NASA and Space Station Alliance On Shaky Ground

coondoggie writes "Even as the latest shift of astronauts arrived at the International Space Station, challenges with the orbital outpost on the ground are threatening its future. Those challenges include the pending retirement of the space shuttle but also the way NASA and the ISS are managed. A report issued this week by the Government Accountability Office said NASA faces several significant issues that may impede efforts to maximize utilization of all ISS research facilities."

Comments

No human spaceflight can't help

[jpmorgan]

Well now that Obama is going to cancel Ares 1, the USA won't have any human spaceflight capacity until probably the 2020s (assuming the rest of Constellation isn't canceled before then too). That can't be helpful for the future of the space station.

Re:No human spaceflight can't help

[wizardforce]

Neither party has any interest in the future. One focuses resources on entitlements and the other on war.

Re:No human spaceflight can't help

[dirkdodgers]

Correction. Both parties focus resources on entitlements and war.

This is shameful. Better to be a beggar in a world colonizing the Moon, Mars, and mining asteroids, than to be a CEO in a world in which the human spirit is dead.

Re:No human spaceflight can't help

[0123456]

Ares 1 was almost done.

That will be why it wasn't supposed to make its first flight to ISS until around 2016.

To put people on top of a Delta-IV or Atlas requires man-rating them.

The whole concept of 'man-rating' is mostly nonsense: if a rocket isn't safe enough to launch some spam in a can, it's not safe enough to launch a billion-dollar satellite. There are issues with using the Delta and Atlas, but they're relatively minor compared to building a whole new launcher: ensuring that the trajectory used always allows a safe abort, improving engine-out performance (where your satellite is toast anyway so you might as well crash and burn on an unmanned launch), etc.

If you want to start building Direct now, you have to consider all the work that's already gone into Ares in the cost. Is it still cheaper?

Yes. Because you only have to build one new launcher and not two.

Re:No human spaceflight can't help

[DerekLyons]

Assuming, of course, that DIRECT doesn't behave like pretty much any other large scale aerospace engineering project and end up cost well above estimates while performing well below predictions.

It uses exactly the same engines as the space shuttle stack

In a world where a booster consists of only the engines, that would be a useful statement. We don't live in such a world.
 

As far as development, the only difficult thing that needs developing is the avionics. Everything else is fairly simple (changing the end cap on the tank, aft thrust structure, payload fairing).

For certain large and handwaving values of 'fairly simple', sure. In reality, you're creating the most difficult parts of the structure from scratch, almost completely recreating the difficult parts of the fuel system, and creating the avionics and flight software from scratch.
 

Engines are already built, in stock, and paid for. SRBs are already built, in stock, and paid for. There's more metal "bent" for Jupiter than ARES.

In a world where how much metal is bent is a useful metric, that would be a useful statement. We don't live in such a world. In reality, your big costs are in integration and engineering - two tasks that for DIRECT/Jupiter are as big if not bigger than for Ares.

Re:i see what you did there

[awyeah]

Apparently there's a "baddoggie" tag for that as well. Learn something new every day.

Re:SpaceX to the rescue

[0123456]

I wonder if America is ready to tolerate a vehicle with a 33% success rate, which is what Falcon 1 has.

If I remember correctly, Atlas had about a 75% failure rate before NASA stuck John Glenn on top, and I think the first Mercury/Atlas unmanned test flight exploded shortly after launch.

Failures are expected during development, the question is whether you can fix the problems and move on (and sustain funding while you're debugging the system), which SpaceX appear to be doing.

Re:SpaceX to the rescue

[QuantumG]

People are ready and willing to pay to go do exploration and colonization.. if only the price wasn't so damn high.