Delta IV Heavy launches now. You'd be better off planning lunar missions with the Delta IV Heavy than with Ares V. My take is that four to five Delta IV launches could put up the Apollo mission, for example.
Or heck, there was even NASA's 1996 "Human Lunar Return" proposal, which would've used launch vehicles even smaller than the Delta IV Heavy at a total program cost of $4 billion.
The sad part is that the estimated cost per launch for the Ares I is going to be $1-$2 billion, making it more expensive per launch than either the Shuttle or Saturn V.
Basically, NASA's own current estimate of the development cost for Ares I + Orion is $35-$45 billion (the cost estimate seems to climb every few months), with development finishing 2017-2019. Current plans after that are for three launches a year (2 ISS flights and 1 crewed lunar flight), and if you take into accounts the annual fixed and per-flight costs it comes out to an additional $800 million a year (including the cost of the standing army of maintenance personnel, which costs ~$2 billion a year). Amortizing the development cost over an expected 20 year lifespan for the Ares I and combining that with annual costs gives the $1-$2 billion a launch figure.
Because the Bush administration asked them to that's why. Someone convinced him to want to go back to the moon and beyond. And also different contractors did in fact design the pieces. ATK for one. Thiokol has been building solid rocket boosters for a while now.
Actually, even under the Bush administration, at least when NASA was under Sean O'Keefe, the plan was to have private companies compete with each other to design the best system for launching crew to orbit and beyond. When O'Keefe was replaced by Mike Griffin though in 2005, Griffin opted to throw out all the prior work, directed NASA to pursue his own personal design, which has turned out to be an incredible screw-up. Besides the inherent flaws of the Ares I design, NASA works a lot better when its overseeing the design and development work of private companies than when it's trying to act as an overseer for itself.
Although both would be a little unfair and while its easy to joke at it being basically a high tech firework (at the moment as the other stages are not used yet), the goal of making launches cheaper is very important.
Although to be fair its no where nearly as impressive as even a Shuttle. Its currently not even as impressive as a Saturn V rocket.
The sad part is that the estimated cost per launch for the Ares I is going to be $1-$2 billion, making it more expensive per launch than either the Shuttle or Saturn V.
Would it be harder to take something like an Atlas 5 (that's got literally hundreds of flights under its belt) and modify it for human space flight then to build a completely new rocket (granted taking bits from lots of different rockets)?
It's technically more straightforward and easier, but politically about an order of magnitude more difficult. Using commercial vehicles like the Atlas V is covered in section 5.3.3 of the report. They estimated 3-5 years for a provider to achieve orbital crew capability. They also estimated a cost of $300 million - $1.5 billion per provider, so if they had contracts with three competing providers initially and one of them droppped out, that would be a total cost to NASA of $2-$2.5 billion. For comparison, NASA's current estimated development cost for Ares I+Orion is $35-$45 billion.
NASA has always been "another government bureaucracy". The difference between the 60's and now: in the 60's, we had 1) a clear goal to aim for, and 2) sufficient funding to achieve the goal.
The other big caveat to keep in mind about NASA is that it's basically politically impossible for them to fire anybody, meaning its really difficult for them to restructure towards any goals other than their status quo. That's another big differences between the NASA of the 60s and the NASA of today -- during the space race NASA was able to hire the best and brightest for its goals, whereas nowadays any plan NASA has needs to figure out what to do with the multiple layers of middle management which have accumulated (and been unable to fire, regardless of competency or lack thereof) over the decades and the thousands of Space Shuttle maintenance personnel. Any attempts at redirecting NASA that doesn't keep all of the civil servants or contractors hired will be massively opposed by the entrenched congressmen representing the impacted districts.
This was a test, after all, and a good one: it proved that Ares can fly. It flew quite well for some time, and it looked smoother than we may have expected. No obvious pogo-ing, for example.
Actually it proved that a Space Shuttle SRB coupled with Atlas V avionics and a Peacekeeper missile's roll control can fly. The Ares I is actually an entirely different vehicle with almost nothing in common with what flew today, so it unfortunately doesn't answer questions with regards to things like the pogo-ing effect you describe. I'm sure it was an interesting education experience for NASA in how to design a launch vehicle, though.
They are excited about things that other countries like Russia have been doing for decades? Huh? Progress?
Technically speaking, the US has been able to build new human-capable rockets for decades as well, with the Atlas V, Delta IV, and SpaceX Falcon 9 (scheduled for later this year). The difference is that those are private companies. This has been NASA's first newly designed rocket launched in ~30 years (albeit a suborbital rocket), although one wonders if it's truly necessary for NASA to spend $35-$45 billion to try to duplicate the capability already provided by US companies.
