Plan C For Outer Space

One problem with the Ares I/V architecture as a return to the Moon program was that there was to be no funding for the Ares V core vehicle or the Altair lunar lander until the Ares I was completed. That significantly delayed any return to the Moon while the delays themselves increased the cost of the program due to predicted inflation.

The fact the Griffin also chose the most expensive architecture to return to the Moon also didn't help. NASA's latest HLV study (May 20 NASA Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle Study) shows that architectures nearly half the cost of the Ares I/V architecture could have been developed.

The second problem, IMO, is that the Ares I was likely to be a launch vehicle only used by NASA. NASA finally had a chance to build the simple space DC-3 that the Space Shuttle wasn't, a vehicle that could be utilized by NASA, the military, and private industry for easy and safer human access to orbit. But they didn't. And its difficult for me to imagine private industry routinely using a LOX/LH2 booster on top of a 5-segment solid rocket booster (Ares I) to ferry tourist into orbit.

Boeing's new HLV architecture is Congress's best option, IMO:

Heavy Lift Launch Vehicles with Existing Propulsion Systems:

http://pdf.aiaa.org/getfile.cfm?urlX=6%3A7I%276D%26X%5BR%5B%2ES%40GOP4S%5EQ%3AO%225J%40%22%5FP%20%20%0A&urla=%25%2ARD%26%220%20%20%0A&urlb=%21%2A%20%20%20%0A&urlc=%21%2A0%20%20%0A&urld=%28%2A%22H%25%22%40%2AEUQX%20%0A&urle=%27%282D%27%23P%3EDW%40%20%20%0A
http://pdf.aiaa.org/getfile.cfm?urlX=6%3A7I%276D%26X%5BR%5B%2ES%40GOP4S%5EQ%3AO%225J%40%22%5FP%20%20%0A&urla=%25%2ARD%26%220%20%20%0A&urlb=%21%2A%20%20%20%0A&urlc=%21%2A0%20%20%0A&urld=%28%2A%22H%25%22%40%2AEUQX%20%0A&urle=%27%282D%27%23P%3EDW%40%20%20%0A

Excellent and honest write up. You are to be commended.

While I did not catch last week's Armstrong and Cernan testimony, I do know from their first testimony that both were confused about the effort that went into creating the POR and its ability to meet any kind of milestones.

Not part of your article was the original intent of the Vision and its initial implementation under O'Keefe and Steidle. Then we got a hurried ESAS report which hi-jacked the Vision, and which as you point out, could not be implemented and required significant changes to plans, designs and budgets. On these points Armstrong and Cernan were clearly uninformed. They were under the impression that the POR was the result of extensive studies, analyses and community consensus.

What concerns me most, besides the fact that the situation has caused a lot of acrimony and infighting and now the new way forward is not getting the required support as a direct result, is that the Constellation Program Management, and the managers overseeing the Program Management, which includes the Center Directors and Mission Directorate AAs, have not been willing to be forthright and honest.

They should have come forward 2 to 3 years ago, as you point out, to tell the Administrator, Congress and President that they could not and would not complete their assigned tasks and that significant changes were required if they were not going to continue to waste the taxpayers money.

This is nothing more than a lack of leadership. We are slowly getting rid of these non-leaders, Mr. Cook of MSFC, Dr. Horowitz and Dr. Griffin, and most recently, Mr. Hanley. I suspect these are all nice people, but they have failed at their assigned tasks, and they have not shown the leadership necessary to come to some form of reconciliation. Were they all so immature to think no one would notice that the job was not getting done? They just continued to pursue a Program that was never going to be achieved.

The Augustine review, the Government Accountability Office, the OMB, all came to the same conclusions and the truth came out. Yet management chose to look the other way as though they were living in some form of a warped universe.

One important problem Dennis leaves out is that by eliminating Constellation, we are left with no US HSF and possibly none for 10 years. Faith in a nonexistent but promised commercial capability is unsupported by the facts.

Assuming the budget was not there to support Constellation as originally structured, no alternatives were proposed to fix any problems with that approach. The program was abruptly canceled and replaced with a plan that had not been vetted properly nor reviewed by experts in the field.

One problem has been replaced by possibly an even worse problem. That's not leadership.

Editor's note" Huh? 10 years? I guess you have not been watching that Falcon 9 on the launch pad at KSC.

Falcon 9 is a long way from being a reliable, operational unmanned booster, let alone a man-rated one.

