Nelson & Hutchison Have a "Major Breakthrough" to Announce

Yippee!

With everything but health care paid for by the Chinese, lets hope Obama doesn't compromise.

Accepting wasteful redundant spending today is accepting a poor and weakened country tomorrow.

I don't understand these repeated allusions to "redundant" spending. And what makes you think health care wont be paid for by the Chinese?

Authorization does not equal Appropriations.
There is a loooong way to go for any legislation.

Our founding fathers weren't in a hurry.

Just remember, anything that gets to the desk of the president needs to be signed or else he'll see another year of Constellation which he doesn't want. You folks better accept the compromise this year or get nothing you want.

Yes as I understand it:

Make every NASA employee not living in Florida, Texas Retire and close all NASA facilities and only have one MD called Human Spaceflight which will become defunct in 2013 as NASA will no longer be a Federal Agency.

All of this because CxP killed NASA as it could not think for itself. It is/was the cyclops that did not have sight or common sense.

Thank goodness for Appropriations and President VETO power.

Spaceboy before I explain to you what redundant means, do you understand that Delta IV heavy with RS-68A is all but done and provides over 70mT to LEO?

Spaceboy, before I explain to you what I meant by "everything but health care paid for by the Chinese", have you read what Alan Simpson said about the federal deficit? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/11/AR2010071101956.html

If not, read it and come back if you need more explanation. Then we can talk about whether you personally can afford a new rocket.

I made a mistake, the ULA product card actually says Delta IV Heavy with RS-68A is something just under 66mT, not over 70mT!

> I don't understand these repeated allusions to "redundant" spending.

SpaceX, Orbital Sciences and Boeing are all gearing up to provide astronaut-carrying craft. The "redundant" spending would be to also fund Orion + Ares.

Creating a parallel public option would be smart if there were only one commercial option, or if the commercial options were all on shaky ground. But those scenarios do not appear to be the case here.

I am guessing the breakthrough is saving lots of jobs in their respective states.

The rumour is that the President has offered his support for the bill. If so, that is a major hurdle crossed and should make the next steps a bit easier.

IMHO at least, it might also mean Charles Bolden gets to retire early and spend time with his grandchildren.

There is an audio clip from Nelson saying “We expect to pass this bill tomorrow… The White House will announce their support for our bill tomorrow..."

I transcribed the part about what he said regarding the White House here-

http://nasaengineer.com/?p=951

If that is what the press conference is about, that is heavy duty.

It is my understanding that the preliminary Appropriations sub-committee approval has already occurred. The approval was given pending the authorization bill we are going to hear about today. I've no doubt, a NW reader will be quick to correct me if I am mistaken.

From July 1 NASAWatch article "Get Ready for the continuing Resolution",

"...a House appropriations panel on June 29 voted to fully fund the U.S. space agency’s $19 billion budget request for 2011 but then fenced off most of the $4.2 billion included for manned space exploration, making the money off limits until a new NASA authorization bill is enacted.

“Any major change to the direction of the nation’s space program should come through an authorization passed by Congress,” Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-W.Va.), chairman of the House Appropriations commerce, justice, science subcommittee, said in opening remarks at the legislative mark-up session."

I made a mistake, the ULA product card actually says Delta IV Heavy with RS-68A is something just under 66mT, not over 70mT!

That would be a Phase 2 Delta, which is a long way away from what we have today. Still, it would be cheaper to develop and cheaper to run and thus make the SDLV redundant. But the SDLV and the Delta Phase 2 are both redundant, since we don't need heavy lift at all.

Wow. This is exciting. Have you developed another way to get large payloads to orbit so that we can explore beyond LEO? No need for heavy lift at all. That is something that we could all agree on if we are able to defy gravity another way. Please, tell us more. Don't leave us hanging.

It is just the engine upgrade: http://www.ulalaunch.com/site/docs/product_cards/DIV_p
roduct_card.pdf

It was on schedule in 2008: "certification of the new engine in mid-2010 and initial launch capability of the upgraded Delta IV Heavy in early 2011"
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=26561

It was still on schedule February 2010: "Engine design certification review and acceptance of flight readiness are currently planned for July 2010"
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pratt--whitney-rocketdyne-begins-certification-testing-of-the-rs-68a-rocket-engine-84050757.html

How is that for saving money. Let DOD pay for the rocket.

I wish the press would stop mincing words and call this budget spade a spade. It is welfare.

BLAST!!!!!!!!

If the WH caves now it steals my thunder at the PCAST meeting tomorrow!

:-)

@RC: The "product card"? ROTFLMAO...

No *wonder* you post such nonsense about how great commercial is and how crappy NASA is; you're getting your "information" from product cards and other assorted advertisements/propaganda from marketers! You're not a technical person and have little to no actual industrial experience upon which to base your wild-ass theories!
Thanks for revealing that; those of us who participate here that actually have 20, 30, 40 years of direct industry experience can now clearly rationalize why we ignore everything you post.

Folks:

"Advisers to Nelson, however, said that the compromise was necessary to win congressional support..."

America is doing it again. This is the same problem that got us an expensive and less than safe Space Shuttle. The politicians seem to think that they are better rocket engineers than NASA... again!

tinker

Augustine found Constellation required launching 600mT per year to LEO, compared to 250mT per year for Apollo. So as you can see the problem isn't the rocket, it is the cost. No matter what you do it will take a lot of rockets. The problem is the cost. 600mT per year was utterly delusional.

The entire ISS has required about 350mT total. Augustine judged that a new Flexible Path plan would require much less than Constellation, but "we will [still] launch to low-Earth orbit a mass comparable to that of the entire ISS every year."

