Oh please, you can't compare the missed milestones of one program against another program that never missed a milestone because it never started.
Actually, since the other designs used already-existing EELV rockets, there were essentially quite a few milestones already finished.
As for the safety argument, IMHO it's so hypothetical I don't even care. I still don't think anybody knows how safe the shuttle now is, or isn't.
Yeah... it's also kind of interesting how the supposedly safer "man-rated" systems seem to have a pretty similar failure rate to the non-man-rated launch vehicles. IMHO, the only way you can really get a good idea of the safety of a system is through repeated unmanned testing, which coincidentally the EELVs have quite a few flights worth of already.
However, if costs on a program have actually exceeded plans by a factor of 10, I think you have a good argument for developing both in parallel in a big programmatic deathmatch.
Coincidentally, this was pretty much what the original plan was back in 2004: The top two design proposal teams (one headed by Lockheed Martin, the other headed by Northrop Grumman and Boeing) would receive initial funding of $1 billion and compete against each other in an unmanned "fly-off" test of their EELV-based in 2008. Former administrator Michael Griffin was convinced his design was safer/better/faster though, so he tossed out the existing designs (and the whole idea of competitive parallel development) and focused NASA on his Ares I.
Obviously, if we have the choice between a more safe and a less safe system we should, all else being equal, chose the more safe one. However, all else is rarely equal. More safety likely adds weight, design time, cost, whatever.
In this case though, the main alternative is the liquid-based EELV rockets, which will cost less and be finished sooner. The main justification for choosing the Ares I over these was supposedly its enhanced safety and launch abort survivability, which have now been shown to actually be inferior. Well, that and providing money to particularly congressional districts, but I'm sure somebody can come up with some way to pay off Senator Shelby (R-Al) so he won't stand in the way of progress.
To be fair, the survival rate of exploding space shuttles is currently 0% as well... At least the Ares as a mechanism to even allow for an early abort.
Allow me to present a little bit more context. Back in 2004, NASA received several competing designs for lunar launch architectures, most/all of which involved using liquid-fueled EELV rockets. In 2005 the (now former) administrator Michael Griffin came in, tossed out all the EELV-based designs, and focused the agency on implementing his own solid-rocket design which eventually became the Ares I. A big part of the justification is that the EELV-based designs would have "black zones" during which a rocket failure would be non-survivable, while the Ares I supposedly had no such black zones and was therefore the only legitimate solution. Ironically, since that time the EELVs have been shown to have no such 'black zones," while this latest report indicates that the Ares I has a huge black zone which covers the entire first minute of flight. That means that what was thought to be the main justification for the Ares I is actually a huge deficiency.
Curiously, the other main justifications for the Ares I were that it would be finished faster and cost less than EELV-based designs. As it turned out, it's taking far longer than the EELVs were expected to take, and the cost has ballooned by almost an order of magnitude. With any luck Barack Obama will take the upcoming report from the Augustine Commission and end the Ares I program before it does any more damage.
along with a snide comment from a commercial outfit that would probably like the contract for themselves
FYI, Bigelow Aerospace (the company quoted in the article) is in the business of building private space stations. They're a buyer in the commercial launch market, not a seller, so it's not like they'd be a getting a contract for any of this. I'd assume they have quite a bit of experience in studying the pros and cons of various launch systems for their own payloads, which is probably why they were asked for a quote for the article.
Fortunately it seems like this is a problem that *could be corrected* fairly easily -- with, say, a propulsion mechanism on the escape capsule, just enough to give enough delta-V that it would clear the debris cloud in time to deploy the parachutes.
From what I understand, the Orion capsule's launch escape system already has a jettison motor, but it's not enough to take it out of range of the flaming debris. Increasing the range of the motor isn't an option, because the capsule is already too heavy for the Ares I and they can't add even more weight to it.
Even though rockets like DIRECT's and the Ares V would have the "field of flaming solid rocket propellant debris" problem, my impression is that they have a big enough margin that you'd be able to have a launch escape system that could escape the debris cloud.
Nope. The SSME [wikipedia.org], RS-68 [wikipedia.org] were developed after the 60's
You're correct. According to SpaceX's own publicity material: "The Merlin 1C next generation liquid fueled rocket booster engine is among the highest performing gas generator cycle kerosene engines ever built, exceeding the Boeing Delta II main engine, the Lockheed Atlas II main engine, and on par with the Saturn V F-1 engine. It is the first new American booster engine in a decade and only the second American booster engine since the Space Shuttle Main Engine was developed thirty years ago."
Quite right. Although Apollo was ideal for its specific goal of landing people on the moon by a specific deadline, the lack of affordability and sustainability made it fail miserably at the wider goal of opening up space.
It's quite interesting to take a look at Werner von Braun's pre-Apollo rocket designs and launch architectures, which emphasized reusability, in-space assembly, and high launch rates. However, once the Apollo program was announced, money was no object and the deadline was all-important, so he shifted to more costly but faster-to-develop expendable boosters.
