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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."
Pork.
Why can't congress just leave NASA the fuck alone and let it actually do something. Or barring that at least give it a mission and not micromanage a government agency of which congress cannot adequately manage. Since we will never elect a majority of rocket scientists for our representatives, what gives them the right to think that they should determine what an agency that deals with rocket science does. Do they micromanage the FBI, NSA, CIA? Do they think that they have the right much less the ability to tell people that know what they are doing what they should be doing. This is like a badly run business that has an accountant running the IT department. Shucks guys but microsoft gave us a deal on server products so we scrapped the linux boxes because our balance sheets told us its better.
"Do you think he's maybe compensating for something?" -- Shrek
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Since when do a bunch of lawyers know dink about the best cost solution to any technical problem?
Want NASA to provide a heavy-lift capability? Give NASA a broad goal (say for example to get to the moon in ten years), get the hell out of the way and have NASA produce a design study showing cost-benefit trades for all options studied (including whatever the engineers think might be feasable / possible / affordable - who knows, maybe those engineers actually know a thing or two about what they do). If the projected costs come within the realm of feasibility, authorize a multi-year funding profile (with offramps for failed performace), and get the hell out of the way. Otherwise, any effort is doomed to failure as a political football.
- A Practicing Aerospace Engineer
PS: N(a)SA, the National Space Administration; lack of adequate funding has already killed any useful Aeronautics they might have once accomplished
Yeah, but "75mT"? It's nice to see US Senators trying to get to grips with this new fangled metric system when they specify their pork, but 75 milli-Tonnes would be 75KG. Perhaps NASA should fax their designated rocket motor supplier in Utah some of its own blueprints for a surface to air missile and just get on with whatever it is that NASA actually wants to do, which might actually be something useful.
Alternatively, they could just claim to be catering to their stated directive about "reaching out to Muslims" and tell the not-so-honorable Senator from Utah "We don't do pork anymore as it might offend Muslims."
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Apparently I mis-calibrated my sarcasm.
I was attempting to satirize the fact that any sort of government spending on social programs tends to fall victim to the backlash against the terrifying(but largely unverified) "Welfare Queen"(which, again regardless of statistics, is an explicitly racially identified character); while even the most transparently pointless dicking around with porky corporate contracts does not arouse the same ire.
Somehow, as long as the government spending results in some sort of corporate product(even if it is wholly ill-suited, grossly over budget, or simply canceled partway through) it avoids the dread stigma of being "welfare"(for some reason, farm subsidies also seem to escape this). On the other hand, if there is some chance that a poor person of the colored persuasion might get their hands on a thin slice, it instantly becomes "welfare", which is self-evidently an unsustainable "entitlement program" that is destroying America's moral fiber even as it wrecks its finances.
This potential bill means congressional support behind a Direct version of a shuttle replacement or something close enough not to matter. Direct is a design to replace the space shuttle with a rocket that puts the cargo and capsule on top of the tank, and moves the shuttle engines on the bottom of the tank. Without having to lift the load of the space shuttle itself, the rocket gets 77mT of cargo to orbit.
Re-using all the major shuttle components provides the cheapest possible option for a Heavy Lift Vehicle, not to mention the quickest, as a Direct design could be flying by 2013. The current plan from the administration doesn't even decide on a HLV design until 2015, let alone start the process of building and testing it. This is not a barrel of pork. Yes, somebody will make some money, but this is the cheapest option at the moment to keep a US heavy lift capability in the near future, and it will be built here in the US.
Current US lift capability stops at only 25mT in the Shuttle cargo bay to Low Earth Orbit. By funding a Direct style vehicle, we get a minimum of 75 mT to orbit without a second stage. This a very good thing. With further development of a second stage, the payload capacity increases to 115mT+. Not only that, but by putting the payload on top of the vehicle, a direct style rocket can support a payload as wide as 12m across (shuttle can only do 5m). So we get the ability to send more per launch and save over the life of a large project. For example, five flights of Direct would have been sufficient to build the ISS, versus the 40 shuttle launches it actually took.
By re-using the same engines and boosters as the space shuttle, we save billions (maybe $10 billion over time) in research and launch facility changes necessary for other designs (Ares would have required 2 new pad designs and new crawlers at a $1 billion a pop). The cost per launch for Direct will be less expensive as well. For comparison, recovery of the shuttle SRB's, refurbishment of the shuttle and launch costs per launch have averaged out to about $1.3 billion per launch. A Direct will cost somewhere north of $200 million for the launch vehicle, plus operating costs, but won't include refurbishment or recovery operations. For the immediate future NASA says it will launch the last shuttle in 2011, and after we'll be paying the Russians $20-30 million per seat for rides in a Soyuz
We save time in that we can have an un-manned cargo version of the vehicle doing test flights by 2013, whereas the engine testing alone for a liquid-fueled booster would take 5 years by the current plan. as all the parts are already man-rated (save for the modified ET), we could be launching Orion capsules on a Direct as soon as the Orions finish development in 2015 or so.
If this passes, I'll be one very happy space fan.
The Internet has no garbage collection
I am also a NASA engineer that thinks it's best to let Ares go.
NASA did a lot of research and science before the Constellation program sucked all the funds from everything else NASA does, and Constellation is still at least 3 billion dollars per year short of what it needs to actually get built. I don't see any of these senators proposing the borrowing or tax increases needed to realistically implement a manned return to the moon, so the chances of it happening are approximately zero. Meanwhile, it's killing all of NASA's other missions.
Given that, it make sense to restore the balance back toward research and technology development and try to get cheaper commercial access to LEO going until we have the technology (fuel depots, electric propulsion) required to affordably go farther.