AirSpaceMag.com

Now is the time to make a cargo pod to the replace the orbiter. It would with a minimum amount of time and money give the U.S. a heavy lift capability. A very reliable heavy lift using human rated components developed over 30 years. Putting people in orbit is not the problem- it is the loss of the only hardware and infrastructure that can take the U.S. beyond earth orbit.

The inline might be the mistake that topples the deck of cards. The Sidemount has been the best option for over a quarter century and to ignore it now when it is needed most in favor of a different configuration that will take much longer to develop- is really stupid.

Extremely stupid; I just do not know what is going on with these people in congress. It is so obvious that sidemount is what the U.S. space program needs more than anything else right now.

Imagine a 70 ton space probe payload. 70 ton lunar robot payload. 70 tons of satellites filling up the cargo pod.
With the orbiter gone a flight rate of 10 a year.

This is incredibly frustrating.

Comment by GaryChurch — June 25, 2011 @ 5:33 pm

The Sidemount has been the best option for over a quarter century and to ignore it now when it is needed most in favor of a different configuration that will take much longer to develop- is really stupid.

I completely agree and have said as much in a previous post:

http://blogs.airspacemag.com/moon/2011/01/heft-lies-and-videotape/

If we had built Shuttle side-mount back in 2004, we could have had it operational by now, for less money than has already been spent.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — June 25, 2011 @ 5:56 pm

I’d probably be in love with the ISS if it had been used as a gateway for beyond LEO missions. But as it exist today, its an overly expensive space lab that is sucking in $3 billion a year of precious NASA funds that I believe could be much better spent for beyond LEO missions. Even Griffin argued for its termination after 2016 in order to help fund the Constellation program.

With a new generation of larger and cheaper space stations on the horizon, I’d rather see the the ISS program come to an end by 2016 (still gives you 5 more years of great science) rather than see it misused as work-fare for the emerging private spaceflight companies for another five to ten years. I could probably support continuing the ISS program if the US was only contributing about a billion a year. But spending $3 billion a year for the ISS program, IMO, is just way too much!

Fortunately, for ISS lovers, Congress still loves spending huge amounts of money on this LEO on steroids program:-)

But I do agree with you Dr. Spudis that there was no logical reason to terminate the Space Shuttle program until there were domestic replacements already fully operational. And the USA (United Space Alliance) claimed they could have kept the shuttle program going at two flights per year for as little as $1.5 billion annually.

The shuttle also could have been used to deploy some of the new generation of private space stations, getting the industry off the ground a lot sooner. And it also could have been used as a rescue vehicle in case there are some mishaps with the new commercial rocket vehicles in orbit. Boy, I hope that doesn’t happen– with people possibly saying “If we only had the space shuttle still operating, we could have rescued them!”

Comment by Marcel F. Williams — June 25, 2011 @ 6:17 pm

Darn stupid to kill the Shuttle with NO replacement on hand IE Commercial Spaceplane.
Now NewSpace will have to Gear up BIG Time for ISS etc.
Fast Track for a new Civil Pvt Space plane type.
& remove NASA from Commercial Space & refocus on Space Scineces.
IE Hubble, Keck, Mars, asteroid Belt etc.
Have ISS under a MultiNational Corp to Pvt Use.

Comment by stephen russell — June 25, 2011 @ 7:41 pm

NASA has exclusively use private launch to put non human payloads into space. It’s being dependent upon this way for decades.

I fail to understand why you want hvy launch based on Shuttle components, and want to end the shuttle program.

It seems you want to continue to provide business to the private sector that made the shuttle parts [the orbiter- wasn't something constantly provided for by private sector].

So, it seems all you wanted ended is shuttle orbiter refurbishment- something done I guess by NASA and private sector.
Perhaps mostly because we had less orbiter after one blew up. The cost of making another orbiter would probably cost more than 2 billion to make- but with perhaps more significant complications, than mere cost of couple billion.

I don’t have any hard information on the cost of refurbishment or the orbiter. I could hope it had cost less than building a new one- 2 billion. But I would guess it costs somewhere less than 1 billion- or say couple billion per year or less [if high launch rate].

So it doesn’t seem to me by just getting rid of the orbiter, one saves much money in terms of budget.

And therefore don’t see how NASA can afford Lunar exploration.

Comment by gbaikie — June 25, 2011 @ 8:36 pm

I think we all are in agreement about the frustration about retiring Shuttle without a U.S. craft to replace it in transporting astronauts to ISS. Constellation turned out to be a huge mess, and I guess we’re going to be paying for that mess for a while.

But I’d like to point out that the rationale for Shuttle has diminished greatly. The Shuttle is a space truck, for large pieces of equipment. The purpose of Shuttle was primarily to build ISS. It’s built. The idea that large pieces of ISS could malfunction and need replacement is of some concern, but the idea that Shuttle provided the only means to carry material to, boost, or deorbit ISS is simply untrue. We have many cargo vehicles that can now autonomously dock at ISS, and those could in principle be outfitted with a large rocket motor. Progress already has substantial capability. Pretty soon, “New Space” will provide us with another. It makes no sense to keep Shuttle running just as a tow truck for ISS.

You’re correct that Shuttle provided a berth which which to service satellites. Not as if we service any satellites, though I wish we did. But in fact no responsible service agent for satellites would start out without hard docking to them. No servicing plans that I’ve seen (and there are a bunch) involve formation flying.

As to the mistrust of New Space, well, they do have a way to go in proving themselves. But you know, when we were making the most wildly optimistic claims abut cost and flight rate for Shuttle, the thing had never flown. Those were just pie-in-the-sky dreams. Falcon I and Falcon 9 work. I look forward to seeing them work more often, but the technological foundation and operational cost model for them is largely proven.

Under the (optimistically!) fixed funding for the agency, doing new stuff is simply going to require retiring old stuff. It would be nice to keep Shuttle flying, but I can’t conceive of any fiscal plan that would do that and credibly develop new vehicles.

Comment by Heinrich Monroe — June 25, 2011 @ 10:16 pm

Excellent article, though perhaps too late to change policy. This is exactly the threat to ISS I have warned about for some time. A meteroid or piece of space junk could damage a solar or cooling panel, and unless a space exists on ISS, this could result in serious problems.

The possibility of losing our $100 billion investment, no matter how remote) should dictate spending a few billion a year to maintain the shuttles on at least a launch on demand basis. The article is exactly correct that a capsule is NOT a replacement for the shuttle any more than a sedan can replace the capabilities of a Mack truck.

NASA’s rejection of United Space Alliance’s proposal to continue operating the shuttles for lass than current operations was a tragic mistake–and hopefully one which we hope will not result in the loss of ISS.

The Coalition to Save Manned Space Exploration supports saving the shuttles and launching a bold JFK-like space program to take Americans to the moon and an asteroid in THIS decade, and to Mars as soon as is safe and possible thereafter.

Comment by Art Harman, director — June 26, 2011 @ 12:48 am

I’m afraid that I don’t agree. It seems to me that you are not arguing so much that it is more likely that the “commercial” approaches will be more expensive ($/kg) or that they will likely be more delayed than a HLV. Rather even if the “commercial” companies might be faster & cheaper, it is safer to go with what we know will likely work than risk our capacity on something that might not work out. It is a conservative, risk-adverse approach.

Speaking for myself, but probably others, what drives my support for the “commercial” approaches is because of my great dissatisfaction with the past and the probability that we’ll get more of the same if we continue to use a similar approach. If we go with a side-mount, using a non-COTS approach, will it probably go very much over budget? Yes. Will the $/kg still be 10,000 or greater? Will the HLV share costs with other commercial customers? No. Will it be so expensive so as to hog the budget and stiffle our other plans? Yes. So, after our experiences with the Shuttle, the ISS, Ares V, and Ares I, may I be forgiven for being rather jaded?

Then along comes SpaceX. From scratch the company keeps working at it. Set backs yes but apparently perfecting the technology. Blowing budgets? No. Successful pper stage and capsule before Ares I and Orion? Yes. Sharing costs with commercial customers? Big time. Low $/kg? It’s signing contracts at posted prices. Potential for 53,000 kg to LEO using proven boosters? Yes. I don’t see that it takes some umrealistic leap of faith to believe that we might have a real game-changer here which with the potential to change how much we’ll be able to do in space.

Comment by JohnHunt — June 26, 2011 @ 1:41 am

JohnHunt,

If we go with a side-mount, using a non-COTS approach, will it probably go very much over budget? Yes. Will the $/kg still be 10,000 or greater? Will the HLV share costs with other commercial customers? No. Will it be so expensive so as to hog the budget and stiffle our other plans? Yes.

Your answers to your own questions are all statements of faith, not fact. But that’s fine – you have your opinions and I have mine. I could construct a similar list pertaining to “commercial” space and the “new direction.” But then, I just did in the essay above.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — June 26, 2011 @ 4:36 am

gbaike,

I fail to understand why you want hvy launch based on Shuttle components, and want to end the shuttle program.

Show me where I advocate this. I am saying that: 1) ending Shuttle without a clear path forward is irresponsible and stupid; 2) Shuttle offers some capabilities that we will miss in the future, even if some cannot see that we’ll miss them; 3) As Shuttle exists and is operating, I contend that a launch bird in the hand is worth two in the bush; 4) The industrial base supporting Shuttle could be used to create a Shuttle side-mount vehicle which could launch 70-80 metric tons into LEO and is more than adequate to begin a beyond-LEO exploration program.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — June 26, 2011 @ 4:42 am

“Show me where I advocate this. I am saying that: 1) ending Shuttle without a clear path forward is irresponsible and stupid;”

Yes, but it’s normal government.
NASA should have sold the shuttle- or paid someone to take it.
But the shuttle is obviously priceless- so naturally the govt must give the orbiters to museums.
But without NASA saving budget money on the operational cost of the Shuttle and without an increase of NASA budget, how can NASA do lunar exploration program?

“2) Shuttle offers some capabilities that we will miss in the future, even if some cannot see that we’ll miss them”

The shuttle is a sort of all purpose vehicle- and part reason it cost so much to operate.
The private sector could probably operate the shuttle at a lower cost- but private sector can not run the Shuttle exactly as NASA would run the Shuttle- or private sector would have a higher cost than if solely a NASA’s operation. And in a sense that is what NASA did.

NASA wants to manage, and only advantage a private sector could possibly have is better management.
NASA gets it’s land for free, doesn’t pay anything for it’s capital, it pays no taxes on corporate income, can’t be sued [really], can exclude itself from stupid laws – so socialism should be cheaper- and it isn’t.

“3) As Shuttle exists and is operating, I contend that a launch bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”

It’s similar to Saturn V.

The companies that make the Shuttle, can’t have millions dollars of assets idle. If the government actually made the Shuttle they could decide to waste money by having those assets idle. I suppose the govt could rent these assets- but it’s tougher technically [and politically] than simply mothballing navy ship.
And another thing similar to the Saturn V- if the Saturn V is available- someone might waste money trying to use it. So they want a clean break. It’s murder, and they want to get rid of the body.

“4) The industrial base supporting Shuttle could be used to create a Shuttle side-mount vehicle which could launch 70-80 metric tons into LEO and is more than adequate to begin a beyond-LEO exploration program.”

Something I was in favor of a decade ago- it was called the Shuttle-C. And the idea is you have both the Shuttle and Shuttle-C and you do a moon program. That was before ISS became 100 billion+ program.
And since that time, the Shuttle program costs seem to rising at a pretty fast clip. I will take the wild guess that the Shuttle “privatization effort” added costs to program {and of course never actually happened- privatization that is- rather it was additional growth [as in cancer} to the program.

But the real question is why must NASA be in the launch business.

Or why doesn’t the military build the heavy lift?
Of course it has already kind of done this- because their EELV program has concept studies of building heavier lift- if the military needed a heavier lift- for some reason.

So, I guess we back the main point, why does NASA need a heavy lift. And how many of these heavy lift does it need, and when does it need them?

Where that nice word, ah, maskirovka.

That is what this Senate heavy lift program is all about. What is important is paying for it, not flying it.

Comment by gbaikie — June 26, 2011 @ 9:31 am

This should cover about everything so far;

“The industrial base supporting Shuttle could be used to create a Shuttle side-mount vehicle which could launch 70-80 metric tons into LEO and is more than adequate to begin a beyond-LEO exploration program.”

And anything less is less than adequate in my opinion Dr. Spudis. 70 tons ten times a year for the next quarter century and likely growing to 130 ten times a year within that time frame could open up the solar system to colonization. Anybody who thinks “private space” can accomplish anything except taxi rides to space stations is living in a dream world.

“With a new generation of larger and cheaper space stations on the horizon, I’d rather see the the ISS program come to an end by 2016″
“(United Space Alliance) claimed they could have kept the shuttle program going at two flights per year for as little as $1.5 billion annually.”

Marcel,
LEO has served it’s purpose and is now a dead end for human space flight. The only thing that should be in LEO is satellites. I do not know what to do with the ISS. Perhaps it could be dismantled into sections and EDS sent up to rendezvous and boost them to lunar orbit where they can eventually be used for a moon base in some way. The solar panels should be good for several more years anyway.

As for the Shuttle, a cargo pod should have replaced the orbiter after Challenger. It became clear very quickly that the cargo bay, wings and landing gear in orbit was not going to do what was advertised and a Cargo Version was needed. For a quarter century it has been talked about- how much that Saturn V class hardware could lift if it was not tied to the 737 in space ball and chain.

And now, at the moment of truth when the future of space flight is being decided, it is being ignored. Why? It will do exactly what an inline configuration will do in far less time with far less money. I smell a rat.

“Darn stupid to kill the Shuttle with NO replacement on hand IE Commercial Spaceplane”

Stephen,
The space plane is a failed concept. What is stupid is killing the only infrastructure and hardware that can get us beyond earth orbit. That is actually more important than an astronaut taxi -right now. I AM an HSF supporter.

“I fail to understand why you want hvy launch based on Shuttle components, and want to end the shuttle program.
And therefore don’t see how NASA can afford Lunar exploration.”

GB,
I fail to understand many things also, but not these issues. Homework, homework.

“The possibility of losing our $100 billion investment, no matter how remote) should dictate spending a few billion a year to maintain the shuttles on at least a launch on demand basis. The article is exactly correct that a capsule is NOT a replacement for the shuttle”

Art – You need some new leadership in your “Coalition.” You are doing nothing for HSF pushing this stuff. Or maybe you are actually pushing something else?

“-we might have a real game-changer here which with the potential to change how much we’ll be able to do in space.”

John, Heinrich,
I have canned responses prepared for you and other private space advocates who want to comment on this issue;
[Talking point # 1- Private space and the flexible path is a dead end and camoflauge for the dismantling of the U.S. heavy lift infrastructure and siphoning those tax dollars into investor pockets.]

[Talking point # 2- LEO is not space exploration, space travel, or even space flight anymore. It has been explored and is now endless circles at very high altitude going nowhere.]

[Talking point # 3- Space flight is inherently expensive, there is no cheap. The DOD budget proves we can afford a large space program. We can build war machines or we can build spaceships.]

[Talking point # 4- There is no substitute for a Heavy Lift Vehicle with hydrogen upper stages and a hydrogen Earth Departure Stage. Inferior lift vehicles result in an absurd number of launches.]

[Talking point # 5- Despite false advertising to the contrary, there is no practical replacement for non-cryogenic storable propellant use in depots and transfer to vehicles in space.]

[Talking point # 11- The profit motive is toxic to space exploration. Only vast governmental resources can build spaceships and construct off world colonies to begin any kind of commerce.]

[Talking point #12- Space tourism, suborbital joy rides, kerosene hobby rockets, inflatable space hotels, and removal of government oversight and control of the space industry is a national humiliation and disaster.]

I am so tired of SpaceX looking for free advertising.

Comment by GaryChurch — June 26, 2011 @ 12:24 pm

“Stephen,
The space plane is a failed concept.”

Stephen, I do not mean to snub you with this comment. I implore you to objectively reconsider your space plane advocacy.

With far more thrust and fuel the space shuttle might have been able to get to any orbit (it could not even reach polar orbit) with a full cargo bay (it was never full) and even could have had an escape system. It never had an escape system because it could not sacrifice any more of what little payload it could carry.

Consider this; for all that mass making the shuttle work a tremendous amount of payload could have been orbited.

For all it’s faults, Constellation was correct on one thing- Separate crew and cargo vehicles are way way more practical than a combination vehicle.

And not to say a capsule, boosters, main engine return module and even the escape tower cannot be parachute-ocean recovered. The orbited fuel tank (the shuttle ET was intentionally de-orbited) could be used as a wet workshop that would make the ISS look like a doghous- or better yet boosted to the moon with a separate EDS and soft landed.

And that is a fully reusable launch vehicle. The ocean is such a convenient “runway” for recovery and parachutes so much lighter than wings and landing gear that the original splashdown technique is still the best deal.

Comment by GaryChurch — June 26, 2011 @ 12:48 pm

Comment by GaryChurch — June 25, 2011 @ 5:33 pm
Comment by Paul D. Spudis — June 25, 2011 @ 5:56 pm

As stated a number of times I am a proponent of the SDHLV Side Mount configuration for exactly the same reasons Dr. Spudis has already stated.

That being said the differences for the inline SDHLV are basically two:
- Redesign of the external tank (to put the payload on top and the engines on the bottom.
- Extensive changes to the ground processing/handling facilities.

This will undoubtedly cost more money, but maybe not by a prohibitive amount, that remains to be seen.

On the other hand maybe the Side Mount is not ‘out of the running’ yet. The original draft of the Authorization Bill ordered an Inline configuration, but that language was left out of the final Act that was passed into law.

Note the letter sent to Bolden by the Senate Appropriations committee:

http://commerce.senate.gov/public/?a=Files.Serve&File_id=52f30e1e-2dd2-4a00-9db2-d26fb916d52f

Sure would be interesting to know what is in those documents that the Senate is rather forcefully demanding.

Comment by Joe — June 26, 2011 @ 1:11 pm

Comment by JohnHunt — June 26, 2011 @ 1:41 am
“Will the $/kg still be 10,000 or greater?”

Since you seem to think you already know the answers to your (rhetorical?) questions you may not be interested in the answer, but the best answer available for the Side Mount indicates a cost per pound of about $2,500/pound for six launches/year.

Comment by Joe — June 26, 2011 @ 1:16 pm

That is what this Senate heavy lift program is all about.

I think that Congress gave specific directions to NASA for an HLV for two reasons. First, it was to assure that they would actually build a vehicle, not conduct paper studies for several years and then proclaim it cannot be done. As the agency was getting no direction from the administration, they moved into the power vacuum. Second, it was an attempt by Congress to maintain a personnel and industrial capability that was about to be abandoned forever. Building a Shuttle-derived HLV may be a non-optimum solution, but it’s something and could serve as the basis for a renewed spaceflight capability in the event the “new direction” falls on its face.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — June 26, 2011 @ 1:46 pm

Gee whiz my posts are monstrous. So big no one is even reading them I bet. Sorry. I will give you guys a break and stop inserting novels in the thread. For a while anyway.

“-the differences for the inline SDHLV are basically two:”

Joe, I saw a table somewhere in a piece on Sidemount that had the number of “new starts” required for the different proposals. I think sidemount had 2 for the SSME module and the cargo pod and that was it. Everything else including in-line had long lists. That made my mind up.

That said I hope you are right. I really do. Thanx for the optimism. I am glad someone is glass half full about this.

Comment by GaryChurch — June 26, 2011 @ 2:39 pm

“The possibility of losing our $100 billion investment, no matter how remote) should dictate spending a few billion a year to maintain the shuttles on at least a launch on demand basis.”

