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NASA Unveils Design for New Space Launch System
wooferhound writes with an article in the Orlando Sentinel about NASA's Deep Space Exploration project. From the article: "After months of debate, NASA has settled on plans for its next spaceship — a space shuttle hybrid that will fly twice in the next decade and cost $30 billion through 2021, according to senior administration officials and internal NASA documents. That NASA decided to recycle elements of the shuttle is not unexpected. Last year, Congress and the White House agreed NASA should reuse equipment from old programs and the new design — which includes a giant fuel tank and two booster rockets — largely reflects that compromise. The most noticeable change is the plane-like orbiter will be replaced by an Apollo-like crew capsule atop the tank."
The Space Launch System will be powered by a combination of the Shuttle main engine for the core launch stage, and the J-2 engine (from the Saturn V project) for the upper stage. The same solid booster rockets used for Shuttle missions will be used for at least the initial unmanned launch in 2017, but NASA will have a design contest to replace them for the 2021 crewed launch and beyond.
And for only $30 billion, and with 50,000 kg LESS lift capacity than it had in 1969.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
How is this different from the canceled Ares? Or they just trim out the LEO variant?
about how much NASA costs, I just posted this same link on another site. It shows an outstanding graph of the overall federal budget for 2011 broken down by Agency.
As the Bad Astronomer says in his writing, find NASA's budget.
The link.
*Ok, I'm a bit late as the ranting has already begun
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
So if you thought that the shuttle was a political compromise of various different interests this will look even worse. There's one primary reason that this new design uses so much of the shuttle: whiny lobbyists and politicians who want to make sure that the factories in their home districts stay doing the exact same thing. To most Slashdot readers the space program isn't what may be the first stepping stones to the stars, and we imagine people a thousand years from now looking back on this early age as we look back on the great achievements of the past. These people don't look at that way. They look at this as one more form of pork. And frankly, given how bad the economy is, I sort of understand that. Their home districts need every job they can get.
But even given that, this still pisses me off. This will have less lift capacity than the Saturn V or the shuttle, will be less frequently launchable, will be essentially not reusable. This is a clear step backwards. More expensive and less capable. Great way to go.
Is this the DIRECT proposal, and if so are they going to design a new crew vehicle or use all the work already poured into Orion?
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Anyone? Beuller?
Solid rocket propulsion is inappropriate for manned spaceflight.
This message has been brought to you by: Basic Common Sense.
What was wrong with the X-33? The concept had flaws. In 1996. So. . . we turn our backs and never try again for a fully, TRULY reusable system? Just so we can continue to funnel billions of dollars of pork to powerful senators from Louisiana and Utah? Wow. We do not deserve space. We just don't.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Space X is developing the falcon heavy, ( The link. ) Why not use that instead. It lifts 53 metric tons for only $80-125 million a pop. Sure, the payload is a lot less, but the cost is 1/10 of what Nasa is thinking about. And those are hard numbers, not NASA will go over-budget numbers. I suppose the one drawback is in scenarios where you want to send a vehicle up there all in one piece.
If only the US Government had more balls and more incentive to launch a great big rocket into space, we might all be space cowboys by now.
If only NASA had the budget of 5% of the US Military, I could take my space guitar to a much larger International Space Station and sing the blues all with my other space buddies.
If only we all could see the amazing opportunities and forward thinking plans which a healthy space program can produce, I could retire on a farm on Mars.
You know what is missing from this so-called modern world? Ego, If only the US had the biggest Ego to orbit the center of the galaxy, we would all be better off. Just having the opportunity to say to the world, hey, I've got a plan for the world, let me build a space station orbiting around every single planet in this galaxy and we can all see the wonderful beauty that is our Solar System, we can all bring back to earth ideas for peace and ideas for bigger and better scientific projects, and oh yeah, We're the U.S of Effin' Aye, and we have a Saturn X. 5 Times the size of Saturn V and a beautiful sight to see as it takes off, this is our mark on society, this is our Image for the future free for all to look up to, and we love doing it too. Because we're the USA!