Even if SpaceX meets the most optimistic projections (highly unlikely), all we'll be getting is a capsule for ferrying crews to/from ISS in maybe 4 or 5 years. Like I said before, Gemini on steroids. I seem to recall that one of the conclusions of the Gehman led commission in the wake of Columbia was that if we are to continue the risks of human spaceflight, it was time to move beyond LEO and do real exploration.

If we're going to remain in LEO for the next decade or more, let's develop a shuttle replacement we can be proud of - a reusable spaceplane. I don't expect the American public to be too excited over the Dragon capsule. I certainly am not.

One important problem Dennis leaves out is that by eliminating Constellation, we are left with no US HSF and possibly none for 10 years. Faith in a nonexistent but promised commercial capability is unsupported by the facts.

I know full well what the ramifications are. The day that the ESAS report came out I was quoted in the Huntsville Times as saying that what came to be called Constellation and its Heavy Lift Vehicle would not be sustainable. With that statement I kissed off any chance at work in Huntsville after that but it had to be said, as was this. Anyone who disagreed with Dr. Griffin's plan was shown the door and I watched the last of the Apollo generation for whom I have the greatest respect become disheartened then disgusted at the path taken by the NASA administrator and by MSFC.

A former senior official from NASA called it the "Ego Driven Space Program" and he was right. This former NASA administrator now is given $25 million dollars to set up an organization for systems studies at my former school. I weep for UAH and will no longer stand silent, no matter the cost, at what has been destroyed in the past five years. We could have had zero gap. Dr. Mike Griffin will in history be the poster child of why having great credentials means nothing in terms of ability to perform and lead an organization.

NASA was never going to get the budget that Griffin needed to build the Constellation system. OKeefe knew this when he was administrator and Steidle did not listen to the voices whispering in his ear to build a heavy lifter. We could have a heavy lifter today in the form of the shuttle side mount but it was not elegant enough, it was not big enough for the ego's involved. For each and every one of you in Florida who are losing your job because of the end of the STS era, Mike Griffin's picture is the poster that you need for your dart boards. We could have easily built the Shuttle C in the period between 2005 and today. We could have easily taken the Apollo command and service module designs and refreshed them for a Crew Launch vehicle that would have flown on an Atlas V. Together, along with advanced solar electric propulsion that was already being funded in 2005 we could have sent heavy payloads to the Moon, brought up to the station with the shuttle side mount.

What has to happen now is that the pieces have to be picked up and we have to do what is necessary to keep American Human Spaceflight going. Never again can we allow an ego to trump engineering common sense.

Nice one Wingo, a great cacophony of truth: "For each and every one of you in Florida who are losing your job because of the end of the STS era, Mike Griffin's picture is the poster that you need for your dart boards. We could have easily built the Shuttle C in the period between 2005 and today."

whyisthat1 and Matt Johnson, either you're for the free market or against it. You can't provide lip service to commerce while building government competition. You've chosen the wrong team. You're like defectors with no secrets to tell. The other side won't have a use for you either.

Great Article Dennis.

Post Augustine Report, it seems as if space advocates were left with two options, both losing ones, i.e. continue with the PoR, or Obamaspace.

Ugh.

The shambles NASA finds itself in now is clearly due to a lack of leadership within the Agency, going back to Griffin and continuing with Gen Bolden, as well as within Congress and the White House.

Everyone seems to be interested in simply surviving the moment without any concern for the long term benefits HSF might bring to the world.

Democracy, don't you just love it.

"Editor's note" Huh? 10 years? I guess you have not been watching that Falcon 9 on the launch pad at KSC."

The problem is that the Falcon 9 on the pad does not have a re-entry vehicle, let alone one capable of carrying humans. As has been mentioned previously, before a human rated spacecraft is ready, requirements need to be determined. Then companies will generate proposals on how they'll meet those requirements (or any exceptions) and what kind of schedule it will take. Once a contract is awarded, then the hardware will be built including test hardware and fixtures. Then the qualification testing is performed and any test flights.

The latest delays with the Falcon 9 have been waiting for qualification testing on the flight termination system to be performed and analyzed. Apparently this wasn't taken into account by SpaceX.

All of this takes time. An experienced company starting with existing hardware knows all this and has the resources to execute the contract can probably do it less than 10 years. A new company probably close to 10 years.

