Why Space Advisory Panels Are Useless. They Are Always Ignored.
Smith to Bolden: Why Not Orion for Commercial Crew?, SpaceNews
“If Orion could provide a redundant capability as a fallback for the commercial crew partners, why is it necessary to carry two partners to ensure competition in the constrained budget environment?” Smith asked NASA Administrator Charles Bolden in an Oct. 7 letter co-signed by Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-Miss.), chairman of the House Science space subcommittee.”
5 Years After Augustine, Florida Today
“The funding still doesn’t match the missions,” said Norman Augustine, the former Lockheed Martin CEO who headed the Review of U.S. Human Spaceflight Plans Committee, in a recent interview. “We’ve been there before, we know how that movie ends. I just hope we find a way to avoid that.”
Palazzo is a disappointment. He knows this answer. What vehicle will carry Orion to station? Right now there are none that are human rated (thanks Lori for setting me straight) that would carry Orion and the SLS Titanic is cost prohibited.
Besides – Orion is already the back up as per the NASA Authorization Act.
The government bureaucrats are beginning to see their space monopoly crumble. We just have to get through tCap.
Look at who some of his big donors are…
Rep. Steven Palazzo
2….Northrop Grumman
5….Alliant Techsystems
5….Lockheed Martin
5….Raytheon Co
15…Boeing Co
Thanks Rep. Palazzo.
Way to make what the Russians charge per seat look reasonable and attractive.
Yep, he is the congressman from Big Aerospace.
Atlas and Delta could be man-rated for a few hundred million according to USA. Orion could easily get to ISS on either of them. However, ISS has been dropped as a mission for several years. I don’t know if any design changes were made that would rule out an ISS mission.
The bigger problem is that the service module for the first couple of Orion missions will be provided by ESA – they owe the US for ISS resupply missions they won’t be doing and this is how they will pay us back. That it increased Orion project costs is beside the point.
Atlas/Delta couldn’t carry Orion, a service module, and an escape tower. You’d need additional funding for a smaller/lighter service module and a much lighter escape tower.
Likewise, IIRC, Orion won’t have a docking system until somewhere in the 2020’s. So it physically can’t dock with the ISS. Can’t even safely approach it. (Although I’m sure a manual work-around could be figured out, but no-one would be happy about it.)
Show me the numbers. No way can Delta cost a “few hundred million”. I hear this thrown around a lot in Cannon… no one can show me the numbers.
USA published a a paper at an AIAA conference. It had cost figures. About all they need is a few redundancy changes and an onboard diagnostics computer to send the manned vehicle a “time to abort” signal.
I think you mean ULA? I did find this:
https://www.nasa.gov/sites/…
Reading this tells me – NO THANKS.
Yes, I meant ULA. Sorry. I was on my cell.
No, this is not the paper. It was an AIAA paper, not a proposal to NASA. Given that the Boeing CCDEV vehicle will fly on a ULA vehicle, I expect the needed human rating work is being done. And since CCDEV seems to have less NASA oversight, it may cost less.
Smith and Palazzon have a good point. And as RocketScientist327 points out, Orion is already the backup.
Nevermind the fact that the cost of using Orion on SLS would quadruple the price per seat over what we currently pay the Russians, and that the Orion and SLS likely won’t be ready until 2021 or 2022, five years later than Boeing or SpaceX.
However the rationale points out why the Gerstenmaier decision to go with Boeing as number 1 is a bad one. Boeing will do things the old expensive way and not the newspace way which SpaceX has shown to be faster and less expensive. Besides, NASA is supposed to be pushing technology development and that is something the Boeing design does not do (neither does Orion).
The mistake of Shuttle was that once it started flying there were almost no improvements ever made, especially to the flight critical systems. Even when there were accidents they did not make significant advances in the design or technology. If you read AvWeek, Gerstenmaier’s choice was based on going back to old technology. Shuttle became an operations program and that is where Gerstenmaier is trying to take the program again today. Not smart. NASA should have gone with advancing technology and reducing costs; Space-X’s capsule and booster does that for capsules, and Sierra Nevada was promising this for flying vehicles/lifting bodies.
The estimated cost of the Orion is 1.1 billion per unit for four persons. The SLS will cost in the neighborhood of 1.5 – 2.5 bilion so it would not be a quadruple increase over the russians. Closer to 10 times more costly per seat.
Lets see if I got this right: The Shuttle cost was below 1 billion per flight for 7 persons + a lot of cargo. The Orion 3,5 billion per flight for 4 persons? Why did they cancel the shuttle in the first place? Just to come out of LEO? But why cancel it? To save money??
