The Band of Brothers Wants a Mars Flyby
Hearing: Mars Flyby 2021: The First Deep Space Mission for the Orion and Space Launch System?
27 Feb 2014 10:00am live webcast
– Dr. Scott Pace, Director of the Space Policy Institute, George Washington University Statement
– General Lester Lyles (ret.), Independent Aerospace Consultant and former Chairman of the Committee on “Rationale and Goals of the U.S. Civil Space Program” established by the National Academies Statement
– Mr. Doug Cooke, Owner, Cooke Concepts and Solutions and former NASA Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Mission Directorate Statement
– Dr. Sandra Magnus, Executive Director, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Statement
– Rep. Lamar Smith Statement; Hearing on Mars 2021 Flyby Mission
– Statement from Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson – Mars 2021 Flyby Hearing
– Statement by Rep. Steven Palazzo on Mars 2021 Flyby Hearing
– House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology Democrats Emphasize Need for Human Space Exploration Roadmap
– House Science, Space, and Technology Committee Examines Mars Flyby Mission
And oh yes
Statement from Inspiration Mars Chairman Dennis Tito on Feb. 27 “Mars Flyby 2021” Hearing
House Science, Space, and Technology Committee Oversight Plan for the 113th Congress, earlier post
“Within the Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee’s jurisdiction, activities warranting further review include costs associated with cancellation of the Constellation program…”
Keith’s 26 Feb update: The hearing charter has now been published. Guess what: Committee staffer Chris Shank is still going on about the cancellation of Constellation and how awful President Obama’s space policy is. A few paragraphs down he also brings up Dennis Tito’s plan to use SLS and Orion for a Mars Flyby in 2021. And of course, true to form, there is no question presented to the witnesses in advance about how much this Mars flyby might actually cost or who would pay for it.
That is the sort of question you’d need to ask NASA, the White House – or House appropriators. Curiously, they are not being asked to testify. As a result you will only hear criticism of the current Administration’s space policy, hear Tito’s surrogates speak highly of the mission, and yet will hear no mention whatsoever as to where the money is going to come from. In other words this is just a scripted puppet show staged by some of the participants.
Keith’s 24 Feb note: Mike Griffin’s self-proclaimed “Band of Brothers” is being reunited. In addition to having Scott Pace and Doug Cooke testify, another Band of Brothers alumnus Chris Shank (House Science Committee staff) is organizing this whole event including the questions to be asked. Although Doug Cooke is representing himself, he has been a consultant to Dennis TIto’s Inspiration Mars. Inspiration Mars has been looking at a 2021 trip to Mars now that the chances of mounting a 2017 trip have proved to be unfeasible. As such, the title of this hearing is no coincidence. You can expect Lamar Smith and others on the dais to raise the issue of Tito’s plans and ask the panel for comments.
The central concept for this is that NASA will pay for the mission using an SLS flight and the more powerful upper stage for SLS. Where the money for such a mission would come from remains elusive. Given that SLS has no funding for payloads, will not launch at the once-a-year rate that NASA says is critical, and has a per-launch cost that is simply imaginary, the task of trying to figure out what this will cost is compounded. Add in the fact that ISS has just been extended and Space Science is in a long term crunch, nothing short of a significant boost of the agency’s overall budget – for a long period of time – would make such a Mars flyby possible.
Given that Congress has not wholly supported the Administration’s prime initiatives for NASA (commercial crew, asteroid mission, technology), it is hard to see how the White House could be expected support this plan – one that requires a multi-year surge of money. The plan’s supporters claim that the White House is supportive – yet that “support” (actually it was more like “enthusiasm”) was related to a privately-funded mission using a Falcon 9 – not a NASA-funded mission using SLS hardware.
As such there is an air of deja vu and unreality to this topic – as cool and inspirational as it might well be. NASA has no clear cut long-term plan. And when they try to implement one, Congress just turns it on its head and funds what they want – at that particular moment in time.
So here we are: yet another unrealistic plan for NASA. But when has reality ever been a factor in discussions about big NASA projects?
– Is Inspiration Mars a “NASA Mission”? It Depends Who You Ask, earlier post
– Inspiration Mars Foundation Chairman Dennis Tito testifies before House Subcommittee on Space, earlier post
– How Dennis Tito Plans To Send People to Mars, earlier post
– Inspiration Mars: Some Thoughts About Their Plan, Dennis Wingo, earlier post
– nspiration Mars: Some Thoughts About Our Plan, Dennis Tito et al, earlier post
Myths pretending to be reality can be the most difficult things ever to
overcome. Myths never have to show proof, how numbers add up, provide
evidence, or make any sense. The band of brothers is just more of the
myth that if only some great leader were to arise and just give NASA the
money it needs that all these problems about lack of direction or lack
of results would be solved so quickly. (Think Great Pumpkin, Charlie
Brown).