But no, instead, we've shut down it all and dug our heads in the sand, for fear of financial collapse.
This isn't the america I remember.
We are all cowards.
Actually, it's too bad they haven't developed a rocket engine that burns a tank-full of $100 dollar bills. That would be cheaper to run.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
What is NASA going to do with those two flights and what are they going to do next? There is no credible plan at all. Fly to some asteroid, then maybe to mars. But in order to do what? Put a flag in the sand of Mars so that half a century later somebody can fly a space probe to the planet and make a picture to combat the conspiracy theories that the Mars flight was all fake?
There is no vision in this other than giving even more money to the firms that provided overpriced space ships and rockets in the past. There is no research in this, other than whatever happens to be picked up along the way by some great coincidence, just as with Apollo that had a grand total on one scientist flying to the moon.
If you want to do manned spaceflight, you need a vision or it doesn't work. Because manned spaceflight in and of itself is stupid. As stupid as plonking down huge stones after dragging them for kilometers through the dirt in order to build Stone Henge. As just as stupid as breaking out stones in a quarry, carrying them along the Nile and building pyramids. Or wasting your time to write a symphony, playing football, chess or go (my favorite).
There is no credible economic reason. There is very little indication, that the scientific gains of manned spaceflight will be worth the monetary expenditure for centuries. But that doesn't mean it isn't worth it, if that is what you decide to focus on. If you say, we think it's worth it, because human nature sometimes requires a higher goal that doesn't have a lot to do with the individuals of the society, but the society as a whole - and as such can truly be enjoyed by all because nobody has any tangible benefit - then this is a good enough reason.
But unfortunately our societies have devolved to the point of regarding everything that doesn't have a tangible benefit to identifiable individuals as a waste of time - unless it is part of those practices that were grandfathered in from eras when people thought otherwise.
So it will take NASA over 10 years to launch only two more missions? So what do they plan on doing after the second launch? I'm sure by that time that Russia and China will have launched more than just two missions a piece. I really don't like the sound of this.
it's not like this is rocket science...
Well, it's rocket budget science.
$30 billion dollars for two flights includes all the R&D to build the freaking rocket, each flight does not cost $15 billion as you imply. Your math is like saying Sony spent $400 million dollars over 4 years to build the first two Cell processors, therefor they will never be able to sell a PlayStation for less than $200 Million each. To put it in perspective, Shuttle R&D was originally bid at $43 billion in today's money. The actual cost per flight was $1.5 billion dollars if you include every dollar that went to the Shuttle program.
What is being overlooked here, imo, is the factor that drove the Apollo program to such fantastic feats on its relatively short timescale. That type of commitment and effort is _never_ going to be undertaken without the threat of another country topping the US. Barring the type of wake-up-call moment like Sputnik or Gagarin, the necessary desire to get us to the aspirational next level will continue on this iterative path of fits and starts. The key factor that allowed for Mercury -> Gemini -> Apollo was the race to the moon. Right now we have these wishy-washy blurred objectives like wouldn't it be great to visit an asteroid or maybe we'll be walking on Mars in 20 years. F that. We really need a challenger. China. Like the title says, they need to get to Mars. Will them putting something real into orbit do the trick? Is that even attainable given their current launch capabilities (I think so). Until something like that happens, we're doomed to live in this bureaucratic netherworld of pork. The public (I'm guilty too) is too apathetic to realize the country could really use something inspiring like this. Otherwise all the wonderful brainpower out there will continue to funnel into the world of spooky finance transactions... who can blame them!!
This is a prime example of why NASA should be terminated. Spin off the space science/weather programs and kill the rest. $30B to re-use existing technology to get something in space 6 years from now? Are they that fucking hopeless?
I knew I shouldn't have skipped lunch. When I first saw the title I thought this was a "New Space Lunch System" for underprivileged aliens and astronauts.
All that work on new propulsion technology and vehicle design (spaceplane, anybody?) and we're doing the same roman candle approach. That is actually worse than something we had 40 years ago.