It looks like Von Braun's 1969 Mars proposal would have been rather more sustainable than Apollo, but unfortunately didn't go through:
The Mars spacecraft itself would refurbished via shuttle flights, two additional PPM stages attached, the whole thing resupplied and refueled, in readiness for further expeditions to Mars in 1983, 1986, and 1988 - leading to a 50-person Mars base by 1989. With the exception of the MEM, all of the spacecraft was reused. Von Braun estimated this colonization of Mars within 20 years could be accomplished with a peak NASA budget of $ 7 billion per year. This robust, relatively safe plan was the culmination of 20 years of Mars mission planning by the Peenemuende team and took full advantage of the other space infrastructure elements in NASA's master plan. It offered the possibility for Von Braun to witness his long-held dream of a manned expedition to Mars in his lifetime.
The Space Task Group made its final report on 15 September 1969, recommending the whole vast infrastructure envisioned by Von Braun. It was not to be -- every element of the NASA plan, except for a much-compromised space shuttle design, would be stripped away by Nixon's budget office. There was no public support for such a grand scheme. The view of Mars as a seemingly barren, lifeless, and uninteresting world in any case was reinforced by the Mariner 7 mission which flew by the planet the day after Von Braun's presentation was made. His ultimate dream crushed, Von Braun was sidelined to a headquarters post at NASA seven months later. He left NASA in 1972 and died in 1977.
All the discussions about the space program overlook a critical fact. It costs about $10,000 a kilogram or more to lift anything into low earth orbit. That means that the entire manned space program is virtually useless : there's no point in learning how to put people into space and have them survive if no affordable way for a lot of people and supplies to go into space exists.... The only way a moon base or a space station or a space hotel or anything else will ever be practical is if that launch cost is reduced through new technology.
This is a common misconception, but when it comes down to it, you can lower the price considerably by just using current technologies in a cost-effective manner. SpaceX's Falcon 9 (to be launched in the coming year) will lower the cost per kg to one-third of the going rate, and CEO Elon Musk believes that less than $1,100/kg is "very achievable." The difference is that up until now nobody had successfully built a rocket from scratch made entirely out of components designed to be as cost-efficient as possible. Again, keep in mind that the cost of fuel is about 1% of the cost of launching a rocket -- by minimizing the cost of components and the number of people needed to put the rocket together, you drop the overall cost substantially.
But an actual, honest-to-god Mars trip is different, and everybody will know it. Just outside the cramped wall is the darkest, blackest, most incomprehensibly complete void mankind can fathom. No air, no beer, no babes. Nothing. And not just some nothing, MILLIONS of miles of nothing. Months of travel at speeds inconceivable to airlines flight. Something go wrong? Everybody's dead!
On the flip side, it's not unusual for the crew of a submarine to be underwater for at least 80 days straight, with a similar sense of "if anything goes wrong everybody's dead." Unlike a submarine crew, a Mars crew would also have regular contact with the world back home.
...but all those private space programs got a huge boost from the decades of NASA doing experiments in the first place.
And that's precisely how it should be: NASA exploring the frontier and pioneering new technologies, and after those technologies have been initially tested private industry then takes them and makes them into cost-effective systems. It's amazing that it took so long for this to happen, but I'm glad that a company like SpaceX is finally doing it. Of course, NASA hasn't still quite gotten the message, and is still keen on trying to compete with the already-existing launch systems with their Ares I.
Not to mention the launch scrub followed by a three-month delay [hobbyspace.com] due to the fact that they were worried about the vibration environment of the launch damaging the satellite and decided to do a new engineering analysis.
From the same site you cited, it's interesting to note that the delay was so long because SpaceX was prohibited by ITAR regulations from simply adjusting the satellite:
Technicians discovered the satellite and the Falcon 1 upper stage rocket share a nearly identical vibrational mode, which could set up a damaging resonance. SpaceX is bound by ITAR restrictions from assisting with any technical problems on the foreign-owned payload, so the company delayed the launch to add some vibration isolation equipment between the rocketâ(TM)s upper stage and the payload adapter.
âoeThe easiest thing would actually be to make some adjustment to the satellite . . . but thatâ(TM)s not allowed,â Musk says.
Nevertheless, when NASA delays a launch to do a safety check, everybody complains how incompetent they are. When Space-X delays, everybody praises them for being cautious.
The difference is that SpaceX's delays have been due to them trying out a totally brand-new rocket design and launch support system. The Space Shuttle, on the other hand, has been around for quite a while, and most of the delays (besides the weather-related ones) are due to the inherent technical finickiness of the Shuttle design. And of course, most of the weather-related delays can be blamed on the fact that it's a ground-based launch system situated in the thunderstorm capital of the US.
SpaceX's launch procedures are designed to be as efficient and timely as possible, with a number of automated safety checks. Heck, even for yesterday's launch it turned out that there was a malfunction in the helium-loading equipment, which was quickly fixed and just resulted in a delay of a few hours. For the Shuttle, I imagine a malfunction like that could easily result in a delay of days.
Whatever happened to the considerable R&D projects to replace the shuttle with a new model?
Off the top of my head, here's a quick summary of the various serious efforts into creating new manned spacecraft over the past 10-15 years:
DC-X: A low-cost VTVL prototype built under a $58 million contract, which is still regarded by many as an ideal approach to an orbital vehicle. Plans were to create incrementally larger versions of it which would eventually be able to attain orbit in a cost-effective fashion. Unfortunately, during one of its flight tests a field technician messed up the landing gear, so it fell over when it landed and was destroyed (1996). The company told NASA it'd need $50 million to build a new one, but NASA used the opportunity to cancel the project so it could instead give more funds to the billion-dollar X-33/Venturestar project. Its spiritual successors are John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace and Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin. In fact, the secretive Blue Origin company has hired several of the former DC-X engineers. One of the Armadillo members has a great write-up of the DC-X here: http://media.armadilloaerospace.com/DCX/
X-33: Interesting project which would have tested a bunch of fascinating technologies (e.g. composite cryogenic fuel tanks, metallic thermal protection, an aerospike engine, lifting body design). Unfortunately, NASA really should've tried testing those technologies individually first, instead of putting every single one of them in the critical path of a new vehicle design. Oops. I believe the main problem ended up being the composite fuel tank, and when that failed the entire project (which had used up a billion dollars thus far) had to be canceled in 2001.
