying that the spaceport will be used not just for “wealthy space tourists” but also satellite launches for communications and imaging needs (although probably not in the immediate future). Martinez, the Republican candidate, notes the spaceport’s “impressive potential” but says that “additional large investments would be a misguided use of our taxpayer funds”. (It’s not clear what, if any, additional investments are planned or have been requested for the spaceport.)
The situation is a little more dire in Oklahoma, where one state legislator is considering closing the state’s spaceport if “nothing substantial” happens there in the next three years. State Rep. Todd Russ, a Republican whose district includes the spaceport in Burns Flat, said in the sidebar to an article in The Oklahoman that he would talk with fellow legislators about closing the spaceport if there’s no activity there, especially after Rocketplane, a major planned tenant of the former air force base, filed for Chapter 7 liquidation this summer.
As you might expect NASA’s future has emerged as a major issue in political races in Brevard County, Florida, home to the Kennedy Space Center and thousands of workers whose jobs may be lost once the shuttle is retired next year. It’s showing up not just in Congressional races, but also at the state and local level. “I can’t remember a time in the last 20 years when NASA was at the forefront like it is now,” Titusville Area Chamber of Commerce President Marcia Gaedcke told Florida Today.
“(The editorial goes too far with that, though, when it claims the new policy would call for a human mission to Mars by 2025; that’s the date of a human NEO mission, with Mars orbital missions to follow about a decade later.)”
The editorial got other facts wrong, like the amount in the Augustine report needed to implement Constellation on schedule. It’s an additional $3 billion per year (not over five years) increase to NASA’s budget. And it’s actually as high as $5 billion per year if other major activities (like ISS) are not ramped down to help pay for it.
FWIW…
The inconvient truth about NASA underfunding is making the rounds.
There is no cheap.
I said it months ago. Obama was foolish to gratuitously alienate voters on the space coast with his mad plans. He handed the GOP a potent issue in a crucial state. The gifts keep coming. November is gonna be fun!
These spaceports are nutty. The only worse place I can think of than New Mexico for an orbital launch to any inclination is Oklahoma. Spaceport proponents have been trying to hold the coat tails of Obamaspace and found that they are disintegrating.
The Washington Post ever eager to prop up this disastrous administration is just criticizing a fluid situation in congress from the cheap seats. They gloss over the fact that congress must take over because of a failure of leadership of Obama. Reminds me of the zombies on this site who moan “it costs too much”, without adding to the debate.
It is a marvel to see something sensible coming from the Washington Post on this subject. Things cost what they cost and pretending otherwise just leads to trouble.
amightywind wrote @ August 8th, 2010 at 11:53 am
sorry you went into the Whittington category with the Falcon 9 second stage remarks. I should have put you there with the Rummy remarks but then I am kind
Robert G. Oler
Mark R. Whittington wrote @ August 8th, 2010 at 12:05 pm
It is a marvel to see something sensible coming from the Washington Post on this subject. Things cost what they cost and pretending otherwise just leads to trouble…
no they dont. They ‘cost’ what the value will bear.
The “value” in Constellation became simply that as a program it existed and floundered on from one year to the next doing not a lot and really going nowhere in any real time frame (2020 or 2025 back to the Moon who cares now). What has ended with the Obama policy is that there is no longer any value in that spending.
When the USMC needed a vehicle that would keep folks safe in IED laden Iraq a bunch of folks figured out how to build the vehicle for far less then Lockheed Martin is still floundering on its concept. Musk has figured out how to build rockets for far less then the traditional aerospace companies….Boeing with the B-17 did the same thing.
Things do not cost what they cost. That is a stupid statement.
They cost what people are willing to pay. You were willing to pay billions for a program that was going nowhere. That is your problem.
We are going another way. A heavy lift can be built for the money NASA has in its budget if the program is run more like Musk and his Falcon’s and less like ATK and their “Ares”.
You use to be far better then this.
Robert G. Oler
There are a few races in The Republic at the state and senatorial level (but mostly at the state level) which in my view though almost not visible on the national scale and the NM Gov race is one of those (the TX race is another)…and to some extent how the NM spaceport figures in it might signal where and how space might play a role in any future national campaign.
The GOP candidate is running a traditional GOP campaign (crime, taxes, etc) while the Dem is actually trying to run a “this is the NM I would create” campaign. One can tell the difference in the views on the Spaceport…the notion that “this is just for wealthy people” from the GOP candidate ignores the “real” jobs (ie non tax payer jobs) that will be created by say the flights by SpaceShip 2. And all this in an area that has virtually no real high tech jobs now.
At somepoint (and far to late for the elections) SpaceShip 2 and the like do have to start generating revenue…but go read both statements on the spaceport, and you can easily see the difference.
(in full disclosure I have friends working at the Spaceport and on the campaign of the Lt Gov (the Dem).
Robert G. Oler
“The only worse place I can think of than New Mexico for an orbital launch to any inclination is Oklahoma.”
These were a started under the Bush administration. Obama had and has nothing to do with them.
Commercial space is not Obamaspace. Commercial space is a Republican platform. Gov’t space is not a Republican platform.
Nothing like Rocketplane Kistler leaving in the middle of the night to cast the fate of the Oklahoma Spaceport…As for New Mexico, I imagine that the people downrange in Texas and further might have something to say about orbital launches from the New Mexico Spaceport. The only things that will fly out of there will be suborbital missions with trajectories much smaller in range and altitude. Unless a system emerges that can fly orbital trajectories without dropping pieces along the way, inland spaceports will have a hard time selling a satellite launch.
The value of any return to the Moon effort is that it deploys Americans on that body that has been rightly called the Gibraltar of Space, with all that implies.
Speaking of value, I take from what the GOP candidate for governor of New Mexico is saying is that the New Mexico space port has to have some kind of economic return and not become a state sponsored jobs program.
Unless a system emerges that can fly orbital trajectories without dropping pieces along the way
That is the plan…
Mark R. Whittington wrote @ August 8th, 2010 at 2:31 pm
So the American Military want to annex the Moon to
a/ Piss off the Spanish.
b/ Command the Pillars of Hercules with big Mass Drivers.
c/ Piss off the Spanish some more.
If I remember my history the US Military abandoned the Moon as a military ‘high ground’ in about 1965…
http://www.astronautix.com/articles/lunex.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Horizon
Mind you Gib is chronically short of water so you’re right there…
“The value of any return to the Moon effort is that it deploys Americans on that body that has been rightly called the Gibraltar of Space, with all that implies.”
That is a false analogy. A military lunar base would have little effect on controlling cis-lunar space, unlike Gibraltar in the Med. Vehicles could pass to and from LEO and GSO and a military force on moon could do little about it. Same goes for escape trajectories. A lunar base is no more military significant than Antarctica.
“The value of any return to the Moon effort is that it deploys Americans on that body that has been rightly called the Gibraltar of Space, with all that implies.”
Gibraltar of Space, eh? A big rock that offers virtually nothing to people living on it or with it, except symbolically as an outpost. Negligible natural resources, and an economy that isn’t based on any kind of production. Of minimal value for modern military dominance.
I never had thought of the Moon that way, but there sure are some similarities.
amightywind wrote @ August 8th, 2010 at 11:53 am<- Best you reassess. The goal of the GOP is to privatize NASA at worst- or dissove it at best. If you want to suffocate the space program, vote GOP.
Doug Lassiter wrote @ August 8th, 2010 at 3:05 pm – “A big rock that offers virtually nothing to people living on it or with it, except symbolically as an outpost. Negligible natural resources, and an economy that isn’t based on any kind of production. Of minimal value for modern military dominance.”
Information can be your friend.
Moon 101 – A Course in Lunar Science for non-specialists
And
The Moon: Port of Entry to Cislunar Space
“Musk has figured out how to build rockets for far less then the traditional aerospace companies….” <- So did Aurora and Revell. Comparing SpaceX rocketeers on a par with NASA operations is utterly bogus. And you know it. Musk hasn't flown anybody in space. Stop talking, start flying.
"They cost what people are willing to pay." Which is why so few people are driving Tesla roadsters. But then Americans are wising up to Musk's business philosophy, freely borrowed from WC Fields: "Never give the suckers an even break or smarten up the chumps."
Mark R. Whittington wrote @ August 8th, 2010 at 2:31 pm
The value of any return to the Moon effort is that it deploys Americans on that body that has been rightly called the Gibraltar of Space, with all that implies…
who is so stupid as to call the Moon “The Gibraltar of Space”. That is a ridiculous statement in all respects.
First off as any serious strategery person knows (and Patton realized as early as WW2) fixed fortifications are an expensive liability. modern warfare or other events are fluid and dynamic and crush fixed positions with ease. Gibraltar itself has almost no strategic advantage as a military installation (OK maybe the analogy is correct after all).
Second no single fixed installation on the Moon can now or will in the future “claim” the Moon or protect it from other groups who are there. If there is minable water on the Poles there is no “we land here for the US (Or Red china) and claim everything that there is”. Goofy Mark.
Third and most important, there is no need to go to the Moon even for what resources are there. It is like the US trying to settle California with the technologies of the late 1700’s.
The “Gib of the Moon” doctrine is Palinish. It is designed to simply something to rhetoric and obliterate thought. You use to be smarter then that.
And things do not cost what they cost. That thinking only works when rhetoric and goofiness are driving the equation not reality and thought…the current brand of the GOP
Robert G. Oler
A lunar base is no more military significant than Antarctica. <- Nonsense. But you go one believing otherwise. It's amusing.
RocketBuilder wrote @ August 8th, 2010 at 2:24 pm
Unless a system emerges that can fly orbital trajectories without dropping pieces along the way,…
I dont think that they are going to get there anytime fast (although I might be surprised) but I am pretty sure that is the plan.
Having said that the fly in that ointment might be that “things drop by mistake” even in reusable vehicles….and what it is going to take to make a spaceport like NM “work” is a level of success in terms of reliability where people are content with reusable (or expendable vehicles as long as they drop on purpose in the ocean) flying overhead much as they are airplanes…
In other words the “thing fell from the sky” events have to be at a minimum and then it wont matter. That day is coming
Robert G. Oler
DCSCA wrote @ August 8th, 2010 at 3:45 pm
A lunar base is no more military significant than Antarctica. <- Nonsense. But you go one believing otherwise. It's amusing….
yeah sure. If saying things are so then Saddam would have had WMD.
Say how it is significant. And then find someone with stars on their shoulder and a retired flag rank to back you up and we might have something there.
otherwise you are just another carny barker.
Robert G. Oler
sorry you went into the Whittington category with the Falcon 9 second stage remarks. I should have put you there with the Rummy remarks but then I am kind
Stay tuned for the next ‘technical blog’ on Falcon 9 launch day for my full postmortem analysis.
DCSCA wrote @ August 8th, 2010 at 3:41 pm
“Musk has figured out how to build rockets for far less then the traditional aerospace companies….†<- So did Aurora and Revell.
no Aurora and Revell built/build plastic models. One of my fun hobbies to this day.
Musk has built a rocket (several actually) that has gone to orbit. Learn the difference and then you are something more then a person with a keyboard making random thoughts on it.
Robert G. Oler
“Gibraltar of Space, eh? A big rock that offers virtually nothing to people living on it or with it, except symbolically as an outpost.” Thank you, Lord Doug Almighty, who has never heard of Seward’s Folly.
“Musk has figured out how to build rockets for far less then the traditional aerospace companies….Boeing with the B-17 did the same thing.”
Except, of course, that Musk has taken and continues to solicit government subsidies. “The prototype B-17, designated Model 299, was designed by a team of engineers led by E. Gifford Emery and Edward Curtis Wells and built at Boeing’s own expense.”
Mark R. Whittington wrote @ August 8th, 2010 at 2:31 pm
I take from what the GOP candidate for governor of New Mexico is saying is that the New Mexico space port has to have some kind of economic return and not become a state sponsored jobs program…..
like Constellation?
you can take whatever you want from the GOP candidates statement, you once thought the Iraq war could be won by 25000 Americans. But no to those of us who read and understand the English language that is not what Susanna said.
Robert
no Aurora and Revell built/build plastic models. <- including rockets. Bone up on that.
Musk has built a rocket (several actually) that has gone to orbit. <– =yawn= Your sales pitch is weak. Even Iran has done that. And the Chinese have orbited a man.
Another day moves from dawn to dusk;
And still we wait on Elon Musk;
Month upon month are all that fly;
And still no Dragons cross our skies.
Stop talking. Start flying.
amightywind wrote @ August 8th, 2010 at 3:49 pm
“Stay tuned for the next ‘technical blog’ on Falcon 9 launch day for my full postmortem analysis.”
Knowing you, you’ve already written it:
“It was a spectacular failure from the moment that SpaceX tried to launch their Falcon 9 “model rocket”. That it made it to space was no surprise, as any Boy Scout could have done that. No, their failure was missing their target orbit by .001% – a HUGE FAILURE for any wanna-be space company”…
Sometime in the 2020s we will begin building a new space facility at one of the Lagrange points. We will need some version of heavy lift. We will need and hopefully have a multitude of LEO access options worldwide who will meet at ISS to transfer to larger craft to go to Lagrange constructions sites. Boots and flag missions along the way to keep public focus.
From Lagrange the moon becomes practical in many ways, as do other distant targets.
Fully fund NASA for it’s missions, I think it’s $21B for next 3 years, and we enable a robust leap in a broad spectrum of national priorities. As it becomes heated politically we may see this happen to the credit of the 111th Congress.
amightywind wrote @ August 8th, 2010 at 11:53 am
“I said it months ago. Obama was foolish to gratuitously alienate voters on the space coast with his mad plans. He handed the GOP a potent issue in a crucial state. The gifts keep coming. November is gonna be fun!” <- When are you going to comprehend that 'Obama' had zilch to do with this; he shows up and reads what bureaucrats have recommended. He has about as much interest in the space program as his predecessor, which should tell you a great deal. In fact, the only person inside the WH who had any genuine interest in the space agency in the past 20 years was Hillary Clinton.
We will need some version of heavy lift.
No we won’t. We can get a space station to a Lagrange point without it.
From “The Shuttle Decision” (for all you SRB naysayers)
In August 1961, United Technology Corp. fired a 96-inch solid rocket that developed 250,000 pounds of thrust. The following year saw the first 120-inch tests-twice the diameter of the Minuteman-that reached 700,000 pounds of thrust. The next milestone was reached when the diameter was increased to 156 inches, the largest size compatible with rail transport. During 1964, both Thiokol and Lockheed Propulsion Co. fired test units that topped the million-pound-thrust mark.
Large rocket stages can be moved by barges over water as well as by land. Aerojet was building versions with 260-inch diameters. The 260-inch motor was kept in a test pit with its nozzle pointing upward. In February 1966, a night firing near Miami shot flame and smoke a mile and a half into the air that was seen nearly a 100 miles away. In June 1967, another firing set a new record with 5.7 million pounds of thrust. 128
At NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, a 1965 study projected that production costs for a 260-inch motor would run to $1.50 per pound of [48] weight, or roughly a dollar per pound of thrust. This contrasted sharply with the liquid-fueled Saturn V, which, with 7.5 million pounds of thrust versus 6 million for the big solid, was in the same class. Even without its Apollo moonship, however, the Saturn V cost $185 million to purchase, over thirty times more than the 260-inch motor. By 1966, NASA officials were looking ahead already to sizes as large as 600 inches, noting that “there is no fundamental reason to expect that motors 50 feet in diameter could not be made.” 129
Didnt I read somewhere, I think earlier today, as a matter of fact. That some areas are closing their private space ports? That doesnt sound good for the private sector, now does it? Go ORION, Go ORION, Go ORION. Go ORION. The point here is that any craft that can reach the moon, can take us beyond it. Either to and asteroid or Mars, which ever mission would be chosen. In the end I dont really think we can abandon the Moon since it is a good point to start into deep space. A Moon base would be GREAT. I view it sometlhign like what we have in Antartica.
