Slashdot Mirror
Can the Ares Program Be Salvaged?
MarkWhittington writes "The Augustine Commission has not officially presented its findings to the White House, but already a push back is starting to occur over the possibility that the Ares 1 rocket will be canceled after three billion dollars and over four years of development. According to a story in the Orlando Sentinel contractors involved in the development of the Ares 1 have started a quiet but persistent public relations campaign to save the Ares 1, criticized in some quarters because of cost and technical problems."
Yes, 3 billion dollars of taxpayer money has been blown. However, the decision to make is : will the gains from FUTURE spending exceed FUTURE costs? We don't factor in the 3 billion already spent in this decision. Alas, it's impossible to quantify gains since a few moon rocks and some pretty pictures don't have a readily assignable value. I'd say no, because I think the 20 billion or whatever a working Ares rocket line would cost could be better spent on other areas of space exploration. 20 billion would pay for a lot of unmanned missions, or could be used to develop a cheaper way to get to orbit (such as lasers or an EM accelerator or something)
The question should be SHOULD Ares I be rescued? Honestly, I do not think so. It always struck me as a waste since other rockets of similar size were available. That bring us to Ares V. Should it be? I honestly do not know. I know that USA needs multiple types of launchers and they need them to be low costs. I would very much like to see an Ares V or a Direct 2** be in the mix. Which is better? I am not sure. Personally, I have to give the nudge to Direct since it uses far far more of the current launch human-rated equipment. There is a lot to say for that. In the end, I am much more concerned that we will not do the right thing WRT to private space. I have aborted that several times. This time, we need to get it started AND give them an ALTERNATIVE destination; Basically, we need to get Bigelow building his Space Station. Also we need tugs combined with a fuel depot to haul things around. While it is nice to say that this is about NASA, but it really is not. It is about Obama and Congress allocating say 1.5B, 1B, and then .5B for the next 3 years and sticking with it. Will they do it? Tough question to answer
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Oh wait, that wasn't the goal, was it?
I always thought that the goal of Ares was to provide a method of finally killing the shuttle program: by promising a successor which would maintain the shuttle program jobs, they would have the political clout to close down the shuttle support manufacturing (external tanks, etc) to ensure that it couldn't fly past 2010 and then they would close down Ares once its job was done.
Augustine's personal views on human spaceflight have been known since 1990:
--
In its original report, the [Augustine] committee ranked five space activities in order of priority:
1. Space science
2. Technology development
3. Earth science
4. Unmanned launch vehicle
5. Human spaceflight
--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advisory_Committee_on_the_Future_of_the_United_States_Space_Program
http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2009/05/does_the_choice_1.html
Should NASA be in the space launch business?
On the basis of the stories coming out, I suspect NASA shouldn't even be in the rowing-boat launch business. Don't get me wrong. They do amazing things with the things they put up there, but they just seem unable to get a grip of launch costs. So it should be someone else's job, someone else (or even many someones) who can keep costs down so that NASA money can be spent on the bits that really inspire everyone.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
No, the question is 'will the Ares program be salvaged.' The answer is 'yes.' Now, I'm not saying that Ares I should be killed... or that it should be saved. But if you try to kill it, all the congresscritters whose districts are going to get money out of Ares I (the SRB components are built by Thiokol, for example), won't let you. If the NASA tries to replace it with something else, Congress will step in and earmark part of NASA's budget specifically for Ares development. NASA has sucked since Apollo, since congress saw the awe and wonder that space exploration inspired and realised it would be a great, unkillable jobs program.
Am I cynical? Yes. But NASA has been enormously hindered by congressional micromanagement over the years. And none of it has been for the benefit of the space program.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So it should be someone else's job, someone else (or even many someones) who can keep costs down
Whenever you see cost overruns, you're seeing "someone else" running the price up.
Government can be amazingly effecient -- if you can cut through "procurement" and "government contractgors."
No. There are plenty of things we can do to stop it:
Or are you just presupposing that there's nothing we can do, and moving from that assertion to the idea that even trying is wrong?
These things worked here for 50 years, and they still work in Western Europe. What the hell is wrong with you when you argue against policies that benefit your own economic and social interests?
The Ares I-X is a stunt at best and a sham at worst. The Ares I-X has a dummy fifth segment and a dummy payload attached meaning it's simply a Shuttle SRB with an inert payload attached. One of the major challenges with the Ares I is the fifth engine segment, it completely changes the dynamics of the rocket. The Ares I-X launch does nothing to test the Ares I design in anything resembling its actual flight configuration. It won't be until the Ares I-Y flight in 2013 that the five segment engine will actually be tested and even that won't be testing the J-2X engine. The whole Ares I stack won't be tested with the Orion 1 until at least 2014 and likely not until 2015.
To say there's no problems with the Ares I is disingenuous. The thrust oscillation issues have theoretical fixes but until the Ares I-Y and Orion 1 flights there's still a lot of unknowns. The likely solution will be added dampening mass and stiffeners which will mean the Orion won't be able to launch with a full compliment. The Block 1A Orions will only be able to launch three astronauts to the ISS instead of the originally planned four. Because of launch pad changes needed for the Ares V the Ares I is only going to have a single civilian launch pad (LC-39B). This puts a hard limit on the number of Ares I launches that can be done in a year which increases the cost of each individual launch. Because of this the Block 1B (cargo only) Orion was canceled entirely.