Editor's note: I just love it when commenters - almost always anonymously - say that it will be "10 years" until we have an American human launch capability. What is the source for this figure? Why is it always *exactly* 10 years? why not 8.5, or 11.2 years? Answer: there is no data to back this up. One person said it and now all of the Obama policy haters just blindly repeat it without stopping to consider if it is even true. Yet somehow the Ares 1 escapes any mention in this regard. When Falcon 9 launches it will be vastly more real in terms of being an operational launch vehicle than Ares 1 has - or would be even if it managed to stay on schedule. And please do not mention Ares 1-X. It was a first stage (only) test vehicle that used another rocket's avionics. As for a reentry vehicle - once again you really need to check your facts. SpaceX has one - and it is called Dragon and it will makes its first reentry years before Orion was scheduled to do so.

Dennis,

A very good piece. You hit most of the main issues well and thoroughly.

The only thing I would disagree with is your embrace of the "spiral development" plan that Steidle et al. came up with. As the agency began to implement it, it became clear that spiral development was another euphemism for viewgraph engineering and very little real spaceflight, human or robotic. The "roadmapping" exercises we began made this very clear, very early. In part, Griffin's ESAS "full-speed ahead" tone was a reaction to the perceived non-progress of the agency under that guidance.

However, you outline the correct path yourself in this post above -- use existing Shuttle infrastructure and EELVs to create a hybrid government/commercial system that does something -- in this case, lunar outpost with the specific mission of learning how to do ISRU. We now know that abundant and accessible water is available at the poles (we were not sure in 2004) and it is criminally stupid to not develop space faring capabilities based on its use.

"I have found recent events to be extremely disheartening. ... the battle between the old exploration plan .. and the new plan ... compounded by the fact that it is forcing a Congress unwilling to take on more fights before the election to allow NASA to operate for months under a continuing resolution ... Couple this with the certainty of congressional chaos after this November's election and what we have is a recipe for disaster. ... is there a compromise or common ground between the old and the new exploration plan that can allow Congress to come together to get a budget for the agency before October 1?"

So far, so good.

"the table is set for compromise if Armstrong and Cernan are willing to abandon an unworkable Program of Record for the new plan ... [Congress] need[s] to fund the new plan before October 1"

You seem to have an odd meaning for "compromise" - 'do exactly what we want, and give up entirely on what you want'.

If the 'new plan' people wanted to work out a compromise, the time to do it was before they announced they were going to shoot the old plan right between the eyes - thereby wasting billions of dollars, and disheartening the workforce.

(E.g. I know of some really sharp young people in the structures area who are leaving aerospace and going to other fields, vowing never to return - because of the stupidity and insanity displayed in the way the baby was thrown out with the bathwater here.)

"Within 24 months we could begin sending missions to a lunar outpost location on the moon"

Now I want to know who your dealer is... This article would better have been titled 'Plan Nine for Outer Space'.

As the agency began to implement it, it became clear that spiral development was another euphemism for viewgraph engineering and very little real spaceflight, human or robotic.

Paul you and I spent a lot of time at these conferences where a lot of people got to have their say in the process of developing that plan that would hopefully, eventually lead to a product. I still remember that most of the people at the Ritz Carlton in Pasadena had to be put on suicide watch after four days straight doing this.

Yes I understand that the spiral development had its problems too but we never got to see where it might have gone as that team left before they were really ready to go. I look to the CE&R studies to see what might have been in terms of the systems engineering. The H&RT programs were making progress at the time and some of the things that are in the new plan were part of the H&RT and CE&R work. In our own funded team we had already made a lot of headway, including hardware, in the first year so I am not quite so sure that I would have called it nothing more than viewgraph engineering.

We will never know what could have been had there been time to develop it. What we do know is that Constellation was never financially viable, the business plan never closed, and that to say now that all they needed was funding, covers a whole host of sins.

If the 'new plan' people wanted to work out a compromise, the time to do it was before they announced they were going to shoot the old plan right between the eyes - thereby wasting billions of dollars, and disheartening the workforce.

The people of the old plan never for one single second sought compromise. They wanted their big rocket and everything else be dammed. If you actually read the GAO report from 2007 it is quite crystal clear that NASA was not going to have the money to execute on Constellation. The workforce was disheartened long before the new plan was announced. The billions were already wasted and it was never going to be built, before the new plan was announced, Augustine showed that.

