Congress, NASA

Nelson plays down risks to US-Russia space relations

Echoing previous comments by agency officials, a key US senator said Tuesday he doesn’t believe that the current crisis involving Ukraine will jeopardize US-Russian relations in space.

“I think you will not see a hitch in the American and the Russian space program that we share with a lot of other nations as well,” Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) told reporters Tuesday at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida Today reported. Despite Russian efforts to annex Crimea from Ukraine, “I think it’s pretty clear that the cooperation in space will continue,” he said.

Those comments come a day after his office issued a press release stating that NASA officials had been “briefing some members of Congress over the last few days on U.S. plans and options should relations between the two nations deteriorate.” In the same release, though, Nelson indicated he didn’t believe the current crisis would “interfere with important scientific work being done aboard the space station,” while also arguing that it called for a “strong” US space program, including development of commercial crew transportation systems.

Nelson’s comments on US-Russian space relations echo those by NASA officials, who have, since early March, indicated a lack of concern that the crisis would adversely affect ISS operations. “I know the events in Ukraine have been a concern for many people, but things are very harmonious in the program,” said ISS director Sam Scimemi during a panel session on space station research held by the Space Transportation Association on Capitol Hill March 14.

62 comments to Nelson plays down risks to US-Russia space relations

  • amightywind

    Why doesn’t he think so? Relations with Russia are nose diving. Expect negative consequences in Syria and Iran too. Not to think that conflict with Russia won’t effect the ISS is reckless. Annexation of the Crimea was also unthinkable last month.

    I know the events in Ukraine have been a concern for many people, but things are very harmonious in the program

    Interesting. Those are the exact words the Chinese leadership tends to use. I don’t believe a word of it.

    • Ben Russell-Gough

      Because Putin is the arch-cynic. He’ll sell goods and services to his worst enemies for cash-in-hand. To him, it’s just part and parcel of having the power to do whatever he wants: he knows that people will have to come to Russia no matter what they think of his policies. Hell, he’ll probably kick the price per seat on a Soyuz up a few percent, just to rub the USA’s face in the fact he’s won in Crimea and is in the process of winning in Syria.

      • amightywind

        So why on earth would the US want to tie up in space with that? It’s crazy to partner on something like this with a malevolent actor.

        • Ben Russell-Gough

          Reason? Remember, before Putin, it was Boris the Tame. He gave the US whatever they wanted, no questions asked. It was at this time, with Russia reduced to an emasculated conquered state status, that the US and Europe made itself dependent on Russian resources thinking it would be a cheap and risk-free move. Then Putin came and it’s taken the West this long to realise that he can’t be bought and he’s not bargaining. It’s even money if the West can extract itself from this particular embrace of death without serious economic and infrastructural damage.

      • seamus

        “he’s won in Crimea”

        Putin may have won a small victory in Crimea, but losing de facto control over all of Ukraine is a much bigger loss for Russia.

        • seamus

          And it’s questionable whether the annexation of Crimea is on balance a real victory for Putin– is the cost of economic and political isolation really worth it for Russia?

          • Ben Russell-Gough

            The point is that Russia isn’t going to be isolated; too many western economies are in a symbiotic link with theirs. Russia’s satellites will go right on trading with them, of course, and I think you’ll find that Central Europe will find it economically difficult to extract themselves from Russia’s mercies in the near-term.

  • Hiram

    It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Because if Nelson is right, international partnership in space exploration can be seen as valuable for diplomacy, but of little importance in actually asserting geopolitical power. That is, threats against space partnership are ineffective as a geopolitical tool. In the long-term interest of space exploration, that’s probably a very good thing. “Soft power” doesn’t work that well against partners, it would seem.

    • Ben Russell-Gough

      I would actually say it’s the other way around, but only in a subtle way. The US’s reliance on Russia for propulsion (RD-180 and NK-33) and human space access (Soyuz) is one of the threads in the noose that hobbled any meaningful US and EU response to Crimea.

      FWIW, I think that the EU might have figured this out too. It might explain the tentative discussions between OSC and ESA about putting Dreamchaser on top of Ariane-5 for assured ESA crewed space access.

      • The US’s reliance on Russia for propulsion (RD-180 and NK-33) and human space access (Soyuz) is one of the threads in the noose that hobbled any meaningful US and EU response to Crimea.

        It also keeps us from enforcing INKSNA, so it renders our efforts at non-proliferation toothless.

      • Hiram

        That’s a fair statement, but it’s really not about U.S.-Russian partnership on ISS. It’s about U.S. being dependent on Russian engines, an arrangement which is hardly a “partnership”, and actually has almost nothing to do with ISS. Nelson’s comments were about that ISS partnership. My point is that risk to the ISS partnership isn’t an effective geopolitical tool. They need us as much as we need them. Threatening to chop someones toe off because their finger is in your eye makes little sense.

  • Andrew Swallow

    The Russians won in Crimea, now they are trying to minimise the cost.

  • James

    What Putin wants Putin Gets.
    What Nelson wants Nelson gets.
    Great combination for global meltdown

  • Time to move on from the ISS with the next generation of private and SLS derived space stations– including artificial gravity space stations.

    An SLS derived Skylab II or a Bigelow Olympus BA-2100 or both could easily be deployed by the SLS before the end of the decade– probably for a lot less than the $3 billion a year we’re currently spending on the ISS.

    Marcel

    • @Marcel F. Williams,…..I agree that it is high time we prepare for de-orbiting & sinking the ISS. It IS indeed costing us way too much, and has long since served/outlived its original geopolitical purpose——-of keeping Russia on a peaceful post-Soviet technological path. We should terminate the ISS by say, the year 2020.

      However I disagree on the idea of NASA building & dealing with any further LEO space stations. We’ve been trapped in LEO for 41 years and counting! Why can’t we just end with the whole LEO station paradigm? We should use our next Heavy-Lift rocket for ferrying new cislunar spacecrafts, for resuming manned landings upon the Moon.

      But if resumed Lunar exploration still does not become politically viable, after the Low Earth Orbit President leaves office, then yes, we might be in semi-agreement, that a smaller & less extravagant & intermittently-occupied, Skylab-resembling station might then be a viable stop-gap measure. After all, China does not appear to be poised to copy the ISS: its “space station” will most likely consist of a module-platform, that’ll be used mainly for practicing docking/linking-up procedures for near-future lunar/interplanetary spacecraft, which would be put into parking orbits prior to venturing into deep space.