Having a low limit on the number of launches that can be made every year and the low payload mass make the Ares I almost entirely unsuitable for ISS missions. The per launch cost is derived from the cost of the actual launch vehicle and the infrastructure costs to run the manned spaceflight operations divided by the number of launches per year. The infrastructure/operations costs are the same (or similar) no matter how many launches are performed every year since you don't stop paying people in between launches. The more launches that happen the cheaper each individual one is since you're getting more payload out of every man-hour worked and thus the cost of a pound of payload decreases. The Ares I being limited to a single launch pad means at best you can get six launches a year if there's a 60 day turnaround for the pad and nothing ever goes wrong.
The Ares I being unsuitable for ISS missions means it doesn't have anything it is good at until the Ares V is completed and lunar missions are ongoing. The Ares I doesn't have enough launch capability to launch an Orion with an experiment module/palette so it can't do Spacelab type missions. Orions could be launched for independent operations but with only three crew members each person would have to wear multiple hats which puts a lot of strain on individual astronauts and keeps their schedules booked. Such a configuration would also make for a cramped cabin since mission instruments would need to be packed in alongside the rest of their supplies. I'm sorry but the Ares I is a shitty rocket and a waste of time and money for NASA. It might be a different story if the Orion was smaller or the Ares I wouldn't kill the crew without vibration dampeners. As it stands however the Ares I is a boondoggle and the sooner we shitcan it the better. An EELV or DIRECT option would be far better not just for Orion missions but eventual Moon, NEO, and Mars missions.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
When National Geographic wanted some space history background material, they contacted NASA' history office. NASA's history office sent National Geographic to http://www.astronautix.com/ I assume NASA sent NatGeo there due to its objectivity and completeness, because they sure didn't send them there for pro-NASA propaganda. This is a good example: http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/ares.htm
Ares is a salvage project from its inception. It is an attempt to build a family of lifters from existing designs, technology and manufacturing as much as possible, with as little new design, technology and manufacturing as they can get away with.
Ares was designed by ATK Thiokol, manufacturer of the shuttle's solid rocket boosters, using derivative components of the shuttle, and in the case of Ares 1, the solid rocket boosters as the main engine. It is far more adaptation than it is invention. This is in keeping with NASA's "faster, cheaper" mind set that served well in many planetary probes. But since it is not a ground-up design, where flaws are handled when they first occur, it is prone to problems emerging from more complex configurations, the errors themselves more often due to complex interactions. Vibration problems, such as the current Ares booster 'pogo-stick' problem, are a common example of such emergent behavior.
One of NASA's greatest inventions during the early manned space program was systems analysis software, intended to examine a large system as it was built to determine where problems might and/or did occur. But even now, with far greater computational capability, the complexity of potential interactions due to starting with a large system that has been altered in numerous small ways from its original design puts the Ares designs beyond predictability. That will continue to occur as long as the design philosophy is maintained. If this fact, and the fact that such problems could emerge only under certain conditions -- say at max Q, pushing a heavy load with a smaller, lighter load on the top (ie. an Orion) -- isn't at the forefront of those minds trying to decide whether to scrap it and start over, it should be.
Had the shuttle component and system design philosophy been based on extensibility and adaptability (such as with SpaceX's Falcon 1 -> Falcon 9 design), Ares might have a better chance. But the core design of Ares 1 is the SRB, which was designed over 35 years ago for one purpose -- to be strapped on the side of the shuttle to help with its initial lift phase. It did that job well, with its only major failure having been a NASA decision going counter to a Thiokol recommendation. Now we have Thiokol recommending and NASA deciding the same things.
Robert Truax designed vehicles using surplus components. He designed so many, with so much acclaim for his designs, that there was a TV show based on it (Salvage 1, with Andy Griffith, ABC, 1979). But Truax was salvaging components to use in their intended fashion, not entire systems being adapted to entirely new designs.
One has to wonder at the basis for decision making when an agency first builds from scratch, then declines designs reusing some of the parts, but later chooses to rebuild existing designs. The probability is great that the decision is not technical but rather administrative. When the decisions were technical we got "Not on my watch." and Apollo 13 got home. When the decisions became administrative we got "My God Thiokol, what do you want me to do, wait until April?" and the Challenger didn't come home. This is the sort of fuzzy, intuitive, gut-feeling stuff that gets trashed in serious discussions about such major projects as a space vehicle. But the people that trash that kind of thinking aren't going to fly these things. A pilot that doesn't have a personal example of an intuitive, gut-feeling decision that was right hasn't been flying long, and the older the pilot they more likely that following such a gut feeling
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
That is a good idea. Private companies are NEVER corrupt. If the government would have kept that money given to the Telcos we would NEVER have gotten the communications infrastructure upgraded.
Wait, that's right. We DIDN'T get it upgraded. The Telcos pocketed the money.
Companies could say "Sure, we've got a great plan to launch men to Mars by 2018!" When 2018 comes around, they could say "uhhhh, we tried but it's really hard to do" (which is totally believable in this instance) "if you gave us the same amount of money, we'll have a man on Mars by 2028!"
I'm not a fan of big government either, but I also am not big on trusting huge corporations working with any sort of "public interest" in mind...which is what the space program is because the odds of any real financial gain from space exploration in the next 50 years are very low.
What, precisely, do you think is actually happening here? NASA isnt developing and building Ares I, Alliant Techsystems, Boeing and Rocketdyne are - all private companies. NASA is acting as the administrator of the program, a position you would need however you decide to source your rockets.