Congress, NASA

Briefly: Criticism of heavy lift and China

A proposal being circulated to use shuttle-derived elements to develop at least a demonstration of a heavy-lift launch vehicle is generating criticism from some quarters, the Orlando Sentinel reported Thursday. The architecture under consideration for the initial Space Launch System would be similar to the Jupiter-130 concept from DIRECT, placing the Orion capsule on top of a modified external tank with three space shuttle main engines and two solid rocket boosters. That’s raised some concerns that NASA may not compete the ultimate design of the SLS, instead modifying existing Constellation-era contracts for various components of the vehicle.

NASA administrator Charles Bolden, speaking at a meeting of the FAA’s Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) Wednesday in Washington, denied that the was any intent by NASA to “no-bid” the design of the SLS. “We are not headed on a no-bid process,” Bolden said in response to a question by COMSTAC member Berin Szoka (who is also quoted in the Sentinel article.) Bolden said that NASA is currently trying to determine if existing development contracts “fit the scope” of the agency’s exploration plans and if the agency can legally transition those contracts to new efforts. If those happen, NASA is also examining “at what point do we transition from existing contracts to open up the aperture so that other companies than those who presently have contracts have an opportunity to compete.” He concluded that “we’re going to have open competition at some point.” Asked by Szoka why that couldn’t start now, Bolden responded, “I want to keep things moving and preserve the industrial base to the best of my ability right now.”

At about the same time Bolden was talking about heavy-lift contracting, Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA) was raising another warning about US cooperation with China. Speaking at a symposium on China’s space program held at the US Capitol by the US-China Commission, Wolf reiterated concerns he brought up at a hearing of his appropriations subcommittee last week that the Obama Administration might be trying to circumvent language in the final FY2011 continuing resolution that prevents NASA and OSTP from cooperating with China. “I take this blatant disregard for the law very seriously and the committee is currently reviewing its options,” he said, according to Space Policy Online’s summary of his talk.

50 comments to Briefly: Criticism of heavy lift and China

  • red

    “The architecture under consideration for the initial Space Launch System would be similar to the Jupiter-130 concept from DIRECT, placing the Orion capsule on top of a modified external tank with three space shuttle main engines and two solid rocket boosters.”

    The funny thing is that some of the DIRECT supporters at NSF are now interested in AJAX, which replaces the SRBs.

  • City Zen

    You voted for these idiots. Enjoy your expensive non-rocket to nowhere.

    Truly a launch vehicle worthy of America.

  • Rep. Wolf bloviated:

    “I take this blatant disregard for the law very seriously and the committee is currently reviewing its options.

    Which is D.C.-speak for, “There’s nothing we can do about it but we’re going to make a lot of noise to pretend we can.”

  • Ben Russell-Gough

    The thing that worries me about this plan is the way it is being openly seen as a ‘make work’ project to buy off Congress. No one is even suggesting that vehicle will ever be used operationally.

    The proposal is to fly four pointless test missions (without even a crew) and then scrap the vehicle in favour of the HLV. The actual SLS/HLV (whatever it eventually is) is still TBD – There is actually no guarantee that there will be any commonality between this flying political compromise and the eventual final operational HLV.

    So, you have the position where NASA is talking seriously about building one SDLV that will cost $10B, which it will fly once a year for four years because Congress told them to do. Then it will scrap the SDLV and build the HLV (costing who knows how much more) that won’t enter service until the 2020s. This will cost billions more and will push the development of actual payloads out even further.

    To quote Ed Harris’s potrayal of Gene Krantz in Apollo 13 – “Someone tell me this isn’t a government operation!”

  • amightywind

    Finally, a target configuration. They Direct design has been around for several years. Why has it taken this long to decide to build it? I am pleased though. It reuses shuttle facilities and workforce. World class shuttle components are already there. Now build the damn thing.

  • GWM

    Yeah Wind, it will definitely be a “damn thing”.