Orbital Space Plane: A low-cost vehicle intended to launch on already-existing EELVs, started in 2003 and expected to start carrying crew by 2010. In 2004, this project was transferred to the Crew Exploration Vehicle project.
Now, the currently ongoing projects and contenders:
Crew Exploration Vehicle: This is a little complicated. Back in 2004, the Crew Exploration Vehicle was announced, and it was assumed it'd be similar to the Orbital Space Plane project it derived from: a low-cost capsule which could be launched on already-existing EELV rockets like the Delta IV Heavy or Atlas V. This went through a number of stages of design studies and competitive flight tests planned, with unmanned tests by 2008 and unmanned tests sometime in the 2010-2014 range. Unfortunately, in 2005 Michael Griffin came in, proclaimed that he had a superior design and tossed out all the prior work. Although he claimed his design was simpler and faster, and commissioned NASA studies to "prove this," history has pretty well proved that his design (now the Ares I) was nowhere near as simple and straightforward as he thought it would be. Instead of the plan to have low-cost CEV launching on existing vehicles it had before, NASA currently has the Ares I which has an ever-increasing cost, currently around $35 billion. The per-launch cost is also expected to be as much as or higher than the space shuttle. Oops.
DIRECT: A bunch of undercover NASA engineers who didn't believe Ares was the best solution but were afraid of retribution from Griffin, so they anonymously released a plan they thought was superior. Since it's Shuttle-derived it's certainly more expensive than an EELV-based design, but would have a larger payload.
EELVs: These rockets are already used regularly to launch payloads for NASA and private industry, and most of the final proposals for the pre-Griffi
So how do you get missions like Cassini and not like the ISS?
I think a big part of the cost problem was that the ISS put the Space Shuttle on its critical path: many of the modules had to be launched on the Shuttle, otherwise they wouldn't be launched at all. This became particularly problematic due to all the cost overruns the Shuttle had. It it had been designed so that (perhaps MIR-size) modules could be launched on whatever launch vehicle was most cost-effective at the time (whether it was a Soyuz, EELV, or Ariane) that would've trimmed costs considerably.
Yes, I did read that part. I'm assuming that because of the sarcasm, he's implying that he believes the Ares I-X has a role similar to the Saturn I, which it patently does not.
Ares I-X is being made just to answer those "question marks" you infer, not build around them. Most of the Boosters will be very similar to the ones used For Ares I.
Besides the fact that it'll use a solid rocket, what similarities are there? The Ares I-X will have the well-understood four-segment SRB which has already flown on the Shuttle hundreds of times, instead of the brand-new and unproven five-segment SRB. The Ares I-X will also have the Shuttle SRB's grain design, nozzle, fuel type, and internal pressure, all of which are drastically different with the Ares I. It'll also have a non-functional (e.g. no fuel sloshing around and entirely stiff) upper stage, which removes much of what could have been learned from doing a stage separation test. It'll also have an entirely different flight control package.
In fact, I can't think of a single piece of flight hardware that the Ares I-X and Ares I will have in common. Pretty much the only similarity is that the two rockets look vaguely similar on the outside to the untrained eye, which I guess is all you need from a PR perspective.
Why NASA bothered with the Saturn I [wikipedia.org] or the Saturn IB [wikipedia.org] when they could have just waited until the Saturn V was built and then done everything after that shows what a waste of tax dollars NASA is.
Do you seriously think the Saturn I or IB are at all comparable to the Ares I-X? I mean, I'm certainly not against flight tests in general -- I think the Ares I-Y is useful, as it will test the 5-segment booster, one of the biggest question-marks about the Ares I. The Ares I-X is almost entirely PR, though. Ironically, it's looking like the Ares I-X schedule slips may result in the Ares I-Y being postponed/canceled.
I know a lot of other people might be down on NASA. They say its too much of this, or too much of that, should be privatized, etc.. but...last time I checked:
NASA was the only organization to put a man on the moon, land a couple of rovers on Mars, fly by Jupiter, Saturn, and the outer planets, build and operate a space plane and a space station.
NASA's done a lot of great things, but the Ares I-X isn't one of them. It's just a suborbital rocket model being put together mostly for political reasons, and has almost nothing in common with the Ares I rocket it's supposed to be a test for. It's been designed to specifically avoid all the big problems and question-marks which are threatening to doom the Ares I, making it almost useless as a test. I feel really bad for all the skilled NASA engineers whose time has been wasted on this make-work project instead of something more fruitful.
Like another commenter, I'm quite a bit more impressed by the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket which is already at Cape Canaveral, even if it isn't using the MLP. That's going to be quite a bit more important to the future of spaceflight than the Ares I-X.