But that’s the world we live in nowadays. The more
complex it gets, the less some people feel compelled to try and truly
understand what interests them. And even so, an opinion will be formed
and strongly held.
Be wary whenever a cause of something (good or
bad) is given as either resources, leadership, or bad apples
(scapegoats). The real reasons (as the case here, why we are not on Mars
already) will have little to do with any of these.
I was about to suggest that they’d using the funding space created by ISS dropping into the ocean in order to pay for it, but you beat me to it. If ISS is getting extended, then this is going nowhere – NASA’s chance of getting a significant boost in funding are very slim, and especially in getting a boost in funding necessary to fund the mission.
That’s a bummer. I was hoping they’d let ISS drop down, since I doubt the prospects for extra scientific gains out of it will be great in 2020. But now it’s going to continue onward.
You and Neil Degrasse Tyson want to boost money for NASA human space flight. But for too long we have let NASA get away with delivering too little for our hard earned dollars, and i don’t know why I should believe that for a lot more money I will get much more. Two times nothing is nothing.
2021 may be too close, but beyond that, it’s not that hard problem to crack. First, cut the ISS annual budget down to pre-2005 levels (somewhat less than $1.8 billion). Then don’t extend the ISS past 2024.
And just like that the SLS has billions of dollars to spend on cargo.
Of course, that would require some budgetary common sense involving a space station that isn’t doing anything to advance any BEO goals, especially actually testing critical technologies required for a Mars mission. Supporters will undoubtedly push for that 2028 extension (and I imagine, well beyond that). Under a scenario where that is the case, of course the SLS has no money for cargo.
By why should the SLS be saved in the first place? The SLS or the ISS… pick one. Well that’s easy. I choose the capability providing launch system over, over the Space Station that is mostly a producer of sciece the ends up in 3rd and 4th rate journals… science not worth supporting for $3 billion a year.
The “SLS can’t afford cargo” argument only makes sense if the ISS is protected, which it shouldn’t be. It never should have been extended past 2018. But now that is happening, 2024 absolutely needs to be the cut off date. It’ll be an expensive shackle for really, not a heck of a lot.
But then again, the budget battle in the early 2020s is going to be overwhelmingly nasty. We’ll have the ISS community arguing how important it is to keep the ISS going through 2028. We’ll have SMD saying they need billions to start planning for their post-JWST future mega telescope. We’ll have the post-2020 Rover Mars community start asking for money for an obscenely expensive meta-Flagship Mars Sample Return mission. Orion / SLS will be doing it’s asteroid thing a year out supposedly. A megaproject-unto-every-fiefdom. The ISS, being the least defensible and most antiquated by that point, should be the first to go.
Someone will have to explain how a space station that cost $1.8 billion per year in 2005 dollars costs $3 billion in 2014 dollars despite the end of ISS construction and just 22% total inflation in that time (which would mean a $2.1 billion budget). What ISS related is getting a billion dollars in funding that didn’t exist in 2005?
Bravo…
Jonathan,
The budget for operating the Space Station in LEO in 2005 did not include the operations costs of the Space Shuttle, which despite not flying, was $3+ billion. By comparison, the cargo (U.S. commercial) and crew (Russian gov’t) services ISS uses now are much cheaper. So the total costs of ISS have gone down.
Now, I agree that we need to increase the ROI of ISS. But that’s partly a function of the research budget (which is slowly increasing) and more crew time (hurry up commercial crew, it will nearly double U.S. research time), and the kinds of privatization we’re seeing via NanoRacks.
Yes, we should do more with ISS on advanced technology, but then that means we need to spend more on technology, and less on Shuttle-derived infrastructure.
But then that challenges your HLV orthodoxy.
… And ISS commercialization is real. My team is submitting an experiment proposal this morning.
Here’s a thought….instead of splashing the $100B ISS in 2024, how about taking the remaining time to turn it into a fully private commercial R&D centre, governed under a “port authority” model? Now its off NASA’s books, and there will be plenty of money for the heavy-lift-to-nowhere fantasy. /s
If NASA can turn this loose
(Which they did only poorly with MIR)
The station can find long use
And privatization is clear
Or cancel SLS/Orion. Thus freeing up approx $3 billion every year.
The trouble with SLS is the fallacy that $10 billion to launch 120,000 lb to LEO is a “good deal”. If NASA where interested in launching payload to LEO, FH can boost 110,000 lb for $135 million. The $10 billion for a single SLS flight ($41 billion / 4 launches) would pay for 74 FH launches and over 8 MILLION lbs to LEO. And that’s assuming NASA didn’t ask for, nor SpaceX offer, any discount for ordering 74 FH launches over 6 years.
