Human Exploration Framework Team Presentation Online

Very darned interesting. This looks like an outgrowth of the OASIS system that NASA did in 1997. Now if congress would just fund all the toys, we could have a very robust operational capability.

Very neat. HEFT suggests a lot of different things. They seem to say something like this:
Develop new tech
Build the 100 ton in-line SDLV
Build an exploration Orion
Build a "Multi‐Mission 
Space 
Exploration Vehicle"
Build two new in-space chemical propulsion stages

Then:
Robotic precursor missions 2017-2022

And then:
Build a "Deep
 Space Habitat"
Build a new solar electric propulsion stage

And then:
Visit deep space with humans 2025-2030

And finally:
Visit NEO in 2031

Needless to say this is very expensive and takes a lot of big rocket launches.

They seem to put down the depot idea saying the number of small commercial launches would be prohibitive. I somehow think the commercial providers (who would happily find a business in shipping fuel) will disagree..

I also didn't see a single mention of the word "international". Augustine was clear about needing international partners on the critical path if we want to afford deep space exploration.

I'd like to see the report, rationale and budget that goes with all of this. Most of it makes good sense. But if you are going to build a multi-mission deep space craft, and if you are going to support commercial crew to orbit, then I'd like to see the rationale behind any kind of Orion.

Viewgraph engineering at its finest. Lots of pretty graphics, carefully laid-out schedules, and promises of new technology development. Been to this movie before.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

> I'd like to see the rationale behind any kind of Orion.

If I read the report right, HEFT acknowledges that Orion could conflict with commercial crew. They say Orion and direct return to earth is the best way to go, whether Orion makes redundant some commercial crew transport or not. They say they'd only do crew launched on HLV and Orion if it made monetary and technical sense.

I guess that decision is indicative of the mythological "risk-adverse" culture of NASA.

Why not figure out how to dock in LEO and return on commercial crew? And use fuel provided by commercial cargo? Seems to me like creating two commercial industries on earth is at least as important as the asteroid docking.

"Needless to say this is very expensive and takes a lot of big rocket launches."

A lot of mass has to be placed into space regardless of the sort of advanced program that is going to be pursued. You can do that with a lot of smaller rocket launches, or you can do it with fewer large rocket launches. The more small launches, the more the logistics overhead of assembly, which means eve more mass to orbit and more launches. ISS, which can support about 6 people for about 6-9 months at any given time, is an excellent lesson in logistics. It took about 80 launches over more than 10 years to build the 850000 lb facility. Using a Saturn V or a Shuttle derived HLV, it could have been done in 5-10 launches in a year or two. Which was more cost effective?

When the plan was decided to go ahead with a Shuttle launched station in 1971, Saturn production had been stopped and Shuttle's were planned to be flying up to 50 times a year on an airliner like-basis. Obviously some lessons learned in assumptions of technical difficulty.

Right now we have a lot of tooling and expertise that has been supporting Shuttle and ISS, so I'd submit that the logical and cost effective way to proceed is to use the already established capabilities and knowledge.

Since developing lunar or planetary landing capability on a manned scale is so expensive, that piece needs to be deferred and the plan that has been laid out here seems to make a lot of sense. Still, I would like to see more than view graphs.

A concise story with good rationale, properly communicated, would go a long way towards getting us beyond the current situation.

NASA cannot afford any more false starts.

"The more small launches, the more the logistics overhead of assembly..."

Small and medium launchers exist today at competitive rates and with frequent launch windows.

"Using a Saturn V or a Shuttle derived HLV, it could have been done in 5-10 launches in a year or two."

The Shuttle derived HLVs or Ares V are priced at a development cost of $40+ billion dollars, or put another way, half the American cost of the ISS! Just to get to the first flight.

I guess to some it would make sense to spend half the cost of the ISS just building a vehicle to get ISS it to orbit. Maybe. Keeps Marshall busy.

"Which was more cost effective?"

Small and medium launchers are available today. Heavy launchers are available a long time from now and require a launcher development budget that NASA will not be appropriated. At a $1+ billion recurring per flight cost that NASA can't afford.

