Getting Out of the Gravity Well on One Thin Dime

This is a really important area of Space R&D which is consistently underfunded and under-emphasized by successive US administrations. The reality is that we continue to rely heavily on Apollo era technologies to get us anywhere in space. That reliance on 'old tech' really constrains our ability to think in terms of new missions and destinations, and reduces the effectiveness of our efforts to get payload and people from 'A to B, and then back to A'.

I think the Obama Administration's initial focus areas above were a good set of options to pursue. We have to be able to 'project presence' well beyond LEO, into Cislunar, and into Solar Space, (inner solar system) in a reasonably responsive and cost effective manner if the visions and dreams of many space enthusiasts are ever to become reality.

Surely a leading candidate area is more advanced in-space propulsion - I'm thinking solar-electric, and nuclear-electric, as well as nuclear VASIMR. When we send humans to Mars we don't want to take 18 months to get there - we should get them there in 42 days - the cargo can take 18 months on a Hohmann Transfer Orbit. So high speed deep space propulsion is a must.

In-Situ Resource Utilisation is also essential for deep space exploration. We simply cannot haul the kitchen sink up Earth's Gravity Well if we are to do space exploration seriously. Being able to live off the land through an ISRU approach opens up the inner solar system - Mars, the Asteroids, and of course, the Moon - to future human exploration in a more credible and effective way.

Inflatable technology, aerobraking, autonomous rendezvous and docking, are I think indicators of a more mature space programme for the future. So we should be emphasising these areas.

One area I'd add in would be deployable space-support infrastructure. By that I'm meaning a low cost, COTS based approach to 'seeding' a target destination - say Mars - with all the support infrastructure, such as GPS and communications satellites, remotely deployable base facilities and fuel manufacturing platforms, etc, etc prior to sending people. If we can set up a lot of the infrastructure on the surface of Mars, or the Moon, then its much easier to support humans on the surface at a later date, plus we can learn a great deal about establishing and running autonomous systems at long range - particularly through using the lunar environment. But, of course, the issue of the Moon I think is a debate that is still yet to occur - a future President may not prioritise destinations in the same way as Obama does.

Our in-space transportation system should be just that - 'in space'. It should 'home port' (to use a naval term) at the ISS, and it should not be designed for Earth atmosphere re-entry. It should be flexible and modular in design, able to fully exploit inflatable technology, to be re-configurable for different types of missions. It should be as reusable as possible, and its components are launched on a SD-HLV, and human crew are launched on a commercial man-rated booster.

That of course means sustaining the ISS, certainly beyond 2020. I never could comprehend the sanity of people seriously suggesting de-orbiting the ISS in 2015 - a mere five years after its supposed completion. The ISS is likely to be complemented by other orbital facilities - Bigelow, etc, and I know the Russians and Chinese have their plans - but the ISS is too useful and important to discard, especially if its role is reorientated away from a focus on science, and instead aimed at supporting a human presence on LEO and beyond LEO.

Malcolm Davis,
Canberra, Australia

It strikes me that the Congress is correct in moving first on the long lead time items -- heavy booster and an exploration vehicle. Regarding the EV, I would stick with Orion although I would restore some of the safety margins and capabilities that were stripped out to permit Orion to make the requisite weight for Ares. I would also restore its crew capabilities back up to 6 for ISS and other purposes. In the R&D line, I would move first on on-orbit propellant storage and refueling as perhaps the most crucial technology, then move to closed loop life radiation hardened support systems -- including research into the long term impact of zero G and various technologies to compensate for that. Finally, I would fund further R&D for VASMIR which appears to be the most promising of the advanced in-space propulsion technologies to help us get where we need to go -- faster. Inflatable space habitats are already being developed by the private sector (yes, I know -- based on earlier NASA work) and they don't seem to need additional funding although NASA should certainly consult with Bigelow Aerospace and other potential private sector providers to ensure compatibility and appropriate capabilities. If we can get that far, we will have an excellent basis for human space exploration for the next several decades at least.

Well, Frank, that is a bajillion dollar question of course. You set yourself up for another lively debate here...

The second one is perhaps relatively the easiest, in that we can limit ourselves to propulsion technology. For myself, the emphasis has to be maybe three quarter on launch systems and one quarter on in-space systems.

