Shuttle Derived Launch Vehicle Idea Is Still Alive

How much do you want to bet that the big news this week or next is the announcement of a vendor consortium that will take the Shuttle and its infrastructure private and will launch it for a fixed price?

Score one for Bolden. He just saved the US taxpayer money.

Boy these folks still aren't getting it are they ?

• Space Based Solar Power- multi Centers/DOE/DoD
• Inflatable habitat - commercial
• Satellite servicing- GSFC/DoD/commercial
• Propellant depot- exploration/commercial
• Robotic Precursors/Lunar ISRU- ESMD
.......can all be flown for a fraction of the cost on an EELV.

The numbers are outrageous and they still look understated.....Compare Stop Shuttle Dev SM vs. Fly Shuttle Dev SM. Something doesn't add up. It costs $3B/year to develop SM *AND* continue to fly Shuttle ? I thought that was ~the current cost per year just to operate Shuttle ?

Unfortunately this probably should've been the stop gap LEO solution instead of Griffin's WAY over priced Ares I "steroids".....but the time for that passed long ago.

This presentation promotes more urgency to spend a lot of money to build a heavy lift vehicle. I hate to say this, but this urgency is simply going to fall on deaf ears just like Constellation. I want to work on expensive sky-is-the-limit rockets as much as anyone else but not until the business case for heavy lift is established by our government, i.e., the buyers of profoundly large and complex rockets that costs 10X smaller and simpler rockets. We can harmlessly flirt with the buyers all we want but my guess is that flirting is going to be ignored.

What is heavy lift anyway?

It is a vehicle that is heavier than what the next guy has. Does this sound like machismo to you? Is it necessary for our government to fall into this money trap of promoting machismo or does it make better sense to build an economy that thrives on job growth and prosperity?

The number of jobs to competitively build small rockets from companies sprinkled around the country that accomplishes the same net lift to orbit is larger than the number of jobs needed to build a one-shot heavy lift vehicle that predicatively runs into constant schedule delays and cost over-runs.

> How much do you want to bet that the big news this week or next is the announcement of a vendor consortium that will take the Shuttle and its infrastructure private and will launch it for a fixed price?

A million billion dollars? Will you bet me a million billion dollars?

"What is heavy lift anyway?"

In this context? It's a launch vehicle that can send 80,000kg/176,400lbs to LEO. This is more-or-less the same as what OSTP was calling for in a report they issued once (although they were pushing for the Atlas-V Phase 2).

FWIW, I am quite interested to see how Headquarters will respond to this. Will John Shannon join Jeff Hanley in being promoted sideways?

Two comments:
"Side Mount can be developed sooner for less money using surplus Shuttle flight hardware and the existing infrastructure with only a few changes compared to In-Line."
I'm no expert but wasn't the cost of developing the PLC (shuttle without the HSF bits) more expensive than a payload support structure, fairing and new engine block?

"Provides catalyst to bootstrap commercial heavy-lift and Retains U. S. Space Leadership Role."

This is the crux. Seemingly you can't be the leader unless you have the Biggest (deleted) Rocket. This IMHO is what Congress is really worried about: "The Missile Gap" redux.

I still don't understand the resistance to this idea. I didn't understand it when NASA turned its nose up to it the first time around in favor of Constellation, and I don't understand it now that the NewSpace/ObamaSpace supporters are poo pooing it.
It uses the infrastructure we have and builds off of it, saving jobs for the jobs program people, and speeding up development time for the people who care about exploration.
Engineers always seem to bitch about anything that isn't purpose built brand new from the ground up, but in an industry that survives by way government dollars and public support, getting "brand new" equipment is always an uphill struggle. If you need evidence of that look at CxP, SEI, or the DC-X.
If its new its going to cost a ton, or put people out of work, either way its not going to get the support it needs to survive. Jupiter Direct was a good compromise, and still is.

Sidemount makes too much sense for NASA to adopt. That's why Shuttle-C was ignored for so many years and why Griffin canned almost all the shuttle heritage hardware in favor of "Apollo on Steroids". It's still a good idea but probably too late at this point.

Anything... But... DIRECT...

