AirSpaceMag.com

Thanks for this needed periscope up into reality, and for keeping the faith another year. I noted, once again, the agency’s new “Mission Statement” carries with its newness the tacit assumption of a departure, that what they were up to before was not to the benefit of all “humankind.”

Whether one can or finds difficult to swallow this administration’s commitment to private enterprise (at least when it comes to Space), this mission statement certainly is a departure from America’s national interests, its national security, which, as Jack Schmitt has often pointed out, is perhaps the most “compelling state interest” our Constitutional Republic’s has for engaging in space exploration at tax payer expense.

That last has not changed, nor will it, until we come to grips, once again, with our Deep Water port to deep space the Moon and its resources.

Comment by Joel Raupe — December 27, 2011 @ 10:05 am

Well said, Paul. I’d say let’s hope 2012 will be better, but there’s no sign of that, either. It’s pretty sad that our own space program has less capability than I used to have with the stuff I ordered by mail from Estes.

Comment by William McEwen — December 27, 2011 @ 10:20 am

- “The retirement of the Space Shuttle this past year vindicated T.S. Elliot’s pronouncement about the nature of the end of the world. The U.S. workhorses that ferried Station pieces and crew to low Earth orbit await their museum berths.“

- “Few noticed or understood that without a replacement, the country’s capability for humans to access space had been discarded.“

- “As 2011 closes out, construction and assembly of the International Space Station is complete – it is a unique Earth-orbiting platform for ongoing scientific research, accessible for the price of a ride on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft”

- “After being kicked long and hard by the Congress, NASA finally decided that they should probably go ahead and build a new launch vehicle. Despite some initial foot-dragging (and the conspicuously ignored presence of an obvious and inexpensive alternative)”

Ouch, I wish I could disagree, but….

Comment by Joe — December 27, 2011 @ 11:02 am

The author wrote:

“Being that I am a “the glass is not only half-empty, but chipped and cracked down the middle” space policy town crier”

Well at least now I know that I’m not the only one that noticed. While there is plenty of things that I would consider a “glass half empty” type situation with our space efforts (SLS being the biggest), I see plenty of “glass half full” stuff too. For instance:

- The ISS is finished, and now we can focus on it’s intended use. Besides research results, I look forward to using the ISS to learn how to live and work in zero-G space. When coupled with the cargo and crew services that are on their way, we should be able to iterate innovations much faster, which means we’ll be able to leave LEO with far more mature systems.

- With the Shuttle program now ended safely, we can start moving towards a transportation system to LEO that costs far less, is far safer, and let’s us stay in space for more than two weeks at a time (most people didn’t realize that). The Shuttle, while good for building the ISS, had no other use after the completion of the ISS, and was a budgetary albatross for NASA – just like the SLS will be if we don’t kill it soon.

- With the progress made in 2011, we are likely to have two U.S. commercial cargo systems delivering supplies to the ISS in 2012. Considering the ongoing launch failures Russia is having, this cannot come soon enough.

- Despite the “support” of Congress, the Commercial Crew Development program (CCDev) continues to move forward, and now with even less NASA oversight (the use of SAA’s instead of more onerous contracting rules). I tend to see our aerospace industry as mature enough to build human-rated vehicles with only high-level NASA input, so I view this as a good thing.

Overall a good year, with an even better one coming.

Comment by Coastal Ron — December 27, 2011 @ 12:17 pm

lunar orbit, and even a human Venus flyby. All of these imagined missions require knowledge, hardware and technologies that we do not now possess.

Well, your argument about a lunar flyby requiring “knowledge, hardware and technologies we do not now possess” falls flat for what you are proposing as far as robotics, depots, extraction, communication satellites etc. It actually requires far less than for what you are proposing.

Comment by A Fleeting Glimpse — December 27, 2011 @ 1:16 pm

your argument about a lunar flyby requiring “knowledge, hardware and technologies we do not now possess” falls flat

What hardware do we now possess that enables this mission?

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — December 27, 2011 @ 1:33 pm

“- a budgetary albatross for NASA – just like the SLS will be if we don’t kill it soon.”

The only albatross is commercial space. It is incapable of any Beyond Earth Orbit Human Space Flight or flights to the moon. The 27 engine Rube Goldberg faux “heavy” is pathetic compared to the SLS- which uses SRB’s,SSME’s and J-2′s which are far superior in every department to any of the cheap junk the private hobbyists are building.

The single point failure is feul depots and transfer- which is not ready and probably never will be. It is just a smokescreen for the true goal of private space; billionaut tourist trips to LEO.

Private space is a disgusting sham and the shills and their endless advertising is my personal worst of all the chipped and cracked exhibits.

All I can do is keep exposing the ridiculous claims of the the space clown wannabes and their tax dollar supported tourist scam.
Pathetic.

Comment by GaryChurch — December 27, 2011 @ 5:01 pm

[...] scientist Paul Spudis says good riddance to the year in space in Annus Horribilis: Space in 2011. So, what went wrong? The space shuttle program ended, the commercial crew effort appears doomed, [...]

Pingback by Ho Ho No! ‘Tis the Season to be Bummed…. at Parabolic Arc — December 27, 2011 @ 5:37 pm

Space oriented places like Houston? Show-business oriented Los Angeles and New York City? That’s hilarious. In terms of aerospace industry, Los Angeles is miles ahead of Houston. Dryden AFB, just outside of LA, is a major testing site. Houston doesn’t have launch facilities anything like Vandenburg, which is sort of LA suburbia. I won’t even comment on New York City being a “show business oriented” place. That comment is simply absurd. In fact the market capital that aerospace is based on lives there.

Paul, there are some half-credible reasons for siting the shuttles at what is know as an oil industry capital (you know, the stuff they use to grease the hinges in Shuttle!) or a missle defense capital (the stuff they pirate to launch humans into space, as opposed to nuclear weapons), but it’s hardly because LA and NYC are show business oriented places.

Comment by Harad Weiner — December 27, 2011 @ 5:54 pm

Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much! 2011 had some bright points…and some of the things that seemed to be negative were actually blessings in disguise.

The retirement of the space shuttles was overdue. They had become dangerous and unreliable. It got to the point where i was holding my breath with each launch. High time we parked them in museums for the relics they are.
The civilian replacements, though not as impressive, will likely be more efficient and safer in the long run. Given sufficient capitol i see no reason why they should fail. SpaceX and Scaled Composites are well on the way to developing useful spacecraft. NASA’s “new” vehicles are a welcome backup, but i don’t see any new technology there, and i don’t expect there to be any. The days when NASA and Roscosmos led the way in manned spaceflight tech are over i think.

The ISS continues to be one of the pinnacles of human achievement, sending awesome images of our planet and providing us with essential info about the Earth and the space nearby.

Hubble…(enough said)

On the positive side of unmanned exploration? Messenger, New Horizons, Kepler, Curiosity, Juno, STEREO, Cassini and Dawn among others bring us new revelations almost daily…there has never in human history been so much knowledge pouring in about the Cosmos.

I celebrate 2011 and look forward to our adventures and advances in the year to come!

Comment by Phil Rounds — December 27, 2011 @ 6:37 pm

Paul,

Yes, until folks realize that the path to the resources of the Solar System goes through the Moon all we will be doing is spinning our wheels.

Comment by Thomas Matula — December 27, 2011 @ 9:25 pm

Its always going to be difficult for NASA’s manned space program to be focused on the right track as long as the serious media and certain political wings in both parties continue to look at permanent artificial gravity space stations and permanent bases and colonies on the Moon and Mars and as some sort of a hyper expensive folly. Scientist and engineers really need to rally behind the idea that a permanent human presence beyond the Earth and on other worlds is a practical and affordable effort that is good for the US economy and for the long term survival of our species. And those who oppose such efforts should be publicly condemned by most scientist as mired in the anti-science mythology and superstitions of our geocentric past.

The $8.4 billion a year that the Obama administration inherited from the Bush administration for manned spaceflight could have easily been increased by $3 billion, as recommended by the Augustine Commission, if the focus had remained on returning permanently to the lunar surface. $8.4 billion a year ($84 billion over the next ten years) is still enough to do it, IMO, if we really focus on doing it!

The ISS is a $3 billion dollar a year distraction, IMO, that doesn’t help us return to the Moon, doesn’t help us to get to Mars, and doesn’t even help us to produce the artificial gravity needed to keep humans healthy in space. The ISS may be good international politics but I really don’t think its good science for the billions we’re putting into it! I probably wouldn’t mind continuing the ISS program, forever, if it didn’t take such a huge amount of financial resources away from those other manned space efforts.

So I’d much prefer for the ISS program to run its coarse until the end of 2015 (four more years of tremendous science?) and then be terminated after 2015 so that those $3 billion a year in funds could be used for a new age of microgravity and artificial gravity space stations and lunar bases. This would not be the end of space stations since the SLS should allow NASA to place much larger and cheaper microgravity space stations and artificial gravity space stations into orbit with a single launch.

