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Commercialization

Inspiration Mars Is Drinking the SLS Koolaid

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
April 4, 2013
Filed under , , , , ,

Feasibility Analysis for a Manned Mars Free-Return Mission in 2018, Inspiration Mars, Future In-Space Operations (FISO) telecon colloquium
Keith’s note: One chart in this presentation lists using SLS as an option. What are these people smoking? They cannot afford to buy one of these launches at $1 billion or more, NASA certainly is not going to give them one for free, and its not certain that SLS will even be ready to launch in time to meet their tight schedule – much less with the reliability NASA is going to require before allowing humans fly to Mars on a trajectory that offers no bail out options.
Inspiration Mars considers NASA’s Space Launch System, ULA rockets for 2018 Mars trip, Huntsville Times
“At their [Tito and another executive of his Inspiration Mars non-profit organization] request NASA briefed them on the capabilities of SLS and Orion,” Marshall spokeswoman Kim Henry said Wednesday. Asked if SLS could support a Mars mission, Henry said that it could. It was not immediately clear, however, how SLS could meet Tito’s deadline for a launch of Jan. 15, 2018. That timing is critical to take advantage of a Mars-Earth alignment that won’t occur again before 2031, Tito’s organization says.”
Inspiration Mars Is Being Pushed by NASA To Consider SLS, earlier post

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

28 responses to “Inspiration Mars Is Drinking the SLS Koolaid”

  1. JimNobles says:
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    Are you talking about the one (uno) (1) slide in the power point that shows a picture of the notional SLS with the only text being the SLS Option?  The SpaceX and ULA slides have actual information on them. The SLS slide looks like it was put there for sake of completeness (’cause SLS people claim they’re gonna be ready) or as simply being polite.

    You must truly detest SLS and all aspects of how it came into being and how the resources are being spent. Me too.

  2. TheBrett says:
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    It could be they just don’t have any other choice. Maybe Musk told them that the Falcon Heavy wouldn’t be ready and certified for the mission in time. 

    • JimNobles says:
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       The FH not ready by 2018? That would be a kick in the ‘nads.  I hope that by 2018 not only will FH be operational but that Elon is well into preparing his Mars invasion fleet.

  3. Mark_Flagler says:
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    Don’t know what they are thinking, but the SLS sure seems like the high-cost, high-risk option.

    • objose says:
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      Landing humans on the moon in 1969. High cost high risk option. Starting Space X. . .    It is space. ALL of it is high risk high cost option. So was Isabella funding sending 3 ships to find a westward passage to India.  “We are the explorers.”

      • pilgrim101 says:
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         Amen on the “We are Explorers”, but is there gold in them there hills to plunder?

        • Ben Russell-Gough says:
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           Ironically, the treasure on the basis of which Columbus sold his expedition wasn’t found.  The real payback came in other ways and much later.  I imagine space exploration will probably end up the same things – few if any of the promised pay-backs but wholly unexpected ones that turn out to be twice as valuable.

          • dogstar29 says:
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            Spain found enormous amounts of gold in the New World, and some of it is still in shipwrecks off the Florida coast. Of course its value proved fleeting, for both the Native Americans and the Spaniards.

            Human spaceflight may be of considerable value, but only if we can reduce its cost. SpaceX is at least attempting to do this. SLS is going in the opposite direction.

      • chriswilson68 says:
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        I believe that when Mark said SLS was high cost and high risk he meant in comparison to the other options.  The slides list single-launch Falcon Heavy and dual-launch ULA options before SLS.  I think there are a lot of us who consider either of those other two options lower cost and lower risk compared to SLS.

  4. Ben Russell-Gough says:
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    Personally? I’m wondering if they’re trying to persuade NASA to take their idea of their hands.  It would allow them to fold up their tents and declare victory without actually having to fund flight hardware.

    As I’ve posted before, the 2018 mission will also be possible in 2031.  This fits in well with the known SLS schedule for a second or third deep space mission, possibly even first if the NEA thing falls through.  If I’m right, it’s a shame though because I’m not convinced that NASA will ever have the mandate or funding to do something even as bare-bones as the already-published Inspiration mission.

  5. voronwae says:
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    Keith, it’s evident that you haven’t listened to the presentation, because there are a few words in it addressed specifically to “the blogosphere”.

    “There has been no pressure whatsoever from NASA…”

    I don’t mean to offend, but ethically, you really need to write up a quick retraction.