    • Orbitnaut_Pluto

      My reply to you is a bit farther down in the comments, so it would be nice if you looked at it there. Sorry for the inconvenience of having to scroll down.

  • Brad

    It makes one wonder, would a joint UK-German antarctic base have continued operating unimpeded after the Germans absorbed Czechoslovakia in 1938? Nelson is whistling past the graveyard.

    • Andrew Swallow

      A joint UK-German Antarctic base would have continued operating until September 1939; then its supplies lines would have been cut by the Royal |Navy.

  • It’s early in the game … Nelson and the rest of the Administration are playing this calm right now in the public eye, while behind-the-scenes (which is where things are *really* happening) the diplomatic game is playing out.

    I suspect the current tensions may go back to the Syria crisis. Assad is the only Russian surrogate left in the Middle East. The U.S. tried to bring him down last year over the chemical weapons, which no doubt left Putin mightily unhappy.

    It doesn’t seem to have caught on with the mainstream media, but earlier this week the U.S. kicked out of the country all the Syrian diplomats.

    I don’t think that’s unrelated to the Ukraine situation. It’s too early to kick out Russian diplomats, because we need to continue the dialogue behind the scenes. I think that privately Putin has justified his meddling in Ukraine by saying the U.S. meddled in Syria. So we retaliated by kicking out the Syrians from the U.S.

    Also overlooked is that VP Biden was in Poland and the Baltic states yesterday, all NATO members. Putin rattled his saber yesterday about protecting Russian-speaking people in Estonia. I think that’s because Biden passed through, and again Putin sees us meddling. Now, Putin won’t touch Estonia because it’s a NATO member, but again I think there’s a larger world-view here that Putin still views the world through a sphere-of-influence lens and he sees the U.S. crossing the line over and over.

    The New York Times had a great analysis on Tuesday. Here’s the key part:

    … [T]he second Bush administration pushed a guarantee of alliance membership for Ukraine and Georgia in 2008 without, the NATO official said, “seriously thinking through how to defend them.” At an alliance summit in Bucharest, Romania, in 2008, Mr. Putin crashed the dinner and said that he regarded Ukraine as an “artificial country,” warning the alliance that Russia would never accept Ukrainian and Georgian membership in NATO.

    The Bush proposal was rejected by Germany, France and a divided alliance, and Ukraine and Georgia were simply promised that one day they would be members.

    So I think his incursion into Crimea is his fear that the U.S. will try to invite Georgia and what’s left of Ukraine into NATO.

    That’s what I think we should do now. Privately get our NATO allies to agree to immediately include Ukraine and Georgia. Tell Putin privately that if he doesn’t withdraw from Crimea, Ukraine and Georgia are part of NATO effective April 1, no fooling.

    Let Putin find a way to save face publicly, just as we did with Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis. No one knew that we’d agreed privately to withdraw the Jupiter missiles from Turkey, but it gave him what he needed to placate the Politburo. In today’s situation, I think we tell him that if he withdraws from Crimea and promises to permanently honor its borders as Russia did when it signed an agreement in 1994, we will pledge to oppose Ukraine/Georgia entry into NATO.

    As for ISS … Yeah, the Russians lose a lot if they sever our access to ISS. They know our Congress is comprised of a bunch of porking idiots, and that we’ve happily extended our reliance on them through at least 2017. I think if both houses’ authorization committees would call emergency hearings and sound the clarion call to prime the pump on commercial crew, it might get Putin’s attention. The space program is of great pride for Russia, as we saw during the Sochi Olympics. They know that once commercial crew is operational, the rest of the world stops flying with them.

    So the best way to protect ISS is for Congress to do its patriotic duty and stand as one to declare commercial crew is a U.S. priority.

    Yes, I know, won’t happen.

    But that’s what should happen. And it would get Putin’s attention.

    • Malmesbury

      Putin can’t back down from the Crimea. In nationalist politics like this, that would complete defeat.

      The next step in the space side of this will be “problems” about the next shipment of RD-180s. Paper work issues only, you understand.

      • Jim Nobles

        .
        “Putin can’t back down from the Crimea. In nationalist politics like this, that would complete defeat.”

        I agree. Besides he’s already won. Once CNN announced that 95% of voters there wanted to join Russia it was pretty much over IMO. The American public may not understand much about the politics in that part of the world but they can understand that number. Expect the American public reaction to be, “95%? Let them join Russia then if that’s what they want to do.”

        I expect very little to happen with our relations regarding Soyuz and ISS. There would be no point.
        .

    • amightywind

      Tell Putin privately that if he doesn’t withdraw from Crimea, Ukraine and Georgia are part of NATO effective April 1, no fooling.

      The US should not write checks it can’t cash. Until sufficient defensive (and offensive) forces can be put in place in both countries don’t admit them to NATO. If Crimea teaches us anything its that Putin respects only facts on the ground. In the short term the US and Europe should prevent the contagion from spreading and bolster the defenses of Poland, The Baltic States, Bulgaria, and Romania. Longer term we can do what you suggest, to strangle Russia. The juiciest undefended target for Putin right now is Moldovia.

  • Orbitnaut_Pluto

    What the heck else would Nelson or NASA officials be saying at this point? So far Putin has ‘only’ seized control of the Crimea by force, and hasn’t made other moves indicating a total breakdown in relations with the West, especially with regards to the ISS, so downplaying the Russian activities in Ukraine for now sends the signal that the USA expects Putin’s camp to uphold their obligations- including ferrying crews up and down. In other words, situation normal. Escalating things from the American side could at best sour the relationship, at worst lead to Americans being blocked from going up and down til commercial crew comes along(or enough pork is thrown at SLS+Orion to get it flying before the decade is out). That would be a worse situation than we’re in now, and what double down on making stuff worse vs. maintaining the status quo?