No it shouldn’t.
ISS has cost in total so far +100 billion dollars. That doesn’t mean it’s worth 100 billion dollars.

A few [3-4] billion per year in a decade is 30-40 billion added to ISS program cost [or should be added if intended to save ISS] and adding 30 billion to 100 billion makes it “130 billion investment”. Plus of course you have the reg ISS program cost of about 3 billion per year, making your investment being 160 billion.

In short the ISS structure couldn’t be sold for more than 10 billion. ISS is pricelesss, just as the Shuttle program that cost over 200 billion, is unsellable. And since neither can be sold- assigning a value to ISS or shuttle is moe of an emotional issue, than anything else.

Comment by gbaikie — June 26, 2011 @ 4:33 pm

Comment by GaryChurch — June 26, 2011 @ 2:39 pm

Hi Gary,

Not sure what table you may have seen (or what level of detail it may have been using). But there is no doubt (at least in my mind) that the Side Mount is the simplest most straight forward approach. I completely agree that the list of design changes for an Inline would be greater (and the more detail you go into the longer that extra list would get).

The trick though is how much of a challenge (how much of a cost) would each of those new starts be. I am pretty familiar with the Side Mount (while I am a payload guy, I have friends who booster ‘guys’ and they are all Side Mount advocates), but I just do not know enough about the Inline to state a hard over opinion.

Also note (keeping up my glass half full image ) that I also said I am not convinced that the Side Mount is out of the running.

Comment by Joe — June 26, 2011 @ 5:32 pm

“I think that Congress gave specific directions to NASA for an HLV for two reasons. First, it was to assure that they would actually build a vehicle, not conduct paper studies for several years and then proclaim it cannot be done.”

It is my understanding that NASA can’t be audited by an accountant [or army of them]- and it has been attempted by some of the best.

Or throwing say 2 billion at NASA, can’t really be tracked- there is fair amount of unknowable involved.
Congress are quite aware of this.
You could fairly easily know how much money NASA paid to a private sector element and what is paid for will be stated- the private sector will attempt to follow whatever procedure is asked for and NASA will confirm these acts were completed.
Knowing whether this “procedure” is “useful”- is the unknowable part- it will be a matter of opinion and those doing it might think it’s worth their paycheck.
What is important is that the paperwork to be correct/verified.

It costs a lot money to tell a large bureaucracy to do anything- they don’t like being told to do anything, and they will do their best so you don’t make that mistake again.
And from their point of view it isn’t their fault- it’s your fault because you are being unnecessarily disruptive of their operations [and they are right].

Comment by gbaikie — June 26, 2011 @ 5:32 pm

“NASA wants to manage, and only advantage a private sector could possibly have is better management.
NASA gets it’s land for free, doesn’t pay anything for it’s capital, it pays no taxes on corporate income, can’t be sued [really], can exclude itself from stupid laws – so socialism should be cheaper- and it isn’t.”

Since NASA belongs to the American people– and not to the international corporations– the American people have the right to give NASA what ever the American people feel is right for the people’s space program. And if it weren’t for the hundreds of billions of dollars of tax payer money invested in aerospace technology by the US government over the past 60 years there would be no $100 billion a year satellite based telecommunications industry and there would be no private space companies like the ULA, Bigelow, and Space X.

Comment by Marcel F. Williams — June 26, 2011 @ 5:41 pm

“LEO has served it’s purpose and is now a dead end for human space flight. The only thing that should be in LEO is satellites. I do not know what to do with the ISS. Perhaps it could be dismantled into sections and EDS sent up to rendezvous and boost them to lunar orbit where they can eventually be used for a moon base in some way. The solar panels should be good for several more years anyway. ”

I think Bigelow space stations (a concept originated by NASA) will start a new age of private space stations mostly for space tourism but also for use by governments and scientist. And the new HLV will be the best way to deploy the largest of these stations. Plus they don’t require the heavy shielding at LEO that such stations would require beyond LEO. I also view LEO space stations as way stations towards the rest of cis-lunar space.

I really don’t think that the age of aerospace planes is over. I’m enthusiastic about the Dream Chaser (another aerospace concept inherited from NASA) and I’d also love to see the DOD’s X-37 space plane scaled up into a larger manned vehicle that could utilize the new space launch vehicle (without the SRBs).

Comment by Marcel F. Williams — June 26, 2011 @ 5:54 pm

[Talking point # 1- Private space and the flexible path is a dead end and camoflauge for the dismantling of the U.S. heavy lift infrastructure and siphoning those tax dollars into investor pockets.]

The problem with heavy lift infrastructure is that we can’t afford it. It’s just that simple. It’s one of those things that would be nice to have if we could afford it.

[Talking point # 2- LEO is not space exploration, space travel, or even space flight anymore. It has been explored and is now endless circles at very high altitude going nowhere.]

I agree completely. But by that token, the Moon isn’t space exploration either. We’ve been there, right? Many times. It may be about resource development, and it may be about future civilization. But it’s not exploration, whatever that word means.

[Talking point # 3- Space flight is inherently expensive, there is no cheap. The DOD budget proves we can afford a large space program. We can build war machines or we can build spaceships.]

The mission of the DoD is national defense. It deserves a large space program because we desperately need the intelligence that space program provides. Launching humans is for what, again?

[Talking point # 4- There is no substitute for a Heavy Lift Vehicle with hydrogen upper stages and a hydrogen Earth Departure Stage. Inferior lift vehicles result in an absurd number of launches.]

You can have an absurd number of launches, or you can have an absurd price for one launcher. Take your pick.

[Talking point # 5- Despite false advertising to the contrary, there is no practical replacement for non-cryogenic storable propellant use in depots and transfer to vehicles in space.]

I’m not sure I’m parsing your double negative properly, but effective cryogenic propellant storage is the ultimate enabler in space exploration. It’s very hard to do in LEO, but not hard to do elsewhere in cis-lunar space.

[Talking point # 11- The profit motive is toxic to space exploration. Only vast governmental resources can build spaceships and construct off world colonies to begin any kind of commerce.]

I suspect you’re right. Except it provides some rationale, which you otherwise don’t have, for “building spaceships and off world colonies”. Bad rationale is, I suppose, better than no rationale.

[Talking point #12- Space tourism, suborbital joy rides, kerosene hobby rockets, inflatable space hotels, and removal of government oversight and control of the space industry is a national humiliation and disaster.]

I agree that it’s pretty funny that this is all we seem to be able to come up with as a commercial rationale for human space flight. Fairly pathetic. National humiliation? Eh, with regard to space, I think Constellation covered that.

Comment by Heinrich Monroe — June 26, 2011 @ 7:07 pm

It is my understanding that NASA can’t be audited by an accountant [or army of them]- and it has been attempted by some of the best.

Simply untrue — the agency is audited all the time by the Office of the Inspector General.

But you miss my point. NASA will spend its budget in any event. It makes more sense to those in Congress (and to me) to have it spend money on doing something rather than nothing. As we are in the process of losing a singular national capability, simple decency requires that the agency to look like they are attempting to create a successor.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — June 27, 2011 @ 4:17 am

The problem with heavy lift infrastructure is that we can’t afford it. It’s just that simple. It’s one of those things that would be nice to have if we could afford it.

Unfortunately, it is not that simple. We could build an operational Shuttle side-mount HLV for a time and budget profile that fits what NASA is anticipated to get. They chose not to do that. It is not “unaffordable” — the current leadership simply prefers to spend the money on other things.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — June 27, 2011 @ 4:21 am

Simply untrue — the agency is audited all the time by the Office of the Inspector General.

But they auditing for different purpose, than what I was talking about.

“But you miss my point. NASA will spend its budget in any event. It makes more sense to those in Congress (and to me) to have it spend money on doing something rather than nothing. As we are in the process of losing a singular national capability, simple decency requires that the agency to look like they are attempting to create a successor.”

But the assumption is that NASA must have a launch vehicle.
Why doesn’t the defense dept need a launch vehicle?
National Aeronautics and Space Administration also researches airplanes, why doesn’t NASA build and operate a airplane?

NASA built the Saturn V because only NASA wanted and needed the Saturn V.
NASA build the Shuttle to lower the cost of getting into space.
Does only NASA want to go to the Moon?
Isn’t the purpose of going to the Moon to explore it?
Don’t want the private sector doing things on the Moon.
Some. Time. Soon?
If the best way to go to the Moon is to use some unique rocket, does this mean the private should also use something similar to this unique rocket?

I don’t want to see NASA lose funding, I want them to start new programs- lunar exploration programs [and other stuff]. I would like them to take this opportunity finish up the Shuttle program [instead flee from it] in a responsible manner.

I can’t see how building a rocket gives the public any benefit. The rocket funding isn’t added to the NASA budget instead it’s taking away, by mandating NASA spend money on developing a rocket.

Comment by gbaikie — June 27, 2011 @ 5:31 am

But the assumption is that NASA must have a launch vehicle.

No, the assumption is that NASA will spend its budget in any event and having them do something productive (like building an HLV) is better use of that money than having them conduct another series of worthless paper studies and Powerpoint engineering.

I can’t see how building a rocket gives the public any benefit.

If you have an HLV (i.e., >70 mT to LEO), you have much more flexibility and options in devising a beyond-LEO architecture. Without one, your path becomes much more dictated by launch constraints. I’m not saying it cannot be done — I am saying that an HLV, if we had one, could be usefully employed, even with depot-based architectures. Moreover, the “commercial” sector is unlikely to develop one because (at least right now), there is no commercial market for one.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — June 27, 2011 @ 8:04 am

Your discussion of the reasons for cancellation of the Shuttle are right on target. It has becaome progressively safer over the years and at this point does not need a crew escape system. This increasing reliability was rigorously examined by Chang in 2001 ( http://www.aero.org/publications/crosslink/winter2001/03.html ) On a moree concrete level, the experience, judgment and motivation of the USA engineers who actually put hands on and maintain and service the Shuttle is, in my experience, unparalleled in industry or government. The tragedy of the cancellation of Shuttle

Where I must take issue with you is in the contention that the Vision for Space Exploration was ever a viable or even a worthwhile program. Many capable people worked on this program. I put all the ability and energy I had into trying to make it better. But at the same time I knew from the very beginning that it would be a failure simply because it produces nothing of any value comparable to its cost. No one in the exploration program seems to understand why we went to the moon ( http://opinionmatters.flatoday.net/2011/04/why-we-went-to-moon.html ) or why this geopolitical imperative is no longer relevant.

At a recent symposium several speakers made a similar point, that human spaceflight will only be sustainable with full reuseability, because otherwise it costs more than a human in space is worth. So the real tragedy of the end of Shuttle is that people with thousands of person-years of real hands-on experience maintaining a real reusable spaceship will be fired, and someday their painful lessons will have to be relearned.

Comment by Dan Woodard, MD — June 27, 2011 @ 8:22 am

Dan,

Thanks for your comments.

Where I must take issue with you is in the contention that the Vision for Space Exploration was ever a viable or even a worthwhile program. Many capable people worked on this program. I put all the ability and energy I had into trying to make it better. But at the same time I knew from the very beginning that it would be a failure simply because it produces nothing of any value comparable to its cost.

We can agree to disagree on this. However, I will note that most of NASA and virtually all of the media did not understand the reason for the VSE and specifically, the importance of the Moon in it. The principal thinking behind it was that we were going to spend ca. $20 billion/year on a space program — what should we do with that “investment”? One option was to continue along the existing path of designing one-off spacecraft for single missions and continue the paradigm of launching everything we need from the bottom of the deepest gravity well in the inner Solar System. The option chosen was the VSE, which was NOT intended to be a “manned Mars mission” or an “Apollo Redux.” The idea was to gradually and incrementally extend our reach beyond LEO with both machines and people, learning how to use the resources of space to create new space faring capability. The Moon was chosen as the first destination because it is the closest and most accessible body with the material resources needed to do this (specifically, using lunar oxygen and hydrogen to make propellant). In contrast to the opinions of certain learned committees, it was and is possible to do this under future restricted budgets — we simply trade money for time and build our new capability in small but cumulative steps.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — June 27, 2011 @ 8:46 am

Comment by Heinrich Monroe — June 26, 2011 @ 7:07 pm
The problem with heavy lift infrastructure is that we can’t afford it. It’s just that simple. It’s one of those things that would be nice to have if we could afford it.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — June 27, 2011 @ 4:21 am
Unfortunately, it is not that simple. We could build an operational Shuttle side-mount HLV for a time and budget profile that fits what NASA is anticipated to get. They chose not to do that. It is not “unaffordable” — the current leadership simply prefers to spend the money on other things.

Heinrich,

I hear this ‘unaffordable’ line of reasoning from the ‘New Space’ community repeatedly. But when I have asked for a better definition of what is meant by ‘unaffordable’ (on other websites) all I have gotten in reply is ad homonym insults aimed at the shuttle and often at me.

Best numbers available for the Side Mount SDHLV are as follows
- Developments cost approximately $ 8 Billion
- Development time approximately 5 years
- Operating cost approximately $2.5 Billion/year (this buys you 6 flights a year at 72 Metric tons a flight)

Perhaps you would care to present some similar numbers as to what you mean when you say ‘unaffordable’.

Comment by Joe — June 27, 2011 @ 9:57 am

If y’all would just give up on the Shuttle, Constellation, SLS, other heavy-lift dreams, and NASA-dominated Human Space Flight, then you might just sleep better at night.

There is no need to have astronauts in space suits beyond LEO any time soon. A huge, huge amount of lunar telerobotic ISRU development can be achieved using existing launchers. Pursue that with vigor and just ignore the Big Rockets That Carry Humans controversy. All we need is a robotic lander that can be launched using the largest three (or so) existing launchers.

Once we’ve expended some real effort on lunar telerobotic ISRU development, then we can start entertaining conversations about human missions. We haven’t done our homework yet.

Give it up!

Comment by Ron Menich — June 27, 2011 @ 10:00 am

Comment by Ron Menich — June 27, 2011 @ 10:00 am

Ron,

Thanks for sharing.

If you are really trying to convince somebody to change their minds you might not want to start out and end by telling them to “give up”.

Not everyone agrees with you that telerobotics (however valuable) can do it all and even if that were true HSF capability is not something that can be turned on/off like a light switch. Give it up now and it will be hard to get back.

Thanks for the ‘concern’ but even though I am troubled by the way things may be going I sleep quite well at night, you seem to be the agitated one.

Comment by Joe — June 27, 2011 @ 11:06 am

“Plus they don’t require the heavy shielding at LEO that such stations would require beyond LEO. I also view LEO space stations as way stations towards the rest of cis-lunar space.”

Marcel,
The HLV can launch EDS (earth departure stages) from a single parking orbit to a TLI (trans-lunar injection burn) and do this using hydrogen in both the HLV and the EDS. In the form of two of those 5 segment SRB’s the HLV is equivalent the first stage on a Saturn V. The size of the robot lander they can throw at the moon is probably around 50 tons. That 50 tons consists of a lander that only has to land once. These large robots that can be landed at the lunar pole by HLV’s can in short order start processing water. The empty EDS fuel tank can also be softlanded and partially filled with water for a shielded habitat. Solar panels can make oxygen to breathe out of the water.
How many HLV launches would be required to make a base? Ten? Twenty? Thirty? It depends on how big you want the base when the astronauts finally get there. Consider we can launch HLV’s for the next quarter century just like we did the last quarter century except instead of a 737 in a vacuum we can send up moon landers.
Without an orbiter we can easily do this ten times a year. We can launch the first robot in a few years by putting a cargo pod on the existing shuttle vehicle.

Floating around in endless circles taking a radiation bath is the past. The way station is the moon. The moon is where you want to launch spacecraft- not LEO. The alternatives to flying straight there with hydrogen HLV/EDS are such inferior schemes it is pathetic.

This is it.
What is decided soon will decide whether we wait many years and spend money for an inline or a few years for a sidemount and spend the money on lunar robots. If the inline HLV gets canceled like constellation the pathetic inferior schemes are all that is left. It is practically a certainty Sidemount will fly since it is basically replacing the orbiter with a cargo pod. The Ares V clone is definitely not a certainty.

Comment by GaryChurch — June 27, 2011 @ 11:21 am

“Best numbers available for the Side Mount SDHLV are as follows
- Developments cost approximately $ 8 Billion
- Development time approximately 5 years
- Operating cost approximately $2.5 Billion/year (this buys you 6 flights a year at 72 Metric tons a flight”

or 432 mts total. The first year of operations would be a total of 10.5 billion spent and would average 1.75 billion per flight.

After 2 years it would average 1.08 billion per flight.
After 3 years it would average .861 billion per flight.

The Falcon heavy

Developement costs 0
time for developmemt 2 years
cost for 8 flights at 125 mil per flight or 1 billion and launch 424 tons.

total savings after 1 one year 9.5 billion
total savings after 2 years 11 billion
total savings after 3 years 12.5 billion.

That savings of 12.5 billion would sure pay for a lot of actual hardware.

Comment by Vladislaw — June 27, 2011 @ 12:59 pm

“Best numbers available for ….

Developement costs 0
time for developmemt 2 years
cost for 8 flights at 125 mil per flight or 1 billion and launch 424 tons.

Hardware built = 0
Adequacy of design = unknown
Number of flights = 0
Cost for development = unknown

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — June 27, 2011 @ 1:54 pm

Vladislaw,

You seem to be basically a nice guy and I try to take you seriously (I really do), but when you say things like:
“The Falcon heavy Developement costs 0”.
You make it very difficult.

I know that the Falcon Heavy is supposed to be based on Falcon 9 components, but the Side Mount is based on Shuttle components and (as another example) the Delta 4 heavy was a three barrel version of the already existing Delta 4 (very similar to what the Falcon Heavy is supposed to be to the Falcon 9). But their development costs are not (were not in the case of the Delta 4 Heavy) 0. In fact the Delta 4 Heavy experienced problems in its first launch that required an investigation, extra costs and schedule delays.

Comment by Joe — June 27, 2011 @ 2:28 pm

“Best numbers available for the Side Mount SDHLV are as follows
- Developments cost approximately $ 8 Billion
- Development time approximately 5 years
- Operating cost approximately $2.5 Billion/year (this buys you 6 flights a year at 72 Metric tons a flight”

Yes, those are numbers I hear too. Why should I believe them? Is this from the same crew that was costing Ares V?

But still, you think we should be spending $2.5B/yr on heavy lift launch vehicles? Six launches per year?? Excuse me, but that’s within a few hundred million of the present total ESMD budget. Payloads? MPCV? Earth departure stages? Ops costs for BEO missions? So I guess we’re going to use those SDHLVs to launch 500 mT of bricks into LEO? Hey, bricks are cheap.

Right now we’re looking at $1.8B for the SLS in FY12. You’re going to take your $2.5B/yr out of that?

Affordability isn’t just measured by how much things cost, but by how big the dollar reservoir is. Your dollar reservoir doesn’t appear big enough.

I’m not interested in how much the HLV will cost. I want to know how much the program it’s supposed to sustain will cost. That number will, of course, include the HLV.

Go for a significant increase in the human space flight budget, ideally without killing off other important NASA investments, and we can credibly talk about sidemount SDHLV.

Comment by Heinrich Monroe — June 27, 2011 @ 2:35 pm

I’m not interested in how much the HLV will cost. I want to know how much the program it’s supposed to sustain will cost. That number will, of course, include the HLV.

