Asteroid Redirect Mission Critique
Human spaceflight: Find asteroids to get to Mars
“Some options are better than others. The cost and complexity of human space exploration demands that each element be measured by its value towards the ultimate goal: Mars. But NASA’s stated next priority will not contribute to that aim. Its Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM)2 is a multibillion-dollar stunt to retrieve part of an asteroid and bring it close to Earth where astronauts can reach it. It will require an ancillary spacecraft deploying either a huge capture bag or a Rube Goldberg contraption resembling a giant arcade-game claw. Neither technology is useful for getting humans to Mars.”
– Bolden’s Confusing Asteroid Mission Rationale (Revised), earlier post
– Congress, NAC, SBAG, Question Asteroid Mission, earlier post
– Report of the Small Bodies Assessment Group Asteroid Redirect Mission Special Action Team, 30 July 2014 (Draft), earlier post
– SBAG Asteroid Redirect Mission Special Action Team, July 2014 presentation, earlier post
– Asteroid Experts Are Not Very Fond of NASA’s Asteroid Mission, earlier post
Orion is a spacecraft in search of a mission. Without a lunar lander, it’s just a useless remnant of the Constellation program. Seems to me we should define a useful mission first and then design a spacecraft to meet the requirements.
Can Orion make it to Deimos and or Phobos?
The point of the asteroid retrieval mission is that sustainable human exploration, and ultimately settlement, into the space environment depends absolutely on the use of extraterrestrial materials, at least until access to low Earth orbit from Earth becomes vastly cheaper. The Moon appears to be a marginal resource, due to its significant gravitational potential well and considerable depletion of volatile elements. Asteroids almost certainly have all the materials we need, so an investigation of their potential, and work on the practical in-space technology needed to use them, is important.
I think the obvious compromise targets for the near term are the moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos. These are likely some combination of asteroidal materials and stuff left over from the formation of Mars, or splashed up from the many impacts it has endured over the ages. These objects are of great scientific interest, probably very useful as sources of extraterrestrial materials, totaling around ten trillion tons, and excellent way points towards human exploration of the surface of Mars.
Phobos and Diemos are reasonable target for science (proposed as the PhD mission in 1986). But not necessarily for a manned spacecraft, until we have high-thrust SEP or NEP for a manageable travel time. Let’s start with unmanned landers and rovers and a space tech program for SEP/NEP instead of trying to saddle a “flagship” mission like JIMO with development of space nuclear power.
ARM is intended to give us the high-power SEP we need for Mars missions. I bet it will satisfy your ‘until we’ requirement and maybe we’d be ready for Phobos as the very next step after ARM. I think of ARM like Gemini. Not as cool as Apollo, but needed to learn how to do new things in space before we go on to the next step.
Electric propulsion is not needed for a Mars mission, nor should it be a prerequisite used to hold human spaceflight and exploration hostage.
Radiation risks do not pose a significant enough threat to require travel any faster than chemical propulsion would enable.
The radiation hazard (roughly 1 Sv whole-body exposure) is acceptable for a single mission, but radiation hazards are cumulative. For repeated, sustainable travel we need either more shielding or faster travel. Either requires higher performance propulsion. It doesn’t make sense to require a mission simply to develop technology. That wasn’t the way NACA worked, and it should not be the way NASA works.
I don’t think it is reasonable to assume that an individual astronaut will make more than one round-trip Mars mission, perhaps it could be pushed up to 2 missions with optimized engineering and added flexibility on tolerance limits(I’ve reviewed Mars Direct’s design and think there is some room for improvement). But even a one Mars mission limit for an individual astronaut should not be something to scoff at as its apx a 3 year commitment(with half of that time on the surface). I agree that NASA should not be a ‘technology driven’ agency since that simply devolves into a stable of unrelated and expensive parts that serve no real purpose, that along with various constituencies who fight over the limited resources for their pet projects. My Aug 4th commentary in the print edition of SpaceNews touched on the illogic of that approach, an approach which NASA unfortunately seems to follow more than the ‘mission driven’ alternative.
So I’ll continue to say that electric propulsion is not and should not be considered a prerequisite for manned missions to Mars, we’ve had nearly every single truly required technology since at least the early 1990’s, and there is almost nothing about a Mars mission completely outside the realm of human experience(meaning without a historical parallel). If additional technologies like high thrust electric propulsion are developed in the meantime they can and should be integrated in-line with the program, but in no way should they be used to delay or detour the primary mission.
The high power SEP is needed to make SEP as fast as Chem, not faster than Chem. Chem. doesn’t work because the huge amount of fuel needed for a round-trip Mars mission would require over half a dozen SLS launches and elaborate on-orbit assembly. The two propulsion technologies that could enable Mars are SEP and NTR… and SEP is a much cheaper technology to mature.
And there are a lot of unknowns about the radiation, and I don’t think we know how big a threat it is until we get more experience. There are also other issues we need to work out for long duration life-suport and how to operate in space for years away from Earth. A few long duration test flights in Lunar orbit would be very valuable… and it is likely cheaper to do these test before going to Mars than it would be to go to Mars in one step.
Your first assertion is completely off base, you neither need on-obrit assembly, nor a huge amount of fuel, even NASA’s DRM’s recognize that by this point. Fuel can be made on Mars using hundred year old chemistry, Sabatier reaction to make methane plus electrolysis of CO2, this is pretty simple and anyone who’s seen a decent Mars mission design in the last 20 years should be aware of it. If fact NASA had the system built and tested two decades ago.
Next, the truth of the matter is that NTR is a mature technology(TRL 6), the only reason it doesn’t fly in modern times is political.