In space, I believe we could focus on trying to find a realistic combination of power vs thrust vs Isp through a combination of electrical thruster, propellant choice, and power source (i.e. nuke) to get out of the chicken-egg problem of power requirements for large-scale electromagnetic propulsions sytems. That, plus demo into useful traditional rocket systems with non-optimal materials that would be available with in-situ resources (i.e. Water, N2, O2)

On the ground, for me it HAS to be about reusability and operational performance. At the moment I cannot think of a single technology that has reached even the level that Goddard or Von Braun reached in the 30s w.r.t. demonstrating more advanced launch systems than the rocket. So, obviously some part of the money should be spent researching this (maybe a quarter), but the bulk (so the other three quarters) should be on making a truly reusable rocket. This is BOUND to lower the cost.

By reusable I mean like an airplane: Between flights you have to clear the mess of the passengers, inspect, and refuel, and it will go on like that for 30 years. I cannot see any other way of achieving lower launch costs than what SpaceX and others have done by streamlining the development process (in fact they also took steps towards reusability).

So this could either be a "normal" rockets whose parts are all completely reusable and designed to last (like the SSME or the Ariane 5 boosters), or a more fancy programme like the British Skylon idea. I don't know. But at program level, I see no other way, assuming we also research technology breakthroughs at low level, as said above.

I am aware of some studies that say that this does not in fact save much launch cost. I kinda refuse to accept that now. If development costs are sunk (that's what R&D is for) then how can it possibly be less expensive to make a new car for each journey rather than for 10 years? This is of course, all down to how reusable you make it, and this is clearly where the challenge lies, and this is where, ultimately, the Shuttle failed (and why some call it a failure). Well, that's my opinion anyway.

The second question is I think too vast, and really, it depends on the mission. But I think the common trunk of expanding human presence is expanding our autonomy. So I would spend all the money on things that are unglamorous to rocket engineers but -actually- important, i.e. autonomous bio-systems. How come for instance, 50 years after Gagarin, it is still necessary to bring all your food and drink in space? How come astronauts have to spend so much of their time into what is actually maintenance? Why have they never tried surgery in space, or even sex for that matter?

One possible mission profile you could see here is to send 6 astronauts to the ISS, with the goal that they stay up there for 1 year (or 2 years) WITHOUT ANY HELP from the ground; So we would have to upgrade the station for environmental control, air, water, and food generation and recycling, and of course properly address the real problems of physiology and psychology. They say they have researched long-duration mission, but they haven't really: The ISS wouldn't last 6 months without frequent resupply. So how will that look when we send people where no help is available?
Anyway, wasn't it what the ISS is supposed to be for? To learn how to build and live in space? They did the building, now they must do the living.

Well, this is my opinion; no doubt people have other views. However, in the end I think the challenge now is not so much new kit as operational capacity now. In fact, my own view is that we should focus more on ISRU and SSP, but that's not strictly your question, so we'll keep that for another post... :-)

Thanks for asking interesting questions though!

Wouarnud.

Who decided on these technology demonstrations. Was there a conscious decision process that decided on these? Who established the dollar amounts?

Many of these have been done before; maybe not by NASA or the US so I am surprised by the half billion to billion dollar expenditures on most.

Refueling and on-orbit fuel storage-the Russians do this every Progress, and both FGB and SM had this capability.
Fabric modules-something that has been thought about for decades; NASA developed the idea, sold the rights to Bigelow, and Bigelow, with NASA development assistance has put a couple of these modules in orbit. A real question that needs to be addressed is that for small module, the size of Bigelow's does it make logistics sense to send up a collapsed module that needs to be expanded and then outfitted with equipment? One of the biggest criticisms of ISS was the logistics expense in time and money of having to launch modules largely empty and then carrying up everything needed to outfit them on several flights.

Closed loop ECLS is something we have already been doing on ISS; is this a further development of that program? Automated rendezvous and docking-done routinely by the Russians, now also done by the Europeans using the Russian system, now partially done by the Japanese, mostly or completely done by the US DOD. Aerocapture-the US has done this on several planetary missions.

Were these tech demos that NASA decided warranted this level of investment and study or did these come from elsewhere like Obama's advisor, Holdren?

Is NASA putting together a prioritized plan for what it needs to be doing?