I'm not a physicist, so I don't really know a huge amount about this. Is there actually a viable design for a spaceplane with a large cargo capacity in the works anywhere? I understand that planes are more economic in the lower atmostphere, where you rest the weight of the plane on the wings, but for upper atmosphere I believe you still need a vertical thrust and to carry the oxygen aboard as well as the fuel you're burning with it. How would you go about this? Maybe a spaceplane that takes off conventionally and refuels in the air for the final burn?
I worked on a "Shuttle-Derived Cargo Launch Vehicle" in the Mid 1980's. It was an obvious answer to the low payload capacity of the orbiter. I see NASA has finally caught on to this idea after we proposed it to them about 5 times over the years in various studies.
(Given the rate of management turnover, they would forget someone already did the study, and pay for it again and again)
I look forward to when they catch up to studies we did in the 1990's (giant space guns, and ultra-tall towers)
Yes, but Sony sold way more than 2 PlayStations, so R&D is spread out over millions of units. The chances of this boondoggle ever flying more that 2 flights is infinitesimal, so it really is $15 billion per flight. Actually the chances of it even flying 1 flight is small, so cost per probable flight is approaching infinity.
Yes, it came from the same concept drawings, but we scratched out the name dangit! Aries was canceled so it is NOT the Aries 5!
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
NASA is one of the FEW places where the $ spent MORE THAN PAYS OFF in actual $$s into our economy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA#Economic_impact_of_NASA_funding
Every dollar spent on NASA actually GENERATES between $7 and $22 for our economy:
http://www.bu.edu/sjmag/scimag2005/features/NASA.htm
People who think spending $ on NASA is bad are the same kind of people that think treating an infected wound with HIV infected dog poop is good.
For a conventional rocket, to some extent you are correct. The aerospace industry has lots of experience with a "learning curve", the more of the same kind of item you make on a production line, the more you learn how to do it faster and cheaper. But there is a "forgetting curve", so if you do it less than two per month, in the couple of weeks between instances of the same task, your production workers *forget*, and you don't gain from experience. So yeah, do it often enough, and costs should come down.
Conventional rockets have to fight physics, part of which is the Earth's atmosphere and fuel tank shapes. To minimize drag, you want a skinny rocket, to minimize tank weight, you want a spherical fuel tank. Below a certain size, aerodynamics wins, and the rockts are skinny, but weight-inefficient. Once the get to around 200 ft tall, mass per unit area of the rocket is much larger than mass per unit area of the atmosphere (14.7 psi or 101kPa), so rockets get fatter rather than taller after that.
If you have jet boosters on your rocket rather than solid rockets, that forumula gets reversed. Air breathing engines want area, more air means more thrust.
Saturn V looking rocket with strap on boosters like a Soyuz, with a small capsule on top? The 1960s were so great we're going to go back to them?
I'm not a physicist, so I don't really know a huge amount about this. Is there actually a viable design for a spaceplane with a large cargo capacity in the works anywhere?
Yes, there is a "viable" design for a spaceplane with large cargo capacity in the works. Its still a significant amount of development away from production, but its past a concept. Its called the Skylon
I'm sure there are plenty of launchers than can lift 70mT and 130mt.
70mT = 140 pounds.
130mT = 260 pounds.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
it's a tiny fraction of what we've spent sending people to South Asia in the past decade. a few months' worth.
NASA: hundreds of flights of dozens of platforms and mission profiles, and an edict to do good for us all.
Space-X: not so much.
Don't knock this approach. The Russian space program uses rockets that can trace their linage back to the R7 boosters that put the first man in orbit. Rather than scrap a working design the Russians have improved them constantly. The SSME is really not a totally new design, it's based on the Saturn V J1 engine. The upper stage of the SLS will use the J1X engine, which is based on the same engine. While the SRB's have a bad reputation thanks to the Challenger accident, they actually have a good safety record. Similar (smaller) engines are used on the Delta rocket as boosters. The SRB's biggest problem is the joints between sections. The SRB could be built in a single large piece (one section), but would then be harder to assemble and ship. By stacking sections it is possible to build SRB's of different sizes and power to suit the payload.