Next the radiological effects of spaceflight, which are very well understood, just because the uninformed have doubts, and find such words as radiation scary, it does not change the fact that we have had decades of study on the topic including several astronauts/cosmonauts that have received radiation doses equal to or exceeding what would be recieved during a Mars mission. None have experienced any radiological health effects nor would we expect them to since we’re talking about maybe a 1% increase in the chance of getting fatal cancer, that is if we were talking about instantaneous doses rather than low level chronic exposure which is probably less harmful than a heavier acute dose.
And why are you fretting about long-term life support systems? NASA engineers are fairly competent, at least when it comes to making things work; now making them work cheaply well we’d have some room for debate. I really think these types of objections hint at a level of cognitive dissociation required to believe them, its almost as if the people that bring it up suddenly forget how long the ISS has been flying above our heads…
Mars Direct was proposed openly in 1990, I really think you should watch the presentation and rethink what is needed for Mars.
A recent presentation from 2014:
http://youtu.be/EKQSijn9FBs
The first public presentation in 1990 (including some discussion on follow on tech skipped over in many later lectures):
http://youtu.be/vD3U0QcEYXs
The same launcher that could do a deep space asteroid mission is probably one that could send something to Mars, so I wouldn’t go as far as the article. Of course, getting something to Mars orbit isn’t the same as actually landing there.
We need a practical facility to get human crews through the radiation belts quickly and efficiently, to get them above LEO to work and explore more distant places. in high-earth orbit we can use solar-electric propulsion (SEP) to get us anywhere in the inner Solar System that has low gravity, such as Sun-Earth/L2, NEAs, Mars orbit, Phobos, etc.
I think any facilities we build should be reusable to the maximum possible extent, so we do not have to continually lift new, expensive hardware to LEO from the surface, only to be thrown away. This seems to call for a chemically fueled spacecraft that can transit the belts quickly, reach HEO or lunar orbit, and return to LEO using aerobraking for servicing and refueling. Massive cargo should be lifted from LEO using SEP, in a reusable vehicle especially designed for the purpose.
Beyond HEO we need an SEP vehicle with sufficient electric power to achieve accelerations around an order of magnitude higher than the DAWN asteroid mission, which points the way to sustainable exploration for the rest of the century.
In general your post is right on the mark, except with regard to SEP. Yes, sustainable ops beyond the moon require faster propulsion systems than in use today, but SEP won’t cut it. The only option with sufficient technical maturity to be counted on in the foreseeable future are nuclear thermal rockets. We must either revive something like the NERVA program or stay home. Until we get over the nuclear phobia, exploration beyond the moon is a non-starter aside from the contemporary handful of small and very expensive probes with very limited functions that take substantial fractions of a people’s careers to get anywhere.
I think SEP can do it. DAWN got to Vesta & Ceres in a few years, and if we can just get one order of magnitude higher acceleration from newer SEP designs (mostly a matter of higher power-to-mass electric power systems), that should make it competitive with standard Hohmann transfers. For longer trips than inner solar system, it would be faster still because of higher Delta-V capability, even than nuclear thermal.
The asteroid retrieval people are looking at high-power SEP (see https://www.youtube.com/wat…, up to 200 kW, with multiple 12.5 kW thrusters) for moving massive
payloads in the inner solar system.
There may be a role for nuclear thermal for sending small ships with only crews, but it seems like a marginal niche to me, given nuclear’s other problems (I would be happy to see them solved, but I’m not optimistic.)
Orion is not capable of an entry from a Mars trajectory. A Mars trajectory is too hot, It requires a substantial redesign and modification of the spacecraft, including adding weight which cannot be done since it is already too heavy, or else changing to a totally different heatshield design.Matt Johnson is right. It was designed to go to moon orbit. It can do some other things, but not Mars and nothing a lot further beyond earth than lunar orbit.
Many have made this point, including very smart people here. I understand that the velocity involved in Earth approach from Mars is what is meant by ‘hot’: but we put satellites into Mars orbit with complex orbits that use the planet for slowing, eventually reducing relative velocity to that needed for orbit. Why can’t Orion do something like that approaching earth, rather than the brute force method of heavy shields, ablation, or god forbid retro rockets?
Just looking for a point of information.
The spam in the can have to be kept alive for the duration of any such orbital slowing and descent. If it takes time, there’s that much more oxygen, water, and food that have to be on the spacecraft. More mass, more energy to get it there, and once there more to dissipate before landing.
For a straightforward direct Earth entry from a Mars trajectory, the entry speed has to be at least 11.5 km/s based on the orbit mechanics. But those ideal low entry speed trajectories don’t occur often, so you’ll probably want your capsule to handle speeds up to 12 km/s to give you some design flexibility. I don’t know Orion’s entry speed limit, but Lunar entry speed is around 11 km/s, and I bet Orion has some capability beyond that to allow operational flexibility.
But all that’s for a straightforward direct entry. You can do all sorts of tricks with maneuvers and Lunar flybys to lower that speed. And even if entry speed wasn’t a limiter, you may want to do tricks like that anyway in case you end up with a Hurricane over your planned landing site and need to pick a new spot to land.
If we could, I think the best thing would be to enter into Earth orbit with a maneuver or Lunar flyby and stop at the Lunar L2 point before coming all the way home. We could wait there until it’s a good time to land if we have to, or we could deal with any quarantine issues if we found something really cool at Mars during our trip. Staging at the Moon would give us a lot of flexibility and reduce risk.
So anyway, I think Orion is probably just fine for Mars missions. Maybe it’ll need a few upgrades… but I don’t think we’ll need a whole new vehicle.
“Orion is not capable of an entry from a Mars trajectory. A Mars trajectory is too hot”
I’ve seen this claim made many times, but it is never backed up. Please cite a source which shows that Orion cannot handle Mars-return temperatures.