    Downplaying this is only a temporary and public thing though- the USA has it’s pants down with regards launching crew, and pretty much everyone involved in Congress, the Executive branch, and NASA itself can get mud thrown at them over not getting the capability back fast enough. Anyone interested can see the problem the US is in, and by extension the other ISS partners, if they don’t do something now they will have this issue come up again next time Putin decides to send his goons out.

    As far sinking the ISS right now, forget it. The costs sunk in building the damn thing were so enormous as to be impressive in it’s own right; nobody wants to be accused of not trying to recoup the value put into it. Humans advancing our claim to life in space, technical demonstrations and development, science unattainable on Earth,and national chest beating, all make for the primary reasons nations started flying space stations. The ISS is no different despite also serving as a vehicle to employ Russians, and it has been serving those needs. New Transhab-based stations that a person can live in, and commercial crew vehicles that pass FAA and NASA regulations are all things that are being worked on, and aren’t done yet. Can a bunch of gear in a factory awaiting daylight serve those needs right now? Bigelow will launch a test module to the ISS this year or the next, with commercial crew vehicles flying as soon as funding allows- both benefiting from the ISS acting as a anchor tenant for them. Would there be a anchor tenant for them with the ISS sunk?

    The idea that somehow Bigelow modules and SLS derivatives(derivative of what, the SLS only has a borrowed Delta Cryo stage for it’s second stage right now) will somehow be better is fantasy. The ISS is real, and we can graft new parts onto it and keep it in service for years to come, all the while it’s doing science, acting to generate revenue for US companies, and many other things. SLS, Bigelow, even commercial crew, is a few years down the road. Whether SLS will continue is a matter on contention, so I’ll ignore that, but you can’t argue that Bigelow and the commercial vehicles are being harmed by having the ISS testing the BEAM module or using commercial cargo and crew services. The ISS is acting as the place where commercial spaceflight can get it’s start without having to pull itself up by it’s bootstraps, while servicing a national need. It’s no dream, not hardware lying still on a factory floor, it’s a hub of human activity on the shores of a unforgiving vastness. Commercial interests are sponsoring research, flying cargo, and soon crew. Even cube sats are leveraging off the ISS to grow. It’s useful, and getting more useful with every Dragon or Cygnus flight. New HD cameras are going up on the next Dragon flight, and it will have taken thousands of pictures by the time it would take your hypothetical station to gets into orbit. While lose that data, and much more besides, just on the dream of some better station?

    • amightywind

      Like a lot of misguided people your best argument for ISS is we need it for appearance sake, because it was so expensive. Face really. Yes, we were that stupid to spend $100 billion on it. Does spending $3 billion a year salve your conscience? No. The US should cut its losses and get back to space exploration.

      • Jim Nobles

        .
        amightywind said, “Like a lot of misguided people your best argument for ISS is we need it for appearance sake, because it was so expensive.”

        No, that was not the best argument. The post made several good points that were reality based. You ignored them. Or perhaps, because of the way your mind works, they were not able to penetrate your psyche. Seriously, amightywind, you are going to have to get a grip on reality if you want to be regarded as more than comedic relief.
        .

    • Hiram

      The point that ISS serves, in one respect, as an important gift to commercial spaceflight is a good one. If you aren’t going to buy enough commercial spaceflight services to advance their trade at the pace they are capable of advancing at, at least you can offer commercial spaceflight a firm rationale for existence. In fact, that’s also precisely the reason that SLS proponents hate ISS. Not just because ISS eats their money, but because it doesn’t provide SLS with a natural rationale for its existence.

    • SLS, Bigelow, even commercial crew, is a few years down the road.

      Dragon could be flying with crew this year if we thought it was important.

      • Orbitnaut_Pluto

        Congress repeatedly gave only about $500 million out of a request of around $800 million dollars for commercial crew, each year the program has been in existence. I’m aware that the original fully funded schedules predicted flights starting 2014-15, but that doesn’t change the fact that since Congress didn’t think it was important to fully fund the program, we are now looking at 2017 to start flights. That Congress will put out enough funds to cover this years request isn’t guaranteed, let alone opening the checkbooks enough to start flights this year. SpaceX can’t start offering a service NASA can’t pay for, especially since development isn’t done yet. Where would the money to speed up come from?

        • Brad

          The point is Dragon could carry crew up to and back down from the ISS today, if the political will is there. Not because any extra money is spent, but because in the national interest Dragon is flown before a launch escape system is fully developed and operational.

          Even without a launch escape system Dragon today is arguably no more risky than the STS was before retirement.

          • Orbitnaut_Pluto

            Soyuz 1 flew before the engineers thought it was complete, because it was in the national interest of the USSR to launch it ASAP and the Politburo had the political will to overrule those engineers. The STS flew even with the serious misconceptions and design flaws riddling the entire structure from the organization to the hardware itself, all because people at the top had the political will to put it in service. Both decisions didn’t lack in political will, but both tried to cheat on the engineering. The only thing that stands between catastrophe and a successful spaceflight is good engineering, and when humans though they could get lucky with shoddy or incomplete hardware, people have died. To not do the work right and cover the preventable stuff is inexcusable.

            • Brad

              The only thing the Dragon lacks that NASA wants for manned space flight is the launch escape system. Dragon is ready to go now, even without the escape system.

              Your equation of Soyuz 1 to the current Dragon is unsustained by any evidence. No one, least of all myself, desires to send anyone into Space riding a death trap for political reasons as was done with Soyuz 1. And your analogy is backwards. Today it is the politicians over-ruling the engineers when the politicians insist on a launch escape system before Dragon can fly to ISS with crew.

              If Russia forces the hand of NASA, would you desire to see ISS splashed rather than assume a slightly higher and temporary flight risk? The launch escape system for Dragon is a risk reducer but even it does not eliminate all risk of flight. There will always be a chance of catastrophic failure even with a launch escape system.

              If Russia forces the issue, the current Dragon could fly crew replacement missions to the ISS during the next year or two while the launch escape system completes development.

              • Orbitnaut_Pluto

                Launch escape systems are part of the completed product, like seat belts on a car or a safety on a gun. Claiming otherwise is gambling with astronaut lives, especially since we know launch is one of the most hazardous times for crew. You specifically stated that Dragon should be launched minus critical hardware like it’s launch escape system, with the backing of of National interest and political will. A top down political demand to launch a spacecraft(incomplete, since at the very least the abort system is untested) is exactly what you stated should happen, despite that was the same recipe that got Vladimir Komarov killed. Why the heck do you think that is a good plan?