This isn't engineering, this is aerospace. In this case they almost always build two designs and select one. For instance, the F-35 was selected from the X-32 and X-35.... In every other case I can think of, at least two designs are presented and one goes to metal.... This all-eggs-in-one-basket approach is actually highly unusual for the aerospace industry, at least in terms of government funded projects. Consider that they funded both Delta and Atlas, precisely to ward off ending up with nothing if the one they selected came in too heavy - precisely what's happening with Constellation.
The saddest part is that NASA was actually well on its way to doing things in a sane fashion, and in 2004-2005 was soliciting multiple proposals from companies for the CEV. The plan is that the top two proposals would be selected, in 2008 there would be a competitive flight test between the two vehicles, and the best vehicle would be chosen. Unfortunately, when Michael Griffin became administrator in 2005 he threw out all the proposals and instituted his personal design as the One True Way that would be faster and cheaper, even though it's actually been slower and an order of magnitude more expensive:
By the time the final CEV proposals were received, Mike Griffin had been appointed the new NASA Administrator. He saw that the CEV plan would realistically leave NASA with a half-decade gap between the retirement of the shuttle and the commencing of CEV flights. Griffin obtained White House backing to reject all of the contractor's proposals abandon the long, expensive, 'spiral' development process, and plunge ahead using existing technology and NASA's best judgment. On June 13, 2005, NASA announced the down-select of two contractors: Lockheed Martin and the team of Northrop Grumman and Boeing. However the selected contractors would only build a CEV to NASA's own design. Phase 1 was now accelerated so that a single contractor would be selected without prototyping or flight-test in 2006, so that the spacecraft could be available by 2010 as a shuttle replacement....
Incredibly, NASA made the same mistake again, fifty years later. The same approach was used. First, proposals from industry were solicited. In both the Apollo and CEV cases these were imaginative, innovative, and incorporated all of the lessons of hundreds of millions of dollars of advanced research funded not just by NASA, but also by industry and the US Air Force. Superior contractor designs using the Soyuz-type separate orbital module or a winged spaceplane approach were made in both cases. In both cases the contractors were thanked, and NASA then proceeded with its own in-house government design. This was then suitably tweaked until it will passed the Congressional pork test.
in-orbit assembly and propellant depots is exactly the problem. It's science fiction. The 90 day study was based on it and came with a price tag of trillions.
Could you help me out with a citation? Do you believe any architecture involving in-orbit assembly and/or propellant depots must necessarily have a price tag of trillions?
Do you think the pre-Griffin architectures Boeing and Lockheed Martin proposed are unreasonable?
You're not going to land an outpost on the Moon with a 70mt launcher, and you're definitely not going to go to Mars with that.
This is a common belief, but there doesn't seem to be much evidence for it. With existing and/or straightforward upgrade launchers it seems quite reasonable to do a lunar outpost (and perhaps even a Mars outpost), no super-heavy-lift required. Just take a look at the studies done for NASA before Michael Griffin came in and tossed all the prior work out. You just need to take advantage of things like in-orbit assembly, propellant depots, etc.
Neither the delta IV nor the Atlas has (or will ever have) the launch capacity to support a moon mission.
It's more that you lose the capacity to support a very specific type of moon mission. Before Michael Griffin came in, the prior administrator had been considering a number of lunar proposals which didn't involve building a new heavy-lift vehicle. One example is Spacehab's proposal, which could have actually been launched entirely in 15 metric ton (33,000 lb) chunks on existing commercial boosters. Of course, after Griffin came he threw all this previous work out.
It may be true that the Delta IV-H is cheaper than Ares I, but Delta IV-H plus Ares V is likely more expensive than Ares I plus Ares V.
But assuming it's needed, how do those options compare to Delta IV-H plus Delta IV-Super-Heavy?
You might be interested in heading over to the bad astronomy board. There is a lot of discussion over there (some of the people are even rocket scientists) and the consensus seems to be developing that scrapping Ares I would be a bad idea. nasaspaceflight.com also has a lively discussion.
Thanks! I sometimes skim nasaspaceflight.com, but haven't read bad astronomy too much yet.
What exactly are they spending all that money on? It looks like such a simple design.
I've never been able to find a full cost breakdown, but I believe their initial cost estimates didn't take into account having to design/build a 5 segment booster, developing the J2X engine, and having to deal with the oscillation problems inherent to using an SRB. This Congressional Budget Office report from last year is handy. I can't find a link at the moment, but I was under the impression that their solutions for dealing with vibration actually put the Ares close to not having the payload capacity needed for Orion, and so there's additional money to be spent figuring out where to trim weight. This is largely going from memory though, so take my comment with a grain of salt until you see a reference for it.
I think the Delta IV heavy is a great launcher, but wouldn't you still need a new upper stage if you used it launch Orion?
I can't find anything conclusive on this. I believe the presentation by ULA and Aerospace Corp. to the Augustine Commission give conflicting information.
I'm wondering if the Delta IV would mostly just be a replacement for Ares I's SRB stage - meaning, we'd still need to spend how many ever billions it's taking to develop the Ares I's second stage.
Even if this were the case (which I don't think it is), keep in mind that many of the problems the Ares I is experiencing (particularly vibration endangering crew, steering, self-destruct mechanisms, etc.) are a direct result of using an SRB first stage. Switching to a liquid first stage would also greatly simplify and lessen the weight of the launch abort system.
