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NASA To Waste $150 Million On SLS Engine That Will Be Used Once
schwit1 writes: NASA's safety panel has noticed that NASA's SLS program either plans to spend $150 million human-rating a rocket engine it will only use once, or will fly a manned mission without human-rating that engine.
"The Block 1 SLS is the 'basic model,' sporting a Delta Cryogenic Second Stage (DCSS), renamed the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion System (ICPS) for SLS. The current plan calls for this [interim] stage to be used on [the unmanned] Exploration Mission -1 (EM-1) and [manned] Exploration Mission -2 (EM-2), prior to moving to the [Exploration Upper Stage] — also to be built by Boeing — that will become the workhorse for SLS. However, using the [interim upper stage] on a crewed mission will require it to be human rated. It is likely NASA will also need to fly the [Exploration Upper Stage] on an unmanned mission to validate the new stage ahead of human missions. This has been presenting NASA with a headache for some time, although it took the recent ASAP meeting to finally confirm those concerns to the public."
NASA doesn't have the funds to human-rate it, and even if they get those funds, human-rating it will likely cause SLS's schedule to slip even more, something NASA fears because they expect the commercial manned ships to be flying sooner and with increasing capability. The contrast — a delayed and unflown and very expensive SLS vs a flying and inexpensive commercial effort — will not do SLS good politically. However, if they are going to insist (properly I think) that SpaceX and Boeing human-rate their capsules and rockets, then NASA is going to have to hold the SLS to the same standard.
"The Block 1 SLS is the 'basic model,' sporting a Delta Cryogenic Second Stage (DCSS), renamed the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion System (ICPS) for SLS. The current plan calls for this [interim] stage to be used on [the unmanned] Exploration Mission -1 (EM-1) and [manned] Exploration Mission -2 (EM-2), prior to moving to the [Exploration Upper Stage] — also to be built by Boeing — that will become the workhorse for SLS. However, using the [interim upper stage] on a crewed mission will require it to be human rated. It is likely NASA will also need to fly the [Exploration Upper Stage] on an unmanned mission to validate the new stage ahead of human missions. This has been presenting NASA with a headache for some time, although it took the recent ASAP meeting to finally confirm those concerns to the public."
NASA doesn't have the funds to human-rate it, and even if they get those funds, human-rating it will likely cause SLS's schedule to slip even more, something NASA fears because they expect the commercial manned ships to be flying sooner and with increasing capability. The contrast — a delayed and unflown and very expensive SLS vs a flying and inexpensive commercial effort — will not do SLS good politically. However, if they are going to insist (properly I think) that SpaceX and Boeing human-rate their capsules and rockets, then NASA is going to have to hold the SLS to the same standard.
Your (our) tax dollars at work.
A bullet may have your name on it, but artillery is addressed to " Whom It May concern"
The cost of the F-35 and the cost of Obamacare are both off topic and not relevant to this discussion.
We know "we" can go to Mars. We can send whatever instruments we want to do whatever science we want. We can send whatever robots we want to operate those instruments. What do we get from sending a meat robot to mars, other than the sort of daredevil glory? We may as well load up the rocket with 1000 lbs of solid gold to raise the stakes even more and make it extra suspenseful.
I am all for NASA, and $150 Million is a drop on the bucket, but I just don't see the utility of sending human beings to mars. We won't learn anything new. We are just risking killing people and making the mission more expensive by trying to mitigate that risk.
One day it will be important for people to go to mars (e.g. like when we run out of space on earth). Until then, there is really no reason a machine can't do the job a human can do more safely and cheaper.
NASA is in a strange place right now. Commercial launch capability is growing quickly, but the recent SpaceX failure underlines the fact that they may not be ready for prime time just yet. So the question is - does NASA spend these dollars to develop a heavy launch capability, or do they wait, cross their fingers, and hope that there is a commercial capability in place during the desired timeline?
At best, they spend the money and have a redundant launch capability. At worst, they don't spend the money AND commercial launch capability dies on the vine, and we are then left with no heavy lift capability at all.