It has been a half century since the aluminum rich solid fuel mixtures made very powerful SRB’s possible. We now have the precision casting methods and non-destructive inspection technologies to make them safe for man-rated vehicles- as over a hundred shuttle launches have shown.
Strap on boosters 50 feet in diameter can be built. Consider the possibilities for such a program if the money spent on one cold war toy was instead used for space exploration.
“The point here is that any craft that can reach the moon, can take us beyond it. Either to and asteroid or Mars, which ever mission would be chosen.”
Not really. There is the little matter of air for a couple years. And the Radiation. And propulsion to push all that air and shielding around. And spinning the vehicle for artificial gravity to prevent zero-g debilitation over the course of a multi-year mission. And alot of TV dinners.
Anne Spudis wrote @ August 8th, 2010 at 3:40 pm
“Information can be your friend.”
Agree completely. Friends are nice. But is there a particular point you wish to make with these friends?
Oh, He3 (such as it might promise to someday offer something), platinum group metals (whose abundance on the Moon is arguable), water (such as it might be there) and I guess rocks to melt into bricks. I have no trouble with the idea that the Moon has those things. What is not clear is whether the Moon offers those things to humankind in a way that is really economical. That needs to be determined determined, but it’s not going to be first determined by sending people there to pick up rocks.
As to Seward’s Folly, the comparison with the Moon is ridiculous. Sending people to Alaska and keeping them there is (and was) incredibly cheap. Sending people to the Moon and keeping them there is decidedly not. There are many places on the Earth that once hosted ambitious and starry-eyed colonists, whose dreams of harvesting riches were never made real. Note that Seward’s original intent in buying Alaska from Russia was not really to harvest riches there. It was to spread American influence and military standing. In space, you don’t need a rock to do that.
DCSCA wrote:
When are you going to comprehend that ‘Obama’ had zilch to do with this; he shows up and reads what bureaucrats have recommended.
What I think is irrelevant. Do you think those who lost their jobs at KSC will blame a faceless bureaucrat? No, they will rightly blame Obama. If Obama didn’t make the decision then he was, in Neil Armstrong’s words, “poorly advised.” Obama and his Chief of Staff are responsible for surrounding themselves with good advice. They are surrounded by John Holdren, Lori Garver, and Charles Bolden. Need I say more?
The NEO mission does make sense if the object is to create an outpost. This is actually very doable if the object is composed mostly of water ice or has large interior areas made up of ice. With simple heat the ice can be melted to sufficient depth to provide a sea level radiation environment. With a constant source of solar power or a “trashcan” reactor, a crew can keep melting ice for several months creating very large living areas. This is where the inflatable habitat has some application. A radiation sanctuary with constant electricity and unlimited water can stay warm, make air, grow food, and perform the processes needed to sustain life with very limited outside support. The only downside is the near zero g, which is debilitating. But with a big enough sanctuary even that might be remedied with centrifuges where people sleep and eat….and eliminate bodily waste comfortably, at one G. The workday would be soaring through ice tunnels. I will go.
I think my best idea for asteroid living is a torus floating in a toroidal water filled tunnel. The torus is several hundred feet in diameter and spins like a circular submarine in it’s tunnel far beneath the surface of the asteroid. This would allow people to live in oneG and work in near Zero G- while shielded from cosmic radiation. You actually might scuba dive out of it into the zero g tunnel environment inside the asteroid. I will go anytime.
But we will need HLV’s.
I believe this number has gone up to 25,000 new near earth objects;
From Wiki-
“As of May 27, 2010, WISE has discovered 12,141 previously unknown asteroids, of which 64 are considered near-Earth, and 11 new comets.[12][13]”
Consider the possibilities for such a program if the money spent on one cold war toy was instead used for space exploration.
Do you work on the Shuttle SRBs?
@Doug Lassiter
The Moon does have oxygen, even if none of the other things work out (such as He3, PGM, cold trap ice sheets)
The economics of LUNOX to LEO might not work out but LUNOX to EML-1 and/or EML-2 could assist getting to NEOs, Phobos, Mars, etc . . .
And, maybe the Moon does have tastier cheese than merely LUNOX.
amightywind wrote @ August 8th, 2010 at 5:36 pm
What I think is irrelevant. Do you think those who lost their jobs at KSC will blame a faceless bureaucrat?…
no nor will they blame Bush the last who along with most of Washington wants to shut down the shuttle program before another disaster happens.
They will blame Obama…but it doesnt matter to his reelection chances.
The people who were going to blame Obama were never going to vote for him anyway. And even if everyone who did vote for Obama but now is angry over losing their job switched and voted mindlessly for whatever Republican goes up…it wouldnt have changed the outcome in 08…and FL wont be close in 12.
Goofy analysis on your part. typical
Robert G. Oler
Alaska was the first part of what Seward wanted. He planned on connecting it to the lower states by grabbing Canada or at least what is now British Columbia. By demanding reperations from Britain for their support of the South during the Civil War, especially the CSS Alabama, they figured one form of payment would be in land. Instead, we got $15.5 million dollers.
Anne Spudis wrote @ August 8th, 2010 at 3:40 pm
is this more He3 nonsense? or some new stuff?
Robert G. oler
Some mindless parrots on this site keep repeating the same lines over and over:
Nonsense. But you go one believing otherwise. It’s amusing….
Stop talking. Start flying.
Radiation is a problem
Sidemount is coming
They think the more times they say them, the more likely it will come true
Radiation is a problem
Isn’t that one actually true? Not a problem that requires HLV, but a problem nonetheless?
Yes, radiation is a problem. It is THE problem in square one. The space industry is not a toursit industry- it is a nuclear industry because the workers are radiation workers. But anything I say is a problem for Byeman- I have proved him wrong a couple times and did not let him get away with a technobabble explanation. He will never forgive me.
Dennis Berube wrote @ August 8th, 2010 at 5:02 pm
“Go ORION. The point here is that any craft that can reach the moon, can take us beyond it. Either to and asteroid or Mars, which ever mission would be chosen.”
Aah, ignorance is bliss for you.
Just as Dragon and CST-100 are taxis to LEO, Orion is a taxi to the Moon.
You want to take it beyond the Moon, but think of it as a mini-van that you are in with three colleagues for 2-3 months, and you can’t go outside to stretch, exercise, or get any privacy. How would you be physically after all that time? Unless you want our astronauts to wither away physically, Orion is only a short-term use vehicle.
No, the exploration vehicles that will eventually be used for asteroid and Mars missions will be made out of structures the size of ISS modules (or bigger), and will allow the astronauts to exercise, work, move around, and even get some privacy during the weeks and months that they are in zero G.
“The economics of LUNOX to LEO might not work out but LUNOX to EML-1 and/or EML-2 could assist getting to NEOs, Phobos, Mars, etc . . .
I’ll grant you that. It’s going to require some considerable energy to get it, and a reducing agent (H2?) as well. But the key words are “might” and “could”.
“And, maybe the Moon does have tastier cheese than merely LUNOX.”
Now *that* would be quite awesome. Better than cheesy arguments for returning to the Moon.
@ Dennis Berube
Its going to a take a meter of water shielding just to protect astronauts from a solar event; two meters to bring radiation levels down to terrestrial levels; and 5 meters to keep the human brain from being zapped and damaged by heavy nuclei. Hydrogen shielding my reduce radiation shielding mass by two or three times. But the radiation shielding requirements for interplanetary travel over several months is going to be substantial and could possibly require over a thousands tonnes of mass shielding. And that doesn’t include the transport vehicle mass.
Trying to move over a thousand tonnes of shielded spacecraft to Mars and back using chemical rockets is a bad idea, IMO. NASA either needs to adopt the Aldrin Cycler concept or start developing titanic light sails (they don’t require any fuel).
Yes, radiation is a problem. It is THE problem in square one.
No, affordable lift or maybe even cheap lift is THE problem in square one. It’s the one capability that will solve pretty much all other problems.
Robert G. Oler wrote @ August 8th, 2010 at 7:03 pm
“is this more He3 nonsense? or some new stuff?”
As once said by a clever sage, He3 makes people talk funny.
To get back on topic here, what was most eyebrow raising in the Post editorial were the words
“But with the funding for NASA set around $19 billion and not likely to change, bold plans for humans in space are simply not feasible. Something must give. If the administration and Congress truly want human spaceflight, they need to fund it adequately. Piecemeal funding that dooms programs to failure is a waste of money — especially when so many truly vital space functions …”
Bold plans for human spaceflight are not likely to be feasible, they’re saying, and human space flight really isn’t a “vital function” anyway. Them’s strong words.
If the budget stays flat, and it likely will NASA will have to jettison non-core activities. The obvious targets are life sciences and earth/climate sciences. If the appropriators really thought out of the box they would cancel the ISS. That thing is an open sore. Kill ISS and explore the solar system with a fully funded AresI&V/Orion.
“No, affordable lift or maybe even cheap lift is THE problem in square one. It’s the one capability that will solve pretty much all other problems.”
There is no cheap. Heavy Lift is the only problem solver. We disagree.
Doug Lassiter wrote @ August 8th, 2010 at 8:02 pm
Doug.
yes .
To me there are three or four hopeful signs out of the Senate Bill which I fully expect to become law.
1. Commercial access to orbit. It is going to happen and that is the hope for a new start in human spaceflight from how one gets to orbit to what is done there to HOW THINGS ARE DONE…
2. Commercial suborbital. To me this is a big deal and is not talked about a lot. If Rutan/Branson, the folks at Blue etc can make their numbers and their numbers start the line of people trying to get to space even in a suborbital fashion then the trend starts. There would have never been a rich airline industry in the country without the barnstormers and the sub orbital people are the barnstormers. As acceptance of risk and rewards grows, cost will come down, routine will settle in…and while the energy to go and come from orbit is greater the “surviving” isnt ie the same technology to keep people alive at 62 nm or greater works more or less (and in scale at orbit)…eventually the systems will scale and that will be the big opening.
3. Both 1 and 2 spawn entirely new companies and organizations and new ways of doing business. That alone challenges the older companies and helps break out of the mold that has caused human spaceflight to get more not less expensive.
4. and I know that this is controversial…but in the end we stop the mindless exploration babble about what human spaceflight is good for. That has really set us off track in terms of the dollars spent. It is sort of the Flying Dutchman of space policy…”we have to go somewhere” as if humans going to another world is justification all on its own. There has to be a reason and some cost V value notion to make the entire thing work.
I dont think that the change occurs overnight, but mark my words if there is a human spaceflight industry in 10-20 years that is of taxpayer value not cost…this will be where it turned.
Robert G. Oler
GaryChurch, The inconvient truth about NASA underfunding is making the rounds. There is no cheap.
Tell that to those silly guys who made a rocket for the cost of NASA’s freaking launch pad and a test flight on non-representative hardware. Really, this is a joke of epic proportions. NASA has the money. NASA needs to lower costs, not sit on its hands hoping for unrealistic budget increases.
Never before have I witnessed conservatives call for more spending in such dire economic times. It’s like an episode of the Twilight Zone.
Indeed, if NASA can’t do anything worthwhile on $19B/year, give it someone who can.
Robert G. Oler wrote @ August 8th, 2010 at 8:50 pm
“but in the end we stop the mindless exploration babble about what human spaceflight is good for. That has really set us off track in terms of the dollars spent. ”
Well put. This truly is key. We really have no idea what modern space “exploration” is and, as a result, we’ll have no idea when we’ve done it. Not something you build a program on.
I’m not sure if this has led us “off track”, but that word has sure been a distraction in trying to come up with a credible motive for human space flight. I’m impressed that the Post editorial managed to resist the temptation to use it.
Josh Cryer wrote @ August 8th, 2010 at 9:02 pm
Never before have I witnessed conservatives call for more spending in such dire economic times. It’s like an episode of the Twilight Zone….
yes what a splendid analogy.
If the money spent on Ares had been spent on something that the right wing didnt like; say oh keeping kids in schools; the right wing would be all over the waste and bad spending…but because they like the “goal” (nutty in itself) of the effort they excuse everything.
This is their tendency anyway and it got worse in the Bush administration as one after the other of the efforts there floundered.
Robert G. Oler
Doug Lassiter wrote @ August 8th, 2010 at 9:11 pm
Well put. This truly is key. We really have no idea what modern space “exploration†is and, as a result, we’ll have no idea when we’ve done it. Not something you build a program on….
thanks. The irony of the gig is that the satellites in orbit around the various “bodies” of the solar system (or on their way) have done more “real” exploration then Constellation has done in the same period of time…and for far less money.
When Agnew did his vision of a post Apollo effort…there was a phrase that emerged that has haunted NASA HSF since “the next logical step” and the only logic in the step is that it is the next “thing” to do…not really ever explaining why it was a good thing to take or what we expected to be different after we have gotten there.
We have just finished after two to three depending on how you count decades of trying to build a space station. It was the next logical step…so what happens when the theory is to do the “next one”…it was to completely ignore it.
There is no hint of what we are going to do with the Station; now you have people saying “dump it” or “we have to go someplace” and yet none of them can really explain why. This has lead to lame things like “The Gibraltar” or the notion of He3 that is virtually useless now.
I was talking with one of the “name” geniuses at JSC this weekend and asked this person “what happens with a Moon base” and the answer was “it is the thing we do before going to Mars” but I said “what do we do with it after we have it”…”oh what we are doing with the space station, using it”.
It is just nonsense.
Robert G. Oler
“The obvious targets are life sciences and earth/climate sciences”
Those are core activities. Read the Space Act.
first task:
The expansion of human knowledge of the Earth and of phenomena in the atmosphere and space
Church,
You have been wrong about everything, except the crushed Atlases.
You have been proven wrong about SRB’s
“The space industry is not a tourist industry- it is a nuclear industry because the workers are radiation workers.”
More blathering nonsense
“”The obvious targets are life sciences and earth/climate sciences—
Byeman wrote @ August 8th, 2010 at 9:25 pm
“Those are core activities. Read the Space Act.”
I was about to say the same thing but, you know, they really aren’t that strongly laid out in the Space Act. Earth science, yes, certainly. Climate science not explicitly. Life sciences? Maybe, sorta.
Not human space flight, explicitly. That’s somewhat boggling. That the defining document for NASA doesn’t say a word about human space flight.
The Space Act has become somewhat of a hodgepodge, with numerous amendments of questionable relevance. But it is the guiding document for NASA, though not necessarily the expression of our national ambitions in space.
One has to wonder if the Eisenhower administration was aware of the dangers of explicitly endorsing human space flight, and intentionally didn’t mention it in the original Space Act. That is, human space flight was, to them, one possible implicit implementation strategy to achieve stated agency goals, but not a goal in itself. If so, that was very wise. Is there a historical account of the Space Act somewhere?
Mark: “Things cost what they cost and pretending otherwise just leads to trouble.”