SLS is a make work pork project for certain NASA Centers and their pet contractors and it’s NOT worth killing ISS so we can do vastly less launching with immensely more money.
Do not forget the gold plated, gem encrusted Orion capsule that will ride on the SLS at only 16.5 billion to develop and over a billion each.
[Belatedly…]
At say, $150m per launch (adding a “NASA tax”, rather than a bulk purchase discount), $16.5 billion would buy 110 Dragon-crew launches.
Which is up to 770 crew. I have no idea what you’d do with them, but damn.
Even at $300m for a combined FH + F9/Dragon launch, that’s 55 combined launches for just the development cost of Orion. 385 crew and 2750 tonnes of payload.
At $500m for two FH launches + one F9/Dragon launch, that’s 33 launches with 7 crew and 100 tones each. (230 crew, 3300 tonnes.)
Hell even Boeing, charging say a $billion for CST-100 plus Atlas, could launch 16 missions for the development cost of Orion alone.
Does anyone find it amazing-tragic really-that we are anywhere from 8 to 12 years away from such a missions and yet it is impossible to count on NASA to either come up with a long term strategic plan or to be able to develop the required hardware-which has not yet been defined. There are technical issues which NASA is not even working on resolving such as artificial G, radiation protection and advanced propulsion.
Those issues need to be addressed before a preliminary configuration can be defined which would have to include a mission module and redundant critical systems. For some reason, in the Space Station Phase A/B, from around 1984-87, that was when these kinds of things were being defined for station and it was done for millions instead of billions of dollars with an internal NASA team and some small support from academia and contractors.
In the meantime Orion has run into a small problem-it is too heavy for the Navy and Marines to be able to handle during recovery-and of course its development has been on the slow boat for nine years so whether they could have a vehicle ready to fly in another ten years is at best problematic.
NASA is in a pathetic state and its leadership is nonexistent.
Today’s space.com article
http://www.space.com/21353-…
points to the very real problem of radiation, especially in-transit to
Mars.Throwing an Orion on top of the SLS and shooting it to Mars for a flyby is going to severely cut the life-span of any crew unless NASA has a good plan to deal with the radiation. I have not yet heard of any good plan.
The risk of radiation-induced cancer for a .7 Seivert expsure is about 3%, not much more than was allowable for lifetime exposure under the Skylab standards, and probably considerably less than the chance of a fatal contingency on the mission. Also, many of these cancers are nonfatal and don’t occur until years later. The problem is that current NASA exposure limits are much more conservative. I think the astros would go if given the chance. If they want to accept the risk, that should be their decision. There is no indication that cancer would occur so quickly as to jeopardize the mission.
I agree fully with Vulture4. Ignorance is bliss and we are not ignorant of the risks. Myself and many others in the USA have ancestors that boarded little wooden ships with sails. Their risk of drowning at sea or illness during passage was probably higher than the risk the planned voyages to Mars will carry. Reflect a moment – wow, we are going to step upon Mars and soon.
Seasoned sailors of the 16th Century knew of the risks of long voyages. We do, too. Compared to hazardous professions and even daily activities, the risk is low. Accidents can happen along the way which are a greater risk than space radiation. It won’t stop us from trying.
The biggest risk is that the machines will fail. With new untested and undebugged designs history suggests that the probability of hardware failure is 1.0 to several significant figures.
Running whilst debugging the machines on the Earth for the trip length will permit many of the problems to be found and fixed. Further faults can be found by testing in space.
For a 4 year flight the minimum testing is
4 + 4 = 8 years.
Applying NASA’s 40% margin for human rating
(4 + 4) * 1.4 = 11.2 years
So starting with built prototype hardware testing will delay the first flight to
2014 + 11.2 = 2025.2
I am not certain that the prototype hardware exists, so the flight will be even later.
A fair assessment. With SLS and Orion consuming funds, development work is forced to proceed more sequentially. Finished SLS and Orion then you have funds for “the payload”. There is the risk of rushing to Mars, not unlike rushing the Challenger launch but over years. But with protracted developments, the timeline doesn’t fit into a 2021 launch. I do not believe in raising the NASA budget not unless SLS and Orion are replaced with what is now is becoming the right path – commercial launch vehicles.
Note quite. An older male can stay 300 days BEO under 20 g/cm2 of shielding for the 3%. Thats ~20mT. Orion only has 1/10th of this shielding and its ~ 6mT. Women and younger folks even less days. These estimates are extrapolated from nuclear bombings, not GCR, so the scientists all agree they need more data.
