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Setbacks Cast Doubt On NASA's Ares Project
stoolpigeon writes with this excerpt from an Orlando Sentinel article about the Ares program, which paints a bleak picture of the program's future: "Bit by bit, the new rocket ship that is supposed to blast America into the second Space Age and return astronauts to the moon appears to be coming undone. First was the discovery that it lacked sufficient power to lift astronauts in a state-of-the-art capsule into orbit. Then engineers found out that it might vibrate like a giant tuning fork, shaking its crew to death. Now, in the latest setback to the Ares I, computer models show the ship could crash into its launch tower during liftoff. "
The Saturn V is (was) built from what is now antiquated technology. I'd rather see then implement Jupiter.
Please, this is not a troll.
So what are the alternatives? I understand that not only is the shuttle getting very old (and presumably less safe with already a 1:100 chance of failure per launch) but is extremely expensive in terms of dollars/lb. to orbit.
Are there any reasonable alternatives that are available in say, 5 years? Such as using a man-rated Delta (very reliable commercial launcher) for the relatively small Orion crew capsule and perhaps some sort of Shuttle tank + Shuttle engines + 2 current boosters as a heavy lift vehicle? Or will the U.S. be without manned space flight capabilities in a few years (ceding it to the Russians and Chinese!).
Any NASA/ex-NASA/space experts out there? (By the way, really disappointed that the SSTO efforts like the Delta Clipper and X-34(?) didn't work out. Also, no, the Japanese space elevator will not be available for at least 20 years and probably not within our lifetimes).
An even more bleak picture comes from this blog/editorial:
http://rocketsandsuch.blogspot.com/2008/10/getting-specific.html
It seems as though NASA hasn't learned about what went wrong with the development of the Space Shuttle and are bound and determined to repeat those mistakes of the past and make new ones on top of that. This is a rocket being designed by committee, with some of the top management folks who don't want to compromise on the basic premise: to "reuse" as many of the Shuttle parts as possible.
I hate to break the word to anybody still ignorant on this, but so little is being re-used from the Shuttle design that they might as well have gone back to the Saturn V design instead, or even made something completely from a blank piece of paper and rebuilt the supply chains from scratch.
There are also so many engineers who are working for NASA that are complaining about this design that at the very least somebody in political leadership (aka congressmen & senators) ought to be starting to listen to the grumblings going on here. The lines of communication between Griffin and the engineers doing the actual number crunching and the basic design of this vehicle are completely broken.
Of course, NASA has a wonderful reputation for listenting to its engineers that you can put full confidence in the NASA administration being able to listen to what needs to be fixed.
Anyway, I'd rather they found these errors now, rather than later...
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
... that engineers at NASA have formed a group to develop an alternative to "Ares", because of the perception that it was too little for too much effort. And the fact that NASA has so far rejected their plan without having looked at it seriously.
I have been saying this for years now: NASA has been dropping the ball when it comes to man in space. It has been doing great with robotics, but otherwise has been dropping the ball.
You want to see another man on the moon from the United States? Make it a $10 Billion dollar prize. NASA blows that (or pretty close) on a single Shuttle launch. I bet private industry would do it in under 10 years.
NASA has been losing it, big time. Can they make a comeback? I would be the happiest person if they did. But I have my doubts.
Despite what people will say about the environmental side-effects, I still feel that Project Orion is the best possible way for us to get back to space fast, and actually travel useful distances with a live crew.
There are going to be setbacks. Mistakes will be made. For the most part these rocket surgeons do the job, on time.
Personally, I'd like to see them re-engineer the Saturn V. Didn't it run linux?
Why should we worry about setbacks? The Delta IV Heavy is launching just fine and could have easily done the job. All that they would have had to do would be the man-rating of the spacecraft and the redesign of the fairing. Additionally, the Delta IV Heavy has a lot of upgrade potential. Cross feeding propellant and adding additional strap-on boosters could easily double its capacity. And should I also mention that you can shut off the engines on the Delta IV if you have a problem (which might be convenient when you are transporting humans who don't like to explode when malfunctions occur).
You also have a conceptual error. The problem is with the Ares I, not the Ares V. The Ares I is a crappy 25 tonne rocket that is being built because it will provide pork to Utah. The Ares V, which also supplies pork to Utah, is the 130 tonne ultra heavy lift rocket that is in the same class as the Saturn V.
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
And like a large software project it also might be a lot of hoopla about day to day operations.
If someone posted an hourly press release for my internal work process at work it would also be full of failures. "Gavin wastes an hour on an idea which goes nowhere." "Gavin thinks he has found solution but actually finds more problems." "Gavin runs projections and determines his initial idea would result in a complete failure."