No – the average shuttle flight was $1.2 billion everytime the RSRMs were lit.
It was 205 billion, in total spent on the space shuttle for 135 flights or 1.518 billion per flight.
spaceflight gets about half of the NASA budget. The space shuttle was 30 years old, it was late 1960’s early 70’s technology. Heritage hardware that was very expensive and the space shuttle wasn’t really reusable as much as it was servicable. It was basically stripped down to the nuts and bolts and rebuilt after each flight with each shuttle having it’s own refurbishment team. The system also had a huge hertiage for supplying congressional districts with NASA centers and contractors a pork premium. The pork premium on human spacehardware procured in the traditional NASA was now so expensive you couldn’t do both at the same time. Retiring the space shuttle and all the space shuttle workers and contractors was going to pay for a new lean program under the Vision for Space Exploration. Losing the workforce and contractors was a non starter for congress. They saved the workforce by starting the Ares I and V Constellation program.
Congress wants huge monster rockets that are disposable.
Saved the workforce? What workforce would you be referring to? The vast majority of us were let go.
tutiger87- if you worked on Shuttle, your experience is important. Can you tell us why you think it was so expensive? Have the same mistakes been made with SLS?
Thanks! Yes, the space shuttle was indeed expensive. But why is Orion itself even more expensive? I understand the heavy lifter will be so expensive that they have to cancel it in a couple of years. An enormous waste of money.
Because of the constant redesigns. First it was 6 people, then 4, some cargo, no cargo, land landing, water landing… on and on and on … all at cost plus. The contractors do not care because they get paid regardless.
So if we need both primary and backup launch systems for ISS access the least expensive pair would obviously be Dragon and CST-100.
Boeing lobbied is corporate rear end off – by far the best, and meanest, lobbyists on capital hill belong to Boeing. They are that good.
How do you know that? Seriously- you might be a Very Famous Person, or your you could be a semi-informed citizen, like me.
http://inthecapital.streetw…
“3. Boeing – $90.3 million
As one of the country’s biggest defense contractors, Boeing has always been concerned about influencing Capitol Hill. This year the company has 14 firms on retainer, with Akin Gump receiving a $130,000 contract with the company and Gephardt Group, McBee Strategic and Shockey Scofield Solutions all enjoying a $120,000 retainer for 2014 so far. Due to budget cuts and sequestration, as well as the wind down of the Iraq War, the Obama Administration was the first government in decades to consider cutting back of defense spending, which caused contractors like Boeing to increase their K Street efforts.”
Too bad he is so ignorant that he is asking the wrong question. He should be asking “If we can spend on 2.6 Billion on SpaceX and get test launch and 6 manned launches (capsules plus launchers) why did we paying Lockheed 3.9 Billion for design, development, testing, and evaluation (DDT&E) through 2013 and an additional 3.5 Billion for only 2 – 3 capsules of which only one may be used on a manned flight?”
Numbers were taken from NASA website: http://www.nasa.gov/home/hq…
Never mind. Dennis Wingo already provided the answer.
The U.S. should utilize every manned spacecraft it’s making to the greatest extent possible. It takes a lot of time and money to develop them.
Currently it seems to take 7 to 10 years for the U.S. to develop a
manned spacecraft from contract signing to first manned flight.
If it doesn’t end up cancelled before it flies like Constellation,
X-38, Venturestar, NASP X-30, MOL or Dyna Soar.
Skylab took 6 years (1967-73). Shuttle took 8 years (1973-81). ISS took 7 years (1993-2000). Commercial Crew is going to take at least 7 years (2010-2017). Orion is going to take at least 10 years (2011-2021).
With pretty much unlimited funding and a crash program Mercury took 3 years (1958-61) from contract to manned flight, Gemini took 3 years (1962-65). Apollo CM took 7 years (1961-68) , Apollo LM took 7 years (1962-69).
The ISS construction was not completed until 2010?
President Obama did manage to get 50 million to start commercial crew from the Stimulus in 2009, That is all Senator Shelby would agree to if I remember correctly.
ISS was first occupied in 2000. If Commercial Crew began in 2009, then it takes even longer to create and fly a manned spacecraft.
President Obama’s original first proposal, in 2010, was for a NASA increase of funding, 6 billion over five years to fully fund multiple entries for Commercial Crew to close “the gap”. Ares I had fell so far behind schedule it was looking like 2018-2019 for the first flight.
Whatever.
My point stands that at the present time and with current funding, it takes 7 to 10 years, or more, to develop and fly a crew on new U.S. manned spacecraft.