GCR can also affect retinas, the brain, and the central nervous system. These could jeopardize the mission. More data would be invaluable.
The flexible path approach has parallel developments. Incrementally increase the duration BEO with minimal shielding, starting perhaps with an asteroid survey after its retrieved by an EP mission. Another group builds and demonstrates a subscale hybrid passive active protection. The active systems trade way better in terms of mass (still to heavy!) but with significant potential with R&D for mass reduction. No such hope with passive shielding. Medicine of course is the lightest solution. So while it may be for grumpy old men initially, perhaps it can be “for the benefit of all” too.
This takes planning, road maps, and most importantly $. To address the number one mass driver GCR, NASA needs to address the number one cost drivers: SLS and Orion.
GCR is only a small fraction of the total exposure; most is solar protons which can be far more easily shielded. GCR does cause loss of neurons but considering the normal rate of neuron loss in older adults it isn’t clear this will detectably degrade performance. GCR is not a significant cause of cancer since it usually causes multiple DNA breaks and results in cell death. Medicine does not offer a clear solution. When the environment is really too hot for humans it will be simpler to develop AI with human or better capabilities.
The cost of all the fuel energy that gets even a Falcon into orbit is only a miniscule fraction of the launch cost. There is no physical reason why human spaceflight needs to be expensive. We cannot explore space if we throw rockets away.
The solution is to develop low-cost LEO access and infrastructure and then assemble a larger reusable vehicle/habitat with higher performance solar-electric or nuclear-electric propulsion which can sharply reduce the transit time to cut GCR exposure and carry adequate shielding for solar protons and a small “storm cellar” for intense flares. Active shielding research should continue but can for the most part be done on the ground.
The real problem Congress has with this strategy is that it does not provide a mission for SLS or Orion.
No one disagrees that SPE can be shielded.
The problem with the lower percentage, but higher energy GCR particles is that they are aborbed and scattered by the thin shield used for SPE, effectively increasing the lower energy dose! If the GCR completely pass through, then cell death has many issues. The ‘certainty’ of cell death is very unlikely, so the DNA breaks and repair can lead to cancer. More data needed.
The GCR environment is not adequately represented on earth today nor would it be feasible. Yes high speed accelerators (for example Brookhaven) can produce some of the particles found in space, but then those pesky dose and rate issues crop up. Based on work at Brookhaven, space radiation has the potential to accelerate the development of Alzheimer’s. GCR mitigation research completely on the ground is sidestepping the challenge of long term exposure at the proper rates and doses–the *proper* environment in deep space is essential.
One cannot perform meaningful research if the parameters of the experimental system are not understood and controlled. Without accurate knowledge of the space radiation environment we will be unable to interpret what happens to humans or animals in that environment, let alone design appropriate shielding, since assignment of specific elements of damage to specific portions of the radiation spectrum would be impossible. Conversely, if we have accurate data then the radiation environment can be replicated on earth. Although funding has not been made available for ground-based long-duration low-dose-rate HZE exposures, such studies would still be dirt cheap compared to actual exposure studies in space. Since no HZE studies have been performed at low dose rate and long duration the potential for induction of dementia cannot be assessed.
Quite a bit of data on cosmic rays http://en.wikipedia.org/wik… the environment is understood
The goal is to test the mitigation system in the proper environment. A subscale unit sent to the crew tended L2 Gateway is the likely approach with further R&D on the materials and hardware, combined with the bio ground testing. The gateway can collect data while the crew are away.
Change the perspective from GCR to LVs
LVs need flight rate. Sending the crew for short stays at L2 for satellite servicing or assembly or to upgrade the GCR mitigation hardware gathers the environmental data you say is required while providing many more future missions at the same time. Avoiding the gravity well saves lots of $$.
The good news is that for the 20 mT of 20 g/cm2 shielding required to meet the 3% for a few hunded days, a 20 mT hybrid system does a significantly better job 🙂 on paper. Its still too heavy for Mars and will need incremental improvements. Hence the need to send subscale units to the L2 Gateway, at staging point for the moon, Mars, and asteroids. Perhaps small enough to just wrap the sleeping quarters at first?
“BEO-x blasts off to L2 to gather critical long term research data for NASA to eventually explore the cosmos.” A very challenging and rewarding task that can minimize the risks with an incremental approach with GUARANTEED spinoffs back to earth.