Comment by Marcel F. Williams — December 27, 2011 @ 9:45 pm

On the positive side of unmanned exploration? Messenger, New Horizons, Kepler, Curiosity, Juno, STEREO, Cassini and Dawn among others bring us new revelations almost daily…there has never in human history been so much knowledge pouring in about the Cosmos.

All of those missions were started under the “old, tired, obsolete” space program, the one that we have now revolutionized with the “new direction.” Check back in a few years and see what we have going.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — December 28, 2011 @ 4:37 am

“All of those missions were started under the “old, tired, obsolete” space program, the one that we have now revolutionized with the “new direction.”

Those are space science missions. The “new direction” stuff is in the human spaceflight realm. And the programs you lambaste in your blog post, JWST+MSL, were also started during previous administrations, so you’re trying to have it both ways.

Funny how the space science side works. They spend money on missions, and then buy launches for them from the available launch vendors. Strange that they don’t take money away from missions to build and run their own dedicated rocket first. Maybe we could learn a thing or two from how space science does things. If an Atlas 5 can launch a nuclear probe to Mars, you’d think it would be a good enough rocket for humans. Oh wait, I forgot, only the space shuttle or a sdlv are legitimate human spaceflight program launch systems for America; anything using the Atlas 5 must be some malicious scam to pervert our precious space access. Just don’t remember how John Glenn got into space.

Comment by libs0n — December 28, 2011 @ 6:52 am

including near-Earth asteroids, L-points, the tiny, asteroid-like moons of Mars, lunar orbit, and even a human Venus flyby. All of these imagined missions require knowledge, hardware and technologies that we do not now possess. All expose human crews to substantial risk through long-term exposure to radiation and microgravity.

And your imagined proposal for extracting water ice from the moon with human settlement does not expose crews to long-term exposure to radiation? Your logic is not sound.

Comment by A Fleeting Glimpse — December 28, 2011 @ 7:02 am

“All of those missions were started under the “old, tired, obsolete” space program…”
That doesn’t invalidate or reduce the importance of the information they provide. Before we actually GO somewhere inhospitable to humans, it might be nice to find out what we’ll have to deal with when we get there. For instance, LCROSS discovered water on the Moon. Is this not vital information for future explorers? All of our probes, as well as providing scientific knowledge, act as essential preludes to manned exploration.

As far as “artificial gravity” is concerned, the only way to provide that is by centrifugal force. I fail to see how that would be achieved on a planet’s surface. At best we could build “space wheel” habitats in orbit around those planets (or moons) we wish to explore. Keep in mind that any person or group spending significant time on the Moon would essentially be trapped there as a result of bone and muscle degradation…unable to return to Earth because of the crushing effects of its gravity.

The only way i see any possibility of planetary exploration would be through international cooperation, it’s simply too expensive for any one government to undertake on its own.

SpaceX will perform docking maneuvers with the ISS in February 2012. Hardly a failure, it’s a step toward more diversity and a sharing of space technology with the private sector…a good move IMO.

Comment by Phil Rounds — December 28, 2011 @ 8:07 am

Those are space science missions. The “new direction” stuff is in the human spaceflight realm.

Last year, the administration’s requested NASA budget for FY2012 (fortunately rejected 97-0 by the U.S. Senate) called for a 1/3 total reduction in “planetary science” mission spending over the next five years, making the just-then completed NRC decadal study (which new space advocates like to cite as the “proper way” to determine mission goals and objectives) obsolete the moment it was published. Even after Congress restored some of that money, there is still significantly less than previously planned. And that submitted budget was the “new direction.”

And the programs you lambaste in your blog post, JWST+MSL, were also started during previous administrations, so you’re trying to have it both ways.

No, my objective in this post is to review the good and the bad in the previous year, not to lobby for more money for science missions or to “lambaste” those two programs for exploding cost (that would require individual posts on their own). Cost growth through the roof is not desirable in any program.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — December 28, 2011 @ 8:13 am

And your imagined proposal for extracting water ice from the moon with human settlement does not expose crews to long-term exposure to radiation? Your logic is not sound.

All it takes to shield yourself from radiation is mass — lots of it. Such is available on the lunar surface, either as bulk soil, rock or the water we will produce from the polar ice deposits. One does not have such mass on interplanetary flight. Your understanding is incomplete.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — December 28, 2011 @ 8:16 am

That doesn’t invalidate or reduce the importance of the information they provide. … All of our probes, as well as providing scientific knowledge, act as essential preludes to manned exploration.

Where did I argue otherwise? You misunderstood my post. I was pointing out that the “old direction” — the one discarded without any serious thought by the current administration — had plenty of robotic science flight activity. In contrast, the new NASA cuts the space science budget in each year for the next five out years, making most of the proposed new science missions impossible.

Apologists for the new path claim that our space program under the “new direction” will be better and cheaper. I question both of those claims.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — December 28, 2011 @ 8:21 am

Last year, the administration’s requested NASA budget for FY2012 (fortunately rejected 97-0 by the U.S. Senate) called for a 1/3 total reduction in “planetary science” mission spending over the next five years, making the just-then completed NRC decadal study (which new space advocates like to cite as the “proper way” to determine mission goals and objectives) obsolete the moment it was published. Even after Congress restored some of that money, there is still significantly less than previously planned.

I think Dr. Spudis is oversimplifying the issue to the point of inaccuracy. In the original budget request for FY2012, NASA requested $1.54 billion for the Planetary Science division of SMD. The final amount allocated to the program in the “minibus” appropriations bill in November was $1.5 billion, that is, $40 million less than the original request. So Congress did not restore any funding to planetary science in FY12, but actually gave it a slight (~2.5%) cut versus the administration’s request.

What worries the planetary sciences community are the long-term projections in the FY12 request, which see the budget for the division decline to under $1.26 billion in FY16. But those projections are just that—projections—and Congress did not address them in the FY12 appropriations bill, since appropriations are handed on an annual basis. There remains a serious concern that planetary sciences could face significant cuts in FY13 and beyond, jeopardizing NASA’s ability to implement any of the flagship-class missions prioritized in the decadal survey. (The administration’s unwillingness to support NASA’s previously planned participation in ESA’s ExoMars program, leading Europe to look to Russia for cooperation, is not a heartening sign.) But we won’t know for certain what the administration has in mind until the FY13 budget request comes out in February.

In short, cuts in planetary sciences spending at NASA remain a real concern, one that was not solved by Congress in FY12.

Comment by Jeff Foust — December 28, 2011 @ 9:13 am

I think Dr. Spudis is oversimplifying the issue to the point of inaccuracy

I said that the administration’s proposed FY2012 budget was rejected by the Senate 97-0 — it was. I also said that the “out years” budget — the projected spending for planning purposes — showed a 1/3 decline for planetary missions. I also said that such a budget makes the NRC decadal study irrelevant. I did not say that Congress solved that problem. I did say that long-term declines in such spending ARE part of the administration’s plans for space because they are.

So exactly where am I “oversimplifying to the point of inaccuracy”?

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — December 28, 2011 @ 9:25 am

@ A Fleeting Glimpse: “And your imagined proposal for extracting water ice from the moon with human settlement does not expose crews to long-term exposure to radiation? Your logic is not sound.”

The Moon has a sea of radiation protective materials in its natural regolith. The poles also have water which can also be used as an effective shield against cosmic radiation.

Comment by Marcel F. Williams — December 28, 2011 @ 11:49 am

@Phil Rounds

“The only way i see any possibility of planetary exploration would be through international cooperation, it’s simply too expensive for any one government to undertake on its own.”

Expensive compared to what? $8.4 billion a year should be enough for humans to establish permanent bases on the Moon and Mars over the next 30 years. And $8.4 billion represents less than 0.24% of total Federal expenditures. Even if you totally eliminated the manned space program, the Federal government would still be spending more than 99.76% of what it was originally spending before the cut. So there is absolutely no evidence that manned space travel is a significant burden to the US economy, in fact, the opposite is true!

Comment by Marcel F. Williams — December 28, 2011 @ 12:09 pm

@ Phil Rounds: “As far as “artificial gravity” is concerned, the only way to provide that is by centrifugal force. I fail to see how that would be achieved on a planet’s surface. At best we could build “space wheel” habitats in orbit around those planets (or moons) we wish to explore. Keep in mind that any person or group spending significant time on the Moon would essentially be trapped there as a result of bone and muscle degradation…unable to return to Earth because of the crushing effects of its gravity.”

We don’t know if the hypogravity environments on the Moon and Mars are deleterious to human health. That’s why we need a Moon base to find out.

Portable centrifuges that temporarily produce high levels of G for an hour or two every day might be a solution to any possible deleterious effects the lower gravity. But, again, we won’t know until we have a permanent base there.