So you don’t think you can lower costs by developing and using technology whose purpose is to lower costs, by using different management strategies intended in part to lower costs like data purchases, hosted payloads, and fixed-price milestone-based contracts when appropriate, by sharing costs and infrastructure maintenance with commercial and/or international partners, by using robotic scouts to refine and improve space architectures and plans, or by other means?
If things cost what they cost and there’s nothing to do about it, then what’s the point of an astronaut exploration effort based on extremely expensive government heavy lift rockets and spacecraft? We will never be able to do much with expensive systems like that, so if we can’t reduce the costs what’s the point?
It seems that if costs are costs and that’s the end of it, we’d better find something cheaper to do so that we can at least do a good job of it.
On the other hand, if costs can be lowered, let’s get on with lowering them so we can do a good job with the things the WP thinks are important and the HSF exploration stuff all at the same time.
… just a quick followup to the “wonder” in my last post.
On consulting my histories, Bilstein states that when the Space Act was put before Congress, the Air Force and Navy were still jockeying about responsibility for human space flight. So the Administration had to be vague about to what extent NASA would be responsible for it. The country needed an entity to handle civil space, but the Administration and Congress were being cautious about handing that new entity the keys to human space flight. Nonetheless, it’s a matter of record that NASA is not explicitly chartered to do human space flight.
amightywind wrote @ August 8th, 2010 at 8:17 pm
A beautiful parody.
Who are you, that you mock so well?
…the Air Force and Navy were still jockeying about…”
I go with Niven’s take, give Government Space Flight to the Air Force.
By the way, Doug Lassiter’s comments have been excellent.
“You have been wrong about everything, except the crushed Atlases.”
How about the air lit solids? (Yes, I was right, the Atlas II does use them)
How about the fiberglass SRB’s? (Yes, I was right, they were called filament wound casings for the polar orbit launches)
What about the shuttle being a spyplane (Yes, the intelligence mission, to launch AND recover secret payloads in one polar orbit made it a spyplane).
Radiation is no problem huh?
And how exactly, have you proven me wrong about SRB’s or anything else?
You are the one blathering surly arrogant technobabble nonsense.
I go with Niven’s take, give Government Space Flight to the Air Force.
What would they do with it?
“Josh Cryer wrote @ August 8th, 2010 at 9:02 pm
Never before have I witnessed conservatives call for more spending in such dire economic times. It’s like an episode of the Twilight Zone….
Josh, I am a dem, like Oler. We just happen to stand on opposite sides of the fence concerning Human Space Flight and Defense Spending. Contribute and stop labeling people please.
The space industry is not a tourist industry- it is a nuclear industry because the workers are radiation workers.
“More blathering nonsense”
From, Radiation and the International Space Station: Recommendations to Reduce Risk (2000)
Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and Applications (CPSMA)
Space Studies Board (SSB)
-the great solar storm of August 4, 1972, which like William Tell’s apple-splitting arrow, split the 8 months between the last two Apollo Moon landings evenly. It delivered a total dose of radiation over half a day that, had it missed the middle and hit the Apollo mission at either end, would have caused the crew in the lunar module to suffer acute radiation sickness and, given the uncertainty in the estimate, possibly even death
From “Radiation Risks and the Vision for Space Exploration” concerning the same event.
Skin doses of this magnitude, delivered in less than a day, with dose rates as high as 1.5 to 2.0 Gy h−1, could have resulted in severe skin damage, including skin blistering and peeling. Even inside a spacecraft, skin doses as large as 2 Gy would have been possible. In addition, bone marrow doses at ~1 Gy could have been received by the crew, resulting in some hematological responses, including blood count changes and possibly nausea or vomiting inside a spacesuit or typical spacecraft. Clearly this event could have had severe consequences for either Apollo 16 or 17 if it had occurred during either of these missions.
Doug Lassiter wrote @ August 8th, 2010 at 10:18 pm
For all their talk about understanding economics the GOP is really a bunch of losers when it comes to it…the last Republican President to balance the budget was Ike. (Nixon might have done it but I think it was Ike).
Ike had a good line about space dollars…when asked at a press conference about funding a satellite that would take pictures of the Moon…he replied that he thought it was a good idea, but didnt want to run a deficit to pay for it.
Ike’s response to the Soviet rocket/satellite situation was to “amp up” NACA and form NASA as a sort of space research group. Even JFK was concerned about the spending.
Robert G. Oler
Robert G. Oler wrote @ August 8th, 2010 at 7:03 pm – “is this more He3 nonsense? or some new stuff?”
An inquiring mind needs only to click on the links and read what’s there.
Here’s a link for you too, Anne.
Are you ‘man’ enough?
“Third and most important, there is no need to go to the Moon even for what resources are there.”
we cant long trips to solar system without test on moon surface..
there we can test the vasimrs and the life support close cycle life systems on the moon..
and a moon base will not be milittaristic ofcourse.
a moon base is needed,jut Nasa cannot land to the moon,,dont have the money..
so the best nasa can build is the heavy rocket and the orion capsule..
and let europe ,russia and privates to build the habitation modules ,for deep space,lunar surface,and the landers..
@ Aggelos,
“we cant long trips to solar system without test on moon surface.”
Actually, that is wrong. If I were planning a trip to Mars, a lunar surface base, whatever the size, would actually be the worst possible thing to do.
There is no reason why you can’t test your orbiter/MTV’s shielding and life-support systems at one of the EML gravitational liberation spots. They are actually slightly easier to get to than the Moon and have the advantage of not having a second deep gravity well to enter and leave for every crew rotation. They are actually closer to a real trans-Mars cruise environment than the lunar surface as they have anatropic radiation exposure and no close-range IR radiation from the surface rocks.
With regard to a lander, remember that Mars has an atmosphere, although it is tenuous in comparison with Earth’s. Although there may be many common features between a lunar and Martian lander, there will also be many significant engineering differences.
ISRU on Mars will be different from that on the Moon in almost all ways. Whilst lunar ISRU may ultimately be desirable on its own merits, it does not offer any real lessons for Martian ISRU that cannot be adequately learnt in a suitably-equipped laboratory on Earth.
Overall, I cannot see what advantages a lunar surface outpost would provide for a crewed Mars expedition.
“If the administration and Congress truly want human spaceflight, they need to fund it adequately,†the editorial concludes. “Piecemeal funding that dooms programs to failure is a waste of money — especially when so many truly vital space functions, from the satellites that supply maps and communications to the telescopes that allow us to glimpse distant worlds, could benefit from such support.â€
That first statement says it all, and I don’t see much hope in that happening at all, despite what the GOPers say on this blog about what a GOPer Congress might do in 2011.
And what will they do besides cut funding? I don’t see them doing otherwise and I don’t see Mr. Obama asking for more money either.
What little money there is will go to funding a Constellation style jobs program and little else.
What about the shuttle being a spyplane (Yes, the intelligence mission, to launch AND recover secret payloads in one polar orbit made it a spyplane”
Wrong, it makes is a launch vehicle. A spyplane use aerodynamics to support it in fly.
How about the fiberglass SRB’s? (Yes, I was right, they were called filament wound casings for the polar orbit launches)
Wrong, filament wound does not make them fiberglass
Radiation is not a problem. It just takes shielding, but not as much as you say.
Ok, wait, if NASA doesn’t have enough money to do heavy lift, and isn’t going to get enough money to do heavy lift, why do all these people keep advocating heavy lift? Why are you advocating NASA do stuff they’ll never be able to afford?
Shouldn’t you advocate the budget increase first and if you don’t get it suggest something productive to do with the *existing* budget? And if you don’t think there is anything productive that can be done with the existing budget (like the Augustine committee said, btw) then shouldn’t you just go find a nice quiet bar?
Ok, wait, if NASA doesn’t have enough money to do heavy lift, and isn’t going to get enough money to do heavy lift, why do all these people keep advocating heavy lift? Why are you advocating NASA do stuff they’ll never be able to afford?
Because what they’re advocating is pork for their NASA districts and little else.
Unfortunately that’s the way it’s been since Nixon and all the Congresses, Dem and GOPer.
Look, I wish NASA could get its “1%” or better, but that ain’t gonna happen. “If wishes were fishes” and all that.
If this FY2011 NASA budget was allowed to go through unaltered, I think NASA could’ve had a chance of doing what it’s real mission is, being an innovator and creator of cutting edge tech.
But that isn’t going to happen, thus the status quo wins.
All you guys who state NASA cant afford a HLV, and turn around and say they should utilize a Delta or Atlas, well my question is: Could they affort to do that, as opposed of course to developing a side mount SDHLV?
According to ULA, Dennis, yes.
All you guys who state NASA cant afford a HLV, and turn around and say they should utilize a Delta or Atlas, well my question is: Could they affort to do that, as opposed of course to developing a side mount SDHLV?
As Justin says, “Yes” Dennis.
For the simple fact that these rockets are underutilized. There are no missions to lift anything heavier than what these vehicles are capable of putting into orbit.
The SDHLV advocates are operating under the assumption of “If we build it, they will come.”
That only works in the movies.
Anne Spudis wrote @ August 9th, 2010 at 3:40 am
“An inquiring mind needs only to click on the links and read what’s there.”
Just a suggestion. The inquiring minds in this forum want ideas, thoughts, and words. Not references. I’ve got loads of references, but I’m reluctant to heap them on you. Throwing references at each other does not make for intelligent discussion.
I’ll say it again. Do you have a point?
Bennett wrote:
Who are you, that you mock so well?
An American patriot who wants see America’s space program restored.
Dennis Berube wrote:
All you guys who state NASA cant afford a HLV, and turn around and say they should utilize a Delta or Atlas
Great point. They don’t want a shuttle derived vehicle even though it is indisputably logical. The only conclusion is that they hate traditional NASA and would do anything to sabotage it.
All you guys who state NASA cant afford a HLV,
NASA can afford an HLV, if it is very closely derived from the Shuttle, say J-130, which could then be extended with an ACES upper stage. The bigger problem is that they no longer have the launch vehicle design expertise to build such an HLV. Another point is that all EELV Phase 1 requires is the ACES upper stage and the ULA people assuredly do know how to design a launch vehicle. So if you are going to build an ACES, EELV Phase 1 instead of SDLV is a much more logical option. It is also cheaper to run, since it would share most fixed costs with existing EELV launches and potential crew launches for ISS + Bigelow.
and turn around and say they should utilize a Delta or Atlas, well my question is: Could they affort to do that, as opposed of course to developing a side mount SDHLV?
Of course, the EELVs already exist.
But the biggest argument against SDLV, HLV or any dedicated government launcher is not cost, but opportunity cost. By using propellant transfer and thus enabling very small launchers an exploration program could lead to a major reduction in launch prices, which would be the biggest component of mission cost once you started using reusable spacecraft as you could and should. Launch prices could come down by one to two orders of magnitude, which would be enough to lead to commercial manned spaceflight in LEO and probably beyond. The HLV would have to have an enormous upside to justify that opportunity cost. So far people have offered only minor benefits. It just isn’t worth it.
‘There is no reason why you can’t test your orbiter/MTV’s shielding and life-support systems at one of the EML gravitational liberation spots. They are actually slightly easier to get to than the Moon and have the advantage of not having a second deep gravity well to enter and leave for every crew rotation. They are actually closer to a real trans-Mars cruise environment than the lunar surface as they have anatropic radiation exposure and no close-range IR radiation from the surface rocks.”
I think you mean libration points outside of earth magnetic field like on moon surface.
and where the big vasimrs will be tested?Chang diaz said that we need the lunar surface to test these..
not enough inertia on space stations..
Doug Lassiter wrote @ August 9th, 2010 at 9:09 am “Just a suggestion. The inquiring minds in this forum want ideas, thoughts, and words. Not references. I’ve got loads of references, but I’m reluctant to heap them on you. Throwing references at each other does not make for intelligent discussion. I’ll say it again. Do you have a point?”
I was attempting to toss some easily accessible information your way in what would seem now to be a failed attempt in assisting you in your intelligent discussion.
As the old saying goes, “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.”
say J-130
J-120 would be better actually, since it could share its RS-68 engines with Delta, even if they have to develop a regenerative version of it.
Martijn Meijering wrojte:
By using propellant transfer and thus enabling very small launchers an exploration program could lead to a major reduction in launch prices
Propellant transfer is a canard! It is a lie, a fraud. You don’t know what you are talking about.
1. You cannot store LH2 for a long time on orbit without prohibitively heavy and costly tanks. Storing lower energy fuel like UDMH and N2O4 makes little sense.
2. You have the dangerous problem of fuel transfer from one pressurized tank to another
3. Once stored the depot will be in an orbit whose inclination may or may not be accessible for your mission. Launching to a depot and then changing inclination is an extravagant waste of fuel. It is basic orbital mechanics. Fuel waste is proportional to sin(delta_inclination).
Please folks. Fuel depots are one of the stupidest ideas bandied about on this forum.
Launch prices could come down by one to two orders of magnitude
Sounds like SpaceX marketing to me. Even Elon Musk’s unicorns must eat. You must be nuts.
amightywind wrote @ August 9th, 2010 at 10:33 am
you were doing better having the Falcon 9 second stage spinning out of control
I’ll tackle one
“1. You cannot store LH2 for a long time on orbit without prohibitively heavy and costly tanks.”
tanks and technology which will have to be available for long duration spaceflights anyway. I am not a “rocket scientist” but a little logic answers a few questions.
Try that instead of just endless rhetoric
Robert G. Oler
The only conclusion is that they hate traditional NASA and would do anything to sabotage it.
And what pray-tell is “traditional NASA?”
Pre-Cold War NASA, Cold War NASA, Post Cold War NASA?
What?
Those don’t exist or no longer exist.
Robert G. Oler wrote:
tanks and technology which will have to be available for long duration spaceflights anyway.
Can you name an example where LH2 has been stored in space for more than a few weeks? Long duration flights on the Orion will use lower energy storable propellants just like the Space Shuttle, just like Apollo. (That is unless FCD saves us all with Vasimir which is highly unlikely.) But such propellants won’t be used for earth departure because they are so inefficient. Stop letting Huffington Post do your thinking for you.
Try that instead of just endless rhetoric..
Ideologues are incapable of other than endless rhetoric.
amightywind wrote @ August 9th, 2010 at 10:46 am
Can you name an example where LH2 has been stored in space for more than a few weeks?….
no I cannot because no one has actually tried to develop and fly the technology to do just that. In fact the notion of technology development has almost completely vanished from the playbook of NASA human spaceflight (which I guess is a good thing because they cannot even really do technology derivations all that well).
BUT if it cannot be done then we wont be doing long distance spaceflights and I am pretty sure given some effort at it, it can be done.
Robert G. Oler
1. You cannot store LH2 for a long time on orbit without prohibitively heavy and costly tanks.
Not true. It is true that long term storage of LH2 and transfer of LH2 in microgravity requires technology development, but there is no reason to believe it is impossible. Extra mass would not be prohibitively heavy and costly for a fixed depot.
Storing lower energy fuel like UDMH and N2O4 makes little sense.
Not true. Noncryogenic propellants (and there are more of those than just toxic hypergolics) are fine for L1/L2 -> Moon or even L1/L2 Moon if you use reusable landers. They are also good enough to lead to RLVs. Which, incidentally is why I think New Space insistence on making everything dependent on LH2 is misguided or inspired by a conflict of interests.
