More Ares Woes

Guidance could fail without the shaking, as even the best rockets are prone to go astray from time to time. Particularly with new designs that are still being tested.

I find it more interesting that a remote control bomb (something similar to what could be found on guided weapons and probably the same as the one used to detonate challengers stray boosters after its main tank exploded) is going to be shaken apart before the booster casing itself could rupture.

Have they demonstrated thrust oscillation to be this bad before?

I think I know which option the Augustine Commission should strike off the list first.

Keith,

Keep up the great work on this issue. It is people like you that might prevent another loss of life because egos at NASA will not let dissenting expert opinions express themselves.

Thank god the USAF hasn't drunk the NASA kool-aid.

In other news, overblown and sensationalistic reports about routine discussions between NASA and Range officials are great cannon fodder for anti-Ares commenters with nothing better to do.

On the avionics of the safety package failing before the SRB case, it certainly will not. But the requirement is the package stay functional -- period. There are MANY reason to terminate the other than SRB case rupture. The range will not allow a rocket to fly that will violate the limits of its range safety system.

I meant to say the range package will certainly fail before the SRB case.

Norm:

Please get rid of the screwed up Ares fiasco and initiate a space architecture/launch system that is safe, functional, flexible, robust and affordable. There are still some competent designers/ engineers that know how to do this job and they are anxious to participate. State some realistic requirements for what is needed, and "they will come". The US government does not design and build aircraft-- why are they still designing and building spacecraft?

I'm no booster expert but my understanding was that 1-X was just a four-segment solid like the Shuttle's and that no significant TO was expected--in other words, a successful test would prove nothing about excessive vibrations on a five segment Ares 1! (Of course, guidance might fail for some other reason.) And who wants to bet the test doesn't come off until September or later! (Which will probably be an excuse for the Augustine Committee to slip it's report until late Fall!)

@Danny:

And just what is the USAF's track record in sending humans to space? Have we already forgotten Dynasoar, Gemini/MOL, Shuttle launches from Vandemberg? Tens of billions have been wasted in those efforts without even a single launch attempt to show. Sure, one could argue zero launch attempts result in a 0% failure record.

The U.S. government does fund, and participate, in the design and construction of aircraft. The commercial sector has over decades benefited from free technology transfers including areas such as propulsion, hypersonics, composite wing structures, blended wing-body designs, etc.

Certainly this looks/sounds bad, as have most things about ARES-1X lately but for anyone who has ever sat waiting for a live fire-ex of missiles knows; Range safety is paramount and the officials will go over everything with a fine tooth comb before the range goes hot. Same here, the USAF folks are just playing the CYA card to the max with the possibility of lives at stake down range, or in this case up/down the coast.

Certainly there are serious issues that need addressing with respect to the vibration (Thrust oscillation)problems that Ares is going through. I hope one of the things the Augustine panel "really" looks into is whether the problem can be fixed. Apollo 4 almost ate itself because of the interstage oscillations or "pogo" as they called it. But the Boeing and Rocketdyne folks figured it out and they eliminatd the problem. I'm not sure that they can this time around simply because it is a lot easire to "de-tune" the harmonics being generated by a liquid fueled engine vs. a solid fueled motor. In talking with a friend who designs solid motors for missile programs he feels certain that they would need to change the star pattern in the central core of the fuel to more effectivly dampen the oscillations but in doing so will have had to give back some of the inherent thrust being developed via this burn pattern. Then what do they do, say, "Hey we need additional segements to create enough thrust"???

It is time that NASA REALIZES they are going to have to go tell the Thiokol crowd you are through, we can't keep cowtowing to your demands JUST because you have influential members of Congress in your back pocket. Bring on an all liquid configuration to the launcher and lets get busy flying before we lose a crew to an unsafe vehicle and with it the manned space program altogether!

That Delta IV launch for the GOES satellite looked mighty tasty! I could totally imagine Orion being launched on that.

Delta IV heavy still looks like a better option.

In 1990 I was working on a program called JOUST, which was a solid propellant sounding rocket based upon the CASTOR-9 strapon for the delta. This vehicle was supposed to carry a 3000 lb payload to 15 minutes of microgravity.

About 55 seconds after launch, the bird made a right turn and had to be destroyed. In the ensuing failure analysis it was found that the Avionics had been placed in a location that it should not have. There was even a letter from ATK to the prime contractor stating that if you put the avionics in this location, it will fail.

What did the prime contractor do? You got it, put it in that location, and as sure as the sun rises, the avionics package failed (due to the vibro-acoustic environment, which is what the USAF is talking about here) and fell off.

