Retrofitting KSC For The Future
NASA races to find tenants for vacant shuttle facilities
“With the space-shuttle program ended, NASA either must find someone to lease major buildings — such as the facility where workers repaired shuttle tiles — or abandon them, because the cash-strapped agency lacks the money to demolish them. Besides looking bad, the crumbling buildings would hinder efforts to remake KSC into a modern spaceport, an initiative estimated to cost $2.3 billion during five years.
NASA KSC: Replace Control and Power Systems VAB 175 Ton Electric Overhead Bridge Crane
“NASA/KSC is hereby soliciting information about potential sources for replacement of industrial overhead bridge crane control, drive, and miscellaneous systems on the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB)175-ton crane located in the LC-39 Area of KSC, Florida 32899.
“… an initiative estimated to cost $2.3 billion during five years”
If NASA had the freedom to reprogram funds, it might make sense to first use some of that $2.3 billion to stimulate commercial capability/demand and then follow with upgrades to the appropriate infrastructure that might be needed if ATK, Boeing or SpaceX succeed. (Why speculate on upgrades if the tenants won’t need some of the facilities?) It’s rather unbalanced that Congress successfully appropriates funding for a mixed-use Kennedy spaceport and then slashes the commercial development part of the portfolio to the bone. SLS is not going to need all of what the 21st Century Spaceport program is refurbishing. KSC could very well turn in to a ghost town with the Space Launch System launching 4 or 5 times a decade in the 2020s, and with infrequent/unaffordable spaceflight. I’d argue it is a better long-term investment for NASA to reprogram part of this budget to fully-fund Commercial Crew, which is the best bet for frequent, affordable human transport to orbit. Isn’t SpaceX interested in launching from complex 39 anyway?
Regretfully, I agree with John but do not even have that optimistic view. I think that the $2.3B for upgrades is the estimated cost, not what is budgeted. And, as John says, spending that type of money when you do not really know what is coming is not wise. Emotionally, I want to see it used at KSC but from a business view, it should not happen.
Kennedy is already turning into a ghost town with very few doing any real work there and nothing significant on the books until SLS. Even the Orion test mission in 2014/15 will be from CCAFS with no real uptick in KSC employment. And, even the NASA work philosophy is to minimize the work at KSC, bringing more work to other parts of the country.
The real need is markets, but we have not figured out how to do that. Even with free time at ISS, the commercial market has not materialized. Even, if as John suggests, we fully fund (whatever that is) commercial crew, that builds a transportation capability, not a market. It is telling that we do not think that the transportation to station is worth what it will really cost to develop. We hide behind the façade that there is a non-NASA commercial crew market that will materialize based upon prices higher than what the Russians could charge for ISS visits (and they only had a few who would really pay that price). We have used the “commercial market” to pick winners in cargo and soon will do so for crew but in reality we are just using it to get around FAR procurement regulations for government only products.
We are not in a mode of “if you build it, they will come”. We are in the mode of, “if you threaten to abandon it (or tear it down), they will come”. This will not work either. With no vastly expanded launch market, as John says, “KSC could very well turn in to a ghost town with the Space Launch System launching 4 or 5 times a decade in the 2020s”. This is the most likely scenario. The real question is whether there will be enough money from tourists to keep the facility exteriors in good enough condition to be able to point to them and proudly say, “That is where we used to have a manned space program”.
Pretty downbeat. There are plenty of people at KSC who would like to turn it into an R&D center if they could get just a tiny fraction of that $2.3B.
Some of the facilities can be used by commercial providers but even if Musk uses LC-39 for the falcon heavy I have heard he would only want the clear pad itself and would want his own assembly facilities. The VAB is a pretty old structure, specialized, and expensive to maintain, so it would be a hard sell unless the space were provided essentially free. I don’t know who would use the MLP/crawler system; the rail-based arrangement used by SpaceX seems simpler. KSC should try to create more pads along its part of the coast or just inland.
use the crawler for a falcon 7 core Heavy lifter rocket that spacex could have ready years before SLS is ever ready.
What was it again tinker ?
3 pair of falcon 9 stages get the center core to orbit and the center core is only lite after it is on orbit, so it could be used as space real estate or or a fuel depot.
cheaper faster and could make good use of NASA big building. and the old crawler. and with all the money saved NASA could plan missions to the moon mars asteroids all for the cost of SLS and Orion 🙂
NONO we can’t do that
a few in congress might not get their pork
soo
let’s build that mock up of SLS with orion on top and add to the NASA SPACE musuems
I wonder what NASA pays on grass cutting contracts
I think SpaceX would prefer to go to a larger booster core stage. They have the Merlin II engine (a distant derivative of the F-1) in development. This would reduce complexity and permit a three-core horizontal integration flow similar to the Falcon Heavy.
