NASA Pitches Heavy Lift Vehicle To Congress

BJ_Covert_Action writes "Well, Congress demanded, last year, that NASA develop a budget plan and proposal for a new heavy lift vehicle in light of the Ares V cancellation. Recently, NASA gave Congress just what they wanted. On January 11th, Douglas Cooke pitched an interim report to Congressional members detailing the basic design concepts that would go into a new heavy lift vehicle. Congress required that the new heavy lift vehicle maximize the reuse of space shuttle components as part of its budget battle with President Obama last year. As a result, NASA basically copy-pasted the Ares V design into a new report and pitched it to Congress on the 11th. The proposed vehicle will require the five segment SRB's that were proposed for the Ares V rocket. It will utilize the SSME's for it's main liquid stage. It will reuse the shuttle external tank as the primary core for the liquid booster (the same tank design that is currently giving the Discovery shuttle launch so many problems). And it will utilize the new J-2X engine that NASA has been developing for the Ares V project as an upper stage. In other words, NASA proposed to Congress exactly what Congress asked for."

Comments

A Bit Left Off

[BJ_Covert_Action]

The editors took the second paragraph of my summary out. They probably thought it was a bit too tasteless, or something, despite the important information in it. Here it is (also from the article linked):

The catch is, NASA also admitted that they will not be able to complete the proposed rocket on the budget that Congress has given them. Neither will they be able to finish the rocket on time. Finally, NASA has commented that a current study being conducted by 13 independent contractors is still being conducted to determine if there is a better design out there that NASA has, 'overlooked.' NASA has stated that, should that study finds any alternate, interesting designs then, they will need to consider those seriously."

Re:A Bit Left Off

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Well actually, they very well may have considered it. Or, at least, NASA may have. Congress tends to be the entity demanding that the same SRB's get used on the new vehicle that were on the shuttle system. You can thank Senator Orrin Hatch and Senator Richard Shelby for this, in part, because they are defending the industries that provide jobs to the areas they represent. As a result, they both push heavily to have certain technical requirements inserted, via budget line items, into legislation regarding NASA's designs.

In a recent copy of Make magazine Dick Rutan, Burt Rutan's test pilot brother, was quoted saying, "In America, the Apollo program was the greatest thing we ever did. A young president wrote a check and got the fuck out of the way..." I think that sums up nicely the role that politicians should play in engineering. But then, I'm old fashioned like that.

There is quite an argument to be made that this whole thing is a political ploy by NASA to either force Congress to pay for what they are asking for, or to loosen up on the stupid ass requirements an allow NASA to design a truly optimal solution. Whether or not the ploy will work, backfire, or do nothing will be seen with time I suppose.

This is Jupiter Direct

[vinn]

This is basically the Jupiter Direct program advocated by quite a few insiders at NASA. It was designed by some NASA engineers moonlighting. So, this isn't some half-baked scheme by Congress to try to engineer something themselves. I didn't look at these final details, but it does sound like they added more SRB's than originally planned.

For more information, see the wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIRECT

Re:Frankenstack

[Tekfactory]

SpaceX plan costs $1 Billion just to develop the Merlin 2 engines and "qualify" them on Falcon 9 rockets in 3 years. I assume by qualify they mean flight tested, I don't know if a Heavy Lift vehicle needs to be man-rated. Of course the Falcon 9 will have to be man rated to carry a Dragon capsule with crew onboard, so if qualify means man rated so much the better.

You have $9 Billion left to build the Rocket, and finish the Dragon capsule crew module version which is already funded.