Intriguingly, storable propellants are probably even good enough for commercial activity on the moon once we had RLVs, though it seems unlikely we wouldn’t have cryogenic depots by then. It’s good to know we could always rely on storables if we had too. Even ISRU is compatible with storable propellants, especially with peroxide, but even with NTO.
3. Once stored the depot will be in an orbit whose inclination may or may not be accessible for your mission. Launching to a depot and then changing inclination is an extravagant waste of fuel. It is basic orbital mechanics. Fuel waste is proportional to sin(delta_inclination).
The same goes for LEO rendez-vous with an EDS as planned by Constellation. And putting your depot/EDS in the wrong orbit is just stupid. Nodal regression complicates matters a bit, but not by much. In any event you should use a stop at a Lagrange point for interplanetary missions. This has many advantages: smaller transfer stages, lower gravity losses, less need for thrust (and even Isp), lower total delta-v if you use three body trajectories, better energy management if you don’t have to let your whole MTV descend to low Mars orbit and return to LEO, reuse of your MTV, no phasing difficulties, larger and more frequent launch windows to interplanetary destinations, no nodal regression, much lower boil-off for cryogenic propellants, no problems with SEP crossing the van Allen belts repeatedly.
Apparently you just don’t know what you are talking about.
In any event you should use a stop at a Lagrange point for interplanetary missions.
For pretty much all exploration missions actually.
even L1/L2 Moon
Markup fail: even L1/L2 Moon
Grr, more markup fail. The preview does not give the same results as the final message. What I meant was “a round trip between L1/L2 and the lunar surface”. So much for brevity…
Anne Spudis wrote @ August 9th, 2010 at 9:42 am
“I was attempting to toss some easily accessible information your way in what would seem now to be a failed attempt in assisting you in your intelligent discussion.”
OK, so you didn’t have a point.
I’m very familiar with these papers that you tossed, and have been familiar with Dr. Spudis’ ideas on this subject long before he wrote them here. So when you’re done leading horses and tossing papers, and ready to have a discussion, do let us know.
“They don’t want a shuttle derived vehicle even though it is indisputably logical”
You have yet shown that it is logical much less indisputable.
He would have to show even more than that, it would have to be indispensible. And that it provably isn’t.
Noncryogenic propellants (and there are more of those than just toxic hypergolics) are fine for L1/L2 -> Moon or even L1/L2 Moon if you use reusable landers. They are also good enough to lead to RLVs.
You might want to ask ESA about that. They sang the same tune with Ariane V and quickly upgraded to LH2 when they found their rocket competitively under performing. Then they developed EPS. I have seen no plans for a non-LH2 earth departure stage.
The same goes for LEO rendez-vous with an EDS as planned by Constellation. And putting your depot/EDS in the wrong orbit is just stupid.
Don’t be a fool. I said weeks. Each earth departure stage is paired with an Orion for a single mission. The rendezvous orbit parameters will change from mission to mission. The fuel depot approach where one depot serves multiple missions, may not be optimally located for each. Get it? You started drinking early over there.
I have seen no plans for a non-LH2 earth departure stage.
I’m not arguing for a non-LH2 departure stage, nor have I ever. I’m arguing for using LOX/LH2 for LEO->L1/L2, and noncryogenic propellant for L1/L2 to beyond (and even back – propulsively!). Even then I’m only advocating that as a quick intermediary solution that could allow private, competitive work on RLVs to start as soon as possible.
I do note that once we had RLVs (or even expendables with a cost/kg roughly two times lower than EELV Heavy) noncryogenic propellant would even be interesting as EDS propellant, since the efficiency of RLVs would dward the inefficiency of noncryogenic propellants. But that argument is aimed at New Space proponents of risking everything on LH2.
Don’t be a fool. I said weeks. Each earth departure stage is paired with an Orion for a single mission. The rendezvous orbit parameters will change from mission to mission. The fuel depot approach where one depot serves multiple missions, may not be optimally located for each. Get it? You started drinking early over there.
I understood what you said and addressed it in my reply. The problem you describe (interaction of nodal regression and interplanetary missions) is solved by using Lagrange points, which has a whole host of other advantages. Lagrange points are the gateway to the rest of the solar system. You only need a depot capable of letting you reach L1/L2 regularly and that’s easy. In the near term a facility that is coorbital with the ISS might be best. It could start with something as simple as a refuelable storable lander or even just a tug acting as a makeshift depot.
amightywind wrote: Can you name an example where LH2 has been stored in space for more than a few weeks?
You may be interested to know that the Herschel space observatory holds 2000 litres (~300kg) of liquid Helium II and has an expected operational life of ~3.5 years, using only passive/boil-off technologies to maintain the instruments at 1.4K. Note that LH2 need only be stored ~20K, so the technical challenge is much less than He II though the amount of LH2 required for a propellant depot is clearly much larger.
I’m not sure about your technical qualifications, but your frequent postings suggest that you don’t work in the space business and have little real insight of the associated economics and politics. This is a pity because your “enthusiasm” to make comments on this blog gets badly undermined by your obvious ignorance and bias.
If you want people to take you seriously, may I suggest that you read-up a little on the subject and at least try to sound serious.
Dave Salt wrote:
You may be interested to know that the Herschel space observatory holds 2000 litres (~300kg) of liquid Helium II and has an expected operational life of ~3.5 years
I am well aware of the use of LHe and L or S N2 for instrument cooling. but it isn’t LH2, is it? LH2 has far less favorable diffusion properties. Do you not know that? Also a fuel depot cannot afford significant losses over a period of months which is what happens on the most advanced actively cooled spacecraft.
I worked on project Galileo for 4 years and spent another 6 at the then Hughes Space and Com, and another 5 at Honeywell Aerospace. Does that qualify me enough to have an opinion?
I worked on project Galileo for 4 years and spent another 6 at the then Hughes Space and Com, and another 5 at Honeywell Aerospace. Does that qualify me enough to have an opinion?
Apparently, it qualifies you to have idiotic opinions, which you even more stupidly state as facts.
Does that qualify me enough to have an opinion?
It does. And then the question becomes …
(puts on sunglasses)
Does it qualify you enough to have a conflict of interests?
Martijn Meijering wrote
Does it qualify you enough to have a conflict of interests?
I now work in the medical device field which is far more lucrative than aerospace. How ’bout the rest of you? What qualifies you to make these silly assertions about fuel depots?
What qualifies you to make these silly assertions about fuel depots?
We understand basic physics, and have actually analyzed them intelligently. Why don’t you go tell the engineers at ULA what is wrong with their analyses? I’m sure they could use the laugh.
amightywind wrote @ August 9th, 2010 at 11:56 am
I worked on project Galileo for 4 years and spent another 6 at the then Hughes Space and Com, and another 5 at Honeywell Aerospace. Does that qualify me enough to have an opinion?///
one can have opinions with little or no expertise as long as those opinions are informed…some of your comments seem to indicate that you either are not informed are or not able to distinguish them from rhetoric based on politics.
Robert G. Oler
What qualifies you to make these silly assertions about fuel depots?
I didn’t question your qualifications, I questioned your motives. I’m a software developer, so I have no horse in this race. And there’s nothing silly about my statements. If there were you could point them out, but you haven’t.
I truly doubt if extra funds will be put forward to place fuel depots into space. The idea may indeed have merit, but I dont think it will fly!
I didn’t question your qualifications, I questioned your motives.
That’s because Windy’s motives are Obama-bashing and political rhetoric.
I truly doubt if extra funds will be put forward to place fuel depots into space. The idea may indeed have merit, but I dont think it will fly!
If I understand the Senate Compromise, funding that went to the fuel depot demonstrators is going to the SDHLV.
And that was probably not a coincidence.
amightywind wrote: I am well aware of the use of LHe and L or S N2 for instrument cooling.
Then why did you ask for examples of LH2 has been stored in space for more than a few weeks? Are you seriously suggesting that the storage of ~300kg of liquid He II (i.e. in a superfluid state) is an easier technical challenge than LH2? Are you suggesting that boil-off is an unacceptable option for a propellant depot? Are you telling me that ULA and Boeing are wrong when they estimate LH2 boil-off rates of ~1% per month? Do you have
degrees in biophysics and nuclear medicine from UCLA School of Medicine?
Rand Simberg wrote:
We understand basic physics, and have actually analyzed them intelligently.
If you do you haven’t shown it.
Why don’t you go tell the engineers at ULA what is wrong with their analyses? I’m sure they could use the laugh.
We all would welcome their argument. I would raise the points I have made. None of you have refuted them in the least. The fact is engineers at ULA will hawk Atlas V’s and Delta IV’s because their company has sunk costs in them and they need to sell more. The last thing on EELV designers mind when they developed them was that they would be the primary post-shuttle manned launch vehicles. It is and remains a silly notion.
And that was probably not a coincidence.
Nope, probably not.
Too bad too, not only cryo-fuels could get stored. Fuels for VASIMR or other ion driven craft could be stationed at Lagrange points also.
“I worked on project Galileo for 4 years and spent another 6 at the then Hughes Space and Com, and another 5 at Honeywell Aerospace”
Being a mechanic does not make one an expert on the automotive industry.
Being a tech or subsystem engineer does not make one an expert on the space industry. Working a few spacecraft or subsystems, does not make one an expert on launch vehicle
None of you have refuted them in the least.
I refuted all of them. If you think I didn’t, you can pick one and explain what’s wrong with it. Time to put up or shut up.
“The last thing on EELV designers mind when they developed them was that they would be the primary post-shuttle manned launch vehicles.”
And if you knew something about launch vehicles and reliability and mission requirements, you would know that it doesn’t matter. And Mike Griffin has said the same thing,
Then why did you ask for examples of LH2 has been stored in space for more than a few weeks? Are you seriously suggesting that the storage of ~300kg of liquid He II (i.e. in a superfluid state) is an easier technical challenge than LH2?
That is precisely what I am saying. Look it up. In fact the higher temperature of LH2 increases its diffusive mobility. Furthermore, Furthermore the highly engineered, tiny, sunshaded dewars on today’s spacecraft are not remotely comparable to the vessels that would have to store 1000’s of times the volume cryogenics in a blistering sunlight environment. It is absurd to suggest they are. You are not thinking clearly.
@ Aggelos,
From LLO, maybe, but not from the lunar surface. A VASMIR, no matter how large, could not launch any significant payload from the lunar surface.
Doug Lassiter wrote @ August 9th, 2010 at 11:11 “….I’m very familiar with these papers that you tossed, and have been familiar with Dr. Spudis’ ideas on this subject long before he wrote them here. So when you’re done leading horses and tossing papers, and ready to have a discussion, do let us know…â€
Since you’ve designated yourself hall monitor, let me just make one brief point so other blog visitors who choose to, can read and learn what is interesting and useful about the Moon (what you say you knew long before anyone else did and apparently have no interest in).
This link to Moon101 is a compilation of years of many people’s work toward understanding the Moon, and not only Paul’s “ideas on the subject,†as you’ve characterize it. It also links to videos of individual presentations.
Many people have an interest in manned space exploration who were not alive during Apollo and/or may have only been schooled about Mars or robots and therefore would benefit from understanding why so many people see lunar return (with robots and people) as the necessary step needed to make space exploration routine and affordable.
Thank you.
Carry on.
byeman wrote:
Being a tech or subsystem engineer does not make one an expert on the space industry. Working a few spacecraft or subsystems, does not make one an expert on launch vehicle
You’re right. What was I thinking? I’ll defer to experts like Elon Musk, Lori Garver and John Holdren for that.
the necessary step needed to make space exploration routine and affordable
Necessary perhaps, but not sufficient. Cheap lift is more crucial. Even if you can get all your resources off-world, you still need to transport humans from Earth to orbit. And for LEO tourism ISRU would not even be necessary.
amightywind wrote @ August 9th, 2010 at 12:55 pm
Rand Simberg wrote:
We understand basic physics, and have actually analyzed them intelligently.
If you do you haven’t shown it….
zounds as Howard Dean would say…that comment seems odd considering how flawed your analysis of the Falcon 9 second stage was…you had it dumping in the ocean.
Robert G. Oler
that comment seems odd considering how flawed your analysis of the Falcon 9 second stage was…you had it dumping in the ocean.
Spaceflightnow reported a shutdown 2 minutes early. SpaceX never published a launch events time line. I have the visual of F9 spinning out of control with an abrupt cut out of video. It was the logical conclusion. Again, one wonders how much of a spacecraft simulator they launched.
I see windy is getting dogpiled over propellant transfer.
Anything that makes a HLV a requirement just cannot work can it?
Cryogenic propellants are extremely difficult to handle in Zero G. That is an inconvenient truth proven by the Centaur program. You people have some magic wand furnished by ULA to make this problem go away? You can say it’s not a problem and it will work just fine all day long but that is the opposite of the truth. Which would make it a lie.
Sometimes Windy is right- when he is not letting the right side of his brain interfere with his thinking he is quite lucid.
All of you are just in denial and propellant transfer to make everything good with you fantasy world again.
“I’ll defer to experts like Elon Musk”
He does have the credentials of a launch vehicle expert.
When you look for a conspiracy, you’re almost certain to find one.
The ULA paper can be found here:
http://unitedlaunchalliance.com/site/docs/publications/AffordableExplorationArchitecture2009.pdf
I’m sure we’d all appreciate a thorough, objective analysis of what they missed.
With respect to hydrogen fuel depots, I’m not sure if it’s been noted, but at least solid hydrogen is a proven long-lived cryogen for infrared astronomy satellites. Colder than liquid H. I don’t recall how big the cryostat was — several hundred liters, I think, but the WISE cryogen is on track to last ten months in LEO, which is thermally a tough place for cryogens to survive. That solid block of hydrogen ice is surrounded by a liquid and gas layer, so if there were a serious gas diffusion problem with hydrogen, WISE would be struggling with it. It’s not.
Now, a Lagrange point thermally be a far better place for a cryogen depot than LEO. Even at Earth-Moon Lagrange points, the Earth and Moon are pretty small, and a planar multilayer shield blocking just the Sun is really all you need. In fact, I believe the radiation temperature at Earth-Moon L1, with the Sun properly blocked, is of order 20-30K. Storing liquid hydrogen there should be easy. Remember that with such a simple 5-layer shield blocking the “blistering sunlight” at Earth-Sun L2, JWST will passively run at <40K. That's limited by thermal parasitics from the spacecraft, so it's not hard to make something there be even colder.
amightywind wrote:
An American patriot who wants see America’s space program restored.
Oh, I get it now! This is what you want, so you argue the opposite position in public, but you do it so badly that everyone flocks to your true position.
Bravo! Well done, sir.
Mike
Colder than liquid H.
Please look it up, yahoo. The boiling point of He (4K) is lower than the melting point point of hydrogen (14K). Like I said, you cannot extrapolate between a tiny dewar sitting inside a shielded spacecraft and a giant tank sitting in space.
Remember that with such a simple 5-layer shield blocking the “blistering sunlight†at Earth-Sun L2, JWST will passively run at <40K
I will, if you remember that JWST has a sophisticated attitude control system. So now we are talking about a 10000x supersized pressure dewar with propellant transfer devices with a deployable sunshade and attitude control system, all marooned at L1 waiting for a spacecraft to refuel. Are you high?
abreakingwind blathered mindlessly:
Spaceflightnow reported a shutdown 2 minutes early.
So? The payload achieved orbit nonetheless, as confirmed by NORAD. It entered a little over three weeks later. Or are they part of the SpaceX conspiracy?
