House SLS/Orion Hearing
House Science Committee Hearing: Update on the Space Launch System and Orion (10 December)
– Archived webcast
– Hearing Charter
– GAO Testimony by Cristina Chaplain – Hearing on SLS and Orion
– Statement by Steven Palazzo – Hearing on SLS and Orion
– Statement of Chairman Lamar Smith – Hearing on SLS and Orion
– Testimony of William H. Gerstenmaier – Hearing on SLS and Orion
– Subcommittee Reviews Progress of Nation’s Human Spaceflight Programs
– Space Subcommittee Discusses Progress of SLS-Orion Development and Successful EFT-1 Mission
GAO: Actions Needed to Improve Transparency & Assess Long-Term Affordability of Human Exploration Programs, May 2014, GAO
“The scope of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) preliminary cost estimates for the Space Launch System (SLS), Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (Orion), and associated ground systems encompasses only the programs’ initial capabilities and does not include the long-term, life cycle costs associated with the programs or significant prior costs:
— The SLS estimate is based on the funding required to develop and operate the initial 70-metric ton variant through first flight in 2017 but not the costs for its second flight in 2021. NASA is now incurring some costs related to the second flight, but it is not currently tracking those costs for life cycle cost estimating purposes. Furthermore, the estimate does not include costs to incrementally design, develop, and produce future 105- and 130-metric ton SLS variants which NASA expects to use for decades. NASA is now funding concept development and analysis related to these capabilities.
— The Orion estimate does not include costs for production, operations, or sustainment of additional crew capsules, despite plans to use and possibly enhance this capsule after 2021. It also does not include $4.7 billion in prior costs incurred during the approximately 4 years when Orion was being developed as part of NASA’s now-defunct Constellation program.”
Any significance to this hearing being in the lame duck congress?
For better or worse, the composition of the House Science Committee won’t be changing much in the next Congress. So no, the timing isn’t necessarily significant. One notable departure, Ralph “we can’t control what God controls” Hall was defeated in the latest election. Golly, we’ll sure miss his scientific insight.
Speaking in denial of climate change, Hall said “I don’t think we can control what God controls” i.e. the climate. That said, his replacement Tea Party Republican John Ratcliffe has pledged to fight “EPA Overreach” and increase fossil fuel production, so there is no indication his policies will be any more scientific, though he may not be assigned to this committee.
Well, the title of the hearing and the dramatis personae give some hope that pertinent matters might be, at last, discussed. I.e., missions, schedules, budgets. How to get from here to there and, indeed, where “there” is.
(I know, that’s naive in the extreme, but you can always hope.)
Sounds like it’s reiterating what we know. The costs of the program are greater than they’ve been selling, and they’re kicking the can on funding any actual operations with their fancy new space capsule into the next Administration’s control.
Not that I’m enthusiastic about either prospect. Odds are the likely Republican or Democrat who wins in 2016 is not going to be a big space fan.
Indeed true. America is suffering from a leadership vacuum in so many, uncountable arenas as a direct result of our decades-long public debate on the role of government.
The debate picked up real steam in 1981 with President Reagan’s famously anti-populist ‘the government IS the problem’ (a claim never substantiated, by the way). Since then, the right has been able to characterize the left as government-dependent sub-citizens intent on stealing from neighbors as a substitute for honest work, and do it with great effectiveness.
I applaud their success, although it has wreaked great havoc on the country and has become a disingenuous paean to the über-rich.
On the other hand at the time the claim was made many were dog-tired of the War on Poverty and the war in Vietnam, which was mere years past. Now we are in a deadlock with recalcitrance that refuses to perform even a modicum of governing; any sort of leadership or vision is impossible in the US and will remain so until a bright and shiny politician comes along able to sway the masses.
I earned my graduate degree at LSU where Huey P. Long’s footprint is still settling into the earth. Our great country is ripe for another like him.
Woe is us.
You sir seem like a paleoprogressive. How is cynicism about the power of government “anti-populist”? Unless of course you believe that holier-than-thou pronouncements of what the government should do for (to) us benighted citizens, since “the government is us”, constitutes true populism. But I suspect that mode of thinking is about to leave the building… with even. Sen Schumer abandoning the Obama/Gruber sinking ship.
