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Senators Want Big Rocket Instead of New Tech, Commercial Transportation
FleaPlus writes "Members of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation are drafting a bill (due this week) which slashes NASA technology development/demonstrations, commercial space transportation, and new robotic missions to a small fraction of what the White House proposed earlier this year. The bill would instead redirect NASA funds to 'immediate' development of a government-designed heavy lift rocket, although it's still unclear if NASA can afford a heavy lifter in the long term or if (with the new technology the Senators seek to cut, like in-space refueling) it actually needs such a rocket. The Senators' rocket design dictates a payload of 75mT to orbit, uses the existing Ares contracts and Shuttle infrastructure as much as possible, and forces use of the solid rocket motors produced by Utah arms manufacturer ATK."
As I said, pork. The senators behind this set specfic requirements that demand their constituent's plants and factories get the money. It has nothing to do with practicality or being cost effective. It's just Pork. In its purest and most disgusting form.
I can see why DoD would want to keep the solid rocket companies in business, because those same companies also build and replace ICBMs. But surely DoD can figure out a way to pay to keep those companies in business without forcing NASA to go with solid rocket boosters.
Solid rockets are a good choice when you need to keep a rocket in storage for a while (like an ICBM hopefully), but for an active launch program it is a little less clear why you would go with solid fuel since they make lots more pollutants when you burn them.
The moon race had nothing to do with nuking Moscow with an ICBM. The missiles needed to put a warhead on Moscow existed before the Moon Race was announced.
The LGM-30A Minuteman-I was first test-fired on 1 February 1961
UGM-27 Polaris was test launched from a U.S. Navy submarine on July 20, 1960 and deployed by July 28, 1960
The SM-62 Snark was deployed in 1958.
Kennedy established the manned landings on the Moon as a national goal on May 25, 1961
Some of the early X33 work had a lot of potential, and I remember reading about how the rocket nozzle work could be qualified as a major breakthrough. But it got scrapped.
The X-33 still has a lot of potential! Lockmart is still funding its own development the reusable lifting-body concept based on the X-33, there has been significant progress with the most difficult technical issue (i.e. developing a composite material capable of making cryogenic tanks with complex shapes), and there was any serious technology issue with the linear areospike engine (they just lacked a vehicle to put it in, once the X-33 funding wasn't renewed). IMHO, it's potentially game-changing technologies and lifters like X-33 and the DC-X that NASA's R&D resources should be focused on, instead of the the Ares program. If most of the personnel and money that was used to support the now probably-defunct Ares was instead used to continue development on the DC-X and X-33, we would have learned a lot more (even learning what doesn't work is of some value) and maybe even gotten one or two revolutionary launch vehicles out of it.
Yeah, but "75mT"?
Hmm, I just realized that article linked in the summary didn't include a reference on the 75mt/mT/whatever requirement. Here's one that does:
http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20100710/NEWS02/7100318/1007/Funding+may+alter+NASA+s+spaceflight+direction
While saying it was not the committee's place to design rockets, Nelson said the giant launcher -- capable of lifting at least 75 metric tons -- should be largely derived from shuttle systems and likely would use solid rocket boosters, like the Constellation program's
Ares I and Ares V rockets.
The "mT" thing is technically deprecated if I understand correctly, but for whatever reason is still quite common in aerospace circles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonne
T and mT and mt (especially in the combination mmt for million metric tons compare to Mt for megatonne) are also occasionally used, but all of these are deprecated since they conflict with internationally agreed SI symbols.
Even Glenn Beck couldn't come up with a conspiracy theory looney enough to link those two phenomena...
Sure he could.
"Obama is having his tools in the Senate demand that they use this particular contractor as a way to undermine support for Christianity by making them servants of the liberal academic elite, imposing unwanted big government on the God-fearing citizens of Utah."
I am officially gone from
Charles Bolden did make these comments. You can google it, it's out there. However the White House has made a statement stating that his comments were out of line and they had asked of him no such thing. They also stated they would be in touch with him about his comments. My guess is a bit of hand slapping went on.
I believe stepping forward and making a rare political statement against the Obama plan.
"Obama's proposal stunned U.S. space heroes Neil Armstrong and Eugene Cernan -- the first and last men to walk on the moon -- who, along with Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell, made a rare public statement denouncing the plan as a "devastating" scheme that "destines our nation to become one of second- or even third-rate stature."
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/NASA_s-new-mission_-Building-ties-to-Muslim-world-97817909.html#ixzz0tVAIqgwT"
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
I believe that's Neil only. Buzz likes the Obama plan, and as far as I know, Collins has been silent on the matter.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Pity so many of those cost overruns and screw ups were due to congress sticking its nose in NASA's operations.
What portion of Apollo was done on solid boosters? Solids have some big advantages, particularly the ability to store them for long periods (great for military applications or a crew escape vehicle), they also have huge disadvantages for a manned system:
- More difficult to eliminate vibrations, which affect human payloads far more than unmanned payloads
- Less reusable. To reuse a liquid stage you refill it. To reuse a solid stage you have to make a new fuel grain, so all you actually reuse is the case.
- Can't turn it off. A liquid booster can abort on the pad. On top of a solid booster you have to eject the payload.
- Not throttleable, which makes it more difficult to achieve a precise orbit -- the more solid stages you have, the more the liquid stages have to do to correct the errors.
Saturn V was all liquid for a reason. Jobs in Utah and a military desire to have NASA share some of the costs of keeping solid fuel in production are the reasons STS uses solids, and why Ares 1 used solids, not sound engineering.
I have interned at JPL which is run on a subcontract with NASA by Caltech. The culture in the group I worked was quite good and they are constantly turning out new and interesting tech. Previous reviews of NASA organization have suggested going more to the structure that JPL works under instead of the structure the shuttle program uses. This bill essentially attempts to keep the bad parts of NASA going instead of refreshing the program.
I see that the moderation of "troll" has now come to mean "I do not agree with you." Isn't that just lovely?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
That seems to track pretty well with my brief experience as an outside contractor at NASA Langley. Lots of powerpoint, meetings, red tape and general pettiness raining from above, pervasive exasperation down below. Part of why I have come to think that the most dangerous organization currently operating on American soil is Harvard business school.
At least the food in the cafeteria was cheap and decent, and I could go there without an escort during daylight hours.
Actually, SpaceX is developing a human rated vehicle without any NASA funding to do so. The only NASA funding they have is a series of pay-for-performance contracts with NASA for delivering cargo to the ISS. Giving some of the money in advance has helped lend SpaceX some credibility, and also made it easier for them to complete their goals, but at this point there biggest contract is with Iridium, not NASA.
And Armadillo is doing something entirely different -- the markets they're in are the suborbital passenger market (e.g. Virgin Galactic), and as a potential contractor for things like a lunar lander. They're not trying to build huge rockets, they're trying to develop their technology on a reasonable scale and see what it can do.
As far as the money actually devoted to commercial crewed transport (CCDev), the money isn't there to fund development, its there to guarantee a customer if someone develops the capabilities. The US government did the same thing at the beginning of the 20th century, guaranteeing airmail contracts that helped get the commercial aviation field standing on its own.
I thought it had more to do with the fact that the closer to the equator you get, the easier it is to launch into orbit.