Oh, yes -- I'm aware of that. That's not a criticism of NASA -- it's a criticism of the United States' screwed-up way of doing things. We spend $600 billion annually on the military, and the Iraq war will cost $2.5 trillion when all is said and done... and yet we can't give NASA enough support that they can launch more than once every four years?
Actually, the Augustine Report (see section 6.2.4) found that even if you gave NASA an unconstrained budget, the earliest the Ares I could be available is late 2016. Although budget was a contributing factor, more important is that the Ares I is an inherently screwy and problematic design, especially when you consider that commercial rockets already exist which can perform the job after some minor upgrades.
Actually, even prior to the Augustine Committee's report (which suggests using commercial crew instead of the Ares I for most of its options), NASA was already planning to delete the Ares I-Y launch to try to speed up the Ares I development schedule. Also, the table (with NASA-provided figures) in general should be taken with a large grain of salt -- even though NASA's public estimate is that the first Ares I launch will be in 2014, the independent assessment by the Augustine Committee estimated that due to the developmental problems NASA has had (some of them inherent to the design), the Ares I likely wouldn't actually be able to launch until 2017-2019.
The rocket [nationalgeographic.com] was the tallest [space.com] (and possibly most expensive, at $450 million) suborbital rocket ever assembled, consisting of a solid rocket motor from the Space Shuttle and an Atlas V avionics system, with a non-functional upper stage put on top.
The Ares I-X has roughly the same shape (but different internal components) compared to NASA's planned medium-lift Ares I, which is scheduled to be completed after 2017 with an estimated cost of $1-$2 billion per launch. A lot of people have been calling this a flight test of the Ares I, but considering how drastically different the Ares I would be in flight, it's really quite a stretch, and it also unfortunately doesn't address any of the biggest potential problems with the Ares I (5-segment booster vibration properties, launch abort survivability, etc.). If anything, it's more similar to a full-size wind tunnel test.
Even though the fate of the Ares I itself (and the overall future direction [thespacereview.com] of NASA spaceflight) is uncertain, the >700 sensors on the Ares I-X should provide data useful for validating computer models [spaceflightnow.com] used by NASA."
For all its faults, it's still worth noting that this is somewhat of an accomplishment for NASA, as its the first new launch vehicle design they've attempted to launch in 30 years, after a long string of failed designs (X-30, X-33, X-34, National Launch System, Space Launch Initiative, Orbital Space Plane). Actually, now that I think about it, the DC-X [wikipedia.org] successfully launched, although I suppose that was constructed by McDonnell Douglas for the DOD before it was transferred to (and canceled by) NASA. Of course, one could still ask why NASA is trying to internally design a new vehicle when the private sector has a much better track record over the past 30 years of bringing new launch vehicle designs into service, but I imagine it's still been a learning experience for NASA. Hopefully they'll learn the right lessons from it, whatever those are.
(I largely copied this from a comment I made yesterday, but it still seems pertinent)
The fact that you think moving from a single engine per stage small rocket like Falcon 1 to a heavy lift, cluster powered rocket like Falcon 9 is just 'the next stage in the game' betrays your abject ignorance of the subject.
Clustering liquid engines is actually fairly easy compared to the much more difficult problem of developing a liquid engine and single-engine rocket stage in the first place (as SpaceX has already done). SpaceX has also already performed test firings of its full 9-engine first stage.
The rocket is the tallest (and possibly most expensive, at $450 million) suborbital rocket ever assembled, consisting of a solid rocket motor from the Space Shuttle and an Atlas V avionics system, with a non-functional upper stage put on top.
The Ares I-X has roughly the same shape (but different internal components) compared to NASA's planned medium-lift Ares I, which is scheduled to be completed after 2017 with an estimated cost of $1-$2 billion per launch. A lot of people have been calling this a flight test of the Ares I, but considering how drastically different the Ares I would be in flight, it's really quite a stretch. If anything, it's more similar to a full-size wind tunnel test.
Even though the fate of the Ares I itself (and the overall future direction of NASA spaceflight) is uncertain, the >700 sensors on the Ares I-X should provide data useful for validating computer models used by NASA."