              • Hiram

                “Launch escape systems are part of the completed product, like seat belts on a car or a safety on a gun. Claiming otherwise is gambling with astronaut lives, especially since we know launch is one of the most hazardous times for crew.”

                Many astronauts have lost their lives, and I don’t think a launch escape system would have saved any of them. Challenger had two bombs running alongside of it, and it was later decided that such a system would not have saved the occupants. We probably should have ejection seats in cars and on bicycles, and they could save a lot of lives if we did, but it just isn’t practical.

                Komarov was killed because of a parachute failure on reentry. The lack of a launch escape system had nothing to do with his death.

                Astronauts gamble with their lives when the fuse is lit (and even before that, as Apollo 1 should remind us), and incremental safety measures aren’t going to change that. If national interest and political will can’t accept that, then just don’t light any fuses. That being said, a launch escape system on Dragon would be nice to have, but it’s tough to assert that it makes for a “completed product”.

              • Orbitnaut_Pluto

                Spaceflight is hazardous, I won’t argue with that. But is it so unreasonable to ask for safety systems like some sort of launch escape system? Seatbelts can’t save a life in the most hazardous crash, but in average collisions a seatbelt can keep a person from sustaining grave injuries or death. A launch escape system can’t save every life in every situation, but it covers most cases, in areas we know are dangerous. That we know how to avoid specific dangers means we can do something about them, and in the case of launch escape systems there isn’t a humane reason to not do our best to reduce those dangers. Misfires are major cause of injury from firearms, most car accidents occur at speeds under 60mph, and the most dangerous time for crew is atop the rocket at launch and ascent. That we can prevent specific problems like these with good engineering is a good thing, even more so that safety features aren’t expensive when built into a clean sheet design like the Dragon. To not apply them for political reasons is ridiculous, bordering on claiming that politicians know more than engineers.

                I admit that I got hung up on launch escape systems, as Kamarov wasn’t killed by not having one. It is true though that his capsule was known to be incomplete by the engineers, but was launched on political orders. That was my point, but I see I wasn’t obvious with it.

              • But is it so unreasonable to ask for safety systems like some sort of launch escape system?

                When it delays an important mission, yes. What you are saying is that it’s not important to send American astronauts on American vehicles. Dragon will be safer (probably) with a launch-abort system than it is now, but that doesn’t mean it’s not safe “enough” without it.

              • Misfires are major cause of injury from firearms, most car accidents occur at speeds under 60mph, and the most dangerous time for crew is atop the rocket at launch and ascent.

                To the degree that’s true (historically, more people have actually died in entry than during ascent), it’s only true for LEO missions. For lunar missions, ascent is probably one of the safest phases. And only three people (cosmonauts) have been saved by an escape system in the history of human spaceflight. Which is why spending so many billions to make Ares I “safe” while spending nothing on the hardware needed to get beyond LEO was a foolish misallocation of funds on Constellation (a point I make in my book).

              • Orbitnaut_Pluto

                You deliberately misunderstand me Mr Simberg, I never said that getting an American crew launcher isn’t a important goal, only that I’m opposed to trying to rush and not implement safety necessities like a launch escape system. Launch and ascent is a important phase for any space mission, and while certain parts of a lunar mission are almost as dangerous, launch and ascent occurs in a very dynamic environment with a great deal of high powered machinery and a greater amount of propellents onboard than at any other time, in even a lunar mission.

                Saying it’s the safest phase in a lunar mission is to be ignorant of the very real dangers, and one only has to look to the ill-fated N1 to see what a rocket supposed to launch a lunar-bound ship can do when things go very wrong. The N1 launch attempts created the biggest, or some of the biggest, non-nuclear explosions in history. On a few of those launches the only things that worked correctly was the launch escape system, and that would have made the difference between life and death for a crew. While the smaller rockets used for orbiting astronauts for mere Earth missions don’t have the same explosive power as the N1, they can still blow up, and it’s a issue to deal with by engineering, not ignoring the problem.

                Even on better behaved rockets like the Saturn V, ensuring the launch escape system worked was a high priority for engineers of the time. Just to point out things haven’t changed, even in the company trying to shake up the launch industry, SpaceX shows no signs of forgoing a launch escape system to cut costs/time. SpaceX has shown a trend of taking as much time as they need to get things right, like scrubbing launches, even on comsat flights. They seem get the idea that spaceflight demands a certain level of care, and human spaceflight even more so.

                Also, statistical speaking, 11 deaths* during entry aren’t significant enough to argue that it is a more dangerous time for crews than launch and ascent, considering the fact that total crewed spaceflights number under 300, and that on these flight under 600 people were flown. To do so shows either a lack of understanding how statistics work, or a deliberate attempt to misuse statistics. For example, 7 people** have died during launch and ascent, and for statistical purposes the numbers are close enough to be equal, however, since we’re still dealing with a small pool of data, the numbers still don’t mean much.

                *I’m counting Soyuz-1, Soyuz-11, and STS-107 as entry failures. Your opinion may vary.
                **STS-51-L

              • Hiram

                “The N1 launch attempts created the biggest, or some of the biggest, non-nuclear explosions in history.”

                What I’m hearing here is that dying in a large explosion is worse that dying because a parachute or a pressure seal failed. Not so. What I find objectionable is what sounds a little like the assumption that a launch escape system forgives the lack of a more general approach to mission safety. If what you’re doing is developing a launcher from scratch, the money you spend on a launch escape system might be better invested in engineering that reduces the need for such a system. It is therefore simplistic and even somewhat dangerous to say that having a launch escape system determines the completeness of a product.

                An automobile really should have an airbag that fills the entire cabin, but instead they chose to make the front ends more safely crushable, and installed more limited airbags. Are those automobiles not “complete” because of this?

              • while certain parts of a lunar mission are almost as dangerous, launch and ascent occurs in a very dynamic environment with a great deal of high powered machinery and a greater amount of propellents onboard than at any other time, in even a lunar mission.