NASA’s job is not to colonize the Moon. Its job is to determine if its even possible to colonize the Moon!

Marcel F. Williams

Comment by Marcel F. Williams — December 28, 2011 @ 12:22 pm

So exactly where am I “oversimplifying to the point of inaccuracy”?

Let me point out a few elements of Dr. Spudis’s earlier comment that led to that conclusion:

Last year, the administration’s requested NASA budget for FY2012 (fortunately rejected 97-0 by the U.S. Senate)

What Dr. Spudis appears to be referring to is the roll call vote on S. Con. Res. 18, on May 25, 2011. The casual reader, without additional knowledge of the appropriations process, might assume from the original comment that this vote dealt specifically with the NASA budget proposal. Instead, it was a resolution on the overall $3.8-trillion budget proposal submitted by the administration in February; it received no votes since it had been superseded by events in the intervening three and a half months. Moreover, it was only a budget resolution, not an appropriations bill; it’s the latter that really count since they provide the funding for various government agencies.

…called for a 1/3 total reduction in “planetary science” mission spending over the next five years

Looking at the NASA FY12 budget proposal, I don’t see a one-third reduction in planetary sciences spending: a decrease from $1.54 billion in FY12 to $1.256 billion in FY16, which works out to just under 20 percent. It is, nonetheless, still a significant decrease.

Even after Congress restored some of that money, there is still significantly less than previously planned.

As I noted in my previous comment, Congress has not restored any planetary sciences funding since the administration released its FY12 budget request: it actually provided slightly less ($40M) in FY12 than the administration originally proposed. It remains to be seen what the key committees in Congress will do in FY13 and beyond.

Comment by Jeff Foust — December 28, 2011 @ 1:11 pm

“As far as “artificial gravity” is concerned, the only way to provide that is by centrifugal force. I fail to see how that would be achieved on a planet’s surface.”

Just because you fail does not mean everyone else has to. Dig a tunnel in a half mile circle on the moon, Ceres, wherever (anywhere but Mars!). Build a circular train to spin inside that tunnel. Run the “sleeper train.” Small apartment living half the day to exercise, and sleep while the workday is spent bouncing around in hypogravity. The 50/50 solution is almost certain to work. The only scheme with more certainty is a tether or big wheel in space- or stay on earth.

Low gravity makes running a train orders of magnitude easier than on earth. You can even jump out or jump back in with much less energy.

“Apologists for the new path claim that our space program under the “new direction” will be better and cheaper. I question both of those claims.”

Funny that this apologist for science works for a firm promoting space tourism. Wailing and gnashing of teeth over science missions is a variation of the “there is no money so take our cheap junk or nothing.” The truth is the money is being spent on any one of a dozen cold war toys- none of which will, for example, keep the straits of Hormuz open when facing Sunburn missiles. Never raising the budget for human spaceflight is a false premise. One comet fragment grazing the atmosphere would quadruple the present NASA budget.

Just one threat- engineered pathogens- is ample justification for building a Lunar Survival Colony.

This works great in hypogravity environments like moons and asteroids. The icy moons are easy to tunnel in and provide perfect radiation shielding.

Comment by GaryChurch — December 28, 2011 @ 1:30 pm

“-anything using the Atlas 5 must be some malicious scam to pervert our precious space access. Just don’t remember how John Glenn got into space.”

The different spins people try to put on history to justify their advertisent never fails to amaze me. Such examples always assume the reader does not know any details of what is being hyped.

The original Atlas that Glenn flew on was a missile designed to carry a nuclear weapon- just like the R-7 that Yuri flew on. The present Atlas uses a Russian supplied engine everybody says we can build but no one is building. The Space Shuttle hardware is Heavy Lift. Atlas is not.
It takes heavy lift to go Beyond Earth orbit with humans. Atlas is not even human-rated.

So I question the veracity of your comment.

Comment by GaryChurch — December 28, 2011 @ 1:39 pm

Looking at the NASA FY12 budget proposal, I don’t see a one-third reduction in planetary sciences spending: a decrease from $1.54 billion in FY12 to $1.256 billion in FY16, which works out to just under 20 percent.

I stand corrected — it was a 20% reduction; I took numbers from the presentation on the Decadal study at last year’s LPSC (NASA brief is HERE; see page 15). As for the rejection of the administration’s budget, that event began the year-long process of Congress attempting to “fix” the space program mess. The House attempted to solve the science money problem by terminating JWST; that program was retained in the Senate version and the conference language adopted it, so the final appropriated level was slightly less than had been approved. As JWST continues to hemorrhage money, these problems will only grow.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — December 28, 2011 @ 2:07 pm

Comment by Phil Rounds — December 28, 2011 @ 8:07 am
“As far as “artificial gravity” is concerned, the only way to provide that is by centrifugal force. I fail to see how that would be achieved on a planet’s surface.”

In addition to Marcel’s (answer number 24 above), if you are legitimately interested in “how that would be achieved on a planet’s surface” (and not just trying to score rhetorical points); you might want to look up the presentation “Lunar Industrialization and Settlement – Birth of a Polyglobal Civilization” by Krafft Ehricke.

“SpaceX will perform docking maneuvers with the ISS in February 2012.”

Since (based on Mr. Foust’s inputs) we are going to nitpick, even if SpaceX is successful in February (or whenever) they will not “perform docking maneuvers”. They will (may) perform berthing maneuvers. In this case there is a significant difference.

Comment by Joe — December 28, 2011 @ 2:59 pm

” Missing is the notion of permanence and expansion into space. ”

Enough time’s passed that I’ve given up thinking this is a “bug” in US space policy. It’s a feature. Somewhere in OMB and State and DoD there are coteries of high level officials that have decided large scale manned space programs are not in the interest of the US and need to be discouraged. Cost saving would be one motive — it could be argued every decade without a moon base saves taxpayers 300 billion bucks. Military concerns would be another — the less capability for space operations in other nations the better for us! So …

IOW, a moon base is fifty years off and it won’t be the US that builds it.

Comment by mike shupp — December 28, 2011 @ 4:59 pm

” Missing is the notion of permanence and expansion into space. ”

Enough time’s passed that I’ve given up thinking this is a “bug” in US space policy. It’s a feature.

Perhaps it is a feature to the head-in-the-sand crowd. But others will develop this capability. And the experience of building ISS and various satellite servicing missions have demonstrated the value of people and machines working together in space to create, maintain and extend large distributed systems. Such capabilities have important national value, regardless of the brilliant thoughts of the analysts in the bowels of government that you mention.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — December 28, 2011 @ 5:43 pm

It has always been obvious to me that the Obama administration is not the least bit interested in the space program at all. They do not have the intellectual curiosity about space, or any area of hard science, to pursue such lofty goals as a return to the moon. Obama people are all about mythical “social justice” apologies for American achievements and prosperity. Obama is more likely embarassed by Apollo than proud of it.

Comment by Michael P. Delaney — December 28, 2011 @ 8:43 pm

I rather gather that the sort of space policy analysts who talk about “soft power” don’t really see most non-US nations as actually interested in space flight per se. They want space programs to show their citizens they are technologically on a par with the US, maybe politically on a par with the US in some respects. I.e., eliminate or diminish the importance of the US manned program and manned space programs in othe4r nations will likely be downsized as well, which provides a rationale forf further shrinking the US program and so on.

Meanwhile, the US is spending nearly 50 billion per year on unmanned DoD and NSA space programs, which nobody on earth is within miles of equalling. Which probably looks just right to DoD and NSA and OMB folks; maube this can’t last fiorever, but it’s endured 40 years so far, and they can hope for another 40 years of stagnation — which would make doing nothing in space the most successful government policy in the US since Jackson booted the Cherokee out to Oklahoma.

Oh well. Hopefully, I’m paranoid!

Comment by mike shupp — December 29, 2011 @ 12:05 am

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — December 28, 2011 @ 5:43 pm

“And the experience of building ISS and various satellite servicing missions have demonstrated the value of people and machines working together in space to create, maintain and extend large distributed systems.”

The ISS also showed us that we could build 990,000 lb vehicles in LEO using modular segments massing less than 50,000 lb, which is within the capabilities of many existing and near-term rockets.

However that hasn’t stopped many from insisting that we can ONLY explore space by building a rocket that carries five times that amount of mass – that is a disconnect if there ever was one.

As long as we have a Congress that wants to fund jobs instead of exploration (even though exploration will generate jobs, but apparently not in the right places), NASA will not leave LEO. We cannot treat exploration as a luxury that consumes ever expanding amounts of money, but a small indulgence that the taxpayer allows us to pursue. Ignore costs and the lessons of Constellation will be repeated (i.e. sudden cancellation).

For that reason I think the biggest failures of 2011 were 1) Congress pushing even harder to get the SLS going (and still not funding a future use), and 2) their failure to fully fund any plan to replace our dependence on Russia for access to LEO and the ISS.