Also, wikipedia claims that Ares I can deliver 55,000lb to LEO, while the Delta IV heavy can only deliver 50,000lb. So, (baring a magical upper stage) it sounds like you'd have to either scale back the Orion to the point of making it useless, or spend a lot more money redesigning the D IV.
Unfortunately, I can't seem to find any concrete projections of Orion's mass. In any case, if it ended up being overweight, you could lessen the required mass considerably by taking advantage of orbital propellant depots.
Also, for the problem of transporting crew to LEO, there's much simpler and more lightweight solutions than Orion, which is what's covered by the "commercial transport to EELV" slides in the ULA presentation. Orion would be necessary for the lunar architecture as NASA currently envisions it, but my suspicion is that the Augustine commission is going to recommend some changes to this architecture. The architecture is bizarre in certain ways, such as trying to avoid things like in-orbit rendezvous which could allow an architecture to operate with existing launch vehicles, even though NASA's learned to become quite good at orbital rendezvous with the ISS.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh please, you can't compare the missed milestones of one program against another program that never missed a milestone because it never started.
Actually, since the other designs used already-existing EELV rockets, there were essentially quite a few milestones already finished.
As for the safety argument, IMHO it's so hypothetical I don't even care. I still don't think anybody knows how safe the shuttle now is, or isn't.
Yeah... it's also kind of interesting how the supposedly safer "man-rated" systems seem to have a pretty similar failure rate to the non-man-rated launch vehicles. IMHO, the only way you can really get a good idea of the safety of a system is through repeated unmanned testing, which coincidentally the EELVs have quite a few flights worth of already.
However, if costs on a program have actually exceeded plans by a factor of 10, I think you have a good argument for developing both in parallel in a big programmatic deathmatch.
Coincidentally, this was pretty much what the original plan was back in 2004: The top two design proposal teams (one headed by Lockheed Martin, the other headed by Northrop Grumman and Boeing) would receive initial funding of $1 billion and compete against each other in an unmanned "fly-off" test of their EELV-based in 2008. Former administrator Michael Griffin was convinced his design was safer/better/faster though, so he tossed out the existing designs (and the whole idea of competitive parallel development) and focused NASA on his Ares I.
Obviously, if we have the choice between a more safe and a less safe system we should, all else being equal, chose the more safe one. However, all else is rarely equal. More safety likely adds weight, design time, cost, whatever.
In this case though, the main alternative is the liquid-based EELV rockets, which will cost less and be finished sooner. The main justification for choosing the Ares I over these was supposedly its enhanced safety and launch abort survivability, which have now been shown to actually be inferior. Well, that and providing money to particularly congressional districts, but I'm sure somebody can come up with some way to pay off Senator Shelby (R-Al) so he won't stand in the way of progress.
To be fair, the survival rate of exploding space shuttles is currently 0% as well... At least the Ares as a mechanism to even allow for an early abort.
Allow me to present a little bit more context. Back in 2004, NASA received several competing designs for lunar launch architectures, most/all of which involved using liquid-fueled EELV rockets. In 2005 the (now former) administrator Michael Griffin came in, tossed out all the EELV-based designs, and focused the agency on implementing his own solid-rocket design which eventually became the Ares I. A big part of the justification is that the EELV-based designs would have "black zones" during which a rocket failure would be non-survivable, while the Ares I supposedly had no such black zones and was therefore the only legitimate solution. Ironically, since that time the EELVs have been shown to have no such 'black zones," while this latest report indicates that the Ares I has a huge black zone which covers the entire first minute of flight. That means that what was thought to be the main justification for the Ares I is actually a huge deficiency.
Curiously, the other main justifications for the Ares I were that it would be finished faster and cost less than EELV-based designs. As it turned out, it's taking far longer than the EELVs were expected to take, and the cost has ballooned by almost an order of magnitude. With any luck Barack Obama will take the upcoming report from the Augustine Commission and end the Ares I program before it does any more damage.
along with a snide comment from a commercial outfit that would probably like the contract for themselves
FYI, Bigelow Aerospace (the company quoted in the article) is in the business of building private space stations. They're a buyer in the commercial launch market, not a seller, so it's not like they'd be a getting a contract for any of this. I'd assume they have quite a bit of experience in studying the pros and cons of various launch systems for their own payloads, which is probably why they were asked for a quote for the article.
Fortunately it seems like this is a problem that *could be corrected* fairly easily -- with, say, a propulsion mechanism on the escape capsule, just enough to give enough delta-V that it would clear the debris cloud in time to deploy the parachutes.
From what I understand, the Orion capsule's launch escape system already has a jettison motor, but it's not enough to take it out of range of the flaming debris. Increasing the range of the motor isn't an option, because the capsule is already too heavy for the Ares I and they can't add even more weight to it.
Even though rockets like DIRECT's and the Ares V would have the "field of flaming solid rocket propellant debris" problem, my impression is that they have a big enough margin that you'd be able to have a launch escape system that could escape the debris cloud.
Nope. The SSME [wikipedia.org], RS-68 [wikipedia.org] were developed after the 60's
You're correct. According to SpaceX's own publicity material: "The Merlin 1C next generation liquid fueled rocket booster engine is among the highest performing gas generator cycle kerosene engines ever built, exceeding the Boeing Delta II main engine, the Lockheed Atlas II main engine, and on par with the Saturn V F-1 engine. It is the first new American booster engine in a decade and only the second American booster engine since the Space Shuttle Main Engine was developed thirty years ago."
