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NASA Shuttle Replacement's Problems Are Worsening
ausoleil noted that NASA's replacement for the shuttle, the Orion, is slipping behind schedule "'We're probably going to have to move our target date,' NASA exploration chief Doug Cooke told The Associated Press on Wednesday after Nasawatch.com posted the 117-page internal status report (PDF) on the moon program. The cost problems include an $80 million overrun on a motor system. The Orion spacecraft's design remains too heavy for the proposed Ares 1 rocket. Software development, heat shield testing and other complex work remain behind schedule or over budget. There are dozens of such serious challenges, many of which are 'worsening.'"
Engineering of a very complex systems overrunning budget and schedule limits and this is news?
News would be if they were under budget and finished a year early.
I think the invisible hand of the market has its middle finger extended
--A wise old fart named SC0RN
but i'll play one on slashdot and come up with all kinds of rubber band and duct tape solutions
You mean like the ones that saved Apollo 13? IIRC the solution to the problem of running out of breathable air involved rubber bands and duct tape.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Well, that's sucks I guess. But since NASA has something like a $17 billion budget, isn't that a colossal non-issue? I realize this was just the motor system, but if I had a $40,000 budget to furnish a new home, I don't think I would be concerned if the coffee table was $20 more than I was expecting.
From Wikipedia:
"NASA's current FY 2008 budget of $17.318 billion represents about 0.6% of the $2.9 trillion United States federal budget."
I'll let the reader come to his own conclusions about US priorities. Without linking to the DoD budget.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
I think you're confusing Ares I and Ares V. Ares I isn't all that big. It's a single stack of capsule -> fuel tank -> stage 2 engine -> stage 1 solid rocket booster. If anything, it's quite a bit thinner than most rockets. However, it does make up for this by towering a massive 94m high. Which does mean a few upgrades to the scaffolding.
The Ares V, however, she's gonna be a beasty. With six (!) main engines, two outboard Solid Rocket Boosters, a plump width of 10m on the central stack, and a towering 116m tall, she's going to put every other rocket to shame. Personally, I can't wait. ;-)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
The post office is, roughly, a crown corporation. It operates under a government mandate and follows some special rules regarding taxes, but it has been self funded for quite a long time now.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Did you look at how much payload each rocket can take to orbit before you made this post? Look at the payload capacity to GTO (not LEO)
Let me list the estimated maximum payloads since you did not:
Delta IV: 20,000 pounds or so
Atlas V: 18,000 pounds or so
SpaceX Falcon 9: 27,000 pounds or so
Ares I: 50,000 pounds or so
See the difference? Ares I is also rated for man-flight, which just makes everything much more complicated.
The article is from a florida newspaper. Of course florida newspapers are going to print doom stories because they don't want to lose Shuttle business. Losing business happens.
err, the S-1C was a Kerosene/LOX burner, and the upper stages were hydrogen/LOX. The Titan, which was obviously not part of Apollo, used some really toxic hypergolic fuels, but Apollo was relatively clean. I'm sure the spacecraft itself had plenty of toxic crap in it, but the booster was relatively safe.
It's much more complicated than your home furnishing project. NASA can't simply apply funds from elsewhere it its budget; that money is already spoken for, and appropriated by Congress for other projects. In other words, there is no way, within the law, to take money from another project to fix this problem; additional funding or reprogramming actions are required, both of which take time. Even in Washington, $80M is a big issue. As it should be.
It's not the heat, it's the futility.
The Ares V will even put the Sat V to shame.
The Ares V is going to be the large booster we SHOULD have built after the Saturn V. It's late, but it's finally coming. :-)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
The resource on the moon is the isotope He3. It might be useful for certain fusion scenarios. However, investing $billions now would be putting the cart before the horse.
We don't know if *any* kind of hot or cold fusion will be feasible with any fuel. IIRC, He3 will be harder to fuse (but less radioactive) than the usual D/T combination. OTOH, there are other more abundant fuels, harder to fuse than He3, which would also have low radioactivity. We'll have to see which, if any, fusion reactors end up as workable possibilities.
The He3 is in trace quantities distributed across the surface of the moon. Mining it would require gathering moon dirt in quantities comparable to the amount of coal mined here on earth, then distilling a few tons of He3 annually from these countless megatons of dust. This doesn't seem economical with any foreseeable space technology.
The huge amounts of money it would take to develop this moon fuel capability would probably be better spent on fusion cycles that don't need He3, or other energy technologies altogether.
If they're serious about replacing the shuttle with only a couple years of downtime, they should already be gearing up to test the system as a whole. I'm not personally involved in the project, but it doesn't even look like they're ready to test big pieces yet. Maybe 2020 is a more reasonable date to actually begin flights.
Disclaimer: I'm a NASA employee at Stennis Space Center, programmer not rocket scientist. The first round of testing on the powerpacks for the new J-2X engines was last month, second round is scheduled for early 2009. That's not the fully assembled engine assemblies, but it's progress.