‘paleoprogressive’! I never fail to learn something new from you!
Expanding my comments: the progressive posits a government that maintains a level playing field for all to play in, no more or less. Thinking in the 1960s was that many in our country were not able to even get to the field (stretching a sketchy metaphor). This was the rationale for the public programs of the time and directly resulted in the Great Society acts of the 1960s. It also resulted, I should add, in the creation of the EPA and the Clean Water Act in the 70s- by Republicans.
We’ve learned a lot since then.
Politically, the Southern Strategy capitalized on growing resentment among many who saw the government’s efforts to lift up citizens as something of a giveaway and as it has turned out the criticism was at least partly justified.
However, Mr. Reagan swung the pendulum too far. For example, the silly ‘trickle down’ theory has resulted in decades of flat or falling real wages for middle Americans while the top 1% have become incredibly wealthy.
There is nothing wrong with being rich. But this spread is bad for the country and is a direct result of wrongheaded tax policy and attitudes about the proper role of government. One guy drives a Rolls, another guy dies for lack of health care. Nothing wrong with having a Rolls. But something is out of balance.
In some sense those of us who are proudly progressive have learned a bitter lesson but we have not abandoned our fundamental views that the government has a role to serve people by creating and maintaining a fair place to live. Nothing more than that.
Progressives want a government that only maintains a level playing field? Equal opportunity, not equal outcome? That is definitely not my experience.
James..
Schumer is not so much abandoning Pres. Obama (assumed as a needed strategy to provide separation for running space for a possible Clinton run) as he was suggesting that Obama’s strategic timing was wrong.
His point (often posed over the years by him and others) was that the president should have immediately devoted all efforts to reversing the economic effects of the Bush Crash. Push health reform early on was supposedly an error in using up political capital, for a issue not top priority for actual dependable likely voters.
In reality, the Recovery Act was laid out before the Affordable Care Act.
Obama moved as early a he could while political capital was available for a major policy initiative – about 100 days is all a president gets.
What Schumer forgets and the Administration has never been able to communicate, 85% of Obamacare benefits are for middle class people, not the health care exchanges or benefits for the poor, a goup who Schumer considers undependable voters and could be bypassed.
Repeating something I wrote here before;
Democracy is based on the principle of One Person, One Vote. (the political arena)
Capitalism is based on the principle of One Dollar, One Vote. (The economic marketplace)
The problem is that those with many dollars want the the political realm to follow the same rules as the economic marketplace.
What they want is that those with many dollars get many political votes.
Hence unrestrained superpacs, the Adelmans, the Koch bros, lobbyists, etc,, turning our government officials into whores.
Capitalism is not “one dollar, one vote.” Capitalism is a system of resource allocation based on mutually beneficial consensual exchanges. Also, the US is not a democracy (fortunately) — nor purely capitalist (unfortunately…).
Erik: The precision of your response is certainly true but I take the spirit of @yales comments as I think he intended them.
I must say that membership in the church of capitalism and the unwillingness to examine its weaknesses is distressing. As the great Ursula LeGuin said recently, we live in a time where capitalism is seen as the natural order of things, the ultimate, fair way to live. But as she pointed out we also thought that the divine right of kings was of similar permanence.
Things can change.
Things can change
How do you share the wealth in the Robotic age???
That will be up to the robots. Not having the wealth, humans will not be entitled to ask.
I was talking about the near future when the rich humans who own the robots don’t need anyone working for them so the masses don’t have any real jobs that produce anything.
Ooohh!!!!!!!
I see now!!!
The masses can get a job with NASA working on SLS and Orion.
Got it
At its core, capitalism is an economic system the eschews the use of force. Rather, mutual gain is its basis. I am waiting for someone to tell me what would be fairer.
“Capitalism is a system of resource allocation based on mutually beneficial consensual exchanges.”
Nothing I said differs with that. I was was not trying to state the simple Econ 101 class midterm exam answer.
The success or failure of a product or service is based upon the “votes” (dollars) is receives versus its competitors.