I wonder how the SLS will compare in takeoff power compared to the Saturn-V and the Falcon-9 Heavy.
A little more quietly, there are four companies now with NASA funded manned space-flight programs: SNC, Boeing, Blue Origin and SpaceX.
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/08/nasa-ccdev-2-partners-reveals-progress-milestones/
Once people start flying on any of these vehicles then it opens up more possibilities moving forward. This is the real space race.
This is not a New Shuttle but a Deep Space ship for cryin' out loud.
Let Space X figure it out on their own. They want to be a Private Venture then they can raise the money on their own.
Will that be a return to turbo-props and a wooden frame.
What NASA appear to be saying is that they've made no significant progress in spacecraft or engine design over the past 40 years.
If all they've done is stagnate, then the NEXT iteration after that can only be the start of the slide backwards.
(Note to self: start learning to ride a horse and hunt with a bow.)
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I'm a bit confused by this.
The re-use of the shuttle program's SRBs makes perfect sense. I know folks at NASA were pushing for these kinds of "refine what we already have" ideas for the next space launch system (See: DIRECT).
But I have no idea why they chose the RS-25 (Space Shuttle Main Engines) for the first stage of this thing.
The RS-25s are unique in that they are designed to be re-used. No other liquid fueled rocket engines are.
Other liquid fueled rocket engines are built, test fired, and then run for 8ish minutes before they're discarded into the ocean, or they burn up on reentry.
Because the RS-25s are re-usable, it's my understanding that they're far more complex than disposable engines of comparable thrust.
Since it appears that the stage these engines will be attached to will not be recovered, why select these engines?
Can anyone confirm my understanding of these engines?
Can anyone confirm if this stage is recovered or not?
Can anyone shed light onto this particular design decision?
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
Apparently SpaceX pricing is a-la-carte. The $80-125 million dollar price tag is for the launcher itself. You have to provide transport, vehicle assembly, mission control, range safety, telemetry monitoring, recovery, etc. for yourself. Granted though, NASA has all those capabilities.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Let Space X figure it out on their own. They want to be a Private Venture then they can raise the money on their own.
And probably be better off for it. The last thing they need is a single customer with a large enough wallet to essentially dictate to them how to run things. Might net a lot of cash in the short term, but it's not really in their best interests for the long term.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Note that Skylon precursor HOTOL, a project under seemingly much more reputable entities and stricter oversight, apparently came to conclusion that it would be not really operationally better than a "dumb rocket" using comparably advanced technology or materials ...which for a specaplane are required to make it even barely possible.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Way back when Russia was lifting much heavier loads into space than the USA could manage, some (NASA?) people got to wondering out loud how they managed to do that. One suggestion I recall was that they had a stretch of basically railway track, and an electric(?) locomotive+spacecraft-holder+spacecraft. That whole assembly was accelerated along the track. Towards the end, at high speed, the track angled upwards and about then the rockets fired up, lifting the spacecraft off of the locomotive+spacecraft-holder, which was decelerated and retained for reuse. So the rockets got off to a flying start, and were carrying no unnecesary weight. If that was such a nifty-seeming idea back then, could it not still be a nifty idea?
Disclaimer: I am a rocket scientist. I worked for Boeing for 25 years doing space transportation and space station work. Real name is "Dani Eder", look me up.
The problem with the big rocket approach is that it is exactly as hard to make the next trip as the last trip. What we should be doing is building infrastructure to make future trips easier. My current favored approach, which is subject to change as new ideas come along is to:
* Use a hypervelocity gun on a mountain in Equador to launch small cargoes of supplies on a regular basis in tens to hundreds of kg per shot. Build up a manned base station there using robots to do the initial assembly work. People come later via ordinary rocket.
* At your low orbit station, assemble VASIMR type plasma rockets which can chug to nearby asteroids and return ~20x their weight in asteroid mass per trip. Choose a carbonaceous type asteroid, and use the carbon to start making space elevator cable. Use the metallic component to expand the orbital base. Use the oxygen component as more fuel for future trips. You will need some chemical and metal processing equipment to do that, send it up in parts via your gun.