  • CharlesHouston

    Charlie Bolden is trying hard to preserve the industrial base – and allow transition time so commercial operators can come up to speed. It is a laudable goal to keep the workforce and facilities running until the new operations can take over. Now, this is a test program under a different name and I wonder about it’s scope. But if there is going to be a test program we need some sort of goal so that schedules can be created, etc. In all likelihood – the final mission would be cancelled at some point.
    As NASA Administrator, could Charlie get away with just having a test program where they flew a mission per year, and flew a reference design? Congress would probably never fund that. He has to make it sound more significant than a “test program”.

  • CharlesHouston

    Reading my post I wonder if people will misunderstand what I wrote. The proposed effort is a “test program” but I feel that Congress might fund a “MPCV Test Program”.
    Congress may be more favorable to a test program that tests specific items that are currently funded (MPCV/Orion) for instance.

  • Coastal Ron

    amightywind wrote @ May 12th, 2011 at 8:32 am

    World class High cost shuttle components are already there. Now build the damn thing throw money at my favorite Shuttle contractors.

    There, I fixed your sentence. This reflects your true meaning, as well as the space porkers in Congress.

  • GWM

    Coastal – it would be a “laudable goal to keep the workforce and facilities running until the new operations can take over” if the “new operations” elect to use shuttle parts, which may ultimately may not be the case. Also, if this is only a means to test Orion, that can be done with EELV’s.

  • *Sigh* DIRECT Jobs Program.

    When SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy makes it obsolete before the d@mn thing ever makes it out of Marshal, will the Congress-critters even show embarrassment?

    Not bloody likely.

  • josh

    ridiculous. oh well, at least these are not my taxpayer dollars that are gonna be wasted on this pork fest, i’m german, lol.
    if this gets implemented best thing that could happen would be for the pork rocket to get scrapped in 2019 (after four completely useless flights to nowhere) to be replaced by a freely competed hlv, for example falcon x.
    or better yet, cancel the make-work program after obama gets reelected in 2012 and boost ccdev spending.

  • John Malkin

    Wasn’t it going to be at least 2 years to restart existing ET production lines? Since this tank would be different from the existing Shuttle tanks, doesn’t it need to be re-designed? Wouldn’t that add time? How many employees are left at Michoud?

  • Coastal Ron

    GWM wrote @ May 12th, 2011 at 10:13 am

    I think you meant CharlesHouston, not Coastal Ron. Otherwise I agree with your comment.

    CharlesHouston wrote @ May 12th, 2011 at 9:47 am

    Congress may be more favorable to a test program that tests specific items that are currently funded (MPCV/Orion) for instance.

    Maybe. It is certainly the intent of Congress to fund a jobs program, and not really do anything NASA needs (or anyone else). The MPCV can be tested on Delta IV Heavy unmanned, and with $1.3B Delta IV Heavy can be upgraded to carry crew. The SLS, in whatever configuration it is built, has NO funded payloads. What a mess!

  • Bill Hensley

    Pure pork, at it’s very finest! Forget bacon, sausage and ham. This is the whole pig. All this thing needs is an apple in its mouth and it’ll be perfect! We have sunk to a new low when this program can be explicitly positioned as a make-work project to keep thousands of people on the payroll, and no one even seems embarrassed by it. Critics tell NASA we don’t need a heavy lift booster project and what’s their response? “That’s right! We don’t need one heavy lift booster project. We need two!”

  • pennypincher

    It doesn’t matter if it takes 2 years to restart. It doesn’t matter if it takes 10 years to restart. The objective is to spend the money. If you actually produced a launcher, you’d lose your excuse to spend the money — especially since there aren’t any payloads for it.

  • Shuttleman

    There are about 530 people at Michoud,25 are hourly floor people,some TPS working on foam problems at the cape.The rest are engineers and office people doing design layouts for HLV contract by Lockheed Martin.The LO2 tank would be a different shape because of stacking.Mostly all of the floor people were laid off.