“The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”
If a permanent manned installation at L2 were bought and paid for, doing experiments with radiation shielding there might be perfectly reasonable. But it’s quite a different thing to suggest human BEO fllights specifically for that purpose. An unmanned active shielding test payload could be assembled on ISS and equipped with SEP thrusters, temporarily moved to an eccentric orbit carrying it above the magnetosphere, and returned to the ISS when modifications are needed. This would permit components to be carried on existing logistics flights. The total cost would be a small fraction of the cost of a manned mission. When we are ready to send a crew vehicle, it could be similarly assembled at the ISS and moved to higher orbits, or even L2, with electric thrusters. The LVs that need flight rate could be the ones that already have it, the Falcon, Atlas and potentially Anteres, operating between the surface and the ISS.
The term “spinoff” has been used at different times to mean very different things. During Apollo it was applied to commercial developments that were said to be “free”, because they had been needed for the moon race. But significant commercial advances that were demonstrably due specifically to Apollo were not easy to document, and today the term is applied to all commercialized NASA technology.
Most NASA technology that has actually been commercialized comes from research and development projects intended specifically to advance ground-based and aeronautical science and technology. There are hundreds of such efforts, almost none of them essential to manned spaceflight, that struggle along on a tiny share of the NASA budget. Practical R&D is made more difficult as technology development is squeezed dry while sums that are many times greater go to SLS/Orion. If we really want NASA to produce practical technology it must be a primary goal, not an inadvertent byproduct.
Better hope to do that on some evolved variant of the Falcon instead.
As somebody who grew up admiring NASA and glued for every space mission, I’m so saddened by what NASA has become. We’re really spinning our wheels and not getting much for the budget we are spending.
This hearing on a human flyby mission of Mars in 2021, scheduled by the House Science, Space and Technology (SS&T) Committee underscores where the problem lies with the NASA human spaceflight program. It is politics and corrupted politics of Capitol Hill.
The corruption one sees in a government such as the one that fell in Ukraine is blatant; palatial home of the president, president’s son the dentist now a multimillionaire, wealthy oligarchs that control industry. Some hear in the USA will say that it doesn’t sound different than us. However, the corruption we face in the government of our country is more hideous.
Legislators on Capitol Hill have broaden the lines in which they operate which allows corruption to operate within legal bounds. We complain about “pork barrel spending” but it is worse. It is institutionalized corruption. The SLS and Orion projects, the spending mandated by legislators and now the mission concepts legislators entertain at their leisure and our cost is the ruination of what attracts us to NASA – exploration and discovery, learning about our Universe, viewing and reading about discovery. Money and power is what drives Capitol Hill including the House Science, Space and Technology (SS&T) Committee. It is not an aberration that a congressman threatened to throw a news reporter off a balcony.
There is plenty of corruption to go around associated with NASA. It is by no means restricted to Congress. NASA has a problem of hiring and promoting a few too many ‘good ole boys’ who don’t meet the criteria for equal employment and who don’t seem to possess the requisite skills, experience or education for the jobs they are supposed to be doing. Perhaps this explains why they cannot seem to come up with a strategy or build hardware on a timely basis. It was particularly noticeable when they named the head of Shuttle Orbiter at the time of the Columbia accident as the Chief Engineer, or the Constellation Program Manager who had never held a management position, but those were just a couple of easily seen and understood examples. When you see everyone from associate administrators down to payload integration managers, none of whom have any background in their respective areas, then you begin to understand how the dysfunction comes about. You begin to understand how Orion was designed to miss the requirements (which were not adequately defined) or how the ISS took 25 years and $100 billion.
Corruption?? Here in the USA?? Say it ain’t so!
It’s easy to dismiss the often-obvious foreign corruption. But the corruption brought to our country by the idea that money and speech are the same has no corrupting equal in political science.
Add to that the right-wing craziness we see in the Congress and, worse, in State houses everywhere, and you have a country with a bleak future indeed. The middle class is becoming third world while the right and rich ironically scream ‘class warfare’.
I’m retiring. And in some sense, just in time.
The SLS flies to the bank weekly in its multi-year mission to provide pork to needy congressional districts.
Summed up in one sentence! These are _certainly not_ the voyages of the starship Enterprise.
It was never feasible in the first place. Look at the time required to develop JWST, Orion and manned Dragon.
Could money have speeded the development of manned dragon along ?
Congressional elements did not want that. It would only highlight the snail’s pace of the Orion.
Nor, I believe, is it SPACEX’s desire to accept pork-tainted money. I have no inside information, but it does not at all seem their business plan to become a dyno-saurus-style 20th century aerospace cost-plus contractor. They skate (fly) to where the puck (payload) will be.
I am suspicious of the more money speeds things up argument. See the book ‘The Mythical Man Month’ by Fred Brooks whose central theme is that “adding manpower to a late software project makes it later”.
The money would have to be spent on something separate from the main capsule such as the ECLSS. I do not know when work started on the Dragon’s ECLSS.
