Back To The Moon
Lost in space, opinion, George Abbey, Washington Examiner
“America needs a space policy that has a vision that can build on past achievements and keep moving forward. A big part of that is construction, maintenance and servicing in low-Earth orbit. Another is international cooperation. And we should realign our goals with those of other major space-faring nations and look back to the Moon, so we again become the leaders in space. After all, we’ve been there before. A lunar exploration program would provide the foundation for manned missions beyond the Moon. Our eyes must look to the skies with purpose toward that limitless frontier.”
In doing research for a book I am working on about the von Braun Team, I have read books, articles, papers, legislation, funding reports, opinion pieces, Letters to the Editor, etc., going back to the 1950s when Sputnik was launched. It was a rare confluence of circumstances that occurred to prompt President Kennedy to call for a mission to the moon by the end of the decade. The von Braun Team was in place at Marshall and had already thought ahead to building the Saturn family of boosters needed to accomplish this mission. Congress approved the funding at first. You had a VP in LBJ that was a major proponent of the space program. We built an amazing aerospace infrastructure manned mostly by energetic young engineers just out of college. Project Apollo was the most intensive peacetime effort ever carried out by the United States and it succeeded by landing men on the lunar surface and safely returning them to the earth. I know I would have loved for NASA to have been funded to execute all of the planned Apollo missions, the follow up Skylab space stations, the building of a truly reusable Shuttle that didn’t have to compromise its design due to budgetary penury and getting in bed with the military. We could have been to Mars by now but the budget for NASA was cut starting in 1965 and declined under Richard Nixon who ditched the follow-up plans for Apollo except for the Shuttle. After the Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975, Americans did not return to space until the long delayed launch of the Shuttle in 1981. It turned out that NASA had way over promised on the cost effectiveness of Shuttle flights and on how often they could safely launch the Shuttle fleet. The Shuttle turned out to be a fragile and complicated piece of engineering and technology that required labor intensive refurbishment after every flight. We tragically lost two of the Orbiters to mishap during the Shuttle Era. There have been many proposals made on the space vehicle to follow-up on Shuttle but they were underfunded or did not pan out. As Mr. Abbey pointed out, NASA does not have the backing by the American people or by those in political power on charting a serious program for the exploration of space, especially for manned missions. The Apollo template does not exist in our age of budget austerity measures and bitter partisan divide in Congress. We will continue to have Presidents come into office for 4 or 8 years, who will propose their vision for space exploration, Congress will likely ignore that vision, and we will continue to be “Lost in Space.” This is a bipartisan problem as neither party has made space exploration a priority. It’s hard to blame our politicians because while the American people love to see NASA have successful missions like New Horizons and would love to see Americans return to the moon, go to Mars and beyond, they don’t want to pay for it. It seems to me that we will be stuck making do with a patchwork of programs with uncertain funding for years to come unless something happens to unite the American people and our politicians into making space exploration more of a priority. Will it be a new Cold War with China? Will it be competition from Russia, China, India, Japan, etc.? Will it be an understanding that there are vast resources in space for us to exploit? Will it be the threat of an object striking earth? I don’t know but I hope to see NASA get at least 1% of the budget in my lifetime but my years are growing short. I wonder if I will see us go beyond earth orbit again in my lifetime. I was 5 when we last left the moon in 1972. C’mon America, let’s get our act together and strive to explore the new ocean of space once again.
Good history (a couple of your facts are off).
It definitely sounds like you are representing the MSFC perspective.
America should get its act together? I thought that was why we had NASA-to lead us into the future. I have not seen a worthwhile or achieveable plan out of NASA since 1980.
Shuttle “mishaps”. Wrong word. You make it sound like somebody fell when they lost their balance. Challenger and Columbia were management failures. They were management failures because in both instances the problems were known and understood (by some) but management chose to ignore the problems and not try to correct them.
Its kind of like the leadership failure NASA is in the midst of today. They have no plan and no strategy. In management school we call that management failure.
There was a plan in 1980. No we were not going back to the moon or on to Mars anytime soon. Because we knew on a 1% or less NASA budget we could not afford it? But we were going to try and make earth orbit affordable, first with a Shuttle, then with a Station, then expand the sphere of accessibility.
If we did not get everything right with the first Shuttle, then there was plenty of opportunity to correct the problems, build new hardware, make processes more efficient….that’s what engineers do.
NASA’s leadership problems are perhaps not due to the current administrator. He works for the president, and the president seems to be uninterested in science and technology outside of what his inner circle promotes. And none of them seem to be aerospace people. So we get Congress designing programs (and rockets) for NASA.