And in case anyone is getting their hopes up for grand exploration programs in the near future, these two examples should remind you that Congress views a significant portion of NASA’s budget as something to use for political means, not science and exploration. Doesn’t matter which letter is behind their name, no one in Congress is that excited about leaving LEO right now.

Comment by Coastal Ron — December 29, 2011 @ 1:48 am

Comment by mike shupp — December 29, 2011 @ 12:05 am
“Oh well. Hopefully, I’m paranoid!”

No offense intended, but I hope you are paranoid as well.

The only way we will find out is to keep pushing for a program of Lunar Development and see what happens.

As frustrating as that can be, its the only game in town.

Comment by Joe — December 29, 2011 @ 12:42 pm

Dr Spudis:

It is not a question of a glass half-full or half-empty.

Previously, the “glass” was of such tiny capacity as to render a full glass useless, a condition which some opportunists wish to preserve.

And currently, the “glass” no longer exists.

Comment by Nelson Bridwell — December 30, 2011 @ 3:18 am

Previously, the “glass” was of such tiny capacity as to render a full glass useless

Which “Previously” do you mean? The “Previously” when we had a working space transportation system that is now destined for status as lawn ornament? The “Previously” when we had a strategic destination and a plan forward working toward it? As for the “Currently,” it is an improvement only if one believes that nothing is better than something.

And currently, the “glass” no longer exists.

If the “glass” no longer exists, why is it getting $17 billion per year funding?

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — December 30, 2011 @ 3:41 am

Pulling out your decoder ring:

Glass = actual flight hardware, vs destinations, plans, and development activity.

Capacity = Payload to LEO.

Previously = Shuttle LEOTS < Space Transportation System

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdA__2tKoIU

Comment by Nelson Bridwell — December 30, 2011 @ 4:52 am

Thanks for the translation guide, although I’m afraid that your meaning is still somewhat opaque. Got something against simple declarative English?

However, picking up on the theme of your linked video clip, I think I can put it: “Be sure and drink your New Space Kool-Aid!”

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — December 30, 2011 @ 8:11 am

Or, to paraphrase Ralphie:

“A crummy commercial …space program? XZMNQKDSIHK!”

However, I could not resist looking at the glass metaphor from a slightly different angle, and asking if our operational launch hardware is large enough (HLV) in the first place for the missions that we need to fly.

A full shot glass < a half full beer tankard.

http://thmb.inkfrog.com/thumbn/jcagney/100_5864.JPG=450

Cheers!

Comment by Nelson Bridwell — December 30, 2011 @ 4:12 pm

“As long as we have a Congress that wants to fund jobs instead of exploration-”

Translation:
As long as there is Heavy Lift Vehicles the whole private space scam is in danger of being exposed.

Comment by GaryChurch — December 30, 2011 @ 4:34 pm

“As for the “Currently,” it is an improvement only if one believes that nothing is better than something”

The shuttle was perfectly capable of sending large payloads to the moon. The hardware is heavy lift- extremely powerful and the best in world. Nothing even comes close.
But underfunding, the curse of NASA, kept the worst feature of the system that killed two crews from being done away with. It was proposed several times to get rid of the orbiter- from the beginning of the program all the way to the end.
The Moon is the only place to launch nuclear missions. And an HLV is the only way to get there.

Space station tourism in LEO is nothing; endless circles at very high altitude.

Nothing is what we are looking at- and the only something is the moon.

Comment by GaryChurch — December 30, 2011 @ 6:03 pm

“it could be argued every decade without a moon base saves taxpayers 300 billion bucks….IOW, a moon base is fifty years off and it won’t be the US that builds it.”

If it costs 30 billion bucks a year, nobody is going to build it – not in 50 years, or 100. That’s about 4 times NASA’s entire yearly HSF budget, and NASA will do well to hang on to that amount.

IOW, we are not going to be building any lunar bases with expendable super heavy lift launch vehicles. NASA had grandiose, and rather detailed plans for building lunar bases with the Saturn/Apollo system. It didn’t work, and I see no reason to believe it will work with SLS either. The only question I have is whether SLS actually flies before it gets cancelled.

OTOH, we have had the technology to build reliable, fully-reusable launch vehicles for over 40 years, and a 2-stage VTOL design with a lift capacity of 40-50 tons could have been developed for less than what we spent on the shuttle. Such a vehicle, combined with a propellant depot in LEO, could enable a long term program of lunar and planetary exploration for a few percent of the cost of using an expendable super heavy lift launch vehicle. It would also enable a very robust LEO tourism industry, with ticket prices in the low 10s of thousands range.

Comment by Dick Morris — December 31, 2011 @ 7:49 pm

Dick Morris:

I went to work at Rockwell’s Space Division in 1973, as an Aero E, on the Shuttle. If we could have built a reliable, reusable 2-stage VTOL spacecraft with more lift capability than Shuttle for less money than Shuttle, we would have done it. We couldn’t and we didn’t, then and now. You’re living in a dream world.

Comment by mike shupp — January 1, 2012 @ 3:54 pm

Comment by Dick Morris — December 31, 2011 @ 7:49 pm

The “30 billion bucks a year” figure is a canard. No reputable study shows costs in that range. Look at the Spudis/Lavoie paper as one reference – they may have made errors, but would have to off by an order of magnitude to reach “30 billion bucks a year” and that is a very unlikely occurrence.

I have no desire to rehash (yet again) the arguments about launcher configurations, but I will make one more pass. The operational cost of running a Side Mount SDHLV is about 2 billion bucks a year and that would buy you a many as 8 launches per year. That is the reason that I have (and still do support) a SDHLV for the initial phases of a lunar development program. I sincerely believe (based on solid data) that it is the cheapest, fastest, least risky way of initiating the program.

Having said that I am a payloads guy, as long as the transportation system works I could really care less if it is:
- An SDHLV.
- An EELV derived HLV.
- A clean sheet of paper HLV.
- “Existing” launchers using (currently) not existing orbital propellant depots.
- Currently not existing reusable launchers using (currently) not existing orbital propellant depots.
- The ACME Slingshot (preferred by Wylie Coyote).

Comment by Joe — January 1, 2012 @ 6:12 pm

“The only question I have is whether SLS actually flies before it gets cancelled.”

Hi Dick,
That question is, of course, on everyone’s mind.
Mike might think you are living in a dream world but I say more power to ya! Just because I disagree with your take does not mean it will not happen.

But that goes both ways dont’cha know?

Joe has the best idea; Shannon is Obi Wan Kenobi IMO.
Maybe not our only, but certainly our best hope to get a truly robust and successful space program going is Sidemount. Sadly, it looks like SLS is the plan and will take much longer and cost much more. And yes, because of this SLS does have a higher chance of being killed.

There are 7 critical items;
1. The friction stir welding facility at Michoud for building the big big stages.
2. The 5 segment SRBs.
3. The RS-25E.
4. The RS-68A.
5. The MCPV with LAS.
6. The J-2X.
7. De-orbiting the ISS.

These things make going to the Moon a “sure thing.”
The Flexible path hobby rocket tourist station fuel depot blah blah blah is a total loser.

Comment by GaryChurch — January 2, 2012 @ 3:05 pm

The author would do well to reacquaint himself with the historical role of Los Angeles in the history of the space program; for example, the current exhibition at the Huntington Library on “Blue Sky Metropolis: The Aerospace Century in Southern California” (http://www.huntington.org/huntingtonlibrary_02.aspx?id=9362) underscores how deeply appropriate it will be for Endeavour to end up next to the A-12 Blackbird trainer at the California Science Center, a few short miles from Inglewood, where Bernard Schriever and Simon Ramo established the Western Development Center, birthplace of the American ICBM and systems management approach that gave NASA the hardware and organization skills to put Americans in space in the first place, and from Hawthorne, where Elon Musk and the SpaceX team are building the vehicles that will hopefully restore the U.S. capability to deliver supplies to the ISS next month.

Dismissing LA as “show-business oriented” does little to establish the credibility of the article’s theses.

Comment by Bradley P. Allen — January 2, 2012 @ 11:43 pm

“47.The author would do well to-”

Plenty of sites that run spaceX infomercials 24/7; why are you posting here?

As for the shuttles; I think they should just jettison them one after another off the back of the 747 carrier and bury them all at sea. Just about every mistake that could be made in designing a launch vehicle was showcased in the orbiter. How the U.S. managed to screw it up so bad is a marvel in itself.

The author’s main point was that the shuttle exhibits are a distraction from the failure to replace them.
I guess you missed that.

Comment by GaryChurch — January 3, 2012 @ 3:00 pm

mike shupp:

You didn’t build it because NASA didn’t want it. NASA picked the design, not Rockwell, and I have found no evidence that NASA has ever even considered a fully-reusable, 2-stage, VTOL launch vehicle. Can you show me where Rockwell, or anyone, made a formal proposal to NASA for a 2-stage, VTOL shuttle? NASA was fixated on horizontal landing, then and now, and the contractors all knew it.