That will, of course, depend upon what program is undertaken and what its aims are. For one possible answer, have a look at the architecture Tony Lavoie and I devised for a lunar ISRU processing outpost:

http://www.spudislunarresources.com/Papers/Affordable_Lunar_Base.pdf

Take look at Table 3 of that paper — HLV costs per year are summarized in the pink shaded line 2/3 of the way down the sheet. These numbers are based on a simple 70 metric ton Shuttle side-mount, minimal mods to both the Shuttle stack and Cape infrastructure.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — June 27, 2011 @ 2:46 pm

Comment by Heinrich Monroe — June 27, 2011 @ 2:35 pm
Heinrich,

I will skip the fact that you did not try to answer the question of how much you thought was affordable, but the rest of your response mixes ‘apples with oranges’.

The $1.8 Billion figure you quote for SLS in 2012 is (apparently since you do not source it) based on the Obama 2012 Budget proposal (which the – Democratically controlled Senate – has already told the Administration is not acceptable). Just as important that is in the development (not operational) phase and leaves out the $1.2 Billion (again judged to be inadequate by the Democratically controlled Senate) for the MPCV. The total HSF Budget is approximately $10 Billion that would leave $7.5 Billion for other hardware operations and development at the beginning MPCV/SLS operating phase. Is that the optimal situation? I certainly do not think so; but given the chaos created by the current non-plan it is certainly a big improvement. In fact it is a big step toward sanity.

Comment by Joe — June 27, 2011 @ 3:11 pm

“The Falcon heavy”

Private space continues to promise everything so cheap it cannot be beat. China said it is impossible. I agree. It is smoke and mirrors and SpaceX is planning on making up for all this “cheap” after the heavy lift infrastructure is dismantled. There is no cheap.

The praise and riotous chanting over the falcon 9 after it orbited a capsule and recovered it. Wow. The Falcon 9 is a very poor design. Combining a human rated capsule with a cargo function is a mistake that has already been made. An escape system that is not really an escape system with so little thrust is cheap and nasty. Kerosene is an inferior propellant and every atlas centaur, delta heavy, and the shuttle program as a heavy lift demonstration 100+ missions running. 9 or 27 expendable engines, it does not matter- SpaceX is throwing away turbopumbs and thrust chambers in huge numbers while the TWO SRB’s put out far more thrust and are reusable.

Private space is a hobby rocket tourist industry for a computer whiz kid who is collecting on a political favor. It is criminal.

The wailing and gnashing of teeth over NASA spending-

Who is doing all that wailing and gnashing of teeth?
Who is screaming blue bloody murder about NASA?
We know who it is and they are lying through their teeth.

If there is one kind of program that is a waste of money it is space stations.

Which is all private space can keep promoting. Space stations are endless circles going nowhere.

It is not space travel- you have to go somewhere to travel. There are no resources in LEO except solar power- which is also on the moon. There is no advantage to LEO except for a less harsh radiation environment. But it is still a radiation bath and zero G debilitation lab.

We know about LEO. It is not exploration anymore. There is nothing in LEO. The moon is the next step. We need a real Heavy Lift Vehicle that is not a computer graphic with the hardware available to increase payload to 130 tons.

SpaceX has yet to orbit the weight of one shuttle mission. And that 100 tons is a long long way off.

Everything to build sidemount except for a cargo pod and an engine module is ready right now.

Private space is the worst thing that has ever happened to space flight.

Comment by GaryChurch — June 27, 2011 @ 3:19 pm

“given the chaos created by the current non-plan it is certainly a big improvement. In fact it is a big step toward sanity.”

Most of that chaos can be laid at the feet of the outrageous claims of private space. Musk has claimed launch prices could go as low as 500 dollars a pound and that has made every space clown wannabe think they will go on a space station vacation. What a joke.

The shuttle hardware and even more powerful SRBs waiting for production is the most evolved and powerful heavy lift hardware on earth bar none. Nothing comes close.

And we are going to flush it for a backroom deal for a hobby rocket?

Private space is the worst thing that has ever happened to space flight.

Comment by GaryChurch — June 27, 2011 @ 3:27 pm

-Kerosene is an inferior propellant and every atlas centaur, delta heavy, and the shuttle program as a heavy lift demonstration 100+ missions running.

Sorry, I meant to say those hydrogen upper stage missions all put up far more than a kerosene stage would.

The private space crowd can regurgitage technobabble and advertising all they want but the laws of physics are not going to change so a kerosene upper stage can outperform a hydrogen upper stage.

Sorry for three posts in a row.

Comment by GaryChurch — June 27, 2011 @ 3:31 pm

“If you have an HLV (i.e., >70 mT to LEO), you have much more flexibility and options in devising a beyond-LEO architecture. Without one, your path becomes much more dictated by launch constraints. I’m not saying it cannot be done — I am saying that an HLV, if we had one, could be usefully employed, even with depot-based architectures. Moreover, the “commercial” sector is unlikely to develop one because (at least right now), there is no commercial market for one.”

Which also means everything NASA designs and builds will be based on the 70 ton to LEO. Since any of the stuff could launched without fuel, and refuel in Space, I suppose any of it could launched using available launch [the 70 ton launcher we will consider unavailable to private sector or available in same sense that Shuttle was available].
Or do you think the private sector will use this 70 ton to LEO launcher to go to the Moon.

As for “another series of worthless paper studies and Powerpoint engineering” vs “something productive (like building an HLV)”
I am not sure building the HLV will lack “worthless paper studies”. And I think will need NASA plans regarding Lunar exploration and perhaps this could be called “worthless paper studies” or will require 100 “worthless paper studies” for every paper study that has merit.

Seems to some discussion of Falcon heavy, which at this point is still a paper study. If you think important for NASA to have some private sector make components for this sidemount, can expect NASA will buy launches for Falcon heavy which has same tons to LEO?
Or said differently assuming NASA needs a 70 to LEO, does it want SpaceX, and makers of EELV making their versions of these vehicles too? Or it desirable to only have one type of vehicle which is 70 tons to LEO?

Comment by gbaikie — June 27, 2011 @ 4:08 pm

I am not sure building the HLV will lack “worthless paper studies”. And I think will need NASA plans regarding Lunar exploration and perhaps this could be called “worthless paper studies” or will require 100 “worthless paper studies” for every paper study that has merit.

The difference is in one case, we are actually building flight hardware. If NASA “studies” technology and designs hypothetical human missions to asteroids, nothing gets built. Or flown.

If you think important for NASA to have some private sector make components for this sidemount, can expect NASA will buy launches for Falcon heavy which has same tons to LEO?

Falcon Heavy (if it is ever built) will NOT do the same payload to orbit — it supposedly carries about 53 metric tons to LEO, about 2/3 of what Shuttle side-mount will do. What are you proposing — that we give all of NASA’s budget for human exploration to Musk?

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — June 27, 2011 @ 4:19 pm

So it looks like ending the $3 billion a year shuttle program is probably going to dramatically increase cost for the DOD’s $20 billion a year military space program.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/space/os-military-missile-business-20110626,0,7372393.story

The most logical solution to this problem would have been for the US government to allow the Shuttle program to be taken over by the United Space Alliance (USA) as a privately operated space launch system. USA claimed that as a private operation, they could have continued the Shuttle program for about $1.5 billion a year under a two launch per year scenario to the ISS.

But a private shuttle program would have also allowed USA to compete for military contracts against the ULA (giving the DOD another reliable vendor to choose from) and for private commercial contracts (something the Space Shuttle is currently not allowed to do).

It could also allow the USA to participate in space tourism by deploying private Bigelow Space stations like the BA-330 into orbit and by transporting paying tourist and maybe even space lotto winners to such facilities. The DOD might also have some interest in deploying BA-330 for training military personal in space. A private shuttle program would also allow the vehicle to be used as a rescue craft in case some of the emerging private space vehicles should have troubles in orbit.

There is still time for the Obama administration to move in this– logical direction– even though there would probably be a one or two year gap in manned space missions until new external tanks are built with new flights beginning perhaps in 2013. But practically everyone would win under such a scenario: NASA, the DOD, Boeing, Lockheed, Bigelow, the Florida Space Coast, the tax payers and even Obama’s presidential chances in Florida during the next election.

And, ironically, America would probably get its first fully operational privately operated manned spacecraft– utilizing a very familiar vehicle:-)

Comment by Marcel F. Williams — June 27, 2011 @ 4:21 pm

“I will skip the fact that you did not try to answer the question of how much you thought was affordable, but the rest of your response mixes ‘apples with oranges’.”

Yes, I was using the FY12 budget number, which is, for lack of any other number, the one we’re left to work with. You, however, have mysteriously quoted a $10B number as a reservoir that can be tapped (that includes, I guess, all of SOMD, including ISS), without telling us what specifically would be heaved overboard in order to develop this new launch architecture. As I said, find a way to free up $2.5B/yr without killing off other important NASA investments, and we have something to talk about. You’re saying we dunk ISS? Sure, but it isn’t going to happen for many years, and that $10B you need in the next five years isn’t going to come out of its hide.

I agree we could use a big step towards sanity, but spending $2.5B/year on a launcher whose purpose has yet to be established, isn’t that step. I mean, yet to be established by our leaders. Certainly there is no lack of individuals who have, in their own mind, established rationale for it.

By the way, let’s not refer to Congressional desires in this discussion. Those desires are about jobs, jobs, and only jobs. Those desires have NOTHING to do with space exploration capability.

Comment by Heinrich Monroe — June 27, 2011 @ 5:41 pm

Joe said,

“Not everyone agrees with you that telerobotics (however valuable) can do it all”

I didn’t say “ALL”.

I do maintain, however, that it is not worth talking about HLVs until such time as we have a bunch of telerobotic equipment on the Moon doing useful things and giving us a clear indication of that which we need humans to do that telerobots cannot do.

Before we start talking about HLVs I’d like to see:
* Rovers everywhere
* Equipment inside shadowed polar craters
* ISRU experiments of various types underway

Why do I want to see that first? Because I want to go for the jugular, namely, to ascertain how it is that we can use the resources of the Moon. I don’t want to get sidetracked for years building an HLV.

Comment by Ron Menich — June 27, 2011 @ 5:46 pm

“It could also allow the USA to participate in space tourism by deploying private Bigelow Space stations”

So we can indulge the obscene spending habits of the ultra-rich? We do not need more space clowns, we need a moon base.

“Those desires have NOTHING to do with space exploration capability.”

Private space has NOTHING to do with space exploration.

“spending $2.5B/year on a launcher whose purpose has yet to be established, isn’t that step.”

It has a purpose but you do not like it so it does not exist. It is the only next step that will accomplish anything beyond endless circles- BEO!

The purpose is heavy lift. And all the things you can do with it having to do with space exploration;
things inferior lift vehicles cannot do. You private space advocates do not like that either. You do not like anything except what is in your infomercial and everyone except your good ole boy club is sick of it.

“-it is not worth talking about HLVs until such time as we-”

You want the heavy lift infrastructure gone so those funds can go in another direction. It is pretty transparent what “until such time” means.

The playbook only has a couple pages- screaming about NASA spending and then chanting the cheap rocket mantra, then the space station vacation boy adventure fantasy.

Comment by GaryChurch — June 27, 2011 @ 6:56 pm

Comment by Heinrich Monroe — June 27, 2011 @ 5:41 pm
“You, however, have mysteriously quoted a $10B number as a reservoir that can be tapped”.

There is nothing mysterious about the$10B number, it is (rounded off to the nearest billion) the amount in the Administration’s 2012 Budget Proposal which you were using as a baseline. I simply accepted your assumptions for sake of argument.

“without telling us what specifically would be heaved overboard in order to develop this new launch architecture. As I said, find a way to free up $2.5B/yr without killing off other important NASA investments, and we have something to talk about.”

I do not think ISS (which you specifically mention) would have to be “heaved overboard” as you so melodramatically put it. Maybe you would care to say what areas of that $10B you are so anxious to defend.

“By the way, let’s not refer to Congressional desires in this discussion. Those desires are about jobs, jobs, and only jobs. Those desires have NOTHING to do with space exploration capability.”

When the Chairmen/Ranking Members (along with the voting majorities) of all of the Authorization/Appropriation Committees/Subcommittees of both the House and Senate disagree with a proposed budget to not refer to the fact is not in any way productive.

One other point, since this has overtones of other internet discussions:
The Good news for you is – It’s a free country – you are entitled to your opinion.
The Bad news for you is – It’s a free country – you are not entitled to tell other people what they are allowed to talk about.

Comment by Joe — June 27, 2011 @ 7:18 pm

Comment by Ron Menich — June 27, 2011 @ 5:46 pm
“I do maintain, however, that it is not worth talking about HLVs until such time as we have a bunch of telerobotic equipment on the Moon doing useful things and giving us a clear indication of that which we need humans to do that telerobots cannot do.”

I can only interpret this as a plan to go robotics only and then when we discover where the robots (even telerobots) fail restart an abandoned HSF program to fill in the holes.

That is a prescription for disaster whether the proposed program be government or (especially) commercial.

Try to picture yourself going before a group of private investors saying something like:
“I know you have invested $X Billion in this venture for the last Y years, but we are at a standstill. We need humans on the Moon but we currently have no capability to get them there. But if you are only willing to give another $Z Billion over the next 10 years we can fix this little problem. Oh and by the way your repayment income stream on you initial investment will be delayed by 15 years (20 tops – really).

What do you think your chances would be of getting out of the room in one piece?

Comment by Joe — June 27, 2011 @ 7:34 pm

Dr. Spudis – good post… well done. The sad deal is… once Obama loses next year, we start all over again, or close to it. It’s a helluva way to do business.

Comment by Jim R. — June 27, 2011 @ 8:10 pm

“The private space crowd can regurgitage technobabble and advertising all they want but the laws of physics are not going to change so a kerosene upper stage can outperform a hydrogen upper stage.”

Like so much else in engineering, it’s not that simple. If you already have an existing booster you absolutely must use, then the total upper stage mass is fixed by the booster lift capacity minus payload. If you need to launch the heaviest possible payload, then a hydrogen-fueled upper stage will provide greater payload, particularly for GTO where the delta-V requirement is quite high.

But if you are just going to LEO than the advantage is not as great, because upper stage thrust rather than impulse may become limiting and a kerosine stage produces greater thrust for a given mass. And if you are designing a new combination of booster and upper stage, as SpaceX was with the Falcon 9, then the limiting factor is not mass at all, it is cost. In that case if you can reduce the number of different engines and propellant services required, then it may be less expensive to use a booster with more thrust, which will allow you to increase the upper stage mass. Eliminating LH2 substantially reduces the upper stage volume and the total vehicle size and empty mass, all of which reduce processing cost.

The Falcon 9 is not unusual in terms of performance, but if you actually add up the processing manhours and infrastructure requirements it has a significant advantage over other medium-lift designs.

Comment by Dan Woodard, MD — June 27, 2011 @ 8:20 pm

“Falcon Heavy (if it is ever built) will NOT do the same payload to orbit — it supposedly carries about 53 metric tons to LEO, about 2/3 of what Shuttle side-mount will do. What are you proposing — that we give all of NASA’s budget for human exploration to Musk?”

I wouldn’t say we are giving human space flight to the Russian because they lifting NASA astronaut to ISS. I would say it is bad idea to depend solely upon the Russians to get to ISS- they already seem to be raising prices, and that isn’t the biggest concern.
Similarly depending solely on Musk would be a bad idea. Musk could drop dead, if nothing else:)

But as far as “all of NASA’s budget” launch cost doesn’t have to be most of the cost of the program. Launch cost isn’t a significant cost for satellites. Launch cost isn’t more than half the cost of NASA robotic missions.
When one talks about the Apollo program it’s not the same as talking about the cost of Saturn V launches. Though the plan of Apollo was to spend the higher percentage of program towards making the rocket- the simplify [and get to the Moon quicker] and also lower the cost of rest of program.
So I would tend to pay more of a program towards launch costs, but wouldn’t imagine that a NASA exploration could cost nearly the same cost as the launch costs. Roughly if there was a total 4 billion in launch cost, it would depend largely time of program- if 5 years, then the launch cost could be say 1/4 of the total costs. If 10 years and 4 billion worth of launch cost, then it would be a smaller fraction of total budget. The length of program is larger factor in costs than launch costs [normally].

And so a Manned Mars has to cost much more than than Manned Lunar, and it’s desirable to pay more for Manned Mars as compared to Manned Lunar. From this “angle” one can see why Manned Mars is more appealing- it’s more generous and stable job program.

So I would say we don’t need a 70 ton lift for manned Lunar exploration. A 70 ton lift might considered better for Manned Mars- but I don’t think it’s needed.
Now if you want a Lunar exploration done quickly- less than 5 years and then one then jumps quickly to Manned Mars- there is some merit to the heavier lift- less program time needed. But also a lot more money per year needed- and could result in lower total program costs.
But what I see is time and money being consumed by making a rocket and no or little funds to do the exploration of anywhere.

Comment by gbaikie — June 27, 2011 @ 8:39 pm

IMO, what people don’t seem to understand is if we get a new shuttle derived inline SLS, we’re going to get an HLV that could eventually be scaled up to be capable of lifting nearly 200 tonnes (LOX/LH2 core vehicle, upper stage, plus four 5-segment SRBs) into orbit or scaled down to lift as little as 10 or 20 tonnes into orbit (core vehicle without an upper stage or SRBs) as proposed by Boeing.

A shuttle derived SLS could be a remarkably versatile machine used for a variety of manned and unmanned missions.

Comment by Marcel F. Williams — June 27, 2011 @ 9:23 pm

So let me get this right. We should continue to fly the Shuttle because we probably will need its capabilities some day (noting, of course, that we haven’t yet needed (except in a contrived way) its capabilities in the past 30 years!)? The obvious solution is to build the capability when you need it, not a few decades before.

Similarly, if the ISS is destroyed, then it’ll be cheaper to put a new station up, using existing commercial flight, than to maintain the Shuttle and use that.

You can’t discuss the Shuttle before doing, at the least, a basic cost/benefit analysis. First, the cost/benefit analysis would note that the Shuttle is very expensive in fixed costs, has an uncompetitive cost per kg even when you take into account just marginal costs, and will require the construction of new orbiters in order to remain viable. The primary benefits of Shuttle service are slightly larger fairing size, considerable downmass, and built-in ability to manipulate objects in space, none of which is particularly valuable at this time. I know some people disagree, but capability that isn’t used is useless. So it costs a lot of money and doesn’t deliver much.

Further, it’s worth noting that NASA has yet to develop a replacement for the Shuttle despite copious evidence and pressure starting after the Challenger accident in 1986. My view is that the Shuttle itself was the primary obstacle to producing a replacement for the Shuttle.

No let’s do a comparison to (“free advertising” for) SpaceX. According to NASA itself, NASA would price a contract to duplicate SpaceX’s current efforts by at least a factor of ten more. The actual cost of the contract would be significantly more (given the tradition of understating the costs of such projects). We have solid evidence that the current NASA approaches to space launch are grossly inadequate and ridiculously expensive.

So I find it laughable to discuss extending the life of the
Shuttle when the commercial approach has demonstrated potential far beyond that.

Comment by Karl Hallowell — June 28, 2011 @ 12:02 am

Space flight is inherently expensive, there is no cheap.

Yeah, there is. It’s being built, even as we speak, in a giant white building on Crenshaw Blvd. in Hawthorne, CA.

Comment by Dick Eagleson — June 28, 2011 @ 2:52 am

Karl,

So I find it laughable to discuss extending the life of the Shuttle when the commercial approach has demonstrated potential far beyond that.