                NASA disagrees with you. Go look at the lunar mission risk pie chart in the ESAS report. Only 3% is associated with ascent. Spending too much on safety of that phase of the mission is a gross misallocation of resources.

                SpaceX shows no signs of forgoing a launch escape system to cut costs/time.

                Because no one has asked them to. If NASA went to them and said, “We know that the system will be safer with the abort system, but it’s important to get Americans into space on American vehicles now, and we’ll accept the risk,” do you think they’d refuse?

              • Orbitnaut_Pluto

                Rockets are complex beasts that depend on many things going right at the same time. Many times engineers or program managers thought they had figured out their rocket and that they could operate with confidence, only to have something show they were still operating in a very narrow margin without room for error. The average Nissan isn’t a rocket, but both rocket and car have to be designed so that when foreseeable accidents happen, there’s something in the design that limits the damage to humans. Both have to assume that bad things could happen, and design to limit what the bad things do. Front ends on cars are nowadays designed to crumple and absorb energy, because cars will get into head on collisions with other cars. Rockets will explode, so launch escape systems are there to whisk humans away from it. There isn’t such a thing as no risk, and products can be complete without having ensure the occupants safety at all times in even extremely unusual scenarios, but I find going forward with commercial crew without a launch escape system akin to disabling the airbags on a car to get it to market faster; it’s betting the world won’t throw curve balls at you when experience tells you it will. We can make spaceflight and cars better by understanding risks and trying to prevent them, but getting rid of time tested techniques and systems isn’t that way at all. Read Wayne Eleazer’s articles on the Space Review, launch safety is not a problem that gets fixed, it’s a ongoing process where hard work is needed to stay ahead of failure. Here’s a link to two of them, and while the articles mostly deal with satellite launchers, a crew launcher should receive at least as much scrutiny:
                http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1234/1
                http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1287/1

                Claiming launch escape systems aren’t so important also ignores the fact commercial launch isn’t well established, and a accident has far greater consequences than a few lives lost. Like car accidents, people dying on a say a Atlas V or a Falcon 9 will create a backlash towards the companies that made the product involved in that accident. It’s not guaranteed to say the public or Congress will accept the loss of a crew without debate, and it’s also wrong to suppose that somebody won’t spin the story to give commercial crew providers a bad name. I’m pro-commercial crew myself, but I’m not so daft as to think a year or more of time saved is worth risking commercial crew as an industry on.

                Accidents happen, and not having reasonable safety measures like a launch escape system in place will damn the product. Look up the Ford Pinto and see how being seen as unsafe tainted it. Sales dropped off, and even now it’s treated like a joke. Ford had other products to sell at the time, but unlike Ford,, commercial crew companies have only one vehicle each. Commercial crew already has has to fight to eek out survival, budget after budget. Skipping tests doesn’t make commercial crew anymore palatable to those that oppose it, and gives them a opening to attack the program. Which isn’t a good idea, seeing as those opposed to commercial crew have made sure that it’s been half-funded from the start.

                As to NASA disagreeing with me, if so Mr Simberg, why would they chose to spend time and effort making safety the highest priority for Ares I and expecting the commercial crew companies to test and certify things like launch escape systems? The reason launch and ascent has a lower risk in the pie chart because lunar flight in Constellation could of lasted for more than a week with plenty of guidance, life systems, and spacecraft engine problems having the potential to occur, not because launch and ascent is unimportant. Launch and ascent happens in under 10 minutes usually, and comparing a engine firing during that time to a CO2-scrubber operating the whole mission long, one sees that the scrubber has more opportunities to fail over a far longer duration. Keep in mind engines operating during ascent usually only have to start once, and since most launch vehicles have multiple stages, only few engines in certain launch vehicles are required to fire for 8 minutes or more, most fire for much shorter times. A CO2 scrubber will turn on and off as needed, for as long as needed, potentially needing to operate for a few hours total with dozens of start/shut down cycles. The chart doesn’t tell you the whole story, and certainly isn’t meant to show that launch and ascent is unimportant.

                As for SpaceX taking up a lunatic NASA on the idea of going without launch escape systems, I’m optimistic they would know enough to refuse. The fact they are taking there time and not rushing comsat launches lends credit to the idea that they know better than to take stupid gambles with people’s lives.

              • As to NASA disagreeing with me, if so Mr Simberg, why would they chose to spend time and effort making safety the highest priority for Ares I and expecting the commercial crew companies to test and certify things like launch escape systems?

                Because the people making the program decisions didn’t understand the implication of that pie chart, and because the decisions weren’t rational, instead driven by politics.

                The fact they are taking there time and not rushing comsat launches lends credit to the idea that they know better than to take stupid gambles with people’s lives.

                Every flight will be gambling with people’s lives, whether they have an abort system or not, and if the mission is important, there is nothing “stupid” about it. You gamble with your life every time you drive to the grocery store.

              • Dick Eagleson

                I think you gentlemen are arguing from a set of false shared premises:

                (1) The launch escape system for Dragonrider isn’t ready.

                (2) The launch escape system for Dragonrider won’t be ready for some significant time to come.

                (3) The launch escape system for Dragonrider is the most critical item on the critical path to a “complete product” as one of you put it.

                You explicitly agree about (1) above and implicitly seem to agree about (2) and (3).

                With respect to (1), I believe SpaceX still intends to accomplish a pad abort test of its launch escape system this summer and an in-flight abort test of it later in the year. The Dragonrider test article for the first of these tests is almost certainly, then, either completely built by now or in final production checkout. The test article for the in-flight test is probably, at a minimum, well-along in production too and may even be sitting, completed, in some convenient corner of the Hawthorne plant as we speak. In short, the flashy, rocket-y impressively noisy part of the Dragonrider launch escape system is ready. It may be as little as 90 days away from its first major test as an integrated system.

                Now a launch escape system is more than just the parts that belch flame when called upon. There must also be a network of sensors and wiring in many portions of the 1st-stage structure and engines to provide physical indications of conditions that might require an abort to be initiated. I am under the impression that these things have been part of the Falcon 9 designs right along. If anyone knows differently, I’d be interested in hearing about it.

                So, bottom line: Dragonrider already has a launch abort system that is “ready.” It simply hasn’t been all-up tested yet. Therefore, all of (1), (2) and (3) are, to the best of my knowledge, factually false propositions.

