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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."
* Congress demands new Moon program
* Nasa dusts off old plans, calls it Ares V
* Congress cancels Ares program
* Congress asks for new heavy lift vehicle
* Nasa hands them the plans for Ares 5
Man, talk about recycling...
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Letting Congress pick rocket components is equivalent to me (colorblind) pick out the paint scheme for my house. Both will end in amazing disasters...
Fast, cheap, correct. You get to pick two.
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."
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Sounds more like corporate welfare then science to me.
Let's just ask Elon what a Falcon XX will cost instead.
Slightly worse, I'd say. You're a single person, so you can just point at a color, whatever it may be, and call it good. They have to pass a resolution to create a committee to appoint a group to review the plans, and then squabble about who gets what in their state.
NASA Pitches Heavy Lift Vehicle To Congress
... and congress catches it, throwing out their back.
The idiocy of using the solid rocket boosters on a new generation heavy lift vehicle is mind-boggling. If I were a NASA engineer, I would rather shoot myself than work on such an obviously ill-conceived project. Lets just give SpaceX a 1 billion dollar contract to develop the Falcon XX over the next 3-5 years. I'm sure they are capable. We just need to keep congress out of the loop as much as possible, and that's all there is to it.
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
----- obSig
The Falcon 9 is a heavy lift vehicle. It can deliver 32000kg to LEO at a cost (supposedly) of $95M per launch. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9)
I can't find any figures for NASA's new Frankenstack, but I'm guessing its capabilities would be approximately similar. Except that they have $10bn budget to play with, so we can be reassured that the cost will expand to consume the budget, even if they are using obsolete technologies.
char*f="char*f=%c%s%c;main(){printf(f,34,f,34);}";main(){printf(f,34,f,34);}
I'm just thinking that both of these will be a very bad idea. Everybody knows men have no taste in color(color blind or not) and Congress has the intelligence of a fence post.
Absolutely, and I think this is indicative of the sort of problem that plagues the legislative branch these days. Congress has the power to control almost everything, but that doesn't mean it should and it certainly doesn't mean the Senators and Representatives should be the ones making all of the detailed decisions. It's what delayed reversing DADT for so long - legislators thinking that, for some reason, they are more equipped to make a decision than the people currently running the military. NASA is another great example - ALL of the people qualified to make a decision on this sort of thing are at NASA and NONE are in Congress. Congress should say "We want to fund this type of goal for this amount of money, give us something that you think works." No more. Scientific progress should not be contingent on who wants to grab more laborers for his/her district. Until we vote for people aside from lawyers and professional politicians, Congress needs to listen to actual experts.
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
There are many heavy lift launchers out there now in the private sector. Surely it would be much cheaper and quicker to validate one of the existing designs. SpaceX has had two for two successful launches of their Falcon 9. Their economics are excellent too - and without the use of dangerous and difficult SRBs.
Even without including the new kid, there are many viable existing designs.
Yes, it does make them a terribly bad idea. It means you need to move the launcher upright out to the pad, it means you can't launch on a cool Florida morning and they cost a god damn fortune. Plus they are dangerous as hell. SRBs are the second worst thing about the shuttle. That prize goes to the idea to put the humans any place but the top of the stack.
This just in, kids cry and fuss and demand Happy Meals. Parents say that McDonald's is a bad idea but wanting peace and quiet give in and propose a trip to "The Golden Arches" restaurant.
Unless they live in San Francisco, of course.
Every lady refuses a gentleman's first proposal.
Well, first off all the problem with discoveries tank is due to a manufacturing problem with the stringers, not a design flaw.
Second of all, why use SSME's? They are designed for re-use, and have restart capability that will not be needed. A better choice would be the rocketdyn's RS-68, single use, cheap as fuck, provides more lifting power.
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
So congress made engineering decisions for NASA. They told NASA to reuse some parts from something else. And does Congress even know if that actually saves money? There have been plenty of times I've been told to develop something and to reuse an existing piece of code, and I've had to disappoint someone by pointing out that reusing their old COBOL EXE does not actually shrink the timeline. :-( In mechanical engineering, I've learned that reusing parts often adds a lot of work.
Maybe that isn't the case here, but Congress should instead have set constraints and let NASA decide how best to implement it. No doubt the new request also tells them what vendors to use, and what state to by them from, and where to eat lunch so that the money gets spread around to their own pet projects.