The shuttle demonstrated the most difficult technologies required to make a vehicle fully-reusable, such as the reusable re-entry thermal protection system. The shuttle TPS left a lot to be desired, but the biggest problem with it was the fact that they mounted the orbiter on the back of the expendable ET so that foam coming off of the tank could damage it.

Making a fully-reusable VTOL launcher would have been much easier than making a fully-reusable VTHL orbiter. An all liquid, VTOL launcher – with no heavy and inefficient solid rocket boosters – could indeed put a larger payload into orbit than the shuttle with less dry mass and GLOW than the shuttle. It would also have cost less to develop, since it would have been much simpler, structurally and aerodynamically than the shuttle. Being largely axially-symmetric, it would have many repeated parts, and if it re-entered base first, all the major loads would be in the same direction.

It is those, like NASA, who think we are going to base a long-term program of human lunar and planetary exploration on an expendable, super heavy lift launch vehicle who are living in a dream world.

Comment by Dick Morris — January 3, 2012 @ 3:34 pm

Joe:

I don’t know where that $30 billion per year figure came from, but I would not be totally shocked if NASA managed to spend that much on a (business as usual) lunar base program (in the very unlikely event that Congress were to give them that amount of money). Like you, I am in favor of whatever works, and at this point I will take whatever we can get, so if we can get a lunar base program going with a SDHLV I will support it. You may well be right that it would be the “cheapest, fastest, least risky way” of going about it. I’m just not very optimistic that such a vehicle can support a long-term program, even if it remains in operation long enough to get us going.

$2 billion a year may cover the fixed costs of the initial SLS version, but I suspect that $3-4 billion may be closer to the truth for the growth version with upper stage. Recurring costs would be in addition to that, so I suspect that the total yearly cost for 8 launches would exceed $12 billion. Payloads may cost a similar amount.

In any event, I think we need to proceed with development of a fully-reusable vehicle at the earliest opportunity. Note that the SLS upper stage would be similar in size and capability to the orbiter stage of my 2-stage, VTOL RLV, so work that has been done on the SLS upper stage to date could be applied to it. If the growth version of SLS actually enters service, the RLV orbiter could be derived fairly directly from the upper stage with the addition of a heat shield and landing legs, as I suggested in my “Sunday Dialog” column in the July 31st New York Times.

Comment by Dick Morris — January 3, 2012 @ 7:18 pm

Dick Morris –

You’re misreading me. I didn’t say Rockwell had proposed a VTOL 2-stage version of the shuttle to NASA. As you note, it wasn’t what NASA wanted, and as I noted, it couldn’t have been built. VTO with Horizontal Land … that was doable, and if memory serves that’s what everybody bidding on the shuttle contract proposed.

I wasn’t there for that part of things. I started at Rockwell (still North American Rockwell, not yet Rockwell International, as I recall) in May of 1973. I was a college dropout, or maybe a flunkout, and even at the time it wasn’t clear exactly which was the case. So I wasn’t a “real engineer”; I was hired as an Engineering Aide II, an extra set of hands for a real engineer, to deal with scut work, and a week after I was hired I got shipped off to Tennessee for two weeks to help record the results from some wind tunnel tests at the Arnold Engineering Development Center — a little bit of the 21st century dropped down for some reason in the mid 20th century, in the midst of communities where most of the the technicians lived amongst farmers and people distilling whiskey and producing baseball bats from lengths of hickory…. Which was educational in a way, to learn I lived in such a country, never all one thing, but mixed up this way and that. And eventually I did become a Real Engineer, with a promotion to Member of the Technical Staff, a couple of years later when I was on the B-1 development program, and got a real college degree in Physics at West Coast University, which ain’t famous but has served me well enough, along with GRE scores, to be considered for grad school, Which is another story.

My boss was a thin intense man named Mark Harthun. His boss was a genial hefty sort named John Lundgren, and I feel privileged in retrospect to havbe known them both. Harthun was a supervisor, he had two lead engineers and about a dozen other people, most of them new college grads. Lundgren had three groups, with about thirty people among them, and he was a manager — second rung on a ladder of 8 or 9 management rungs leading up to Vice President, if I remember correctly. Anyhow, we were the Aeroheating Group, and our job was to keep the shuttle from melting during ascent and reentry.

Chief problem on a VTOL system: re-entry and landing. You’ve got 25,000 fps of velocity to kill off, at a minimum, which takes a whole lot of fuel if you don’t get aerodynamic braking. Which means wings or a wide fuselage, like a lifting body. Re-entry from the moon or planets, outside earth’s orbit, gives you 35,000 fps or more velocity to deal with — twice the energy, twice the problem.

So Rockwell proposed a VTOHL system. The original design was a rwo-stage system: the booster was about the size of a football field, with a rather flattened oval cross-section; it had a two-man crew, if memory serves. The orbiter sat on the back of the booster, much as the real one did, but the proposal orbiter looked like an X-1, with small rectangular wings pretty much perpendicular to the fuselage at about 2/3′s the fuselage length. Think of a brick sitting on a one-foot ruler and you’ve got the idea. It was small, with maybe 15000 pounds of payload capability.

“And the air flow over it never goes turbulent,” Joe Haney, one of the lead engineers said my first day, showing me a 6-inch wind tunnel model of the orbiter. “No matter what we test at, it doesn’t go turbulent.” Which didn’t mean nearly as much then as it would later ….

What with this and that going on in Washington, some “improvements” were ordered. I think the flyback booster died first; the shuttle would be mounted to big expendable tanks instead — easier to design and cheaper to build, since a tank didn’t need a human crew or engines or much else. This was supposed to be “temporary,” and NASA would get around to building a real flyback booster as soon as funding was available. There was a war going on, and the government was running an unprecedented deficit, largely because of the cradle-to-grave socialism of the previous Democratic administration, which just about all the guys around me despised …. I’m sure you’ll find this inconceivable.

Then NASA and the Air Force made an agreement, and the X1-like orbiter went away. The vehicle suddenly needed five times the crossrange (from 1250 miles to 6250 miles); it needed to carry 65,000 pounds of payload. Roughly speaking the cargo bay went from pickup truck sized to railroad car sized. So, bigger fuselage, wider and longer. Bigger wings to increase the vehicle’s range — to slow down descent faster, to allow more steering during rentry. And bigger wings yet again, to deal with the orbiter’s increasing size and weight…

And since the wings are larger, during reentry the boundary layer (the region where air goes from flowing “free” to not moving relative to the vehicle, and becomes hot as kinetic energy is transformed to thermal) is going to get thicker, and finally at last we did get turbulent flow on wind tunnels, implying we’d have turbulent flow in real flights….

Which was not good news, because a turbulent boundary layer is thinner than a laminar one. Air flow becomes chaotic. There’s buffeting. And there’s a lot more heat transfer to the aircraft structure. People write books about this stuff — the basic text on boundary layer theory was by a guy named Schlichting and for all I know it’s still in print, there’s not a lot of folks competing for fame in his corner of the churchyard.

Anyhow. The increased heating required bigger, tougher wings, which mweant more weight. It required some structural changes in the main fuselage, generally meaning more weight. All meaning changes in the vehicle’s aerodynamics, meaning different return trajectories had to evaluated, and so on.

But of course the real fun thing that in was a tile-based Thermal Proctection System. People could write books about the TPS I rather think — really thick ones, like Russian novels, with — in the end –similar amounts of tragedy. Shuttle TPS was an absolutely insane kludge in my humble opinion == and because it took so large a workforce to maintain it was the single most important factor in destroying shuttle’s economic rationale.

What would have been better? I always thought some sort of “boil-off” system to transfer cool air from the topside of shuttle to the bottom would have worked. But I wasn’t asked, and long afterwards it strikes me a boil-off system would have needed some hefty internal ducting, which would have weighed a whole bunch. Shuttle just wasn’t big enough for that. So, maybe some sort of liquid sodium heat transfer, as with nuclear reactors… but those transfer heat to water, rather than air. Better materials… well some titanium got substituted for aluminum, but basically the aeroheating would have overwhelmed the titanium as well. So the tile TPS won the day. (Remember, this was to be a _reusable_ system. The Mercury-Gemini-Apollo tactic of ablating heat shields wasn’t open.) For what it’s worth, Chuck Blumer and Serge Waiter, the high powered science guys in my group, never proposed any radical alternative in my hearing, though they did grumble about what had to work with.

