JWST and SLS: Dueling Giant Money Sponges

Without a manned beyond LEO spaceflight program NASA is unlikely to get much financial support from Congress for expensive unmanned programs. And NASA will simply be viewed by both the political left and the right as a way to reduce unnecessary government spending. This would not only hurt America's government space program but also America's private space programs-- unless private investors finally decide to part with some of the trillions of dollars that they are currently sitting on.

Marcel F. Williams

I thought that the current NASA leadership and the WH just didn't want a heavy-lift vehicle now and wanted to wait 5-years to perform studies until such time they could pick an HLV design. So why are both the WH and NASA thumbing their noses at an immediate HLV effort? Because they think it's just a re-hashed Ares V? I thought the current WH Administration even agreed on the need for an HLV to support the supposed human to asteroid mission. So what's the problem?

Is it that Congress mandated it be Shuttle-derived that has the WH clearly dragging its feet? Has NASA and the WH already decided that liquid-boosters are the way to go? If so, what's the point of waiting 5 years to study options then? And why 5 years? Why not a 1 or 2 year exhaustive study on the best architecture? What's so magical about 5? Or are they still sour that Congress rejected the wholesale cancellation of all Constellation-like elements? To do an asteroid mission we'll need a crew capsule with a large propulsion module designed to support deep space missions (Orion) and not just ISS crew transfer (Dragon, CST-100, etc.). I imagine we also need an HLV of some type, whether with liquid boosters or solid rocket boosters. I just find it foolish that people are seriously proposing Falcon Heavy for beyond LEO exploration when it hasn't yet been proven. And having every reason to believe FH will launch multiple times successfully is NOT a good enough reason to hand over to them the responsibility of beyond LEO exploration. It's just too early to tell. I agree SpaceX has broken part of the old HSF mold by launching and recovering Dragon using it's Falcon 9 for lot's less than NASA could have...but they are just entering the HSF arena and so far only dealing with LEO. Going beyond LEO will require a significant amount of funding -- at a level only governments can afford.

Unless the private sector is really ready to invest the needed funds to develop beyond LEO systems -- which I just don't believe they are (too much risk and not enough return in profit and no identified realistic markets). If commercial companies truly want to begin commercializing space, they need to first demonstrate they can launch and operate wholly commercial unmanned scientific missions (rovers at the lunar South pole, rovers on & orbiters around Mars, etc.) and then sell the data to NASA or universities. Then they can set their sights on HSF for beyond LEO missions. Or if they're truly ambitious in wanting to enter the HSF world, they should then put their money where their mouth is and wholly fund commercial missions beyond LEO -- to high earth orbit, Lagrange points, lunar flyaround, lunar landings, etc. But obviously they aren't there yet. Maybe some day they will be and we'll have tourist trips to the Moon -- but right now NASA is our best bet for beyond LEO missions. We simply have to get NASA out of LEO operations and onto the true holy grail: beyond LEO missions.

I for one am happy Congress is pushing for NASA to identify multiple beyond LEO missions and destinations that will require an SLS -- rather than just a single stunt asteroid mission in 2025, followed 10 years later by only a single Martian-moon visiting mission (which would likely be canceled after the first mission if a non-visionary President or Congress appear, resulting in no crewed Mars landing). If you truly want a stepping-stone approach, you have to realize that more than a single asteroid mission will be required to prepare us for Mars. You have both the long-duration 6-9 month in-space portion of the flight AND the 2 year surface stay. Now which requires more precursor missions?

And at some point you need an HLV -- otherwise there are just too many launches with increased likelihood of a launch disaster. Unless you seriously propose launching several EELVs or even FHs to then assembly every crewed spacecraft in LEO.

Even if you propose FH for the asteroid mission or a crewed mission to Mars, that's only 2 missions in the next 20 years. Is that truly all that NASA is capable of now that we've had 40+ years experience in LEO and have already experienced the Shuttle and ISS programs? We need to identify more beyond LEO missions to justify NASA's HSF program AND to prepare for Mars landing. Without a huge Apollo-like infusion of government cash, we'll necessarily have to spread out the cost over 2 decades to develop all the elements for a suite of beyond LEO missions. So in my view, we have to start preparing for Mars now -- not delaying it by half a decade.

As far as JWST vs. HSF -- If I had to choose one or the other I'll opt for HSF. Not that unmanned science isn't valuable...But if you punish one HSF program for being too ambitious fiscally (Constellation) then you should hold the same standard to unmanned missions. If you don't want to cancel JWST, then just accept reduced funding for a later than desired launch date. Also, HSF done right (beyond LEO) will be vastly more inspiring to the public than unmanned science missions (maybe with the exception of rovers with personalities).

While the lumbering dinosaurs of SLS and JWST dominate the landscape today, if you look carefully you can see the small mammals like COTS, CRS, and CCDEV running around at their feet, better able to adapt to changing conditions.

