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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."
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
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.
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
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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.
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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.
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.
Actually I think thats the point ESMD is trying to make here. Congress mandated that they use SRBs et. al., so ESMD comes back and says "all right, we can do it, but it WILL be late and overbudget."
They want the things launched into space to survive the trip.
It's already tricky to engineer things like satellite components so that they can withstand the force and vibration of liftoff on a rocket.
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
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.
> Actually I think thats the point ESMD is trying to make here. Congress mandated that they use SRBs et. al., so ESMD comes back and says "all right, we can do it, but it WILL be late and overbudget."
I think this is essentially NASA's way of telling Congress that there are two options:
* a rocket that uses as many Shuttle-legacy components as possible and continues delivering a stream of funding to politically-important congressional districts
* a rocket that meets Congress's schedule and budget requirements
Congress can only pick one. Unfortunately, I have a feeling that they'll pick the first, only cancelling the project after the schedule and budget have gone completely to hell (i.e. repeat of Ares I), and after it's already delivered plenty of funds to key districts.