Unless and until we get something better than chemical rockets, space travel isn't going to get any better.
I think SpaceX has been proving quite nicely that there's at least an order of magnitude of improvement that can still be made with chemical rockets.
Quite right. Although Apollo was ideal for its specific goal of landing people on the moon by a specific deadline, the lack of affordability and sustainability made it fail miserably at the wider goal of opening up space.
It's quite interesting to take a look at Werner von Braun's pre-Apollo rocket designs and launch architectures, which emphasized reusability, in-space assembly, and high launch rates. However, once the Apollo program was announced, money was no object and the deadline was all-important, so he shifted to more costly but faster-to-develop expendable boosters.
It looks like Von Braun's 1969 Mars proposal would have been rather more sustainable than Apollo, but unfortunately didn't go through:
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/vonn1969.htm
The Mars spacecraft itself would refurbished via shuttle flights, two additional PPM stages attached, the whole thing resupplied and refueled, in readiness for further expeditions to Mars in 1983, 1986, and 1988 - leading to a 50-person Mars base by 1989. With the exception of the MEM, all of the spacecraft was reused. Von Braun estimated this colonization of Mars within 20 years could be accomplished with a peak NASA budget of $ 7 billion per year. This robust, relatively safe plan was the culmination of 20 years of Mars mission planning by the Peenemuende team and took full advantage of the other space infrastructure elements in NASA's master plan. It offered the possibility for Von Braun to witness his long-held dream of a manned expedition to Mars in his lifetime.
The Space Task Group made its final report on 15 September 1969, recommending the whole vast infrastructure envisioned by Von Braun. It was not to be -- every element of the NASA plan, except for a much-compromised space shuttle design, would be stripped away by Nixon's budget office. There was no public support for such a grand scheme. The view of Mars as a seemingly barren, lifeless, and uninteresting world in any case was reinforced by the Mariner 7 mission which flew by the planet the day after Von Braun's presentation was made. His ultimate dream crushed, Von Braun was sidelined to a headquarters post at NASA seven months later. He left NASA in 1972 and died in 1977.
All the discussions about the space program overlook a critical fact. It costs about $10,000 a kilogram or more to lift anything into low earth orbit. That means that the entire manned space program is virtually useless : there's no point in learning how to put people into space and have them survive if no affordable way for a lot of people and supplies to go into space exists. ... The only way a moon base or a space station or a space hotel or anything else will ever be practical is if that launch cost is reduced through new technology.
This is a common misconception, but when it comes down to it, you can lower the price considerably by just using current technologies in a cost-effective manner. SpaceX's Falcon 9 (to be launched in the coming year) will lower the cost per kg to one-third of the going rate, and CEO Elon Musk believes that less than $1,100/kg is "very achievable." The difference is that up until now nobody had successfully built a rocket from scratch made entirely out of components designed to be as cost-efficient as possible. Again, keep in mind that the cost of fuel is about 1% of the cost of launching a rocket -- by minimizing the cost of components and the number of people needed to put the rocket together, you drop the overall cost substantially.
But an actual, honest-to-god Mars trip is different, and everybody will know it. Just outside the cramped wall is the darkest, blackest, most incomprehensibly complete void mankind can fathom. No air, no beer, no babes. Nothing. And not just some nothing, MILLIONS of miles of nothing. Months of travel at speeds inconceivable to airlines flight. Something go wrong? Everybody's dead!
On the flip side, it's not unusual for the crew of a submarine to be underwater for at least 80 days straight, with a similar sense of "if anything goes wrong everybody's dead." Unlike a submarine crew, a Mars crew would also have regular contact with the world back home.
Huh?
...but all those private space programs got a huge boost from the decades of NASA doing experiments in the first place.
And that's precisely how it should be: NASA exploring the frontier and pioneering new technologies, and after those technologies have been initially tested private industry then takes them and makes them into cost-effective systems. It's amazing that it took so long for this to happen, but I'm glad that a company like SpaceX is finally doing it. Of course, NASA hasn't still quite gotten the message, and is still keen on trying to compete with the already-existing launch systems with their Ares I.
Not to mention the launch scrub followed by a three-month delay [hobbyspace.com] due to the fact that they were worried about the vibration environment of the launch damaging the satellite and decided to do a new engineering analysis.
From the same site you cited, it's interesting to note that the delay was so long because SpaceX was prohibited by ITAR regulations from simply adjusting the satellite:
http://www.hobbyspace.com/nucleus/?itemid=13078
Technicians discovered the satellite and the Falcon 1 upper stage rocket share a nearly identical vibrational mode, which could set up a damaging resonance. SpaceX is bound by ITAR restrictions from assisting with any technical problems on the foreign-owned payload, so the company delayed the launch to add some vibration isolation equipment between the rocketâ(TM)s upper stage and the payload adapter.
âoeThe easiest thing would actually be to make some adjustment to the satellite . . . but thatâ(TM)s not allowed,â Musk says.
Nevertheless, when NASA delays a launch to do a safety check, everybody complains how incompetent they are. When Space-X delays, everybody praises them for being cautious.
The difference is that SpaceX's delays have been due to them trying out a totally brand-new rocket design and launch support system. The Space Shuttle, on the other hand, has been around for quite a while, and most of the delays (besides the weather-related ones) are due to the inherent technical finickiness of the Shuttle design. And of course, most of the weather-related delays can be blamed on the fact that it's a ground-based launch system situated in the thunderstorm capital of the US.