When the prime contractor was asked by the failure commission why they did this, after being told what would happen, the response was "Well we would not have been able to meet our requirements for the mission had we done otherwise".

Not too long after this the Conestoga III, another solid rocket system, also failed during booster flight due to the excessive use of the Thrust Vector Control system DUE TO EXCESSIVE VIBRATIONS. This was not forseen in the simulations and calculations before launch.

The USAF safety guys have seen all of this before, and if they see something amiss that has been glossed over by go fever, they will stop the mission. This is especially the case in regards to the Ares 1-X which will be the largest single booster solid ever launched at the cape.

No surprise here, but I need to ask the question:

If Ares 1-X is using a "standard" STS SRB, with an SRB 5th segment mass simulator, there seems to be some fact related to safe flight of an 4 segment SRB that has gone unreported.

Has the 4 segment SRB another "unknown unknown" which is slowly revealing itself, prior to a stand-alone flight like the Ares 1-X test shot?

Quoting "John" from his post above:

"Bring on an all liquid configuration to the launcher and lets get busy flying before we lose a crew to an unsafe vehicle and with it the manned space program altogether!"

@ keny

It is true that Ares-I-X is basically a shuttle RSRM with a fake Ares-I upper stage and payload. It is also true that its flight dynamic environment will be different from the real Ares-I.

However, the TO is still certain to be more violent on Ares-I-X than on any STS launch because the massive vibration dampening of the orbiter and ET will not be available. One of the big worries about Ares-I and its related designs is the extreme harmonic vibration potential that come from a lack of anything significant to absorb the vibration. This article (amongst others) bears out the contention held by many that the problem may be unsolvable, at least not without radically re-thinking the design.

@ Lowly Contractor

I can't say I've seen anyone on this thread advocate a USAF-designed launcher. The EELVs (I think you are probably referring to them) were developed with government money to specifications that must have included USAF requirements. However, they are a commercially-operated vehicle. I believe they have carried more civilian (including NOAA and NASA) payloads than military ones.

What I do think a lot of people are advocating is that NASA lose its 'prime contractor' position for crewed launch vehicles. Like the USAF, they should issue requirements (as detailed as necessary) to competing contractors to bid to fill. "Reliable, launches 25-30t payloads to LEO in human-safe trajectories" would be the basic 'executive summary' for CLV, for example. See what Orbital and ULA come up with for that.

Keith;

Thanks for the comments. During the "Dem/Val" aspect of the shuttles SRB testing Thiokol (ATK now) Thiokol found several segment tests failed due to uneven grain burn or cracking of said grain. This was later reported as an improper star configuration which netted an irregular burn pattern than that which was expected. Dr. Boujoisly (Challenger) repeatedly brought this up in engineering meetings along with his very real concerns about joint rotation of the segements during motor ignition. Finally they changed the star configuration by reducing the "arms" of the star to reduce the surface area exposed and thusly to reduce the thrust generated to reduce the harmonics generated. Also remember the solids are attached via struts and attach points at either end of the booster casing to the ET. These allow a certain "shock absorbing" effect too. Watch a video of any shuttle launch (that's available) shot from the flight deck. The crew are shaken quite visibly until after SRB burnout and seperation. The audio of crews has on numerous occasions atttested to how much smoother the ride just became after they dropped the solids. Or as one Commander put it to capcom "That was like sittin on the San Andreas during a 6.8 on the Richter scale" he should know he was from SoCal.
I fear that NASA knows all too well the potential harm that could befall a crew while "ridig out" the 1st stage of Ares 1 yet they are beholden to the contractor (ATK/Thiokol) and the key votes from the Utah delegation in congress.

>If Ares 1-X is using a "standard" STS SRB...

A) It is not a standard SRB.

B) SRBs were never designed to fly 'solo' as it were.

What SRO (Range Safety) is concerned about is that Capt. Murphy may be long gone, but his Laws are NOT! (Capt. Murphy, incidentally, was a REAL person; he worked for Col. Dr. John Paul Stapp, "The Man Who Rode the Rocket" sled. When something caused Stapp to be subjected to more g's than orginally anticipated, Murphy is reported to have said, "What can go wrong, will!" Hence, Murphy's Laws!)

Even liquid birds have gone out of control, and flown back uprange (or at least tracking indicated their point of impact would be uprange from their launch site)! Failure to be able to destroy such an anomolous beast could lead to a real catastrophy that might even close down operations at the Cape, or at least until the furor abated!

Vibrations and failure to heed the warnings by the contractor resulted in the loss of the STS-4 (IIRC) boosters when the main parachute deck fitting separation explosive bolts inadvertantly fired prematurely when the linear shaped charge used to separate the frustum (nose cone) from the booster fired and generated vibes that the decelerometers sensed as water-impact...at 10,000 ft.!