Dark Blue Nine, over at space politics, provided the NASA documentation that said the current configuration for the heat shield would faill short of a Mars return. I can not find the link and since Space Politics shut down I have not seen him posting anywhere…
Thanks for this, you are the first person who has pointed in a general direction so I can at least start looking for something that might show that the Orion can’t handle reentry speeds from Mars.
He’s got several posts on NSF as well.
The most relevant posts I’ve seen so far are here: http://www.spacepolitics.co…
Where he posts this: “while the Orion spacecraft is being designed to perform a wide variety of mission scenarios, many aspects of the IM mission fall outside of that design envelope. One of these critical areas was the reentry speed. Orion’s missions only require reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere at speeds up to 11.2 km/sec, whereas the special IM trajectory would have the spacecraft reentering at speeds near 14.2 km/sec. While this is only a 27% increase in reentry speed, the physics of atmospheric heating produce heat loads that are several times greater. To survive the Orion spacecraft would need a new, thicker, heavier heat shield along with a strict mass limit that is difficult to achieve given the fixed geometry of the Orion crew module.”
this still doesn’t tell us what the highest speed that the current design of the heat shield for Orion can handle is, only that the 14.2 km/sec reentry speed of the Inspiration Mars free return trajectory exceeds it.
NHATS (Near-Earth Object Human Space Flight Accessible Targets Study) uses an assumption that “Earth atmospheric entry speed [must be] less than or equal to 12 km/s at an altitude of 125 km”
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/nhats/
so we can assume that the Orion can handle at least up to 12 km/sec reentry speeds, and there are many solutions where the return speed from Mars is less than 12 km/sec!
page 6 has the relevant table
http://www.ssdl.gatech.edu/…
which suggests (pretty conclusively, to me) that Orion can, in fact, handle reentry speeds from Mars.
I thought the number was 12.4 … I have pages and pages of links but can not seem to locate the one that has that number.
The last paper I cited mentions 12.4 km/s, but only once: “An Earth entry velocity capability of 12.4 km/s is sufficient to enable Earth return in any opportunity if transit duration is not a constraint.”
If we say that around 12.4 km/s is an upper limit on the re-entry speed of Orion with the current heat shield then theoretically Orion can handle a 14 km/s return trajectory if the service module engine is fired to slow it down.
The total delta-v you can get from firing the SM engine is around 1.6 km/s. On a Mars free-return trajectory you wouldn’t need to fire the SM engine any other time. Of course keeping the propellant from boiling off would be a problem but we have to solve that anyway if we want to land on Mars.
References?
Article seems to be in general agreement with Dr. Zubrin’s assessment from May 2013.
http://www.spacenews.com/ar…
ARM makes absolutely no sense, unless the mission design goals were the following:
1. What is the absolutely least demanding thing we could do in human spaceflight beyond LEO without doing anything as ambitious as a Moon or Mars landing?
And
2. How can we make this project use as many of our pet technology projects as possible thereby justifying their expense and continued existence regardless of actual utility or cost.(Aka a ‘Christmas Tree Project’ with pet tech the ornaments)
If evaluated with those as the goals then it would be understandable to see how we got to this point.
NASA is in desperate need of a complete reform and overhaul, especially in procurement practices. New hardware should make economic sense, evaluating cost/kg (for launchers) as one of the primary factors instead of an afterthought, and it should be open bid on a pay for results/milestones/success basis, expanding on the CCDev model.
NASA also needs a clear and immediate goal, not just Mars as the ultimate destination, but Mars as the immediate destination, a mission open bidded and based on an ambitious Mars Direct model ready for launch in less than 10 years, it would provide clear and ambitious goals, it would achieve an immense amount of science, and do it far less expensively(perhaps and order of magnitude less expensive than the current NASA model)
If NASA cannot reform itself and get to Mars within the next 12 years, they should be prepared to accept the possibility that the greatest days are behind the agency; Because it is quite possible that with its current level of development and pace SpaceX could go to Mars in just 15 years time, with or without much additional input from NASA. So the question is: Will NASA opt to reform and go to Mars or are they content to be a historical footnote?
What practical value is there in sending a few civil servants to Mars at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars? With 40-year-old technology (SLS/Orion) it would be no more sustainable than Apollo.
I’ll not attempt to convince you of the value of the manned space program since you seem to have already made your mind up in that regard, I’ll only say that hundreds of billions of dollars is an extreme over estimate, but with a revamped approach it could be done at a cost of around 2 billion dollars per year over 20 years(10 years development, 10 years of missions). 2 billion dollars per year would be much less than we currently spend on manned spaceflight.
The last unbiased estimate was made under the Human Spaceflight Initiative during the first Bush Administration. The best estimate was $400B for development, testing in lunar flight, placement and support of a small lunar base, and a short campaign of manned Mars sorties, each lasting about three years. John McCain said in 2004 that America is deeply in debt and cannot afford it. The cost of Constellation/SLS/Orion already exceeds $5B/yr and $20B total, including ground support and processing facilities,and development of habs and landers hasn’t even started.
I am convinced of the value of human spaceflight, in fact I have dedicated my life to it. But human spaceflight will not be sustainable unless we can reduce its cost to a level that is equal to its value. This cannot be accomplished with SLS/Orion due to its extraordinary cost.
That report (circa Nov 1989) had an absolutely terrible mission design that attempted to use as many elements as possible, the ‘Christmas Tree project Double-XL’ really. It was what led teams at Martin Marietta to develop alternative mission architectures, a process which led to the Mars Direct architecture by Robert Zubrin and David Baker. Mars Direct has been variously priced out between 20 and 100 billion dollars over 20 years, with a median estimate of about 40 billion dollars over the life of the program. Mars Direct included Moon missions using about a 80% parts commonality and included 5 Mars missions and 10 Moon missions in a 10 year period after primary development.