SpaceX's launch procedures are designed to be as efficient and timely as possible, with a number of automated safety checks. Heck, even for yesterday's launch it turned out that there was a malfunction in the helium-loading equipment, which was quickly fixed and just resulted in a delay of a few hours. For the Shuttle, I imagine a malfunction like that could easily result in a delay of days.
Whatever happened to the considerable R&D projects to replace the shuttle with a new model?
Off the top of my head, here's a quick summary of the various serious efforts into creating new manned spacecraft over the past 10-15 years:
Now, the currently ongoing projects and contenders:
So how do you get missions like Cassini and not like the ISS?
I think a big part of the cost problem was that the ISS put the Space Shuttle on its critical path: many of the modules had to be launched on the Shuttle, otherwise they wouldn't be launched at all. This became particularly problematic due to all the cost overruns the Shuttle had. It it had been designed so that (perhaps MIR-size) modules could be launched on whatever launch vehicle was most cost-effective at the time (whether it was a Soyuz, EELV, or Ariane) that would've trimmed costs considerably.
Yes, I did read that part. I'm assuming that because of the sarcasm, he's implying that he believes the Ares I-X has a role similar to the Saturn I, which it patently does not.
Ares I-X is being made just to answer those "question marks" you infer, not build around them. Most of the Boosters will be very similar to the ones used For Ares I.
Besides the fact that it'll use a solid rocket, what similarities are there? The Ares I-X will have the well-understood four-segment SRB which has already flown on the Shuttle hundreds of times, instead of the brand-new and unproven five-segment SRB. The Ares I-X will also have the Shuttle SRB's grain design, nozzle, fuel type, and internal pressure, all of which are drastically different with the Ares I. It'll also have a non-functional (e.g. no fuel sloshing around and entirely stiff) upper stage, which removes much of what could have been learned from doing a stage separation test. It'll also have an entirely different flight control package.
In fact, I can't think of a single piece of flight hardware that the Ares I-X and Ares I will have in common. Pretty much the only similarity is that the two rockets look vaguely similar on the outside to the untrained eye, which I guess is all you need from a PR perspective.
Why NASA bothered with the Saturn I [wikipedia.org] or the Saturn IB [wikipedia.org] when they could have just waited until the Saturn V was built and then done everything after that shows what a waste of tax dollars NASA is.
Do you seriously think the Saturn I or IB are at all comparable to the Ares I-X? I mean, I'm certainly not against flight tests in general -- I think the Ares I-Y is useful, as it will test the 5-segment booster, one of the biggest question-marks about the Ares I. The Ares I-X is almost entirely PR, though. Ironically, it's looking like the Ares I-X schedule slips may result in the Ares I-Y being postponed/canceled.
I know a lot of other people might be down on NASA. They say its too much of this, or too much of that, should be privatized, etc.. but...last time I checked:
NASA was the only organization to put a man on the moon, land a couple of rovers on Mars, fly by Jupiter, Saturn, and the outer planets, build and operate a space plane and a space station.
NASA's done a lot of great things, but the Ares I-X isn't one of them. It's just a suborbital rocket model being put together mostly for political reasons, and has almost nothing in common with the Ares I rocket it's supposed to be a test for. It's been designed to specifically avoid all the big problems and question-marks which are threatening to doom the Ares I, making it almost useless as a test. I feel really bad for all the skilled NASA engineers whose time has been wasted on this make-work project instead of something more fruitful.
Like another commenter, I'm quite a bit more impressed by the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket which is already at Cape Canaveral, even if it isn't using the MLP. That's going to be quite a bit more important to the future of spaceflight than the Ares I-X.
This isn't engineering, this is aerospace. In this case they almost always build two designs and select one. For instance, the F-35 was selected from the X-32 and X-35. ... In every other case I can think of, at least two designs are presented and one goes to metal. ... This all-eggs-in-one-basket approach is actually highly unusual for the aerospace industry, at least in terms of government funded projects. Consider that they funded both Delta and Atlas, precisely to ward off ending up with nothing if the one they selected came in too heavy - precisely what's happening with Constellation.
The saddest part is that NASA was actually well on its way to doing things in a sane fashion, and in 2004-2005 was soliciting multiple proposals from companies for the CEV. The plan is that the top two proposals would be selected, in 2008 there would be a competitive flight test between the two vehicles, and the best vehicle would be chosen. Unfortunately, when Michael Griffin became administrator in 2005 he threw out all the proposals and instituted his personal design as the One True Way that would be faster and cheaper, even though it's actually been slower and an order of magnitude more expensive:
http://www.astronautix.com/craftfam/cev.htm
By the time the final CEV proposals were received, Mike Griffin had been appointed the new NASA Administrator. He saw that the CEV plan would realistically leave NASA with a half-decade gap between the retirement of the shuttle and the commencing of CEV flights. Griffin obtained White House backing to reject all of the contractor's proposals abandon the long, expensive, 'spiral' development process, and plunge ahead using existing technology and NASA's best judgment. On June 13, 2005, NASA announced the down-select of two contractors: Lockheed Martin and the team of Northrop Grumman and Boeing. However the selected contractors would only build a CEV to NASA's own design. Phase 1 was now accelerated so that a single contractor would be selected without prototyping or flight-test in 2006, so that the spacecraft could be available by 2010 as a shuttle replacement. ...