It is lunacy to claim that they didn’t put the payload into orbit.
SpaceX never published a launch events time line.
They provided me with one, which was published in Popular Mechanics. Or am I and Popular Mechanics part of the conspiracy, too? Do you also think that fire can’t melt steel?
I have the visual of F9 spinning out of control with an abrupt cut out of video.
It was not “out of control.”
It was the logical conclusion.
At this point, it is the lunatic conclusion.
Again, one wonders how much of a spacecraft simulator they launched.
Only ignorant idiots wonder such things, since SpaceX has stated multiple times that it was a structural test article.
“The boiling point of He (4K) is lower than the melting point point of hydrogen (14K).”
Not sure what you’re referring to. I was comparing the temperatures of solid and liquid hydrogen. Not helium.
“you remember that JWST has a sophisticated attitude control system.”
The sophisticated pointing system of JWST has nothing to do with its thermal shielding. The telescope has to stay in the shadow of the shield. I think it can wazzle around by ten degrees or so, and still be in that shadow. Surely a tanker depot would be stabilized that well. But yes, it would get pretty exciting if it drifted out of that shadow! Such stabilization is especially easy to do with a cryogenic depot, because you have boiloff to adjust the orientation. But it’s not as if you’re going to have major torques on-station at the Lagrange points.
“So now we are talking about a 10000x supersized pressure dewar with propellant transfer devices with a deployable sunshade and attitude control system, all marooned at L1 waiting for a spacecraft to refuel.”
Well, any depot needs to have an attitude control system. That’s not a biggie. You’re going to rendezvous with something that doesn’t? A deployable multilayer sunshade is trivial. One that is the size of a tennis court will be TRL 9 in a few years.
With low thermal loading, it sure isn’t clear to me why we’re talking about a high pressure dewar. Where is the pressure coming from?
10000x what?
“@ Aggelos,
From LLO, maybe, but not from the lunar surface. A VASMIR, no matter how large, could not launch any significant payload from the lunar surface.”
I dont understand…
big Mars spaceship vasimrs(50mw perhaps) need solid ground and vacuum(moon surface) in order to be tested not fly from moon surface..Chang diaz said that in new space conference..
And I believe him..
And astronauts must be trained for Mars outside of earth magnetic field..so moon surface,or lagrange point beyond moon..
Rand Simberg wrote @ August 9th, 2010 at 2:44 pm
They provided me with one, which was published in Popular Mechanics. Or am I and Popular Mechanics part of the conspiracy, too? Do you also think that fire can’t melt steel?
Sigh. Published well after the real events transpired, and the kindergarden version as well. I was thinking of something like this. That way we know what to look for. My guess is SpaceX planning is not that detailed. I haven’t seen seat-of-the-pants operations like this since the launch of Evel Knievel’s sky cycle! I know you were trying to whitewash a serious malfunction for your friends at SpaceX, but the roll was in excess of 3 rpm when the video cut out.
Don’t let them get away with the cryo depot scam windy.
They are talking about keeping hundreds of tons of liquid hydrogen in storage in a high radiation zero G environment. And then transferring it to another vehicle and another and another. They ARE high. It is a good powerpoint but it is, in my opinion, false advertising. Anything that makes HLV’s a requirement just cannot be true. Inconceivable.
I cannot believe I am cheering windy on. Cats and dogs sleeping together. madness.
I dont understand…
Electric propulsion system typically produce tiny amounts of thrust (~1N). You can scale that up, but then the total mass of the system goes up too. I don’t know the precise thrust to weight ratio, but it is much, much lower than 1. A EP powered craft couldn’t even come close to taking off from a celestial body of any significance. And VASIMR in particular: it needs a breakthrough in power systems too, otherwise it won’t be cost-effective even when it’s starting from orbit.
Heh, it look as if it’s fail to close your italics properly day today.
Or let’s make everything italic day.
Bold actually. How appropriate!
Let’s see if we can close that stray bold tag.
Nope.
stop bolding
Now?
Try this.
Well, it starts with a badly close </b> in agello’s post, but inserting another one doesn’t seem to help.
I tried that too, it looks as if they are filtered out. Look at it this way, at least we’ve managed a modicum of common ground in our efforts to get rid of excessive boldness. Maybe we can build on that…
How about if we try both tags? Does that work?
Nope. I guess we need an HLV for this one.
Nope. This seems like a serious bug in Jeff’s commenting software. The only real solution is for him to edit the original offending post, it seems.
Or maybe it’s a Sign that we need to stop bickering. The first warning is overboldness. Next comes lightning. Then the big one.
I think that the big one happens when the lightning ignites abreakingwind.
GaryChurch wrote:
Don’t let them get away with the cryo depot
It should be a non-partisan issue. Just think about the details for a few minutes and conclude how ludicrous the idea is. But again. It is about selling an inferior launch solution in high volume. The Obama’s cronies will do anything for funding.
With low thermal loading, it sure isn’t clear to me why we’re talking about a high pressure dewar. Where is the pressure coming from?
The depot will spend weeks maneuvering to L1 and will be exposed the whole time, or do you propose that it boost with the sunshield deployed? Think! Why would you store propellant at L1, when the first thing you will do with the fuel is fly uphill out of its potential field to go to any destination? Crazy.
“The depot will spend weeks maneuvering to L1″
No, that’s silly. It won’t take weeks to get to Earth-Moon L1. No reasonable planning for work at Earth-Moon L1 or L2 require transit times anything like that. Actually, if you really wanted to spend weeks maneuvering to L1, doing it with the shield deployed would be easy.
“do you propose that it boost with the sunshield deployed”?
I see no reason why the sunshield can’t be deployed after a high-thrust departure from LEO. Insertion into L1 is a low-thrust proposition, so the shield would not be seriously stressed. But the idea of sunshields that can be deployed repeatedly has been considered.
“Why would you store propellant at L1, when the first thing you will do with the fuel is fly uphill out of its potential field to go to any destination?”
Actually, L1 (or L2) is not a potential well. Unlike L4 and L5. But what you say makes no sense. In fact, the gravitational potential of Earth-Moon L1 is not that dissimilar to other locations outside cis-lunar space. That’s what makes it a fairly extraordinary location. The delta-V’s required to go other places from there are incredibly small. That’s the principle behind the “Interplanetary Superhighway” that was worked out a decade or two ago. The Decadal Planning Team effort mapped out the conops of EM L1 in some detail.
You’re going to have to come up with something better than that …
Arguing that the technical challenge of storing LH2 in-space is greater than that for He II, amightywind wrote: That is precisely what I am saying. Look it up. In fact the higher temperature of LH2 increases its diffusive mobility.
Yes, and He II has a property called ‘creep’ that also makes it difficult to seal against. Nevertheless, even CFRP with a metallic liner (e.g. 1mm of Al) can reduce the LH2 permeation rate to 4×10^-8 mbar l/s, so I don’t regard this as a major show stopper… unless you know of some other physical property that others may have overlooked?
amightywind also wrote: Furthermore the highly engineered, tiny, sunshaded dewars on today’s spacecraft are not remotely comparable to the vessels that would have to store 1000′s of times the volume cryogenics in a blistering sunlight environment. It is absurd to suggest they are.
I’m not sure what your problem is here. No one is suggesting we take the Herschel cryostat and heat shield designs and just scale them up for a LH2 store. What is being suggested is that solar radiation (IR, visible & UV) and Earthshine are relatively easy to shield against using thin metal coated polymer sheets (i.e. a more refined version of the sort of thing they rigged up for Skylab) and that vacuum insulation is also relatively easy to realise in space because… well, I’ll let you guess why.
amightywind finally wrote: You are not thinking clearly.
Well, you do come across as a rather ‘cynical’ old space cadet, so all I can say is: “physician, heal thy self”
strangeness has set in
Robert
The depot will spend weeks maneuvering to L1 and will be exposed the whole time, or do you propose that it boost with the sunshield deployed?
Of course it would travel with the sunshield deployed.
Think!
Physician, heal thyself.
Why would you store propellant at L1, when the first thing you will do with the fuel is fly uphill out of its potential field to go to any destination? Crazy.
Why did Amundsen set up supply caches along the way to the South Pole? He must have been crazy.
Why should we have gas stations in Kansas City and Denver, and Salt Lake City, and Reno? That’s crazy. All we need is a single-stage heavy-lift car to get from St. Louis to San Francisco.
Dave Salt wrote:
…
Glad you read up. Good post. Long term thermal control is a weight and cost issue for LH2. Ask a Lockmart Centaur engineer.
The greatest crime of Obamaspace is that intellectual midnight burst on an unsuspecting industry and all of the zombie arguments buried by Mike Griffin reanimated. It takes a lot of energy to fend them all off, but hit them enough times with a shovel and they do stay down.
Why would you store propellant at L1, when the first thing you will do with the fuel is fly uphill out of its potential field to go to any destination?
I just gave you a whole host of reasons. But here’s the list again, for the benefit of slow learners:
This has many advantages: smaller transfer stages, lower gravity losses, less need for thrust (and even Isp), lower total delta-v if you use three body trajectories, better energy management if you don’t have to let your whole MTV descend to low Mars orbit and return to LEO, reuse of your MTV, no phasing difficulties, larger and more frequent launch windows to interplanetary destinations, no nodal regression, much lower boil-off for cryogenic propellants, no problems with SEP crossing the van Allen belts repeatedly.
Long term thermal control is a weight and cost issue for LH2. Ask a Lockmart Centaur engineer.
Weight is much less of an issue for a depot than for an upper stage.
Long term thermal control is a weight and cost issue for LH2.
A depot is a fixed, reusable asset, unlike an upper stage or EDS. It matters very little what the mass ratio of the depot is, we have plenty of margin to spare, even with LH2.
Does anyone here really believe they will invest money in fuel depots at various points. Come on, I dont think so. Even Mars missions have been describe as not needing such things. I think with all the differing views here being described, actually points out the problems people face with deciding where our space program should go. Some say dont even have a space program, a waste of money. Others say the Moon as it is a good stepping stone for future ventures to Mars. Otheers say that isnt necessary, and a Mars direct flight can commence without the necessities of anything lunar. Others say lets go to an asteroid. We will learn how to deflect them should one be heading our way. Everyone puts their respective 2 cents in, and who will win in the end? If everyone could define a definative direction, from our government on down, we wouldnt have this problem. With only so much money, not everything can be realized, so what is the best possible methods with which we can carry out several of these goals? Thats the question. I dont think the commercial side is ready to invest in that direction yet.
No, that’s silly. It won’t take weeks to get to Earth-Moon L1. No reasonable planning for work at Earth-Moon L1 or L2 require transit times anything like that.
Actually, there are pretty good reasons for doing that. There exist very efficient three body trajectories to L1/L2, that take only ~3.2km/s delta-v, as opposed to ~3.8km/s for traditional trajectories. You wouldn’t want to use those for crew or for cryogenic propellant without boil-off mitigation, but you could use it for pretty much everything else. It would help you move heavy payloads like habs to L1/L2 with nothing more than wet-launched EELV upper stages, even before you had cryogenic refueling.
I think if we asked a centaur engineer about storing hundreds of tons of liquid hydrogen and oxygen indefinitely in space and also pumping the propellents both into the depot and out on demand dozens, actually, hundreds of times, with vehicle docking, he would be very interested but not too optimistic.
Dennis, you keep shilling for NASA launchers. It’s no use debating you, you’ve already made up your mind and your conclusions are set in stone. No rational argument will convince you, you’re just looking for new excuses for a shiny NASA launcher. If you truly want to see exploration, then you need a spacecraft. We already have launch vehicles. It is crazy to argue we couldn’t spend the money for an HLV on a spacecraft or even depots instead. That’s just not what you want, for reasons probably best known to yourself.
To carry out several of these goals, whether an asteroid mission, Lunar mission , or Mars mission, certain hardward is needed, and that is definitive. A craft like Orion, is a must, in order to keep the crew safe for extending missions. HLV, is a must for throwing large payloads out toward the planets, and or asteroids. These are must have items, and are a definitive need if we are to explore space, further out than Earth orbit. Is everyone satisfied with only going to orbit? Oh hum, how boring, and unchallenging it is today. Mike Griffin said it all when, he said it would cost. There is no cheap way to space. Even Musk wants 20 mil. a ride. Can you afford that? As I have said before, unless we think outside of the box, like with perhaps the space elevator idea, rocket science will continue to be an expensive ride!
No one will admit that what is being avoided in this depot discussion is the necessity for nuclear propulsion. Big big bucks. And going cheap is the whole theme of commercial space. Chemical propulsion is hopelessly inadequate for Beyond Earth Orbit Human Space Flight. Why? Shielding.
It is not about the economy, it is about the Radiation.
Dennis Berube wrote @ August 9th, 2010 at 4:40 pm – “………….. With only so much money, not everything can be realized, so what is the best possible methods with which we can carry out several of these goals? Thats the question. I dont think the commercial side is ready to invest in that direction yet.”
Good reasoning. At the risk of being roasted for posting a link, may I suggest the following paper:
Objectives Before Architectures – Strategies Before Tactics
A craft like Orion, is a must, in order to keep the crew safe for extending missions.
A spacecraft is a must, yes. Not necessarily one like Orion, but certainly a capsule is part of it. You need more than that though, some kind of mission module (and/or lander) is also necessary.
HLV, is a must for throwing large payloads out toward the planets, and or asteroids.
This will remain false, no matter how often you say it. It is not just false, it is provably false, and obviously so to anyone who knows basic physics and a tiny little bit about launch vehicles.
There is no cheap way to space.
And you know this how? RLVs could reduce launch prices by one or two orders of magnitude. Mass produced minimum cost expendable launchers could perhaps reduce them by one order of magnitude. None of that is happening know because there isn’t enough launch demand. Routing NASA demand for exploration through the market would provide that demand. It’s that simple.
Even Musk
Musk is not the only alternative to SDLV. EELVs are the most obvious alternative in the shirt term.
The reason space is so expensive is precisely why we must not build an HLV!
“As I have said before, unless we think outside of the box, like with perhaps the space elevator idea, rocket science will continue to be an expensive ride!”
Beam propulsion is the most probable solution. Which is why solar power satellites- and the experiment that Oler keeps ridiculing- is important. Not for cheap electricity (there is no cheap) but for the upper stage of a beam propelled launch vehicle. Small discs have been practically demonstrated and sometime around the end of the century we may at last be paying airline fares riding extremely large discs into orbit. Beam propulsion is outside the box- elevators are more fantasy than possibility.
sorry about the bold problem..
weird,
But If Nasa dont want to land on the mon and build base,,privates,and other countries want..
So its a matter of time when this will happen..
I’m suddenly reminded of the OJ Simpson jury: we know he’s guilty, but we’ll let him off anyway.
HLV, is a must for throwing large payloads out toward the planets, and or asteroids.
“This will remain false, no matter how often you say it. It is not just false, it is provably false, and obviously so to anyone who knows basic physics and a tiny little bit about launch vehicles.”
I know a tiny bit and I am throwing the B.S. flag. You are calling the truth a lie- which is lying.
“Ask a Lockmart Centaur engineer.”
Centaur engineering is not really germane to the question. Centaur cryogenic insulation is not vacuum insulation, since it has to hold tankage before launch, and needs to be compact enough to fit under the booster housing. Depot architecture wouldn’t look like that. It also doesn’t allow for a deployable mutlilayer sunshield that properly dumps thermal energy to cold space. A depot would be based on this geometry. Also, Centaur insulation assumes thermal loading from all angles, which would not be the case for a depot at L1.