I don’t consider John McCain a rational or authoritative source on almost any topic, particularly space exploration, so his opinion may be disregarded.
I think it can be done somewhat less expensive than 40 billion dollars if procurement was more like CCDev, and done for far less if launcher re-usability is perfected. I am convinced SpaceX is already pursuing (in an incremental fashion) an updated/modernized version of the Mars Direct architecture. The Raptor engine in development is sized such that it could be used for a reusable 100 ton+ launcher, and I expect that it(the launcher) will fly within 10 years. I agree that SLS/Orion should have and should still be canceled in its entirety.
SpaceX may well be pursuing such an architecture. Whether it will prove feasible is an open question. My point was that meaningful human exploration of Mars cannot be achieved with the 40-year-old SLS/Orion technology at a cost of $1B per launch for the LV alone, and this is the architecture Congress has required by law.
President Bush was blind sided with that “estimate” that is not the original design parameter.
Blind sided with an estimate that wasn’t low-balled like almost every major NASA mission cost estimate? IMHO the estimate was honest. Mr. Bush’s decision that the cost was excessive with the technology of the day was appropriate.
I would love to see humans on Mars. To do that we first need to develop the technology that will make it practical and sustainable. Otherwise it will be an expensive stunt. Even the most enthusiastic supporters of spaceflight seem unwilling to personally pay higher taxes to support it.
As I’ve mentioned before that is the worst designed mission architecture ever envisioned, one in which the primary design goal was to use every single bit from every obscure pet project. Unsustainability is completely embodied by the 90-Day Report because it was poorly designed.
The term ‘Sustainability’ is constantly bandied about, but nobody can ever give a logical definition of what that would entail, meaning I’ve yet seen anyone actually work out the system processes in a way that would be more beneficial than simple direct launches, ever. Try it, work out the number of launches, and the cost to build an alternate universe starfleet needed by advocates of such ‘sustainability’, I’ve hammered out the numbers before, they just don’t pan out, its simple economics, basic physics, and basic systems engineering.
What we should focus on rather than the extreme incompetence of the 90 Day Report of November 1989 is the NASA study from 1994, which said Mars Direct could reduce mission costs by a factor of 8, or the joint NASA / ESA study from 2003 which showed that within ten years a mission such as Mars Direct was achievable for an initial cost of about $35 billion dollars.
I am sure there were a lot of people who asked that question about the Apollo program. I guess in your mind we shouldn’t have gone to the moon because it wasn’t “sustainable.”
SLS/Orion are needed if we want to go anywhere BEO in the near term.
NASA’s job isn’t to colonize the solar system. It is to push the boundaries of space exploration and set up initial bases to help us learn how to live and work in space. It is supposed to be like Lewis and Clark and Columbus.
True colonization will only happen when private citizens and companies move into these areas. For LEO that is in the relatively near term. For BEO that is far into the future.
I am not sure whether we should have gone to the moon using the Apollo architecture. Von Braun would have preferred to begin with a permanent LEO station where vehicles for lunar and Mars expeditions would be assembled. That might have been a more sustainable approach.
However the goal of the Moon Race was not to explore space. It was intended to divert the ideological conflict between the US and the Soviets away from a perilous race in nuclear arms and to substitute a symbolic contest that would prove to the nonaligned nations that the American system was superior to Communism. The goal of Apollo was to send a man to the Moon and return him safely to the Earth before the Soviets. Period.
This post is one of the main problems I have with some New Spacers. Unless the architecture is exactly what they prefer they would rather not go anywhere.
Apollo worked and got us to the moon. Was it perfect? No, but nothing is absolutely perfect. The Apollo architecture actually worked a lot better than assembling massive spacecraft at a space station. That approach was what killed SEI.
Apollo failed because the Nixon Administration decided that it was much too expensive for what it could accomplish. The same fate awaits SLS/Orion.
I have no idea what the optimal architecture is for human flight to Mars, however I have some sense of what the available resources are. Even the Bush 2 administration made no attempt to provide the funding level actually required for success with the Constellation architecture. If SpaceX is ableto radically reduce costs, we will be able to go further with our limited resources.
Apollo didn’t fail. It accomplished its mission.
Right now SLS/Orion cost $2.7 Billion a year. Assuming the costs that most New Spacers give for when SLS/Orion are flying:
For around $7 Billion a year we could have 2 SLS flights with 2 Orions as well as a $1 Billion a year BEO hardware program. That is half as much as the federal government spends in a day. We could keep NASA at less than 1% of federal revenue and still put SLS/Orion to great use. At the height of Apollo NASA’s budget was 4.5% of the budget. I think SLS/Orion are far more sustainable.
Yes, ‘NASA is in desperate need of complete reform and overhaul’.
No, CCDev is not the right model. It is the ultimate culmination of the worst business model ideas that have been tried at NASA and is the worst possible direction to take the agency. There is NOTHING commercial about it, other than it is the most unconstrained pork spending method yet tried. The best outcome of CCDev will be to serve as an example of what a wisely lead NASA should never do again. As I’ve posted here before – if you want to understand good business models for NASA to operate under, the best thing to do is look at the history of N.A.C.A. successes. NASA assistance to industry must be limited primarily to technology assistance. Direct transfer of public funds to private interests for operational purposes will not achieve progress and certainly will never lead to a self-sustaining space industry. You need to take a few steps back and look at the big picture of what a financial disaster the COTS/CCDev program has become – the cost per capability has gotten so bad that NASA would have saved money in the long run to just keep operating the shuttle, even if you ignore the development costs of COTS/CCDev. A very sad situation indeed given that the whole reason for giving up on the shuttle was that it was considered financially unsustainable.