Incredibly, NASA made the same mistake again, fifty years later. The same approach was used. First, proposals from industry were solicited. In both the Apollo and CEV cases these were imaginative, innovative, and incorporated all of the lessons of hundreds of millions of dollars of advanced research funded not just by NASA, but also by industry and the US Air Force. Superior contractor designs using the Soyuz-type separate orbital module or a winged spaceplane approach were made in both cases. In both cases the contractors were thanked, and NASA then proceeded with its own in-house government design. This was then suitably tweaked until it will passed the Congressional pork test.
in-orbit assembly and propellant depots is exactly the problem. It's science fiction. The 90 day study was based on it and came with a price tag of trillions.
Could you help me out with a citation? Do you believe any architecture involving in-orbit assembly and/or propellant depots must necessarily have a price tag of trillions?
Do you think the pre-Griffin architectures Boeing and Lockheed Martin proposed are unreasonable?
You're not going to land an outpost on the Moon with a 70mt launcher, and you're definitely not going to go to Mars with that.
This is a common belief, but there doesn't seem to be much evidence for it. With existing and/or straightforward upgrade launchers it seems quite reasonable to do a lunar outpost (and perhaps even a Mars outpost), no super-heavy-lift required. Just take a look at the studies done for NASA before Michael Griffin came in and tossed all the prior work out. You just need to take advantage of things like in-orbit assembly, propellant depots, etc.
http://selenianboondocks.com/category/lunar-exploration-and-development/
http://exploration.nasa.gov/documents/reports/cer_final/Boeing.pdf
http://exploration.nasa.gov/documents/reports/cer_final/tSpace.pdf
http://exploration.nasa.gov/documents/reports/cer_midterm/tSpace.pdf
http://exploration.nasa.gov/documents/reports/cer_final/Lockheed_Martin.pdf
http://exploration.nasa.gov/documents/reports/cer_final/Schafer.pdf
Neither the delta IV nor the Atlas has (or will ever have) the launch capacity to support a moon mission.
It's more that you lose the capacity to support a very specific type of moon mission. Before Michael Griffin came in, the prior administrator had been considering a number of lunar proposals which didn't involve building a new heavy-lift vehicle. One example is Spacehab's proposal, which could have actually been launched entirely in 15 metric ton (33,000 lb) chunks on existing commercial boosters. Of course, after Griffin came he threw all this previous work out.
It may be true that the Delta IV-H is cheaper than Ares I, but Delta IV-H plus Ares V is likely more expensive than Ares I plus Ares V.
But assuming it's needed, how do those options compare to Delta IV-H plus Delta IV-Super-Heavy?
You might be interested in heading over to the bad astronomy board. There is a lot of discussion over there (some of the people are even rocket scientists) and the consensus seems to be developing that scrapping Ares I would be a bad idea. nasaspaceflight.com also has a lively discussion.
Thanks! I sometimes skim nasaspaceflight.com, but haven't read bad astronomy too much yet.
What exactly are they spending all that money on? It looks like such a simple design.
I've never been able to find a full cost breakdown, but I believe their initial cost estimates didn't take into account having to design/build a 5 segment booster, developing the J2X engine, and having to deal with the oscillation problems inherent to using an SRB. This Congressional Budget Office report from last year is handy. I can't find a link at the moment, but I was under the impression that their solutions for dealing with vibration actually put the Ares close to not having the payload capacity needed for Orion, and so there's additional money to be spent figuring out where to trim weight. This is largely going from memory though, so take my comment with a grain of salt until you see a reference for it.
I think the Delta IV heavy is a great launcher, but wouldn't you still need a new upper stage if you used it launch Orion?
I can't find anything conclusive on this. I believe the presentation by ULA and Aerospace Corp. to the Augustine Commission give conflicting information.
I'm wondering if the Delta IV would mostly just be a replacement for Ares I's SRB stage - meaning, we'd still need to spend how many ever billions it's taking to develop the Ares I's second stage.
Even if this were the case (which I don't think it is), keep in mind that many of the problems the Ares I is experiencing (particularly vibration endangering crew, steering, self-destruct mechanisms, etc.) are a direct result of using an SRB first stage. Switching to a liquid first stage would also greatly simplify and lessen the weight of the launch abort system.
Also, wikipedia claims that Ares I can deliver 55,000lb to LEO, while the Delta IV heavy can only deliver 50,000lb. So, (baring a magical upper stage) it sounds like you'd have to either scale back the Orion to the point of making it useless, or spend a lot more money redesigning the D IV.
Unfortunately, I can't seem to find any concrete projections of Orion's mass. In any case, if it ended up being overweight, you could lessen the required mass considerably by taking advantage of orbital propellant depots.
Also, for the problem of transporting crew to LEO, there's much simpler and more lightweight solutions than Orion, which is what's covered by the "commercial transport to EELV" slides in the ULA presentation. Orion would be necessary for the lunar architecture as NASA currently envisions it, but my suspicion is that the Augustine commission is going to recommend some changes to this architecture. The architecture is bizarre in certain ways, such as trying to avoid things like in-orbit rendezvous which could allow an architecture to operate with existing launch vehicles, even though NASA's learned to become quite good at orbital rendezvous with the ISS.