When I read back to the early 60s and establishing the Apollo architecture I see contingents within NASA fighting for their technical interests. When I read back to the late 60s and early 70s, the NASA people were trying understand one another's issues so that a consensus would come forward on what needed to be done. When, in the plans for the planetary program, the issues were contentious, the Administrator assigned one person, Homer Newell, an experienced and well respected space sciences administrator, as arbiter to decide on the plan to bring forward.

Has NASA done anything like this for our current round of contention?

I am also quite disappointed that the congress seems to be cutting the research part out of the budget. Research had been stripped from NASA back in the VSE days, to pay first for Space Station and then for Constellation development, and one of the bright points of the proposed new plan is that it put the development of new technologies back into the NASA mission.
Flying technology demonstration missions is absolutely the critical part here. The hardest thing to getting technology used is to overcome the barrier that no mission manager wants to fly technology that hasn't been already demonstrated in space. It took almost thirty years from the development of the ion engine before flying it on Deep Space-1, and this is not at all unusual-- everybody agreed that it would be useful, but nobody wanted to be first.

Seems to me most or all of these technologies could be integrated into a sortie spacecraft that goes from ISS to higher orbits and eventually even circumlunar, asteroid or planetary missions. Something along the lines of the Buzz Aldrin proposal.

If all of these technologies have been previously demonstrated (according to Libby) then the next step could be a spacecraft that incorporates them and moves us along on the path toward exploration.

Or is the idea more like the Obama plan of studying these things for five or ten years and deciding how to proceed sometime in the next decade?

One specific technology that will almost certainly be needed for high-ISP, high-delta-v propulsion systems for HSF in the solar system is very lightweight thermal radiators. If we're talking about nuclear prime power, the propulsive requirements will be in the many-megawatt realm, and it isn't hard to imagine getting towards a gigawatt. Absent extremely efficient power conversion, that means there's going to be a lot of waste heat to get rid of.

Fortunately, there's some base to work from, as the Strategic Defense Initiative of late memory faced a similar problem for some of its proposed systems. Liquid drop curtain radiators were one proposed answer.

A large part of the technology described was the product of the Concept Exploration and Refinement Studies submitted by industry and academia in 2005. These were seemingly thrown away with the ESAS. As a proponent of on-orbit and in-space servicing, I can tell you there has been a great deal of conceptualization in this area, going back decades. The technology readiness levels of propulsion and guidance and navigation systems have been major sticking points for space tugs, propellant depots, repair stations, etc., but the business case is there for commercial positioning of orbital payloads, debris salvage/collection, satellite repair, power/propulsion services, and more. Over a 40 year period of space flight, some technologies have matured and others still need work, but space infrastructure can only make further progress easier. There are now choices to make in terms of government or purely commercial markets (positioning and fuel), international or global markets (debris, repair, power and positioning), and the system design in most important. Capable infrastructure can pay for itself incrementally, but the risk is in capital (for control and operations) and marketing. Some companies realize this, and will pursue the incremental path, regardless of the availability of technology development dollars for risk mitigation. The better alternative is segmenting and specializing to reduce risk (launch services, operations, return, fueling, etc), but it introduces the larger need for integration.
The payoff is a transportation/service system in a position that can affect exploration with cargo prepositioning, safe havens, repair activities, construction sites, fueling for empty launches (mass fraction improvement), and much more. It's expansible, profitable, and necessary, so it will happen eventually, with the right imagination and investment...when risks are acceptable.

A heavy lift vehicle with 4x the proposed system has already been designed and evaluated for capability, development cost, and operational cost. It's called SeaDragon - 1.2MILLION lbs to LEO - 550 tons. It could be built and flying before any new design has a snowball's chance in hell of being off the drawing boards - and SeaDragon was designed in 1962.

The in-space propulsion system also already exists and was demonstrated on the ground in 1968. The nuclear thermal rocket motor designed for the NERVA program had a specific impulse of almost 1000 and was designed and tested in less than 5 years. It runs on LH2 alone and will create 75,000lbs thrust for an hour on 1million gallons of LH2 - almost exactly the lift capability of the SeaDragon.

Think about this folks - with those 2 systems we could send a satellite the size of HUBBLE to PLUTO - and BEAT NEW HORIZONS THERE!

Will these be built? Probably not. Pork-barrel politics will almost certainly win out and we'll design and build something that will keep people working in the districts under the politicians who hold the purse strings.

But I'd love to be proven wrong.

