Thinking About Orion EFT-1 in Interstellar Terms
Thinking about #Orion #EFT1 in #Interstellar terms pic.twitter.com/J9A4VkLuIf
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) December 4, 2014
Thinking about #Orion #EFT1 in #Interstellar terms pic.twitter.com/J9A4VkLuIf
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) December 4, 2014
http://xkcd.com/1074/
And in 3.. 2.. 1.. cue the complaints about not enough budget.
But remember the 1989 Bush Mars plan that NASA said would cost around 200 billion ?
Well, assuming 25 years and a yearly budget of around 16B, that is a cool 400 billion dollars spent, and not an inch off the basketball.
well that plan, the Space Exploration Initiative, was never funded, nor did it ever gather any congressional support. all deep space human exploration was essentially abandoned in 1992, in favor of Goldin’s “Faster, Better, Cheaper” robotic missions.
and in 1996, President Clinton’s National Space Policy officially removed human deep space exploration from the NASA agenda.
The reason the SEI wasn’t funded was that Bush took one look at the (relatively accurate) price tag and decided it was too high. I have not heard anything different from the current presidential hopefuls on either side, or from Congress. What Congress is willing to do is keep SLS/Orion going forever as a jobs project to provide big bucks to their districts and the contractors and lobbyists who finance their campaigns.
Given the incredible advances in technology, by this time we should have lowered the cost of human spaceflight by a factor of ten. Without such a reduction we will not be able to send people to Mars. Clinton directed NASA to do what it could usefully do within the available budget. We cannot eliminate environmental monitoring because if we do not keep Earth habitable we won’t have the resources to go to Mars.
We have a fixed budget. We want to do more. We need to reduce cost. QED.
Look I agree with your sentiments, and would increase the NASA but get by 30% if we could dial up human exploration, but I’m not optimistic. If you’re looking for true believers among politicians, well, I’ll just refer you to Harry Truman’s comments on finding a friend in Washington.
This “just give NASA more money and it will be successful” argument is getting very, very old. Look at a graph of the NASA budget as a percentage of GDP and you’ll see the cold hard truth about NASA’s budget put into the proper perspective. As a country, we just don’t care as much about manned space travel as we did when it served as the main weapon in a proxy war with the Soviet Union during Apollo/Saturn.
http://www.fdbetancor.com/w…
The legend on the right should read “Percent of US Federal Budget” not “Percent of US GDP”. The GDP in 1966 was $815B. The NASA budget was .61% of GDP that year. In 2013 the NASA budget was .10% of GDP. But looked at the other way around, the NASA budget, in constant dollars, is nearly half what it was in 1966 and almost as much as it was the year we landed on the Moon. We still have quite a bit of money. We need to think more about cost and value, and make better decisions regarding how to use the money we have. Before we decide to send people to Mars with the SLS/Orion technology, we need to figure out how much it is worth. If it is not worth what it will cost, we need to first develop new technology that will reduce the cost.
New technology is not synonymous with low cost. In fact, the quest for the inclusion of bleeding edge technologies can increase development costs, increase development risk, and delay schedules unnecessarily (e.g. Lockheed’s X-33).
SpaceX arguably has very little new technology on Falcon 9 (conventional LOX/kerosene engines mated to aluminum lithium alloy tanks), yet is it far cheaper than any other launch vehicle in its class and its first stage is getting very close to being reused.
The slope of that curve is consistently downward except for brief expansions during the Kennedy, Johnson and George Herbert Walker Bush administrations. Gee, what a surprise.
Agree. And also that advocacy for NASA and it’s budget is always required. At the same time though, planning as if the budget will go up outside of the historical trend, as well as future demographic budget pressures is a lot like being in a battlefield and wishing the placement of the enemy, or your assets, was other than what it is. The proper, healthy response is to accept the reality and plan around that.
At best, NASA’s forward planning is more like hunkering in a foxhole talking about how the cavalry might arrive one day, and how we need to survive till then. Is hunkering in the foxhole a plan that will work even to survive, as the battlefield shifts every day around you?
Ouch…
Orion is nothing more than what used to be the yearly “Orbiter Project” cost under the Shuttle budget. More or less – and adjust upwards to also bring in orbiter folk who used to work upgrades, etc.