    • kcowing says:
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      I only know what multiple informed sources within NASA say about what is going on.  I am not retracting anything. That would be unethical since it would be misleading to my readers.

    • JimNobles says:
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       Is there an audio of the presentation somewhere?

    • chriswilson68 says:
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      So you think whenever a reporter reports that sources are privately saying there’s political pressure that isn’t being publicly acknowledged, that reporter should retract the story?  That people should only report the official story?

  6. John Gardi says:
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    Keith:

    “NASA certainly is not going to give them one for free…”

    Why not? They don’t have a payload of their own for it. I’m sure they can find some way to sign off on it so they don’t have to take responsibility for the crew yet still call it a NASA mission. Done!

    SLS is an unsustainable launch system and Inspiration Mars is a one shot (therefore unsustainable) mission. They’re a perfect match!

    tinker

    • Gonzo_Skeptic says:
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      I’m sure they can find some way to sign off on it so they don’t have to take responsibility for the crew yet still call it a NASA mission.

      You’ve got that right.

      IF SLS is ready by 2018, it won’t have had many (if any) launches.  I predict, if it happens, NASA will declare the SLS human-rated by fiat and ignore their own system safety processes.

  7. cuibono1969 says:
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    It’s a sop to the SLS. The SLS needs sops.

  8. Andrew_M_Swallow says:
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    Inspiration Mars is a private sector organisation.  Would the SLS need approval from the FAA before they could use it?

  9. Jafafa Hots says:
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    And I hesitated to point out what was to me the apparent pie-in-the-sky nature of this idea when it was first announced, thinking I’d be piled on here by the true believers.

    • Paul451 says:
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      It’s interesting that we all seem to consider SLS more pie-in-the-sky than Inspiration Mars.

      • Jafafa Hots says:
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        I don’t. That is not what I was trying to convey.
        SLS is technically more realistic. Just financially and politically impossible.

        • Robin Seibel says:
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          SLS is an overweight (when you include the weight of all the congresspeople pushing for it), overly expensive waste of man-hours that will rarely fly.  Now, does it seem smart to pump a lot of money into something like SLS, money that could be used for HSF using different, already available architecture?  Is it smart to have to engineer a space vehicle based on requirements specified by and demanded by politicians, a space vehicle with no real mission?  Isn’t it smarter to engineer for mission needs?  There’s a big difference, and that big difference is going to put a hurt on NASA.

          • Jafafa Hots says:
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            All I said was it was technically more realistic than the Inspiration Mars proposal.
            Which it assuredly is, despite all of its faults.

            Because that is not a very high bar to meet.

  10. Steve Whitfield says:
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    I clearly recall a certain Congressman asking Charlie Bolden in a public committee meeting what NASA was going to use SLS for (which was a cheap trick seeing as SLS wasn’t NASA’s idea).  Maybe this is his answer.

    • Ben Russell-Gough says:
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       FWIW, my fear is that the objective her is not taking over the project but suppressing it.  After all, a fully-commercial Inspiration Mars would be a humiliation for NASA.  A privately-funded spacecraft circumnavigating Mars two years before the first crewed flight of SLS? It’s debatable whether NASA HSF could survive that shock.

  11. chriswilson68 says:
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    Even if NASA does offer SLS for free (in violation of the law), Inspiration Mars would be crazy to accept.  Not only will SLS have fewer flights before the IM flight (at most one, more likely zero) compared to the SpaceX and ULA options, but once IM accepts, they are at the mercy of NASA and Congress.  When it gets close to launch time, NASA could simply decide that SLS isn’t safe enough.  Or they could change their mind and decide IM isn’t a safe enough mission and they don’t want to support it.  Or Congress could pass a law saying NASA isn’t allowed to support IM (maybe because it threatens vested interests in the old way of doing things at NASA that don’t want a demonstration that shows there are better ways to do things).

  12. John Gardi says:
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    Folks:

    From a practical standpoint, there is a launch vehicle with heritage & payload capacity that could be used by Inspiration Mars but again has been overlooked. The Zenit has been around a long time and has the payload capacity of a Falcon 9. A variant of the Zenit first stage was used for the strap-on stages on the human rated (but never flown with a crew) Energia launch vehicle. I didn’t see it mentioned in the pdf.

    A point about lost opportunities. Why hasn’t anyone upgraded the Zenit in the last three decades into a triple core launch vehicle like the Delta IV Heavy or Falcon Heavy? It would have had the payload capacity of the Falcon Heavy and could have been available long ago.

    tinker