Oink!

Look Dennis please make an effort to understand what is going on.

“Talking of NASA as a social program, or a military program, or a jobs program, or a science program, all shows the point, that many benefit from it.”

No it does not show any of that. It is not in the NASA Space Act to do any of that. Please read this: http://www.nasa.gov/offices/ogc/about/space_act1.html

“I think in all of this though, the main idea of human exploration is forgotten. That is the sad part.”

There is no “human” exploration at NASA to be done by law.

“I am the first to realize, that NASA needs to budget better. The cost over runs must stop, and the best possible means for exploration achieved, whether that means expendable rockets, and or reusable.”

It is not NASA fault alone. When Congress provides a budget that is much lower than needed to do anything significant you get this kind of results, i.e. nothing.

“Also other avenues of study need to progress, such as cheaper access to space, and again whether that means systems like the space elevator, and or reusable systems, needs to be addressed.”

Congress did its best to kill any of that to support an HLV of some sort that we actually do not need! There is no requirement for an HLV, there is no mission, no customer! The HLV is there to protect the workforce, right or wrong.

“Theere is presently no easy answers to satisfy everyone. Plenty of bending of ideas will have to be gained, if we are to get anywhere. In all of this however, Human Spaceflight, MUST continue. If China launches its planned for military space station, what are we going to be doing?”

There are very easy answers. Read the Augustine committee report at the very least. Then there are other options that people have offered here and elsewhere. http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/396093main_HSF_Cmte_FinalReport.pdf

Af for China. No one gives a hoot what China does or does not do. And if it is of military nature we have the DoD to take care of it with a much larger budget than NASA, a civilian agency.

Please!

I ask, because ‘amightywind’ has not answered the Ares I question yet, but ‘Truth Is Weirder Than Fiction’ seemed to be arguing the same points as ‘amightywind’.

Any monetary defense of Ares I Windy?

“Is Dragon such a ship?”

I agree with Justin’s response, and I’ll expand on it a little.

I like to look at things from a number of different perspectives.

If I were to imagine a future where all U.S. spaceflight is through NASA (like it is now), then I continue to see ups and downs in the number of people flying because of the ups and downs of Congressional funding. This is regardless of the overall demand for spaceflight, since NASA would be constricted in the number of flights by it’s funding levels.

If I were to imagine a future where there are more than two commercial crew transportation companies, I see that the government portion would still have it’s ups and downs (as programs get funded or go away), but that the non-NASA market has a chance to continue flights as the market allows. No one knows how much demand there is, but we know there is some tied directly to supporting the ISS, and we know that at least one company (Bigelow) is trying to create a business that caters to countries or large companies.

Between these two examples, the later one is the one I see as giving us the best chance to expand into space. NASA will always be a place of “programs” and never commerce, so if we want commerce in space, we have to get commercial companies involved.

I also see the later example as a way for NASA to save money on getting to LEO, and use that money to get out past LEO. Commercial firms, doing the routine work of transporting to/from LEO, can offer significant cost savings over anything NASA can do.

With SpaceX and their Dragon, they are targeting the market of getting to/from LEO. Dragon is just a minivan for space, and is not optimized for extended duration operations. It does not compete with Orion, or any other exploration vehicle, but they would be glad to deliver astronauts to/from those types of vehicles when they are in LEO. SpaceX wants to the Southwest Airlines of Earth-to-LEO for crew – no frills transportation at a great price.

Yeah, I should have put a smiley face at the bottom so it didn’t seem so harsh.

“Actually not. That’s only if you just fly it once a year. If you fly the Ares I several times a year the cost goes down DRAMATICALLY to $138 million/year to operate. Around the the cost of flying Soyuz missions:”

See, this shows we’re falling behind in our national math skills…

The Ares I program requires a standing army of people and contractors that it needs to operate, regardless how many flights (if any) – that cost is estimated to be $1B/year. As a reference, the Shuttle program cost $200M/month, or $2.4B/year.

The marginal cost of $176M/shipset that your article mentions is added on top of that $1B, so if you fly twice, then the total cost is $1.176B, three times would be $1.352B, and so on. Depending on when you start adding the marginal cost in (the 1st or 2nd shipsets), the number of flights that it would take to equal the cost of a Delta IV Heavy ($300M/flight) comes around 6 or 7/year. And you have to do that every year, from year 1, in order to be cost competitive.

Now keep in mind, that in order to get to that parity with Delta IV Heavy prices, you had to spend $20-40B, and the only way to “recoup” those costs, or to make your investment worthwhile to the U.S. Taxpayers, is to make up the 67+ flights that $20-40B would buy on Delta IV Heavy. So if you added six additional flights per year, it would only take you 11 years of 12 flights per year to achieve spending parity with the Delta IV Heavy (this ignores little things like interest, so it’s just a simple comparison).

In some ways, this could be described as the “opportunity cost”, in that instead of spending the time and money to build Ares I (that $20-40B), you could have saved that money and spent it on doing real exploration programs much soon.

So, does Ares I still look like a great bargain for the U.S. Taxpayer?

Yeah, that’s what I get for typing in a hurry as I try to get out the door.

Too bad, because a reduction in marginal costs by an order of magnitude is what I think we need.

I’m sure he meant that he was the first one in his house to realize that…

Dennis, all kidding aside, I knew you would eventually discover you were a commercial space advocate – it was just going to take a little time. Welcome to the group!