Your ability to acquire a resource (product or service) is based upon what you will bid (“vote” in dollars or equivalent) for it.
etc.
Yes, we are not a pure democracy (which can become mob rule) nor are we a pure capitalism (thank the gods),
We are federated republic with a constitutionally-regulated democracy and a regulated marketplace (or mixed free-enterprise system).
This isn’t a democracy, it’s a republic.
A republic is governed by laws and objectives, not numbers or personalities.
I think it’s because we forget that why we get into these problems.
Instead if saying we want to go to Mars and logically going about the process, individuals are trying to jimmy the system for personal benefit (which may or may not bring about a Mars mission, they don’t seem to care either way).
Evil13RT wrote: This isn’t a democracy, it’s a republic. A republic is governed by laws and objectives, not numbers or personalities.
You must have missed where I said:
We are federated republic with a constitutionally-regulated democracy and a regulated marketplace (or mixed free-enterprise system).
Reagan’s famously anti-populist ‘the government IS the problem’ favorable reception was not due to the war on poverty or the Vietnam war, it was a direct result of the wrong headed governing of the country by Jimmy Carter. His famous “malaise speech” which can be summarized as the best days of our country are behind us was just the tip of the iceberg of this disaster but if you review the talking points especially regarding energy policy it closely parallels the current administration and its messages with respect to global warming and the need to sacrifice progress and prosperity in the name of reducing greenhouse gases. This applies to the space program as well. A progressive country with an entrepreneurial motive will be driven to go where no man has gone before. Not be trapped in endless second guessing and analysis paralysis.
David, I take your point and it is certainly true that Mr. Carter was a turning point. But to the larger issue of our decades-long discussion about the role of government I would only reiterate my point.
On the issue of sacrificing prosperity for the sake of the environment, I would only point out that the role of government is to establish a level playing field for all to live. Dumping shit in the water or the air isn’t right on any level- it’s only a short-term profit and it saves a few short-term jobs. In the long term it fucks up the country. And that is why governmental environmental regulations make sense.
It’s not complicated. Seat belts saved lives. Anti-smoking campaigns, same. Lunch standards, same. Pre-school programs have terrific out-comes and save money. Dumping chemicals into drinking water, as happened recently in West Virginia (?), is wrong, criminal, and illegal, but it wasn’t always so. Support from congressional Republicans put teeth in the Clean water Act.
It’s important to realize that the value of living in America isn’t entirely measured by money, although I would grant that it has become the ultimate measure.
Jimmy Carter? Not our best foot forward for sure. Neither George Bush, for that matter. How do we elect these dunces? Dunno.
Its important to note that Carter didn’t use the term “malaise”. It was a “Crisis of Confidence”
The speech followed the 2nd Oil Shock, where Iranian oil cutoff doubled the price of crude and led to shortages and long gas line. The Three Mile Island core damage shocked people’s faith in the Salvation of atomic power. The 1st oil cutoff had occurred 5 years earlier during the Nixon administration.
Due to different scandals, both the Nixon and VP Agnew resigned. The next president, Ford presided over 11% inflation and zero growth (“stagflation”). The US quit in Vietnam after 8 years and it was overrun. The West was losing its bearings.
This is the speech:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/ame…
Excepts:
I want to speak to you tonight about a subject even more serious than energy or inflation. I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy.
I do not mean our political and civil liberties. They will endure. And I do not refer to the outward strength of America– the nation that is at peace tonight everywhere in the world with unmatched economic power and military might. The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will.
We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.
The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America. The confidence that we have always had as a people is not simply some romantic dream or a proverb in a dusty book that we read just on the Fourth of July. It is the idea which founded our nation and which has guided our development as a people. Confidence in the future has supported everything else– public institutions and private enterprise, our own families and the very Constitution of the United States. Confidence has defined our course and has served as a link between generations.
We’ve always believed in something called progress. We’ve always had a faith that the days of our children would be better than our own.
Our people are losing that faith. . . . But just as we are losing our confidence in the future, we are also beginning to close the door on our past.
In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does but by what one owns. . . .