> It strikes me that the Congress is correct in moving first on the long lead time items -- heavy booster and an exploration vehicle.

Are you sure? None of the Augustine report options started a heavy booster right away... how could all those experts screw up so badly? What does Congress know that they don't?

I also don't see how the Shuttle disproves reusability as a concept, but I don't know that the government should do it at this point.

We know the Shuttle's reusability works, but reusability is only valuable if you use it enough to warrant it. The Shuttle, as well as not being as reusable as it could be, is also not used enough because it is a deathtrap; simply launching payloads requires the superfluous risk of sending humans without an escape system.

We don't launch, repair or recapture satellites with it and we don't fly it independently because if there's damage on the way up, the crew is doomed.

So there may be merit in developing a revised shuttle which does not carry humans; simply a reusable launch vehicle, to carry pieces of construction projects such as long distance vessel components, upper stages, fuel, space probes, etc.

Meanwhile, humans fly on something like a Falcon 9 or EELV or even Soyuz with a launch escape.

I don't believe NASA should do this, though - build a complete system and start using it.

It could easily quash any competition, establish a publicly owned monopoly, then by the same processes that ruin every other big NASA manned spaceflight project, become a pork barrel "more jobs!" device that explodes in costs - or worse, is abandoned, once again leaving all private customers going to the Russians.

The solution, though, is the point. If this is all about making something less expensive, the private market should do it as soon as it makes sense to.

So if we were to conjure up enough F9 or F9H or EELV sized payloads, it could create a strong business case for such a gizmo.

They'd find investors, we'd drop a grant or two or three and it would exist.

I like the idea of space tourists and buying flights because it creates payloads, and is therefore conducive to this long term goal. We should be giving that a bump.

Space based power would also help it materialize. For the costs we've spent on war, we could probably manufacture our way out of the energy crisis with space based power.

Frank,

You wrote:

///They have also mandated NASA to develop a heavy lift launch vehicle by 2016. Given the short horizon and budget this almost certainly means some form of SD HLV.///

Actually, no. Shuttle-derived has such huge carrying costs for SRBs and, potentially, the expendable SSME, that you can't finish the vehicle within any likely budget before 2020.

The real question that SDHLV-huggers don't want to ask, let alone answer, is how much heavy lift do you really need for the first decade or so? If you use cryo propellant storage/transfer -- which hasn't been in-space demoed yet, Libby -- then you can get away with a Delta IV-H plus the new Common Cryogenic Upper Stage, which lofts 45-50MT. Then you make the 5-M core stages hydrocarbon (Atlas V Phase II) to get 70MT.

This alternative -- or a Falcon 9 Super Heavy -- is what frightens some people. A truly affordable, shared-infrastructure HLV path.

- Jim

Posters-I'm not aware that either NASA or OSTP for that matter has shared details of how these tech programs were selected. As of this writing there has not been a priority assigned to any of them, except in the sense that some are flagship demos. Nor is it clear how the truncated Congressional budget(s) would leave the original plan.
As far as giving some order to this sequence, I thought maybe NASAWATCH could give them some help...

NASA issued a slew of RFI's soliciting ideas for the Technology programs. Of course now that Congress is killing the new technology program to run Constellation welfare programs, any significant new game changing innovation is probably out. While I thought the Augustine Commission lacked any vision of why it is worth spending $30B a year on space instead of $18B, I believe they were correct when they said manned programs will not get beyond LEO with our current budget. Although Obama added a little, it was not the amount needed. After all, if you need $10 to get on the bus and you have $4 and your parents give you an extra dollar, it still doesn't get you a bus ride.

So we can either live within our budget constraints and do our homework and develop the next generation of technology and let robots do our exploring for a while or we can play "extend and pretend" with a new HLV and capsule. Of course without the increased funding to support manned exploration beyond LEO will just drag on and become an expensive way to get to ISS. Just my humble opinion...

Planning a detailed programme is pointless at this stage, when NASA needs to play for position. I would prioritise totally differently based on:

a) project risk (mid-term cancellation of multi-year mega projects which only deliver at the end)
b) regular usable deliverables
c) making incremental progress - building a position which makes the continuation options obvious to all
d) building to a point where a big mission - a manned station on the Moon, landing on Mars, is there for the taking. This is the endgame - when a really big result is only a few years away, and believable promises can be made to appropriators

... which is exactly what the Obama plan is about IMO.