(E.g. I know of some really sharp young people in the structures area who are leaving aerospace and going to other fields, vowing never to return - because of the stupidity and insanity displayed in the way the baby was thrown out with the bathwater here.)

And I know some brilliant older people in the structures area that were disgusted with the existing plan and were waiting to retire so that they could leave, or had left in the past few years. I was one of those young people in 1993 that vowed to stay and keep plugging away to one day revive what was taken from us when the Space Exploration Initiative died. In 2004 there was hope but when the ESAS report came out in 2005, we knew that it was only a matter of time and wasted billions before it all came tumbling down.

Now I want to know who your dealer is... This article would better have been titled 'Plan Nine for Outer Space'.

Good, now that I have your attention, you might take a look around you at some of the landers that have been built by others such as Masten and Carmack to see real hardware at work. There has even been some very good work in Huntsville at MSFC and its contractors in this area.

This is another key failing of the old plan. Dr. Griffin was once heard to exclaim that all he needed was a good map to get back to the Moon. Now that we have some really great hyperspectral maps of the polar regions with billions of gallons of water identified, we can go do some ground truth.

NASA sent eight landers to the Moon in a space of 24 months in the 1960's, are you saying that we don't have what it takes to do this today? We could take lander hardware developed for Mars and send it to the lunar polar regions quite quickly.

" As for a reentry vehicle - once again you really need to check your facts. SpaceX has one - and it is called Dragon and it will makes its first reentry years before Orion was scheduled to do so."

My understanding as I stated previously is that the Falcon 9 payload (a Dragon qualification vehicle) does not have re-entry capability. Are you saying it does?

I made no comments about when Orion would make a re-entry, but an unmanned re-entry is different than a crewed re-entry. It remains to be seen when Dragon would be capable of performing a manned re-entry. The Dragon is not capable of a lunar return re-entry so the comparison is not quite the same.

Noel,

It wasn't Obama or Augustine that "wasted" $10B on Constellation. It was the folks who put us on an unaffordable and usustainable course: Griffin et al.

To use your (and many others') wrongheaded belief in sunk costs as a current liquid asset, why isn't throwing away the $100B spent on Station worse than throwing away the $10B on Constellation?

- Jim

"why were Armstrong and Cernan brought only into this discussion in 2010 when it would have been far better to have their input in 2005 or 2007 when it could have really counted?"

This is EXACTLY what I was thinking when watching the hearings. Where were your complaints when the budget failed to materialize even as costs were mounting? Guess you didn't care *that* much.

"(E.g. I know of some really sharp young people in the structures area who are leaving aerospace and going to other fields, vowing never to return - because of the stupidity and insanity displayed in the way the baby was thrown out with the bathwater here.)"

With all due respect I think that YOU MADE ONE OF DENNIS main points...that the entire POR effort was "ego driven".

Engineering has at its heart the same foundation as any other honorable profession which is... "service to humanity". Meaning that the core of the profession and its overarching goal should be not "service to self" but doing things which at the accomplishment of the goal have made humanity better.

The Golden Gate Bridge, DC-3, Dash 80, Armstrong on the Moon...the list goes on had as their ultimate accomplishment "making humanity better".

it was not the technology per se (no matter how clever), rather it was what the technology enabled. I dont see how one makes a case that the technology on the POR is all that "clever". It seems more like "it is difficult" because it is taking old technology and trying to extract the last ounce of performance out of it.

But the goal of the POR seems less as well. Wingo's main point, it strikes me, is that the POR had gotten to the point where the "means justified the end", not the other way around.

building the "ego" rockets was more important then what the program actually did. And if you know people who are upset that the "means" are gone but dont really care all that much about what the ends that were going to be accomplished...well I dont think that they are doing much honor to the profession.

The foundation of arguments for the POR is about the weakest I have seen in my lifetime. It is a series of ephemeral things which are almost impossible to prove... "the chinese will take over the Moon", "military solid rocket programs will go up in cost' (no they wont), "NASA needs a destination" or my favorite "spinoffs".

The weakest of the weak is "bright engineers will leave human spaceflight". Really? Go check out the unemployment lines...and then go see who is working at SpaceX and all the other "startups".

Robert G. Oler

Dennis and I have (to be kind) crossed swords in the past, but this is a first rate piece and agree or disagree with the thrust of it; it is an important statement at least inside the space community of "where things are".

As it is, I agree with the direction of the piece and wish it would be read outside the space community.