We’re all glad that you’re amused. But the fact is that commercial has demonstrated little capability as of yet, except to make stupendous and frankly unbelievable assertions and promises on the basis of modest progress. In the mean time, a national capability is being destroyed. But as you’re OK with that, you can keep laughing.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — June 28, 2011 @ 4:01 am

The facts as NASA found them, relating to SpaceX, are:

Falcon 1 & 9 development costs would be :

$4 billion using the standard NASA development setup
$1.7 billion with a “more commercial approach”
$390 million dollars as done by SpaceX (verified by NASA)

In addition to this a variety of companies such as Boeing, Sierra Nevada and OSC are building spacecraft based on pricing which is in the ballpark of the “more commercial approach” above.

A good question would be how we can use this knowledge. If applied to an HLV program, the “more commercial approach” would lead to a saving of a number of billions. Which could then fund something to go on top. A lunar lander say.

Comment by Malmesbury — June 28, 2011 @ 6:31 am

“The principal thinking behind it was that we were going to spend ca. $20 billion/year on a space program — what should we do with that “investment”? The idea was to gradually and incrementally extend our reach beyond LEO with both machines and people, learning how to use the resources of space to create new space faring capability.”

I appreciate your willingness to discuss these important issues, and understand that this was the rationale behind Constellation. But I have difficulty following this logic. Why should we spend $20B/yr, or even $1, on a program if it doesn’t provide real practical benefits for America?

The Shuttle program was initiated because human spaceflight is not economically productive at a cost of over $20M/seat to LEO. In fact, to increase sales of seats to space to even 50 a year, still not much of a market, the cost must be reduced by an order of magnitude.(see http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/383313main_25%20-%2020090808.3.practical-benefits.pdf )

Obviously shuttle failed to achieve its cost objectives. Nevertheless without full reusability a significant reduction in cost is clearly impossible, since over 80% of launch cost is in vehicle fabrication. However over the past ten years NASA has abandoned every RLV program, including X-33, X-34, DC-X, X-37, and now Shuttle. The USA workers who know every centimeter of the Shuttle, with all their ideas about how its problems could be solved in a new design, are to be fired and dispered. Their experience, to the extent it is even compiled, will likely sit on a shelf.

There are other priorities for NASA. Roughly a billion people travel by air for every person who travels in space, yet the aeronautics program, NACA/NASA’s original mission, is small and anemic. The weather satellite program is severely underfunded, although lives are in the balance there as well.

I using the dynamic light scattering system developed for USML to try to prove a new theory of the cause of Alzheimer’s disease. This is a condition that is newly diagnosed in 500,000 Americans every year, more than a thousand a day, It is often fatal and has no cure. We need about $100K/yr for this project. I think would be a good investment for NASA. It might save many lives (http://ftalz.com ). I think their lives are important. What do you think? Isn’t this the “spinoff” the public hopes to see? Should NASA support such human research, even if it isn’t critical to sending Americans to the moon, when it can save lives and requires the special capabilities we have developed?

Comment by Dan Woodard, MD — June 28, 2011 @ 7:47 am

The facts as NASA found them, relating to SpaceX, are

A NASA “estimate” isn’t a “fact” any more than one of SpaceX’s press releases is. If you choose to believe those numbers, more power to you. Others may have reservations.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — June 28, 2011 @ 8:05 am

I appreciate your willingness to discuss these important issues, and understand that this was the rationale behind Constellation. But I have difficulty following this logic. Why should we spend $20B/yr, or even $1, on a program if it doesn’t provide real practical benefits for America?

Because it does have real, practical value. I describe those benefits in these documents:

http://www.spudislunarresources.com/Rationale.htm

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1376

I describe how to achieve those benefits in an affordable manner here:

http://www.spudislunarresources.com/Papers/Affordable_Lunar_Base.pdf

I using the dynamic light scattering system developed for USML to try to prove a new theory of the cause of Alzheimer’s disease. This is a condition that is newly diagnosed in 500,000 Americans every year, more than a thousand a day, It is often fatal and has no cure. We need about $100K/yr for this project. I think would be a good investment for NASA.

Good for you, but what does this have to do with space? If you arguing for a cancellation of the space program in favor of funding your own (and other) medical projects, NIH already gets more than half again as much as NASA per year now. Isn’t that enough? I guess not.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — June 28, 2011 @ 8:10 am

[...] D. Spudis has written a piece that sums up neatly where our current manned space program is going, or rather not going. He argues that the Shuttle, while not the best system, is a working system, [...]

Pingback by A clearheaded description of our current manned space program… « The Old Gray Cat — June 28, 2011 @ 8:24 am

> Paul D. Spudis
> How long will our rapidly growing government (with its rapidly shrinking discretionary
> budget) patiently support “commercial” New Space efforts?

Judging from Congresses very cool reception (and major budget cuts) to CCDev, and their pointedly issuing a paper a couple weeks back pointing out COTS $/Kg to ISS was higher then shuttle or Progress, and their revoking the special contracting rules used to lower the bureaucratic overhead for projects like COTS and CCDev: I think they are about to cut the NewSpace folks lose and focus their resources on old school projects.

> Comment by Paul D. Spudis — June 26, 2011 @ 1:46 pm
> I think that Congress gave specific directions to NASA for an HLV for two reasons.
> First, it was to assure that they would actually build a vehicle, not conduct
> paper studies for several years and then proclaim it cannot be done. ==
> Second, it was an attempt by Congress to maintain a personnel and
> industrial capability that was about to be abandoned forever. Building
> a Shuttle-derived HLV may be a non-optimum solution, but it’s something
> and could serve as the basis for a renewed spaceflight capability in the event
>the “new direction” falls on its face.

Major agree on all points, though you could argue that the “new direction” alreday fell on its face.

Comment by Kelly Starks — June 28, 2011 @ 10:10 am

> Comment by JohnHunt — June 26, 2011 @ 1:41 am
> Then along comes SpaceX. From scratch the company keeps working at it.
> Set backs yes but apparently perfecting the technology. ==

??
Ah they have a very high failure rate in their program and launches (vastly higher then they were projecting), with crude tech. How’s that mastering the technology?

>==Blowing budgets? No.

I’d call this one as a yes, and their development program costs being tens of times cheaper then other commercial, and a hundred times cheaper then NASA, makes one really wonder what corners they are cutting.

>==. Low $/kg? It’s signing contracts at posted prices. =
Again, half their paying flights are to NASA who is seeing $/kg numbers higher then anything they were getting before.

So this adds up to high cost, low quality, low reliability. Not a real game-changer. And SpaceX’s increasingly strident (and vicious) statements when asked hard questions is a bad sign for how secure they are feeling.

Comment by Kelly Starks — June 28, 2011 @ 10:11 am

> Comment by GaryChurch — June 26, 2011 @ 12:24 pm
>.. The space plane is a failed concept…

Say what? Shuttle was (even adjusting for inflation) cheaper to develop then the capsule and booster replacements, much cheaper to operate, and delivered cargo to orbit (even carrying the full NASA bureaucratic overhead, and NASA refusal to allow cost reduction efforts) at a cost SpaceX and Orbital couldn’t meet COTS. All with the best safety record in history, and delivering 2/3rds of all people and half of all cargo that humans ever took to orbit. Again all that while buried in NASA and federal gov BS, with a half completed patched together design.

… So how does this say failed concept to you?

>== for all that mass making the shuttle work a tremendous amount of payload
> could have been orbited. ==
Again, shuttle has dominated cargo lift in human history, and it lifts the tonnage it was designed to lift. The extra weight means nothing but a negligible increase in fuel costs, which are well under 1/1000th the per launch costs. Other then geek creed for cooler cargo to dry weight mass ratios, what’s the practical issue with the extra mass? In trade the wings alone give you safer, cooler reentry temps, and gentler cheaper landings and recoveries, and you don’t soak you system in salt water.

Also being a duel use (cargo and crew) vehicle cuts costs by halving your development costs for 2 separate vehicles.

> Comment by GaryChurch — June 27, 2011 @ 3:31 pm
>
> the laws of physics are not going to change so a kerosene upper stage can
> outperform a hydrogen upper stage.

Actually a Kerosene upper always outperforms ni the equations of any importance. Cost per launch, $/kg to orbit, development costs, etc.

Comment by Kelly Starks — June 28, 2011 @ 10:14 am

60. It was my understanding that NASA verified the SpaceX numbers in detail. They then ran the project through the standard cost model they use for comparison. I’m not sure where we can get harder data than that. Apart from building the same systems with the NASA and “more commercial” project styles.

The “more commercial approach” is interesting and I am very surprised that the possibility of halving costs has not received more interest.

Comment by Malmesbury — June 28, 2011 @ 10:14 am

> Comment by Marcel F. Williams — June 27, 2011 @ 4:21 pm
>
> == The most logical solution to this problem would have been for the US
>government to allow the Shuttle program to be taken over by the United
>Space Alliance (USA) as a privately operated space launch system. USA claimed
>that as a private operation, they could have continued the Shuttle program for
>about $1.5 billion a year under a two launch per year scenario to the ISS.
>
>But a private shuttle program would have also allowed USA to compete for military
>contracts against the ULA (giving the DOD another reliable vendor to choose from)
>and for private commercial contracts (something the Space Shuttle is currently
>not allowed to do). ==

Excellent points. Yes commercializing the Shuttles would have dramatically improved shuttles cost and safety. Concerns about the sustainability of the ISS would end. It would also allow it to expand into other markets – and the commercial operators would likely have adopted the cost savings, and safety increasing, low cost refits NASA had to forgo for political reasons. Which could have been a major step forward for the US and the worlds abilities in space.

The fact the offer was utterly ignored by NASA and Congress is telling.

Comment by Kelly Starks — June 28, 2011 @ 10:15 am

I’m not sure where we can get harder data than that.

Cost estimates are not “hard data” — they are someone’s attempt to look into the future. Nobody believes NASA’s cost estimates when they give them for their own projects, so why should their estimates of SpaceX’s costs be any more believable?

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — June 28, 2011 @ 10:39 am

@Joe:

You wrote,

“I can only interpret this as a plan to go robotics only and then when we discover where the robots (even telerobots) fail restart an abandoned HSF program to fill in the holes.”

The entire offshore oil industry is predicated upon the success of ROVs, Remotely Operated Vehicles, to perform operations on the sea floor.

Comment by Ron Menich — June 28, 2011 @ 11:13 am

68. The estimates were for doing the development the “NASA way” and the “more commerical”. The cost model in question is NASA owned and reportedly calibrated by past development efforts

The SpaceX development cost was the hardest number – that is what they spent as double checked by NASA.

As to whether NASA could have done Falcon 1 & 9 for $4 billion – well, I agree that is probably on the optimistic side.

But shouldn’t we be asking about the “more commercial” costing – why is that half?

Comment by Malmesbury — June 28, 2011 @ 11:15 am

But shouldn’t we be asking about the “more commercial” costing – why is that half?

By all means, ask away. But not me — they are the ones making that assertion.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — June 28, 2011 @ 11:25 am

Comment by Ron Menich — June 28, 2011 @ 11:13 am
“The entire offshore oil industry is predicated upon the success of ROVs, Remotely Operated Vehicles, to perform operations on the sea floor.”

Hi Ron,

We had this whole discussion on this very website a while back and I am not going to go through the whole thing again.

The “entire offshore oil industry” uses ROVs exclusively only when they are working at depths where a dexterous human presence is not practical. Anytime human presence is practical, they use divers/saturation divers in addition to ROVs. What those Ocean Floor ROVs are expected to do is relatively (note please I said relatively) simple compared to the activities being discussed for the Lunar Surface. Since a dexterous Human presence is obviously achievable on the Moon this debate serves no purpose. If you insist on having it again you will have to have it with someone else, I already took my turn.

Comment by Joe — June 28, 2011 @ 12:42 pm

Comment by Joe — June 27, 2011 @ 7:18 pm
“I do not think ISS (which you specifically mention) would have to be “heaved overboard” as you so melodramatically put it. Maybe you would care to say what areas of that $10B you are so anxious to defend.”

But you *still* aren’t answering the question. Where specifically is the $2.5B/yr going to come from? There are many parts of the budget that I can defend, but since you’re out to reallocate $2.5B, I was just curious what activity it was going to come out of. I’m not trying to reallocate anything. That $10B is a dollar reservoir only to the extent you can make obligations of it go away.

“When the Chairmen/Ranking Members (along with the voting majorities) of all of the Authorization/Appropriation Committees/Subcommittees of both the House and Senate disagree with a proposed budget to not refer to the fact is not in any way productive.”

They disagree with certain restricted parts of the budget. Specifically, the provision for HLV. But they disagree with those parts, as I said, largely because of jobs. In many respects, I really believe that NASA’s slow progress on human space flight isn’t the fault of the agency. Congress has been the ultimate obstacle to (even as they should be the ultimate enabler of) progress in human space flight. I think that’s one of the big advantages of commercial, in that they are not hamstrung by job-focused politicians, whose rationale is based on zip code, and who would micromanage the agency by designing launch architecture for them to launch things that are as yet unspecified.

[gratuitous remarks deleted]

Comment by Heinrich Monroe — June 28, 2011 @ 12:53 pm

@Karl Hallowell

There are no private commercial manned spaceflight companies that are operational in America right now. So we really have no idea what their reliability and accident rates are going to be and how much they will cost once they are fully operational. One fatal accident early in the Space X vehicle crew launch program could also be fatal for the company and could greatly increase the cost of other private crew launch vehicles.

Comment by Marcel F. Williams — June 28, 2011 @ 1:24 pm

“Yes commercializing the Shuttles would have dramatically improved shuttles cost and safety.”

Give it a break Kelly. The shuttle is gone. Why are you taking up space on this forum talking about what is not going to happen?

We are talking about what could happen.

The issue here is the heavy lift infrastructure. That means the VAB, crawlers, pads, hydrogen, etc. More than anything else it means those SRB’s, that ET, and important for the immediate future at least, the SSME’s.

Human space flight must evolve or go extinct. LEO is the past, BEO is the future. The means to go BEO in the immediate future is a cargo sidemount. A moon base is the next step. With water a base becomes easier to establish.
Much easier.

SpaceX sycophants should be arguing FOR an SDHLV! The dragon can be the people transporter for the rest of the century if space flight advances. If we are trapped in orbit for decades to come SpaceX has a far higher chance of closing it’s doors. The only thing in LEO should be satellites. The moon is the jumping off point for the rest of the solar system- not LEO.

Dragon can rendezvous in orbit with EDS lofted by Sidemount and escape the endless circle dead end. The orion capsule? If dragon can go up as cheaply as advertised then orion will be used for other things. Transporting fissionables (not people) to the moon is a good mission for it.

Why fissionables? Because there is no solar power in the outer solar system. There are 100+ moons suitable for offworld colonies in the outer solar system. Launching to those destinations from the moon is an order of magnitude easier than from earth- or LEO.

Beam propulsion is now the game changing space technology and beam boosting from the moon will open up the solar system.

This is the situation- move forward and colonize the solar system or be imprisoned in LEO for a very long time to come. Sidemount cargo is the critical issue right now.

If I was Musk I would go on TV and throw my support behind a Cargo Sidemount.

Unless he really thinks he is going to retire on Mars from the money he makes taking the good ole boys on space station vacations.

Comment by GaryChurch — June 28, 2011 @ 1:26 pm

“The entire offshore oil industry is predicated upon the success of ROVs, Remotely Operated Vehicles, to perform operations on the sea floor.”

It is not “predicated” on that anyway. Actually those operations were formerly carried out by manned submersibles. They use ROV’s because they are “cheaper.”

And they failed miserably in stopping the BP spill.

[remarks edited]

Comment by GaryChurch — June 28, 2011 @ 1:33 pm

To all posters,

Future posts that become personal and accuse the other party of deliberate falsification shall be summarily deleted. Ditto personal attacks and snarky remarks, the degree of which I shall be the judge. I’ve let a bit too much go by on this thread already and I can see that it was a mistake. I shall now rectify my error.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — June 28, 2011 @ 1:50 pm

Let me know if you need to borrow my cattle prod for use on your “fans” …

Comment by Keith Cowing — June 28, 2011 @ 2:08 pm

Comment by Heinrich Monroe — June 28, 2011 @ 12:53 pm
“But you *still* aren’t answering the question. Where specifically is the $2.5B/yr going to come from?”

Actually I already answered the question (at least one possible answer) but maybe I was not specific enough. The current Administration budget proposal for 2012 (which you took as baseline) has $1.8B for SLS and $1.2B for MPCV that is $3B ($0.5B more than the $2.5B). That is for the development phase. The $2.5B you ask about is for the operational phase. Since your assumption was a static budget based on the Administration proposed 2012 Budget, there is your $2.5B with $0.5B to spare (and nothing had to get heaved overboard).

Comment by Joe — June 28, 2011 @ 2:12 pm

@Joe:

You wrote,

“Since a dexterous Human presence is obviously achievable on the Moon this debate serves no purpose.”

You are wrong. Robotic landers have landed on Mars, Titan and elsewhere in recent years. By contrast, no human has walked on the Moon in 39 years. It is not now achievable to get back to the Moon with humans with Big Rockets. It seems as though it should be, given that we did it successfully 39 years ago. But it’s not. The problem is not technical, but rather political. The proof is right in front of you.

Comment by Ron Menich — June 28, 2011 @ 2:24 pm

Let me know if you need to borrow my cattle prod

Many thanks, but the “Trash” and “Delete permanently” keys are working just fine.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — June 28, 2011 @ 2:52 pm

Comment by Ron Menich — June 28, 2011 @ 2:24 pm
Ron:
“By contrast, no human has walked on the Moon in 39 years. It is not now achievable to get back to the Moon with humans with Big Rockets. It seems as though it should be, given that we did it successfully 39 years ago. But it’s not. The problem is not technical, but rather political.”

The same political problems that could prevent a useful human return to the moon could also prevent the kind of telerobotics we are discussing (the Mars Rovers are interesting but small and simple compared to what would be required for Lunar Industrial purposes).

So if you are going to give up on one the other would be in jeopardy as well.

But that is really not the point, the point is that if you ‘bet the farm’ on a robots only approach you are likely to lose the farm and it is not necessary to do that.

I understand that you believe that the undersea work proves you to be correct, but (based on my own experience) I simply do not think that is true. We went through all this once before and nothing has changed since then (including our opinions).

I will state my own opinion on this subject once more then bow out of this particular discussion, if we give up all the expertise developed over the decades in HSF we are unlikely to get it back and this country will be the worse for it.

Comment by Joe — June 28, 2011 @ 3:17 pm

Joe,

the point is that if you ‘bet the farm’ on a robots only approach you are likely to lose the farm and it is not necessary to do that.

And that is why Tony Lavoie and I chose a hybrid “robots THEN people” approach to lunar return. Also, making the robots small and incremental permits easier midcourse corrections if you’ve guessed wrong about some job or difficulty in the processing stream.

if we give up all the expertise developed over the decades in HSF we are unlikely to get it back and this country will be the worse for it.

I agree completely with this and that was the basic point of this post.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — June 28, 2011 @ 3:30 pm

Ok, to distill down the argument that dr. Spudis seems to be making ( correct me if im wrong ) : NASA is going to blow the budget anyway, so lets have them do something potentiall useful, i.e. a HLV.

Which somehow ignores the entire world of OTHER things that they could blow their budget on, like say, building some hardware that would actually fly somewhere ? Planetary landers, ISRU prototypes, tugs, communication relay satellites and networks, power beaming prototypes .. the list is endless.