I think you go wrong here when you evaluate CCDev as “Direct transfer of public funds to private interests for operational purposes…” when really NASA only paying for (and only in-part) the specific development of spacecraft it has requested to fit its requirements, along with specific launch and cargo deliveries using the vehicles it ordered, vs say ULA which actually does demand and receive direct subsidies to continue its launch operations, and at considerably higher cost than those being developed by COTS/CCDev(the opposite is true for SpaceX and some others who actually pay NASA to lease some launch sites and facilities).
Another point I’d disagree with you on is the shuttle cost, because even if we completely discount the development costs the incremental cost per shuttle launch was around 450 million dollars, but only if a full 6 missions per year were launched. When considering the flight rate toward the end of the program a more reasonable estimate for actual incremental cost is between 600 and 900 million per launch.
When we examine CCDev, specifically SpaceX’s recent award, it breaks down to about 433 million per launch for a guaranteed 6 launches, and that is for early flights including a very substantial amount of development and testing NASA has requested. This figure is still lower than the bottom limits for STS incremental cost; And if we were to compare apples to apples early shuttle flights cost more than three times its final best case incremental launch cost(which it never really achieved). The per flight incremental costs for the manned version of the Dragon spacecraft after the first 6 flights are expected by almost everyone involved to be much lower than the initial award costs.
There is some debate to be had about Boeing(ULA) and if its entry is truly worth its expense, vs SpX, SNC, Orb ect… but I see Dragon 2 really being the crown jewel and sucess story of CCDev, and even NASA for that matter.
As for NACA I feel its a bit too far removed in both time and scope to be a very good foil to NASA.
If our goal is asteroid science unmanned landers can do the job less expensively than asteroid return. If our goal is asteroid utilization, returning it to the ISS will be much more effective than returning it to lunar orbit. If our goal is human spaceflight, we need less expensive access to to the ISS, and less expensive vehicles to go onward from there.
The ARM was created because Congress demanded that NASA produce the SLS and Orion, and then demanded that NASA create a mission for it. The truth is that SLS/Orion is a profligate waste of money that the nation does not need and the Obama Administration did not want. It’s time for the taxpayers to tell Congress to put our precious tax dollars to more practical use.
You put this in orbit. SLS is pork – fried up southern style in a vat of fat with heaping loads of sanctimony on the side.
One of NASA’s roles is planetary defence. This has nothing to do with going to Mars although some hardware designs can be used for several types of missions. The asteroid diverter can be used for both defence and mining.
The only element common to asteroid retrieval and asteroid diversion is the solar electric propulsion stage.
No the whole of the first spacecraft is needed for diversion. Without a guidance system it cannot capture the dangerous asteroid. A bag or gripper is needed to gain control authority over the rock (or dust cloud) in 3 dimensions.
I do accept that a bigger bag will be required for a bigger rock.
(The Orion V2.0 and SLS are for Mars trips.)
Incorrect, the masses of objects that pose any threat to the ground are so high that electric propulsion simply does not have the thrust to make any meaningful adjustment. A more practical and effective approach would be to hit any such threat with a kinetic impactor or nuclear weapon, both of these would be far more effective and far cheaper. Planetary defense is not a justification for ARM, except in the minds of layman who don’t grasp the masses and physics involved.
Kinetic Impactors certainly are one of the most promising technology for planetary defense that’s been proposed so far, but there needs to be a lot of technical problems worked out before we’d know if they’d work for sure. So it’s a little early to say KI is the only way to go. And SEP can be used to deliver a KI, or a gravity tractor, or ion beam deflection, or laser ablation, or even nukes. SEP is a very efficient and fast way to get to an asteroid (yes, sometimes even faster than chemical propulsion, especially if you have to rendezvous). And before you go attacking people for not having a sufficient grasp of physics, you might want to first familiarize yourself with recent research. There are research papers from groups all over the world that demonstrate how SEP spacecraft could be effectively used for planetary defense. I did a quick search and found a GTOC competition that looked at SEP to deliver a KI to an asteroid and a paper looking in detail at a KI to deflect 2011 AG5 that found SEP to be a better option than chem. And I’m sure I could find more papers looking at using other methods.
Proponents of SEP have tried desperately to tie it to planetary defense, however there are multiple problems, first with those whose architecture called for capture and tug, since anything large enough to be a threat to earth would be hundreds of times more massive than could ever be hoped to move by any amount with SEP. Now they try to tie it to the KI approach.The thrust required to significantly move an impactor massive enough and to high enough speed to directly intercept and deflect an asteroid or comet is far higher than can be achieved in a reasonable timeframe with electric propulsion. GTOC’s winning solution required several gravity assists and many years lead time. Realistically in an impact scenario Earth is not likely to have the convenience of a 30 to 40 year lead time and will need high thrust for a direct intercept.
You don’t know what you’re talking about. With long warning times you only need to impart a cm/s or less of DV to the asteroid, especially if you have an Earth flyby before the impact where you can modify the keyhole. And if they fly a sentinel-type space telescope we should have decades of warning time for everything except for comets. And we don’t currently have any technology that could deflect a comet. KI is jut one option amoung many, and there are also many possible impact scenarios which have to be dealt with in different ways.
I always know exactly what I’m talking about actually, I make a habit of doing the relevant research, you however missed my primary point; which was that there is a very good chance that you simply would not have the convenience of a long warning time such as the 30 years in gtoc, think 3 months or 30 days, critical disaster scenarios without optimal conditions. If you’re serious about planetary protection, think critically about less than optimal circumstances.
All this aside, planetary protection from space rocks is simply not a good justification for a focus on a particular hardware, technology, or capability set at this time.