Without rewriting Dennis piece it in my view makes a few key points. (and Dennis feel free to correct these I dont want to misrepresent the piece)

1. the system put in place by Griffin was "goal less" other then to return to the Moon. There might have been some "study the Moon" efforts there but in the end simply going back was all the system that Griffin put together was aimed at.

2. Instead of finding some system that could fit inside the expected budgets Griffin foolishly hoped for significant increases to fund his "steroids" effort.

As the "system" Griffin put in place floundered because the money never developed; there exist (even in the debate today) no real political or other support for the increases necessary to make the system work.

What we will never know (and I think Dennis in his replys makes this point) is if a system had been executed which used available vehicles and morphs of legacy hardware...and aimed at a concerted effort (including uncrewed efforts) to use lunar resources...and stayed "near" the expected NASA budgets...could it have sustained political support?

My guess is yes.

Griffin could have put together a "flexible technology" approach which nibbled in reasonable lumps at the technology to sustain the space station and make use of it, go back to the Moon; building on a station legacy...and I suspect that the effort would find considerable political support.

My guess is NOW it is to late for this. This might be however where we pick up in a few years.

Solid piece Dennis.

Robert G. Oler

We discovered in 1974 that human spaceflight with ELVs is much too expensive to be of any practical value to America. To allow people to do work in space that is actually worth what it takes to get them there, we have to lower that cost by at least a factor of 10, to $2M or less per seat. Otherwise spaceflight will never be anything more than a political stunt for a handful of professionals.

LOX costs 60 cents a gallon at LC-39, LH2 is 98 cents. The energy that puts any vehicle into space is such a tiny part of the mission cost it can be considered free. The cost is in building a new rocket for every flight.

That is why we developed the Shuttle. Obviously it was more expensive than planned, but it was the first reusable launch vehicle ever built. With all its problems, its launch cost is lower than it would be for Constellation, even though it carries over ten times the cargo.

People who have never torqued a bolt or welded a seam claim the Shuttle "proves" RLVs don't work. None of them bothers to look at where the costs of Shuttle operations are. They are in fabricating new components, in the solid fuel boosters which are expensive to process and must be entirely rebuilt between flights, in maintaining the huge Apollo-era facilities like the VAB, crawlers, MLPs, etc, and in the many indirect support functions that have become charged to the Shuttle.

Our goal should not be to make human spaceflight a spectacular for a few, but to make it practical and routine for many. The people who actually put their hands on the Shuttle have thousands of ideas about how a new RLV can be made practical in cost and safe in operation. But they are the very people who are about to be dispersed forever.

@ whyisthat1

My understanding as I stated previously is that the Falcon 9 payload (a Dragon qualification vehicle) does not have re-entry capability. Are you saying it does?

There is:
* Dragon qualification vehicle (unit)
* cargo Dragon
* manned Dragon.

Only the last one needs the ability to bring people back to Earth. SpaceX's time-scale to develop them has been published.

SpaceX is developing its spacecraft using traditional engineering techniques. Build a bit, test it, debug it. Build the next bit, test it and debug it - repeat until the machine works.

The modern term for this is incremental development. Right first (and only) time is also old and associated with failed projects.

"People who have never torqued a bolt or welded a seam claim the Shuttle "proves" RLVs don't work. None of them bothers to look at where the costs of Shuttle operations are. They are in fabricating new components, in the solid fuel boosters which are expensive to process and must be entirely rebuilt between flights, in maintaining the huge Apollo-era facilities like the VAB, crawlers, MLPs, etc, and in the many indirect support functions that have become charged to the Shuttle."

How about that $1 billion per year Orbiter Project office standing army ?

"If Congress is truly concerned that we are abandoning our spaceflight heritage, then they need to fund the new plan before October 1 while mandating the Moon and a strong presence there. Within 24 months we could begin sending missions to a lunar outpost location on the moon and building up a capability that humans could use when they get there."

Seems to me you are just throwing in a bone (the Moon) for the old dogs. The new 'plan' still lacks any integrated plan to get there. Flagship demos of inflatable habs, closed-loop ECLSS, AR&D, none of which are integrated and might not fit together. Demos of fuel depots and in-space propulsion which may not work together either. What if the advanced in-space propulsion uses fissile materials or other fuel not suitable for storage in the new cryogenic fuel depots? *sigh*

And the decision on an HLV to stock the outpost is only in 2005 (punt, punt). There is still a great deal of work to do before I would consider Plan C an option.