  • Congress has been badgering Bolden to build a heavy lift utilizing existing work forces as much as possible and maximizing use of constellation elements already in development and when he does they come back on him for not following their instructions?

  • amightywind

    When SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy makes it obsolete

    Musk’s Soviet era 54 thrust chamber F9H design is obsolete before it ever left paper. The NASA leadership has done everything in their power to slow the process, but the time to cut metal on Direct/Orion is here. This is Constellation reborn with a larger Orion carrier rocket.

    and when he does they come back on him for not following their instructions?

    Obama and Holdren put Bolden in the weak political position he is in. The GOP smells blood.

  • Robert G. Oler

    This is the end of the heavy lift effort at NASA…Robert G. Oler

  • Jim Hillhouse

    Unless some within NASA want to be sitting in front of a hostile Appropriations Committee hearing defending themselves against charges of misappropriation of funds, there will be no MPCV test rocket, early phase rocket or anything but, per the FY11 Appropriations bill (pp. 214-215), Sec. 1333(a)1, “…heavy lift launch vehicle system which shall have a lift capability not less than 130 tons and which shall have an upper stage and other core elements developed simultaneously.”

    Not much ambiguity there. And if you talk to Hill Approp’s space staffers, there’s no willingness for allowing NASA’s 9th Floor any flexibility in interpreting 1333(a)1. Quite the opposite.

  • mr. mark

    Ah.. windy in a word no. Falcon Heavy has crossfeed technology and is no Soviet era lifter. Sorry but you seem not to understand basic rocket technology. It’s the shuttle derived launch vehicle that NASA is building that is based on old 1980’s tech.

  • reader

    >>his is Constellation reborn

    .. reborn in the same way as zombies keep walking. Its called “undead” in popular mythology.

  • John Malkin

    amightywind wrote @ May 12th, 2011 at 2:42 pm
    The GOP smells blood.

    Pity they don’t smell logic.

    @Shuttleman wrote @ May 12th, 2011 at 12:32 pm
    Lockheed has over 400 people (engineers and office staff) working on HLV tank design at Michoud?

  • Coastal Ron

    amightywind wrote @ May 12th, 2011 at 2:42 pm

    Musk’s Soviet era 54 thrust chamber F9H design…

    Wrong as usual. The Falcon Heavy has 27 Merlin engines (9 per core), and the Merlin is a single chamber design. I know this technical stuff is hard for you… ;-)

    …is obsolete before it ever left paper.

    Sure, as obsolete as the car you’re driving. In fact by your definition EVERY car is obsolete, as is EVERY rocket in the world.

    How was Ares I not obsolete by your standards? 30 year-old Shuttle SRB, 50-year old upper stage engine, pushing a 50-year old “Apollo on steroids” capsule. You’re hilarious!!

    What you keep ignoring is that the innovation SpaceX brings to bear is their ability to lower the $/lb to LEO. So what if they use proven designs and technology? As long as the payload makes it to orbit, the customers really don’t care when the technology was invented.

  • common sense

    @ Robert G. Oler wrote @ May 12th, 2011 at 2:45 pm

    “This is the end of the heavy lift effort at NASA…”

    I’d rather say the beginning of the end. They have to keep it going for a while for the jobs, you’ll see. But all who dream about a SD HLV? Yeah sure why not DIRECT? It is not going to be built anyway. And that’s the law, financial law that is: No bucks, no Buck Rogers.

    Oh well…

  • amightywind

    Falcon Heavy has crossfeed technology and is no Soviet era lifter.

    Ah Mr. Mark, crossfeed technology (aka a pump), bane of the triple body rocket. It is so enticing to jam 3 cheap cores together, until you realize you have to apply hacks to throttle the inboard core or crossfeed propellant. Then you have much more complex and dangerous plumbing interconnects. In short, a dumb idea. How about a properly sized rocket? Or Lockmart’s dial-a-rocket concept using solid boosters with Atlas V?

  • John Malkin

    I think the Steve Miller band sang it best
    Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’ Into the future for SLS…

    Fly through the revolution with Commercial.