And for the anti-NASA crowd that will be chanting "Pork! Pork! Pork!" - note that NASA is also trying to slow a massive brain drain of experience and knowledge from the shuttle program (yeah, which happens to keep the district congress-critters happy). Not having a project to work will mean watching all that experience walking out the door, gutting NASA's capability to do anything in the future.
NASA has a lot of judgements to make, several of which in hindsight will be seen to be redundant and costly, but without a crystal ball they need to make the decisions based not on cost-efficiency, but what will leave them with a exploration lift capability. That sucks, but that is not NASA's fault; they have to ride the waves (with a period T of 4 years) of the political seas.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
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Please update the word "Waste" to "Spend" in the title:
Current: "NASA To Waste $150 Million On SLS Engine That Will Be Used Once"
Recommended: "NASA To Spend $150 Million On SLS Engine That Will Be Used Once"
Less biased.
Commercial launch capability is growing quickly, but the recent SpaceX failure underlines the fact that they may not be ready for prime time just yet.
NASA has blown up plenty of rockets before SpaceX. This rocket failure won't be the last. Let's not get all chicken little because one rocket blew up.
Apples and oranges. Single use rockets are one thing, but a single use design is another. It would be like spending $1000 to design and build a burger completely different from anything before, and then only making one. When you spend that much on something, you would hope the fixed costs would get spread out.
You get the most sophisticated tool we possess on Mars. One that can make discoveries orders of magnitude faster than any other tool we possess.
The most sophisticated tool we possess, discovered a way to make discoveries without leaving earth.
What can a human being learn about botany in space that a human can't learn on earth by controlling a robot botanist?
and countless other subjects not relevant to mechanical robots
Nothing is relevant to robots. They are robots. Everything they do is something that is relevant to humans. Artificial sensors are better at detecting things than human beings (even the things that are only relevant to humans). A robot will know the CO2 level in a room better than a human ever will. That's we we use instruments to measure CO2 levels and don't just ask people how much it feels like there is.
You'll also inspire a lot of people to get into science and engineering - far more than any robot mission ever could.
As an engineer, (and not an astronaut), I think I am far more interested in making the thing that actually goes to mars and does the work, rather than making something that is so deficient that it requires a human being to be in close physical proximity to operate it.
I think we will invent good spinoff technology regardless of whether we send humans or robots. In fact I would say the *best* spinoff technology to come from the space race were the advances in automation.
You know there used to be a time when we planned (and the russians actually did) send manned spy satellites into space. The job of the person on board was to point the spy camera at interesting things to spy on, and also use the on-board weapon systems to shoot downl other spy satellites. Before we actually finished ours, someone (very smart) realized that the future was to send unmanned spy satellites. "How will the machine possibly do as good of a job as a human?" people said. It turns out that those people just failed to understand what was possible through automation.
I'm not saying we shouldn't have people on mars. We should when it benefits us. Automation removes the *need* to put humans on mars to actually do things on mars. We should go when there is a tangible benefit to going.
We shouldn't send people to mars to repair robots. Robots can repair robots. We shouldn't send people on mars to operate instruments. Robots can operate instruments. We shouldn't send people to mars to point cameras. We shouldn't send people to mars to lift heavy shit. We shouldn't send people to mars to push buttons on a computer. These are all reasons we used to send peopel to places they didn't want (but needed) to go.
We should send people to mars when it is better for those people to be on mars than on earth.
For the price of having a team of scientists on mars, we could probably have hundreds of rovers and teams on earth supporting them. Or we could probably just make far better rovers.
What makes a human better than a rover? That a human can walk faster than a rover can roll? That he/she can climb over terrain better? Those are all things that rovers will can/will get better at (if we are willing to spend the money), where humans will never really improve.
Rovers are probably not going to be good at making high level decisions (e.g. how should I conduct this experiment?), but those sorts of decisions don't need low latency. The decisions that do need low latency (low level decisions (e.g. how should I avoid this rock), are already getting to the point to where the are close to being better than humans (especially in an environment that humans aren't used to).
There really is no reason that high level decisions need to be made on mars. And high level decision making is really the only thing that humans will do better than robots for the foreseeable future.