I pretty much agree with moonman (I'm another old "moonguy" myself). None of us who worked Shuttle (BEFORE we landed on the Moon!)ever believed the 50 flts/year BS that was foisted on Congress to justify and amortize Shuttle costs but that was the political reality of the day. We used the last Sat V for Skylab and showed an excellent "lesson" on how to build a space station--but certain elements in NASA didn't want to do stations that way! Now after those 80+ flts to construct The Great Flying White Elephant maybe some "learned" the lesson! Nahhhhh--not the flyboys and other slow learners!
BTW, RC, I also agree with most of your points--except on the re-fueling depot---right now and in the foreseeable future there is just not enough commercial traffic (mostly to GEO) that would return a positive ROI for the huge infrastructure costs involved---even IF the cryo transfer and storage challenges are solved--still a BIG IF! (I can expand on this with more info if anyone wants it.)
Still the HEFT effort is a start---far better than anything coming out of the WH and our "leaders" at NASA Hqts.! Hopefully Congress has some staffers who half-way understand this stuff---nahhhh! It's gonna be treading water for 6 months or more!

New Rule!

Constellation Cronies and Orion Oglers are from hereon forbidden from using the phrase "powerpoint engineering".

I have said it once and will say it again. Any long term plan not involving nuclear power and propulsion development is fatally flawed. The Isp of chemcial systems is to low and the T/W ratio of SEP and NEP is to low. The only system that opens up the solar system to manned exploration is NTP with the appropriate T/W ratio and Isp. I am perplexed as to how these systems are always declared to far out of reach or to expensive when they are neither out of our technical grasp and are only a fraction as expensive as the Augustine panel stated they were.

notice the HEFT team seems out of touch,on page 36 they aknowledge all STS derived systems except side mount require a greatly modified MAF.
they assume OMB "budget escalation" after 2015
page 47
commercial crew abanded till 2019 or after, so what is flying humans to ISS?
there 70 ton inline HLLV costs 3 times side mount in developemnt costs
page 69
deep space habitate almost $ 7 billion to develope,
ummm how many Bigalows may I have for that price?
no funding for fuel depot flagship

Where is the money for all this coming from? What is the practical benefit of BEO flight with these rather expensive ELVs that will justify the investment, given that the money will have to be borrowed? At least support for commercial launch services might make the US competitive with Europe, Russia, and China again.

I don't know why we are even bothering discussing this. It is clear to me that any Space Plan developed under this administration will not survive much beyond the next Congress (and much less the next Administration). The irony is that this plan, all things considered, is far better than what we saw earlier this year but in my view comes too late (and close to the elections) for any meaningful fence mending.

I'm so burned out with all the political posturing (on both sides) that I've even decided not to renew my Planetary Society membership this year despite being a continuous member since 1989 (and on a personal note I really can't stand the pomposity of Bill Nye, self-proclaimed 'The Science Guy').

The only good thing about all this is that Space-X is positioning itself very well to replace Boeing/Lockheed and their overpriced ELVs by the end of the decade.

Any long term plan not involving nuclear power and propulsion development is fatally flawed.

Any long term plan that includes nuclear power and propulsion today is a non starter, so there you have it. At least the people at NASA HQ understand that.

A lot of mass has to be placed into space regardless of the sort of advanced program that is going to be pursued.

Why? Now of course if you want an all chemical system where 80% of the mass lifted is fuel, you are correct. With a SEP, that figure declines to under 50%. The SEP in their study is limited but it can be improved upon, a lot.

If you have SEP, and if you have EELV's, and if you have a committment to ISRU, the mass requirements diminish greatly. If you look at the payloads that have to be launched, there are very few that could not be done a lot more efficiently.

There was a great design for an open cockpit lander from low lunar orbit to the ground that could be carried to lunar orbit where it would be met up with by a human crew. In comparison the Apollo lunar orbit rendezvous after LM liftoff was sporty in the extreme. With modern navigation methods there is no reason not to use a staged approach to get to the Moon, or an asteroid.

I do not follow virtually any of your comments.