For all its faults, it's still worth noting that this is somewhat of an accomplishment for NASA, as its the first new launch vehicle design they've attempted to launch in 30 years, after a long string of failed designs (X-30, X-33, X-34, National Launch System, Space Launch Initiative, Orbital Space Plane). Actually, now that I think about it, the DC-X successfully launched, although I suppose that was constructed by McDonnell Douglas for the DOD before it was transferred to (and canceled by) NASA. Of course, one could still ask why NASA is trying to internally design a new vehicle when the private sector has a much better track record over the past 30 years of bringing new launch vehicle designs into service, but I imagine it's still been a learning experience for NASA. Hopefully they'll learn the right lessons from it, whatever those are.
I don't know why you are impressed with SpaceX... NASA was producing superior products to them in the 1960's.
And NASA hasn't successfully developed any new launch vehicles at all since the 70s, although they've had plenty of failures. As for SpaceX, any totally brand-new design is going to have bugs, and they seem to have worked out theirs. All of the SpaceX problems have been easily-fixed quirks, and none of them have indicated any fundamental problems in the way SpaceX operates or have been due to reliability problems.
Want to see more cool stuff come out of NASA? Make Congress stop changing their mission every 4 years and give them a consistent budget so they can plan properly.
The other big caveat to keep in mind about NASA is that it's basically politically impossible for them to fire anybody, meaning its really difficult for them to restructure towards any goals other than their status quo. That's one of the big differences between the NASA of the 60s and the NASA of today -- during the space race NASA was able to hire the best and brightest for its goals, whereas nowadays any plan NASA has needs to figure out what to do with the multiple layers of middle management which have accumulated (and been unable to fire, regardless of competency or lack thereof) over the decades and the thousands of Space Shuttle maintenance personnel.
Despite your denigration, for the past 30 years the private sector has had a considerably better track record at developing new launch vehicles than NASA.
I'm much more impressed with the others also. However, Ares was never intended to be a 'new' vehicle. It was NASA's own call for proposals that specified the designs for the new vehicle be based as much as possible on existing designs and preferably existing hardware. When von Braun did this with Redstones and came up with the Saturn 1 booster he was called a genius and everyone remembers him for it. When NASA proposed and got a repeat based on shuttle parts everyone's critical and if they were ever aware of the fact this was a redesign project from the start, they apparently can't remember.
The problem is that with the Ares I, NASA's pretty much has a case study in how *not* to reuse existing launch components. Mike Griffin's conceptual design of using a single giant solid rocket as the first stage of a manned vehicle had some pretty fundamental flaws, and the only reason it's NASA's current focus is because he shoved it down NASA's throat when he was administrator. On top of that, the Ares I design has moved from the 4-segment SRB used on the shuttle to a 5-segment solid rocket booster (which will have entirely different flight and vibration properties) and different liquid engines for the second stage, meaning there essentially aren't even any reused components anymore. Finally, the projected cost per launch is $1-$2 billion, for a vehicle with even less capability than the Space Shuttle at a considerably higher cost -- what was the advantage of reusing components supposed to be again?
Although I have my own qualms with them, a far more reasonable approach is that taken by DIRECT or NASA's sort-of new sidemount design, which actually *would* take advantage of existing components and not introduce huge fundamental design problems like the Ares I. Of course, IMHO even better would be to use already-existing commercial boosters like the EELVs, which have a proven track record and cost substantially less over time.
As well as being just a test of repackaged existing technology, this launch is costing $445 million. I'm pretty sure that Congress could find a lot of other uses for that half billion dollars.
I doubt Congress would allow NASA to spend it in a productive way, at least not without pressure from the White House. For example, this past year NASA wanted to spend $150 million in stimulus funds on jump-starting development of spacecraft for commercial crew to the ISS. Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) put up a fuss and threatened all of NASA's stimulus funding, until they diverted $100M of the funds to the Ares program based in his state, leaving only $50 million to get commercial crew started. Article: http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2009-07-03/news/shelby_1_rocket-constellation-space-shuttle
There is certainly a benefit to SRB's in that you don't have all the complexities of cryogenic fuels, and having to fuel before launch. That's why the Air Force uses them in ICBM's, they are extremely simple to launch. They are also somewhat safer than liquid fuels in some respects. It certainly remains to be seen if they will work the way NASA is trying to use them, especially how bad the vibration will be.