About a Billion a year.
…forever…
Oh with a slight twist. No 7 astronauts per flight 5 times a year. More like maybe a dozen, maybe by 2050.
I’m sure Orion defenders will whine about lack of budget in their magical world where a Billion a year since 2005 has not been enough to make a crew capsule and service module.
I’m sure Orion defenders will whine about the ever-shifting requirements, from flying on Ares I to then on a TBD rocket, to then on an SLS that’s still taking shape. Naturally, because no one builds what is essentially a payload that should be sub-optimized when they have the money and time to optimize, forever and ever…and ever.
I’m sure that Orion defenders will talk about the difference of being a beyond-Earth-orbit (BEO) system, vs. items like Dragon or CST-100. Does anyone doubt that if even HALF of what Orion has left to spend TO COMPLETION in 2021, say a few Billion tops, a commercially acquired BEO spacecraft could be acquired by 2021 by NASA that would be much more affordable come the day it has to fly? Leaving money for other exploration elements. Not breaking the bank.
And imagine what could have been done productively for many in-space elements of exploration with the near $16B spent on Orion to date!
As with SLS, it’s only the lack of transparency and the hiding and misleading about costs that keeps these programs from being seen for the hugely inefficient, unaffordable boon-doogle systems that they are. After Constellation, that was what the continuing program learned—never talk costs, always mislead. The bank robbers got caught in Constellation, then spent their days of remorse learning their lesson-how not to get caught when robbing the bank the next time!
Orion isn’t perfect but it can be used to great effect. I am not willing to cancel Orion just because something less expensive may eventually come down the pike.
Orion has cost $8 Billion so far, not $16 Billion. Also not only has its rocket changed but its mission has changed as well. Before it had to go to the moon and do ISS crew rotation. Now thanks to commercial crew it can be optimized for BEO. A lot of the early design problems were due to having to do both jobs.
It’s entirely possible something less expensive will fly before Orion flies people on SLS.
That is going BEO? I don’t believe so.
Joe-
No, not $8B. I said 16 off the top of my head, and it’s actually $17B. See the “Preliminary Report Regarding NASA’s Space Launch System and Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle” from Jan. 2011, at>
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/510…
From this report – Quote- “NASA recently estimated that Orion would need a total of $11.5-$12.0 billion through 2015 in order to achieve the first crewed flight in 2015, minus the $4.9 billion already expended through November 2010.”
i.e., $12B+$4.9B=~$17B.
Even worse, note that development continues to the first crewed flight in 2021, adding ~$1.1B per year till then, the total would be $17B+6X$1.1B=$23.6B for Orion DDT&E.
From the report, “The three-year authorized funding level represents a significant reduction relative to previously planned Orion budgets.”
Orion hasn’t gotten the budget you quote. It has gotten around $1 Billion per year since 2011, not $4 Billion. It has had around $8-9 Billion total through today.
Joe,
I’ll add up the actuals later…that said…
Do you think the Orion project will wrap by 2021 for less than the GAO total, which is to say the total the project estimated in that report, less than the project says it needs to get to first crew flight, that $23Billion? or will they extend the timeline to that end, to 2022…or 2024…again yielding…drumroll please…the $23 Billion?
Joe-you are correct on the $8 Billion “actual” spent on Orion to date (see below, adds up to $9B with $7B to go).
Here’s what’s found actually adding up “actual” budgets for Orion, and explaining the discrepancy with the Orion budget numbers in the GAO report.
1. Go into the NASA budgets and grab the “actuals” for CEV, MPCV, Orion et al since it’s inception. “Actuals” are usually tagged as such a year (sometimes two) after the specific year ends. For example, “actuals” for 2008 can be found in the 2010 NASA budget request and so on.
You get this:
2006=$400M (apx.)
2007=$480M
2008=$890M
2009=$1,387
2010=$1,200 (apx.)
2011=$1,196
2012=$1,200
2013=$1,114
2014=$1,197
SUM=$9,064M or ~ $9 Billion
(Sometimes the data is entirely missing from the docs, so “apx.”)
Plus, add in the projected budgets to completion, taking the milestone for this as the first crew flight.
