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.

Comments

So basically, they're reinventing the Saturn V?

[elrous0]

And for only $30 billion, and with 50,000 kg LESS lift capacity than it had in 1969.

Re:So basically, they're reinventing the Saturn V?

[mlong]

Oh no they will work on it at least until the next president and congress is elected...then they will scrap it and come up with something else to start and abandon

Re:So basically, they're reinventing the Saturn V?

[emc]

And for only $30 billion, and with 50,000 kg LESS lift capacity than it had in 1969.

To quote Neil deGrasse Tyson, "Apollo in 1969. Shuttle in 1981. Nothing in 2011. Our space program would look awesome to anyone living backwards thru time."

Re:So basically, they're reinventing the Saturn V?

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

In this case, the "lobotomized drooling morons" are the Congressional spec writers and component selectors who are also happen to be in charge of the budget. Imagine if someone told you to design an airplane, they'd pay for the budget, you just had to include a giraffe and 1963 Volkswagon Beetle in the final airframe design.

Re:So basically, they're reinventing the Saturn V?

[tsotha]

Go Mediocre rehash of 40+ year old designs!!!

There's nothing wrong with using old designs. There's even nothing wrong with making a mediocre hash of old designs if it results in a large cost savings. Cost, after all, is the big problem with these kinds of systems, not capability.

But an expensive mediocre rehash of old designs needs to be killed with fire. This is a make-work jobs program, not a launch system.

Re:So basically, they're reinventing the Saturn V?

[Cajun Hell]

"Apollo in 1969. Shuttle in 1981. Nothing in 2011. Our space program would look awesome to anyone living backwards thru time."

Nothing in 2011? I thought we launched two rockets to the moon just a few days ago, and it was ho-hum routine! Look at the stuff crawling around on Mars right now, and think of how lame they would be by comparison, had the mission occured in 1969 or 1981.

Maybe we ought to be happy we don't need to impress cold war rivals anymore. Imagine if in the 1960s, you told someone that 3000 deaths would be considered a big deal that would shake up international affairs for a decade. They probably misunderstand you. They'd think you were talking about the death toll per some kind of futurist micro-nuke MIRV, which would fit into individual ICBMs by the hundreds.

Play the tape forward, Tyson, not backward. See through the special effects and pay attention to the plot.

If the shuttle was a political compromise

[JoshuaZ]

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.

Re:If the shuttle was a political compromise

[sznupi]

This will have less lift capacity than ... the shuttle

What is the point of including the wasted upmass of airframe? Excluding it, the lift capability of STS was in the range of many inexpensive expendable launchers; and there's nothing wrong with expandability - physics, rocket equation, are a bitch.

Some simple, back of the napkin calculations so you might get the feel of how much waste the "spaceplane" scifi cargo cult dream brought with it: the empty weight of the orbiter was 80 tons, weight at liftoff 110 tons including maximum payload of 24 tons. Lets be generous and assume, say, a capsule of 15 tons for comparable crew transport capabilities (other capabilities being superfluous), launched on a typical ~20+ tons launcher... that gives a wasted upmass of around 70 tons in each Shuttle launch.

Through 134 successful launches. Over 9000* tons of launched mass which could be in LEO, but was wasted on Buck Rogers style contraption.
Even if merely half of that was used for a space station, it would an order of magnitude larger than the ISS, probably easily of the spinning, "gravity" generating type. And on a somewhat higher orbit (ISS was for a long time on non-optimal one so that Shuttle would be able to reach it with usable payloads)

*Yes, I perhaps slightly inflated the above "70" ( ~65 being more realistic), but I wanted badly to sneak in the 9k line ;p

China needs to get to Mars first...

[thefuz]

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!!