Again, I think KSC can cut to barebones and provide competitive commercial services, but it really needs a little R&D funding to survive as a center. For launch pads the question is whether KSC is just admin support for CCAFS or has its own pads. To invest in LC-39 when it has no likely customers doesn’t seem wise.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see NASA start doing useful R and D soon to help solve all the problems to do Elons goal to making us multi-planet species. Grow up NASA support that boy he sure needs it! Let’s flies dragons to the moon and way out there!
NASA r and d idea
Develop a rocket engine you can light-up against high wind to slow a rocket jet plane without having to flip it over.
Here’s a thought… How about renting out pads to various countries? China and India are a couple of countries that might have interest. Then if we could get North Korea and Iran interested we could spy on them. What do you think? It’s going to be years before NASA launches any manned flight… thanks to BHO. We could use the rent monies to cut the grass and remove the rust.
I see this as yet another negative consequence of NASA not having a current mission/destination/goal (I don’t count SLS, the BFR that couldn’t) combined with its bad procurement habits.
Historically, NASA gets its infrastructure built by adding it as extra line items on major, big money programs (one reason why program costs become so huge), making unrelated items interdependent, like riders on a piece of legislation. I’ve never liked this tactic because it has created a situation whereby NASA can only get infrastructure built by doing it this way — they don’t have a mechanism for acquiring infrastructure other than by tying it to a program (sending that program’s cost through the roof). And now, here we are, the goal is to acquire/repair/maintain infrastructure, and clearly NASA has no way to deal with it. $2.3B is too much money for an overhead cost and there’s no mega-program happening to tack it on to. And, of course, when the mega-program gets canceled, the tacked-on infrastructure goes away, too.
Steve
A good point. NACA was based on technology development, not arbitrary destinations. I can’t see any mega programs coming.
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Well nasa could set up a full scale mock up of SLS with an Orion capsule on it for the tourist for the next 8 to 12 years.
Question
How many year round employees does it take to baby sit a falcon 9 launch site and a falcon heavy launch site? How many seasonal employees are needed for a launch. If space had many launch sites wouldn’t they have some that stayed and lived at each site and then have some teams that stayed on the road?
How many people does it REALLY take to launch a commercial rocket?
“How many people does it REALLY take to launch a commercial rocket?” Answer: far fewer than NASA thinks it does.
actually I think the answer is “far fewer than the contractor made NASA believe it does”
ABSOLUTELY CORRECT – “Shock and awe” went through the NASA space community when Orbital Sciences original launch control center was unveiled – located inside a small trailer! 😉
Also amazing to me – Seen up-close and personally = The fibre optics, closed circuit television rigs aboard Orbital Sciences modified L-1011 “Stargazer” airborne launch platform!
True, and we’ve since lost OCO and Glory.
Not exactly a good record for Orbital.
I think the author makes a lot of good points in this article. Leave space to the robots for now.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/…
JPL unmanned missions deliver 10 times the science for a tenth of the cost, but NASA is stuck in a test pilot / cowboy mentality centered on HSF. Those pink fleshy payloads are completely impractical for any real space exploration, but they look good on PAO posters….
Here’s a “news tip” for the Washington, DC-based writer [Mark Matthews] for “The Orlando Sentinel” — Not all vacant NASA buildings are only at KSC!
My recollection is that TESLA MOTORS [of Palo Alto / Fremont, CA] has a sub-compact, all-electric automobile assembly line either soon to open or perhaps may have already opened in a former NASA Apollo Era rocket assembly building near LAX! [Formerly owned by McDonnell – Douglas, perhaps].
CHECK IT OUT, would you? For one = I’m just curious, Mark and Keith.
[PLS FWD to the “Orlando Sentinel” bureau in DC, TNX] – 30 –
Sadly, there’s no practical use for most of the existing facilities at KSC going forward. Sure, we could spend a huge amount to retrofit them for new purposes, but it would very likely be cheaper to use other facilities.
I say turn the VAB into a museum. Hang all the big rockets that won’t fit in the National Air & Space Museum in there, and build elevated walkways to let people see them up close at various levels. No other building in the world could display rocketry like that one. It would be stunning.
Hopefully, as many of the other buildings as possible on that site can be preserved as museums too.
VAB is reconfigurable, its just an empty stress bearing shell, most of the platforms can be moved up-down as needed.
I like this idea — start with the Saturn V exhibit moved inside the VAB. If anything else, that will extend the life of that exhibit, instead of it sitting out in the elements.