If I wanted to get thermal loading wisdom for a free-space facility out of Lockmart, I guess maybe I’d ask their Spitzer team. I could get the Centaur folks to build the tank, but I wouldn’t want them to keep the heat off of it.
In fact, Lockheed has done some nice work on using space qualified cryocoolers to reduce boiloff of cryogenic propellant tanks. It’s not the Centaur engineering team doing that.
Good reasoning.
Exceedingly bad reasoning actually. Cheap lift will enable any and all destinations for any and all purposes, whether they are commercial or publicly funded.
Martijn Meijering wrote @ August 9th, 2010 at 5:00 pm
“Exceedingly bad reasoning actually.”
I think Ms. Spudis is agreeing with you on this point. See from the link she posted …
“Launch vehicles should be chosen strictly on the basis of availability, utility and cost. The need for a heavy lift vehicle (~100 mT) has never been proven; it is only a bias of the previous architects.”
Well, I think that was her point, but you can never be sure …
“weight is much less of an issue for a depot than for an upper stage.”
Wieght is the issue for any spacecraft, especially if you’re launching from the bottom of a gravity well. The lighter the depot, the more fuel can be launched with it and the less you have to worry about re-fueling the fuel depot.
You do plan on launching that depot on a rocket, right?
Doug Lassiter wrote @ August 9th, 2010 at 5:00 pm
Centaur engineering is not really germane to the question. Centaur cryogenic insulation is not vacuum insulation, since it has to hold tankage before launch, and needs to be compact enough to fit under the booster housing.
Yes it is. The Centaur flies complex profiles with several restarts over a period of up to 8 hours, or even more. So it must perform well in the thermal environment of space. Obviously the fuel depot requirements are even more demanding in terms of cost and weight. The Centaur only rides under the fairing in the 5XX Atlas V configuration. It is exposed in the 4XX configuration. Spitzer is carrying a small dewar of LHe and is not at all comparable.
Another question for the fuel depot zealots. What will provide the acceleration needed to settle cryogenics in their tanks so that fuel can be transfered from the depot? For storable propellant transfer an in tank diaphragm can do this. Can’t do this with cryo. More weight, more cost. Also, if the fueling vessel provides thrust the docked unit is perturbed off station. In an L4 halo orbit it means the depot moves in a widerer orbit with each fueling, which defeats the purpose of sitting at L4. Will the depot need station keeping thrusters to go with their sun shield? More weight, more cost. An earth departure stage should be looking pretty good by now.
Rand Simberg wrote:
Why should we have gas stations in Kansas City and Denver, and Salt Lake City, and Reno? That’s crazy. All we need is a single-stage heavy-lift car to get from St. Louis to San Francisco.
Stupid analogy. An aircraft has an Isp of 30000 or more because it is air breathing. Who knows what a car’s is. On earth surrounded by O2 we are not at mercy of the rocket equation. A case might be made to depot storable propellants or even solid motors. But they are less efficient.
Obviously the fuel depot requirements are even more demanding in terms of cost and weight.
No, not obviously more demanding. Heavier, yes, more expensive, yes. But that’s not the same as more demanding. An upper stage has to have a good mass fraction. This is not nearly as important for a depot. After all, it isn’t going anywhere and its costs would be amortised over many years.
What will provide the acceleration needed to settle cryogenics in their tanks so that fuel can be transfered from the depot?
Settling thrusters? ULA has done work on very low-g propellant settling. Later depots could use more advanced methods such as magnetic propellant positioning.
A case might be made to depot storable propellants or even solid motors. But they are less efficient.
Efficiency is a system property. You have to look at costs, not just IMLEO. The efficiency of having an RLV would dwarf any inefficiency of lower Isp propulsion. Not that I concede the point that LOX/LH2 depots are impractical. They are merely unproven and the lack of need for HLV does not depend on them.
Not to mention that any Mars architecture involving propellant transfer (of any kind, even just for storable propellant) would enable use of small SEP tugs, which require only proven technology. You might lose Isp with storable propellants, but you would gain a lot of Isp through use of SEP. In the sense that it reduces IMLEO it is comparable to aerobraking or NTR (apart from the lousy T/W of NTR which could ruin the whole concept), but importantly it would do so without requiring nw technologies or HLV and without reducing the benefit to the emergence of RLVs.
amightywind wrote @ August 9th, 2010 at 7:16 pm
“The Centaur flies complex profiles with several restarts over a period of up to 8 hours, or even more.”
Which a fuel depot doesn’t need to do. This has absolutely nothing to do with restartability or complex profiles. It’s about maintaining the cryogen for long periods of time. My point was that a depot can be designed to mantain cryogen for long periods of time in free space. It’s really hard to do that with a Centaur, unless you retrofit an efficient shield on the outside of it after it’s up.
What is comparable about Spitzer isn’t the architecture, but the efforts to minimize heat loading. With Spitzer, that minimization is even more important than for a depot.
“No, that’s silly. It won’t take weeks to get to Earth-Moon L1. No reasonable planning for work at Earth-Moon L1 or L2 require transit times anything like that.
Martijn Meijering wrote @ August 9th, 2010 at 4:44 pm
“Actually, there are pretty good reasons for doing that.”
Fair point. There are some economies to be had by going slowly. But in that case, having a large, possible fragile shield deployed while you go there is tractable.
Yeah, it’s a trade. It could be that having a simpler propellant transfer vehicle with less boil-off mitigation using faster trajectories would be more economical than a more advanced one of slow trajectories. We could rely on the market to find that out for us. Similarly we could rely on the market to figure out if using van Allen crossing SEP tugs (say with self-annealing solar panels) would be more economical.
I’d find it amazing that abreakingwind doesn’t understand the difference between the requirements for an upper stage versus those of a propellant depot, if I’d had no previous experience with the idiocy and ignorance of abreakingwind.
byeman wrote @ August 9th, 2010 at 1:52 pm
“I’ll defer to experts like Elon Musk†He does have the credentials of a launch vehicle expert.” More clucking. More goose eggs.
Stop talking. Start flying.
Another day goes from dawn to dusk;
And still no manned flights flown by Musk;
The tick-tock moves; the months fly by;
And still no Dragons cross the sky.
DCSCA, it was amusing once, now stop please.
“Another day goes from dawn to dusk;
And still no manned flights flown by Musk;
The tick-tock moves; the months fly by;
And still no Dragons cross the sky.”
you have to sent this to spacex…
they will laugh surely.
@Trent-<– tick-tock, tick-tock… musketeers need a daily reminder. Their Emperor has no clothes. No operational manned spacecraft, either.
Aggelos wrote @ August 10th, 2010 at 3:08 am <– One suspects the only 'good humor' you'll find there 'orbits' by once a day in a white truck with bells on it.
Bennett wrote @ August 8th, 2010 at 11:02 pm <- Seems a redundancy. They already have spaceflight operations and the DoD is beginning to make some actual cuts. But if NASA is ever dissolved– and that could happen if the Age of Austerity overwhelms the USA– DoD most likely would get the right of first refusal on the leftovers.
RE- text issues– Well, this is a space forum so, 'to boldy go…." seems oddly appropriate.
Dennis Berube wrote @ August 9th, 2010 at 4:40 pm <- Commercial space will never lead the way in space exploration in this period of human history. That's why governments will do it for some time to come. The smart space program is to press on w/a GP spacecraft, aka Orion, plan a more comprehensive return to the moon in the middle-out years; develop a lander, HLV, long stay lunar facility and press on with a lunar exploration program to develop infrastructure, architecture and technical experience in cis-lunar operations and techniques for actual lunar surface exploration in the extremes of that environment– days and nights. The moon is the obvious and most logical target to use– and three days away. Then extrapolate and apply what's learned for a possible Mars expedition in the 2050 and after time frame. That's your manned space exploration program for the next 30-70 years. Of course after peppering the Red Planet with increasingly sophisticated robotic rovers and probes over the years, an actual human trip to the surface might not be warranted in this era. Depends on if the probes find some form of life– and the ramifications/risks that would have to an expedition or any sort of sample return probe.
“Commercial space will never lead the way in space exploration in this period of human history. That’s why governments will do it for some time to come. The smart space program is to press on w/a GP spacecraft, aka Orion, plan a more comprehensive return to the moon in the middle-out years; develop a lander, HLV, long stay lunar facility and press on with a lunar exploration program to develop infrastructure, architecture and technical experience in cis-lunar operations and techniques for actual lunar surface exploration in the extremes of that environment– days and nights. The moon is the obvious and most logical target to use– and three days away. Then extrapolate and apply what’s learned for a possible Mars expedition in the 2050 and after time frame. ”
I agree completely..
The moon as target is still on for nasa..
http://www.space-travel.com/reports/NASA_Seeks_Data_From_Innovative_Lunar_Demonstrations_999.html
> Aggelos wrote @ August 10th, 2010 at 8:28 am
> The moon as target is still on for nasa..
Though not maned flights – Bolden was pretty adament abuot that- at least unless internationals wanted to do it as a joint program.
al these robotics are for humans in the future.
and yes,,only with europe,russia,japan etc can nasa lad on the moon and make a base..
Mabe russia can build the lander,,Russia built manned and robotic landers for the moon..only robotic landers flew ofcourse..
bigelow will provide the inflatable base modules,..
Every space agancy or companie in the world will provide something..
Gone are the days when nasa went to the moon apollo style..
Any beyond earth mission now will be international..
even for the asteroid mission nasa plans for a space habitata atv derived..
And I am european…Greek..
DCSCA, it was amusing once, now stop please.
No, it wasn’t even amusing once. Repeating it is the sign of a troll. And a stupid one at that.
> The moon as target is still on for nasa..
Though not maned flights – Bolden was pretty adament abuot that- at least unless internationals wanted to do it as a joint program.
It doesn’t matter what Bolden is “adament” about. He’s not going to be there long enough to matter. If we want to go the moon in a few years, the new architecture will provide the capability to do so, if Congress allows us to build it. If they instead insist on a heavy-lift jobs program (as Mike Griffin did) then there will be no money to go anywhere.
> Rand Simberg wrote @ August 10th, 2010 at 10:41 am
>>Though not maned flights – Bolden was pretty adament abuot
>> that- at least unless internationals wanted to do it as a joint program.
> It doesn’t matter what Bolden is “adament†about. He’s not going
> to be there long enough to matter. ==
True, he’ll be out in 2013 but it tells you the current goals of Obamaspace.
> If we want to go the moon in a few years, the new architecture
> will provide the capability to do so, ==
Whose architecture? Certainly commercial crew can’t, or at least less so then say shuttle. No landers, LEO to LLO transstages, etc.
Also of course wre laying off the expertice to go to the moon and do missions – or develop the rest of the gear.
Its likely that at this rate, by 2012 we really would need 10-15 years to rebuild enough to be as close to maned moon missions as we are now.
> Aggelos wrote @ August 10th, 2010 at 10:22 am
>== and yes,,only with europe,russia,japan etc can nasa land
> on the moon and make a base..
>== Every space agancy or companie in the world will provide
> something..
>== Any beyond earth mission now will be international..
>== And I am european…Greek..
May I point out that international integrated space projects are as inefficent as any other multi-national government buracracy program. I.E. your talking the EU buracracy runing a space program.
The cost explodes so fast no one even in combination can afford it.
Whose architecture? Certainly commercial crew can’t, or at least less so then say shuttle. No landers, LEO to LLO transstages, etc.
There was no money for that in Constellation, either, even though the moon was an explicit goal. If a future administration wants to go to the moon, and we have the LEO infrastructure in place, then it can go to the moon. The notion that we’ve “laid off” people who know how to do so is nonsensical. No one has done it in almost forty years, and there are plenty of smart people in industry who can figure it out if given the resources (and in a lot smarter way than Mike Griffin wanted to do it).
>== The notion that we’ve “laid off†people who know how to do so
> is nonsensical. No one has done it in almost forty years, and there
> are plenty of smart people in industry who can figure it out if given
> the resources ==
Such people are being laid off with the downsizing of the commercial space industry as the NASA market implodes.
Such people are being laid off with the downsizing of the commercial space industry as the NASA market implodes.
Can you provide an example of someone who “knows how to go to the moon” who is being laid off and is irreplaceable, and not being picked up by someone else?
Kelly Starks wrote @ August 10th, 2010 at 11:44 am
“Its likely that at this rate, by 2012 we really would need 10-15 years to rebuild enough to be as close to maned moon missions as we are now.”
I don’t understand that at all. In what way can we now be considered in any way close to manned Moon missions? What’s going to happen in a year that will leave us further away? Surely you aren’t talking about SSMEs.
Kelly Starks wrote:
Its likely that at this rate, by 2012 we really would need 10-15 years to rebuild enough to be as close to maned moon missions as we are now.
What do you mean by “now”? Right now we have no way of conducting manned flights above an altitude of about 300 miles. Our entire manned space program consists of launching a crew and cargo to the ISS.
Regardless of the outcome of the NASA authorization debate, the Shuttle will be retired within a year. And Constellation was not on track to land its first man on the moon until the year 2035.
But current projections are that we will regain the ability to deliver cargo to and return cargo from the ISS through COTS / CRS by this time next year. And if the FY11 budget proposal passes, we should regain the ability to deliver crew to and return crew from the ISS by early 2015 through the commercial crew initiative. In addition, it looks like the commercial crew capsules will be able to function as crew return vehicles, giving us a capability that we don’t even have now.
So under the FY11 budget proposal, we’ll have *more* capability by 2015 than we do now.
Add in the propellent depot demonstration scheduled for 2015 under FY11, and we’ll have the ability to leave LEO shortly thereafter. Our destination in cislunar space will depend only on our heat shield.
So given that our loss of Shuttle’s capability preceded the FY11 budget proposal by several years — thus FY11 was not responsible for it — FY11 allows us to exceed our current capability within four years.
It’s clear. If you want to go somewhere in space — either yourself or vicariously through NASA — the best path forward at this point is the FY11 budget proposal. Your own criteria should cause you to support it.
Mike
Doug Lassiter wrote:
I don’t understand that at all. In what way can we now be considered in any way close to manned Moon missions? What’s going to happen in a year that will leave us further away? Surely you aren’t talking about SSMEs.
It’s weird. I get the impression from the Constellation supporters that they have a manned moon mission on the launch pad all ready to go, but Obama won’t let the launch director push the big red button.
Mike
You know what really gets me. How our government can keep us in a war, that is not only costing American lives, but also ruining us financially. They have got to keep that war machine running, but a peaceful space program of exploration, they want to kill. What a shame that our species has so much of a fighting drive in it!
How our government can keep us in a war, that is not only costing American lives, but also ruining us financially. They have got to keep that war machine running, but a peaceful space program of exploration, they want to kill.
What nonsense. Whatever yo think of its wisdom, the war isn’t ruining us financially — entitlements, public pensions, and the insane new levels of domestic spending are. And the only people who want to kill space exploration are those who insist that it be a jobs program, as Constellation was.
Rand Simberg wrote @ August 10th, 2010 at 10:41 am <- Stop talking. Start flying.
Stop trolling. Start being intelligent and non-repetitious.
@Rand Simberg wrote @ August 10th, 2010 at 10:41 am
There was a ‘stupid’ fella;
With a reactionary guile;
Who squawked a ‘stupid’ theory;
Laced dismissively in style.