    :)

  • Justin Kugler

    If that’s the case, Jim, those staffer don’t understand aerospace program development. They can’t constrain the budget, the schedule, and the technical solution simultaneously or arbitrarily and rationally expect good results.

  • common sense

    Oh and just for fun. Look at the fairing around the Orion on the Jupiter link by Jeff. If it stays the same and the LAS has to pull the fairing then the drag associated with this monstrosity is going to require enormous thrust from the LAS tower.

    Unfeasible, yet again… You’ll see with the first “studies”.

  • dad2059 wrote:

    When SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy makes it obsolete before the d@mn thing ever makes it out of Marshal, will the Congress-critters even show embarrassment?

    Not bloody likely.

    I think a day is going to come when commercial space is ready to launch crew far more affordably than government vehicles, and Congress will finally have to own up — either admit that the government program is all about pork, or acknowledge that SpaceX/fill-in-the-blank can do it far more cheaply and drive a stake through the heart of government space.

    But they won’t go easily. I suspect we’ll see certain Congresscritters like Shelby introduce legislation mandating these private sector vehicles to use government infrastructure, even though there’s no need and it’s terribly inefficient. Hopefully enough Congresscritters from outside those space districts will say no to the porkers and that will be that. But then they have their own pork too and might swap votes to protect everyone’s pork.

    What a sad situation.

    I was telling a group of KSC tourists today about CCDev. They were enthralled. Then I told them about SLS. One asked, “What’s its destination?” I said, “It doesn’t have one yet.” They were confused.

    Particularly interesting is the reaction of foreign tourists versus those from the U.S. The foreigners don’t have the overlay of partisan hatred and bitterness that seeps into the conversation with Americans. The foreigners grasp CCDev right away, while some Americans start throwing Beck-speak or Limbaugh-speak at me. I try patiently to explain how we got where we are today, and finally most get it, but some are still so blind with hatred for Obama that they don’t care about the facts, they just want to spew hate. There’s no reasoning with those people.

  • Scia

    Well Since the falcon Heavy is being developed purely on SpaceX’s dime, and is built to fly humans. I think we are going to get a human rated heavy lifter regardless of the porkers in congress.

    Elon Musk also said with two launches the falcon heavy could put men back on the moon. This would also cost less then 1 shuttle flight.

    I believe we are likely going Beyond Earth Orbit regardless of what happens to the SLS.

    Just 2 cents

  • DCSCA

    “A proposal being circulated to use shuttle-derived elements to develop at least a demonstration of a heavy-lift launch vehicle…a modified external tank with three space shuttle main engines and two solid rocket boosters.”

    Maybe they should just call it the Pork Chop. Good grief: NASA Productions presents the horror classic, “THE THING THAT WOULDN’T DIE.” More residual vestiges of shuttle management/planners/contractors armed with the talons of its political backers. Desperation. This too shall pass– once the agency is cleaned out of shuttle deadwood management. The feared ‘gap’ may be a blessing in disguise. Meanwhile, more free drift and wasted time.

  • Alex

    “The funny thing is that some of the DIRECT supporters at NSF are now interested in AJAX, which replaces the SRBs.”

    You could put a bright red racing stripe on a giant cardboard paper towel roll and the people at NSF would flock to it as the next big thing in rocketry.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Alex wrote @ May 12th, 2011 at 5:22 pm

    “You could put a bright red racing stripe on a giant cardboard paper towel roll and the people at NSF would flock to it as the next big thing in rocketry.”

    yes…its an entertaining lot RGO

  • Robert G. Oler

    The irony of all this hoopla is that (as I pointed out at NASAspaceflight.com and it was not all that well received there…shock) if preserving the shuttle workforce and the shuttle infrastructure were a desired goal (and it is not one of mine) then the “time” to have done a SDV was oh well you know right after Columbia went bang.