Augustine also found that the largest piece of Constellation, when not fueled, weighed 40mT. So with depots you could conceive of a system using only 40mT rockets. But mission reliability falls with more than three launches, so they actually needed "a launch mass to low-Earth orbit of at least 65 to 70 mt based on current NASA lunar plans."

They ended up deciding that a 70mT rocket was capable of doing the job. And as you can imagine the lowest cost way to get one was not building an entire new rocket (SDLV) with entire new engines (RS-25E, J-2X). Thus Obama's plan to let the shuttle hardware die and just buy EELVs off the shelf when the time came.

Well, scratch all that. Distinguished senators of the US Congress are now deciding what to do.

Please, tell us more. Don't leave us hanging.

Propellant transfer. How could you have missed it? The concept has been around since the dawn of astronautics (in the writings of Tsiolkovsky for instance) and the technology itself since the late seventies. More advanced versions will be developed under the new plans.

In fact, not even propellant transfer is needed, combined LEO and Lagrange rendez-vous would be good enough. But the smart thing to do would be to use propellant transfer because it could generate enough demand for smaller launchers to lead to a breakthrough in launch costs and prices at no additional cost to exploration. It also gives you more flexibility.

When Hutchison thanks someone from a web forum you have to wonder why she isn't listening to actual experts. (I don't actually, the experts just didn't say what she wanted to hear)

The Augustine 10 are chopped liver. The development schedules they reasoned out are thrown in the bin. Vitter wants his rocket now!

No sense investing in technology for lower life cycle cost like Augustine and every panel before his recommends. Vitter wants his rocket now.

This is all about them singing and dancing in front of an entertained audience. They will do whatever they do to stay elected this November. It involves complicated psychology that we are totally unaware of.

Hypothetically...

Are you going to vote out the Congressman that appears to fight tooth and nail to keep jobs in your district? (Likely, No)

Are you going to be surprised, if you discover after the election, your job is going to go away even after your Congressman, who fought for your job, won the election? (Likely, Yes)

Even if they tell you your job is going away now, to apply pressure to higher-up politicians to force them to change their minds, are you going to vote out the Congressman that appears to fight tooth and nail to keep your current job in your district? (Likely, No)

Did you realize, you are not likely to vote out your Congressman no matter what they do now or later, and your job is likely to go away? (Enter your answer here and think about it)

I'm entertained. Aren't you? That's what I call entertainment, folks!

RC, the payload of the existing Delta IV Heavy + RS-68A is a little under 30mT to LEO. You have to look at the line below the rocket, not the top of the rocket. :-)

It's still welfare, but not because existing rockets can lift >60mT to LEO. It's welfare because 25-30mT is enough, and much less is enough with cryogenic propellant transfer.

"No sense investing in technology for lower life cycle cost like Augustine and every panel before his recommends. Vitter wants his rocket now.

Of course Vitter supports a development program instead of paper studies, he should. I don't recall Augustine saying that investing in technology will result in lower life cycle cost, in fact the Obama plan is none of Augustine options that were considered in the study. Costs has much less to do with hardware than business models, processes, and procedures. Having said said, everyone recommends new technology studies, the question is whether they support them at the expense of a development program. There is no guarantee there would be a development program for new technologies in the future. Do you know how easy it is for paper studies never to make it for development? They get cancel with the snap of a finger all the time.

There is also the question of work force, not for the sake of saving jobs (although I am not blind not to assume that is Vitter's priority), but maintaining a baseline industrial capability. Simply put, you cannot turn on-and-off the aerospace industry at will. If our rocket development capability diminishes significantly, which it will without shuttle or Constellation, resurrecting it in the future would be incredibly difficult, making a new development program even more expensive. Waiting five years to make a decision on a HLV architecture would do just that.

> those of us who participate here that actually have 20, 30, 40 years of direct industry experience

Sorry, I see my mistakes. Maybe you can inform the ignorant and explain how a new HLV can be ready in 2016 when Augustine assumed more money and had it ready for 2025. Does it just fly resupply missions to ISS for 9 years?

RC - my *guess* is (based on the draft bill) they are going to push for the SDHLV. There have been many studies performed that say we can have this capability within several years (time depends on budget, when we start and whether you go sidemount or inline) - so that's how you make 2016.

As for the Delta IV Heavy, I actually want to correct Martijn a little, since mT were stated, then the current lift capability of a Delta IV heavy is about 23mT. With the RS-68A, that capability goes up to about 26mT. However, since the bill does not state metric tons, it states tons, I will say that equates to roughly 28T. Which is far short of the 70 Tons on the low end and the 100 tons on the high end of the bill. They also ask for that to evolve to 150 tons.

I also disagree with martijn's assertion that we only need 25-30 ton lift capability (although that is all we have). It took 12 years to build station because we were limited by the lift capability of the shuttle and size of the payload bay. We also do not have any rockets that can lift 60mT or anywhere near that. Delta IV Heavy and Atlas V heavy are our big boys (25 and 32 tons).

I think there are certain things like propellant transfer that can be done that way, but other things require heavy lift. Unless we want to spend 10 years building our earth departure stage on orbit.

We need both the Delta IV/Atlas V and a true heavy class lift vehicle, different missions, different goals. Therefore - not redundant.

Congratulations to the Direct Team. They are going to build your rocket!! Start the parties now!!

> It took 12 years to build station because we were limited by the lift capability of the shuttle and size of the payload bay.

I hear flight frequency had something to do with that too :)

My read of the Augustine report is that SDLV is most cost effective when Shuttle is continued to be used, and big EELV is most cost effective when EELV is continued to be used.