Often you see paralysis and stagnation and drift. You don’t like it. And neither do I.
What can we do? First of all, we must face the truth and then we can change our course. We simply must have faith in each other. Faith in our ability to govern ourselves and faith in the future of this nation. Restoring that faith and that confidence to America is now the most important task we
face. . . .
And we are the generation that will win the war on the energy problem, and in that process rebuild the unity and confidence of America. . .
Energy will be the immediate test of our ability to unite this nation. And it can also be the standard around which we rally. On the battlefield of energy we can win for our nation a new confidence, and we can seize control again of our common destiny. . . .
[At this point, the speech lists six specific points emphasizing conservation and reduced energy consumption.]
I do not promise you that this struggle for freedom will be easy. I do not promise a quick way out of our nation’s problems when the truth is that the only way out is an all-out effort. . . . There is simply no way to avoid sacrifice. . . . In closing, let me say this: I will do my best, but I will not do it alone. Let your voice be heard. Whenever you have a chance, say something good about our country. With God’s help and for the sake of our nation, it is time for us to join hands in America.
Let us commit ourselves together to a rebirth of the American spirit. Working together with our common faith, we cannot fail.
“the current administration and its messages with respect to global warming and the need to sacrifice progress and prosperity in the name of reducing greenhouse gases.”
Total baloney.
Progress and prosperity are the GOALS of managing climate change.
For the first time, utility companies and corporate leaders are joining, not opposing, environmental advocates and labor leaders to create a new system of clean energy initiatives that will help unleash a new era of growth and prosperity. It’s a plan that will finally reduce our dangerous dependence on foreign oil and cap the carbon pollution that threatens our health and our climate. Most important, it’s a plan that will trigger the creation of millions of new jobs for Americans, who will produce the wind turbines and solar panels and develop the alternative fuels to power the future. Because this we know: the nation that leads in 21st century clean energy is the nation that will lead the 21st century global economy. America can and must be that nation — and this agreement is a major step toward this goal.”
Now, he and some of his advisers are unaware of the true opportunities in doing things right, he is at least on the right track.
A typical example what he is talking about – take a look:
http://www.ted.com/talks/am…
http://www.bloomberg.com/po…
Seems Mr. Sanford has learned that there is a more affordable way to go to Mars in about 10 years. Seems he thinks Spacex’s Mars Plan is more credible. Seems like progress to me???
Ah, yes, that would be Mark “Appalachian Trail” Sanford, famed for lying to his wife, lying to the people of South Carolina (when he was their governor), and breaking up with his Argentinian “soul mate” over Facebook. Sure, I’ll listen to him…
Perhaps proponents of alternative paths to deep-space exploration would do well to find a different spokesperson.
Never suggested he be a spokes person.
Isn’t the house and Senate becoming more republican as of late. As Spacex releases more info on MCT and their Mars plan won’t fiscal conservatives like Sanford apply more pressure to explore space more cheaply? Mixed commercial/public plan???
This is the first time I have seen that politicans are aware Spacex has a Mars plan.
There is no way to predict what “fiscal conservatives” will do, especially given the divide between the Tea Party and non-Tea Party republicans. The only prediction that is likely a safe bet is that they will try to reduce all spending, with a few caveats, including spending on NASA.
It’s already been seen that there are a number of congresspeople who aren’t impressed with SpaceX. I don’t expect that to change.
One thing you can count on republicans doing, they will increase spending on their political interests and cut taxes for the same.
I was unable to find any statement in which Sanford suggests he would support funding _any_ human spaceflight with tax dollars.
They will only ask about delays and how much more money NASA needs.
that will repeat next year about the same time and then it will get defunded and canceled by the next POTUS in favor of a “new more econamical design” that will look just like the Aries 5 and SLS
I wish those Washington goobers would let us finish one project without canceling it 80% through. X33 – canceled, Aries – canceled, now SLS is just about there – and it may get canceled. That is how you waste funds, by getting something almost done. Every hobbyist knows that, why cant DC get it through their heads.