                If, because of some extremely near-term emergency, it were considered essential to use a Dragonrider, in something close to its current state of development, to get personnel up to ISS, the people making that trip would almost certainly be doing so on one of the test articles with some last-minute additions (cockpit displays/controls? jury-rigged life support? crew couches?). They would not – repeat not – be looking at launching without any launch abort system, just without one that had been all-up tested yet. I hope you will agree that the latter is a much less worrisome proposition than the former.

                If we can get through the remainder of 2014 without such an emergency arising, then the availability and functionality of the Dragonrider launch escape system will no longer be either a critical path item or a subject for crepe-hanging speculation.

                There may still be other aspects of Dragonrider’s “complete product” status that would require jury-rigging/McGyvering for an emergency mission even after the launch abort system is no longer any kind of question mark. But I would also think there would be progressively less of this for putative emergency ISS crew missions in 2015, 2016 or early 2017.

                Given that Elon and other SpaceX executives have publicly stated a goal of making the first crewed flight of Dragonrider sometime next year, I suspect the majority of the critical path items remaining are of the NASA review and blessing of paperwork piles variety. It would not surprise me in the least, therefore, if all of the significant hardware and software items needed for a complete Mk1 Dragonrider are either already in SpaceX’s hands or will be within a maximum of one year from the present.

              • That all may well be true, Dick. My point is that even if the abort system isn’t ready at all, the vehicle is not “unsafe” to fly in any meaningful sense of that word. “Safe” and “unsafe” are not binary conditions. The only question is what the probability of loss of crew is, as is, and if that’s worth the risk of ending our dependence on the Russians.

              • Dick Eagleson

                Hey, I agree with you Rand. I think a cargo Dragon could probably be rigged for emergency crew launch in, at most, 30 to 60 days from a standing start. I think the overall risk of such a mission would likely be lower than a Shuttle mission. The cargo Dragon is a match for the Shuttle in that neither has a viable abort system during powered flight. Where the cargo Dragon comes out ahead is that it doesn’t ride to orbit on a vehicle whose other components shed potentially lethal detritus onto it on the way up even on successful flights.

                I made my previous post because I’ve just gotten progressively more annoyed about the general brainlessness that attends discussions of what is needed to launch crew on the vehicle SpaceX is actually developing for that purpose, namely Dragonrider. If an emergency arose that required making a “premature” crewed flight atop a Falcon 9, it is – right this very minute – possible to choose either a standard cargo Dragon or a prototype/test article Dragonrider on which to launch said crew. There is at least one of each sitting in the SpaceX rocket works over on Crenshaw Blvd. right now. I simply think that choosing a possibly incomplete Dragonrider which may, at this point, lack crew couches, cockpit instrumentation, life support system, etc., but which does have a fully built-out, even if untested, abort system, makes more sense than picking a cargo Dragon which definitely lacks everything on the preceding laundry list. I have no inside information about just what, in addition to a functional abort system, the test article Dragonriders will have installed. It just seems to me that a worst case list of deficiencies just puts a test article Dragonrider on par with a cargo Dragon. The latter’s lack of an abort system and the former’s possession of one makes this hypothetical decision a no-brainer of the the first water so far as I’m concerned. It also puts the lie to the oft-expressed notion that Dragonrider doesn’t have an abort system yet. It does, dammit! It may or may not have anything else it needs to get a crew to orbit, but it has an abort system!

                Bottom line: you don’t need to spot all of the “Safety, Safety Uber Alles” morons their favorite talking point about Dragon lacking an abort system. I quite share your disdain for these delicate hothouse flowers. To paraphrase Rhett Butler, these people need to be kicked in the balls they haven’t got, and often, and by someone who knows how.

    • Brad

      ISS is almost as badly conceived and damaging to long term US space policy as was the STS. It really should have been funded by the State Department instead of NASA.

      It’s almost rather sad. Now that the STS white elephant is gone, NASA has the ISS to replace it. A tar baby to absorb NASA’s attention and a critical amount of budget from now until… the latest claims seem to indicate as far as 2028!

      Those who claim that nothing more efficient could be done in manned spaceflight with the budget used to sustain the ISS remind me of those who claimed that there was no way SpaceX could fly cargo to orbit more cheaply than the ULA.

      If the ISS is so irreplaceable let me posit this, assuming we continue to spend the big bucks on ISS just what do we do if we lose the ISS anyway? Lose it from some unlikely catastrophe, just as we have lost Shuttles?

      Commercial crew projects such as Dragon and Bigelow will prosper in their own good time regardless of what NASA does. All that NASA support for them does is speed up the private space timeline. The real question, the vital public policy question is what is the best use of NASA resources? How best to advance the space interests of America with the 15 billion per year that NASA spends? I don’t think keeping the ISS flying until 2028 is the best use of those tax dollars.

      • Hiram

        “If the ISS is so irreplaceable let me posit this, assuming we continue to spend the big bucks on ISS just what do we do if we lose the ISS anyway? Lose it from some unlikely catastrophe, just as we have lost Shuttles?”

        That’s an easy one. We’d build another. It would be technologically superior to ISS, and it would rely firmly on commercial efforts, especially for low-mass, high-volume pieces (e.g. Bigelow). It would be designed for vastly lowered operations cost than ISS (probably a lot smaller), and not pretend to be about more than human-factors science. The purpose that it would serve would be an easily achievable space destination for humans, exercising many challenges that need to be proved out for more distant travels. It would be one that is efficiently shared internationally, and also a rationale for commercial access, perhaps even partially tourism-based. It would be built in a smarter, low inclination orbit that would make it far more useful as a development site for spacecraft going further. In order to say we have a human “presence” in space, we sure don’t need 500 mT of creaky old technology to prove it.

        It is profoundly clear that just from an affordability standpoint, international collaboration will be essential to any human work outside of cis-lunar space. A space station in LEO is an ongoing demonstration of that commitment. Unlike a LEO space station, where many countries can send astronauts and be “in the game”, that won’t be as feasible for, say, a one-time trip to Mars. If you have three people going to Mars, those people will represent precisely three countries. Everyone else is left out. If France is sending a human, England won’t want to just send a solar panel.