Why would nuclear power or other advanced power and propulsion systems not be viable? Certainly we need to be studying how to develop these.

I consider a lot of mass being payloads somewhat heavier than what a Shuttle carries now. We've heard lots of complaints about how Shuttle's logistics limitations caused a considerably slowed program. But you are saying we can do all future development with rocket capacities similar to what the Shuttle carries now or less? Maybe, but I don't think that in the future we can afford 50 to a hundred missions to assemble systems the mass of an ISS.

You are saying we can rely on ISRU? Maybe but first you have to have the lander capacity to place your ISRU manufacturing plants wherever you are going to use them. And you have to have a transport capability to get your ISRU produced resources launched back into space for use. What are you producing-10 lb ingots of aluminum that can be worked into fuel tanks or crew compartments once you ave them in space?

You are saying that the Apollo LOR was sporty, but that an open cockpit lander which would presumably also have to be able to ascend and perform an LOR would be somehow better-I don't follow your logic. The Apollo LM ascent stage was under 10000 lb for its ascent. Only Gemini and Mercury, nether of which had significant propulsion capacity, weighed less. The LM carried about a 1000 lb of payload for ascent. How much do you think your open cockpit lander will weigh and what do you think it will carry?

barsoom, I would also add one thing to your comment. The most recent budget exercise conducted by the Oak Ridge National laboratory, Idaho National Laboratory and NASA to estimate the cost of building an NTP engine was approximately $7 Billion, which is a far cry from the $19 Billion that the JSC HEFT proposal claims. It seems as if they were very purposefully faulty in estimating the cost to support Electric Propulsion which has always been a JSC favorite. Also of great importance is the fact that most of the $7 Billion estimate is for testing infrastructure, which is a one time cost. The cost of designing and building the engine itself is only $800 million to $1 Billion, which is less than the cost of developing the ARIES-I or IV which already have their infrastructure in place.

Still the HEFT effort is a start---far better than anything coming out of the WH and our "leaders" at NASA Hqts.!

HEFT is a NASA Headquarters plan.

I agree it is the best plan we have seen. It still is not perfect.

HEFT might have come too late because of the momentum building behind the House and Senate plans. Of these two, only the Senate plan is at all viable. The House plan leaves us stuck with the old Constellation, which was poorly thought out and even more poorly implemented; really it could not and never will be implemented for technical, cost and supportability reasons.

In one more report, once again some very competent people have gone off and created some architectural options for a space transportation scheme as a means to explore space beyond Earth orbit. Once again this has been done outside of any context, such as how this fits within the agency, and what NASA is about in the context of everything else. The result is predictable; an overly optimistic set of assumptions, with no consideration of the range of scenarios, results in needing more funds forever than even the most optimistic scenario of what might be available.

Much of the feedback here as well is about the engineering, the technical approach, positive or negative. This at a time when the nature of what NASA is trying to do should be the more fundamental discussion that has been avoided since the days after the loss of Columbia and leading to the first such big study, ESAS (of which yes, I was a part).

Consider these matters for a moment.

The Space Shuttle leading to the loss of Columbia was (and continues to be) a recurring cost in the range of $3 Billion dollars a year. Put aside any notion for a moment of this number – which gets quoted all too often also out of context. Add to this number some other questions. One might be, where did the money come from for the Space Station, or for Exploration or for Space Flight Support? There was a time that recurring costs for getting to low-Earth-orbit needed an ongoing, recurring, development budget. Just before the loss of Columbia the last rendition of this was the Shuttle Life Extension Program. What was Space Flight Support but a way of placing much of JSC (and in the future budgets, KSC) operations “off the books” as set at a certain amount regardless of architecture.

Develop some context now. NASA and Exploration beyond Earth orbit at no time ever gets more budget than today to go much farther than low Earth orbit. Even in these kind of reports the inflationary expectation is just a way of saying that purchasing power in the future is no more than today or yesterday.

Now consider, what is Exploration? If we equate it to transportation, to getting there, we are doing something very different than any other industry, where transportation is considered a non-value added means to an end. Yet in these type studies the notions of transportation and exploration, by page 32, and entirely lost by page bazillion 5, are interchangeable. This is where context is loss.

