Dennis, you've hit the nail on the head again :)
And one of the key ingredients driving cost is perceived necessities which, in actuality, are NOT actually necessary, but merely desired (we call them DESIREMENTS rather than REQUIREMENTS). The LCROSS program's software development team had only 20 months to deliver a working product that met the requirements. The only way we could do that was to insist on NO DESIREMENTS. And by doing THAT successfully and leveraging off of existing, heritage software, we were able to do it for approximately 1/20 of the cost of the program (off-the-cuff ballpark estimate), not 1/3.

Make common components a requirement, get rid of the DESIREMENTS and the moon becomes a resource we can access, not a one time event for a limited few.

Emory

I am 100% in agreement and admiration of the work that you guys are doing on LCROSS. You guys absolutely have it right.

You say nothing about the required closed-loop life-support and other self-sustaining systems for power generation and storage and water and air purification and waste treatment. These are unique and novel technologies that must be efficient and reliable in reduced-gravity and hostile environments. These are just as important for long term survival and productivity as the software you focus on and will require decades to develop. The research communitities with the expertise to design these were abruptly terminated a few years ago and may not be retrievable. I do like your over all approach.

Simon

You are absolutely right about the lift support stuff. Ironically this area is one of the areas that has the greatest potential to benefit humans on the Earth as well.

I think that the Moon offers an incredible opportunity to act as a laboratory for proving technologies for the more efficient use of our earth's resources. I am not quite as concerned technology wise about power generation, though the cost is going to be huge. To put a megawatt of solar power (forget nuclear, unless it is that fantastic idea from Sandia) on the Moon is not going to be cheap.

I do think that this could be spun up quickly though should funding become available and it would not take that much funding either. NASA has actually done some good work in some of these life support areas and the data that is coming out of the ISS program related to the maintainability of these systems is absolutely gold.

The original Shuttle C proposal would have been completely expendable in order to minimize development costs and maximize commonality with the orbiters. Throwing away much of a shuttle orbiter's structure along with three, rather expensive, SSME's isn't terribly cost effective on a per flight basis.

Turning Shuttle C into something that is partially reusable would dramatically increase development cost and time. It would also sacrafice commonality with the shuttle orbiters.

You can't have your cake and eat it too.

NASA seems to have had a fitful time supporting advanced computing technology for space, particularly with regard to Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) hardware and software. Historically, COTS electronic components can be troublesome in space, so NASA devotes a good deal of effort into quality control and testing, but as stated in the missive, radiation hardness becomes a cross-cutting concern that limits the mission architecture and can drive up cost. Recent advances in electronic devices, though, have been quite promising for space applications. This is true particularly for applications in the more benign radiation environments, which actually comprise most regions of interest.

Notable research and development roller coasters for getting new computing technologies into space have been the NASA High Performance Computing and Communications Program's Remote Exploration and Experimentation project of the mid-to-late '90s and more recently the moribund New Millennium Program Space Technology 8.

Michael

When I flew the first MacIntosh with a hard drive on the Shuttle (though I hear rumors that someone else did it) for our 3DMA accelerometer microgravity measuring system on STS-46 that hard drives would not work and standard computers would not work. When I pointed out that the spec for hard drives actually exceeded NASA's vibration specs we were continually told that if it did not work we would never get any more funding. Well unfortunately STS-46 sat on the pad for 104 days and our battery was only specced for 100 days and we did not get any data on the TSS-1 mission. However, since that was not our fault we were able to refly, with even bigger hard drives as a mid deck box in the Spacehab module on STS-57. Everything worked fine for the entire mission and then we flew again on STS-63 and 68. We used a standard Mac computer, standard OS, standard memory, and Labview to control the experiment.

Yes COTS hardware can be troublesome. However, not using COTS severely limits that you can actually accomplish with the amount of funding that is available. The AMSAT folks have proven time and time again that COTS hardware can work and work reliably for years. Surrey Satellite Technology was built on this concept as well. It infuriates me as a U.S. small sat developer when the U.S. government goes to Surrey to buy hardware when if they would just pay attention to how Surrey achieved their success it was from ignoring the U.S. process for spacecraft electronic components.

I would challenge anyone in the USG to allow us to design a spacecraft and electronics the way that we want and then fly it just as an experiment in comparative capabilities. The resulting savings to the USG from changing obsolete methods would allow a lot more missions to fly than currently do due to overruns.

Jeff

At the level of detail possible by any non funded engineering study, whether it is DIRECT, Shuttle C, or EELV based designs it is not possible to truly wring out all of the unforseen issues in a design. There were studies done on a reusable pod for the "classic" Shuttle C so your contention is not 100% accurate. The posts that I have made regarding the Shuttle C is to open the discussion for alternates. I know that you come from a blogspace that has the Direct/Jupiter architecture as something akin to religion but not everyone in the universe is as enamored of it as the people that post on that site are. As I have posted to you and others in other forums, without considering the entire spectrum of political and financial trades, no architecture is going to go forward next year.

This is why the Shuttle C is part of a trade space to go forward if the ESAS architecture is not funded in the next administration. If it had been possible to figure out everything in sufficient detail as to provide 100% confidence, then we would not be seeing the problems that we are seeing with the Ares 1/Ares 5 designs.

If the considerations were purely technical, a Shuttle C nor Direct design would be considered. The central issue is that the government, sans an impending asteroid impact, is unlikely to continue funding the current effort. None of the three, now probably two candidates have indicated ESAS as a priority. Clinton would have probably been the closest to supporting that architecture.

There are many technically competent architectures out there. I personally prefer variations of the ones that were developed during the CE&R architecture studies that incorporated EELV's and Solar Electric propulsion systems. However, that does not solve the real political issues assocated with workforce continuity. What has to be done is to come up with one that meets all of the political, financial, and international relations considerations that also influence the willingness of the congress to write checks.