Editor's note: I just love it when commenters - almost always anonymously - say that it will be "10 years" until we have an American human launch capability. What is the source for this figure? Why is it always *exactly* 10 years? why not 8.5, or 11.2 years? Answer: there is no data to back this up. One person said it and now all of the Obama policy haters just blindly repeat it without stopping to consider if it is even true. Yet somehow the Ares 1 escapes any mention in this regard. When Falcon 9 launches it will be vastly more real in terms of being an operational launch vehicle than Ares 1 has - or would be even if it managed to stay on schedule. And please do not mention Ares 1-X. It was a first stage (only) test vehicle that used another rocket's avionics. As for a reentry vehicle - once again you really need to check your facts. SpaceX has one - and it is called Dragon and it will makes its first reentry years before Orion was scheduled to do so.

Is simple but I'll explain. Is called engineering judgment, 10 years is understood to be an estimate with uncertainty of a few years. 11.2 has an uncertainty of months, who in the right mind would estimate HSF capability within months? The Augustine Commission had a guess of HSF capability by private industry about a year earlier than Constellation, that is in about 6 years. However we should note that such guess for private industry has a much bigger uncertainty than Constellation (much bigger), not only for technical reasons but because the process to human rate a private vehicle is unknown. So 10 years until we have American HSF capability is not at all "Obama policy hater" estimate, but a rational engineering one. You can argue that is conservative, but not that is irrational.

As far as Falcon 9 being more real than Ares 1, how do you even compare vehicles with different uses? Falcon 9 is a cargo vehicle, just like many successufl existing ones. It may evolve in the future, but currently its requirements and maturity are nowhere near those required for human space flight.

Editor's note: OK. you still have not shown me where the 10 year number came from and how it was calculated. Get back to me when you find it.

Seems to me you are just throwing in a bone (the Moon) for the old dogs. The new 'plan' still lacks any integrated plan to get there. Flagship demos of inflatable habs, closed-loop ECLSS, AR&D, none of which are integrated and might not fit together. Demos of fuel depots and in-space propulsion which may not work together either. What if the advanced in-space propulsion uses fissile materials or other fuel not suitable for storage in the new cryogenic fuel depots? *sigh*

There are many things that could go wrong but I suggest reading the CE&R reports from 2005 to get a sense of what an integrated plan might look like. Also the NASA OASIS plan from 1997-2001 was a very nice plan and it looks like the Flagship missions were picked from that study. I had heard about the flagship tech plan from a former NASA Center director who was part of the vetting process so I think that there is more that was put into this than what certain people would like to think.

"...I suggest reading the CE&R reports from 2005 to get a sense of what an integrated plan might look like."

Proposers of the new plan/Plan C need to do due diligence completing integrated plans. Pointing to past work and hoping that will answer questions and fill in the gaps is just not good enough.

Proposers of the new plan/Plan C need to do due diligence completing integrated plans. Pointing to past work and hoping that will answer questions and fill in the gaps is just not good enough.

I do not speak for the people that developed the new plan, just pointing out that if those in the peanut gallery want to see what was developed during the period before ESAS, then it is there.

Also, I would point out that the problems with the Ares 1 and any large solid motor were pointed out by none other than Wherner Von Braun in a 1962 letter to the president. If Dr. Griffin had done that bit of due diligence, it would have saved the nation years of wasted billions and man hours.

> private industry has a much bigger uncertainty than Constellation (much bigger)

What do your simulations say about private industry with n+1 participants? How many does it take for the uncertainty to be less thant Constellation?

"Also, I would point out that the problems with the Ares 1 and any large solid motor were pointed out by none other than Wherner Von Braun in a 1962 letter to the president. If Dr. Griffin had done that bit of due diligence, it would have saved the nation years of wasted billions and man hours."

I assume you mean this letter:
history.nasa.gov/Apollomon/apollo3.pdf

I glanced at it but did not see anything which ruled out solids as you are suggesting.

"It may evolve in the future, but currently its requirements and maturity are nowhere near those required for human space flight."

and Ares 1 is?

Anyway Gemini beat the 10 year rule easily...sorry like KC I dont get it

Robert G. Oler

I glanced at it but did not see anything which ruled out solids as you are suggesting.