We already have the 80 to 85 percent solution. No way in heck will anyone accept this when a lot of work has already been done. There was a time when I though the government and industry could have got us a SD-HLV.

I do not think it will happen.

Where would we be if we would have accepted and adopted that "Rocket that defied the laws of physics?" in 2009? We would be looking a launch sometime next year.

And now they jobs program that is NASA is being cleansed. Sad day for us all really.

VR
RS327

> FWIW, I am quite interested to see how Headquarters will respond to this. Will John Shannon join Jeff Hanley in being promoted sideways?

He'll probably only get "promoted sideways" if he attempts to do something illegal like start new SDLV projects without congressional approval, as people have been saying Hanley attempted immediately prior to being moved.

Do it!

Dump Ares I and go directly to SDHL and fill the Ares V need. Upscale Orion back to what it was and launch it on SDHL rocket for BEO purpose. Let commercial come up to speed and provide something that could replace Ares I and use the now downscaled Orion for ISS taxi or whatever manned craft that actually comes to fruition from commercial.

DO IT!

Wake up Congress!

Obama sure won't.

Couldn't they put a heat shield and shute on the engine module and return it?

Nope, sorry: the one on the right gives up parallel staging, which was one of shuttle's few positive design features; the one on the left still has those dumb-ass SRBs.

SD-HLV makes a lot of sense - whether it is sidemount or inline.

Hopefully, a Congressional compromise will give the go ahead to make this happen.

Anything there gets us the hell outta LEO I'm all for.. I don't know about everyone else and I'm sure Kieth with agree with me.. 40 years parked in LEO is freaking long enough let get on with exploring.

Damn the Gravity!

Problem is that the smart people know that you can't take something designed for one mission and then cheaply redesign it for a new mission. Any time you try to re-use existing hardware you end up compromising the performance of the vehicle, you can't re use as much of it as you think and in the end you get more bang for your buck by starting with a clean design that is built for you particular mission. See the P-7 and T-45 programs.

Yea, tell that to von Braun who cobbled together a Redstone and other solids and put our first satellite in orbit vs. the "clean sheet" Vanguard that blew up on the pad.

That is the broad stroke cop-out that people have been trying to kill Direct with since it was suggested, and it really doesn't make any sense for either the inline or side mount configurations of a SD-HLV.
This design does not repurpose anything. Everything is basically doing what it was originally designed to do. In fact if anything, the argument can be made that a Shuttle derived HLV has the benefit of actually simplifying the design that is currently in use in order to boost its capabilities.
That's just good engineering.

One of the major advantages of the inline shuttle derived vehicle is that you can also use the core vehicle (without the SRBs) as a single stage booster to transport humans into orbit as suggested in Beoing's paper 'Heavy Lift Launch Vehicles with Existing Propulsion Systems' at the SpaceOps 2010 Conference.

Marcel F. Williams

I am sitting here watching the Exp.24 launch coverage. Why is it that we don't have some sort of plain jane system to get our people to LEO? Soyuz is an old, clunky looking thing, but it gets the job done in fine style. It is also a proven, robust design with over 40 years of service. I think all of these over-engineered designs that fail, lose sight of the fact that if they keep it simple, it might just work. I just think reinventing the wheel is not necessary.

So I guess Mack Henderson is one of "anonymous" NASA employees, dare I say it at the risk of inviting the wrath of Constellation, Direct advocates? His IL or inline sure looks like what the Direct folks have been advocating for what, 3 years?

Bless 'em, engineers...a managers nightmare.

Allow them complete freedom and they'll build a kids toy that can nuke the planet!

You know I can remember (20 yrs ago) trying to rationalize with (obviously) very talented engineering-scientists, the difference between what can be done and what should be done, and it's amusing to see nothings changed.

When one embarks on the Commercializing of Launch Services, there's no turning back. That very fact alone will radically change the nature of NASA's future.

It's been a long time coming, but it's finally here - The Future.

And you guys always over estimate how much your going to save by "re-using" an existing design optimized for different requirements. Then once you do the actual engineering work, Oops, we can't reuse as much as we thought and the magical cost savings evaporate.