* As your space elevator cable grows, use the plasma rocket to raise the orbit gradually until it reaches about 30% of a full space elevator. That is the practical limit with carbon fiber we can make now (if we learn how to make better carbon fiber later, great, update the plans and upgrade the fiber). 30% is very useful. Take 30% off the velocity to reach earth orbit,and reuseable single stage to orbit vehicles become fairly easy to make. 70% of orbital velocity means 50% of kinetic energy relative to standard rockets.
* 30% above orbital speed on the upper end of the elevator cable is nearly escape velocity (which is 41% above orbital). So you are nearly able to get anywhere outside earth orbit. To start with that is grabbing more asteroid stuff to expand your system.
* Lunar orbit velocity is 21% of Earth orbit velocity. So if we can build a 30% Earth space elevator, we can build a full space elevator on the Moon. Now we can take off and land on the Moon with negligible fuel use.
* Since we already know how to make habitats and oxygen out of local materials, and use the O2 for fuel, we can pretty much spread out through all the nearby asteroids and the Moon. When we get to Phobos and Deimos, we can build a space elevator going down to Mars. Oh hey, Mars orbit velocity is 45% of Earth's, so our space elevator technology can take care of 2/3 of the velocity to land, the rest is by some aerobraking and landing jets. Going up we can get our oxygen from the Martian atmosphere (its CO2), and only need to get to 1/3 of orbital speed to reach the elevator, so getting to and from Mars is relatively easy all around.
So, is this essentially a slightly re-designed Jupiter craft from the Direct v.3 team? As I understand it this was the main opposition program to ARES. SDLeary
Note that Skylon precursor HOTOL, a project under seemingly much more reputable entities and stricter oversight, apparently came to conclusion that it would be not really operationally better than a "dumb rocket" using comparably advanced technology or materials ...which for a specaplane are required to make it even barely possible.
That's exactly backward. Alan Bond headed the HOTOL project. Guess who owns Reaction Engines, the company behind Skylon? That's right, Alan Bond. The main issues with HOTOL were actually more to do with the vehicle geometry, not with the engines themselves, and with politics (specifically, the Thatcher government). Apparently, the new materials and manufacturing technology available 20 years later have made it possible to address the technical issues. Let's not forget that there have been several independent evaluations made of Skylon's feasibility, including by the ESA, and none of them have found any reasons for the spacecraft not to be feasible.
Pirate Party UK
It is absolutely expected that creators are the most appreciative of their darling, it doesn't say very much in itself. If problems were so minor as you present, there would be not much reason to just terminate the effort (and yes, the new materials and technology available now were certainly anticipated in calculations then; those which suggested that a "dumb rocket" would give something at worst comparable)
ESA provides them with low-level funding; it is certainly the goal of the organization to explore and be supportive of potentially(!!) promising paths, that's it, that's what public funding of research is also about. They have their own share of dead ends...
Now, don't get me wrong, it would be fun if Skylon works out, in practical operations. But we must be sceptical of the claims of those who are, one way or another, deeply invested in it. If only because of... come on, how many "this will be awesome, revolutionary, and inexpensive" we had, also from supposedly respectable entities? Heck, it was the same song behind the push for STS, and look how much of a train wreck of a project it ended up being.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Just because someone else (or some other part of the government) is throwing even more money away on something else stupid, doesn't make this a good idea.
-- Alastair
I've added HOTOL background to Skylon enthusiasms; it's not so clear as Skylon would like us to believe (with the types of public funding it gets being also about risky projects with unknown outcomes, investors not willing to step up)
...but, on top of that, "vertically" ("vertical thrust") is a popular but huge misunderstanding. The first rocket that got into space was A4, aka V-2 (~100 km during normal operational flight, and I think it could achieve ~180 if launched almost vertically). However... it was more than an order of magnitude away in energy expenditure required from being able to reach orbit. Launchers work primarily not for height, but for horizontal speed, kinetic energy, and most of those energy gains must happen outside of the atmosphere - a) the speed is high b) it gets squared in kinetic energy...
One that hath name thou can not otter