On the other hand, there's plenty of ways that SRBs are also more dangerous. Pretty much the only failure modes SRBs have are catastrophic explosions, and since you can't shut them off like you can with liquid rockets it makes it rather difficult to launch-escape if something goes wrong. It's also considerably more difficult to handle for the ground personnel, as summarized well in this blog post by "Chair Force Engineer":
Just when it seemed like the history books had been closed on the Challenger disaster, I came across a review of Truth, Lies & O-Rings, an interesting look at the faulty decision-making leading up to launch. (hat tip to Clark Lindsey's Hobbyspace.) The reviewer makes an interesting point about the dangers inherent in ground handling of solid rockets. Many of the inherent disadvantages of SRBs have been long-discussed, such as the inability to shut them down during abort situations. But handling and storing the motors carries all the potential dangers of riding on them. For that reason, SRB stacking operations are classified as "hazardous operations," and all non-essential personnel are banned from the Vehicle Assembly Building. The procedure is similar for stacking the stages of other solid-fuel launch vehicles. In spite of all the precautions and built-in safety mechanisms, the potential always exists for a catastrophic solid-fuel detonation, as occurred with Brazil's orbital launch vehicle.
While I tend to think that the risk is overstated (the industry has been dealing with large solid rockets since the 1940's,) it can never be entirely eliminated. For this reason, Jeff Bell predicted that the SRB would be deleted from the shuttle-derived launch vehicles under development by NASA. Many "space boosters" are dismissive of Jeff Bell, viewing him as a cynic whose arguments aren't worth the paper they're written on. I'll concede that his predictions often come with fatal flaws, but he does make a lot of solid arguments and presents plenty of pertinent facts. In the case of the aforementioned prediction, Jeff Bell's fatal flaw is assuming that NASA would choose a safe, clean-sheet launcher design over one that protects the shuttle's entrenched workforce and contractors.
The ground-handling of large solid rockets (and even the individual segments) was an issue that should have been re-examined when Ares I was designed to be "safe, simple and soon." While NASA personnel have done an admirable job in handling the SRB's up to this point, it's sobering to know that just one mistake could cost a lot of lives and pull the plug on the nation's manned space program. The Ares 5-segment SRB will be the world's largest stick of dynamite, and that risk should never be lost on anybody who works in the space business.
There are two near future commercial rockets, the "EELVs", Delta IV Heavy, which flies now, and Atlas V Heavy (which would be based on a modification of the Atlas V which flies now).
One thing which I thought was a little strange was on page 69 of the report, where it says, "While launch of the Orion on the Delta IV HLV was found to be technically feasible, it requires some modification of the current launcher, and was comparable in cost and schedule to simply continuing with the development of the Ares I."
I really hope they release some analysis appendices, because that statement seems somewhat bizarre to me. The Ares I development is scheduled to be $35B+ (only a fraction of which has been spent so far), so I have no idea how upgrading the Delta IV Heavy is supposed to cost that much. I mean, the Delta IV development itself was maybe a billion, and the "Heavy" upgrade was just $500 million.
Flying astronauts to LaGrange points strikes me as bizarre. I could see you sending satellites to them but they are empty points in space. You spend billions of dollars to fly people to empty points in space, everyone on Earth will say WTF are you doing?
They're empty points in space which also happen to be incredibly ideal staging points for reaching other locations in the solar system. Any serious and sustainable long-term exploration of the solar system will require staging/refueling at Lagrange points, it's just a question of how soon you want to start operating from them.
Spending even more billions to fly people to Mars, not land and return is just as bad, and will get just as bad a reception.
Why's that? It's seems that the public reaction to the first manned lunar flyby was pretty positive. As long as the public understands that the flyby is a step on the way to an actual landing (which it will be), they will accept it. Also, the prospect of landing astronauts on Phobos and establishing a base there is just plain awesome.
Putting an ex Lockheed CEO in charge of this commission pretty much eliminated any chance of any original thinking before this commission even started. Lockheed IS the status quo and the jobs program.
When it comes down to it though, NASA is a political program, and any truly radical changes will be opposed tooth and nail by Congress. Without at least some congressional support, any proposals will just be shelved away and forgotten (as has happened to a number of other NASA commissions). You need somebody like Augustine who knows how to work the political side if you want your proposals to have any sort of an impact. And when it came down to it, even though he upheld the status quo on things like heavy-lift pretty stubbornly, the report does proposal some relatively groundshaking things like in-orbit propellant depots and the Flexible Path option.
If you lose one payload chances are whatever your mission was is shot anyway until you replace it, unless you are going to build a spare for every module and have spare launchers ready to go, which would seem to be a problem if they are "expensive".
What would you rather lose? An expensive module or a mission?