Actually, it does. The concept of total impulse and its effect on the Ares 1 vehicle was enormous. While they could add another segment to the vehicle, they could not change the burn time, so they get more thrust during the 120 seconds of powered flight. This is what is leading the Ares 1 in the direction of destructive thrust oscillations (the 4 segment test was not a test of TO as the stage was coupled into a high frequency first mode brick, not a low frequency first mode stage with tens of thousands of gallons upper stage fuel and oxidizer to shake around)

It also results in a mismatch between the first stage and the upper stage in terms of energy provided. The four segment booster required the SSME in the upper stage as it was underpowered. The five segment was not well matched to the J2S, requiring the development, at a cost of billions of dollars, of the J2X in order to get closer to the optimum vehicle match.

The solid propellant system in Ares 1 also has the problem of its dispersion field for a worst case destruction early in the flight. Either you beef up the LAS, resulting in a bad mass margin, or you drop from four people to even less.

These are some of the trades that the solid fueled vehicle brought us. Dr. Griffin even admitted in his 2004 study for the planetary society that the Atlas V could do the job of lifting humans to orbit.

I'm not convinced. They never planned to get to orbit with a solid, and did not need to with an upper stage. The LOX/LH2 tanks can have slosh baffles, this is normal. Besides the ullage is small initially and won't slop around much.
As for the J2-X, I thought the problem with the SSME was the air start, not a first stage mismatch. As for abort, there was talk of shape charges to unzip the solid rocket for quick dispersal.
These are engineering challenges that I feel could have been overcome, but we let every Tom/Dick/Harry with an agenda throw in his wrench. Mark my words, the new system (if we ever get there) will have it's own challenges and naysayers ready to bring it down. Bloody miracle we ever get anywhere.

These are engineering challenges that I feel could have been overcome, but we let every Tom/Dick/Harry with an agenda throw in his wrench.

Of course there are fixes, but at the end of the day, the question is, is it worth it? It is clear from the GAO report and from experience, that the Ares system was going to not be financeable with the amount of money that congress was willing to spend. If the ESAS cost appendices were ever made public you would see that they were already far overbudget and were still years from a flying system.

When the ESAS system started I did a cost study, using the high numbers for EELV costs and payload capacity to the lunar surface. Using the stated flight rate for the Ares system and its original IOC date of 2018 I found that if you spent the money that was going to be spent just on developing the Ares 1 and five, that it would take till around 2040 before the Ares payload delivery matched the EELV delivered payload to the Moon.

There is something wrong when this happens.

Standard EELV's don't deliver payloads to Lunar orbit in the same sizes as Ares V was expected to. So there would be a cost to reassemble them at some point and the ISS is an example of what that might look like.

I think the unfortunate problem with constellation was it would be fine tuned to a budget that never came and cut down before it could redesign itself as a competitive option.
Granted the writing was on the wall for NASA ever since the election, but there should have been at least an attempt to save what was invested.

Keith do you believe the 3 year number tossed around for Space X? If so why? Because Space X says they can? Space X is trying to sell something and will promise anything it thinks it's customer wants to hear to close the deal. Regarding the 10 year number, I think that is still overly optimistic for a new from scratch program. DOD lessons learned database for major aerospace programs was 15 years from program start (i.e. start laying out the program and doing the first trade studies)to IOC back in the 90's. Again that is average, some can take longer and some can take less time but it is a good number to use for conservative planning on when you need to start replacement programs for existing capabilities. What Mr. Zack and others have forgotten is that Space X started their development efforts before their was a COTS program or COTS D. They have about 7 years development behind them. Last proposal from NASA I saw was first crew demo flight in 2014 with IOC in 2015 which works out to about 12 years for Space X so an aggressive but doable schedule. But IOC in 3 years is not realistic for Space X. But for anyone else, like Blue Horizon or Orbital, 10 years is a pretty realistic number.

"Mark my words, the new system (if we ever get there) will have it's own challenges and naysayers ready to bring it down. Bloody miracle we ever get anywhere."

Isn't that the point of decoupling the engineering from the politics? I understand that its not that much more "commercial" than cost plus contracts, but if SpaceX is making the design decisions, nobody throwing their wrench at it can actually have any effect.

Its not the case where they have to pick a certain type of first stage to make certain senators and lobbyist happy. Its no longer the case that people who don't like the layout can do much with a shiny website promising "Faster, Cheaper, Cures Hairloss 2.0" next to a big red "Yell at Congress" button.