NASA needs to be an independent long term funded agency, then we’ll get stuff done. This year to year funding that is at the whim of every new administration is retarded.
the X-33 deserved to be cancelled. there were a lot of problems with it. virtually every system on it was overweight, the engines, tankage, heat shielding, etc. and as a result, the center of gravity was much too far aft and it would never have flown as high as was intended for tests. the entire vehicle was in the middle of a complete redesign when it was cancelled.
the Ares and the SLS suffer from the same problem – congressional mandates. if NASA could just drop the old shuttle infrastructure and contractors, a new heavy lift rocket could be built of modern materials and designs for much cheaper.
While I agree about the need to can X-33 (the tank situation was just a debacle of the highest order), I’ve really been disappointed that technology developed for the VentureStar hasn’t shown up in newer programs or proposals — The Metallic TPS, the Aerospike Engine.. both of those were good ideas and had a lot of development, and neither (to my reading) were parts of the failure of X-33. I hope that someone will one day revive these ideas on a better thought-out spaceframe. Between NASA and Lockheed over a Billion was spent on this; they could at least have something to show for it in the future.
what the X-33 program should have been is a set of 3 (or so) technology development programs, not directly tied to any vehicle. develop the composite tanks, linear rocket engines, and metallic TPS separately up to a useful technology readiness level, then work on a vehicle based on that mature (or at least more mature than it was) technology.
so far as none of them were really ready for “prime time,” they did contribute to the demise of the X-33 program. all 3 turned out to be pretty badly overweight and not close enough to the design specifications for the X-33.
the composite tank problem has been solved over time, and it looks like a composite tanks / components will be part of the design of rockets from here on out. but the metallic TPS doesn’t really have an application anywhere in the current US space program, same with the linear aerospike engines.
I agree; the spike nozzle engine was mainly aimed at SSTO and all LVs under development are multistage so can use a nozzle hith a higher expansion ratio on the upper stage..But what happened to the metallic TPS? That still sounds interesting.
Regarding the aerospike tech:
Check out -Tom Markusic and Firefly Space Systems.
http://www.fireflyspace.com/
Deleted by auther
Cool I hadn’t seen that. Non-linear (“regular”) aerospike. Pretty ambitious that the video shows it on Pad 39 but maybe just convenience for the video.
Perhaps some of the technologies just hasn’t showed up in a program you know about.
A lot of good technology came out of the X-33 program.
It’s not that the tank situation was a debacle of the highest order–the tank situation was of the highest technical hurdle–composite tank technology grew leaps and bounds because of X-33.
oops it was a typo, I meant the X37
X-37 was cancelled by NASA but picked up by DOD and is still flying, in fact has taken over OPF bays 1 and 2 at KSC.
I know, I drive past the big blue reminder every day.
It would require a congress willing to give up the reins on NASA for it to be independent, and that’s not going to happen anytime in the foreseeable future. There’s too much pork and too many political factors standing in the way.
For better or worse the notion that any agency is independent of Congress is scary. There are a few exceptions, I suppose. But not NASA.
better NASA than NSA
Not according to congress, they are getting exactly what they are funding. Jobs and a tax base added to their district and campaign funding from the contractors they dole out the cost plus, fixed fee, sole source FAR contracts to. The congressional porkonauts are getting EXACTLY what they want..
Oh .. did you think the human spaceflight program was about exploration?
Not really, but it would have given them lot more leverage with the constituents – “Look what you have accomplished when I was in … . Re elect me and we will do more!” = happy, ignorant, misinformed voters.
They only have to announce that a program is in place, not that it is actually ever acomplishing anything. They do not talk about space, look at their webpages, Space is never even one of the main issues when you click their issues links. The space budget, as a percentage of the total budget barely rates an asterick so it never really gets talked about. only during elections then it is dismissed again.
There’s also more than enough reason to believe that NASA’s budgets are not of concern to much of the electorate, save for voters with NASA centers nearby.
The only way we will provide for all the people on this planet is with new technologies. No one is working on better ways to bake bread. If a president is not a “fan of space” then where can “alternative energy” develop? Alternative food sources? Alternative living patterns. No we need an explorer focused president to pull the mass forward.