Flying a single, 4-segment SRM with a mass simulator on the front end, and without the damping of the rest of the structure of a Shuttle stack could be a totally different critter! You can computer simulate a lot of stuff, but only an actual flight will tell you if your models are correct.

Failure to heed the warnings of engineers needs only two words: "Challenger" and "Columbia"!

Everybody needs to remember the words of NACA/NASA pioneer Walt Williams: "You don't get medals for on-time failures!"

Solids were brought into the equation to save money while increasing payloads and enhancing reliability. It seems a step backwards to write these advantages out of our next generation launch vehicles.

I more suspect any issues with the continued use of four segment boosters will become the 800 pound gorilla in the room.
The powers that be want to focus criticism on Ares I, not call a bunch of shuttle replacement options into question.

The issue is the shockwave coming off the launch pad. It may be sufficient to damage about every system on the vehicle. Been known for years. We talked about ways to mitigate it back in 2006. The nearest we came to fixing it was things developed for the MX missile. But that's not a NASA systems we can't do any of that.

Ares 1-X uses Atlas V avionics. Bloody good stuff.

USAF saying "no" is a face saving device to end the program.

'If Ares 1-X is using a "standard" STS SRB, with an SRB 5th segment mass simulator, there seems to be some fact related to safe flight of an 4 segment SRB that has gone unreported.

Has the 4 segment SRB another "unknown unknown" which is slowly revealing itself, prior to a stand-alone flight like the Ares 1-X test shot?'

The two Shuttle SRBs only fly safely now because their TO is dampened by their connecting flexible crossbar through the external fuel tank. Take that away and it is not the same beast which means the rest of Ares I-X has to take the shock of TO or not as the case may be.

I hope NASA will go ahead and at least test-fly Ares 1-X, so we can get some REAL FLIGHT TEST DATA instead of more paper studies and endless arguments.

Take a look at the nice Delta IV GOES launch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3eJZS1on7o. Great video angle that includes the Shuttle on pad in the foreground, too.

Great reporting from Orlando Sentinel!!

Still wondering about the reliability of Ares 1-X software for issuing ground control & flight commands, etc. & if they're integrating any Range Safety software too and how that factors in to the vibration etc. issues?

It sounds like the AF is not so much worried about TO as about the fact that no TO damping facility will be installed on Ares I-X. Given that NASA admits that TO is an Ares I problem that needs fixing, that's an understandable worry. But there's little or no flight test data relevant to Ares I 5-segment booster TO, so how do we know that the damping system planned is going to work (or would work for a 4-segment-plus-dummy-segment test article)? I bet that if the AF and NASA put their heads together they could come up with a plan that would make both parties, if not happy, at least comfortable. Perhaps they're doing that even as we blog, and the "Sentinel" just forgot to report it.

And just what is the USAF's track record in sending humans to space? Have we already forgotten Dynasoar, Gemini/MOL, Shuttle launches from Vandemberg? Tens of billions have been wasted in those efforts without even a single launch attempt to show. Sure, one could argue zero launch attempts result in a 0% failure record.

The U.S. government does fund, and participate, in the design and construction of aircraft. The commercial sector has over decades benefited from free technology transfers including areas such as propulsion, hypersonics, composite wing structures, blended wing-body designs, etc.

Posted by: Lowly Contractor at June 28, 2009 2:59 PM

(Quote)

For one, these programs were cancelled by Congress, not failures. Second, the Air Force is in charge of safety at the Cape and is using it's analysis to say "No go!".
As far as manned space flight experience, Shepherd and Grissom went up using Army rockets (Redstone) While the rest of the Mercury and all Gemini flights were courtesy of the Air Force (Atlas and Titan). The Atlas and Titan rockets had Air Force crews set them up FOR NASA so ALL of those flights were done by the Air Force.

When the Challanger failed, the Air Force came up with the Titan 4 which was the first rocket which could lift payloads only the Shuttle could have.

And you want to trust NASA? The same mismanagers who assured the Challenger crew? The same ones who even after Columbia burned up assured everyone that there was no way the foam could have done it right up until the "Chicken gun" proved them wrong?

If it doesn't pan out on paper, it won't pan out in actual flight. Only when the calculations say it can be done does one even have a chance of it working in the real world.

Delta IV Heavy - LH all the way, baby!

@Ben

On paper they might appear to be commercial vehicles, but in reality they're just overpriced DoD launchers. That's why ULA has essentially given up on the international launch market and, instead, has to rely on U.S.-government payloads that are not allowed to shop elsewhere.