Wouldn't NASA and the american taxpayer better off talking to Arianespace and trying tp develop something in cooperation with them? Arianespace has a lot of knowledge in development procedures and technology which I think NASA was forced to scrap for political reasons.
There were a lot of advanced and promising technologies almost ready which NASA and the US industry dumped because your congress did cut the money when the device was almost ready.
These could be utilised in such a joint venture.
They'll probably learn when Congress gives NASA the financial freedom to learn. Until Congress stops mandating technical requirements as, "solutions," from on high via micomanaged budgets, NASA's hands are tied. If you don't like how NASA is being funded and managed, complain to your Congress critters.
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So long as we in America waste our national treasures on fruitless foreign wars of Republican adventure in Iraq, Afghanistan, and possibly Iran, there is no way we can afford this - and space will continue to be the domain of China, India, and even Japan, all of whom get cheap resources from Iraq and Afghanistan at no expense of their own due to our collective national insanity in America.
Reality hurts.
Spaceflight ain't cheap.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Seriously, why not?
Dig a deep hole in the ground, put a 150kt nuke (the max allowed by the Partial Test Ban Treaty) in it and put a 6,000 TONS of more or less raw materials on top of it, and then push the button.
Oh ho! Let's see them fake a moon landing in HD this time! /tinfoil
I am looking out the window now at my fence post and I just can't accept you assertion its of lower intelligence, than out Congress.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Neither were clean sheet designs. They both adapted existing technology in new designs; Ares just adapted things a little more to better fit mission goals, while DIRECT adapted things less to cut schedule and budget.
IMHO, the problem with DIRECT is that it didn't advance our capabilities. They were basically just proposing a single medium sized rocket (with multiple variants). To get to the moon would require a two launches that joined in orbit - a step backwards from the Saturn V days. It wasn't scalable for Mars trips, or even bringing large amounts of cargo to the moon.
The Ares V on the other hand is a genuine heavy lift vehicle, that would exceed the capabilities of the Saturn V, allowing not only to return to the moon, but also Mars. We would finally have the capability to start building permanent stations on the moon (and if we aren't going to do that what is the point in returning).
I agree that something like the DIRECT rocket would have been a more capable (and possibly less expensive to design) replacement for Ares I, but it had nothing to bring to the table to compete with Ares V.
A facepalm is the only suitable response to this. I don't even think a double facepalm quite conveys the necessary sense of palm meeting face.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
NASA just acts as a Beuracracy that hands money out for contracts {only if they get results ) and they get 100% out of the actual sending people into space.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Fuel for one reason.
The threat of terrorism precludes space elevators and other low-cost alternatives for the most part.
Subsidies that artificially make it appear cheap by having the military provide the funding don't make it actually cheap, they just make it appear so.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Unlike Congress, a fence post has the wisdom to refrain from doing anything actively stupid.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Those are the numbers are metric tons, not megatons and they are for low earth orbit. The purpose of a heavy lift vehicle is to get to the moon or beyond. The cargo capacity to the moon is exactly 0 for all existing rockets, and 0+0+0 still equals zero :) So you need something bigger just to assemble things in parts like you suggest.
This is as good a place as any to ask:
Why did we stop design of the NERVA engines in the 70's? Wikipedia claims that they worked well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA
I understand people hate the idea of launching nuclear material above our heads, but the logic that the reactors on these devices should stay in one piece in the event of a disaster seems to put those concerns to rest (for reasonable people). Obviously there are plenty of non-reasonable people who say "OMG nukes!", but is that the only reason?
An unrelated wikipedia page says that some known engine technologies have the potential to get us to Mars in 40 days. Does anyone know if NERVA was one of those? Aside from OMGnukes, what were the downsides to NERVA? The wikipedia page really makes it sound like the whole program was successful, and then we just scrapped it for political reasons!
I'd appreciate leaving "duh our government sux" arguments our of this - I'm very aware of that.
-Taylor
Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
If they can pitch a lift vehicle all the way to congress, let alone a heavy one. Now two questions ultimately arise: Was it a straight throw, or was some spin applied? Did Congress swing?
The DIRECT plan was a response to the dead end Ares I / Ares V idea with the goal of maintaining the institutional knowledge of NASA. The DIRECT team made plenty of political assumptions. The rocket was always a compromise, but one that used the best parts of what had gone before and offered a lot of flexibility if mission plans were to change. The idea made a lot of sense in 2006, with the planned demise of the space shuttle four years in the future.