    Now all it is is the last gasp of a political/bureaucracy machine trying to stay alive as it is Terry schivoed…ie the machines turned off. RGO

  • josh

    Sophisticated commentary on the us space policy debate, for your enjoyment

    http://i.imgur.com/Rr6LE.png

  • @ Robert G. Oler wrote @ May 12th, 2011 at 6:00 pm

    Now all it is is the last gasp of a political/bureaucracy machine trying to stay alive as it is Terry schivoed…ie the machines turned off.

    Ugh. And just as hard and ugly to watch. :-P

  • Major Tom

    “Musk’s Soviet era 54 thrust chamber F9H design…”

    The Falcon Heavy employs 27 Merlin 1D engines in its 0/1 stages. If you can’t count higher than ten, you shouldn’t be commenting on launch vehicle design or any other engineering topic.

    Cripes…

    And a “Soviet-era” launch vehicle with 20 thrust chambers in it 0/1 stages kept NASA astronauts safely in space for over two years after the Shuttle program experienced its second loss of crew. In fact, in 45 years of over 1,700 launches, how many times has the Soyuz launch vehicle failed because of the number of its thrust chambers?

    starsem.com/soyuz/log.htm

    Don’t make idiotic statements out of ignorance and think before you post.

    Sigh…

  • pathfinder_01

    Jill, I think you could. There is no law against testing it unmanned on Delta. The law just calls for the creation of SLS and that SLS should be man rated. In fact that is planned to happen in 2013. There could be an issue with man rating delta but that is another story.

    Mark, more like 1970ies tech…shuttle first flew in 1981!

  • Shuttleman

    I have to backtrack on the 500 engineers and office people at Michoud.I found out not long ago that thoes 500 aren’t there any more!Michoud is the only place to build a HLLV tank and to retrain and get that workforce back online will take some doing.A lot of the experienced workforce that was there won’t be comming back!

  • Ben Russell-Gough

    @ Robert Oler, Alex,

    I think that you are mis-characterising the debate over on NSF.

    Looking back historically to when the DIRECT concept first emerged, it was in a debate about streamlining the Ares Launch System. The reason what eventually evolved into the DIRECT Jupiter concept was so popular, even with some NASA engineers, was that it was so very much simpler and cheaper than the orthodox ALS (even at this time, when SSME and the four-seg RSRM were being considered for Ares-I).

    At no time have DIRECT claimed that their ideas were the best option available. If you read the preamble for the 2009 AIAA presentation, you will see that the team acknowledges that any kind of SDLV has its draw-backs. However, they go on to explain how several items of legislation demanded that NASA use legacy hardware as far as possible (yes, that wasn’t an innovation of the 2010 Re-authorisation Act). Because of this legislation and the political needs of a major program, it was their assessment that any non-SD concept was a non-starter, no matter how better it might be in terms of technology and cost-efficiency. The objective of DIRECT always was to find a way to align the stars of political backing, operational requirements and legacy technology in such a way as to provide the required operational capabilities quicker, better and cheaper.

    Since then, the debate has moved on. The Augustine Commission’s report concentrated a lot of minds. It has also become increasingly clear that NASA itself does not have the capability to build anything of the sort of a heavy lifter without incurring massive extra costs and schedule slips due to an inefficient bureaucracy and methodology. Because of this, the debate on NSF is moving on to how to make the program ‘no-frills’, seeking even simpler, lower-cost solutions. The current watch-phrase is to leave enough money in the kitty to pay for payloads as well as rockets. Hopefully, this would enable more to be done than, say, fly an Orion on top of a shuttle-derived launcher before the end of the 2020s.

    One movement, as has been pointed out, is AJAX. I admit to not being a fan of that design. The T/W ratio at launch is marginal at best and this issue seems to be being hand-waved away by the concept’s fiercest partisans. Another major grass-roots movement on the site has been to attempt to develop an exploration architecture using the Falcon Heavy and the ~50t IMLEO derivations of the EELVs (sometimes known as the ‘Phase-1′ upgrades).