@Bernie

All those programs were FAILURES that from the start made no engineering sense. This was especially relevant in:

1)DC-X and X-33, where either could only work if 96% of the mass at launch were fuel (that's plain physics) which just leaves 4% for structure, payload, and everything else (!). The whole concept was doomed since day one, especially once composite cryogenic tanks were proven to be a physical impossibility (not unlike pouring liquid nitrogen into, say, a thick plastic bottle ... it will immediately become brittle and crack).

2)Human launches from Vandemberg NEVER made sense due to radiation levels (crossing Van Allen's belt 4 times every 90 minutes if you're on a LEO polar orbit) where an astronaut would reach the maximum lifetime allowable radiation dosage in just one mission (that is, a DoD astronaut could only carry out one mission in his/her lifetime) and yet billions kept getting poured into facilities that were never going to be used (not to mention forcing an absurdly long down range onto the Shuttle which resulted in it's huge wing area and brittle thermal tiles).

MOL & the X-20 were cancelled, not failures. The X-33 and DCX were NASA projects, not Air Force.
Fact: The first two Mercury flights were on Army Rockets (Redstone) with an Army team setting up the launchers.
Later, the Army team headed by Von Braun was trnasferred to NASA with Von Braun protesting all the way.
The later Mercury flights and all Gemini Flights were on Air Force rockets (Atlas & Titan) With Air Force crews setting up the launchers.

Also, the Kennedy Space Center is a tennant located inside Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The Air Force owns the Cape as well as Vendenburg.

Humm...
Human launches from Vandenberg NEVER made sense due to radiation levels (crossing Van Allen's belt 4 times every 90 minutes if you're on a LEO polar orbit)

This is why we are in the position we are in. The US does not understand hypersonics well enough to launch from anywhere and achieve any orbit it wishes.

Same Thinking about Rockets launched from KSC and controlled from JSC. It does not make sense anymore.
http://www.spaceportamerica.com/
http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ast/licenses_permits/
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/pao/History/presrep95/energy.htm

I hope Lowly Contractor doesn't have any contracts that require him to know the rocket equation. A hydrogen/oxygen rocket with a propellant fraction of 0.96 would have a free-space delta-v of almost 15 km/s; it could reach escape velocity with a lot left over. Getting into orbit, allowing for drag and gravity losses, requires a propellant fraction of no more than 0.86. There's a big difference between 0,86 and 0.96.
I won't comment on the rest of his "technical" points.

@ Lowly Contractor

I don't understand your comment that the USAF has never put anyone in space. They haven't and they shouldn't. That is why they stopped all of these programs you mentioned. None were canceled because they chose a fundamentally flawed design in the first place.

They do; however, do a great job of running the Eastern Range. They also did a good job of giving us two very capable EELVs. ULA can give us a man rated EELV.

Now that you mention it. I have worked for both the Air Force and for NASA in the development of large programs. I found the Air Force MUCH better at this task.

Danny Deger

KSC is not a tenant at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. It is on Merritt Island separated from the Cape Canaveral land mass by the Banana River. The Shuttle complexes are not on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Also SLC-41 was actually on KSC property.

Let me get this straight.

1) We want to launch the test rocket to see if it shakes too much.
2) We can't launch the test rocket because it might shake too much.

I don't understand your comment that the USAF has never put anyone in space. They haven't and they shouldn't. That is why they stopped all of these programs you mentioned. None were canceled because they chose a fundamentally flawed design in the first place.

Danny

Fundamentally this is not the case. The reason that the USAF retreated from space was due to the MADD doctrine of MacNamara. All of these forward looking programs were cancelled as under MADD anything other than photrecon and communications were "destabilizing".

@Conley: And where's your allowance for losses during thrust build up, engine losses during flight, and everything else that happens in the real world? Saturn V had already used up 150 tons of propellant during thrust build up before even lifting from the pad. That's why rockets shed stages (or engines as in Atlas) during ascent if their intent is to reach orbit. If your SSTO design aims for exactly .83 mass fraction you're not going to make it past suborbital flight. They tried replacing the composite tank with an aluminum one but, quite simply, there wasn't any margin of error left.

Lowly contractor--

DC-X was a DOD program, not a NASA program, and it proved what it set out to show: that rockets could be designed to operate more like aircraft. X-33 failed only because it tried to push too many technologies at the same time, instead of being a more typical X-vehicle.

I also see you are as uninformed as NASA's former Chief Technologist (Sam Venneri) when it comes to composite cryotanks. NASA's upgrade to the DC-X, aka the DC-X/A,
had a composite LH2 tank. It worked just fine. Over and over again. In fact, it was the last structure to rupture when the Clipper Graham fell over on its final landing.