What I was trying to point out for commercial crew it was the politics that controled the timeline, not the technology or aerospace’s ability to build faster. Once space transportation is in the same commercial boat as all other forms of commercial transportation you will start seeing build times reduced. When it is cost plus there isn’t any incentives to do it faster.
Well that seems to be the way our government rolls. Since Mercury and Gemini, nothing has taken less than about 7 years from contract until the first crew flies. Some because of need to develop technology, but now it’s almost all about funding. I don’t see that changing any time soon. People can speculate and dream, but it hasn’t happened yet.
It is sooner than most people realize. The three legs of the stool are commercial cargo(check) commercial flights to LEO(check 2016-17) and a commercial destination(check BA 2015-17) I believe by the end of this decade, 2020, the transition will be complete. Congress will no longer have that iron grip on this transportation system.
Commercial Crew exists today because of the clear failure of the unfounded assertion that CEV launched on a hypothetical Ares I would be “safer” than CEV launched on an EELV. The current state of affairs clearly shows that Ares I was never “needed” to begin with, other than to give NASA engineers a starting point for Ares V.
Unfortunately, much of CEV’s troubles were caused by problems with Ares I, so we’ll never know what might have been if Griffin wasn’t so dead set against flying crew on an EELV.
As was clearly spelled out in President Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration. It said no new rockets for NASA for launching capsules. Also the 60 day study that Griffin did he put his thumb on the scale to wash the EELV’s out of contention.
Yes, the ESAS clearly stated that the Orion capsule could not possibly be launched on the Delta IV. Consequently it was necessary to build the Ares I. It was clear the authors were directed what conclusions they were to reach before they started.
Actually, ISS was not completed until 2011
I am a pro-SLS/Orion guy and even I think this is stupid. SLS is overpowered for ISS crew swap and Orion would be underutilized. CST-100 and Dragon are specifically designed for this purpose.
You gotta keep the SLS funding somehow. There are more BFR plans than just SLS and Spacex btw… we just do not publicly hear of them.
The saddest thing about this is not that Palazzo & Smith signed this – they’re busy guys without subject matter background. That’s why they rely on their staffs to make sure they “don’t do stupid stuff” This is a massive staff failure – if Shank, Hammond, etc. don’t know better, then Congress really is pathetic.
http://www.spaceref.com/new…. This is a good reason not to use SLS-Orion for HSF. Within 1 min. of flight on Ares-1 a destruct would send embers out in a cloud, that would melt the parachutes. Nice images of melted parachutes and using a Titan-4 for a model. Solids of any type may not be able to be used. This may be why NASA is talking about using liquids to replace the SRBs on SLS. Atlas may not be usable either.
Similar talk surrounded the shuttle SRBs, but nothing ever came of it. I doubt that NASA will ever get the funding to replace the SRBs with liquids. ATK will be allowed to submit their own “upgrade” proposal which will ultimately be chosen due to the (generally) lower development cost of solids.
Solids were there from the beginning (Ares I and Ares V), and will likely be there until the end of the SLS program.
They have done more than talk. NASA has put out a RFI. One offer was F-1 engines. Solids could be used for no crewed test and cargo flights. I wonder if Congress knew about this. That solid rocket fuel just keeps burning. Water will not put it out. They split the case and 1500 psi shoots it out. But Congress must think it is worth it. The article called it fratricide. DC might be able to handle it. SLS could switch to DC or something like it. It will be like you say though and stay the course and save some money.
When NASA can’t even afford payloads for SLS, besides Orion, I just don’t see liquid boosters ever being funded. That and ATK has always had a knack for staying alive during tough times for solids.
During Constellation there were proposals to launch the Orion on a liquid fueled Delta 4H. This was rejected as impossible, and anyway more dangerous than the Ares,
There was no limitation due to physics or engineering that rendered it “impossible”. It was “impossible” because of the management climate created by NASA Administrator Mike Griffin.
Whenever the idea comes up about having some sort of program “redundancy”, it’s amazing how little if any thought goes into thinking through and documenting just what that even means.
No one ever draws out the scenario that initiates the need for the redundancy, the money to be spent now to assure the redundancy is ready if needed, the flow of money in the future scenario, or the end-game whereby things return to normal and the redundancy is put back in “warm” mode versus “hot”. Official reports, nil. Official scenarios, zip. Not even semi-vague sort-of maybe’s with some high level directions.
If we let the politicians and program managers own the word “redundancy”, then declare it vague, and undefined, and the last thing we will ever have is robust options in case of major program setbacks or catastrophes. That’s how you end up with crazy talk about Orion from politicians that just want to screw one program that does not serve them in favor of one that does.