A return to the moon went out with the near collapse of the economy. Then two more years passed. The current bill was crafted (I have no idea by whom) so that only the DIRECT idea could fulfill the requirements.
If they do not want to do it the way DIRECT suggests, I hope they come up with either a) a mission and the perfect system to fulfill the mission, or b) design something as flexible as DIRECT. Option b) will mean that most of the Florida army will be dissipated, and there still will be no specific mission.
I think NASA would rather go under than make anything like DIRECT suggested. It might just happen.
Their they're doing there hair.
Telling people what to buy is not a budget decision. A budget decision is telling people how much they can spend.
Actually, a budget specifies both what you can spend money on, and how much money you can spend on those things.
Now, it is true that it is a poor budget that is more specific on the "what you can spend money on" part than is warranted by the objectives intended to be served by the limitations expressed, but the fact that a particular requirement of that type may be a bad budget decision doesn't make it into something other than a budget decision.
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/01/nasa-report-favors-sd-hlv-sls-complains-cant-afford-2016/
The difference is that the jobs to build this stuff will now go to blue states instead of red states. This was never about anything else.
or else!
... to the Space Falcon 9 "Heavy" (http://www.spacex.com/falcon9_heavy.php)
The US Constitution provides the federal government with three tasks * Provide for Common Defense * Promote General Welfare * Provide Domestic Tranquility What the H___? NOW the morons who can and do screw up a 1 car parade, our economy, housing, etc. etc. etc. are "rocket Scientists"????? The government needs to disband much of the infrastructure, and leave governing to the states. Read the bill of rights, and prove me wrong.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke
I think this whole thing is gonna die no matter how it is presented (which is too bad because all this great technology and we all still going to the same place Yuri Gagarin visited nearly 50 years ago).
I believe it was Dennis Wingo who wrote a comment on nasawatch.com that proposing HLV is a non-starter. Reason is such a launch vehicle is so expensive there is no way such a program will be approved by congress. It would be nice to have a Saturn V class vehicle that can place 100 tons in one shot but if you ain't got the money, then do planning for lower cost lower payload rockets (there are several). Supposably Sean Okeffe, NASA administrator before Mike Griffin, as a longtime Washington DC politico understood this so didn't push for a HLV. But he was replaced by Mike Griffin (man o man you should read the rants about Griffin on nasawatch). I don't know all the details but enough to bring up some interesting discussion (new topic for /.?)
I read on Wayne Hale's blog that OMB made the edict to Augustine Commission to not present any options that cost more than $3B which limited options "worthy of a great nation's exploration." Kind of reminds me of funding large programs, either put a lot of money upfront on development but save on operational costs, or skimp on development and have a more expensive operations cost.
I think the biggest question that needs to be answered is why go back to the moon and on to Mars? Back in the 60s, we knew exactly why a HLV had to be built. It was needed for Apollo so we can beat the Reds to the moon. Otherwise if they get there first, they will plant the Soviet flag on the moon seizing the high ground and enslave the rest of world in Communism. Now that all may sound silly but if you read all the history, it was serious back then. However, looking back the Apollo program could have "failed" like the Soviet lunar program (Korolev never had the resources needed for a HLV and much of the Politburo argued among themselves), the USAF MOL never flew (it just kept getting more and more complex), and John Houbolt at LaRC was able to successfully get the LOR adopted (which was among a few key fundamentals to have Apollo/Saturn work without violating the laws of physics). Also note that Saturn V was built to fulfill a single task. It was too expensive for "routine" flights to the moon, and Ares V is trying to be "routine" which I can never see congress funding.
I'd love to see us go back to the moon and see what the old Apollo sites look like now (and... what if they were to find the rovers on blocks with the tires missing?!?!). However, if I could wave the magic wand, I would direct NASA to do research and development in making access to space lowcost. So far all orbital access requires major bucks and a huge standing army just to get a small elite few into space (I'm not elite and I wanna go!)
mfwright@batnet.com
As this point, I'm rooting for the Chinese space program to steal some of NASA's failed ideas and try to put men on the moon by 2020. Unlike the US, they still have the money, manpower, and manufacturing capabilities to pull it off.
Honestly, It seems that the US government is only interested in funding NASA properly when they're losing the space race.
At last something that can get a lone slashdotter into orbit!
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
They pollute the environment with lots of nasty stuff, which will always restrict their use (in any sane society).
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Amen, brother!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff