Ares V Draft Proposal Request

Proposal : Stop wasting money on Ares and use Delta 4 Heavy, which has already been proven. We're throwing SSME into the trash-bin of history where F1 resides. What a shame.

Here's a question for you guys : With the amount of money we've spent on Ares I already, could we have developed and constructed a flight prototype Shuttle-C?

Would the nay-sayers at least get their facts right?

Delta IV Heavy works just fine for what it was designed to do, but it is not capable of the payloads required for Ares V. It might be upgraded to Ares I and probably should be before we put lives on top of that solid rocket paint shaker.

I don't apologize for NASA and its ATK planners, but at least get real.

BH's concerns are understandable, but keep in mind Ares V will have much greater lifting power than any derivative of Delta IV or the shuttle. Keep in mind that Ares V has the potential to be a multi-purpose launcher. In addition to Moon/Mars/Asteroid payloads, it has been proposed as a launcher for an 8-meter monolithic mirror telescope that will have a bigger aperture than JWST and require much simpler deployment.

Ares V could also solve the problem of maintaining a "National Laboratory" in space after the ISS is retired. It could be used to launch a Skylab-type space station, only larger, in one shot (no need for 10+ years of small module launches). An Ares V station might not have the habitable volume of the ISS, but it could be fully integrated/checked out on the ground and would require far fewer EVAs to prep once in orbit.

I'm aware that Delta 4 Heavy will not lift as much as Ares V. The difference is that we have Delta available right now, Ares V won't get its initial test flight for 10 years. 10 years if we're lucky and it doesn't get cancelled.
I have a hard time believing that congress would authorize construction of more than a handful of Ares V vehicles.

Ares V could also solve the problem of maintaining a "National Laboratory" in space after the ISS is retired. It could be used to launch a Skylab-type space station, only larger, in one shot (no need for 10+ years of small module launches). An Ares V station might not have the habitable volume of the ISS, but it could be fully integrated/checked out on the ground and would require far fewer EVAs to prep once in orbit.

The 10+ years of ISS was due to the low flight rate of the Shuttle, and the complexity of the station, not the lack of a heavy lifter. We don't need an Ares V. We need a flexible, robust in-space infrastructure.

2 things:

Don't lose sight of the real aim of this procurement: To further entrench the Ares architecture that only serves the purposes of its constituencies. Change.gov needs to put a moratorium on all non-essential procurements.

The problem isn't Ares vs Atlas/Delta per se. It's inexperienced designers vs experienced ones. NASA and Congress need to cry uncle and admit that the private sector now holds the best American rocket designers.

This RFP should specify orbit elements, a mass and a sane LOC/LOM number, nothing more.

Ares-V is a good heavy lifter. Ares-I 'paint shaker' can be made better using Ares-V 1st stage core with two flanking Delta-IV Heavy CBC boosters. X-33 spaceplane should be completed and developed into reusable, aerospike engine powered, TiN skinned, spacecraft. Humans need to be able to fly to space and back.

>>Ares-V is a good heavy lifter.

No, not so much. Let's see, start with 4 segments SRBs & 5 RS-68s, then go to 5 segment SRBs and then 5.5 segment SRBs, then 6 RS-68s all to lift the same payload? No, it's not a good lifter. It's a big lifter, but it's not very good.

>>Ares-I 'paint shaker' can be made better using Ares-V 1st stage core with two flanking Delta-IV Heavy CBC boosters.

Excuse me? What in the world would this solve and what size payload would it be trying to lift. It would be incredibly expensive to develop and operate and there is no mission for such a beast.

>>X-33 spaceplane should be completed and developed into reusable, aerospike engine powered, TiN skinned, spacecraft. Humans need to be able to fly to space and back.

Perhaps "Humans need to be able to fly to space and back" but that has nothing to do with Ares or Constellation. As a comment on Ares V, it's a bit of a non sequitor. I don't disagree that, perhaps, a reusable spaceplane architecture might be a good thing, but it isn't what Ares (I or V) is supposed to lift and neither booster would be correctly sized if a spaceplane was going to be developed.

Paul

Posted by: Antares at November 26, 2008 1:07 AM
> NASA and Congress need to cry uncle and admit that the
> private sector now holds the best American rocket designers.

Such as the one which brought us the 0-1 and out ATK ALV-X1?

Three-to-Four Ares V launches and ISS would be done. If we want humanity to outlive this planet, HLLVs must become priority one. JIMO can be launched by an Ares V with no tedious ISS-type assembly. Space Based solar powersats and large space sails also could use the larger shroud diameter.

Many say the large space telescope was an 'excuse' to build Ares V. Nonsense. The simple monolithic construction is just smarter than Webb--which makes the Transformer toys look simple by comparison. Ms. Porco of the Casseni team has advocated the use of Ares V in WIRED.

Not only that--but Ares V keeps NASA jobs in states other than red-state Alabama. Ares V will help Hurricane Katrina ravaged Louisiana. Cancel that in favor of all-Alabama EELVs, and NASA looks like that one states pork--and widespread congressional support for NASA in general will fall away in spades.

Political and technical ramifications both argue in favor of Ares V.

On a side note--here is what I find most amusing. The Saturns (liquid-fueled) were very much Army /ABMA rockets. The Air Farce wanted solid augmentation for their Titans--supposedly cheaper than Saturn IB according to some. Then the shuttle gets whittled down with a huge ET--read drop tank---with the SRBs like huge JATO/RATO units.

Now the Air Force have these two Ariane V class EELV contraptions that are no better than Titan IV, cannot fly depressed trajectory, and have severe black zones.

Now they have the liquids, and NASA supports solids for a change. Fitting, that.

Understand this. Solids will always be used for thrust augmentation. SRB is a proven element, and last I heard, 21 RS-68s per 130-140 tons still cost less than six. Ares V has engine out--Delta IV doesn't. Case Closed.