I would like to know whether the project is actually off track--or just working through the problems that are a result of doing something difficult. With any large project you spend most of your time screwing up. My favorite anecdote is from one of the editors of Apocalypse Now. They calculated the number of individual edits they made in the film and divided it by the number of days they were editing. If they had been able to work without any mistakes and just cut the film they would have only needed to cut two shots per day.
That can't be right. A 1/6 chance to fail is a 5/6 chance to succeed. Wikipedia indicates 11 manned launches. (5/6)^11=0.13
If 1/6 chance is correct then there was only a 0.13 chance that all those launches succeeded. I find it hard to believe that we were really that lucky. The chance of failure had to have been much lower.
Cow Cube
That part of the problem is that the US had a very successful manned space program with many firsts (including the moon landing). In fact the US continues to have a very successful unmanned space program. The recent Mars missions, the rovers and the Phoenix Mars mission, have been very successful.
Well those two things help lead to being lazy about future manned space missions. After all that's not the competitive "We've got to do it first," thing going on. Then there's the fact that the unmanned missions are much, much cheaper and seem to produce plenty good data.
You have to remember that sending people in to space has thus far not been all that necessary, nor is there a real economic reason (beyond tourism). If it was a case that there was a lot of money to be made, like say you sent someone to the moon and they brought back billions of dollars of valuable resources, well then sure, there'd be plenty of motivation to keep a modern manned mission going. However as it stands, there's no economic benefit. So the benefit is entirely scientific. Well, that's sure as hell not worthless, but unmanned missions seem to do the job brilliantly.
I mean suppose you are running the program and I come to you and say I have some research I want to do. I can do it two ways: I can either design and build an automated system, which has a chance of failing, or I can send people, who based on past experience have about a 1% chance of dying (that's roughly NASA's record at this point, about 1 in 100). Also, the automated system is much cheaper to do, and can potentially work for longer, though perhaps not quite as flexible.
Which do you choose?
I'm certainly not against NASA modernizing it's manned space program I think it's worthwhile. But let's maintain a realistic assessment of how useful it is and how priority it is. The US has already sent people to the moon, a number of times in fact. Doing it just for bragging rights isn't useful at this point.
One job I landed for a summer while I was in school for aerospace engineering was as an apprentice helicopter mechanic. I would always catch flack for being an engineer and every little design flaw in the airframe was my fault (even though some of the airframes were built well before I was even born). Sometimes their complaints were legitimate, however other times I could give them an educated guess as to why the engineer designed something a specific way even though it may be more difficult to maintain. As with everything in life there are trade offs in the designs.
That job was not only a lot of fun, but it also gave me a pretty unique insight that a lot of engineers don't get into what happens after the product is designed and out the door. Because of that experience the maintainability of a product is something that I try to keep in high regard when I'm going through the design process because I have been on the receiving end of some really bad designs that could have been (IMO) easily avoided.
This is one of the reasons, and I know people will cringe when they read this, I actually believe that engineers make the better managers than someone who's just "a manager". When you have someone who has gone through the process and knows what the challenges are, they're going to make better decisions in the long run. If you throw someone with a suit at a project who has little to no technical background you're going to run into the PHB problem.
[side rant]The same type of thing goes for the engineers. During work on the project there should be at least one engineer who has a background in safety, reliability, and maintainability (usually a systems engineer) to go over the work and point out major flaws in the design that can easily be fixed at that stage rather than after the product has been developed and you get complaints from all the mechanics. Unfortunately this seems to be something that a lot of companies forgo because it can be a very expensive process.[/side rant]
What NASA seems to have is a disconnect between levels of workers. The engineers are saying one thing and the managers are doing another. I understand that trade offs need to be made when managing a project, but from what I've read there have been a lot of poor decisions in those areas. I'm not a part of all these shenanigans but I have former classmates who are on that project. One major problem NASA has is politics, not only within the organization itself but politics in DC for funding and everything that comes with it. That will gum up the works of any major project faster than incompetence.
Because now, almost 40 years after Apollo 11, "we" have utterly lost the capability to go to the moon and beyond. Hell, we should at least be on Mars by now, but we just can't do it anymore. That should bother us. We, as a society, have regressed substantially without realizing it.
We should be bothered by the fact that we are planning to regain Moon flight capabilities somewhere within the next 15 years, and from the way things look right now, we won't even manage that in time and without blowing a huge budget on the endeavor. For reference, Apollo 11 landed on the Moon less than 8 years after Kennedy announced his plan.
With 40 years of technological advances behind us, we should be able to accomplish this much faster. Instead it'll take us twice as long, if we even manage at all.
And that's damn frustrating.