Also, the TPS was fragile, about like chalk. “What’s going to happen if a bird hits this?” I asked an older friend one day, after looking at a blueprint. The TPS over the front edge of the wing was about two inches thick at the most, and there was a gap of about a foot between it and the actual metal of the wing. “This’ll break.” Not a problem, he said to reassure me. The air flow around the wing would be thick enough and fast enough that anything a bird would be swept aside. “But even so,” I said, persisting. “What if? What about a flock of birds.” “For that, we keep our fingers crossed,” he said wryly. And you might guess how well that worked out.

The TPS system was reasonably heavy. Not quite as bad as rock or steel, but the tiles weigh about as much as an equal volume of … Lava hand soap, I wrote originally, but that’s too heavy, say that the tiles weigh about the same as dog poop, and you’ll have a better idea … and they cover a great amount of area. Which increased weight.

I’ve said “increased weight” a lot, you may have noticed. And guess what, another improvement got ordained: A pair of nice bulky solid rocket boosters to be used on each shuttle flight. Two boosters collectively weighing 4.4 million pounds, which would generate 4.5 miilion pounds of thrust, and hopefully get this ungainly mother of a system off the launch pad at about the speed of a dying sparrow…

Well, that was the last of it. There were refinements to be made, of course. New trajectories to evaluate, new thicknesses of the TPS to consider, new structuraL changes in the fuselage, and so on. But that’s how the basic system evolved. And it was all a horrible kludge as I well remember and you can now see. But it did work, well enough. Despite OMB’s adding a couple years of delay to the program, despite losing about a third of the initial development budget, shuttle got built.

So yeah, it was seriously compromised, and it wasn’t as rugged as we’dd all hoped and it killed 14 good men and women during its brief (138 flights!) lifetime. And the economics sucked.

So, should we not have built it? Should we have done The Honorable Thing, and walked away from the job? Or kept secret diaries to reveal the Waste & Corruption when it got bad enough to justify whistle blowing? Well, nobody did, and along the way those who hadn’t been aware of how life departed from textbook examples got some education in real world engineering.

Engineering involves compromises. The world’s complex, the customer’s stupid, the money coming in isn’t what was budgeted, and even your coworkers will make the occasional wee error. You had in mind making something glorious, and you have to settle. Other hand, you learn mistakes to watch out for, you learn tactics that do work, you get experience, and with it an idea of what kinds of problems are serious and what kind minor, and so on. Everything will be better when we get to version 2.0 of the software!

Most of us working on shuttle saw it as a temporary thing. No, it wasn’t perfect, but it filled the time, it kept people busy till Washington loosened up and got back to funding space programs properly again. Which, in the worst world anyone could concieve of, would be the later 1970′s. Meanwhile, shuttle was a start toward the reusuable spacecraft of the future, far from perfect given the constraints, but a start. In five years or maybe ten, Shuttle 2 would take its place, and in the decades after, Shuttle 3 and Shuttle 4 and …. That’s how it goes in the aerospace business, my friend.

And 40 years after the Space Shuttle started development, we are all still waiting for Shuttle 2.

And that’s the “dream world” in which in which shuttle got built, shuttle got compromised, and shuttle went to hell and gone. Nobody got together and purposefully designed from the start exactly as it turned out. It was the best we could do at the time, with the technology and the money we had, and no one expected it to be perfect, or to last so long that anyone coming later would think that we had though it perfect.

Any questions?

Comment by mike shupp — January 3, 2012 @ 10:19 pm

“-an expendable, super heavy lift launch vehicle who are living in a dream world.”

The heavy lift components (super heavy is an attempt to “uprate” inferior launch vehicles) exist. Not a dream.

And your dream is not impossible Dick. The Chrysler Serv proposal from the 60′s is an interesting variation of what you are proposing.

But it is a far riskier proposition than SLS.
HLV’s work. That is how we went to the moon and physics have not changed.

Comment by GaryChurch — January 3, 2012 @ 10:24 pm

“47The author would do well to-”

I agree with Gary Church. You most definately missed one of the main points the author was making about the placement of the retired shuttle orbiters.

The effort that various Congressional delegations have spent on the placement of these museum pieces, would and could be much better spent on making sure that the United States is designing, building, and properly funding a robust, safe, reliable, and real replacement system capable of sending humans to the surface and vicnity of the Earth’s Moon, and between the Earth and the Moon in a timely fashion etc…..

At any rate if we are going to worry about where the four orbiters should be placed…it seems commonsense to me that the Smithsonian should get one, and Houston’s Johnson Space Center should have gotten one, if they wanted one. However, the larger point, again, is that the whole fight over these retired orbiters is a sideshow and a distraction, and at best merely a small symbol of the current NASA issues that Congress needs to continue to address…

Comment by Zach — January 4, 2012 @ 1:02 am

Comment by Dick Morris — January 3, 2012 @ 7:18 pm

Hi Dick,

“I would not be totally shocked if NASA managed to spend that much on a (business as usual) lunar base program (in the very unlikely event that Congress were to give them that amount of money)”

Nobody I know of ever went broke overestimating the ability of any large beaurocracy to waste money, but that would be true of any architecture. If that is to be the reason not to try, it will apply equally well to any other booster configuration,

“Like you, I am in favor of whatever works, and at this point I will take whatever we can get, so if we can get a lunar base program going with a SDHLV I will support it”

Good, now we are on a positive track.

“$2 billion a year may cover the fixed costs of the initial SLS version, but I suspect that $3-4 billion may be closer to the truth for the growth version with upper stage. Recurring costs would be in addition to that, so I suspect that the total yearly cost for 8 launches would exceed $12 billion. Payloads may cost a similar amount.”

Actually the $2 Billion would cover the “standing army cost” to just be able to fly at all. The recurring (incremental) costs are small enough to be buried in those fixed costs and thus at 8 flights a year the total would still be about $2 Billion. This is the way it is for anything that fly’s. If an airline maintained two airports (say in New York and California) and a fleet of 5 airliners that only flew 5 to 10 times a year air travel would be much more expensive. The reason reusable vehicles are potentially more economical is because they are (hypothetically – at least) capable of much higher flight rates. You are absolutely correct that payload cost would be in addition to the $2 Billion.

“In any event, I think we need to proceed with development of a fully-reusable vehicle at the earliest opportunity.”

I think the SDHLV is the best way to initiate the Lunar Development Program, I never meant to imply that is an “end point”. If the Lunar Development Program (once initiated) is successful it will reach a point where the need for Human/Light Cargo transportation from Earth Surface will out strip the capabilities of any expendable vehicle. So we are in less disagreement that it might have seemed.

Note that Blue Origin appears to be working on a vehicle concept similar to what you are advocating.

Comment by Joe — January 4, 2012 @ 10:39 am

Gary,

Yes, we know that an ESHLLV will work, because that’s how we did it with Apollo, over 40 years ago. The key words in my previous posts are “long term”. Based on past experience with Apollo, SEI, and VSE, I have a hard time envisioning a sustainable, long-term program using an ESHLLV. I am not necessarily opposed to SLS, but I see it mainly as a stop-gap measure to get us going while we work on a sustainable system using a fully-reusable launcher (and LEO propellant depot).

SERV was indeed an interesting proposal (thanks for the link), though it was considerably larger than the orbiter stage of my 2-stage, VTOL proposal. There were many other SSTO concepts that had been proposed, by Phil Bono and others, and DC-X demonstrated many of the required technologies in flight. My 2-stage, VTOL proposal would be riskier than SLS, though I would not consider it to be “far riskier”, or even “risky” in an absolute sense.

As I envision it, the orbiter stage of my proposal would use a truncated, circular aerospike nozzle, which has not been flown, though NASA tested a linear aerospike nozzle, based on the J-2, in connection with the X-33. If NASA wants to make a “long-term” contribution with SLS, they should design the upper stage with 4 J-2 derivatives (or a larger number of RL-10 derivatives) feeding a circular aerospike nozzle. It would then be much easier to convert it into the orbiter stage of my 2-stage, VTOL RLV, as I suggested in my reply to Joe, and elsewhere.

Comment by Dick Morris — January 5, 2012 @ 11:27 am

Joe:

“Nobody I know of ever went broke overestimating the ability of any large beaurocracy to waste money, but that would be true of any architecture. If that is to be the reason not to try, it will apply equally well to any other booster configuration.”

The cost of Earth-to-orbit transportation tends to be the principal driver of the cost of everything we do in space, so if we can, as I expect, get that cost down by a factor of 10 or more with a fully-reusable vehicle, we could expect a similar reduction in the total program cost. That could make a big difference in the political viability of the program.

“Actually the $2 Billion would cover the “standing army cost” to just be able to fly at all. The recurring (incremental) costs are small enough to be buried in those fixed costs and thus at 8 flights a year the total would still be about $2 Billion.”

I’ve seen estimates of the cost per flight of SLS in the $1-2 billion range. If the fixed cost is about $2 billion per year, for 8 flights the fixed cost per flight would be about $250 million, so a large fraction of the cost per flight would, therefore, be recurring cost. At this point, it’s hard to say how reliable any of these figures are, so they should be taken with a grain of salt. But I would expect the cost of the expended core and upper stages to be at least $250 million – each.