    I want to emphasise that this is not in any way a ‘Ooh! Shiny new thing!’ mind-set. If NASA had shown any hint that it was capable of building a D-SDLV In-line in a way that reduced costs or fit in a reasonable time-scale, I believe that it would have more support in the NSF community. As it happens, NASA seem determined to build the most expensive possible interpretation of the SLS using the slowest and least cost- and time-efficient development path. Frankly, we’re getting the impression that NASA don’t want to do it and won’t do it. The race is thus on to find something that either NASA can and will do or something that doesn’t require them.

  • Egad

    > The current watch-phrase is to leave enough money in the kitty to pay for payloads as well as rockets.

    Could you recommend NSF threads that discuss potential payloads, please?

  • Ben Russell-Gough

    @ Egad,

    There are several and they aren’t always obvious as the discussion sometimes gets mixed in with LV & policy debates.

    One particular thread that I’ve been watching is this one:

    http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=24842.0

    This particular thread discusses a multi-launch lunar surface archetecture using only 50t launchers.

    The ‘Advanced Spaceflight’ and ‘Orion and Exploration Vehicles’ forums are the best places to look. Otherwise, new spacecraft/payload threads tend to appear in launcher-specific forums (such as the ESA forum for ATV applications, the OSC forum for Prometheus and Cygnus and so on).

  • >The current watch-phrase is to leave enough money in the kitty to pay for payloads as well as rockets

    Now there’s a truly radical concept. Actually having a reason to fly the vehicle, other than “mine’s bigger than yours”.

    The next breakthrough will be leaving enough money to actually fly the rocket and achieve the mission.

    It will turn out to be amazine how much we can explore with current rockets, if we care more about exploring than rocket-designing.

  • Egad

    @ Ben Russell-Gough

    > There are several

    Thank you.

  • Byeman

    “crossfeed technology (aka a pump)”

    There are no additional pumps in crossfeed.

  • Byeman

    ” Lockmart’s dial-a-rocket concept using solid boosters with Atlas V”

    It was designed as a 3 core booster.

  • red

    “I want to emphasise that this is not in any way a ‘Ooh! Shiny new thing!’ mind-set.”

    Yes, it probably isn’t just a “shiny new thing” reaction. I think the following quote from NSF’s clongton shows one point of view:

    “[someone else’s quote: Yes, I think that is one of the great strengths of your AJAX concept. From my vantage point, quite superior to what is coming out of the RACs.]

    As an original co-founder of DIRECT, please allow me to add my agreement to that statement. The Jupiter was designed to replace the Ares with a LV that completely complied with the then legislation, which required using the SRB. So long as that requirement remained absolute, there is literally *NO* better SDHLV design available than the Jupiter. But remove the *absolute* requirement for the SRB, which the current legislation did, and AJAX becomes the superior design.”

    From my point of view, it would be better to not have an SLS at all, and to use those funds for exploration technology demonstrations, robotic precursor missions, fully funded commercial crew, ISS use, robotic science missions of various sorts, human research, perhaps very modest enhancements to existing rockets, etc. So I’m not an AJAX advocate. However, it does strike me [as a non-rocket-engineer] as having some nice advantages compared to, say, Ares or DIRECT.

  • Coastal Ron

    red wrote @ May 15th, 2011 at 7:20 pm

    As an original co-founder of DIRECT…

    Your team made a good proposal. I originally liked DIRECT because of the level of reuse that you did, but ultimately realized that there wasn’t enough demand for an HLV at this time – regardless who builds it.

    So I’m not an AJAX advocate. However, it does strike me [as a non-rocket-engineer] as having some nice advantages compared to, say, Ares or DIRECT.

    If Congress insists on building an HLV, then AJAX is an interesting proposal, and maybe more palatable to me than DIRECT. I would rather use rocket boosters that already have commercial demand (Atlas CCB’s) than boosters that only have one use (DIRECT Shuttle SRB’s). I guess we’ll see which way the wind blows from NASA.

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