To connect a future direction to a budget what is required is context, to provide relevance, where transportation is one line item, and exploration is another. Exploration would measure out mostly scientific payload, instruments, and relate to the science return of these. Further, the in-space infrastructure such as a Lunar base site, or some habitat, would be set aside as well. The context of all three elements would show disconnects that are even worse than presented in this report. The alternative is a transportation architecture that consumes with its recurring costs, by pretending to equal, any possibility of actually exploring or establishing in-space habitation.

There are alternative questions. Does exploration need a permanent ISS-like infrastructure (but somewhere beyond Earth orbit) to live in, which then must be maintained? Would a more dynamic, less fixed approach to exploration be preferred? In either case a context would be required where the development of transportation concepts is done alongside the scientific concept and the in-space infrastructure concept.

Additionally, further context would be required – thing NASA in terms of everything else - starting with this odd assumption of an inflationary NASA budget profile going forever out. The context here is about a simple question – as Federal budgets continue to see all type of pressure, how likely is it that NASA in the next 10 years will see an ever increasing share of this budget? An inflationary assumption is saying this is a given.
As we approach getting twice as many elderly into Medicare 10 years from now, for what is likely not twice as much budget, which is more likely – that somehow a large insurance program like Medicare had to become 50% more efficient (providing twice as much service for the same or just a little more costs) and that discretionary agencies were never affected, or that discretionary agencies saw the hammer fall around 2013?

Setting context is what will define success in NASA Human Space Flight defining its next steps. Are we to go beyond Earth orbit, for a transportation amount not much more or likely LESS than has historically been spent in the past just to get to low Earth orbit? Are we to really balance any costs there with the research and technology that feeds into future systems even beyond this next step? Are we setting realistic budget expectations? Are we setting aside for the exploration costs per se, as scientific payload and instruments, rather than assuming getting there equals exploration? Are we assuming the science will show up “gratis” – a mistake made already by the ISS, another infrastructure that neglected context?

Most of this context has been lacking even in the current Human Space Flight state of affairs dominated by Shuttle, ISS and the development dollars of Exploration that mostly are available because of the planned end of the Shuttle. It’s an issue of matching realism to ambition, of seeing Human Space Flight in the context of NASA, and NASA in the context of everything else. I’ll not add up numbers here or present spreadsheets, but if I’ve given a hint here of the challenge, we’re up against something hugely beyond a shortfall of a couple of billion a year in 2017, or a few billion a year here or there. There are alternatives, and yes there are “we survived” scenarios where the numbers don’t look too bad (perhaps just shortfalls like in this report, a few billion a year shortfall, forever, taken in isolation, if getting there is all your interested in). But we need to take these as a message for radical change, not as a measure that “we’re getting close, the last disconnect we even worse”!

On another note…a moment of Zen… We’ve grown so used to endless possibilities that, like the housing market, the logic of adding up numbers was simply overcome with the desire for more and more. Until of course the numbers assert themselves, and once again housing heads the way of lining up with income, not with assumptions. And perhaps that’s how this will end – an inability to change, while some watch the accident about to happen and can’t look aside, making any realization of the situation more about getting prepared for what will happen when reality asserts itself, rather than trying to prevent the crisis.

FWIW, a flat or even declining NASA budget does seem to be a concept that is impossible for the agency's thinkers to deal with. In fact, the current thinking seems to go like this:

"Back when we were developing Saturn V, our budget was over ten times greater in proportion to the overall Federal budget as it is now! There's the answer! We need a new Saturn V! If it is expensive enough, they'll give us enough money to build it, especially if we do a good enough job of trash-talking the alternatives that no one will fund them!"

Well, they got one out of two. They managed to make the alternatives politically unacceptable. Unfortunately, they didn't get the extra funding, mostly because it was the mission that attracted the dollars before, not the big, shiny rocket. As always seems to be the case with this kind of groupthink, 'Plan-B' seems to be "Close your eyes, cross your fingers and wish, wish, WISH!"