It's also worth noting that for any beyond-LEO mission, the bulk of your mass is going to be propellant, which is pretty much the definition of easily-replaceable. This is particularly the case if you take advantage of in-orbit propellant storage depots, one of the things which the Augustine Report recommends.
I've pretty much decided the U.S. Senate is an epic FAIL because one senator can often single handedly kill any program they oppose.
For a more recent example of this, this past year NASA wanted to spend $150 million stimulus funds on jump-starting development of spacecraft for commercial crew to the ISS. Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) put up a fuss and threatened all of NASA's stimulus funding, until they diverted $100M of the funds to the Constellation program based in his state, leaving only $50 million to get commercial crew started. Article: http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2009-07-03/news/shelby_1_rocket-constellation-space-shuttle
The release of the Augustine Report is just the beginning of some very nasty political battles.
Hmmm. I think that the 35 billion is for BOTH Ares I and V, NOT ares I.
I've been double-checking, and it doesn't seem to be. In fact, it looks like the estimates are higher now. From a recent GAO report (although this does include the Orion cost as well):
Nevertheless, NASA estimates that Ares I and Orion represent up to $49 billion of the over $97 billion estimated to be spent on the Constellation program through 2020. While the agency has already obligated more than $10 billion in contracts, at this point NASA does not know how much Ares I and Orion will ultimately cost, and will not know until technical and design challenges have been addressed.
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Delta IV Heavy launches now. You'd be better off planning lunar missions with the Delta IV Heavy than with Ares V. My take is that four to five Delta IV launches could put up the Apollo mission, for example.
Or heck, there was even NASA's 1996 "Human Lunar Return" proposal, which would've used launch vehicles even smaller than the Delta IV Heavy at a total program cost of $4 billion.
http://www.nss.org/settlement/moon/HLR.html
The sad part is that the estimated cost per launch for the Ares I is going to be $1-$2 billion, making it more expensive per launch than either the Shuttle or Saturn V.
{citation needed}
Sure. There's a nice discussion here.
Basically, NASA's own current estimate of the development cost for Ares I + Orion is $35-$45 billion (the cost estimate seems to climb every few months), with development finishing 2017-2019. Current plans after that are for three launches a year (2 ISS flights and 1 crewed lunar flight), and if you take into accounts the annual fixed and per-flight costs it comes out to an additional $800 million a year (including the cost of the standing army of maintenance personnel, which costs ~$2 billion a year). Amortizing the development cost over an expected 20 year lifespan for the Ares I and combining that with annual costs gives the $1-$2 billion a launch figure.
Yeah right...
Could you elaborate?
Because the Bush administration asked them to that's why. Someone convinced him to want to go back to the moon and beyond. And also different contractors did in fact design the pieces. ATK for one. Thiokol has been building solid rocket boosters for a while now.
Actually, even under the Bush administration, at least when NASA was under Sean O'Keefe, the plan was to have private companies compete with each other to design the best system for launching crew to orbit and beyond. When O'Keefe was replaced by Mike Griffin though in 2005, Griffin opted to throw out all the prior work, directed NASA to pursue his own personal design, which has turned out to be an incredible screw-up. Besides the inherent flaws of the Ares I design, NASA works a lot better when its overseeing the design and development work of private companies than when it's trying to act as an overseer for itself.
Although both would be a little unfair and while its easy to joke at it being basically a high tech firework (at the moment as the other stages are not used yet), the goal of making launches cheaper is very important.
Although to be fair its no where nearly as impressive as even a Shuttle. Its currently not even as impressive as a Saturn V rocket.
The sad part is that the estimated cost per launch for the Ares I is going to be $1-$2 billion, making it more expensive per launch than either the Shuttle or Saturn V.
Would it be harder to take something like an Atlas 5 (that's got literally hundreds of flights under its belt) and modify it for human space flight then to build a completely new rocket (granted taking bits from lots of different rockets)?
It's technically more straightforward and easier, but politically about an order of magnitude more difficult. Using commercial vehicles like the Atlas V is covered in section 5.3.3 of the report. They estimated 3-5 years for a provider to achieve orbital crew capability. They also estimated a cost of $300 million - $1.5 billion per provider, so if they had contracts with three competing providers initially and one of them droppped out, that would be a total cost to NASA of $2-$2.5 billion. For comparison, NASA's current estimated development cost for Ares I+Orion is $35-$45 billion.
NASA has always been "another government bureaucracy". The difference between the 60's and now: in the 60's, we had 1) a clear goal to aim for, and 2) sufficient funding to achieve the goal.