This mission concept resides in the interstitial space of an Administration and a Congress with vastly different visions of space exploration, but of a common funding approach that is insufficient to do much of anything beyond low Earth orbit. IF Mars is the ultimate goal, then a heavy lift capability, efficient in-space propulsion, the ability to work and live in deep space, and the ability to safely return are all elements that need to be developed. Without consensus, nor a change in funding, ARM is a solution that touches on many of these capabilities.
I agree that the ARM mission is insufficient and unnecessary. The President promised an asteroid but wouldn’t propose the funding necessary to actually get us to an NEO in its native orbit. They had to come up with something to make the President’s promise “come true” so we got ARM.
That doesn’t mean though that SLS/Orion are useless. They can be put to great use in cis-lunar space and beyond. Orion Block I is especially suited for cis-lunar space. There has already been a proposal for a small EML-2 gas/logistics station with a reusable lunar lander. It would take 3 SLS launches to put together and then you could have as much as 2 or 3 lunar landing missions per year depending on the SLS flight rate. Also the station could conceivable be resupplied by Falcon Heavy and Dragon.
This idea doesn’t break the bank and gives an important mission to SLS/Orion.
In the time period considered, the SpaceX BFR should be available. With the base model having twice the lift of SLS and be reusable, its seems best to save the money that would be spent on the SLS.
The BFR is a paper rocket right now. There has been testing on the Raptor engines but beyond that anything BFR related is a long way away (late 2020s probably). I see no reason to deprive ourselves of BEO travel until then. Will BFR eventually be built? I hope so. Then we will have two HLVs that we can use concurrently. As the Orbital failure shows it is best to have multiple options.
It is a paper rocket. But the aggressive plan is to have it ready by the end of the decade and boots on Mars by 2026. Typically, SpaceX is 26 months late on its estimates. That puts the BFR at roughly the time as the only funded crew SLS.
Will there be money to support the SLS at billions per launch when a rocket with twice the capacity is available? Maybe. What will the program look like after 1 or 2 changes of national administrations? Hard to tell.
Well Musk had an aggressive plan to get people in orbit by 2010 without government funding. With government funding it will be in 2017. Nothing wrong with that mind you. I am a fan of Musk and SpaceX and what they have done.
If the BFR is going to be so much better and be ready around 2025 what will canceling SLS now do to help it? Nothing. What is wrong with having 2 systems? If the BFR is not all it is cracked up to be then canceling SLS will keep us in LEO for the next 15 years.
NASA will not beable to afford the hardware to utilize two systems. By chopping SLS/Orion it will free up funding to build the actual hardware and technology we need to launch on the BFR.
So we would be spending $2.7 Billion a year on hardware to launch on a rocket that hasn’t even been announced yet and hope that it is ready in 11 years?
Also why can’t we have a competition like CCDev for things like a lunar lander and a hab module?
NASA will not be going anywhere BEO without an increase in funding. A modest increase now (as well as the ISS being deorbited in 2024) will free up more than enough money to build the hardware we need.
The SpaceX BFR concept is based on the manufacturing and assembly flow of the Falcon, which is remarkably efficient. One major change might be the need to shift from horizontal to vertical integration due to the size of the vehicle. The SLS OTOH is based on the assembly flow of the Shuttle, which is far more labor-intensive and demanding of facilities, in particular for the manufacturing and assembly of the SRBs. Moreover SpaceX can come close to SLS performance at a fraction of the cost with the FH.
The currently prevailing lunar phobia continues to push NASA space exploration policy farther down the death spiral of absurdity. Sadly, it seems by now as though there is no hope of fixing the current leadership policy failures until the current administration is gone in a couple of years. Every other space agency in the world sees the obvious next exploration steps; has anybody figured out a reason for NASA’s sudden and unique lunar blindness of the past six years?
Lunar phobia? Since 1990, the US has had 7 missions explore the Moon, and 5 of them were in the past six years – the LRO (2009), LCROSS (2009), ARTEMIS (2010), GRAIL (2011), and LADEE (2013). What lunar blindness? These have been very illuminating lunar exploration missions! Perhaps you’re the one not seeing clearly!
Currently means over the last few years. I am pretty sure he was referring to the dictat of the Obama Administration that we will not have human lunar missions because we have, “been there before.” Also all the missions you mentioned were started during the Bush Administration. The current administration is ignoring the moon.
fair points. and it is true that the current administration has not shown any interest in continuing the Bush-era plans to return to the Moon, but to say there has been a phobia or an ignoring of the Moon in the past six years is just plain wrong. we’ve learned more about the Moon in the past six years than we have in any time since the Apollo program.
Yes, that is exactly what I meant. Everything Hug Doug referred to was carryover from prior years that was sufficiently small effort and sufficiently progressed as to avoid cancellation. I was referring to large scale future exploration plans such as the topic of this thread, of which there has been a notable avoidance of the moon by NASA ever since the Constellation cancellation, even while the rest of the world shows keen interest.
the GRAIL mission wasn’t selected until December 2007, and LADEE was announced in February 2008.
both were planned, built, and launched within the past six years.
(darn! meant this as a reply to @wwheaten).
What he said.
And I’ve said the same thing over and over, along with several others: maybe ARM is the wrong mission for a hugely expensive rocket. But there are so many things we need to become a space-living species- and the first is in situ use of materials, including moving them from complex orbits to more convenient spots as well as materials smelting and extraction.
It’s the secondary tech that makes this mission so important. But far too expensive using SLS.
There was a brief period when the Obama administration had announced the end of Constellation. The Obama Administration wanted the money to go into a program called Space Technology. That made sense. Naturally it was eliminated by Congress to create SLS/Orion and keep segmented SRBs in production for another thirty years.
While I agree that SLS shouldn’t have been single sourced I must disagree with your assertion that just spending the money on “tech development” makes sense.