“Note that Blue Origin appears to be working on a vehicle concept similar to what you are advocating.”

SpaceX is also working on a fully-reusable, 2-stage, VTOL design based on Falcon-9. Both concepts are much smaller than what I have in mind, since my proposal is targeted at human lunar and planetary exploration, with the orbiter stage being refueled in LEO for the TLI/TMI burn. Still, if either or both of the Blue Origin or SpaceX designs are successful, it could be a very important step in the right direction.

Comment by Dick Morris — January 5, 2012 @ 8:45 pm

Mike Shupp:

Thanks for the personal history of the shuttle program from the inside. I also started as an Engineering Aide, supporting a hardware-in-the-loop flight simulation facility for SRAM, before I got my BSEE.

I didn’t actually believe that Rockwell, or anybody else, had proposed a VTOL design for the shuttle, but it was possible that you, being an insider, would know something that I had missed, so I thought I’d ask. Your recollections largely coincide with mine, though I think the “improvements” came about because the OMB would not allow enough budget for NASA to develop it’s fully reusable design. I also think the final cross-range requirement was a lot closer to 1250 miles than 6250. That, and the 65,000 pound payload requirement came about because the Air Force wanted to launch it’s heavy reconnaisance satellites into polar orbit from VAFB with the ability to do an abort-once-around (a mission which the shuttle never performed).

As for re-entry aeroheating, some people who know a lot more about the subject than I do have examined the problem of VTOL re-entry and concluded that it is doable with a reusable TPS. When returning from the Moon or Mars, we don’t have to re-enter to landing in a single atmospheric pass the way Apollo did. All we require from the initial pass is to capture into an Earth orbit, which can be quite elliptical. Another pass to circularize into LEO, then re-enter and land some time later.

As for engineering realities, you wouldn’t believe some of the “wee errors” that I have seen in my 20 years working Engineering Liaison on the 747 and 767. But we do our best to fix the problems and give the customers what they want. The end result is vehicles which are several orders-of-magnitude less costly to fly than the shuttle, and several orders-of-magnitude more reliable.

In summary, I think your description of the shuttle as a “horrible kludge” is pretty close to my impression from the start. You may also be right that it was the best that could be done with the available technology, if one is absolutely determined to build a VTHL design without enough money to make it fully-reusable. I believe that they really could have developed a 2-stage, VTOL RLV for less than they spent on the shuttle.

Comment by Dick Morris — January 5, 2012 @ 10:40 pm

From http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328464.600-hundreds-of-tiny-moons-may-be-orbiting-earth.html:

”
The team found that, on average, one asteroid about 1 metre across is in Earth’s orbit at any given time, and 1000 or so smaller space rocks down to 10 centimetres across should be in orbit too (Icarus, DOI: 10.1016/j.icarus.2011.12.003). “There’s a lot more of these than people may have been thinking,” Granvik says.
”

Finding these rocks would require some hefty space-based telescope assets.

But what if we didn’t need to go down to the lunar surface for resources, and instead just collected asteroids already in Earth orbit?

I haven’t thought about it much yet — new possibility.

Comment by Ron Menich — January 6, 2012 @ 8:40 am

But what if we didn’t need to go down to the lunar surface for resources, and instead just collected asteroids already in Earth orbit?

Good luck on that. First, it’s not certain these meter- to cm-scale rocks even exist in any significant quantity (the estimates in the article you link to are models, not observations). Second, space is big and even if these estimates are correct, they are spread out over a large region of space. An ore is a concentrated quantity of the desired material.

Comment by Paul D. Spudis — January 6, 2012 @ 9:04 am

“But what if we didn’t need to go down to the lunar surface for resources, and instead just collected asteroids already in Earth orbit?”

To reach any asteroid we must first climb from the bottom of earth’s gravity well to LEO. That’s 9 to 10 km/s.

These tiny earth moons folks have been buzzing about are several lunar distances from earth. To reach them from LEO would take another 3.2 km/s.

Given a 13 km/s delta V budget to reach these guys, ROI is out of the picture.

However, given lunar propellant at EML1 or EML2, such asteroids could be reached with around .5 km/s. Possibly less.

Likewise, the transportation infrastructure Paul promotes would make accessible a multitude of near earth asteroids in solar orbit.

Comment by Hop David — January 6, 2012 @ 10:31 am

Comment by Dick Morris — January 5, 2012 @ 8:45 pm
“The cost of Earth-to-orbit transportation tends to be the principal driver of the cost of everything we do in space ….”

That is certainly true up until now (when all mass is delivered from Earth) and will remain so unless and (hopefully) until significant portions of the required mass can be derived from extraterrestrial sources (initially the Moon). But that is what this whole conversation is about. The question (to me at least) is what is the most expeditious path to begin the exploitation of Lunar resources.

“I’ve seen estimates of the cost per flight of SLS in the $1-2 billion range. If the fixed cost is about $2 billion per year, for 8 flights the fixed cost per flight would be about $250 million, so a large fraction of the cost per flight would, therefore, be recurring cost. At this point, it’s hard to say how reliable any of these figures are, so they should be taken with a grain of salt. But I would expect the cost of the expended core and upper stages to be at least $250 million – each.”

It is wise to be suspicious of the cost estimates given so far for operating the SLS. All of them, with which I am familiar, were produced before the Obama Administration accepted the SLS in September. A cynical type might think that NASA headquarters was turning out studies intended to make the SLS look bad.

The $2 Billion number is based on the Side Mount configuration SDHLV, but an In Line version should not be more expensive to operate (once the additional development costs are paid). The cost is for payload delivery to orbit, so the cost of an upper stage would be considered part of the payload. Accepting your $250 Million figure for the upper stage cost (and I think it could be held lower if the hardware is maid common with the EELV ACES upper stage that the DoD wants anyway) that would be an upper stage cost of another $2 Billion a year (for 8 flights per year). If the money allocated to HSF is the $10 Billion a year it was prior to the current fiasco, that would leave $6 Billion for actual payloads ($750 Million per payload at 8 flights per year). Obviously actual implementation would be considerably more complicated than that (with the need to schedule concurrent developments of the booster, upper stage and payloads along with use of current EELV’s to launch precursor missions). But it seems doable when you consider that the actual payloads (at least for the most part) will be recurring units of the same small number of units (crew vehicle, lunar lander, modular units of the lunar surface equipment).

I expect that we approaching the outer limits of Dr. Spudis telling us we are getting off topic (however much fun we may be having), so I will close by saying I like your idea of using the upper stage as the staring point for other uses (in your suggestion an upper stage for a TSTO RLV. I would suggest two others:
- A Lunar surface to orbit RLV
- An LEO to LLO RLV.

Comment by Joe — January 6, 2012 @ 11:36 am

Once we have the ability to refuel on the Moon with LH2 and/or LOX, the orbiter stage of the TSTO RLV will be able to fly out to the Moon (after being refueled in LEO) and land. It can then be refueled on the Moon and fly directly back to LEO with aerobraking. (It will be able to do the same with Mars.)

Comment by Dick Morris — January 6, 2012 @ 1:47 pm

“-will be able to fly out to the Moon (after being refueled in LEO) and land.”

Launching from earth straight to lunar orbit is no problem- we did it with Apollo without fail. Launching an HLV with a 100 ton payload is no problem- we did it over one hundred times (!) with the shuttle. And you started with launching from the moon, which is a moon base makes no problem.

The problem is this “(after being refueled in LEO).”
That is not going to work.
But the SLS certainly will- just as quickly as we can stack it in the VAB.

Like your “super heavy lift” revision (it is just heavy, and the ones you are trying to reclassify as heavy…are not) refueling in LEO is a trick. A disguise for something having nothing to do with going to the Moon and opening up the solar system.

Comment by GaryChurch — January 7, 2012 @ 3:55 pm

I couldn’t disagree more. 2011 continued the fantastic success of the unmanned scientific probes. The advances due to these probes are literally and figuratively astronomical. And the tail end of 2011 saw the launch of several ambitious probes that will deliver in coming years. Cost effectiveness of unmanned probes continued to be proven in 2011.

Meanwhile, the manned program continued to go around in circles in low-Earth orbit without a meaningful destination, other than to continue to “go where a lot of men and women have gone before”. Too many people from my time still see the Apollo program as a science mission instead of the geopolitical tool it really was. When we need another geopolitical success, the manned program will be re-sponsored and re-staffed — not before.

The 2011 loss of the Shuttle program was a gain that stopped the charade of a manned “exporation” program. And the success of the unmanned exploration deserves more respect than given in this article.

We need more years like 2011, not fewer.

Comment by Joe Shuster — January 8, 2012 @ 4:19 pm

“The 2011 loss of the Shuttle program was a gain that stopped the charade of a manned “exporation” program.”