Musk said that cuts in Commercial Crew funding would delay the manned Dragon by at least a year.
Cuts in funding – they frequently result in someone being fired.. If Musk has the optimal number of people working on manned Dragon then fewer people will take longer to do the same work.
Wouldn’t it be that instead SpaceX has to generate the revenue to make up for the lack of funding? They said it will cost X in total to build the Crew version they have been given X-y and they can not match that spending curve. Means having to wait to sell a rocket before they can buy that ecless instead of NASA funding paying for it. (as an example)
There are many way this situation could be managed but that is not the way to negotiate.
More money may not speed things up but that additional money can be put towards building a lander. So when (or if) SLS and Orion become ready, they also have a craft that can land on the moon.
SLS/Orion is already eating the lunch of research, technology, commercial crew, and aeronautics, IOW every part of NASA that is doing something useful or scientifically important. I can’t imagine where they would get the money for landers.
The total funding for SLS/Orion is approximately $3bn/year, which is what we were spending on the Shuttle program. We replaced Shuttle spending with SLS/Orion spending. How is that eating the lunch of every other element of the NASA mission?? Just sayin’…
I appreciate your point. But Shuttle provided logistics and crew rotation for the ISS. Now these have to be provided under the ISS budget, for both seats on Soyuz and cargo on Progress and the commercial carriers, while new crew carriers are being developed under the commercial crew budget. Shuttle also supported a lot of science which SLS/Orion does not.
So SLS/Orion took the Shuttle budget with no real prospect of doing the useful work which the Shuttle did. Not to mention the additional ISS modules and capabilities like the hangar module which were planned at one time.
I would only support a boost for NASA funding if the increased funding was spend in the “right” way, and the SLS was cancelled in favor of developing fully reusable IN-space vehicles and infrastructure to support BLEO operations. The SLS supporters are “standing in the door”, blocking the technology work that would allow us to do just that. Now, just as some predicted, there is developing an ISS camp and an SLS camp. In spite of the relatively unproductive work at the space station currently, (since little of it is directed at BLEO technology development), the station already has a lot of what it needs to do
that work, and access to the station is about to become a lot cheaper. It would probably already be cheaper if it were not for the SLS leech.
A short list of what critical work could be done on the space station starting very soon.
– Testing components and equipment for Cryogenic Propellant Depots and the transfer of cryogenic fluids in micro-gravity.
– Using the existing robots to build a test docking truss (from parts shipped up in a compact container), to see how easy (or hard) it is for them to do so, and thus determine what improvements are needed to the robots to let them do this work.
– Developing and testing new universal docking and
berthing mechanisms which will accommodate both pressurized and non-pressurized vehicles and equipment such as propellant depots and tugs. These new docking positions can be tested and used by attaching them to the docking truss.
Adding a Propellant Depot and a space tug to the space station, which would allow the tug to retrieve large objects such as modules and bring them back to the station, replacing that capability lost when the shuttle was retired.
Developing new hab modules for the station that require much less crew time to maintain. Such modules are needed for any lunar or Mars
missions so the crew can focus on the mission, not module maintenance. We will need such modules for stations at L1/L1 and Low Mars Orbit.
Such Habs should also include exterior water jackets which would provide excellent radiation shielding in anticipation of human BLEO missions. We need to find out how thick such jackets should be to allow crews to go to Mars with less exposure than the station crew gets now.
Build and add the large centrifuge facility which was supposed to be part of the station, to test mammal life cycles in low gravity fields.
Many of these improvements would also make operating the station
itself cheaper and more attractive to use for private technology development.
Of course, the SLS supporters are not interested in such BLEO
hardware, since all they care about is keeping the SLS zombie staggering along. So they want to kill of the space station, which is the only place right now we have to test BELO hardware. It seems
that future space operations and exploration mean nothing to them.
The current Apollo-style minimalist Mars missions will probably go nowhere, due to the perceived lack of progress toward a sustainable
IN-space transport system that would make one-way Mars missions as unnecessary as one-way plane trips.
Don’t forget earth and space observation. The ISS overflies the entire inhabited portion of the earth and could carry hundreds of sensors. That was originally part of the plan. And there have been very sensible plans for assembling medium-aperture astronomical scopes in ISS, testing them, and moving them into higher orbit when they are known to be working properly, avoiding the risk of JWST. Of course this would require the Space Tug, the third component, with Shuttle and Station, of what was called, 30 years ago, the Space Transportation System or STS.
In contrast it’s hard to see any science that would come out of a manned flyby of Mars. But the SLS/Orion contractors get the tax dollars, and promptly give a fraction of them to their friends in Congress, who give them more tax dollars. It’s the original self-licking ice cream cone.