So, short projects, marking clear achievements, leaving usable infrastructure. all of the Tech Demos: fuel depots, inflatables, SEP, ECLS, ISRU. All with short timescales,steadiliy building the grand design.

Something like Project-M will make it obvious to a blind man that building work can be done on the moon. Use something like this to set up ISRU and In-situ fabrication/repair. Again, more small projects, more quick wins.

Control all this from lunar orbit from an inflatable hab. Another set of non-mega projects. Plenty of collaboration opportunities from countries with smaller space budgets. Then, with companies like Marsten capable of bulding a lander, a lunar expedition would be an easy ask.

At every point, the value of the next small step can be made obvious. By the end, a lunar colony would be would be an obvious and easy goal for whoever got elected President next.

from all these new research things like depots etc.the best is vasimr,and space nuclear reactors(i dont know if obama thinks about these reactors,or is too risky politically)

vasimr is the key..as a tug or big spaceship.

> As far as giving some order to this sequence, I thought maybe NASAWATCH could give them some help...

I'm not totally sure that I understand the request, but, assuming that it's asking for some ranking in terms of benefit vs cost/feasibility, I'll give it a go.

1. Long-term cryogenic storage.

2. Elements of in-space propulsion, like the lighweight thermal radiators mentioned earlier.

3. Elements of long-term closed-cycle life support, perhaps a really reliable oxygen generator.

4. Centrifugal "artifical gravity" using centrifuges, von Braun wheels, tethers or whatever.

5. Conduct technology reviews/assessments/studies to identify engine technologies that could deliver ISPs in the thousands of seconds range, preferably over 10,000 sec, and allow a manned spacecraft to make interplanetary trips in months, not years. (I'm really not sure this is in the cards, but it would be nice to have a solid assessment of what's likely to be possible.)

6. I'd put "inflatable modules" and "automated rendezvous & docking" in a slightly different category, as there are non-NASA entities (Bigelow and the Russians) that are well along with those already. Develop some sort of commercial or partnership relations to take advantage of those.

Frank, great questions for which I don't really have any good answers because there is a fundamental problem with vagaries of current federal budgeting and any rational plan to prioritize R&D spending.

I guess some people would call what's going on in NASA these days as eating your seed corn. It's the conflict between short-sighted goals and long term sustainability--a classic problem of all organizations under threat.

Others have commented persuasively (at least to my satisfaction) elsewhere here at NASAWatch that the current compromise path will lead to unsustainably expensive ops infrastructure.

So, what to do? How do NASA stop eating its seed corn? Personally, I'd like to see these large-scale infrastructure development efforts spun off from a NASA refocused on core research and technology development for the benefit of all American interests. We must see the development of an HLV in the context of sustainable space access and colonization. If the nation is serious about building a space infrastructure, maybe the time has come to explore alternative funding mechanisms such as Pacific Railway Act of 1862 for space? Maybe something like the Lunar Spaceway Act of 2010? Fund it with bonds (or some such funding mechanism), independent of a normal NASA budget, and managed independently of NASA per say. Get NASA out of the "designing/building/operating Titanics" mentality and get it back to fundamentals: high risk one-offs and small production runs to test fundamental concepts.

Well, that's a long-winded non-answer to your questions. ;-)

When we build a large structure on Earth (an office building, a ship, a power plant) we do not begin by building a vehicle capable of moving the entire structure. We build it by carrying pieces of it, in chunks rarely larger than 10 or 20 tons, to the work site. Somebody please name or describe something that cannot in principle be sent into orbit in 10 or 20 ton chunks.

The point of in-orbit assembly, space tugs, inflatable shelters, and fuel storage and transfer capabilities is that they allow you to do stuff without first building a gigantic 100 ton launcher. A gigantic launcher offers very impressive launches and opportunities to destroy 100 tons of payload at a time in a launch accident; the practical benefits of these are not obvious.

Actually a gigantic booster does allow one thing that some find useful: it allows you to launch a mission to the Moon without developing any of the in-orbit skills and infrastructure that would support other projects or journeys to other destinations. The benefit of that is that there will be no unused facilities sitting around as embarrassing reminders crying out to be used after the one-off stunt is completed.

Ever wonder why it seems politically untenable to expand NASA's annual budget much beyond $19B or so in change? Why there is no support for at least a 20 percent annual increase? Money is the problem because money has always been the problem, as in not enough of it.