The other big caveat to keep in mind about NASA is that it's basically politically impossible for them to fire anybody, meaning its really difficult for them to restructure towards any goals other than their status quo. That's another big differences between the NASA of the 60s and the NASA of today -- during the space race NASA was able to hire the best and brightest for its goals, whereas nowadays any plan NASA has needs to figure out what to do with the multiple layers of middle management which have accumulated (and been unable to fire, regardless of competency or lack thereof) over the decades and the thousands of Space Shuttle maintenance personnel. Any attempts at redirecting NASA that doesn't keep all of the civil servants or contractors hired will be massively opposed by the entrenched congressmen representing the impacted districts.
This was a test, after all, and a good one: it proved that Ares can fly. It flew quite well for some time, and it looked smoother than we may have expected. No obvious pogo-ing, for example.
Actually it proved that a Space Shuttle SRB coupled with Atlas V avionics and a Peacekeeper missile's roll control can fly. The Ares I is actually an entirely different vehicle with almost nothing in common with what flew today, so it unfortunately doesn't answer questions with regards to things like the pogo-ing effect you describe. I'm sure it was an interesting education experience for NASA in how to design a launch vehicle, though.
They are excited about things that other countries like Russia have been doing for decades? Huh? Progress?
Technically speaking, the US has been able to build new human-capable rockets for decades as well, with the Atlas V, Delta IV, and SpaceX Falcon 9 (scheduled for later this year). The difference is that those are private companies. This has been NASA's first newly designed rocket launched in ~30 years (albeit a suborbital rocket), although one wonders if it's truly necessary for NASA to spend $35-$45 billion to try to duplicate the capability already provided by US companies.
Oh, yes -- I'm aware of that. That's not a criticism of NASA -- it's a criticism of the United States' screwed-up way of doing things. We spend $600 billion annually on the military, and the Iraq war will cost $2.5 trillion when all is said and done ... and yet we can't give NASA enough support that they can launch more than once every four years?
Actually, the Augustine Report (see section 6.2.4) found that even if you gave NASA an unconstrained budget, the earliest the Ares I could be available is late 2016. Although budget was a contributing factor, more important is that the Ares I is an inherently screwy and problematic design, especially when you consider that commercial rockets already exist which can perform the job after some minor upgrades.
according to wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Constellation_missions the next mission is Ares 1-Y, in 2013, a full first stage, a real second stage, testing high altitude abort.
Actually, even prior to the Augustine Committee's report (which suggests using commercial crew instead of the Ares I for most of its options), NASA was already planning to delete the Ares I-Y launch to try to speed up the Ares I development schedule. Also, the table (with NASA-provided figures) in general should be taken with a large grain of salt -- even though NASA's public estimate is that the first Ares I launch will be in 2014, the independent assessment by the Augustine Committee estimated that due to the developmental problems NASA has had (some of them inherent to the design), the Ares I likely wouldn't actually be able to launch until 2017-2019.
Some items to note:
(I largely copied this from a comment I made yesterday, but it still seems pertinent)
The fact that you think moving from a single engine per stage small rocket like Falcon 1 to a heavy lift, cluster powered rocket like Falcon 9 is just 'the next stage in the game' betrays your abject ignorance of the subject.
Clustering liquid engines is actually fairly easy compared to the much more difficult problem of developing a liquid engine and single-engine rocket stage in the first place (as SpaceX has already done). SpaceX has also already performed test firings of its full 9-engine first stage.
Some items to note:
I don't know why you are impressed with SpaceX... NASA was producing superior products to them in the 1960's.
And NASA hasn't successfully developed any new launch vehicles at all since the 70s, although they've had plenty of failures. As for SpaceX, any totally brand-new design is going to have bugs, and they seem to have worked out theirs. All of the SpaceX problems have been easily-fixed quirks, and none of them have indicated any fundamental problems in the way SpaceX operates or have been due to reliability problems.
Want to see more cool stuff come out of NASA? Make Congress stop changing their mission every 4 years and give them a consistent budget so they can plan properly.
The other big caveat to keep in mind about NASA is that it's basically politically impossible for them to fire anybody, meaning its really difficult for them to restructure towards any goals other than their status quo. That's one of the big differences between the NASA of the 60s and the NASA of today -- during the space race NASA was able to hire the best and brightest for its goals, whereas nowadays any plan NASA has needs to figure out what to do with the multiple layers of middle management which have accumulated (and been unable to fire, regardless of competency or lack thereof) over the decades and the thousands of Space Shuttle maintenance personnel.