2015-2021 =$1200M per year = $7.2Billion to completion
Thus: Orion to completion (first crew flight) then = 9+7.2 =~ $16 Billion by 2021.
The discrepancy with the GAO report is that the Jan. 2011 report with the “$11.5-$12.0 billion through 2015” is the amount Orion project estimated to get to a crew launch date far ahead of the actual reality that has since been accepted (2015 vs. 2021).
Nonetheless, the value TO COMPLETION has gone UP, since the budget outlook is carrying $16B to completion (rather than the earlier 11.5 TO 12).
Putting all this aside again though, does anyone believe that a Billion a year project (same as “Orbiter Project”) is affordable to NASA for just the crew spacecraft portion of a beyond Earth orbit exploration plan? For a flight rate that’s trickling out to be in the 1 or so every X years, like every 4 or 5 years? Not “per year”.
Does anyone believe this is affordable and does not make other elements of an exploration plan starve, or more likely never happen at all?
Its not 7 years, its 10+.
The penciled-in date of the first crewed flight is 2024 at the earliest. NASA scrubbed its pages and now only says “2020s”.
SpaceX is aiming at Mars by 2026.
Incorrect. The ARM mission is 2024 at the earliest. The first crewed flight of Orion will be before that (around 2021).
As for SpaceX being on Mars by 2026 by themselves I have some oceanfront property in Oklahoma that I’d like you to buy.
The ARM mission is the first crewed mission – EM-2
It is “officially” set for 2021, but NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel does not buy that:
http://www.nasaspaceflight….
As to SpaceX on Mars, all I can say is watch and wait.
I will bet 1,800,000 rubles ($1.00) to a bag of bagels that they will do it.
ARM is being delayed so it will no longer be EM-2. It will EM-3 or EM-4 on the current schedule. NASA isn’t just going to sit on a fully functional Orion and SLS.
ARM may be delayed. There is no no such thing as a funded crewed EM-3 EM-4, whatever.
NASA has no clue what to do with a re-purposed EM-2. If funding is maintained for the ARM flight as a later mission, then no real funding is earmarked for EM-2.
Attempting to simply re-create Apollo 8 in seven years will be tough to pay for.
The nasaspaceflight article describes various (unfunded) non-crewed options.
One side thing. The NASA FY15 AMPM has EM-2 in FY15. That provides only a 90 day window to be in 2014. The penciled date is Aug 2021. Pretty tight planning 7-8 years out.
It is dismaying to see how most of the media are lapping up the “Mars” hype NASA is saturating its message with. In reality, it is FISCALLY impossible to support practical human Mars missions with the SLS and Orion, since the cost per year cannot be supported with anything like todays NASA budget. The budget itself is not even the issue, since even if more funding was provided, the Congress would force it to be spent on the wrong programs. No deep space infrastructure is being developed, and at this rate, it will not begin development until after 2030.
It is fiscally impossible to do anything except fly around in LEO forever with the current budget. All canceling SLS and Orion will accomplish is further depletion of the manned spaceflight budget.
The one parallel that I see to Interstellar is that, within a few years, NASA should be losing to retirement the vast majority of the dinosaurs that are left over from the various space programs. That gives them at least a chance to do something right….if they can understand that “simple” is an option, that optimization costs more money than it typically saves, and old rocket designs like F-1 could be restarted if they can resist the impulse to triple the cost by “modernizing” them.
I admire your sentiments but in modern America breaking through the current signal-to-noise ratio is going to be really difficult with John Q Public. With the exception of a few of us, and I mean a few of us, most people are much more concerned about Ferguson, football, undocumented immigrants, and the Kardashian’s when they are about human space exploration, or robotic space exploration for that matter. I’m a physician, and most my friends work in healthcare, are fairly well educated, and scientifically attuned. When were out at dinner and the conversation turns to space exploration of any type you see on their face what we call a blunted affect! The graph shown earlier demonstrates that real change for good or bad comes from the top down with one man’s idea and commitment. Usually the guy that lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Anyway, I sincerely hope you’re right.
Well, this is nit-picky, but it is a bit paradoxical for Cooper to say this. (I get the joke)