Betraying angst frustrations;
Fueled by insecurities;
For his Musk has flown nobody;
The world knows this, you see.
Our Musketeers love theory;
They promise and propose;
Yet still nobody’s flying,
Their Emperor has no clothes.
The bottom line they’re eyeing;
To ‘privatize’ their case;
As days and months go flying;
Without human’s flown in space.
The time for talk is over;
Let actions speak, not words;
Commercial space our future?
Free markets say- absurd.
Investors remain wary;
Hear grandiose plans they speak;
Human spaceflight has a future,
With NASA- not Wall Street.
Simberg? WOW, the war isnt ruining us financially! Wow were are you? How many millions are spent on it every month? Check it out.and then tell me we can afford it!
Rand Simberg wrote @ August 10th, 2010 at 5:02 pm <- The learning curve will be steep with this one. Stop talking. Start flying.
Dennis Berube wrote @ August 10th, 2010 at 5:49 pm <- Dennis, he's living a fantasy agenda in an alternative universe… where the stars at night, shine to the right.
WOW, the war isnt ruining us financially! Wow were are you? How many millions are spent on it every month?
We’re spending about twelve billion a month for both Iraq and Afghanistan. The total federal budget is running three hundred billion a month. The wars are not the problem ruining us financially. To think they are is to display innumeracy and economic illiteracy.
It’s great when trolls start in with the “poetry” because it makes it really easy to scroll right on past their nonsense. What a goofball.
Sidemount is on the way. There is no cheap. Space travel is inherently expensive. The space industry is a nuclear industry, not a tourist industry.
How does that dose of reality feel?
“I don’t understand that at all. In what way can we now be considered in any way close to manned Moon missions?”
Well, let’s see. We have a heavy lift infrastructure capable of launching a heay lift vehicle- which is what the SRB’s,SSME’ and ET is. We have an escape system for a capsule tested, actually two different ones. We have a capsule and the engine for an earth departure stage fairly close to being ready in Orion- which has tested it’s parachute system, and the J2X.
With Shannon’s Sidemount proposal, the only new system needed is a structural hardback in place of the orbiter. For an NEO mission an MMU can serve as landing vehicle since there is no gravity to speak of.
What has commercial got? One test flight.
Bennett wrote @ August 10th, 2010 at 7:17 pm <- Stop talking. Start flying.
“The wars are not the problem ruining us financially. To think they are is to display innumeracy and economic illiteracy.” <- A 'moronic mind' at work.
What has commercial got? One test flight.
Atlas and Delta have a long string of successful flights, over many years, you moron.
GaryChurch wrote @ August 10th, 2010 at 7:27 pm <-There's little point in arguing with commercial human spaceflight advocates. They know they're behind the 'eight ball' now and the only thing that'll fuel any valid credibility is to successfully launch, orbit and return a few crews on a privately funded, designed and launched manned spacecraft. As Cernan so rightly said, they don't know what they don't know yet– but they're starting to learn. It will be a welcomed achievement to see when it fimally happens. And if it's successful, investors will surface. It's just time for them to get on with it.
> Doug Lassiter wrote @ August 10th, 2010 at 1:19 pm
>>Kelly Starks wrote @ August 10th, 2010 at 11:44 am
>> “Its likely that at this rate, by 2012 we really would need 10-15
>> years to rebuild enough to be as close to maned moon missions
>> as we are now.â€
> I don’t understand that at all. In what way can we now be considered
> in any way close to manned Moon missions? What’s going to happen
> in a year that will leave us further away?
Over the next year we lose the shuttle (not up to its full potential, but designed to field major missions beyond Earth), we lose about 80% of the Astronaut corp, the bulk of astronaut trainers and mission planers, most of the operations staff NASA and industrial, the bulk of industrial groups that support manned and unmanned space projects, etc.
I mean estimates are up to 30,000 folks are going to be laid off nation wide by closing down the shuttle program. Have to be thousands when they shake out the constellation shutdown – depending what they deside to do.
That’s a lot less capacity in the US to do any significant project in space..
Church, explain why Shannon is now doing an inline study.
> Michael Kent wrote @ August 10th, 2010 at 1:19 pm
>==But current projections are that we will regain the ability to deliver
> cargo to and return cargo from the ISS through COTS / CRS by this
> time next year. ==
Probably optimistic, and the launch and return will be at very reduced levels.
>== And if the FY11 budget proposal passes, we should regain the
> ability to deliver crew to and return crew from the ISS by early 2015
> through the commercial crew initiative.==
?
Even Obama’s backed away from Commercial crew and talking about the house version being ok with him. At the very least the Obama budget proposal was rejected, and no budget (NASA or otherwise) is getting through congress this year for 2011.
> == Add in the propellent depot demonstration scheduled for 2015
> under FY11, and we’ll have the ability to leave LEO shortly thereafter. ==
In what? No one has a BEO ship in development, and without a shuttle it needs Earth launch and landing abilities – so its a more complex craft.
Who’ll build it? Figure out how to use it? Were shutting down most of the space industry, and laying off the engineers and other staffs, who know how to develop something like that.
My big problem with the Obamaspace proposal is not only doesn’t it do anything good and useful with the $19B NASA budget, it doesn’t even retain the current infrastructure to do something with in the future. Its also a perfect proposal to eliminate US space capacity, and push NASA to do what it does the worst, and eliminate every useful ability they developed. I.E. trashing it and the industry, then salt the ground for later.
“Church, explain why Shannon is now doing an inline study.”
Because he is done with the Sidemount study? Why are you asking me, are you not the NASA employed space expert?
‘Atlas and Delta have a long string of successful flights, over many years, you moron.”
Never carried a single person you moron. The shuttle hardware has carried hundreds.
Kelly Starks wrote @ August 10th, 2010 at 9:38 pm
It might not retain the Shuttle related infrastructure but that only just gets us to leo. NASA hasn’t done any HSF BEO for decades. There’s more experience in their robotic mission areas.
Then there’s a certain amount of BEO LV expertise associated with Lock Mart and Boeing.
Kelly Starks wrote @ August 10th, 2010 at 9:38 pm
Self-deception and rabid rhetoric, in bold face no less.
Even Obama’s backed away from Commercial crew and talking about the house version being ok with him.
Says who? Where? Show me a link to anything that backs up this claim!
No one has a BEO ship in development
What about the much heralded Orion?
My big problem with the Obamaspace proposal is not only doesn’t it do anything good and useful with the $19B NASA budget
The only thing about that entire paragraph that makes sense is the first three words “My big problem”. Plus, learn to either type correctly or check your spelling, “adn” is not a word. Or are you in such a freaking hurry to post your comments that you can’t bother?
Seriously, how does it feel to be one of the disgruntled deniers that refuses to understand that infrastructure, the kind laid out in expert committee after expert committee, is exactly what the FY2011 NASA Budget embraced?
Constellation wasn’t going anywhere until 2030 at the soonest, while killing everything else NASA is capable of doing. Why in would you want that to happen?
Powerpoint colonies on the moon? That’s not why I pay my taxes every year. I want advances, and they won’t happen if we keep ten thousand broom pushers standing around waiting for “the son of shuttle” to appear.
I was reading where some proponants for the space elevator, have said that an early concept for such a thing could be ready by 2014. I had no idea that the tech. was moving along so well. That would put a crimp in everyones plans, including commercial ventures.
Kelly,
I don’t know where you get your information from. The White House has indicated they would accept the Senate’s proposal, which includes funding for commercial crew, not the House’s bill.
The House and Senate leadership have also agreed to pre-coordinate over the recess, using the Senate bill as the baseline, with the goal of having a bill on the President’s desk by October 1st. This was made possible by the unanimous passage of the NASA funding bill by the Senate.
As for the President’s FY2011 proposal, I can only conclude that we haven’t read the same documentation.
Church, If the sidemount is the way they are going, then why is a inline study needed?
Kelly Starks wrote @ August 10th, 2010 at 9:20 pm
“Over the next year we lose the shuttle (not up to its full potential, but designed to field major missions beyond Earth), we lose about 80% of the Astronaut corp, the bulk of astronaut trainers and mission planers, most of the operations staff NASA and industrial, the bulk of industrial groups that support manned and unmanned space projects, etc.
I mean estimates are up to 30,000 folks are going to be laid off nation wide by closing down the shuttle program. Have to be thousands when they shake out the constellation shutdown – depending what they deside to do.”
This is, I think, a naive perspective. Firstly, industrial groups that support unmanned space projects will do fine. The vast majority of industry efforts on space is for unmanned (communications, DOD, science, etc.). It’s often not appreciated, but the national investment in space is not concentrated in NASA efforts.
Secondly, what we’re talking about is losing positions, not people. If we’re really going to retire the Shuttle, I don’t need people around who know how to tighten a particular screw in a SSME. I’d much rather give that person some new responsibility. With regard to NASA programs, the fundamental fact is that most of the NASA budget is for salaries (jobs), and the NASA budget is increasing. So in the end, you aren’t going to find a pile of engineers and technicians out by the dumpster. What they decide to do will likely involve space flight. They may well wear a different badge (perhaps commercial), and they might have to move, but their skill won’t disappear.
Finally, as to the existing astronaut corps, our continued involvement in ISS will preserve astronaut positions who have expertise in ISS, as well as mission planners and trainers whose expertise pertains to ISS. Yes, Shuttle pilots may need some retraining.
Don’t forget, Shuttle in no way ever contributed to any focused plan to return to the Moon. In my view (as well as in the view of Mike Griffin, as it turns out), shutting down Shuttke gets us closer to a return to the Moon, not farther away. In many respects, continued operation of Shuttle was a fiscal obstacle to any human efforts by the U.S. BEO.
“The shuttle hardware has carried hundreds.” Not applicable to an SDLV.
Subsystems and components are not manned rated, only whole launch vehicles are. So once the pieces of the shuttle are re arraigned, it is no longer manned rated and has to go through the same processed as any other launch vehicle.
Atlas V is a Titan and Atlas derived vehicle, both that have carried people.
Anyways, since when has previous manned experience matter? There was a first flight for Atlas, Titan and Saturn. Actually, the EELV’s would have more flights before their first manned flight than Saturn. Also, the first manned flight of an EELV would be safer than the first flight of the shuttle.
Finally, the shuttle has killed people, US ELV’s have not.
All you EELV naysayers have no leg to stand on.
Subsystems and components are not manned rated, only whole launch vehicles are. So once the pieces of the shuttle are re arraigned, it is no longer manned rated and has to go through the same processed as any other launch vehicle.
The Shuttle itself was never man rated.
Atlas V is a Titan and Atlas derived vehicle, both that have carried people.
There is very little heritage in the Atlas V to either Titan or Atlas, other than the Centaur upper stage. It’s essentially a new vehicle, but a well-designed and reliable one with a good track record. Putting crew on it is relatively trivial compared to developing a new system.
My point is other than the SRB (with some new hardware) and the engines, an SDLV is just as similar to the shuttle as Atlas V is to heritage Atlas and Titan
My point is other than the SRB (with some new hardware) and the engines, an SDLV is just as similar to the shuttle as Atlas V is to heritage Atlas and Titan
I agree. People who think that a Shuttle-derived vehicle is human rated because it uses Shuttle components don’t understand human rating. Of course, very few people do.
Keep arguing…. Aviation Week just announced that the first Cargo Dragon is completed and is undergoing final checkouts for the first flight. The first and second stages are already at the cape. Please everyone keep arguing everything is falling into place.
“Another day moves from dawn to dusk;
And still we wait on Elon Musk;
Month upon month are all that fly;
And still no Dragons cross our skies.”
I can’t wait 2 months and this statement will be shoved right back at you. I just can’t wait. I’m salivating at the chance. LOL
Mr. Mark wrote @ August 11th, 2010 at 5:29 pm Uh, Markie, it won’t be manned. That’s that flight we’re waiting for, big fella. Keep a bib on hand- you’ve got years waiting for the first manned Dragon spaceflight.
Uh, and Markie, the Russians have been lofting ‘cargo’ flight for decades. Tick-tock, tick-tock.
Anything that makes a HLV a requirement just cannot work can it?
I’ve never seen anyone make that claim. The problem with HLV is that using one would block the possibility of using the enormous demand for launch services provided by a exploration to jump start the development of commercial RLVs, which would revlutionise manned spaceflight, both government funded and commercial. That is the enormous opportunity cost of HLV.
To justify that opportunity cost there would have to be an enormous upside to HLV, or it would have to be indispensible. So far people have only offered minor advantages and HLV is provably not indispensible, and obviously so to anyone with knowledge of basic physics and a tiny bit of knowledge about launch vehicles.
(repost, original disappeared without a trace)
“Finally, the shuttle has killed people…”
A strawman. As Dick Cheney would say, “So?” Soyuz has killed crews; Apollo lost a crew– nearly two; X-15 as well. Gemini lost a prime crew in aircraft mishaps and Mercury lost a capsule for 35 years. We know the how and why. To believe there will be no accidents or loss of life in spaceflight is absurd. But given the parameters of the risks at hand, the loss of vehicles and crews have been tragic, costly, avoidable– but endurable over 50 years of space operations. Other forms of transportation should be as lucky.
Commerical space has killed nobody because it hasn’t flown anybody. Someday it will do both. And a loss will be sadly inevitable. But you accept it and press on.
“A strawman. As Dick Cheney would say, “So?†Soyuz has killed crews; Apollo lost a crew– nearly two; X-15 as well”:
Those were spacecraft problems, Challenger and Columbia were launch vehicle incidents.
We know the how and why. To believe that commercial space can not do just as well is absurd.
” But you accept it and press on.”
Which is what you need to do. Commercial space is the now and the future.
@Byeman “Commercial space is the now and the future.” Totally bogus.
It’s the nothing and the ficticious. Commerical space has launched nobody into orbit. Commerical space has returned nobody safely to Earth. It has no operational manned spacecraft. It has nothing- no history. NASA and Russia have been lofting people for half a century. . Stop talking. Start flying. Get somebody up and down safely. Earn some credibility.
Isn’t there anyway to ban DCSCA etc from this blog. They spout so much rubbish that you can’t hold a decent discussion. They don’t even want to check facts let alone provide rational argument. The gods weep!!
“Church, If the sidemount is the way they are going, then why is a inline study needed?”
You tell me, you are the space expert that works for NASA.
Maybe Sidemount is not on the way. It it isn’t we are screwed.
DCSCA wrote @ August 11th, 2010 at 11:34 pm
“Earn some credibility”
Look in a mirror, you have less than none.
As for me, I will continue to enable commercial space and will be supporting the development of the NASA commercial crew contracts.
An HLV (sidemount or inline) is not needed at this time. Current launch vehicles and prop depots can do the job.
If there is an HLV, it will be inline
> Beancounter from Downunder wrote @ August 10th, 2010 at 10:53 pm
>> Kelly Starks wrote @ August 10th, 2010 at 9:38 pm
>> It might not retain the Shuttle related infrastructure but that
>>only just gets us to leo.
I was referring to the industrial infrastructure to develop and field such craft, and the human infrastructure to operate them.
> Bennett wrote @ August 10th, 2010 at 11:00 pm
>> Kelly Starks wrote @ August 10th, 2010 at 9:38 pm
==
>> No one has a BEO ship in development
> What about the much heralded Orion?