Falcon 9 will be built and flown no matter what the peanut gallery thinks of the arrangement; nobody can really complain that "we" are "going back" to "spam in a can" if Elon Musk is paying for it with his own money (and investor's and customer[s]).

So where does this leave us in terms of Earth Orbit Rendezvous and Assembly (EOR/A) of which I know you are a big proponent (Dennis)? I'm quite convinced - heck for the money we've already spend on ARES V design alone we could have flown at least 25 Delta IV Heavy flights at 50Klbs each to LEO! That's at least 3 Ares V flights (assuming it lives up to the design assumptions) or enough hardware to go to the moon probably 3 times - actually probably a LOT more if it was done right. Now that ISS is being kept up until 2020 is NASA looking at EOA at all? It sure seems to me that lack of funding(read:national will) to keep ISS afloat was the reason we required a heavy lift to go to the moon in the first place. The ESAS specifically called out NO IN ORBIT ASSEMBLY but didn't seem to actually provide a justification for it.

And for anybody here who HASN'T read Dennis' book "Moon Rush", it's a HIGHLY recommended read.

I think the unfortunate problem with constellation was it would be fine tuned to a budget that never came and cut down before it could redesign itself as a competitive option.
Granted the writing was on the wall for NASA ever since the election, but there should have been at least an attempt to save what was invested.

At the end of the day, it does come down to the dollars. Constellation, as a technical implementation, is probably the best plan to go to the Moon and Mars if NASA had an unlimited check book. In all of our complaining about Constellation, at least for the most part, it is about the dollars.

Why is it that Congress passes a $789 billion dollar stimulus bill with very little of it going to NASA when an additional $60 billion dollars spread over ten years would have solved the problems? In all of our complaining about Dr. Griffin we have to give equal weight to that external problem.

Dr. John Marburger really said it best in his 2006 Goddard symposium when he talked about the vastly increased budgets for the NIH and other agencies and that NASA would not be getting a similar percentage increase as it was not perceived to provide the same level of value for the investment of taxpayer dollars. This is really the key point.

I feel a new article coming on.

"Keith do you believe the 3 year number tossed around for Space X? If so why?"

Keith can answer on his own, but I think SpaceX can go from "now" to a flying Dragon (and even human dragon) in three years.

Why? It isnt that hard.
We have done "humans in the can" for about 50 years now and the essence of keeping humans alive in a space environment is well understood. It is not some DoD effort to do something cutting edge.

Gemini did it in a lot less time then 10...and all we are doing, in terms of humans is redoing Gemini. Spacecraft "control" functions are likewise well understood and not all that difficult.

Musk is doing the "hard part" now, the rocket equation and he is doing it in a process that is teaching his organization 1) how to work and 2) how to work efficiently/affordably.

Learning those things will cause the organization to be "more timely" in doing things in the future. Go look at any "new" organization stepping out into a "new" field and throughout history they have had the same teething problems.

NASA HSF is far to complicated, almost medieval in terms of looking outside of itself and seeing how industry in the rest of The Republic does things. They do this by claiming "human spaceflight is hard or dangerous" and come up with self serving notions to prove that ("the docking is occurring at 17,500 mph). But in reality hsf is no different then operating any other machine in an extreme environment with human interface.

The F-14 went from contract to IOC in less then 2 years. Tommy was far more complex then Dragon needs to be. It had to fight.

Robert G. Oler

"The F-14 went from contract to IOC in less then 2 years. Tommy was far more complex then Dragon needs to be. It had to fight."

I'm not sure the F-14 is a good example. The aircraft, and especially its TF30 engines, had known power and reliability issues (if you believe Wikipedia, Secretary of the Navy John Lehman called it "probably the worst engine/airframe mismatch we have had in years"). In particular, the engines were particularly susceptible to compressor stalls. However, even with these known problems, the aircraft was allowed to join the Navy inventory.

Of course, F-14s were equipped with ejection seats, so aircrew could just simply punch out of the aircraft if it failed. Even then, there were casualties...a yaw-induced compressor stall during a carrier trap killed the Navy's first female aviator, Lt. Kara Hultgreen. The same can't be said for the Dragon. The Dragon can't operate with known deficiencies, as the crew can't simply eject if the vehicle fails on-orbit. The Dragon doesn't have to fight, but it must be extremely reliable, definitely to a much greater degree than the F-14.