With Apollo tech was developed along the way and integrated with the mission. Just spending money to develop “game changing technologies” without a mission is silly. It would just turn NASA into a place where everyone could get funding for their pet technology that may not have any bearing on space exploration.
Under the Obama Administration’s original proposal we would have no HLV under development, no BEO craft, and no plans to do anything BEO for the foreseeable future. Things are not the best when it comes to human space flight right now but it would have been worse if the original proposal had succeeded.
Under the President’s proposal we would have had a 6 billion dollar budget increase, over five years to fully fund mulitple commercial firms for passenger service to to LEO.
NONE of the squabbles in congress over commercial crew would have EVER had to be waged.
We would have had new engines for a heavy lift and Atlas replacements comming online in about a year or two.
NONE of the squabbles over russian engines in congress would have ever had to be waged.
We would have had all the trade studies done on which heavy lift to build and IF we would need it at all currently. The design trades and decision had to be made NO LATER than Jan 1st 2015. Bolden could make the decision ANYTIME before 2015. We would have fuel depot tech flying by now or very shortly. We would have matured the technology for closed loop life support, aero capture, and a long list of tech that will be needed in the future push outward.
Can you please list all this “pet” technology with absolutly no use in space that was proposed to be funded?
I remember that quite clear unfortunately all everyone else heard was “no need to go to the Moon, we’ve been there before.” Other than that Constellation lunar program was basically kaput with no money available for a lander. Until money is made available for a lander or habitat module for Mars journey, only BEO manned mission option is to an asteroid.
The great mistake was to be half-hearted in the approach, Constellation could have been successful albeit at immense cost, or could have been canceled entirely along with its Orion/SLS successor, saving that money for more rational mission designs.
Like simply using two medium lift rockets for an Earth-Orbit-Rendevous architechture. A modest modification to a capsule (perhaps the upcoming Dragon V2), and a lander developed in a process similar to CCDev. This would be able to replicate Apollo, at far less cost than Constellation, while I’m a far greater proponent of Mars exploration, I can see how a Moon expedition could be achieved simply and cheaply. If NASA could muster the type of focus, drive, and leadership it had in 60’s and couple that with the advantages of open-bid commercial space, I think it could achieve a Moon expedition in 4 to 5 years from project start, and Mars in 6 to 10 years.
President Nixon tried to no spend money on a program that congress appropriated funding for. So Congress passed a law that Presidents have to execute the spending of appropriated funding to what was voted on. This was passed in 1974 If I remember correctly. The President’s non binding budget proposal to congress suggested stop funding Constellation. A bi partisan congress voted to stop funding it. They then immediately voted to fund a new launch vehicle and capsule, renamed SLS/MPCV. The President would have had to veto the entire spending bill, which includes justice dept et cetera to stop the funding on SLS.
The President only proposes the congress disposes.
I do not consider the President independent of NASA, and do include any current president strongly in an evaluation of NASA leadership, not only in providing directive leadership, but also in having the necessary political leadership to make sure the agency under his direction has the appropriate legislative backing.
Unfortunately that isn’t possible when the majority party in the House (which initiates all appropriations bills) is dedicated to blocking any initiative by the president. For almost four years Frank Wolf has had veto power over the entire NASA budget, a degree of micromanagement to which other agencies are seldom subjected.
I’ve seen no evidence that any recent or future Republican presidential candidate advocates increased spending on human spaceflight, other than Newt Gingrich, who was ridiculed for it. The budget deficit remains high, and the public will reject any increase in taxes, so a significant increase in discretionary spending appears unlikely to say the least.
I actually don’t see a flat NASA budget as a deterrent. Unlike most I believe NASA is in some ways over-funded, meaning the amount that is spent is quite high in relation to the level of results achieved. It comes down to poor structure, poor methods, and poor management.
The myth of the underfunded NASA always starts with NASA’s budget as a percentage of the entire federal budget, ignoring that increases in the overall federal budget are disproportionately in just a few areas namely National Defense and Entitlements/Social Welfare, and that the country was much poorer overall in the 60’s then it is now. When we view the NASA budget in terms of real purchasing power, meaning having been adjusted for inflation, its budget is roughly comparable to its Apollo era budgets, and this has been true for nearly 25 years, since at least the early 1990’s.
I’m not advocating that the NASA budget be cut, but I am advocating for serious reform. If properly reformed NASA could be extremely successful entirely within its current budget.
As for the political side neither party has a particularly great record for space exploration in recent years, the current situation belongs to both parties, neither has had adequate political or directive leadership, both the Bush and the Obama administrations have performed quite poorly. There should have been reform after the Augustine Commission report, but there has not been any significant reform. It’s worth noting while holding both houses of Congress and the Presidency the Democrats were unable to reverse NASA’s direction. It may be possible that the Republicans will have similar conditions by 2016, so it may be their ball to drop this time around.
When it comes down to it, the cold reality is that any program must be ready to launch in less than 10 years, preferably less than 8 years, because the political conditions that enabled its start are unlikely to last much beyond that. Additionally the mission has to be made very affordable, else it will receive too much opposition just like the SEI.
If the space program in the 1960’s under President Kennedy had been moving at a pace like we’ve been experiencing in recent years, by the time President Nixon got into office the program would have been canceled well before reaching the Moon, as attention focused on things like the Vietnam War. The faster pace spared the program, because by the time Nixon took office the mission was nearly ready making it nearly impossible to cancel(at least until several missions were under their belt).