Still in flux. Last directive was to respec it just as a life boat, adn of course the boosters to fly it beyond LEO are officially canceled – but that to is in flux.
>> My big problem with the Obamaspace proposal is not only
>> doesn’t it do anything good and useful with the $19B NASA budget
> Seriously, how does it feel to be one of the disgruntled deniers
> that refuses to understand that infrastructure, the kind laid out
> in expert committee after expert committee, is exactly what the
> FY2011 NASA Budget embraced?
Feels like I drink less then you do.
> Bennett wrote @ August 10th, 2010 at 11:00 pm
>> Kelly Starks wrote @ August 10th, 2010 at 9:38 pm
==
>> No one has a BEO ship in development
> What about the much heralded Orion?
Still in flux. Last directive was to respec it just as a life boat, adn of course the boosters to fly it beyond LEO are officially canceled – but that to is in flux.
>> My big problem with the Obamaspace proposal is not only
>> doesn’t it do anything good and useful with the $19B NASA budget
> Seriously, how does it feel to be one of the disgruntled deniers
> that refuses to understand that infrastructure, the kind laid out
> in expert committee after expert committee, is exactly what the
> FY2011 NASA Budget embraced?
Feels like I drink less then you do.
> Constellation wasn’t going anywhere until 2030 at the soonest,
> while killing everything else NASA is capable of doing. Why in
> would you want that to happen?
I wouldn’t, but now everything is being gutted no now, leaving nothing you could build on later.
> Dennis Berube wrote @ August 11th, 2010 at 6:02 am
> I was reading where some proponants for the space elevator, have
> said that an early concept for such a thing could be ready by 2014.
> I had no idea that the tech. was moving along so well. ==
It isn’t. The Nanotech best Nano fiber cable had the tensile strength of cotton thread and was only a inch or two long if that.
> Justin Kugler wrote @ August 11th, 2010 at 8:36 am
>Kelly,
> I don’t know where you get your information from. The
> White House has indicated they would accept the Senate’s
> proposal, which includes funding for commercial crew, not the House’s bill.
??
Thought I read house later – could just be the Senate bill.
Though the Senate bill downgrades commercial crew to basically a dev program, not the $6B+ adn countnig program Obama had outlined.
Nelson was pretty explicit in brush off the idea commercial were ready – which at the least needs more definition.
> The House and Senate leadership have also agreed to
> pre-coordinate over the recess, using the Senate bill as
> the baseline, with the goal of having a bill on the President’s
> desk by October 1st. This was made possible by the
> unanimous passage of the NASA funding bill by the Senate.
Hadn’t heard that.
> As for the President’s FY2011 proposal, I can only conclude
> that we haven’t read the same documentation.
Or I read something in or about it you didn’t.
> Doug Lassiter wrote @ August 11th, 2010 at 9:24 am
>>Kelly Starks wrote @ August 10th, 2010 at 9:20 pm
>> Over the next year we lose the shuttle (not up to its full potential,
>>but designed to field major missions beyond Earth), we lose about
>> 80% of the Astronaut corp, the bulk of astronaut trainers and mission
>> planers, most of the operations staff NASA and industrial, the bulk of
>> industrial groups that support manned and unmanned space projects, etc.
>>
>> I mean estimates are up to 30,000 folks are going to be laid off nation wide by closing down the shuttle program. Have to be thousands when they shake out the constellation shutdown – depending what they deside to do.â€
> This is, I think, a naive perspective.
?
> Firstly, industrial groups that support unmanned space projects
> will do fine. The vast majority of industry efforts on space is for
> unmanned (communications, DOD, science, etc.). ==
Point. I should have been more specific about the major science nose. – though commercial space is downsizing also as comsats lose out to fiberoptic etc.
> Secondly, what we’re talking about is losing positions, not people. ===
No really were losing people and teams/organizations. You don’t keep on staff lift support systems teams if you stop fielding new ships or upgrading old ones. Flight planers don’t get handed jobs as Airliner dev program managers etc. And lets face it – in this economy any jobs going to be hard to find, and a big fraction of these folks in surveys are looking to retire or get out of the industry.
NASA will retain its head count – its just the skill set of those on salary or subcontracted will be different. New company’s will bid for the new contracts to staff the centers, with all new people with new skillsets
> Finally, as to the existing astronaut corps, our continued involvement
> in ISS will preserve astronaut positions who have expertise in ISS, as well
> as mission planners and trainers whose expertise pertains to ISS.
> Yes, Shuttle pilots may need some retraining.
You forget shuttle flew about 5 times as many people a year as we will send to the ISS, so the major downsizing. And obviously the skills needed to do the complex missions shuttle can do, but nothing after it is built to do, will be droped.
>== Don’t forget, Shuttle in no way ever contributed to any
> focused plan to return to the Moon. ==
Untrue, it was designed and built as part of a plan to get us to moon and mars in a big affordable way. We never did that, adn other then the work it did building ISS it didn’t develp the skills needed for big moon adn Mars programs – but it was integral to such plans.
>== In my view (as well as in the view of Mike Griffin, as it
> turns out), shutting down Shuttke gets us closer to a return to the Moon, ==
No that wasn’t Griffens view. He believed Shuttle made space to routinely accessible, which wasn’t ni NASA political interest.
“NASA will retain its head count – its just the skill set of those on salary or subcontracted will be different. New company’s will bid for the new contracts to staff the centers, with all new people with new skillsets”
So, um, this is not about preserving jobs. It’s about preserving YOUR job. Maybe the time has come to see some evolution in the skill sets that are available to make space exploration happen properly. Also, I firmly believe that job shifting for engineering and technical efforts is not nearly as difficult as you do.
“He believed Shuttle made space to routinely accessible, which wasn’t in NASA political interest.”
I’m having trouble parsing your words, but so that’s why Mike was so anxious to retire Shuttle (and ISS) as a part of his Constellation program? No way. Shuttle didn’t make space “routinely accessible”. Not by a long shot. In fact, it made it very expensive. Mike knew that, and he knew he needed to pull the plug.
Shuttle was certainly not built to “get us to Moon and Mars”, and although it was built to get us to LEO in an affordable way … it didn’t. The Shuttle program had many successes, but affordability of access to LEO sure wasn’t one of them.
byeman wrote @ August 12th, 2010 at 9:24 am =yawn= Stop talkng, start flying, musketeer.
DCSCA wrote @ August 12th, 2010 at 8:57 pm
I am flying. I am working on a NASA launch that uses commercial space services.
Kelly Starks wrote @ August 12th, 2010 at 4:40 pm
> Dennis Berube wrote @ August 11th, 2010 at 6:02 am
> I was reading where some proponants for the space elevator, have
> said that an early concept for such a thing could be ready by 2014.
> I had no idea that the tech. was moving along so well. ==
‘It isn’t. The Nanotech best Nano fiber cable had the tensile strength of cotton thread and was only a inch or two long if that.’
Sorry Kelly, that’s totally incorrect.
There’s been competitions going for several years now with teams supported by various companies and individuals competing for prize monies worth up to $4m put up by NASA not only for tether but also for climbers.
In particular, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) being developed for the tether have far better strength to weight ratios than the best steel. CNTs are now moving out of the laboratories with commercial quantities slowly becoming available.
For more info’ suggest you visit the following site for a good overview and update on developments in the area of Space Elevators.
http://www.spaceward.org/
Cheers
That said, 2014 for a space elevator is certainly unrealistic.
> Doug Lassiter wrote @ August 12th, 2010 at 6:11 pm
>> “NASA will retain its head count – its just the skill set of those
>> on salary or subcontracted will be different. New company’s
>> will bid for the new contracts to staff the centers, with all
>> new people with new skillsetsâ€
> So, um, this is not about preserving jobs. It’s about preserving
> YOUR job.==
I haven’t worked there for years.
>== Maybe the time has come to see some evolution in the skill
> sets that are available to make space exploration happen properly.==
By eliminating everyone (or nearly everyone) with any maned space exploration experence?
>>=
>> “He believed Shuttle made space to routinely accessible,
>> which wasn’t in NASA political interest.â€
> == No way. Shuttle didn’t make space “routinely accessibleâ€.
> Not by a long shot. In fact, it made it very expensive. Mike
> knew that, and he knew he needed to pull the plug.
It wasn’t routine and low cost by our standards, but it was far to routine and low cost for Mike. So Constellation would cost several times as much per launch ($7B-$9B by various GAO estimates), and fly far fewer times, but they would be big spectacular Apollo style launches and recoveries.
>== Shuttle was certainly not built to “get us to Moon and Marsâ€, ==
Oh contra – the concept was shuttles could lift and assemble massive stations (bigger then ISS), and deep space ships. Shuttle was to be the space truck that lifted the peaces to assemble in orbit, craft and platforms far larger and more complex then a HLV could do.
> Beancounter from Downunder wrote @ August 12th, 2010 at 10:52 pm
> carbon nanotubes (CNTs) being developed for the tether have far
> better strength to weight ratios than the best steel. ==
The nanotubes has stunning strength. But the cables made out of them don’t. You can’t make single nanotubes stretching from the ground to orbit, and more then nylon ropes are made out of nylon lines the full length. You briad or glue strands into the bigger ropes. That’s where nanotubes fall down. The nanotubes are extremely slippery, so there’s little friction between them and other materials – nor do adhesives stick to them.
Nano tubes are moving into commercial use – but they no longer talk about structural uses.
To make it worse, space elevators have such huge capital costs, and such low carrying capacity – it seems unlikely they could lift material to orbit at costs competitive with current rockets – much les future ones.
“Oh contra – the concept was shuttles could lift and assemble massive stations (bigger then ISS), and deep space ships. Shuttle was to be the space truck that lifted the peaces to assemble in orbit, craft and platforms far larger and more complex then a HLV could do.”
C’mon. The argument here is about what it did, versus what it was intended to do. And I actually don’t recall any specific plans to use the Shuttle to raise Moon or Mars ships. It lifted large pieces along with people, which may have been a justifiable strategy then, but is assuredly not now. Far larger and more complex than an HLV could do? Not quite. These days, payload to LEO of a Shuttle is of order 25mT. That mass is easily accommodated by a Delta IV-H, which has a comparable shroud diameter. Yes, payload length can’t be quite as long as in a Shuttle, but that’s rarely an issue.
“”Maybe the time has come to see some evolution in the skill sets that are available to make space exploration happen properly.””
“By eliminating everyone (or nearly everyone) with any maned space exploration experence?”
Nope. Never said that. In no way is retirement of Shuttle eliminating nearly everyone with manned space flight experience. It may well be eliminating their job description, especially if that job description happens to be first assistant screw tightener on SSMEs. As I said, you won’t end up with engineers and technicians out by the dumpster, but you will end up with a pile of job descriptions out there. For those people who are wedded to their job description instead of to their training, I do have pity for them.
I suppose there are some elderly Edsel engineers wandering around out there, still looking for work. But most just moved on.
We understand basic physics, and have actually analyzed them intelligently.<- Congratulations on earning a high school degree.
Shuttle didn’t make space “routinely accessibleâ€. Not by a long shot. In fact, it made it very expensive. Mike knew that, and he knew he needed to pull the plug.
Astonishingly, almost no one I know in the space program knows why Apollo was canceled (by Nixon) in 1974. Sending people even to the Moon with big expendable rockets was, an is, much too expensive to be practical. A few remember that Shuttle was developed for a very simple reason. Most of the astronomical cost of human spaceflight is in building a new launch vehicle and spacecraft for each mission. The fuel for the Shuttle costss almost nothing; hydrogen is 98 cents a gallon at LC-39, LOX is 60 cents a gallon.
Most people have no idea why the Shuttle is more expensive to fly than was originally predicted. It is not because it is reusable, it’s primarily because it was built without any prototypes that could actually fly in space. Consequently there was no accurate way to predict cost or risk and many critical design decisions were made that, in retrospect, were incorrect. Obviously constructing a new external fuel tank and completely rebuilding the SRBs is a large part of it, but maintaining the VAB, MLPs, crawlers and ships is also expensive.
That’s why NASA initiated the Reusable Launch Vehicle program, to test design concepts and critical systems for a new generation of shuttles that would be both safe and practical. The X-33, X-34, X-37 and DC-X were part of that program. Unfortunately Bush and Griffin canceled all the technology demonstrators in favor of Apollo on Steroids.
Astonishingly, almost no one I know in the space program knows why Apollo was canceled (by Nixon) in 1974.
That might be because it was canceled by Johnson, many years earlier than that. Nixon was an awful president, in many ways, but cancelling Apollo was not one of his sins.
Nixon was an awful president, in many ways, but cancelling Apollo was not one of his sins.
Authorising the Shuttle on the other hand…
> Doug Lassiter wrote @ August 13th, 2010 at 11:06 pm
>== The argument here is about what it did, versus what it was
> intended to do. ==
I thought we were talking about why Griffen didn’t like about it, adn wanted different in the next system?
>== And I actually don’t recall any specific plans to use the Shuttle
> to raise Moon or Mars ships.===
Yeah as late as the 90’s they were doing studies and proposals for a return to the mon with craft that could be deployed in Earth orbit fro shuttle, go to the moon, return to LEo, then be picked up adn returned to Earth with shuttle.
>== It lifted large pieces along with people, which may have been
> a justifiable strategy then, but is assuredly not now. ==
Why?
>== Far larger and more complex than an HLV could do? Not quite. ==
Defiantly. They budgeted about 20 flights to build the ISS – and that’s 500 tons, with a lot of on orbit assembly, allowing a more space optimized design. There are downsides to the modularity — but for big scale projects or assemblies, its pretty much the only way to do it.
>>>“â€Maybe the time has come to see some evolution in the skill
>>> sets that are available to make space exploration happen properly.—
>> “By eliminating everyone (or nearly everyone) with any maned
>> space exploration experence?â€
> Nope. Never said that. In no way is retirement of Shuttle eliminating
> nearly everyone with manned space flight experience. == As I said,
> you won’t end up with engineers and technicians out by the dumpster, =
And where are they going to go with no jobs for anyone with their skill sets?
#1 – as soon as those contracts end they are all laid off. Few folks at the centers work for NASA.
#2 – then NASA Brings in new contract teams who hire folks with the diffent skills.
Now given they are laying off folks who know how to fly and operate space craft, and those who know how to develop and build space craft. And they have very little need for anyone with those skills at NASA, and NASA was a major fraction of the market, and NASA not really going to replace them with new engineering needs in other projects, they are forced out of the industry.
Not really new – US areospace and manufacturing isn’t doing real well.
Yes I knew engineers can shift back and forth between wildly different jobs – I made a career out of it – but you still lose skills and knowledge when you lose experenced folks.
> vulture4 wrote @ August 14th, 2010 at 5:48 pm
>==
> Most people have no idea why the Shuttle is more expensive to
> fly than was originally predicted. It is not because it is reusable, ==
True.
>== it’s primarily because it was built without any prototypes that
> could actually fly in space. Consequently there was no accurate
> way to predict cost or risk and many critical design decisions
> were made that, in retrospect, were incorrect. ==
No and yes. After flying the first couple shuttle flights they learned a lot of things didn’t work as well as expected (tiles, some internal systems, etc), but those could have been refited. The external tank adn SRB design was just a rush job tossed in as a quick (2-3 day) driven by a gov edict.
The big problems were NASA waas pushed to keep costs up, as well as keep up and maintained centers designed for programs far larger then Apollo or Shuttle. These were political givens that drove NASA.