That’s something I’ve wondered about as well: why the ISS isn’t used to house instruments that are flown as separate packages- like the almost $1B NASA spent getting a new weather observation system into orbit yesterday. Perhaps the orbit is too low/high for some missions, but still.
At least partly it’s because ISS is a dirty dirty girl. Hydrazine and general outgassing has apparently coated everything with a layer of evil slime. And will similarly coat any instrument you send up.
However, another question might be “Why hasn’t NASA built an unmanned facility from ISS parts (power, comms, truss, robo-arm, attitude control, etc) to house multiple instrument packages, and capable of supporting both human and robotic servicing?” A universal platform for Earth observation. Possibly for at least some exo-observation.
[The “human servicing” part is also probably the answer. I think a lot of programs go out of their way not to be tangled up with HSF. It potentially increases funding, but also leads to greater compromises and delays.]
Which gets back to my endless griping about the lack of iterative development.
And it’s not too late. Well, it’s too late for ISS-based technology, you’d be redeveloping it from almost scratch. But the concept would serve as a great challenge to have multiple suppliers develop competing capabilities. A relatively low cost program (a la COTS/CC) to develop the tools to save billions down the track (by allowing the early retirement and replacement of ISS, by allowing the low-cost development of BEO ships and stations, etc etc.) All of which could also, by an amazing and unforeseen coincidence, feed into a potential future private space-station industry.
At least partly it’s because ISS is a dirty dirty girl. Hydrazine and general outgassing has apparently coated everything with a layer of evil slime. And will similarly coat any instrument you send up.
This is a myth that has been definitively put to rest by the MSSE experiments where optical surfaces were placed outside of the station for a year with no discernible degradation in performance.
Back in the late 70’s the plan for ISS was to use it for payload assembly, checkout and servicing, and for earth and space observation, either with sensors mounted on the station or free-flying co-orbiting. Two major components were planned, and are still needed. 1) hangar modules (pressurized and unpressurized) for assembly and checkout of payloads, and 2) a space tug. Why hasn’t this been done? As recently as last year I saw a well-thought-out plan to assemble and check out medium aparture astronomical telescopes on the ISS. Why did it run out of funds? Hard to say.
You never know with 100% certainty that a person wishing to use your bank account to get money out of Nigeria is a fraudster until they have stolen your money. You just learn in this life that certain statements are guaranteed to be untrue. See their previous track record.
Frequent milestones have 2 interesting properties. First they require the people to plan what they will be doing in detail. Second milestones allow the contractor to show what progress has been made. If a milestone is late then the entire project is late.
What milestones have Inspiration Mars completed?
So what are they going to ride in again? Unless the requirements have changed since the CEV days, Orion was never meant to be a Mars vehicle. There was some hand waving about Dragon, but again, I have not heard of any serious work to make Dragon Mars capable for a human crew. I haven’t heard of NASA, Inspiration Mars, SpaceX, or anyone else talking about what kind of vehicle needs to be developed and more importantly I haven’t heard of anyone talking about what real work is going on right now to meet that goal. Hand waving and Power Point charts don’t count. Just wondering…
Does anyone happen to know the maximum relative velocity that Orion can safely approach Earth and land?
about 20,000 MPH
Thanks. And I should have included: what’s the assumed velocity of an object leaving lunar orbit and approaching Earth? And of an object returning from Mars orbit?
As distance increases, the entry speed approaches Earth’s escape velocity, 11.2 km/sec
Hi,
Could someone smarter than me explain the why the Mars alignment in 2018 & 2021 matters (see the hearing charter)? I was under the impression that good Mars launch dates were every two years. Or is that only for robotic craft?
The orbits of Mars and Earth are such that the minimum distance between them occurs approximately every 2 years. This has been used for robotic missions. What Inspiration Mars has noticed is the orbit of Venus. For launches in 2018 and 2021 the gravity of Venus can be used as an extra engine.
In simple terms Inspiration Mars is playing baseball with the space capsule as the ball and Venus as the batswoman. They are planning a home run with Mars as the outfield.
Andrew,
Nice analogy, thanks!
What Inspiration Mars has noticed is the orbit of Venus. For launches in 2018 and 2021 the gravity of Venus can be used as an extra engine.
Excuse me? I am the one that first proposed Venus as a means to boost the inspiration factor and to cut down on mission time right here in an article on NASA Watch after the original mission was announced.
True.
Possibly it should have said “Inspiration Mars has read Dennis Ray Wingo’s comment that Venus can be used to reduce the mission time and is now proposing it.”
What Inspiration Mars has noticed is the orbit of Venus. For launches in 2018 and 2021 the gravity of Venus can be used as an extra engine.