Without a manned beyond LEO spaceflight program NASA is unlikely to get much financial support from Congress for expensive unmanned programs.

That's pure fantasy on your part. There's not a shred of evidence that the existence of a manned spaceflight program increases the amount of money Congress will allocate to unmanned missions. You've simply rationalized that manned spaceflight helps unmanned missions because you don't like the idea that the hugely expensive manned exploration program you fantasize about could have any downside.

It strikes me that at least JWST at least exists somewhat and SLS is a pile of PowerPoint cut and paste nonsense.

Sadly when I donn my mystical swami hat of space program termination prediction, my hat tells me that both are going to meet a sad and wasteful death. I honestly do not ever either of them making it to flight.

The issue would be easily solved if Mr Musk would only transfer Falcon production to Utah. Suddenly, commercial solutions would be the order of the day...

Bob Shaw

There's not a shred of evidence that the existence of a manned spaceflight program increases the amount of money Congress will allocate to unmanned missions.

That's because we've never had one without the other. But the converse -- that the absence of a human program can correlate with a decline in the unmanned budget -- does have some direct evidence.

Under the auspices of the National Academy, the planetary community has labored mightily for the last two years on the planetary exploration "decadal study", a wish list of possible robotic missions to various planetary destinations. The decadal report was released last spring and featured a mixture of Flagship (> $1-2 B), New Frontiers (~ $1 B), and possible Discovery (less than $0.5 B) missions.

At the same time the new decadal study was released, OMB released the administration's proposed NASA budget, one which took into account the projected savings from the soon-to-be-retired Shuttle program. It shows a 30% cut in the out-years planetary exploration budget.

Welcome to the new reality.

At least JWST would be valuable - unlike SLS / MPCV. I don't know if it is better to cut our losses now or to muddle on, but if we do muddle on at least the top two levels of management need to be purged. And that means none of them should *ever* work at NASA again. Failures like this have to have consequences. A less drastic purge may be called for at GSFC and JSC, while MSFC needs to be both closed down and purged.

Place your bets on JWST winning this battle, if only because so much has already been invested in it. On a related note, revival of Ares I may not be so far-fetched after all. Yes it looks like a corn dog, Yes, it will shake the crew like yesterday's quake. But it may be the only way to keep any kind of SLS possibilties alive in the distant future.

Unfortunately I think NASA is going to have to learn how to do things on a shoestring from here on out. Never mind the big, multibillion-dollar programs and adopt an approach similar to what we saw in the Russian space program after the USSR collapsed: much simpler technology, plenty of ugly hacks and increased risks.

Given how small a percentage of the budget NASA consumes it's quite absurd, but the truth is that space has always been at the front of the chopping block, presumably because it's so high-profile (plus it's always been a political football).

At any rate, it'll be hard to justify space spending if, as seems likely, cherished programs like Social Security and Medicare, not to mention the Pentagon and food stamps, are facing significant cuts.

I think the JWST needs to be axed entirely and started over from scratch to account for this new reality.

At least the JWST will do real science and is breaking new ground in telescope design. We will know more than we do today. What do we learn by re-treading shuttle era technology to build the SLS?

No one will win in this kerfuffle (if that's what will happen). First, politicians have their hands in it, so that means the entire process will be fubar'd with lobbyists; politicians looking to win points with their backers (financial, followed by constituents) and with ideologues; the bureaucratic morass that NASA is in after years of mismanagement and overbearing and unweildy government control; and he public's lack of interest in things space or science.

In terms of expense, JWST is an outlier among science missions. SLS' has maximized the little time it's been in "existence" to become a terrific example of government inefficiency and questionable decision making. JWST certainly isn't bad as a science effort, but the management of JWST sucks massively. I'm not sure that's reason to kill it, though.

Comparing systems, SLS will, by the definition of those that "created" it, won't fly very often. JWST is designed to operate at least 10 years and will likely return enough data to keep scientists busy researching for 2,3, or more times that. SLS is only one option (albeit one mandated, so far, by Congress) but is certainly not the only option for an HLV (I'm still waiting for someone to prove exactly why 130MT capability is necessary, especially since that figure is not the result of any specific mission requirement). There aren't any space based telescope options to take the place of JWST.

No matter what any of us think, the decision on how money will be split between the two will likely not be made with an overabundance of critical thought.

Let's say JWST does cost $8.7B for launch plus 5 years ops, of which $5B remains yet to spend. That takes us till 2023. Assuming NASA's budget is flat at $18B/yr that whole period, then JW works out to be... 2.5% of the NASA budget for the next decade. Are we really arguing that we can't afford to spend under 3 percent of the budget on our top scientific flagship?

So yeah, JWST is big and pricey, but it's not *that* big. We spent as much or more on Hubble... And God knows the shuttle and ISS weren't exactly inexpensive or on budget.