        The purpose of a hab in LEO is abundantly clear. The purpose of a hab in LEO that costs $4B/year to the U.S. is not.

        • Brad

          I doubt the wisdom of international cooperation for deep space exploration precisely because of the experience with ISS.
          Even though more money is pooled from cooperation an even greater amount of money is wasted through compromised design required to satisfy the international partners.

          If ISS is the model used for international cooperation, NASA won’t be going anywhere beyond the ISS until after 2028. So by the time the first international/NASA mission lands on Mars in 2075, they will be greeted by representatives of the martian colony already established by SpaceX.

          • Hiram

            “If ISS is the model used for international cooperation, NASA won’t be going anywhere beyond the ISS until after 2028.”

            I agree completely, which is precisely why I said that ISS should NOT be the model for such cooperation, except that it be in LEO. Being in LEO fosters international collaboration for human space flight because it’s easy for partners to get their people there. Flight beyond LEO will just depend on that collaboration, rather than fostering it.

            The question was not what we should do to replace ISS. The question was what we should we if we didn’t have ISS.

            • Brad

              I appreciate your support of a skeptical evaluation of ISS. And I did not mean to imply that you recommended ISS style cooperation for deep space missions. But…

              “It is profoundly clear that just from an affordability standpoint, international collaboration will be essential to any human work outside of cis-lunar space.”

              … I do dispute the notion that international collaboration is essential or even helpful for such missions. It is possibly true, but just as possibly false.

              • Hiram

                “I do dispute the notion that international collaboration is essential or even helpful for such missions.”

                If the U.S. had all the cash at hand, you’d be right. International collaboration is probably less efficient than without it. But it’s a wet dream to think that we have the money. We don’t. It took $30B (present dollar) yearly budgets to get us to the Moon (and that was an era when science got a smaller fraction than it does now) where we ended up not doing anything lasting. It’s just that simple and profoundly clear.

                OK, maybe international collaboration isn’t essential. But we need someone to help pay for it. You think Bill, Warren, and Larry are going to kick in for it? Don’t be daft. C’mon, fess up. Where are the bucks going to come from? Oh, we’ll do it on the cheap, right? Hey, I’ve heard that before.

      • Orbitnaut_Pluto

        Why is the ISS so badly conceived? You say it is, but you don’t explain why. Don’t just say some smack talk about the Russians being part of it, because the US side of the station isn’t too dissimilar to the Space Station Fred proposals before Dan Goldin brought in the Russians. Explain how it is so bad, and such a tar baby. Was Fred such a bad idea, and was Regan being played for a fool when NASA sold him on Freedom? Your argument as it stands is opinion without evidence, and even contains a bit straw in there too. I never claimed that nothing more efficient could done with the manned space flight budget than the ISS, only that is useful and deserving of the budget it gets. You may think I’m wrong, but I at least stated what informs my opinion; You should do the same.

        • Brad

          The current Space Station is a project whose design was fixed by the Clinton administration, and primarily completed during the Bush administration. The primary policy goal of the ISS for Clinton was more to rope underemployed Russian aerospace engineers into harmless service in the aftermath of the Cold-War than it was to promote an efficient use of American resources to advance manned space flight.

          Compared to a truly efficient station design: it depended on unreliable Russian cooperation ; is in a poor orbital inclination ; uses obsolescent design modules ; and used the STS as the primary launch vehicle. Which is why it has taken 16 years (!) to complete.

          The ISS is a magnificent feat of effort. But it was more of a make work project than a useful one. It kept the Russians busy, it gave the STS a purpose to continue flying, but it hasn’t generated much in payoff compared to the effort put into it. By extending the life of the STS one could even claim we lost seven more astronauts because of the ISS.

          • Orbitnaut_Pluto

            First of all, your still blaming the Russians. Since Destiny, the nodes, Columbus, the Japanese modules, the Cupola, the truss, all of the US side of the station wasn’t built in Russia, it’s hard to see how that was a make work project for them. The Russian side has languished for the most part, without much construction or major additions going of for many years now. There’s the continuing service of the Soyuz and Progress, but you can’t argue that’s keeping the Russian industry in harmless service, as Energia is only one of the 3 big Russian corporations. Far from being unreliable, it was the US that had to stand down and fix it’s vehicle while the Russians took up the slack.

            Second, what would be a better inclination? You can only observe the equatorial regions from 28 degrees(most efficient inclination reachable from the Cape), while at the ISS’s current inclination(51 degrees) you can observe most of the human occupied regions. Skylab was in a similar inclination for those very reasons, and it benefited as least as much as the ISS does from Earth observation.

            Third, the STS was in the plan because that how NASA works, it does as it’s mandated to do. To expect them to completely switch programs and use new vehicles was out of the question. So the ISS had to fit the Shuttle or it wouldn’t get flown. Real life has compromises, you live and work with them.

            By the way, the 7 astronauts you mention dying from extending the STS to build the ISS died on a unrelated flight, after a more than a decade since Challenger, at a time when few thought the program was due to end. They weren’t killed because of the ISS, and not in an extended program, they died because the STS was flawed, and it was kept around by politicians who lacked any idea that they should press for retirement.

            • Brad

              “By the way, the 7 astronauts you mention dying from extending the STS to build the ISS died on a unrelated flight, after a more than a decade since Challenger, at a time when few thought the program was due to end. They weren’t killed because of the ISS, and not in an extended program, they died because the STS was flawed, and it was kept around by politicians who lacked any idea that they should press for retirement.”

              STS flew 135 times. Columbia burned up on the 113th flight of the STS. 36 flights of the STS were used to complete the ISS. The math is obvious. It doesn’t matter whether Columbia was on an ISS related mission when it burned up. Without the ISS program the STS may have ended sooner, and before the fatal flight of the Columbia.

              But I will concede that brainless inertia was keeping the STS program going and “few thought the program was due to end” until the Columbia disaster demonstrated why it had to end.

              “Second, what would be a better inclination? You can only observe the equatorial regions from 28 degrees(most efficient inclination reachable from the Cape), while at the ISS’s current inclination(51 degrees) you can observe most of the human occupied regions. Skylab was in a similar inclination for those very reasons, and it benefited as least as much as the ISS does from Earth observation.”