Despite your denigration, for the past 30 years the private sector has had a considerably better track record at developing new launch vehicles than NASA.
I'm much more impressed with the others also. However, Ares was never intended to be a 'new' vehicle. It was NASA's own call for proposals that specified the designs for the new vehicle be based as much as possible on existing designs and preferably existing hardware. When von Braun did this with Redstones and came up with the Saturn 1 booster he was called a genius and everyone remembers him for it. When NASA proposed and got a repeat based on shuttle parts everyone's critical and if they were ever aware of the fact this was a redesign project from the start, they apparently can't remember.
The problem is that with the Ares I, NASA's pretty much has a case study in how *not* to reuse existing launch components. Mike Griffin's conceptual design of using a single giant solid rocket as the first stage of a manned vehicle had some pretty fundamental flaws, and the only reason it's NASA's current focus is because he shoved it down NASA's throat when he was administrator. On top of that, the Ares I design has moved from the 4-segment SRB used on the shuttle to a 5-segment solid rocket booster (which will have entirely different flight and vibration properties) and different liquid engines for the second stage, meaning there essentially aren't even any reused components anymore. Finally, the projected cost per launch is $1-$2 billion, for a vehicle with even less capability than the Space Shuttle at a considerably higher cost -- what was the advantage of reusing components supposed to be again?
Although I have my own qualms with them, a far more reasonable approach is that taken by DIRECT or NASA's sort-of new sidemount design, which actually *would* take advantage of existing components and not introduce huge fundamental design problems like the Ares I. Of course, IMHO even better would be to use already-existing commercial boosters like the EELVs, which have a proven track record and cost substantially less over time.
As well as being just a test of repackaged existing technology, this launch is costing $445 million. I'm pretty sure that Congress could find a lot of other uses for that half billion dollars.
I doubt Congress would allow NASA to spend it in a productive way, at least not without pressure from the White House. For example, this past year NASA wanted to spend $150 million in stimulus funds on jump-starting development of spacecraft for commercial crew to the ISS. Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) put up a fuss and threatened all of NASA's stimulus funding, until they diverted $100M of the funds to the Ares program based in his state, leaving only $50 million to get commercial crew started. Article:
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2009-07-03/news/shelby_1_rocket-constellation-space-shuttle
There is certainly a benefit to SRB's in that you don't have all the complexities of cryogenic fuels, and having to fuel before launch. That's why the Air Force uses them in ICBM's, they are extremely simple to launch. They are also somewhat safer than liquid fuels in some respects. It certainly remains to be seen if they will work the way NASA is trying to use them, especially how bad the vibration will be.
On the other hand, there's plenty of ways that SRBs are also more dangerous. Pretty much the only failure modes SRBs have are catastrophic explosions, and since you can't shut them off like you can with liquid rockets it makes it rather difficult to launch-escape if something goes wrong. It's also considerably more difficult to handle for the ground personnel, as summarized well in this blog post by "Chair Force Engineer":
http://chairforceengineer.blogspot.com/2009/10/worlds-largest-stick-of-dynamite.html
Just when it seemed like the history books had been closed on the Challenger disaster, I came across a review of Truth, Lies & O-Rings, an interesting look at the faulty decision-making leading up to launch. (hat tip to Clark Lindsey's Hobbyspace.) The reviewer makes an interesting point about the dangers inherent in ground handling of solid rockets. Many of the inherent disadvantages of SRBs have been long-discussed, such as the inability to shut them down during abort situations. But handling and storing the motors carries all the potential dangers of riding on them. For that reason, SRB stacking operations are classified as "hazardous operations," and all non-essential personnel are banned from the Vehicle Assembly Building. The procedure is similar for stacking the stages of other solid-fuel launch vehicles. In spite of all the precautions and built-in safety mechanisms, the potential always exists for a catastrophic solid-fuel detonation, as occurred with Brazil's orbital launch vehicle.
While I tend to think that the risk is overstated (the industry has been dealing with large solid rockets since the 1940's,) it can never be entirely eliminated. For this reason, Jeff Bell predicted that the SRB would be deleted from the shuttle-derived launch vehicles under development by NASA. Many "space boosters" are dismissive of Jeff Bell, viewing him as a cynic whose arguments aren't worth the paper they're written on. I'll concede that his predictions often come with fatal flaws, but he does make a lot of solid arguments and presents plenty of pertinent facts. In the case of the aforementioned prediction, Jeff Bell's fatal flaw is assuming that NASA would choose a safe, clean-sheet launcher design over one that protects the shuttle's entrenched workforce and contractors.