Framing this debate as JWST vs SLS is just way too simplistic If we're somehow at a place where we can't simultaneously handle the agency's top few priorities, then something is sorely wrong. This should not be an either-or dilemma.... JWST is big bucks compared to most of what the scientists get, but the total program cost over two decades is less than a year's budget for shuttle+station.

Right on!!! It will never happen, but right on nevertheless.

NASA's SLS program is idiotic--it repeats the same mistake our space agency made with von Braun's Saturn V--a series-stage ELV good for only one job, namely, to launch 250,000 lb payloads. The kicker is that the only customer for these gigantic payloads is Congress, and NASA required a constant supply of these payloads (at least two per year) to justify the immense expense of the manufacturing, acceptance test and launch infrastructure for Saturn V. And in 1970 when Congress decided it didn't want to pay for any more of these payloads, Saturn V was history. Too bad for our HSF program because the only things remaining from the $40B (today's $) in Saturn V are some of the ground facilities.

SpaceX has the right idea--develop a family of ELVs based on a simple, reliable, easy to manufacture cost effective core module (the Falcon 9 first stage) and cluster these modules along with suitable upper stages to produce a variety of ELVs to handle payload sizes from 15 to 100 mt (and eventually up to 130 mt).

Hold on - a bit of reality for a moment.

The issues with JWST (not unlike those with MSL) are of pushing the state of the art beyond where it can reasonably go. And much of this can be blamed on the cultural aspects of how you manage/risk such in an institution like NASA - a hard thing for an associate administrator to change, but possible.

The issues with SLS are very different - there's no link with mission objectives and scale, there's no appreciation for the scope change in taking Shuttle parts and incompetently (meaning Congress here) demanding that they work to serve absurd political need on impossible budget/schedule, meant to be justified by fake cost savings that the bean counters are finding impossible to invent. As it crashes down, the K street boys are out in force trying to twist staffers arms with ways to put it back together.

A perfect storm.

So the question you should ask is ... can the reality of mission returns trump the (ab)use of power in forcing HSF pork barrel desires? Or does the naked, obvious nature of the conflict bring too glaring a light to bear ... and the roaches start scuttling for the shadows.

... MSFC needs to be both closed down and purged ...
No - devolved.

Returned to the DOD/AF from whence it came.

You forgot the Mars Science Laboratory. No list of money spounges can be completely without our nation's nuclear powered, women's fragarence named Martian boondoggle, likely the only American rover/lander of the 2010s.

Granted I am an equal lover of Martian robotic science, cosmology and manned space exploration. But part of me, the justice loving part, smiles a little bit at the scientists in the early 2000s after Columbia who advocated the end of manned space travel in preference for robots and space telescopes finding their projects of choice just as equally as trecherous.

For the life of me, I cannot understand why:

-the SLS which is based on mostly long used shuttled hardware is going to cost $38 billion.

-how the MSL suffers a $800 million "taint" issue, and it isn't covered by Northrop and/or no one loses their job over it. $800 million is what it would cost to build the Golden Gate Bridge in 2011 dollars by the way.

-how the JWST, at $8.5 billion dollars, will cost as much as the US paid in procuring and building the USS George H.W. Bush-type Nimitz Class Aircraft Carrier plus operating it for two to three years, or just shy of the cost of two USS Ronald Reagan-type Nimitz Class Aircraft Carriers. Those must be some damned special mirrors.

I'd rather the aircraft carriers. Really. $8.5 billion for a garage sized space telescope? For that price, I'll take the guns, not the butter. JWST for maybe... I don't know, $1.5 - $2 billion? Sure. $8.5 billion? I know some roads I'd rather fix.

Out of general principle, space telescopes should not cost $8.5 billion, no matter what it discovers. It could image the Almighty creating the universe on a celestial etch-a-sketch, and I'd say we still got ripped off.

... SLS which is based on mostly long used shuttled hardware ...

Tell me how many 130t Shuttle launches with a J-2X powered third stage and with 30% greater boosters have been flown. None. How much would it cost to do so? More than $38B.

It took more than $4B in today's dollars to empirically design/build/test/qualify/fly three SSME cluster that powered the Shuttle. Add one more engine and you have to start from scratch again. It's not like souping up a funny car by bolting in a bigger engine and bolting on a supercharger - everything changes!.

As to MSL/JWST ... there's a tendency to not gauge "how big" at times ... because you have never built a JWST/MSL before. How many nuclear rovers have you done, hmm? Can you imagine what it might be like ... if you had to refuel it due to delays ... the radioactive contamination, the re-qualification of systems all from the ground up because you had to do disassembly? Do you have enough of the RTG's plutonium - its in very short supply.

It's also not the fact that you can rely on like an assembly line of these things - they're not like cookie cutter cellphones rolling out of China.