Whichever political party you identify with, or even if you don’t directly identify with a party, I encourage you and everyone else to strongly push NASA reform, space policy is and must be a political issue, but it needn’t necessarily be a partisan one(which would increase the chances of failure), we can push some agreements on appropriate reforms along with clear, immediate, and achievable goals. It doesn’t have to be a source of ridicule if there are enough committed people speaking loud enough to make sure its taken as a serious issue, pushing back strongly against anyone shortsighted and childish enough to mock it.
Well after the President proposed that increase in funding he promptly forgot about it.
There is not enough demand right now for more than 2 LEO taxis (even though I would have loved to see more fly). Even if there is a commercial station in the near term two providers will be more than enough.
I find it quite interesting that some New Space advocates have no problem spending more on ISS and commercial crew than SLS/Orion and yet scream for SLS/Orion to be canceled because it is “too expensive.” (Note: I am fan of ISS. I am just saying this for the sake of discussion)
The squabbles still would have happened and would have probably been worse. Even Lori Garver said they had to do SLS/Orion in order to get funding for Commercial crew. If we didn’t have SLS/Orion we wouldn’t have commercial crew either.
I don’t think the proposed “HLV study” effort would have produced engines we could just strap on to Atlas V.
So we would have spent 3 Billion dollars to decide if we should build an HLV or not instead of actually designing and building an HLV. I don’t think that was the better option.
Even Mr. Musk is planning to build an HLV vs. relying on fuel depots (at least initially).
I thought the $3 Billion a year for the ISS was supposed to be helping us develop closed loop life support.
NASA is working on aerocapture (LDSD).
I have no problem with tech development as long as it is part of a broader mission.
My point about pet technologies was that if you made NASA’s mission solely tech development then people would try to get funding for technologies that may not be important or needed for near term space exploration. NERVA and SEP come to mind.
Promptly forgot about? Please explain to me Joe, and site a few examples, just what exactly THIS President has proposed to THIS Republican house that they have jumped on board with? Please site examples of THIS republican senate led by McConnell that has not fillibustered it the second the President suggests it?
Mitch McConnell was very clear, THIS President does not get any successes. You make a one term President by not allowing them to do ANYTHING to fix ANYTHING. You make their whole Presidency a failure by the house voting no to every single proposal. 80 republican house members even signed a pact. Tney would vote no to EVERYTHING he proposed.
They idea that all this president has to do is make a suggestion and wave a wand and it will happen is silly. The HUNDREDS of fillibusters says different. The 25% of all ambassadors slots not being filled is a testifment.
All the governmental appointments that the senate refused to vote on and fill those posts, another testment.
So Joe, enlighten me … how does the President get anything past a house that took a pact to vote no on everything he proposes?
Well if you look at the President’s proposed budgets on the White House website you will see a drop off from $19 Billion to $17.7 Billion for the NASA budget.
There was bipartisan opposition to a purely technology driven program. Last time I checked Bill Nelson is a Democrat.
Also last time I checked the Senate has been held by the Democrats since 07 and at the time of the 2010 NASA authorization both the House and Senate were in the hands of Democrats.
Oh please lets not turn this into a blame the Republicans for everything rant. They are not required to agree with the policies of this President. I don’t recall the Democrats agreeing with most of the policies of the Bush Administration.
The President doesn’t want to negotiate with the Republicans. It benefits him more to play the blame game.
How about the fact that the Republicans can’t get anything past a Senate that won’t even vote on bills that get sent to them from the House? That is pretty unprecedented.
The OIG (office of the Inspector General) pegged just the development costs of MPCV/Orion at 16.5 billion and the recent GAO (government accountablity office) pushed development and first flights for Orion at 23 billion.
That is 8 years of ISS funding and commercial crew didn’t get anywhere near that much. That doesn’t included the 30 billion for SLS ( booz allen didn’t give NASA numbers any credence but said that 30 billion would not take it to the Block II, that would only pay for the Block 1, now we see it will not include funding for Block I B. It will be closer to 50 billion to get the Block II, the high energy second stage, the lander and associated additional hardware. So 70 billion for SLS.Orion and you honestly going to try and equate that to Commercial crew funding?
Okay your numbers on Orion through first flight are a little high but they are close enough.
The $23 Billion number must be from inception (2005) through 2025 or so. So that is a bit more than $1 Billion a year through 20 years. ISS spending +commercial crew through 8 years (2017-2025 based on either OIG or GAO numbers)) gives us roughly $32 Billion.
SLS will cost around $12 Billion through 2018. If you assume $4 Billion a year for SLS after that through 2021 you get $24 Billion. In 2021 EM-2 will launch on SLS Block IB so your estimate is off.
I am not equating SLS/Orion to CC. That would be comparing apples and oranges since they are designed for different missions. Obviously CC costs less than SLS/Orion. I am comparing them to CC + ISS because without ISS unfortunately there would be no demand for commercial crew.
So if look at the same 8 year period (2017-2025) we get:
CC + ISS: $32 Billion (LEO)
SLS/Orion: $40 Billion (BEO)
Why is ISS spending so sacrosanct while we must cancel SLS/Orion because they are “too expensive?”
I’m glad you brought this up again. I was in favor of those proposals. It’s not necessarily tech development without a mission to use it. These are things that definitely have good uses. And for fuel depots – there should be tests as part of the program for sure.
Hopefully the next POTUS will have the leadership to demand that the ARM be cancelled. Mr. Obama made a valiant effort to shift NASA from expensive and aimless projects intended to please powerful lobbyists to development of practical space technology. He was defeated by a primarily Republican congress that shows no desire at all to compromise.
It won’t matter what a President proposes in the non binding budget to NASA. It will depend on which way the wind is blowing with the house republicans. They control the ways and means committee and the appropriation committee.
We should proceed directly to Deimos and Phobos, placing us solidly on the critical path to Mars.
We should proceed directly to Deimos and Phobos, placing us solidly on the critical path to Mars.