Sadly it also threw the baby out with the bathwater.
Sidemount was the solution to the “charade.” It could have sent a dozen probes into the outer solar system in one afternoon. The problem has always been underfunding- a problem the DOD space program has never had.

Like so many critics of the shuttle program and NASA manned space flight, you do not seem to understand that the shuttle hardware- the SRB’s, ET, and SSME’s- are a national asset and the most powerful launch hardware on earth. Nothing else even comes close.

Your happiness at this supposed “gain” is actually a terrible loss for future unmanned probes.
How many Curiosity rovers do you think a sidemount vehicle could send in one flight?

Comment by GaryChurch — January 8, 2012 @ 4:58 pm

Comment by GaryChurch – January 8, 2012 @ 4:58 pm

“The problem has always been underfunding- a problem the DOD space program has never had.”

We can blame Congress for a lot, including “underfunding”, but in the end we have to live with the money we get. And with the Republican candidates lobbying for LESS government, and no real mention of expanding spending on space, we’ll be lucky if NASA doesn’t get a big budget cut. We need to plan accordingly.

“How many Curiosity rovers do you think a sidemount vehicle could send in one flight?”

We don’t lack for ways to send missions to other planets, and bundling up a bunch of them as an excuse to use a mega-rocket doesn’t solve any current problems. It could create lots of problems if the rocket suffered a failure, so putting all of our exploration eggs in one basket is not a solution. And holding up one mission because a companion program is behind doesn’t make a lot of sense either. I don’t know if many people would lobby for your solution.

If anything, if budgets are going to go down over time, we need to reduce the cost of sending missions on their way. We need more of our shrinking NASA budget going into hardware that can get to it’s destination and do something useful. Congress insisting part of NASA’s budget be used for a rocket without a mission (i.e. the SLS) reduces the money that could be used for mission hardware and ops.

The last vestiges of the Constellation program need to die this year, with their funds moved over to the exploration side of the house, otherwise we’ll be facing the end of 2012 looking forward to reading “Annus Horribilis: Space in 2012″.

Comment by Coastal Ron — January 9, 2012 @ 1:07 pm

“We need more of our shrinking NASA budget going into hardware that can get to it’s destination and do something useful.”

Yes, the old “there is no money so take our cheap junk or get nothing.”

And of course that hardware “that can get to it’s destination” is hobby rockets to space station vacations.

And making money for those tax dollar subsidized investors is that “something useful.”

“-putting all of our exploration eggs in one basket is not a solution.”

LEO is not exploration. And the one basket is fuel depots- the sham that supposedly will solve all the private space problems. The space clown wannabe cult is the worst thing that has ever happened to space exploration.

The “exploration side of the house”? Puh-leez.

Comment by GaryChurch — January 9, 2012 @ 7:20 pm

Comment by GaryChurch — January 9, 2012 @ 7:20 pm

“Yes, the old “there is no money so take our cheap junk or get nothing.””

Nothing NASA buys is cheap, and with competitive procurement there is always someone that will submit a qualified bid. Keep in mind that government procurement guidelines don’t allow for much funny business, and the threat of a lawsuit from a losing bidder forces everyone to have good justification for their decisions. I have pretty good insight into this having worked for two large government contractors.

“And of course that hardware “that can get to it’s destination” is hobby rockets to space station vacations.”

NASA is only allowed to buy from qualified suppliers, which would not include “hobby rockets”.

However what many of us want to see is Congress allow NASA to do is put out to bid all of their routine transportation needs, such as everything that launches from Earth. So far current rockets can handle everything Congress has funded, and there are no funded payloads or missions that need a larger rocket. Even if there were, ULA has an upgrade path for both Atlas and Delta that would like take care of anything NASA needs (and cost far less than the SLS). So instead of funding a rocket without a payload, Congress could be using that money to fund payloads that already have existing commercial rockets they can use. Even NASA has stated this is the fastest way to do exploration missions beyond LEO.

“And making money for those tax dollar subsidized investors is that “something useful.””

Gary, I think you must be under the impression that everyone donates their products to NASA, but that’s not the case. Lockheed Martin is the largest NASA contractor, with Boeing being the #2. Both get hundreds of millions in revenue from NASA on fixed price and cost-plus contracts. Supplying products and services to the government is standard fare in the private sector, so why you have problems with small companies but not big ones is hard to figure out.

“LEO is not exploration.”

I never said it was. Congress continues to fund the ISS National Laboratory because they recognize the need for us to learn how to survive, live and work in space. If we don’t learn that in LEO, then doing it beyond LEO will only be more expensive, and perhaps fatal.

Everyone has certain interests that they have for our future in space, and everyone has particular backgrounds and experiences that they bring to the conversation. As taxpayers, everyone should get a say. For myself, as a taxpayer, I want to see us do more with less money – to break the price barriers that have kept us in LEO. That’s why I talk about costs and money so much, because that is where I see the biggest challenge ahead – too little money from Congress, and too expensive hardware being built. That to me is a ticket to staying in LEO, which I don’t want, so I speak out on money-related issues probably more than others.

Comment by Coastal Ron — January 10, 2012 @ 1:08 am

“Gary, I think you must be under the impression that everyone donates their products to NASA”

Always the subtle insults- along with tons of double talk that say absolutely nothing about what is being discussed. EXPLORATION; Beyond Earth Orbit – Human Space Flight. By way of the Moon as the obvious next step.
Not LEO space station tourism; which is what you are alluding to in every sentence of your post.

“ULA has an upgrade path for both Atlas and Delta that would like take care of anything NASA needs (and cost far less than the SLS).”

Well, according to you. I notice you are more than willing to speak for NASA at times, but also have little good to say about what they do when it does not support the private space agenda.

“If we don’t learn that in LEO, then doing it beyond LEO will only be more expensive, and perhaps fatal.”

Uh-huh. Whatever you say Ron.
I have to throw the B.S. flag on anyone that believes a half century of space stations has not taught us what we need to know.

“-procurement guidelines don’t allow for much funny business”

Right. No funny business at all when we dump the most powerful launch hardware on earth for a political contributor’s anemic hobby rocket.
Same old infomercial Ron. So transparent.

Comment by GaryChurch — January 10, 2012 @ 5:57 pm

Comment by GaryChurch — January 10, 2012 @ 5:57 pm

“Same old infomercial Ron. So transparent.”

That pretty much covers it Gary, best to leave the troll to talk to himself.

Comment by Joe — January 10, 2012 @ 8:12 pm

@ Mike Shupp

“My boss was a thin intense man named Mark Harthun. His boss was a genial hefty sort named John Lundgren, and I feel privileged in retrospect to havbe known them both. Harthun was a supervisor, he had two lead engineers and about a dozen other people, most of them new college grads. Lundgren had three groups, with about thirty people among them, and he was a manager — second rung on a ladder of 8 or 9 management rungs leading up to Vice President, if I remember correctly. Anyhow, we were the Aeroheating Group, and our job was to keep the shuttle from melting during ascent and reentry.”

Mike – I see you worked in my dad’s Shuttle TPS group back when you were a kid! It’s nice to read your personal recollections these many years later. I was in high school and college during those days, and remember many discussions of “gap fillers” and other bits of the physics/engineering that I was just gaining a grasp of.

I’m sure my dad would be disappointed at the depth of the retreat from space exploration. He was always outspoken with critics/acquaintances claiming that the “space program” was a waste of money. I believe today’s perspective has clearly proven him right. It has seemed ironic to me that the the “mission to the moon”, perhaps the greatest endeavor of man is now something undertaken by grandfathers and great-grandfathers! He truly loved his career.

As my career has focused on radars and other applications that I feel are also important, I recognize the need for money to go around, but none of that compares to the excitement of watching men walk on the Moon, and knowing that you helped make it happen.

Thanks for the memory!

P.S. Very interesting timing that your post was just last week and I just now happened to be searching some DoD acquisition process things that prompted me to look for things related to my dad’s career.

Comment by John Lundgren III — January 11, 2012 @ 1:54 am

Hop David said,

”
To reach any asteroid we must first climb from the bottom of earth’s gravity well to LEO. That’s 9 to 10 km/s.

These tiny earth moons folks have been buzzing about are several lunar distances from earth. To reach them from LEO would take another 3.2 km/s.

Given a 13 km/s delta V budget to reach these guys, ROI is out of the picture.
”

Harvesting temporarily-captured NEOs already in Earth orbit might not ultimately make sense for a variety of reasons — I was exploring a new possibility — but I’m not convinced by your argument. To get to the Moon one must launch to LEO and then get out of LEO to LTO and then get down to the surface of the Moon. That all has a big delta-V budget, too. You did not compare delta-V budgets between getting to the lunar surface vis a vis harvesting NEOs already in Earth orbit.

Comment by Ron Menich — January 11, 2012 @ 8:08 am