Comment by kert — June 28, 2011 @ 3:50 pm

Which somehow ignores the entire world of OTHER things that they could blow their budget on, like say, building some hardware that would actually fly somewhere ? Planetary landers, ISRU prototypes, tugs, communication relay satellites and networks, power beaming prototypes .. the list is endless.

I haven’t ignored it — I’m just saying that none of those things will be done.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — June 28, 2011 @ 4:32 pm

“It is not now achievable to get back to the Moon with humans with Big Rockets.”

Wrong. It is just as achievable as robots. All it takes is money;

[Talking point # 3- Space flight is inherently expensive, there is no cheap. The DOD budget proves we can afford a large space program. We can build cold war toys or we can build spaceships.]

“Planetary landers, ISRU prototypes, tugs, communication relay satellites and networks, power beaming prototypes”

Not much use for any of that till it can be launched for pennies on the dollar from a moon base. You can keep “blowing the budget” or you can invest in a future that expands the entire space and nuclear industry.

An HLV allows a moon base- a very large moon base- in a time scale of about a quarter century. That is with a Sidemount Cargo vehicle launching 10 times a year.

Dr. Spudis might be able to speculate a little on this. With the ability to soft land empty EDS stages and fill them with water and use them as the primary structures the base would provide complete radiation shielding, air to breathe from splitting water, Hydrogen fuel storage, and even greenhouses to grow food in.

A hydrogen EDS stage is basically skylab. An empty skylab can be landed with the same hypergolic engines used on the Apollo service module and still in use on Delta upper stages.

A couple hundred of these stages could be on the moon and filling up with people in a quarter century- with Sidemount.

All of the alternatives with Inferior Lift Vehicles are hopelessly complicated and the number of launches to duplicate the HLV built base is truly absurd. We would be waiting till the next century on a moon base.

This scenario is based on the flight rate of the Shuttle without the money hole orbiter.

[Talking point # 11- The profit motive is toxic to space exploration. Only vast governmental resources can build spaceships and construct off world colonies to BEGIN any any kind of commerce.]

As for Beam Propulsion, 2 million dollars has already been spent buying a megawatt gyrotron to begin building a prototype engine. Since the engine is basically an LH2 tank and a nozzle, it will not take long. The main component- relatively inexpensive microwave projectors- are now in production.

Comment by GaryChurch — June 28, 2011 @ 6:34 pm

Cost estimates are not “hard data” — they are someone’s attempt to look into the future. Nobody believes NASA’s cost estimates when they give them for their own projects, so why should their estimates of SpaceX’s costs be any more believable?

Paul,

NASA’s findings about SpaceX’s costs are not “estimates,” they are audited facts. The development of the Merlin engine, Falcon 1, Falcon 9 and the Dragon capsule have already occurred. NASA didn’t have to “estimate” anything, they simply had to get ahold of SpaceX’s receipts, so to speak, and add them up.

Why is it you do not believe these numbers? Do you imagine Elon Musk has access to a bottomless secret slush fund of some kind? You seem to accord NASA an unconditional credibility advantage over New Space in every other respect; why the exception for this report? And why are the Chinese suddenly more credible than NASA on this one subject?

Moving on, the actual estimate part of the NASA report is for the hypothetical development of comparable capability via both their own established processes and a never-tried-with-anything-to-this-point “more commercial” approach whose detailed definition is sketchy. About these numbers, as you have correctly noted, there is room for skepticism. But all of said justified skepticism is in the direction of NASA’s estimates being too low. This means that the further off these NASA estimates would be, the better SpaceX looks by comparison.

So far as I’m concerned, the most remarkable thing about NASA’s report is not its conclusions but its bare existence. To say that a report which, in effect, announces, “Hey, these guys really did build big rockets for no more than 10 percent what it would take us to do the same thing,” is a statement against self-interest is an understatement of epic proportions. It’s a Kinsleyan Gaffe on an institutional level; someone slipped up and told the bald truth.

I’ll make a little prediction here. 24 months from now, SpaceX will have two or three successful ISS resupply missions notched up and a successful first launch of the Falcon Heavy. Shuttle sidemount HLV will still be a non-starter along with the by-then-cancelled SLS. If you want to go to the Moon, you’re going to need to see a man in Hawthorne, CA. He’s easy to find. Just look for the huge white building next to the airport. It’s right across the street from Lowe’s.

Comment by Dick Eagleson — June 28, 2011 @ 6:51 pm

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — June 28, 2011 @ 3:30 pm
“that is why Tony Lavoie and I chose a hybrid “robots THEN people” approach to lunar return.”

Dr. Spudis,

My comments were not directed at the Spudis/ Lavoie plan but at what (I believe) Ron to was saying.

As previously stated I think you will need human intervention earlier than the plan currently allows, but since you also support continued HSF development (including BEO activity) this is a matter of tactics not strategy. The details can be worked out when the plan becomes more developed and (assuming parallel development of the Lunar ISRU equipment and HSF capabilities) they can also be implemented.

Now let’s just hope that is what happens.

Comment by Joe — June 28, 2011 @ 7:28 pm

@Joe & Paul:

Joe wrote:
“if we give up all the expertise developed over the decades in HSF we are unlikely to get it back and this country will be the worse for it.
”

then Paul wrote
“I agree completely with this and that was the basic point of this post.”

If HSF is important, then it will be built. If it is not important, then it won’t. Why do you have fear that if you let Shuttle infrastructure go, you’ll never get it back? What prevents us from carefully mothballing that infrastructure? Planes are carefully mothballed and sit out in the desert for years and are then resuscitated and fly again.

The time is now for telerobotic development, not for developing HLVs. Robots first, then humans.

Comment by Ron Menich — June 28, 2011 @ 9:06 pm

Joe > the best answer available for the Side Mount indicates a cost per pound of about $2,500/pound for six launches/year.

Can you give a hyperlink reference to that? Thx.

Comment by JohnHunt — June 28, 2011 @ 10:19 pm

I haven’t ignored it — I’m just saying that none of those things will be done.

Yes they wont, because NASA will be busy blowing their cash on building yet another rocket as you advocate. Circular logic.

Comment by kert — June 28, 2011 @ 10:33 pm

If HSF is important, then it will be built. If it is not important, then it won’t

That’s probably the most vacuous formulation on this topic I’ve ever read.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — June 29, 2011 @ 3:20 am

Yes they wont, because NASA will be busy blowing their cash on building yet another rocket as you advocate. Circular logic.

Nothing circular about it. If what you advocate happens, you’ll just get a decade of paper studies and Powerpoint charts. At least, that’s been the agency’s record for the last 30 years.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — June 29, 2011 @ 3:23 am

Joe,

My comments were not directed at the Spudis/ Lavoie plan but at what (I believe) Ron to was saying.

Yes, I understand that. I was just throwing in my two cents. As for when humans are involved in lunar return, our architecture tries to maintain complete flexibility — it’s simply a matter of money. If we have more than anticipated, humans come earlier.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — June 29, 2011 @ 3:29 am

Dick,

You seem to accord NASA an unconditional credibility advantage over New Space in every other respect

No one who had ever read even one-tenth of what I have written on this blog over the last two years could possibly believe that statement.

I don’t have a problem with what SpaceX is trying to do. My only point (and this is not a criticism) is that they haven’t done anything yet. In Falcon 9, they have a flight system under development. That’s great and more power to them. What they do not have is an operational system from which we could get a real idea of what it costs to build and operate. From their payload deliveries to orbit, we could estimate the cost to deliver a kilogram to LEO. As for the Falcon Heavy, that’s simply another paper rocket.

Congratulations on your prediction. We’ll see who was closer to the truth at that time.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — June 29, 2011 @ 3:41 am

Comment by JohnHunt — June 28, 2011 @ 10:19 pm
“Can you give a hyperlink reference to that? Thx.”

Hi John,

Unfortunately I do not have a Hyperlink for you. The information comes from several presentations I have seen and conversations with people that participated in the various evaluations.

I do know that several technical presentations were made at AIAA Conferences in 2010. You might be able to find them on the net.

I hope that helps.

Comment by Joe — June 29, 2011 @ 8:55 am

Any one who has any doubts that the move to commercial space is the only way to reduce the cost to space should read this:

As military-launch costs soar, would-be competitors protest.
By Mark K. Matthews, Washington Bureau
June 26, 2011
“Company officials said the cost of parts has gone up, and the uncertainty of post-shuttle work at NASA has resulted in subcontractors raising prices. As a result, ULA is sharply increasing the prices it charges the Defense Department to launch military satellites, prompting the Air Force to raise its projected launch costs by nearly 50 percent during the next four years.
“In addition, the company is demanding — and federal officials are acquiescing — that government agencies commit to buying more rockets than they’re likely to need from 2013 to 2017, all in the name of maintaining a ‘resilient, healthy and flexible space industrial base’.”
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/space/os-military-missile-business-20110626,0,7372393.story

In other words the government is saying, “Raise the price? OK, we’ll buy more.”

Bob Clark

Comment by Robert Clark — June 29, 2011 @ 10:10 am

> Comment by GaryChurch — June 28, 2011 @ 1:26 pm
>
>> “Yes commercializing the Shuttles would have dramatically improved shuttles cost and safety.”
> Give it a break Kelly. The shuttle is gone. Why are you taking up
> space on this forum talking about what is not going to happen?
>
> We are talking about what could happen.

Topic came up, its a good idea – at this point its more likely then others discused – but damn unlikely.

> The issue here is the heavy lift infrastructure. That means the VAB,
> crawlers, pads, hydrogen, etc. More than anything else it means those
> SRB’s, that ET, and important for the immediate future at least, the SSME’s.

I’d debate some of that, but NASA rehiring folks for ET construction and crawler upgrades. They need to do some restoration no the VAB!

MPCV (Orion)/SLS (Ares-V) lives!

> Human space flight must evolve or go extinct. LEO is the past, BEO is the
> future. The means to go BEO in the immediate future is a cargo sidemount.
> A moon base is the next step. With water a base becomes easier to establish.
> Much easier.

I’m past flags and footprints, and with cost per flight so high for Orion/SLS, your not going to do much more in space or on the moon. Until we get Shuttle class capabilities (preferable significantly better!) to LEO, were not in much shape to do anything significant ni LEO much less go past it in any meaningful way.

Sidemount(Shuttle-C) is a reasonably HLV design, they chose inline. Not big enough pluses adn minuses between them to get to excited about.

> SpaceX sycophants should be arguing FOR an SDHLV! The dragon can
> be the people transporter for the rest of the century if space
> flight advances. If we are trapped in orbit for decades to come SpaceX has
> a far higher chance of closing it’s doors. ===

If the Dragons even competitive as a people transporter in 10 years we abandoned space for this generation, and SpaceX will likely be out of business as the market implodes.

>== The orion capsule? If dragon can go up as cheaply as advertised then
> orion will be used for other things. Transporting fissionables (not people)
> to the moon is a good mission for it.

Dragons not built for BEO, and is likely not going to meet the expectations any more then the Falcons did.

>== Launching to those destinations from the moon is an order
> of magnitude easier than from earth- or LEO.

;/
Why?

> Beam propulsion is now the game changing space technology and
> beam boosting from the moon will open up the solar system.

Disagree. Nuclear thermal is available now (assuming we didn’t lose all the blue prints), or ion drives. Fusions pretty near term if we want to go get it. These offer lower cost and complexity, are more flexible, etc.

However – you did say you want to stick to things that are actually going to be done in the near term – and that’s certainly not beam propulsion or Orion carrying reactor fuel.

Comment by Kelly Starks — June 29, 2011 @ 10:11 am

There is a solution that would allow you to get a 100+ mT payload launcher AND a separate manned launcher at the same time and at the cost of only a 70 mT launcher, or even less.

See the details here:

Some proposals for low cost heavy lift launchers.
http://www.orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?p=270195&postcount=9

Bob Clark

Comment by Robert Clark — June 29, 2011 @ 10:14 am

Speaking of fusion propulsion. A new idea thats a cheep little laser fusion thruster, 40 times more efficent then ion thrusters. Cool.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/a-fusion-thruster-for-space-travel/0

Comment by Kelly Starks — June 29, 2011 @ 10:59 am

@GaryChurch:

I wrote:

“It is not now achievable to get back to the Moon with humans with Big Rockets.”

and you replied

“Wrong. It is just as achievable as robots. All it takes is money;”

Well said!

Indeed, all it takes is money to put humans on the Moon. We last walked on the Moon 39 years ago. Walking on the Moon again is not a technical problem, but rather a political/economic/cultural one.

But getting a huge amount of money is a far more difficult proposition than the engineering of a rocket.

It takes a whole lot less money to get started with telerobotic ISRU. And, we could get started doing that within the duration of a single Presidential Administration. HSF requires a multi-Administration commitment, something extremely difficult to achieve.

Comment by Ron Menich — June 29, 2011 @ 11:08 am

@Paul

I wrote,

“If HSF is important, then it will be built. If it is not important, then it won’t”

and then you wrote,

“That’s probably the most vacuous formulation on this topic I’ve ever read.”

Please answer the original question: Why do you fear mothballing the Shuttle hardware? The Spudis/Lavoie plan doesn’t need that hardware for the first (I forget the exact number) 15 flights or so.

Mothball the Shuttle infrastructure, get going on the initial steps of the Spudis/Lavoie plan, and see how it goes. Learn as you go. Robots first, humans later.

Comment by Ron Menich — June 29, 2011 @ 11:13 am

“Now is not the time to stop flying Shuttle”

You are a bit too late Paul. It was pretty well defined more than a year before Augustine started his investigation that Constellation and Orion would not be ready for 5 to 10 years after the last Shuttle flew. It was also well understood that the Orion had few of the capabilities that the Shuttle Orbiter possessed. That same time period, a year before Augustine, was when the Shuttle procurements were being shut down.

NASA management,much to their discredit, all spoke the party line: Geyer and Hanley: Orion will be ready in 2014; Augustine said maybe 2017, more likely 2018. Gerstenmaier: “if we do not end Shuttle we have no money for Orion.” There were lots of ways to reduce Shuttle costs, as USA is now showing in their commercial proposals.

Even today there is no clear direction; we continue to work on an Orion that does not meet the most basic requirements for costs, affordability, sustainability.

The proper approach was always to make use of what we had invested in Shuttle and base where we are going on where we are now, not on throwback dreams of the 1960s. Its too late for the thousands who have lost their jobs starting several years ago, and too late for a smooth transition to the future. Look no further than the nonexistent leadership in NASA today.

Comment by James H — June 29, 2011 @ 11:26 am

Why do you fear mothballing the Shuttle hardware?

It’s not the mothballing (more accurately, the destruction) of the Shuttle system that I fear per se — it is the dismantling of an existing, working space faring infrastructure in favor of a rather not credible promise to create a new space faring capability with unproven systems and personnel.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — June 29, 2011 @ 11:49 am

You are a bit too late Paul.

Yes, I know. Better late than never.

It was pretty well defined more than a year before Augustine started his investigation that Constellation and Orion would not be ready for 5 to 10 years after the last Shuttle flew.

And now, 5-10 years has turned into “uncertain, possibly never.” Great improvement.

Look no further than the nonexistent leadership in NASA today.

You won’t get any argument from me on that point.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — June 29, 2011 @ 11:51 am

Comment by Ron Menich — June 29, 2011 @ 11:13 am
“Please answer the original question: Why do you fear mothballing the Shuttle hardware?”

Ron,

Your statement was vacuous (among other reasons) because the Space Shuttle hardware is not being mothballed for future use. It is being sent to museums to be turned into tourist attractions. So that future parents can take their children to give them an idea of all the things we used to do.

“Robots first, humans later.”

Yes I know that is your position, I think anybody who cares is well aware of that by now.

Comment by Joe — June 29, 2011 @ 12:24 pm

“Fusions pretty near term if we want to go get it.’

The only two places fusion will ever happen is in a sun or in a bomb. The demonstrations to date have been carefully choreographed as an excuse to keep the money flowing. Fusion reactor research has often been cited as covert weapons development. I tend to agree.

Your “laser fusion thruster” is science fiction. No such thing.

Comment by GaryChurch — June 29, 2011 @ 1:45 pm

“We last walked on the Moon 39 years ago.”

I like talking points also Ron.

Like, The DOD budget proves we can afford a large space program.

Your 39 years ago point has no point.

“There were lots of ways to reduce Shuttle costs, as USA is now showing in their commercial proposals.
Even today there is no clear direction; we continue to work on an Orion that does not meet the most basic requirements for costs, affordability, sustainability.”

James,
The space plane concept has failed. The manned cargo vehicle is a failed concept. Constellation was correct in using the shuttle lift of approx. 100 tons to lift 100 tons of payload and not a orbiter and 25 tons. Also correct in separating the crew vehicle and the cargo vehicle. What went wrong does not change that.

The shuttle could never go BEO. Orion can.
LEO is a dead end. BEO requires an HLV.

The critical issue is a HLV. Not an astronaut taxi. Sidemount is the best option and has been for a quarter century.

Comment by GaryChurch — June 29, 2011 @ 1:57 pm

“I don’t have a problem with what SpaceX is trying to do. My only point (and this is not a criticism) is that they haven’t done anything yet. In Falcon 9, they have a flight system under development. That’s great and more power to them. What they do not have is an operational system from which we could get a real idea of what it costs to build and operate.”

The cargo delivery contracts are already signed. The only way they could not carry through is that they suffer failure in their future launches.

Bob Clark

Comment by Robert Clark — June 29, 2011 @ 2:08 pm

“The only way they could not carry through is that they suffer failure in their future launches.”

SpaceX is a small high risk company with little experience in space flight.

They could go bankrupt or the contracts could be canceled. It happens and happens quite often with this kind of business. As a matter of fact- no small space flight start up has ever succeeded.

Falcon is not a good design. It is cheap because it has too many small expendable engines, a combined cargo crew vehicle, an ineffective escape system, able to deliver very little and with 7 passengers packed tightly into a can. An inferior upper stage propellant and 27 engines on the misnamed “heavy” does not have a high probability of success.

The hype has been incredible but the facts are they have had plenty of failures and have launched Falcon 9 three times.

The shuttle heavy lift hardware has launched over a hundred times in a row. Two hundred flawless SRB firings.
With little more modification than an engine mount and a cargo pod it will lift several tons more than the 27 engine computer graphic. With 5 segment SRB’s already tested and ready for production it will lift much more.

The falcon 9 is a hobby rocket compared to the most powerful and evolved heavy lift launch hardware on earth bar none. Nothing comes close to the flight heritage, reusability, and facilities available to support a high flight rate.

SpaceX is great at inofomercials and conning gullible space clown wannabes, but Falcon is a very poor alternative to a Sidemount HLV.

I agree with the Chinese government on this one; it is a scam.

Comment by GaryChurch — June 29, 2011 @ 2:52 pm

@Joe:

You wrote,

“…the Space Shuttle hardware is not being mothballed for future use. It is being sent to museums to be turned into tourist attractions. So that future parents can take their children to give them an idea of all the things we used to do.”

A lot of these discussions focus on side-mount SDHLV alternatives. So I wasn’t really talking about the orbiters. “Shuttle infrastructure” also includes SRB and ET production tooling, the VAB and crawler, SSMEs, etc. These could be mothballed if we wished to do so.

Comment by Ron Menich — June 29, 2011 @ 7:38 pm

Paul D. Spudis said June 29, 2011 @ 3:41 am:

“No one who had ever read even one-tenth of what I have written on this blog over the last two years could possibly believe that statement.”

Maybe I’m “No one”, but I agree with Dick’s statement. The reason why is because you make statements like this:

“I don’t have a problem with what SpaceX is trying to do. My only point (and this is not a criticism) is that they haven’t done anything yet.”