Quite a few people are working on better ways to bake bread, and DOE has several alternative energy projects. Practical advances will not be achieved if we insist they must come as an inadvertent byproduct of human spaceflight.
I’m impressed by the public interest, but the flight was simpler than the last four CRS flights, since it did not include either rendezvous and docking or testing of a new reusable booster.
I wasn’t aware the CRS flights included docking; I thought the spacecraft maneuvered to the vicinity of the ISS and then was grabbed by the station arm. Have they demonstrated actual docking?
Sorry, you’re tight, CRS demonstrated rendezvous and berthing. Commercial crew will use docking.
A nine billion dollar empty capsule flown to 3000 miles that will cost another 10-14 billion dollars and will not fly a human for another decade? WOW what an acheivement.
That’s how we get to Mars baby!!! Lololol.
What a Joke !!!
Rep Rohrbacher is going to town on Gerst. Sounds like he gets the Emperor has no clothes!
Rohrbacher: “not enough money” “whole bunch of technologies we need that aren’t funded and still remain to get to Mars” “the cart before the horse” “rocket that will be useless for 2 decades” “Chairman, we made a wrong decision when we went down this road”
Gerst, weakly, suggested some experiments on ISS (like the robotic refueling experiment) are addressing the future technology needs.
Augustine II on its way to a theater near you!
What I dont get is were are the NASA planners that could come up with a space plan that repurposes the SLS and Orion program. As people say congress doesnt care if they get anything done or not. So why Isn’t there someone with a plan, telling these congressman hey lets do this instead?
Congressmen shouldnt care if it is cost plus or cots.
Congress shouldnt care if Orion is a capsule or, part of a repurposed ISS turned into a lunar transfer vehicle.
The goal of nasa should be to build a highway to the moon and mars. Not to just explore.
Nasa’s goal should be to build an affordable Inner Solar System Highway (ISSH). No congressman would not agree with that if they were given a workable plan.
Who are this Augustine guys anyway. are they planners, are they designers? Engineers? Will they reckamend a radically different business/space model?
Space needs to be affordable, and all these current people employed, could be making that possible.
Some body needs to come up with a PLAN
Don’t cancel Orion and SLS. Transform them into a solar system highway program that builds on top of Musks Mars Musks Plan
Something like this is possible
No one is leading. That is the main problem. No one.
Unfortunately Orion and SLS are so expensive that there is no path to affordability. Maybe this was demanded by the political factors you mention. But unless we choose a technology that can drastically reduce the total number of manhours required per pair of boots on the ground in LEO or on the Moon, etc, there will be no ISSH.
I’m not talking about saving the systems I’m suggesting using those people to do other things.
Say instead of Orion those 3000 people were building a lunar transporter. Or landers.
How many people are employed in the man space program? And what could they be doing to build an ISSH instead of what they do, if the manned program was based on reusable affordable Lift.
Good point. That’s why Obama proposed a major program in Space Technology to replace Constellation and apply the freed up dollars. Unfortunately industry and lobbyists like ATK and their supporters like Senator Shelby that simply wanted to keep existing facilities in production were able to crush the Space Technology program and put massive funds into the reincarnation of Constellation.
Seems at the end of the day its the old Space contractors that are the “bad guys that control the thoughts of congress and the lack of leadership at NASA for not being able to provide congress with a workable public/commercial space plan.
Seems to me one wonderful thing Musk is doing is putting space settlement on the page. Seems the mind set has moved beyond the NASA Explores.bull shit.
I think given the chance that Garver could do the same on the NASA side.
Technology, in this case, has little to do with it. SpaceX has proven that by using off the shelf technology launch costs can be dramatically lowered.
The problem with SLS/Orion is with what NASA chooses to do. They should not be in the launch vehicle business anymore. You can buy launches on the commercial market from any number of suppliers. NASA should have been spending their money on developing innovative hardware for actual missions. How that hardware makes it into LEO is not as important as the overall program cost to place it into orbit.
It is easy enough to convert the money spent on SLS to date (first launch is still four years away) and convert that to pounds to LEO using commercially available vehicles. When this is done, it becomes clear that SLS is not needed in order to put massive amounts of hardware into space.