              Oh boy. ISS doesn’t have an inclination of 51 degrees for the purposes of Earth observation. Why do you suppose the planned inclination for Freedom was supposed to be only 28 degrees? Because 28 degrees allows the most mass into orbit with the fewest launches from Florida. Instead the inclination of ISS was designed to make it easier on the Russians since Baikonur Cosmodrome is so much farther north than the Kennedy Space Center.

              And yes the Russians were unreliable partners, just look at the shaky history of the Zvezda service module.

              http://www.russianspaceweb.com/iss_sm.html

              Not to let America off the hook for the ISS boondoggle. Estimates are the U.S. portion of the construction cost of ISS exceeded 100 billion dollars, a good half of which was using the STS white elephant to launch and assemble most of the ISS mass.

              It is foolish not to recognize the mistakes of the past, and insist on repeating them. Keeping the ISS flying until 2028 is repeating the mistakes we made with STS.

              • Orbitnaut_Pluto

                The math doesn’t have a bearing. STS-107 was part of a continuing program, not an extension. You can’t claim the ISS killed those astronauts because as you yourself said, STS just kept rolling along on inertia. It’s likely that without a Station at all, the Shuttle would have kept flying until luck caught up with them and killed people. It’s not like we have ever succeeded in ending the STS either, so far the people who built the STS are still employed as workers for the SLS. Arguing that it could have ended if not for the ISS isn’t true.

                As for you arguments against the ISS’s inclination, your still blaming it on the Russians. It’s a benefit, one that shouldn’t be ignored just because of the lessened payload to that inclination, and at the very least NASA didn’t chose to ignore it. Why do you think they kept proposing a sister station to Freedom in a polar orbit? After ‘free flyers’ like the polar station became forbidden by Congress, the only alternative for Earth observation would be to raise inclination on the one station they would get- but since it’s much easier to blame the Russians, you might just do that.

                About Zvedza, as your link says, the shaky period consisted of two years, and the Russians actually did accomplish getting Zvedza up there. A two year delay, how unprecedented in aerospace. Funner still, a great deal of their problems related to funding, which would be odd in a make work program for Russians that you claim the ISS to be. You would have had better luck bashing Proton than Zvedza itself, though if you didn’t catch part that I might infer you didn’t actually read the article.

                Now, what are the mistakes we’re repeating on the ISS that we had with the STS? I don’t see them.
                For one, the STS was a transport, and a bad one at that, while the ISS is destination.
                The ISS allows crews to experience long duration spaceflight, critical for long trips to places like Mars, something the week long STS missions couldn’t supply.
                The ISS is a platform for long term science year round, continuously staffed by astronauts; The STS could do ~2 weeks at most, if it was cleared to fly, if the instruments got enough funding, and if the whole shebang wasn’t bumped by another STS flight.
                The ISS uses commercial vehicles for cargo, and soon, crews; the STS wanted to be the only transport game in town, and nearly killed the US launch industry with it’s stranglehold.

                So what are the problems the ISS is repeating? You might claim that not being a BEO project is a fault, but you haven’t actually came out and said so. If that is your argument, why not come clean with it? I would much prefer an debate where both of our stances are known it each other, instead of having to pin yours down while defending my own point of view.

  • James

    There is nothing like a crisis as an excuse for the Congress-porkers to approve spending of monies. And it will probably be spent in more than one place. i.e. Both SLS and CC.

  • Andrew Swallow

    If the USA put a small spacestation in LEO then a couple of years later NASA may wish to put a similar spacestation at EML-2. The SLS would be the ideal launch vehicle to get the new spacestation to EML-2.

    A small spacestation in LEO may be seen as a backwards step because it is small. A sister spacestation at EML-2 shows the USA is back in the lead. With two spacestations the world will accept that the manufacturer wanted to debug the design in LEO where government inspectors (NASA and the FAA) could keep an eye on it.

  • Who can launch a manned vehicle fastest?

    ULA of SpaceX?

    That is a very real question if not for Congress then for those two launch providers, they both need to jump up and say “when” !!!

    • Andrew Swallow

      Sftommy nice question but a more important question is “Who will be in the launch business in 5 years time?” There is a significant likelihood that ULA’s Atlas V will be gone in 3 years because it uses Russian engines.

      If the order was given in say June this year, “How long will it take before ULA’s Delta IV can launch a manned vehicle? Also how much would it cost?”

  • vulture4

    “so far the people who built the STS are still employed as workers for the SLS”

    The people who originally designed the Shuttle are long gone. The people that kept it flying, the engineers and technicians of USA at KSC who were hands on with the vehicles for decades, were all fired. The people who were kept are civil service managers. The people who were hired are at other centers. The Shuttle was never completely safe but the problem that caused the loss of STS-107 (the bipod strut fairing block which came loose) was fixed before the next flight, the component was deleted and a heating element substituted to keep ice from forming on the bipod strut.

    • Orbitnaut_Pluto

      What I meant was the corporations and companies that supplied parts like the ET, SRBs, and other items. They got contracts for hardware for SLS that are similar to what they had for the STS program, and while workers at KSC, JSC, and ETC( just kidding) got pink-slipped, certain Congresspeople and companies in their districts continue to get the same benefits they expected during the STS program. SLS is even called the “Senate Launch System” in some parts for the way it seems to be tailored just to protect jobs and cozy relationships in certain Congressional districts, but that is a bit off-topic, not mention contentious. I apologize for generalizing about the builders still being employed, I didn’t think I might be misunderstood as implying people in places like Brevard County near the Cape, where their economy has been hit pretty hard by the Shuttle retirement. Hopefully it’s a lot more clear who I’m referring to now.

  • vulture4

    “ISS doesn’t have an inclination of 51 degrees for the purposes of Earth observation.”

    Originally there was to have been a second station in polar orbit, launched from Vandenberg, hence SLC-6, specifically for earth observation. This ended up being abandoned after Challenger. So when the ISS went to 51.6 degress it was a fortunate choice, allowing it to be truely international and to do extensive earth observation. however because of the slow moves to utilization and the pointless focus on microgravity science NASA has been very slow in getting earth obs up to speed on ISS. Hopefully that is changing.

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