So composite tanks can handle cryos. The issue is microcracking over time. That issue, plus LOX compatibility, is solved by a material that XCOR has under development called NONBURNITE.

- Jim the Flack

LOL @ Doug Flegall
- what a fine mess they've gotten themselves into!!

@ Danny Deger:
I agree with your posts most of the time, but you must not have worked at VAFB during the pre-Challenger days because those AF & contractor folks were completely lost and couldn't figure out how to do much of anything themselves for Shuttle ops.

NASA sent several folks there on extended TDY to try to get them organized & up & running, but it was very overwhelming to the VAFB workforce.

Even with all of their unmanned launch experience, HSF launches were way way over their heads.

Actually, ULA may not completely understand all of the HSF requirements either. If they really go with upgrading EELVs to replace CxP, they're going to need the USA & NASA Shuttle folks at both KSC & JSC.

If we're lucky the thing will explode a few seconds after liftoff.

@Moonlady,

You are correct that both KSC and JSC will need to be in the middle of man rating an EELV. But, I found ULA (Lockheed and Boeing at that time) to both be very capable when I worked with them during Orbital Space Plane. Every engineer I worked with was very willing to listen carefully. For example, both companies got their trajectories down to no blackzones within 24 hours of being asked.

Thanks for the heads up on ops at VAFB. You are correct that I never had anything to do with this. Do you think they could have pulled if off if the need to launch from there had not gone away?

"All of these forward looking programs were canceled as under MADD anything other than photrecon and communications were "destabilizing".

That is what a person with a ABMA/Medaris point of view would say. They weren't "destabilizing", they were not cost effective. MOL and Dynasoar were canceled because unmanned spacecraft and ICBM's met the main requirements (photorecon and warhead delivery) better and cheaper and the residual requirements couldn't justify Dynasoar or MOL. Just as there is a DOD manned spacecraft 40 years later, there still isn't a requirement for it. The USAF still continued with hypersonic research via PRIME, ASSET, Boostglider, etc, but they were unmanned.

Just as there is a DOD manned spacecraft 40 years later, there still isn't a requirement for it.

Do you work at the Pentagon?

DOD flys HUMANS on every NASA spaceflight.

Let me get this straight.

1) We want to launch the test rocket to see if it shakes too much.
2) We can't launch the test rocket because it might shake too much.

Posted by: Doug Flegall at June 29, 2009 1:50 PM
(Quote)

All calculations and testing indicates that it WILL shake too much. It will shake so much that it might knock out the guidence system and self destruct system. If the calculations say so, you don't fly until the figures on paper tell you it should work. The Air Force is responsible for the safety of the entire area. If thier calculations indicate a hazard with presents an unacceptable risk, they have a duty to say "No Go!"
Stop condemming the Air Force for doing it's job!
NASA, who ordered its engineers to "Take off your engineering hat and put on your managers hats!" Gave us the Challenger disaster. By ignoring the calculations, NASA killed seven Astronauts. NASA went on to kill another seven when thier engineers once again assured everybody that foam cannot damage a wing. Even after it happened, the "Mismanagers of NASA" assured everybody "It wasn't the foam!" Only the chicken gun once again proved these mismanagers disguised as engineers wrong once again.
Now, you want to tell the safety officers who are doing thier jobs once again to take off thier engineering hats and put on your ideas of a managers hat.

"DOD flys HUMANS on every NASA spaceflight."

They aren't flying as DOD employees on those missions. They are NASA employees. So your point is meaningless.

That is what a person with a ABMA/Medaris point of view would say.

This has nothing to do with ABMA/Medaris. Read the book "The Heavens and the Earth". There is a section on this decision in there. Medaris was of the opposite mindset as their 1958 project Horizon study that the ABMA did for Eisenhower was to put an Army base on the Moon to gain "the high ground" over the Soviets.

Lowly Contractor, when someone points out to me that I've said something dumb, I admit it.

This isn't a problem a THAAD couldn't solve. A Patriot could work the issue as well. More rockets is the simple solution. It is a test flight of an X program after all.

"DOD flys HUMANS on every NASA spaceflight."

"They aren't flying as DOD employees on those missions. They are NASA employees. So your point is meaningless."

"Posted by: me at June 30, 2009 1:27 PM"

Actually they are DOD personnel detailed on assignment to NASA. They are not employed by NASA. NASA does not pay their salaries. The DOD does. After those assignments end they return to active uniformed service. When the Shuttle used to fly dedicated DOD missions every crewmember on board was active duty DOD.