You said its not the cost of the hardware but the cost of the over all program. If you are right, doesn’t that make the case against NASA having anything to do with human Space flight at all????
that’s Why I say that Spacex has Human Space Program with a future and NASA does not.
NASA should step back from more than just launchhardware toa LEO. How far?????
NACA
In fact the current Space Act Agreement relationship between NASA and SpaceX in which SpaceX gets some funding to achieve milestones without NASA oversight while investing company money as well is very much in the NACA model.
Hope ! 🙂
Rohrabacher insinuated that funding SLS will result in people dying from asteroid impacts. I wonder how spending billions on Commercial Crew and ISS mitigates that risk. Actually SLS would be great for asteroid deflection since it could send up a massive gravity tractor or ablator spacecraft and reduce the time needed to get to the asteroid. Rohrabacher is a hypocrite.
Musks MCTs will be around anyway. So you would just use one of those instead of SLS. No reason for SLS in the reusable Rocket age.
The SLS is not proposed for the actual asteroid retrieval mission but rather for the manned misison to the retrieved asteroid. Because of the rapid response that might be needed for asteroid deflection and the extremely long production time for the SLS, it is not ideal. The real need is for operational high-thrust solar (or nuclear) electric power for interception and deflection of asteroids. There isn’t any evidence that an SEP launch would require SLS.
Actually we could produce an SLS in about 6 months assuming normal operations. We would need that time anyway to produce a deflection spacecraft.
In fact making the deflection spacecraft dependent on SEP or nuclear would make the production time far longer than it would take to just shoot a gravity tractor to the asteroid via SLS.
A gravity tractor needs continuous thrust for the entire deflection period or it will just collide with the body being deflected. To have continuous thrust, we need electrical propulsion. If we have electrical propulsion we can get to the asteroid quickly without a huge booster. At this point we are spending gobs of money on SLS/Orion and very little on mapping the near earth objects or testing electrical propulsion in space. SLS is a huge, sexy rocket, but like the Saturn and Shuttle it simply costs to much to operate. We need to put out very limited taxpayer dollars where they do the taxpayers the most good.
I don’t acknowledge climate change deniers like Rohrbacher one way or the other.
Rep Rohrbacher is the Man from SpaceX, and always has been. No one who knows him would call him a great thinker. He is as much in the tank for his side; as Shelby is for his constituants. A stroll through the depths of either man’s soul wouldn’t get your ankles wet. Very few true believers are in politics, but we must deal with them to get the bucks for Buck Rodgers. You guys believe that this can all be accomplished through brawney capitalisim (2 lbs. of flour to make a 10 lbs. cake etc.)… we’ll see…
I believ the whole proscess will be more difficult than we can possibly contemplate and will require a governmental initiative; and that needs to be appropriately funded at between 0.75% and 1% for the annual federal budget. So for now we crawl along for now until the powerful come to their senses. BTW, we are spending all this money now developing a heavy left booster because a bunch of “far thinkers” in Congress, such as senator Cranston (God rest his soul) not only canceled Saturn V but also tore up the tooling and stopped any research and development! Good grief Charley Brown!
I’m just an amateur, but I’ve studied the construction processes and life cycle cost. There isn’t anything particularly difficult about duplicating the Saturn V, but it isn’t the optimal design today. Methane fuel, channel-wall nozzles, full-flow engine cycles, fuel pressurized hydraulics, modern electronics, stir welding, composite structures and insulation, booster reusability, and more efficient assembly/launch facilities are just some of the major advances. As to increasing the NASA budget, be careful what you wish for. If there is an increase it will be the result of lobbying by builders of obsolete designs.
F1 wasn’t the optimal design in 1969 either given the fact that it didn’t burn a hell of a lot of the fuel that went through it so it produced a flame as long as the rocket. Methane has yet to be scaled up from the handful of successful fired engines to a size of interest. but here’s the hard part about re-doing saturn V: the sheer size of everything is beyond the reach of American industry anymore. re-constituting the ability to fixture things, handle large assemblies, transport stages, would be a tremendous undertaking. remember in the 50’s and 60s American steel/industrial production was at it’s zenith. a US steel strike could shut the economy down. now they could be on strike for a decade and it wouldn’t register a blip…. we just don’t build enormous things like that anymore. heck the new bay bridge in SF was chinese components….