Good lord, $19B per year spent intelligently could accomplish almost anything. SpaceX has spent less than $1B in total and so far has demonstrated two brand-new launchers and is close to demonstrating a brand-new reusable passenger and cargo capsule.

What $19B per year cannot do is, fund make-work programs for 40,000 voters and at the same time accomplish much of lasting value.

Chemical based space propulsion systems such as the Saturn V and shuttle are perhaps near-optimum for moving payloads from the earth’s surface to low earth orbit. They have been tuned for this job for about 40-years and there is no potential new technology on the horizon that might make this task significantly more efficient. So this is not the area to concentrate new research effort.

Chemical systems can also be used for travel to lunar destinations (Apollo) but they are less optimal for this distance\energy requirement. And travel to Mars and to a lesser extent most asteroids is at the extreme far end of chemical capability. Chemical based transportation to Mars is usually approximately a year in travel time, one way. And involves a great deal of expense.

The technology that has the best potential of optimization for Mars distances is ion propulsion. An ion transportation vehicle might make the earth-mars trip in about a month. We have used ion engines in small space based demonstration missions and they do work. Now the task it to scale them up to the size required for a manned Mars mission. This will require much larger ion engines than currently exist, a demonstrated capability to use multiple large ion engines in parallel for long periods of time. And a large source of space-based electrical power to support the ion engines – almost certainly a nuclear generator.

Ion propulsion and space nuclear power. Almost certainly the areas where our new technology efforts should be concentrated for support of future deep space manned missions.

It amazes me to see people advocating VASIMR in their blogs. I think VASIMR may be a great idea in the next century or beyond when the power and power conversion technology exists to support VASIMR. However, for now VASIMR has been looked at in multiple NASA and Air Force studies and ranked at the very bottom of all known electric propulsion technologies in every study. To make Earth Mars flight faster than can be done with NTP, VASIMR needs a specific power of 5 kg/kW or less, right now their is no power conversion system that can accomplish this. Nuclear can possibly approach 12 kg/kW and solar has about the same when you attach the support structure to protect against the massive bending moments placed on an array that can produce megawatts of power at Mars. In the far future if MHD power conversion can be realized, a nuclear VASIMR may be possible, but this is many many decades if not centuries in the future.
In NASA's most recent Mars Design Reference Mission 5.0 all known propulsion candidates were looked at to support a Mars architecture and VASIMR ranked at the bottom. Within the DRM 5.0, Nuclear Thermal Propulsion was selected as the propulsion system of choice to go to Mars with. If we choose to neglect the findings of this study then NASA is guilty of more fraud waste and abuse. Wy pay for the multiple studies looking at VASIMR and the propulsion wide study for DRM 5.0 if you are only going to neglect their findings and do what sounds sexy (and unrealistic) to the public.

It is all in the sales approach. NASA could get double the money it gets now if it could show the value returned.

Showing is critical and that is where strategic communications comes in. NASA has not made that effort.

The comparison with Space-X and Falcon is a fair one. Sure, NASA oversight requires a bit more expense but the question is why is it orders of magnitude more?

To expand our human exploration opportunities sending crews to destinations beyond the low Earth orbit at reduced costs, we should include innovative propulsion concepts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ScAHXN_kAY

Can you provide a source (on-line) to see which are the more competitive advanced propulsion systems?

So, is the only reason VASIMR is spoken of so frequently because of the dedication of one ex-astronaut and support from Costa Rica, since NASA has put little support or funding into the effort so far. VASIMR has a prototype in preparation to place on the ISS in another couple of years. The VASIMR prototype could sustain the ISS orbit in place of Progress and over time could potentially even change the ISS inclination, moving it towards an equatorial orbit.