I’m not sure what you mean by “haven’t done anything yet”, but to the uninformed that would make it seem like they haven’t built or launched anything. They have.

SpaceX has test flown their Falcon 9 rocket twice (both successfully), with the second flight also testing their Dragon capsule (which landed successfully). That last flight also satisfied their NASA COTS Flight 1 requirement (with a $5M payment), and their next flight could end up docking with the ISS and completing the COTS program. That sounds like something to me.

“What they do not have is an operational system from which we could get a real idea of what it costs to build and operate. From their payload deliveries to orbit, we could estimate the cost to deliver a kilogram to LEO.”

SpaceX publishes their prices on their website, so there is no need to estimate company proprietary “costs”. Are airline companies told the internal cost of a Boeing 787 before buying one? In the commercial marketplace it’s price that matters, not cost.

“As for the Falcon Heavy, that’s simply another paper rocket.”

It depends on what you call a “paper rocket”. Were the Ares I/V rockets “paper rockets”, since no actual flight hardware came together? Or is the SLS a “paper rocket”, since no design has been announced?

In that light if you were describing Falcon X or Falcon XX, which would be a new design (new engines, new tooling, etc.), then you would be right. However Falcon Heavy uses the same 1st and 2nd stages as the Falcon 9, so other than their proposed propellant cross-feed system (which is an option for heavier payloads), Falcon Heavy uses existing and flight proven hardware. Falcon Heavy is just an extension of the Falcon 9 design, just like Delta IV Heavy is an extension of the Delta IV design.

And since SpaceX is taking orders for Falcon Heavy ($80M – $125M), it’s far more a real rocket than something like ATK/Astrium’s proposed Liberty rocket.

Just out of curiosity, at what point does something stop being a “paper rocket”?

Comment by Coastal Ron — June 29, 2011 @ 10:43 pm

“SpaceX is great at inofomercials and conning gullible space clown wannabes…”

That must include NASA since they gave them a billion dollar contract.

Bob Clark

Comment by Robert Clark — June 30, 2011 @ 2:38 am

Paul- My comments on your Rationale for Cislunar Space. I assure you I am not arguing with your basic motivation, indeed I share it, having spent most of my life in the space program. But I have some different perspectives on the logical path for implementing it. I note below some of the points from your rationale and my perspective. These are all my personal options only:

PDS: Space benefits society in many areas, especially the use of satellite assets in orbits beyond LEO.

DW: I agree, in fact the “Space Transportation System” was intended for just this purpose. It originally referred not to the Shuttle alone, but to the combination of the Shuttle, Station, and the Space Tug, which would have moved satellites from GEO or lunar orbit back to the Station for servicing, making all elements reusable. The Tug was never built although new propulsion technologies like the VASIMIR make it more feasible. But there is, to my knowledge, nothing in the Constellation program that would reduce the cost or improve the performance of these satellites.

PDS: Earth’s deep gravity well is a significant cost deterrent to expanded activities in space. For beyond LEO missions, most launch mass is propellant.

DW: Liquid hydrogen, propellant grade, delivered to Launch Complex 39, costs 98 cents a gallon. LOX costs 60 cents. All the energy that puts an LV in orbit accounts for less than 1% of launch costs, while vehicle fabrication, even for the Shuttle, accounts for perhaps 80%. Many writers equate mass and cost in LV operations but this is not, to my knowledge, substantiated by objective analysis of the relative effects of investment in the surface-to-LEO technology which is needed in any case.

PDS: The International Space Station proves that human- and machine-assembled satellites can be as big and as capable as needed and unlimited by launch vehicle size.

DW: The fact that it is possible does not make it economically feasible. The SLS is very expensive to launch even for an ELV. The original goal of the Space Station was to prove its utility for space operations, satelite servicing and as a transportation hub for reusable systems shuttling payloads up from earth and on to GEO and higher orbits. This hasn’t been accomplished and will be impossible without the other elements of the original STS concept.

PDS: We cannot routinely access orbits beyond LEO with people and machines to build and maintain such satellites today.

DW: If we are to access such orbits sustainably it must be at a practical cost, That requires fully reusable shuttlecraft and building up our infrastructure in LEO, not abandoning both, along with the world’s only force of highly experienced hands-on reusable spacecraft workers, which is happening as we speak.

PDS: A system based around the manufacture and use of propellant made from lunar materials can reduce the cost for new space activities, enable routine access to and from the surface of the Moon, access all other points in cislunar space, including GEO and other orbits useful for space assets; and enable human interplanetary flight (i.e., to Mars and beyond).

DW: The cost savings of ISRU are exaggerated because the value of commodities is calculated on the basis of current transportation costs, costs at which the project itself is unaffordable. Many tons of expensive equipment has to be shipped to the moon and maintained there before you can even begin to extract raw materials, and at current transportation costs this is simply not feasible when even ardent supporters of exploration demand lower taxes.

6. The Moon also offers other material and energy resources that can be used to create new space faring capability, including regolith aggregate, glass and ceramics, metals and the fabrication of solar cells.

Producing sophisticated industrial products from raw lunar soil is even more expensive than fuel production, and there is even less potential for a market without very large-scale settlement. Again, after we have a space infrastructure ISRU might well make sense, but ISRU doesn’t provide a return on investment for the space infrastructure since it is used in space.

PDS: Both robotic and human presence is required on the Moon to enable and maintain production from lunar resources.

DW: Whether production can or should be entirely robotic is a separate question. I remember when transistors replaced tubes. I think it is safe to say that robotic technology is advancing much more rapidly than humans are evolving. Research on robotic mining is supported by NASA and may well have application on Earth.

PDS: By going to the Moon to establish a permanent presence, we create a reusable, extensible and maintainable (thus, affordable) transportation system, a “transcontinental railroad” for cislunar space while expanding human reach beyond LEO.

Does a permanent base on the moon contribute to the creation of a reusable transportation system? The reverse appears to be the case. To pay for Constellation, all five US RLV programs (X-33, X-34, DC-X, X-37, and finally Shuttle) were cancelled, perhaps the greatest disaster in the history of the US space program.

9. Undertaking a program to develop and use off-planet resources creates wealth by developing and enabling new technology,

Communications, weather and navigation satellites have been quite productive, but all are unmanned. Human spaceflight has, so far, not been productive, at least in part because it requires far more tons in orbit per dollar of useful work.

PDS: … opening new and previously unforeseen markets …

DW: If a market is truly “unforeseen” than how can we make decisions based on a belief that it exists? Private capital for human spaceflight has been limited by the presence of more attractive investments in new terrestrial markets.

PDS: … thereby assuring that free market, democratic pluralism prevails in the new frontier of space (neither totalitarianism nor corporatism) …

DW: Space colonies might well be democratic, but the investors will likely have a large degree of control. There is so far not much evidence that using off-planet resources will actually create wealth. Creating wealth, at least on Earth, does not necessarily assure democracy. Finally, American taxpayers today do not appear to be motivated to spend many tax dollars to spread democracy.

DW: To summarize my perspective, the real challenge in making human spaceflight practical is reducing the cost of human spaceflight by at least a factor of ten. This cannot be done without fully reusable launch systems, which do not depend on extraterrestrial resources. If we solve that problem, it will be much less expensive and easier to solve the problem of learning to live in space. But if we spend all our money trying to solve the second problem first, we will have no resources to make space accessible. The first step in colonizing space is the development of a safe, inexpensive and fully reusable launch system.

Moreover, production from lunar resources serves no purpose if the overall cost of operations is too high to be justified by its productivity in science, tourism and other primary income sources. Ascribing near-infinite value to any material (e.g. helium 3 or even water) is not justified. Helium-3 can be produced on earth simply by letting tritium (the current fusion fuel) decay. At current access costs lunar water has no market, because no one could afford to live there even if the water were free.

As to the medical research, NIH will not support research at a NASA facility unless NASA provides a significant part of the funding. To move to another institution will delay the work by years, even if I could find a position at a research university. Should I just give up and let hundreds of people die every day, when we need such a microscopic fraction of the existing budget? If medical research isn’t important to Americans, why does NASA make such a point of it? If NASA can only produce practical benefits when we can make them appear to be an unintended byproduct of space exploration, then its real effect on the lives of Americans will be limited indeed.

Comment by Dan Woodard, MD — June 30, 2011 @ 8:29 am

To summarize my perspective, the real challenge in making human spaceflight practical is reducing the cost of human spaceflight by at least a factor of ten. This cannot be done without fully reusable launch systems, which do not depend on extraterrestrial resources. If we solve that problem, it will be much less expensive and easier to solve the problem of learning to live in space. But if we spend all our money trying to solve the second problem first, we will have no resources to make space accessible. The first step in colonizing space is the development of a safe, inexpensive and fully reusable launch system.

Go ahead and pursue that. My contention is that such a system is unlikely (many have tried previously and failed, including Shuttle), but I’d be glad to be proven wrong. In the mean time, there are compelling reasons to both 1) preserve a space faring infrastructure and capability; and 2) have an American presence in cislunar to protect our national interests. The creation of the capability to routinely access cislunar will create new wealth, as documented by the last 30 year history of the space communications industry. Going to the Moon to develop that capability is a logical next step in space.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — June 30, 2011 @ 9:03 am

Comment by Ron Menich — June 29, 2011 @ 7:38 pm

Ron,

I assumed you meant the orbiters because you said (Comment by Ron Menich — June 28, 2011 @ 9:06 pm):

“Planes are carefully mothballed and sit out in the desert for years and are then resuscitated and fly again.”

But I am afraid this version of what you mean by “mothballing” will not work either.

“ “Shuttle infrastructure” also includes SRB and ET production tooling, the VAB and crawler, SSMEs, etc. These could be mothballed if we wished to do so.”

That is theoretically possible, but there are at least two problems:

Problem #1: Nobody I know of (except you) has proposed it. The Administration’s 2011 budget certainly did not. Just the opposite It proposed shutting everything down, doing basic research for at least five years, then supposedly staring all over again from scratch. If the SDHLV SLS architecture is in fact followed you may (in a way) get what you say you want, that is the preserving of the system.

Problem #2: The” mothballing” ,as you propose it, would require maintaining all the facilities and a cadre of trained personnel (who would have to maintain proficiency, presumably by doing constant training exercises) to restart work when you decided you wanted to do it. That is the bulk of the expense of running the system . In other words, it would cost almost as much to “mothball” the system (by your definition) and build/fly nothing as it would to maintain an active program. It would therefore not be the ‘cash cow’ you are thinking it would be for the things you would rather see done.

Comment by Joe — June 30, 2011 @ 9:52 am

“Go ahead and pursue that. My contention is that such a system is unlikely (many have tried previously and failed, including Shuttle), but I’d be glad to be proven wrong.”

It is my contention that to produce such a RLV SSTO is easier than has been portrayed. For instance it neither requires impractical mass ratios, nor unknown high energy propellants.
The lightweight structures have existed since the 60′s, and the required engines since the 70′s, both for kerosene and hydrogen fueled. What was required is to marry the two together, i.e., remove the rather low efficiency engines that originally came with the high mass ratio stages and replace them with the high efficiency engines available now.
Boeing is to make an attempt at one based on the X-37B:

Boeing proposes SSTO system for AF RBS program.
“The new issue of Aviation Week has a brief blurb about a Boeing proposal for the Air Force’s Reusable Booster System (RBS) program:
Boeing Offers AFRL Reusable Booster Proposal – AvWeek – June.13.11
(subscription required).
Darryl Davis, who leads Boeing’s Phantom Works, tells AvWeek that they are proposing a 3-4 year technology readiness assessment that would lead up to a demonstration of a X-37B type of system but would be smaller. Wind tunnel tests have been completed. Davis says the system
would be a single stage capable of reaching low Earth orbit and, with a booster, higher orbits. The system would return to Earth as a glider.
Davis says “that advances in lightweight composites warrant another look” at single-stage-to-orbit launchers.”
http://www.hobbyspace.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=30110

Bob Clark

Comment by Robert Clark — June 30, 2011 @ 11:03 am

@Joe:

I would certainly NOT wish to continue to support a high-cost cadre of trained personnel constantly doing exercises just to maintain a system in suspended animation.

No. Just document, document. Put the tooling in storage.

Yes, there would be a startup cost to train new personnel in 8 years if indeed there were some reason to resuscitate it then.

But whatever. I don’t really care. There are so many existing under-utilized launchers fully-capable of launching payloads towards the Moon that this entire debate over preserving Shuttle infrastructure is quite silly.

Comment by Ron Menich — June 30, 2011 @ 11:25 am

But whatever. I don’t really care.

People with your attitude are running the space program. And it shows.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — June 30, 2011 @ 12:33 pm

Comment by Ron Menich — June 30, 2011 @ 11:25 am

“I would certainly NOT wish to continue to support a high-cost cadre of trained personnel constantly doing exercises just to maintain a system in suspended animation. No. Just document, document. Put the tooling in storage. “

Then I would have to deduce, that you are not serious in your supposed plan to ‘mothball’ the capability

“Yes, there would be a startup cost to train new personnel in 8 years if indeed there were some reason to resuscitate it then.”

There certainly would be and they would be prohibitive. Take a trip through the Midwest and see how many “rust belt” manufacturing facilities were similarly ‘mothballed’ only to never be opened again. Their function did not go away; it was just moved over seas. Just as Russia is now taking over our Human launch capability, at least for the foreseeable future.

“But whatever. I don’t really care.”

No, it is obvious you do not.

“There are so many existing under-utilized launchers fully-capable of launching payloads towards the Moon that this entire debate over preserving Shuttle infrastructure is quite silly.”

If you really believe that, then why are you ‘wasting’ your time participating in it?

Comment by Joe — June 30, 2011 @ 12:58 pm

@Paul:

I don’t care about building SLS, preserving Shuttle infrastructure or engaging in debates regarding the merits of side-mount SDHLVs.

I do care about developing the resources of the Moon. We can start that with existing launchers, as you well know.

Comment by Ron Menich — June 30, 2011 @ 1:04 pm

“do care about developing the resources of the Moon. We can start that with existing launchers, as you well know.”

What you care about is dismantling the heavy lift infrastructure so you can send those tax dollars in the other direction.

Comment by GaryChurch — June 30, 2011 @ 2:15 pm

Joe said June 30, 2011 @ 12:58 pm:

“Just as Russia is now taking over our Human launch capability, at least for the foreseeable future.”

The current Congressional direction is all over the map on this matter, which doesn’t help.

Congress designated Commercial Crew as the primary method of supporting the ISS (MPCV is only a backup), but they didn’t provide full funding for the program. They claim to have “reservations” about the ability of commercial companies to meet NASA’s needs (need date, safety, reliability, etc.), but haven’t take any action to address those concerns.

Russian certainly doesn’t mind being the only crew provider for the ISS, and though our ISS partners wouldn’t mind more crew options, Soyuz is a known quantity and has been reliable so far, so why rock the boat?

NASA of course is moving ahead with the CCDev program as much as they can, but there are funding limits that keep them from pushing forward quickly. If Congress has specific concerns about the program, that’s fine. But Congress should not sit back and criticize while Russia is charging us $60M/seat – now is the time to either address what they see as lacking, or reallocate the crew transportation budget to Russia. By doing nothing the latter will happen anyways – is that what they want?

Comment by Coastal Ron — June 30, 2011 @ 3:40 pm

Joe said June 30, 2011 @ 9:52 am:

“Problem #1: Nobody I know of (except you) has proposed it. The Administration’s 2011 budget certainly did not. Just the opposite It proposed shutting everything down, doing basic research for at least five years, then supposedly staring all over again from scratch.”

How many people are we talking about that have domain specific skills relevant to the parts common to the Shuttle and SLS that are not available on the open market?

External Tank probably, although ULA also makes large LH2 rockets. Maybe SRB’s, but not really if the contract is competed and someone other than ATK wins (especially if the new design is liquid and not solid propellant). The crawler? That’s all I can think of that would be Shuttle and SLS unique.

From a manufacturing perspective (my background), I don’t see what the scale of the problem is. What are we losing personnel-wise that can’t be hired again? What are we losing facilities-wise that can’t be refurbished or built new?

Why wouldn’t it be cheaper to do a truly in-depth study of what we need for our next super-heavy launch vehicle so that we can learn from the lessons of Shuttle and Constellation?

Do we want to repeat the costly infrastructure mistakes that caused the Shuttle to be so expensive?

Comment by Coastal Ron — June 30, 2011 @ 4:04 pm

Comment by Coastal Ron — June 30, 2011 @ 4:04 pm

An interesting premise. Since you say you have a “manufacturing perspective” I suggest you test your theory in your own field.

Go to your current employer and say:
- Boss I suggest shut down all our current operations.
- Close all our current facilities.
- Lay off all our current workers
- Then spend at least the next five years studying better ways to do business.
Then we can (maybe):
- Build whole new facilities.
- Hire new workers.
- Train those workers to do what our previous workers used to do.
- Start all over again.

After that you can let us know how he reacts.

Comment by Joe — June 30, 2011 @ 5:54 pm

“From a manufacturing perspective (my background), I don’t see what the scale of the problem is.”

Really?
It is interesting how something that one moment that is the root of all evil (NASA heavy lift hardware costs) is not a problem the next. This happens alot with the people advocating private space.

One of the reasons I do not believe any of it. It is camoflauge for the dismantling of the heavy lift infrastructure and the sending those tax dollars in another direction.

I have found that just about anything that SpaceX does is wonderful and not to be criticized while just about anything that will get rid of heavy lift hardware and infrastructure is also wonderful.

It makes me want to say many things that Dr. Spudis will not allow on his site.

Comment by GaryChurch — June 30, 2011 @ 7:10 pm

“Do we want to repeat the costly infrastructure mistakes that caused the Shuttle to be so expensive?”

That would be the case with dismantling the HLV infrastructure and allowing private space to create another “standing army” except trying to do Space on the cheap and finding out there is no cheap.

The hobby rocket is not going to replace a HLV.

The costly mistake is clear to anyone not sucked in by the SpaceX private space hype.

And that mistake is believing any private spacet advertising; just ike the infomercial posts being put up here.

Comment by GaryChurch — June 30, 2011 @ 7:27 pm

“…
Train those workers to do what our previous workers used to do.
- Start all over again.

After that you can let us know how he reacts.”

He might say this isn’t a government program, dummy!

Comment by gbaikie — June 30, 2011 @ 8:20 pm

Joe said June 30, 2011 @ 5:54 pm:

“Go to your current employer and say:
- Boss I suggest shut down all our current operations.
- Close all our current facilities.
- Lay off all our current workers
- Then spend at least the next five years studying better ways to do business.”

That’s more of a theoretical question than what’s going on with the Shuttle program. Let’s stick with reality for now.

Shuttle manufacturing essentially shut down years ago, so there is no “standing army” of manufacturing people to employ. USA is processing the last Shuttle flight, and after that it looks like the only work going on is preparing the Shuttles for museum duty.

Who are the “irreplaceable” personnel or positions that can’t be rehired or trained new in the future?

What infrastructure are we in danger of “losing”?

Comment by Coastal Ron — June 30, 2011 @ 9:05 pm

Comment by gbaikie — June 30, 2011 @ 8:20 pm

“He might say this isn’t a government program, dummy!”

Beacause we only do things that stupid in government progtams, right.

Comment by Joe — July 1, 2011 @ 8:47 am

Comment by Coastal Ron — June 30, 2011 @ 9:05 pm

Two points:

Point # 1: The situation in not as apocalyptic as you seem to think (or is it wish?) it is. It is still recoverable (at least where s SD HLV is concerned). That is the reason the Congress is pushing so hard for the political appointees currently running NASA to implement the Appropriation/Authorization Laws.