Bob,

Good comment.  Both the humorous and the serious aspects ring through.  However, it’s not Utah I’m worried about.  Considering the unreasonable and unchangeable activities of Congress, how long will it be before SpaceX, Xcor, and other key commercial players decide to move their operations closer to the equator, i.e., right out of the US altogether?

I don’t think it’s impossible that pushing SLS could kill COTS and CCDev, at which point the small commercial players, having to rely basically on non-USA-government customers, might benefit by moving south of the border, where I suspect there are lots of other countries/governments who would welcome them with open arms.

I’ll leave the consequences of that possibility for others to contemplate.

Steve

Well I mean, there isn't exactly an assembly line (in the conventional sense) for a Nimitz class carrier either. They are all different from each other to varying degrees, especially the more recent ones I named. They are all built section by section, with about four years between construction of the same sections between carriers. The complexity of it immense. It too is nuclear powered.

I'm sorry, I don't see how a garage sized probe with hunded-thousand dollar hardened electronics and special mirrors, no matter how many or how big, adds up to $8.5 billion (yes I know that includes launch and operating costs, but the cost minus that is still immense).

That's honestly what I'd love to see on NASAWatch sometime: an itemized cost breakdown of every component of these three projects. If ATK is going to charge $200 million for a 5 segment version of something that cost $48 million (in 4 segment form) in 2011 dollars in 1989, I want to why. If the MSL suffers a $800 million taint issue, what was the taint? How did it arise? Who was responsible for it? Was that person(s) fired? Was anyone involved in the taint at an individual or organizational level penalized? Whats the cost in materials alone of replacing the "tainted" parts?

You know what $800 million in MSL "taint" costs the United States? About a squadron of similarly overpriced F-35s or two squadrons of F/A-18E/Fs. This tax payer will take the jets.

Hi JonathanN,
there isn't exactly an assembly line (in the conventional sense) for a Nimitz class carrier either.
It's called a shipyard, and actually there is a kind of assembly line for aircraft carriers and another for nuclear subs (Groton). It's necessary for certain qualities of the arms delivery system to function properly - they must "interoperate" for logistical reasons. That's a hour of typing right there to describe this more - ask the Navy about it.

I don't see how a garage sized probe with hunded-thousand dollar hardened electronics and special mirrors, no matter how many or how big, adds up to $8.5 billion

Unlike arms system, these items intensively use encapsulation, in clean rooms, and in prepared atmospheres (not air). So you build up a communications system (actually 7-25 seperate subsystems each encapsulated independently), assemble into the bus, integrate the thermal management, power distribution, signalling, and do subsystems integration test. If there's a problem, you have to deintegrate/unencapsulate and fault/isolate replace.

Note that this is highly recursive - they are nested like Russian dolls.

Then you reintegrate/encapsulate until you get to subsystems test, then you can begin the thermal tests. Then you integrate whole other systems in like kind ... eventually being able to test on shaker table, vacuum chamber, ...

If you have any deviation from the norm, you deintegrate/unencapsulate to get to the anomally, and devise a test to provoke the problem - may be heat/radiation/other. In one case, the buildup of a minor amount of static electricity caused a cascade failure in the electronics. In another case it was a complex materials failure due to unintended chemistry between components that would only occur in a partial vacuum at a certain temperature with a catalyst from an (otherwise) benign outgassing of another component. This novel chemistry was discovered first in a communications satellite (actually, my dad found it!) - the chemistry researchers were surprised at it - resulted in new basic science, and he used the effect later in building parts for a satellite (sputtering process he patented!).

I could go on for 3,000 hours and not repeat one bit.

Jonathan, your question is quite reasonable, because you've never actually talleyed the costs - I have. I've watched them right in front of me. I've seen a ten million dollar slip (due to being off by a millimeter). The wackiest things imaginable. Sometimes years of material testing to get around problems like "metal creep". That sometimes metals behave as gases as well. Things that are unthinkable.

You want to get mad at something? Fine, hear's what you can get mad at. Management of projects. That's where the big, avoidable slips rack up the big bucks. Changing the culture like Alan Stern attempted to do - helps this. So you're right there are things that can be done to get better.

But realize that many failed missions could be traced to omission of a test, or an attempt to bypass a step to save on budget. Like the test of the original Hubble optics - $100M could have saved $2.5B. Making the call here as to what is useless expense and what is not isn't easy.

an itemized cost breakdown of every component of these three projects
Companies like ATK won't let you. They mark this as "proprietary" information that cannot be released. Senators Hatch and Shelby will rush to defend these from release as well - it could otherwise be fatal politically. That's why you can't get it.

Oh, and the microprocessor in your computer is 10-1,000x more complicated than a Nimitz class carrier. If we had to build them "one by one", we'd only be able to afford a handful in the entire world.