All of NASA;s Mars design reference missions from 1.0 to 5.0 should be available on NASA Technical Report Server which can be accessed from google. As far as the Air Force studies, I am not sure what mechanism the Air Force uses to release documents to the public; however. However, I think some have been released to the NRC and I will see if they are public releasable. Yes VASIMR has what they are calling a flight engine for the ISS; however, it will not do the job any better than Ion or Hall Effect thrusters and according to VARITOP calculations it will have large gravity losses due to its low F/W ratio and will not perform they way Ad Astra is touting it will. Even if it does perform well, it is not the thruster that concenrs people, it is the inability to make a power source with a low enough specific power for manned flight or even cargo flights. Also NASA has put a lot of effort into VASIMR, in fact when Diaz was an astronaut he was funded by NASA Johnson for VASIMR research in what most consider to be an unfair business practice and the govt funded research was then transferred into a business. I know of few other business owner that gets that unfair govt funded competitive edge to start a business.

webbja wrote:

when Diaz was an astronaut he was funded by NASA Johnson for VASIMR research in what most consider to be an unfair business practice and the govt funded research was then transferred into a business. I know of few other business owner that gets that unfair govt funded competitive edge to start a business.

Yes, VASIMR is a lousy concept with great publicity. However I am missing how the commercial transfer is a bad thing. I thought that it was part of NASA's congressionally mandated duty to transfer technology to new commercial ventures. It seems like VASIMR should be considered a success in that regard. (Ignoring the minor detail that it could be centuries before they make any profit.)

So what was "unfair" about it?

All money spent by the government (i.e. NASA) is funded by taxpayers. As a result it is a federal law that all government funding directed towards individuals, organizations and companies must be open to all taxpayers through a bidding process. The best bidder based on organization, technical merit and ability to accomplish a mission is the organization awarded the government money. No bid was put forth for the money given by the taxpayers to the company that is now Ad Astra. Their were many other equally and probably at the time more capable organizations with advanced technology concepts which should have had a chance to compete for that government money. There are many equally deserving businesses that never got legs to stand on where Ad Astra did merely because money was awarded with no competitive process which is actually mandated by federal laws regulating spending. In short how can other equal business compete when Ad Astra is funded by the government and other businesses are not and never had a chance to be funded by the government?

Ok, so you're not complaining about the tech transfer, but rather NASA funding the research. But I'm still confused. You originally wrote:

in fact when Diaz was an astronaut he was funded by NASA Johnson for VASIMR research in what most consider to be an unfair business practice and the govt funded research was then transferred into a business.

NASA has considerable leeway on funding itself to do research activities. So while Diaz was an astronaut, I don't see where they could have gone afoul of the law.

In the response you wrote:

As a result it is a federal law that all government funding directed towards individuals, organizations and companies must be open to all taxpayers through a bidding process.

So are you also saying that NASA funded the spun-off commercial company without competition? Indeed such sole-sourcing would require a very strong justification.

I am interested in the future of NASA, but demonstrating technology without a goal and constantly changing targets NASA is trying to advance towards nothing in several directions at once. NASA can do amazing things on single-depth mid-complexity projects (think Cassini and the Mars rovers). But for a long term multi-stage project, like landing humans on Mars or an Asteroid, NASA needs a clear path with milestones. If they do not have a specific use for the technology like they did with Apollo, the development is slow and unfocused, and the final product will always be inadequate. Technology demonstrations are great if they are working towards a goal and proving an approach.

New methods of propulsion will be central to any major project NASA undertakes, and they should be creative and innovative in exploring them, but still with a goal in mind, not some arbitrary date. Give them the goal, find a reasonable time frame and funding, and let NASA decide how and when they will accomplish the steps.

A final goal could be a permanent station on Mars by 2060. This may mean a manned Mars landing by 2045, an automated landing and return by 2040, in-orbit ship assembly by 2035, evaluation of landing sites by rovers by 2030, and development of a new heavy lift vehicle by 2025. Maybe these are doable, maybe not, but I feel that without a long term plan, whether that plan will change or not, NASA will not advance towards any new major capability. Think big, give them the mandate and funding, and they will get things done.

I'm comfortable with delaying those items and feel having a means to get there is more important. Space proven inflatable structures can be purchased from Bigelow Aerospace. We don't need nuclear propulsion to get to the Moon or Mars, though it would be nice. Besides significant development work was previously accomplished under the NERVA program. Automated rendezvous and fuel transfer are not a novel technologies. They been demonstrated by the US Air Force and on the ISS quite frequently. Closed-loop life cycle technology could be demonstrated on a cramped space station or it could be demonstrated on the lunar surface or in a lunar cave while other scientific pursuits and in-situ resource utilization are demonstrated. Aerocapture has been demonstrated at Mars and Venus.

Come on folks it's time to cut and eat the pie, not decide what tool is need to make an incision.