Point # 2: Since you decline to answer the “theoretical question” I would deduce that the answer is no, because you know that if you did your boss would think you had lost your mind. Yet you would impose just such a decision on the entire American Human Spaceflight Program.

Interesting.

Comment by Joe — July 1, 2011 @ 9:38 am

Joe said July 1, 2011 @ 9:38 am:

“Point # 1: The situation in not as apocalyptic as you seem to think (or is it wish?) it is. It is still recoverable (at least where s SD HLV is concerned).”

When did I say the situation was apocalyptic? I’ve been saying the opposite.

And what’s to recover? Can you provide details or examples?

“Point # 2: Since you decline to answer the “theoretical question” I would deduce that the answer is no”

I didn’t feel your theoretical question represented the situation we have with Shuttle and SLS – isn’t that the topic at hand, real jobs and real companies?

What are the jobs that are irreplaceable? What are the companies that are going away that we need to save?

For instance, ATK is still around, and AeroJect would be glad to build SRB’s if needed. The Shuttle External Tank facility has unique tooling, but the next launcher would require new tooling anyways, and the industry retains the knowledge to build large aluminum LH2 tanks.

Those two represent the vast majority of the commonality to the Shuttle program, so if the decision to build the next SHLV for NASA were delayed for 5 years to evaluate what the best set of technologies and size will be (not to mention operational costs), I don’t see what harm that is.

If you disagree, fine, but please provide some examples of why.

Comment by Coastal Ron — July 1, 2011 @ 10:24 am

Comment by Coastal Ron — July 1, 2011 @ 10:24 am

Hi Ron,

Sorry but I have been here with you before (on other websites). Your (somewhat disjointed) demands for specific answers to nonspecific questions (just what is “irreplaceable” anyway? – would come next) would just lead to an endless (and increasingly rancorous) series of exchanges; that lead nowhere.

You have had your say on this subject, I have had mine. Anyone interested in them can read them and decide what they think.

I will now bow out of this particular exchange.

Comment by Joe — July 1, 2011 @ 10:43 am

Paul wrote:

“Hardware built = 0
Adequacy of design = unknown
Number of flights = 0
Cost for development = unknown”

There is already hardware built that can be used for the FH.

Cost for development, Musk said SpaceX was funding the development so no costs to the taxpayer.

You could use your same chart for Constellation and SLS and how would that look? No hardware, no flights, costs, out of this world.

Comment by Vladislaw — July 1, 2011 @ 12:26 pm

Joe wrote:

“You seem to be basically a nice guy and I try to take you seriously (I really do), but when you say things like:
“The Falcon heavy Developement costs 0”.
You make it very difficult.”

I was refering to Musk’s statement at the National Press Club that SpaceX was funding the development and first flight. So the development costs to the taxpayer is 0. The cost to the taxpayer for developing the SLS is 10 billion +
—————

You wrote to Coastal Ron:

“Go to your current employer and say:
- Boss I suggest shut down all our current operations.
- Close all our current facilities.
- Lay off all our current workers
- Then spend at least the next five years studying better ways to do business.”

You are making a mistake here. You are trying to compare the funding of a government agency to how a private sector company should do things. They are apples and oranges.

You can find a multitude of examples where a government agency is going to lose infrastructure that the agency has built up over time on the taxpayers dime and then argue that we can not or should not lose that infrastructure. Military bases come to mind, look how the representatives in congress argue that basically the world will come to an end or our military will turn into a paper tiger IF THEIR base is closed.

If we do not need that infrastructure why spend the billions to support it when those same billions can actually fund HARDWARE that can immediately be launched on existing launch vehicles.

We can launch Lunar landers, unfueled EDS’s, capsules, habitiats, etc etc on current launchers, so instead of 10-20 billion spent on a luncher, lets spend that 20 billion on flight hardware that can be launched on existing launchers.

Comment by Vladislaw — July 1, 2011 @ 12:39 pm

You could use your same chart for Constellation and SLS and how would that look?

I’m not advocating Constellation hardware. I’m advocating Shuttle side-mount. The chart would look like this:

Hardware built: 5 orbiters, over 57 SSME, 134 ET, 268 SRB
Adequacy of Design: 134 successful missions, 2 failures. Numerous payloads delivered and assembled, including HST and ISS
Number of flights: 134
Cost for development: About $ 175 B over 35 years, or roughly, $ 5 B per year.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — July 1, 2011 @ 1:06 pm

Comment by Vladislaw — July 1, 2011 @ 12:39 pm
“I was refering to Musk’s statement at the National Press Club that SpaceX was funding the development and first flight. So the development costs to the taxpayer is 0.”

You also said (presumably quoting Musk) that the cost per flight would be $125M.

1. Does that include the amortization of the undefined development cost?
2. What are the vehicles fixed costs?
3. What are the vehicles incremental costs?
4. What flight rate was assumed in deriving the $125M figure?
5. Did Musk answer any of those questions?
6. If not, how is anyone supposed to know if that nonbinding statement is valid?

It would be a good idea to show half (a quarter, even an eighth) the skepticism you show towards anything Shuttle Derived towards the pronouncements of Space X.

”You are making a mistake here. You are trying to compare the funding of a government agency to how a private sector company should do things.”

“If we do not need that infrastructure why spend the billions to support it when those same billions can actually fund HARDWARE that can immediately be launched on existing launch vehicles.”

You are making the mistake of assuming everyone agrees with you that the infrastructure is not needed. Private companies could as easily have unneeded plant and equipment as any government project. Are you suggesting that the entire American economy shut down and think about what it needs and then start over again from scratch (assuming that would ever happen), because that is what you are suggesting for the entire American Human Spaceflight Program.

Comment by Joe — July 1, 2011 @ 1:54 pm

Joe said July 1, 2011 @ 1:54 pm:

“1. Does that include the amortization of the undefined development cost?
2. What are the vehicles fixed costs?
3. What are the vehicles incremental costs?
4. What flight rate was assumed in deriving the $125M figure?
5. Did Musk answer any of those questions?
6. If not, how is anyone supposed to know if that nonbinding statement is valid?

It would be a good idea to show half (a quarter, even an eighth) the skepticism you show towards anything Shuttle Derived towards the pronouncements of Space X.”

SpaceX offers a service for a set price, signs a contract with their customer, and is bound by that agreed upon price. The customer doesn’t care what SpaceX costs are, only what they are getting for the agreed upon price.

Do the airlines care what Boeings amortization schedule is for the 787, especially since they are over 2 years past due on their first deliveries? No, and it’s none of their business since Boeing’s financials are proprietary information (not to mention competitive information).

Do you think that United Space Alliance should be divulging the same information about Delta IV Heavy, or ESA about Ariane 5? They don’t, and would likely ignore you if you ask.

Why are you making special rules for SpaceX?

Regarding Shuttle-Derived anything, can you show the same information you demand from SpaceX? Not likely, since there are no official reports of what the Shuttle program has cost, only outside estimates.

I could be wrong of course, and if so please point us to the government approved report that breaks down the Shuttle program costs by major elements (SRB, ET, orbiter, USA processing, etc.).

Comment by Coastal Ron — July 1, 2011 @ 4:07 pm

Joe said July 1, 2011 @ 1:54 pm:

“You are making the mistake of assuming everyone agrees with you that the infrastructure is not needed. Private companies could as easily have unneeded plant and equipment as any government project.”

Private companies can get rid of unneeded assets pretty quick.

Early in my career I worked for the largest defense contractor of it’s time. Not too many years after I left to go to a smaller and more dynamic company, my old company shut down the facility I had worked at, as well as all the rest of their facilities in town. They razed their entire complex of buildings, some of which had been there since WWII, and the land was sold off.

They had built launch vehicle components, built and tested cruise missiles, built and tested electronic systems (my program), and lots of other things. It defined the town, and it’s largely all gone.

It was a shock to some, especially the lifers, but I ran into former workers at other companies in the area, including many significant startups. The town adapted and life went on.

Other companies I’ve worked at have made major changes too. That’s a part of life, so maybe that’s why I don’t see the downside, since “New’ is always replacing “Old”.

Now if you can make an economic argument that we should keep something, then that’s different. There’s lots of old hardware that is still in use, because it makes economic sense to do so. Air & Space magazine has articles about old aircraft still flying all the time.

So I guess we need to know “why” the Shuttle infrastructure is needed, and what economic benefit it is providing that can’t be provided in the future, likely for a lower cost?

Comment by Coastal Ron — July 1, 2011 @ 4:41 pm

With the last flight of the shuttle in the news people are taking a temporary interest and you better believe the private space sycophants are making sure most of what gets posted on space forums is about SpaceX conquering the universe.

I see by going back through the posts that the infomercial is in full play on this thread.

Post after post of private space advocates filling up space arguing every little detail, mostly issues they are completely familiar, knowing they are arguing for a half truth or false advertising. It is their standard procedure to post anything as long as some SpaceX advertising gets posted.

I know this is true because I am very familiar with several of the posters here from other websites and they are talking about stuff that they have been over many times before but act like they are uninformed or want to discuss the issue but it is just for the sake of keeping the argument going.

It is endless; always managing to throw in their doses of arrogant condescension-

“So I find it laughable to discuss extending the life of the Shuttle when the commercial approach has demonstrated potential far beyond that.”

You will find these kind of words, silly, funny, and any other subtle insult they can manage repeated again and again.

They are doing it on purpose. It is not a discussion for them- it is a con and they are laughing about every time they get a response or hard thought out reply.

They slightly misquote figures or misrepresent or confuse issues knowingly- just to get a chance to pronounce it false- even though it is the truth. They love that one.

I have seen this dozens of times on other websites. It is all part of the con.

[Talking point # 1- Private space and the flexible path is a dead end and camoflage for the dismantling of the U.S. heavy lift infrastructure and siphoning those tax dollars into investor pockets.]

[Talking point #12- Space tourism, suborbital joy rides, kerosene hobby rockets, inflatable space hotels, and removal of government oversight and control of the space industry is a national humiliation and disaster.]

Post after post of pointless arguments serving one purpose; turning a forum into an infomercial.

Comment by GaryChurch — July 1, 2011 @ 4:59 pm

“Shuttle manufacturing essentially shut down years ago, so there is no “standing army” of manufacturing people to employ.”

You know very well what is being discussed is not the orbiter. You are just arguing in the most inauthentic way you can get away with. You must think it is very funny that people are taking their time to answer you with courtesy and respect while you are using them.

That hobby rocket is the worst thing that has ever happened to space flight.

Comment by GaryChurch — July 1, 2011 @ 5:06 pm

The falcon 9 is a perfect example of poor design and false advertising. Even the company name “SpaceX” is a facade. The only place they are going is to a government funded space station and they are doing it on government subsidized job programs in the form of commercial crew development. Launching a hundred tons into orbit 100 times in a row is not a jobs program- it is excellence. You can wail and gnash your teeth about NASA spending and how they are the root of all evil but private space will never accomplish what they have.

It is the oldest trick in the book to throw a quarter in the post and then claim you gave the most and are the top dog. SpaceX has nothing to do with space exploration. It is about a backroom deal and trading the most powerful and evolved heavy lift hardware on this planet for a hobby rocket. Before everyone figures the scam out and ignores the hype it will be too late and the infrastructure will be dismantled.

The Falcon 9 has too many engines and this is a key mistake. There just was no money to make anything better. Cheap. The propellent is kerosene because the best choice for an upper stage- hydrogen, requires a turbopump that is too expensive. Cheap.

The escape system is a dual purpose maneuvering system that does not have enough thrust to really qualify as an effective escape system. Cheap. The capsule is used for both crew and cargo. A key mistake already made long ago in the shuttle program for the same reason- Cheap.

And the 27 engine monstrosity? It is the only “funny” thing about the whole mess. Who would ever come up with 27 expendable engines and call it cost effective? It is a con.

There is no cheap,

Comment by GaryChurch — July 1, 2011 @ 5:23 pm

Comment by Coastal Ron — July 1, 2011 @ 4:07 pm
“SpaceX offers a service for a set price, signs a contract with their customer, and is bound by that agreed upon price. The customer doesn’t care what SpaceX costs are, only what they are getting for the agreed upon price.”

So you are saying Space X has signed a contract (or contracts) with someone to provide Falcon Heavy launches for $125 M per flight.
1. Who are these contracts with?
2. How many launches are involved?
3. What is being launched?

Comment by Joe — July 1, 2011 @ 5:41 pm

Joe said July 1, 2011 @ 5:41 pm:

“So you are saying Space X has signed a contract (or contracts) with someone to provide Falcon Heavy launches for $125 M per flight.”

Not that I’ve heard yet, but if you have $80M I’m sure you can buy the first flight and have it all to yourself. Musk did say that they were talking with potential customers, either for the total capacity or just part of it, but that they would fly without a customer if no one signs up ahead of time.

The list price for a Falcon Heavy is shown as $80-125M, and likely the highest price includes the cross-feed propellant system for maximizing payload mass to orbit. However my guess would be that the first flight won’t use the cross-system system, since they may want to just test out all the ground systems and verify flight dynamics first. But that’s just my guess.

However if you think about it, who has 100,000 lbs of payload that they need put into LEO all at once? Even NASA doesn’t have a budget for that size of payload, which is one of the reasons why I don’t see the need for the SLS.

SpaceX can afford to guess wrong on the heavy-lift market with Falcon Heavy because it shares the same tooling and facilities with Falcon 9, but what if Congress is wrong about the need for the SLS? The U.S. Taxpayer gets stuck paying the bill for a long time.

Just out of curiosity, I’m sure everyone realizes that there are no funded missions or payloads for the SLS yet. Anyone want to hazard a guess when they will get around to funding the dozens of payloads needed to justify building the SLS? Will it be in the 2012 budget? The 2016 due date for having it built is coming up pretty soon, so it’s a good question to get answered.

Comment by Coastal Ron — July 1, 2011 @ 6:52 pm

Those 54 propellant feed lines going to those 27 engines, each with it’s own turbopump and gymbals, crossfeeding from 18 engines in the booster to the core stage? My God.

According the SpaceX fan club it makes perfect sense. It is wonderful!

It is a mess. Why is it designed this way? That is all they have and going cheap is all they can do. The problem is you cannot throw away 27 engines over and over again while saying you will eventually “reuse them” without it being apparent that is a deception.

You cannot keep saying that the arrangement has many benefits without it being apparent that the complexity is a disadvantage that outweighs everything else. Compared to the 5 engines used by the shuttle hardware it is pieced together micky mouse junk.

The Russians had a similar experience trying to make a heavy lift vehicle. Did not work.
But SpaceX is different. They have “unparalelled quality control and reliability.” And they are cheap. Cheaper than anyone says a rocket can be.

I smell a rat.

Comment by GaryChurch — July 1, 2011 @ 7:03 pm

GaryChurch said July 1, 2011 @ 5:06 pm:

“You know very well what is being discussed is not the orbiter.”

Yes I do know that.

I was talking about what gets manufactured for each flight, of which the two largest items are the Solid Rocket Motors and the External Tank. The costs for these, according to the last major contracts I could find, was a total of $241.M. Manufacturing for them shut down years ago, and according to statements the companies have made publicly, it would take years to restart them.

Joe could probably speak more to the items that get replaced on the orbiters themselves between flights, but I doubt they are high dollar components, since they were trying to make the orbiters reusable.

However the other major cost component for the Shuttle system was the $200M/month that United Space Alliance charged for processing the Shuttle. Since some part of that was for the orbiter, you would imagine the SLS would require less, but I haven’t seen a cost breakdown that would show how much less.

Yet another reason why government-run transportation systems tend to cost more than commercial ones (like ULA), since they can’t spread their costs across multiple customers or even multiple launch vehicles.

Comment by Coastal Ron — July 1, 2011 @ 7:12 pm

I have seen the Falcon “heavy”, which is not heavy at all, mentioned many times by private space groupies as fully operational and far superior to any other launcher available.

I have heard them argue about every design detail as the way to go because it makes sense to use so many little engines, to use kerosene, to have a low thrust hypergolic pusher escapes system that carries propellants all the way into orbit and uses them for maneuvering and de-orbit.

It is not the way to go. It is just cheap. But that makes up for everything in the final argument. The problem is, there is no cheap.

I have seen them even argue that the escape system on Orion is too dangerous. That everything about the shuttle hardware is no good. Either too dangerous or too expensive.
The SRB’s have fired flawlessly over 200 times, are reusable, put out far more thrust than anything SpaceX has- even if they get the taxpayers to foot the bill for that new 1 million pound kerosene engine. They were dangerous in the beginning of the program because they were trying to go cheap. They fixed the SRBs. The SRB danger myth is based on an excerpt from an air force study quoted ad nauseum. Air Force does not even launch humans. I smell a rat there to.

The whole new space flexible path is portrayed as the American way and very trustworthy and joe the space plumber obviously great. Actually the whole plan is based on either very old technology lifted from NASA in the 60′a, or radical new technology like fuel depots that probably is not practical. Big promises about everything being cheap with obsolete designs and equipment that has not even begun to be developed.

It is a con that will go down in history as the plan that stranded the U.S. in LEO for decades and ended up costing the taxpayers far more to start from scratch and rebuild the HLV infrastructure.

Comment by GaryChurch — July 1, 2011 @ 7:22 pm

:So I guess we need to know “why” the Shuttle infrastructure is needed, and what economic benefit it is providing that can’t be provided in the future, likely for a lower cost?”

We need the shuttle infrastructure to launch HLV’s derived from the shuttle hardware. The economic benefit is plain to see. We have the most evolved and powerful heavy lifte hardware on planet earth right now. In production. Starting from scratch in the future would be……incredibly stupid. We have the best that can be had right now and we have paid dearly for it.

But according to the private space corner, it makes so much more sense to throw it away on a kerosene propelled hobby rocket. We have so much more to do going around in endless circles in LEO!

Excuse the sarcasm but it is well deserved. We have nothing more to do in LEO. It is time to go BEO and that will require HLVs. Despite the shrill denials that an HLV is needed, when the fuel depot and inferior lift plans are compared to what can be done with an HLV…. there is no comparison. The SpaceX infomercial vehemently denies an HLV is capable of anything more than what a Falcon can do- but this is so far off the scale I leave it to the reader to decide. Looking at what Falcon can lift in any supposed configuration and what the shuttle hardware can lift- the decision is easy.

Comment by GaryChurch — July 1, 2011 @ 7:36 pm

“The propellent is kerosene because the best choice for an upper stage- hydrogen, requires a turbopump that is too expensive.”

As with many choices in engineering, it is not that simple. If you have an existing booster stage, which you must use, then your gross liftoff mass is limited by the booster thrust, and an LH2 will give you the lightest upper stage and thus the heaviest payload. But if you are designing a new LV from the ground up, then the performance limit is not set by mass, but by cost. It may well be less expensive to use a slightly larger booster, particularly when going to LEO, where second-stage thrust, rather than impulse, can become limiting. The second stage is heavier fueled but considerably smaller and lighter empty, which also reduces processing cost.

Musk is able to see the big picture and balance all these factors for an efficient clean-sheet design. This is rare in the industry or government.