So a progressive NASA might invest in two or three prototype methane engines from different companies …
“the sheer size of everything is beyond the reach of American industry anymore. “
Not true.
Virginia Class Submarines are of megarocket scale.
Zumwalt-class Destroyers
America-class flattops
Boeing 747s
National Ignition Facility
SLS is being built.
American-made Wind turbine blades are longer than 747 wingspans each (and being transported) Wind farms of thousand enormous towers are being built everywhere.
Check out the draglines and ore trucks being built.
The TBMs
Visit GM Electromotive or Caterpillar.
SpaceX is RIGHT NOW going through the design and testing of the Raptor engine which is bigger than the F-1.
Facilities are being designed RIGHT NOW to handle rockets that make Saturn Vs look like babies.
One thing Gerst said was NASA would work with Europe on the Moon as part of the cis-lunar plans they have. England said they plan to land at the south pole. I suggested SpaceX land on the Trunk on the Moon. It might be possible, no one will want to do it, for MPV(Orion), to do that. It is suppose to be multi-purpose. If SpaceX can put legs on a 1st stage, then legs could be put on Orion service module. Already has a landing engine and lots of control thrusters. I have not checked the weight and thrust to see if it would be possible to land with 1/6 gravity. As Elon said: If you have a Mars craft capable of landing on the Moon, might as well go since it is on the way. It would be nice not to have something that is not 20 years away.
The X-33 and X-34 were prototypes, not perational vehicles. They would have produced useful information if they had been allowed to fly.
This is my first comment with NASA Watch. This discussion sounds like a rerun of all the previous political campaigns from both parties. I am a retired NASA engineer. I worked SSME during most of my career, but I did work on several engine and tank development programs (just a stress guy). The end of the shuttle program was not accompanied by substantial civil service layoffs. The end of the Apollo/Saturn resulted in large number of layoffs. This included civil service personnel. The design and development of any program does not require the “army of civil service and contractors” that are currently employed for SLS development (to many cooks in the kitchen). Part of the cost problem with SLS is that it is a job program. Both parties have national and local reasons to fund this jobs program. Does anyone believe that a congressman or senator with a NASA center in their district or state would be willing to vote for layoffs? I doubt it. Private companies have demonstrated that a new launch vehicle can be developed using a substantially smaller design and development team. This results in substantial cost savings. The elephant in the room is the fact that Shuttle program termination did not lead to a reduction-in-force. NASA has become a jobs program support by political leaders from the left and the right. Everyone has local and national reasons to keep it going. So much for scientific inquiry, exploration, capitalism and the free market! It’s just pork barrel politics.
It’s good to have someone here with real Shuttle experience. What do you feel could have been done differently during the Shuttle program to reduce its cost of operation?
Keep St. Elon in the black so he can save us from ourselves.
Its good there is a hearing on the subject but due to political implications, nothing will come out of it. Cost overruns, production delays, budgetary concerns all get in the way of getting this program running as it should. Everybody starts finger-pointing while the program suffers and the taxpayers foot the bill. The program should be turned over to private commercialization where the cost could be cut due to ridiculous budgetary add-on not even related to the program.All this can be handled correctly by public oversight.
He was referring to the NEO survey. However, I do believe an NEO survey is being funded right now. I don’t know if it is being fully funded but it is a lot less than SLS/Orion and ISS/CC.
I was saying that he is a hypocrite because if he thinks that SLS/Orion are taking away the funding needed to find NEOs why doesn’t he apply the same standard to ISS/CC? If he really thinks that people will die as a result of us not funding an NEO survey why are SLS/Orion waste and ISS/CC not? I personally think both should be funded.
ISS has a mission to test long duration spaceflight and CC’s mission is to support ISS. SLS/Orion are perfectly good hardware whose mission is to send us to BEO destinations.