The ground-handling of large solid rockets (and even the individual segments) was an issue that should have been re-examined when Ares I was designed to be "safe, simple and soon." While NASA personnel have done an admirable job in handling the SRB's up to this point, it's sobering to know that just one mistake could cost a lot of lives and pull the plug on the nation's manned space program. The Ares 5-segment SRB will be the world's largest stick of dynamite, and that risk should never be lost on anybody who works in the space business.
The private sector has been free to get into space for decades, and hasn't done so.
Um, what?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_V
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigelow_Aerospace
There are two near future commercial rockets, the "EELVs", Delta IV Heavy, which flies now, and Atlas V Heavy (which would be based on a modification of the Atlas V which flies now).
One thing which I thought was a little strange was on page 69 of the report, where it says, "While launch of the Orion on the Delta IV HLV was found to be technically feasible, it requires some modification of the current launcher, and was comparable in cost and schedule to simply continuing with the development of the Ares I."
I really hope they release some analysis appendices, because that statement seems somewhat bizarre to me. The Ares I development is scheduled to be $35B+ (only a fraction of which has been spent so far), so I have no idea how upgrading the Delta IV Heavy is supposed to cost that much. I mean, the Delta IV development itself was maybe a billion, and the "Heavy" upgrade was just $500 million.
Flying astronauts to LaGrange points strikes me as bizarre. I could see you sending satellites to them but they are empty points in space. You spend billions of dollars to fly people to empty points in space, everyone on Earth will say WTF are you doing?
They're empty points in space which also happen to be incredibly ideal staging points for reaching other locations in the solar system. Any serious and sustainable long-term exploration of the solar system will require staging/refueling at Lagrange points, it's just a question of how soon you want to start operating from them.
Spending even more billions to fly people to Mars, not land and return is just as bad, and will get just as bad a reception.
Why's that? It's seems that the public reaction to the first manned lunar flyby was pretty positive. As long as the public understands that the flyby is a step on the way to an actual landing (which it will be), they will accept it. Also, the prospect of landing astronauts on Phobos and establishing a base there is just plain awesome.
Putting an ex Lockheed CEO in charge of this commission pretty much eliminated any chance of any original thinking before this commission even started. Lockheed IS the status quo and the jobs program.
When it comes down to it though, NASA is a political program, and any truly radical changes will be opposed tooth and nail by Congress. Without at least some congressional support, any proposals will just be shelved away and forgotten (as has happened to a number of other NASA commissions). You need somebody like Augustine who knows how to work the political side if you want your proposals to have any sort of an impact. And when it came down to it, even though he upheld the status quo on things like heavy-lift pretty stubbornly, the report does proposal some relatively groundshaking things like in-orbit propellant depots and the Flexible Path option.
If you lose one payload chances are whatever your mission was is shot anyway until you replace it, unless you are going to build a spare for every module and have spare launchers ready to go, which would seem to be a problem if they are "expensive".
What would you rather lose? An expensive module or a mission?
It's also worth noting that for any beyond-LEO mission, the bulk of your mass is going to be propellant, which is pretty much the definition of easily-replaceable. This is particularly the case if you take advantage of in-orbit propellant storage depots, one of the things which the Augustine Report recommends.
I've pretty much decided the U.S. Senate is an epic FAIL because one senator can often single handedly kill any program they oppose.
For a more recent example of this, this past year NASA wanted to spend $150 million stimulus funds on jump-starting development of spacecraft for commercial crew to the ISS. Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) put up a fuss and threatened all of NASA's stimulus funding, until they diverted $100M of the funds to the Constellation program based in his state, leaving only $50 million to get commercial crew started. Article:
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2009-07-03/news/shelby_1_rocket-constellation-space-shuttle
The release of the Augustine Report is just the beginning of some very nasty political battles.
Hmmm. I think that the 35 billion is for BOTH Ares I and V, NOT ares I.
I've been double-checking, and it doesn't seem to be. In fact, it looks like the estimates are higher now. From a recent GAO report (although this does include the Orion cost as well):
http://www.hobbyspace.com/nucleus/?itemid=15541
http://gao.gov/products/GAO-09-844
Nevertheless, NASA estimates that Ares I and Orion represent up to $49 billion of the over $97 billion estimated to be spent on the Constellation program through 2020. While the agency has already obligated more than $10 billion in contracts, at this point NASA does not know how much Ares I and Orion will ultimately cost, and will not know until technical and design challenges have been addressed.