Comment by Dan Woodard, MD — July 1, 2011 @ 9:13 pm

As to the number of engines, again it is up to the designer. There is some added efficiency using larger engines on a booster of this size, but the difference is not great as there are increased size and mass factors with the longer nozzle and higher structural loads of the larger engine. The Saturn I had 8 engines, the Soyuz has five engine clusters, but each actually has four nozzles, for a total of 20 nozzles in the first stage! Musk used the Merlin I because it was already tested and in production and the switch from the Falcon I to the Falcon 9 had to be made quickly, when the COTS opportunity became available. SpaceX has a design for a larger Merlin 2 engine available but its development to the production level will take some time and money, and it is not required immediately.

Comment by Dan Woodard, MD — July 1, 2011 @ 9:59 pm

WELL PUT, Gary!! You hit the head of the nail. Commercial Space is nothing but a bunch of hype!! The tragedy that is unfolding now: the needless end of the manned U.S. space program, is being caused by the Obama administration believing the lie that is Commercial Space, hook, line, & sinker. Flexible Path gets you NOTHING….but more & more Low Earth Orbit! Trust me: if the space entrepreneurs get their way, the ISS will NEVER end! Come 2020, you all will be seeing an ISS-2 in the works.

Comment by Chris Castro — July 2, 2011 @ 2:47 am

“WELL PUT, Gary!! You hit the head of the nail. Commercial Space is nothing but a bunch of hype!! The tragedy that is unfolding now: the needless end of the manned U.S. space program, is being caused by the Obama administration believing the lie that is Commercial Space, hook, line, & sinker. Flexible Path gets you NOTHING….but more & more Low Earth Orbit! Trust me: if the space entrepreneurs get their way, the ISS will NEVER end! Come 2020, you all will be seeing an ISS-2 in the works.”

Commercial rocket launchers have been the only rockets going beyond LEO, for the last few decades. They put all the robots on Mars. They put up thousands of tons of GEO satellites.
And I hope ISS does never end. And we probably wouldn’t built ISS I if we hadn’t expected at some point in time to have a ISS II [and III and IV, and ect].

But it nice if NASA spent less on the ISS program in some time in the future. And perhaps end all funding at some point. Though perhaps want some projects on ISS in the future, so perhaps instead of 3 billion yearly program, it might spend in later years say 100 million on some project using the ISS. Meanwhile ISS could getting a large potion of it’s business from numerous other sources.

Comment by gbaikie — July 2, 2011 @ 6:47 am

Comment by Coastal Ron — July 1, 2011 @ 6:52 pm
“Not that I’ve heard yet”

So, the answer is no. Then I stand by my original assertion. The $125M/launch figure is a nonbinding press release statement subject to unilateral change without notice. Take away its only likely competition and watch the price rise (making the big assumption it ever gets built at all).

Comment by Joe — July 2, 2011 @ 8:14 am

Comment by Chris Castro — July 2, 2011 @ 2:47 am
“The tragedy that is unfolding now: the needless end of the manned U.S. space program, is being caused by the Obama administration believing the lie that is Commercial Space, hook, line, & sinker. Flexible Path gets you NOTHING….but more & more Low Earth Orbit! Trust me: if the space entrepreneurs get their way, the ISS will NEVER end! Come 2020, you all will be seeing an ISS-2 in the works.”

Hi Chris,

I think the thing many of us fear (I know I do) is that if the current non-plan were to be allowed to proceed, you are being far too optimistic. I doubt there would be any American activity even in LEO after 2020 (at least not any that did not involve buying tickets on other countries rockets, to fly to other countries facilities).

Comment by Joe — July 2, 2011 @ 8:32 am

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Pingback by NASA Shifts Into Neutral | The Once and Future Moon – Air & Space Mag | Commercial Space Travel — July 2, 2011 @ 10:39 am

Joe said July 2, 2011 @ 8:14 am:

“The $125M/launch figure is a nonbinding press release statement subject to unilateral change without notice.”

The price is $80-125M, not $125M. And if you read what they say on their website, they say “Standard launch prices for 2013. Please contact us for details at sales@spacex.com“, so they are upfront about when the prices are good for. And once you sign on the dotted line, you’re locked in for the price. Payload customers know how this works, so you don’t have to worry.

But again you seem to be placing different rules on SpaceX than you do on everyone else. ULA is known for not having set prices, and I’ve heard complaints that they negotiate the price for each launch. If true, why don’t you complain about them?

In the end the marketplace will decide if the prices SpaceX charges are worthwhile, not you or I. If they are perceived as too high, then they won’t get any business. If the pricing is good, like it is now for Falcon 9, then they will get lots of business (like they are now). Capitalism works.

“Take away its only likely competition and watch the price rise (making the big assumption it ever gets built at all).”

Who is the competition? If we’re still talking about Falcon Heavy, then let’s talk price and capability:

Price – Falcon Heavy can do the same job as Delta IV Heavy, Ariane 5, and Proton, but for far less. Six times less for Delta IV Heavy, so price-wise there really is no competition for Falcon Heavy. What’s holding them back right now is that Falcon Heavy needs to gain trust, which since the payloads it would fly would be the most expensive in the industry, payload owners will want to make sure it’s worth the risk to save a lot. Standard business decision type stuff, so not a big surprise.

Capability – There are no other commercial rockets in the 50mt-to-LEO category, and no defined market, so Falcon Heavy doesn’t have any direct competitors. It’s too small to directly compete with the SLS requirement, and it will have to fly multi-launch payloads for quite a long time (no 50mt payloads projected by NASA or anyone).

But again, Falcon Heavy shares most everything with Falcon 9, so SpaceX can accommodate a small number of launches without a large overhead penalty (unlike SLS). They can take their time to let the market develop without betting the farm on the amount of demand.

With the SLS, Congress is betting that Congress itself will be providing lots of funding for SLS-only payloads. So far they haven’t even funded a payload for one launch!

When will Congress start funding payloads for the SLS? No seems to be able to answer that question – why?

Comment by Coastal Ron — July 2, 2011 @ 10:47 am

Round and round the argument goes. Such intense obsession over big rockets.

Meanwhile, the Delta IV Heavy is capable of hurling 11-12 metric tons towards the Moon. This is quite sufficient to transport a person or two from the surface of the Earth to EML1.

Why is there so much heat and discussion concerning an HLV when fundamentally it is not necessary? HLVs are optional, not necessary.

Comment by Ron Menich — July 2, 2011 @ 11:28 am

Comment by Coastal Ron — July 2, 2011 @ 10:47 am
“The price is $80-125M, not $125M. And if you read what they say on their website, they say “Standard launch prices for 2013. Please contact us for details at sales@spacex.com“, so they are upfront about when the prices are good for. And once you sign on the dotted line, you’re locked in for the price. Payload customers know how this works, so you don’t have to worry.”

Saying that on their website commits them to nothing (as “Payload customers” know, so “you don’t have to worry”)

“But again you seem to be placing different rules on SpaceX than you do on everyone else. ULA is known for not having set prices, and I’ve heard complaints that they negotiate the price for each launch. If true, why don’t you complain about them?”

You keep saying I am applying different standards to Space X. I am not. When have you heard me praising (or for that matter attacking ULA)? What makes you think Space X (if can get a monopoly on a specific launch market) will operate any differently than ULA.

“In the end the marketplace will decide if the prices SpaceX charges are worthwhile, not you or I. If they are perceived as too high, then they won’t get any business. If the pricing is good, like it is now for Falcon 9, then they will get lots of business (like they are now). Capitalism works.”

I do not need a lecture from you about how “Capitalism works” (thanks for the thought though). If there is a market for payloads beyond the range provided by Delta IV/Atlas V and this hypothetical Falcon Heavy is the only vehicle that can fill it, Musk will decide what the prices are as long as that monopoly exists. If that is Capitalism at all it is Crony Capitalism.

“Who is the competition?”

Pretending not to know the answer to that question (given the context of this discussion) is a pointless diversion.

Have a nice Holiday weekend.

Comment by Joe — July 2, 2011 @ 11:30 am

Why is there so much heat and discussion concerning an HLV when fundamentally it is not necessary?

First, there is no “heat” — most of this discussion is being generated by supporters of the “new direction,” which, in the opinion of some of us (including me) is a path to non-accomplishment and the dismantling of the American space program. Second, it is not the HLV per se that we are defending; it is the space faring capability and infrastructure that it represents, which is being deliberately destroyed in favor of a paper rocket of questionable value and vague promises of future accomplishment. Some of us think that this is a poor bargain.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — July 2, 2011 @ 12:11 pm

“I was talking about what gets manufactured for each flight, of which the two largest items are the Solid Rocket Motors and the External Tank. The costs for these, according to the last major contracts I could find, was a total of $241.M. Manufacturing for them shut down years ago, and according to statements the companies have made publicly, it would take years to restart them.”

Curious. I seem to recall seeing some tests of 5 segment SRB’d recently.
And the casings on those boosters were from some of the first shuttle flights. That is called reusability. Years to restart?

The external tank switched to being made with friction stir welding equipment so in a sense you are right about production stopping years ago. And production did stop recently but everything is still there waiting for a decision on the SLS.

Comment by GaryChurch — July 2, 2011 @ 12:38 pm

“Commercial rocket launchers have been the only rockets going beyond LEO”

ALL ROCKETS ARE COMMERCIAL ROCKETS BECAUSE THERE ARE NO STATE RUN FACTORIES. This is one of the most often used private space distractors.

We are talking about discarding the commercially built components of the HLV infrastructure in favor of a single source vehicle that is inferior in any comparison except cost.

Cheap is not going to get the U.S. Beyond Earth Orbit. It will more than likely be discarded when it is realized it cannot do what is advertised any more than the shuttle could.

They hype is amazing but PR is not reality. A couple test flights of a hobby rocket is not a HLV sending a hundred of tons into orbit,

There is no cheap.

Comment by GaryChurch — July 2, 2011 @ 12:46 pm

“First, there is no “heat” — most of this discussion is being generated by supporters of the “new direction,” which, in the opinion of some of us (including me) is a path to non-accomplishment and the dismantling of the American space program. ”

Well said.
They will not thank you for giving them all this space to advertise Dr. Spudis. As I said, I am certain several of them are all smiles over the success of the game they are playing.

I could have answered all of their posts by exposing the subterfuge and manipulation behind their half truths and spin doctor statements.

But I do not have the time that they have as an infomercial team to even begin to compete with the volume they are posting.

That is the game; put up as much SpaceX advertising for free that they can get away with.

Comment by GaryChurch — July 2, 2011 @ 12:55 pm

“As with many choices in engineering, it is not that simple.”

I was stating the fact that Falcon 9 does not use the best propellant available- liquid Hydrogen- in the upper stage because SpaceX cannot afford it, The point being they are sacrificing a key ingredient of superior performance for no other reason they did not have the money to build anything better. Which results in pieced together micky mouse 27 engine expendable monstrosities masquerading as heavy lift.

I was not commenting on engineering choices- I was keeping it simple and you were trying to obscure the point.

Comment by GaryChurch — July 2, 2011 @ 1:07 pm

Paul D. Spudis said July 2, 2011 @ 12:11 pm:

“which is being deliberately destroyed in favor of a paper rocket of questionable value and vague promises of future accomplishment.”

Are you saying that NASA is dismantling the Shuttle infrastructure in favor of an undesigned commercial rocket and/or crew transportation system?

First of all, let’s separate LEO (i.e. ISS support) from exploration (beyond LEO).

For crew to LEO, by law the MPCV is only a backup to commercial services, so no competition there. And the proposed SLS is not meant for ISS cargo support duty, so no competition there either. Your “vague promises of future accomplishment” comment probably wouldn’t include the CRS contract, since so far both companies have been making steady progress, and SpaceX may even exit the COTS program after their next mission.

Maybe you’re implying something about the CCDev program? Like all things, if properly funded, I don’t think anyone doubts that Boeing can build and operate their CST-100, and SpaceX has already flown their Dragon capsule, so really that only leaves room for skepticism for SNC and Blue Origin. Still, I wouldn’t say “vague promises” about them either, since they have specific performance goals that they are designing to, and if they don’t meet them, NASA doesn’t pay. Gotta love milestone programs

So for LEO cargo and crew, NASA was never going to support it anyways, so you assertion doesn’t apply. Is that correct?

For exploration beyond LEO, commercial crew is not competing with the MPCV. No conflict there either?

So really the only area in question is getting payloads to LEO and beyond for exploration purposes. Is that correct?

And that boils down to ULA, ESA, JAXA, Russia, SpaceX and all the other launch providers competing against the proposed SLS for future exploration missions that Congress hasn’t funded yet.

No Congressionally funded missions yet, no mission definition, and no idea what size payloads (or technologies) are needed. Aren’t the vague promises really on the side of Congress? That they will someday fund lots of missions for the SLS? That the SLS, which so far is a “paper rocket”, will truly, really, will be the only way to carry out the dozens of missions that will somehow be funded during this recession?

It seems like Congress is the one you should be talking to about vague promises, not the commercial space industry.

Comment by Coastal Ron — July 2, 2011 @ 1:21 pm

There’s nothing capitalistic private companies being dependent on government contracts.
And ULA prices for military launches continue to climb. Real capitalism is sustaining a business without being dependent on tax payer dollars and government contracts!

But, fundamentally, NASA’s problems have more to do with its priorities than with its budget. It seems rather odd that some in Congress call NASA a failure for doing what the President and Congress directed them to do: build an aerospace plane and an international space station.

If the President and Congress seriously want NASA to do beyond LEO missions then current NASA funds have to be prioritized for beyond LEO missions. But, again, that’s rather difficult to do when NASA is still spending a ton of money for LEO missions ($3 billion a year for the ISS and nearly $1 billion a year to develop commercial crew missions to the ISS). $3 to $4 billion a year over a decade ($30 billion) would easily be enough to fund the development of a lunar lander and lunar base modules and ice mining and processing machinery).

With all the talk about spending caps in Washington these days, I’d love to see a $1 billion a year spending cap on annual US expenditures for the ISS program in order to provide $2 billion more in annual funds for beyond LEO programs. But our international partners need to start paying their fare share.

And if that means that we have to bring in more international partners and corporate investment, then so be it. But spending $3 billion a year for a space station that is not even totally owned and controlled by the US is way too much money, IMO. And it doesn’t make any sense for Bolden and the administration to keep saying that NASA needs to turn LEO missions over to private companies while still spending over $3 billion a year of precious NASA funds for the ISS, the ultimate LEO mission.

Comment by Marcel F. Williams — July 2, 2011 @ 1:48 pm

GaryChurch said July 2, 2011 @ 12:38 pm:

“And production did stop recently but everything is still there waiting for a decision on the SLS.”

The people running the production for the Shuttle manufacturing are gone – they have been laid off, or absorbed into other parts of their respective companies.

So what is “the space faring capability and infrastructure that it represents” that Paul Spudis is talking about?

Certainly not the people, since they have gone off to other jobs, many in the same commercial space industry that many deride.

The tooling for the Shuttle is not directly usable for the SLS, since it requires new materials for the SRM casings (and new formulations for the solid fuel), the External Tank is a different configuration (new tooling and assembly methods), and just about every other part of infrastructure is going to be different from the Shuttle, including the pad (brand new) and the crawler (beefed up to handle the SLS weight). The VAB probably won’t change, or the control room, but that’s not that much.

I don’t see what we’re losing from the industrial manufacturing capability side. Please provide details if you disagree.

It will be years before the SLS is ramped back up anyways, so whether it’s one year or 10, I don’t see why the aerospace industry won’t be ready to build any type of launch vehicle needed when the time comes.

And remember our existing launchers for NASA (Delta IV, Delta IV Heavy, Atlas V, and soon Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy) still have plenty of capacity to fly more missions, but there is little extra money coming from Congress for more exploration missions. The launch industry has lots of excess capacity.

So why do we need the SLS? I think some people are under the assumption that a heavy lifter is mandatory for exploration – from what I can see that’s just vague promises of future accomplishment. Let’s see how much money Congress is going to allow NASA to spend on new exploration, and then determine what we need to accomplish it.

Don’t put the cart before the horse.

Comment by Coastal Ron — July 2, 2011 @ 3:20 pm

Comment by Coastal Ron — July 2, 2011 @ 1:21 pm
“Are you saying that NASA is dismantling the Shuttle infrastructure in favor of an undesigned commercial rocket and/or crew transportation system?”

No Ron a number of us are saying (over and over again, but somehow you manage to “not understand” over and over again) that a small number of political appointees currently running NASA HQ are trying to do that. You’re pretending to not understand the obvious is getting rather tedious.

As for the rest of you post:

”First of all lets” talk about anything but the direct subject. You seem to think no one notices when you try to change the subject, at least some of us do.

It’s a Holiday weekend why don’t you take a break from your jihad against the American Space Program and go eat a hotdog.

Dr. Spudis,

If this post violates the civility standard you are trying to set for these discussions, I sincerely apologize and hope you will still post it; but this guy is not playing a straight game. For myself I intend to hang out the “Do not feed the Troll’s” sign and ignore any of his further comments.

Comment by Joe — July 2, 2011 @ 3:32 pm

“No Congressionally funded missions yet, no mission definition, and no idea what size payloads (or technologies) are needed. Aren’t the vague promises really on the side of Congress? That they will someday fund lots of missions for the SLS? That the SLS, which so far is a “paper rocket”, will truly, really, will be the only way to carry out the dozens of missions that will somehow be funded during this recession?”

No missions?
Paper Rocket?
Somehow be funded during this recession?

The mission is obvious which is why congress is mandating it; BEO
The reason they are mandating is because private space is an extremely risky proposition and in any case has nowhere near the proven capability and a HLV.

The paper rocket is two SRB’s that are the most dependable ever built, firing flawlessly over 200 times. Private space has nothing comparable. The SSME and ET have evolved and been improved to the point where they are ready made components for a HLV that will be as reliable as the last 100 heavy lift missions that have flown.

Comment by GaryChurch — July 2, 2011 @ 4:02 pm

Joe,

It’s a Holiday weekend why don’t you take a break from your jihad against the American Space Program and go eat a hotdog.

As we have reached the stage of continuous repetition at last, I think that’s time for all of us to go have a hotdog. Everyone’s had their say and at over 160 comments, I think that enough is enough.

Everyone have a nice Fourth of July weekend.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — July 2, 2011 @ 4:12 pm

Superb essay and fantastic discussion!

I’m a neophyte to government bureaucracies, so forgive me if the following questions sound sarcastic (they’re not).

1) How could we have been so far off our previous estimates and plans to go back to the moon?

2) If we couldn’t get it right before, what’s radically different this time around?

3) Why should we believe that private contractors could possibly be better than 20-30% cheaper?

Cheers everyone!

Comment by Ken Rickets — July 21, 2011 @ 1:57 am

“I’m a neophyte to government bureaucracies,”

Everyone is a neophyte, even the bureacrats. It is all too complex for anyone to understand except for each little kingdom- and there are thousands.

1. Why so far off?
No quality control experts or accountants keeping the contractors honest. These people were out the door to cut costs after Apollo. Along with this was underfunding so that the programs dragged along costing more and more money. It all adds up to greed; going cheap and working the system. Unfortunately there is no cheap and the system has put itself out of business.

2. We did get it right before. The Apollo program was shut down because of Vietnam war costs and changes in administration that ate away at the coalitions supporting it. Apollo would have become cheaper to fly as the program evolved and a moonbase using soft landed wet workshops would have been in operation probably before 1990.

3. Private contractors are not transparent and do things as cheap as possible while keeping their books confidential. This is why past private space companies have all gone out of business and will probably continue to do so. Space flight is inherently expensive, there is no cheap.

Comment by GaryChurch — July 21, 2011 @ 4:21 pm

[...] retirement of the Space Shuttle this past year vindicated T.S. Elliot’s pronouncement about the nature of the end of the world.  [...]

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