Excuse me? I am the one that first proposed adding the Venus flyby to the Inspiration Mars mission first as a means to add to the inspiration content but second to add to the windows for flying the mission and shortening its duration. They even put out an article discounting the Venus opportunity for thermal reasons…
My article…
http://spaceref.com/news/vi…
Their response…
http://spaceref.com/mars/in…
I was in high school when Apollo first landed on the moon. Before and after that event, manned flights were frequent and tested new capabilities. Moon flights never became routine.
At that time, my expectation was that we would have the moon base envisioned in the movie 2001 by early in the 21st century and be exploring/mining asteroids and planning for the colonization of Mars before I died. FAT CHANCE that a man will actually fly beyond LEO let alone, do anything significant before I become a corpse. I am 60 and my expected lifespan is maybe ~80. We won’t have built a Mars man rated craft by that time. There are no currently no plans for the design of any kind of Landers (Lunar, Martian, Asteroid) and certainly no testing or construction to support such a mission. (There is no will in the White House or in Congress to spend the necessary $$ to make it happen). Without a “Vision” that says “We will go to Mars in this decade … ” similar to President Kennedy’s proclamation and mean it, we will NEVER get to Mars.
Make no mistake, the Chinese are not exploring the Moon and expanding in space for the purpose of science — this is a military mission to “take the high ground” when future conflict arises – and it will.
Today, we have routine flights to LEO (ISS) and there is nothing to test on those flights – they are essentially a bus ride to ISS.
ISS is not doing bleeding edge space science that will develop the technologies for manned flights beyond LEO.
The technologies that should be tested and implemented on ISS should involve more effective and more efficient (weight & energy) shielding, They still have to huddle together in the least hazardous part of the ISS area during solar storms(Please note that I did not say safest because there are no “safe” areas on ISS due to lack of comprehensive shielding.)
Unless the ISS becomes a test platform for BEO technologies, I say splash it ASAP.
SLS is a dead weight on the budget and should be replaced with multiple launches by ULA or SpaceX at a small percentage of the costs.
SpaceX Dragon, as it is being currently developed under CCC, is not designed for extended missions (LEO, Lunar, Martian, etc.). It would take time and $$$ to develop an extended mission Dragon but I think not nearly as much as ORION.
Orion potentially could be launched on something other than SLS (ULA or SpaceX) so there is actually not much need for SLS. There is the problem of launching a total mission configuration in a single launch without SLS for missions beyond LEO. Multiple launches seem to be the best solution with assembly of the final mission configuration in orbit. We really don’t need SLS as long as ULA and SpaceX are healthy.
We don’t have any viable hardware to land on anything or grab an asteroid or do anything except, perhaps, get there.
One interesting idea … the military should consider that the raw materials are present on the moon to construct rockets and capsules and such. It would take far less delta V to launch a satellite into Earth orbit from the Moon than from Earth — and you don’t need all the aerodynamic shrouds so the shapes of satellites would not be constrained as they would be by Earth launch.
ISS is testing out long duration systems, most notably for ECLS and exercise. The program management seems to have tunnel vision, so for a long time all they focused on was assembly and in the last few years they went off on the science focus. Long duration systems were always a part of the plan.
If NASA would lay out a plan, or even multiple alternatives then maybe someone could identify what systems, elements or vehicles were going to be critical and their priority for development. But sadly there is no plan so no one knows whats important.
We need ISS to test technologies for getting — to LEO. Because that’s the first step. And because after more than half a century of human spaceflight, we still do not have a practical way to take the first step, from the ground into low earth orbit, at a cost that makes it anything more than a stunt. 50 years after the Wright Brothers’ flight, hundreds of thousands of people were flying all over the world every day. Today it is millions. Fifty years after Gargarin’s flight, there are no more than half a dozen people in space. That is the barrier we must break. We need to make it possible for people to accomplish tasks in space that are worth the cost of sending them there.
Good Congressional session.
Basically everyone was in agreement that a strategy and particularly a technology roadmap is required. Those are the first steps.
Scott Pace repeatedly stated that cislunar space was accepted as the first priority. Cislunar space is not Venus and Mars missions.
Multiple of the panelists talked about a long duration module for the mission. I have not seen that in anyone’s plan. It is not in development today.
Until there is a well articulated and accepted vision, and a strategy to get to that vision, and a road map to develop the necessary technologies and systems and hardware, and a budget forecast, and a commitment by OMB and the Congress to match the requirements to the budget, then we are not going anywhere.
“Scott Pace repeatedly stated that cislunar space was accepted as the first priority.” How does sending a tiny crew into cislunar space at a cost of $1B+ bring us any closer to sustainable human spaceflight?