The current administration has had an inyense focus on STEM. As to aerospace people, just a quick sampling:
Dr. John P. Holdren holds advanced degrees in aerospace engineering and theoretical plasma physics from MIT and Stanford.Member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as a foreign member of the Royal Society of London and former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Wanda M. Austin is president and chief executive officer of The Aerospace Corporation. Austin earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Franklin & Marshall College, master’s degrees in systems engineering and mathematics from the University of Pittsburgh, and a doctorate in systems engineering from the University of Southern California. Austin is a fellow of the AIAA, and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the International Academy of Astronautics, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She also serves on the Board of Directors of the Space Foundation, and on the Board of Trustees for the University of Southern California and the National Geographic Society. Austin has received numerous awards and citations. Among them are the National Intelligence Medallion for Meritorious Service, the Air Force Scroll of Achievement, and the National Reconnaissance Office Gold Medal. In 2010 she received the AIAA von Braun Award for Excellence in Space Program Management, and is a recipient of the 2012 Horatio Alger Award, the 2012 NDIA Peter B. Teets Industry Award, and the 2014 USC Viterbi Distinguished Alumni Award.
Jeff Immelt – CEO GE – global class aviation
And don’t forget the leadership of NSA: https://www.nasa.gov/about/…
A lot of people are very well educated but lack the vision to see beyond their noses
This is no different than administrations of the past.
So, the president has filled positions that previous administrations had to advise them on science and tech issues with … people with STEM backgrounds. (And Immelt’s job was economics, not STEM, btw.) This is no different than what other presidents have done. None of them are in his inner circle, which is the Chicago people. One does have a company that sells electronic medical record software, and PPACA mandates EMR systems.
If the administration was so keenly interested in space issues they would not have allowed the Senate to design the SLS and force NASA to build it. If they were supporters of STEM in the US, they would eliminate the STEM H-1B visa program – as there is no shortage of STEM workers in the US, as has been shown by the IEEE, among others.
As for the NASA leadership, I’ve met many of them during my career.
I was being polite with my description of the loss of Challenger and Columbia which may have led to giving you the wrong impression. These were failures by the management to listen to those who had the knowledge about the vehicle. We know that there were numerous warnings made about using the SRBs at low temperatures as there was a history of O-Ring erosion on previous flights and then the warnings made by the engineers that morning at Thiokol. Management was under pressure to launch after numerous scrubs and this flight was high-profile with the Teacher In Space to be lauded by Reagan during his State of the Union speech that evening. The compromised design that led to these SRBs coupled with the arrogance of management destroyed Challenger. (A good review of the tragedy can be found at http://www.spacesafetymagaz… The loss of Columbia found many of the same issues reoccurring where safety concerns were ignored or labeled as acceptable risks to keep the flight schedule moving. (Again, I refer you to the excellent website about space safety which has a section on the loss of Columbia at http://www.spacesafetymagaz… I hope this makes clear where I place the responsibility for the loss of these vehicles and their crews.
I did err in saying the budget for NASA started its decline in 1965. After further review of the relevant documents, it started in FY 1967 and continued on a downward spiral through FY 1975.
Hoping that NASA will get 1% of the federal budget is a dream that won’t come true. The Cold War fueled the Space Race because the US and the Soviet Union needed some sort of proxy war to show which was superior both technologically and economically. Once Apollo/Saturn development was nearing completion, the budget was cut. It is important to note it was significantly cut before the first successful moon landing. This should have been the big wake up call to NASA that the gravy train was over.
Unfortunately, a string of NASA administrators have failed to take note and have failed miserably to tackle the biggest problem NASA faces going forward, which is the high cost of launching anything into space. Ares I plus Ares V was not going to lower launch costs. Similarly, SLS has little chance of lowering launch costs, even with the inclusion of already developed engines. The infrastructure costs are simply too high and the flight rate far too low.
Currently, SLS is the biggest albatross around NASA’s neck. Unfortunately, the politicians support SLS because of the pork spending it provides. It could enable all sorts of interesting beyond LEO missions, but there is zero funding for any of the hardware to actually make this happen. Unfortunately, wishing for funding for SLS missions won’t solve this problem.
Even worse, there is pretty much nothing in work right now that will significantly lower launch costs. (Except maybe for those British Skylon guys, if you believe their system will work and will really get funded.) For example, in case you haven’t noticed, the latest projections of per seat launch costs of CCDev have grown to the point where even the cheapest estimates are close enough to current Soyuz costs that the net savings over the life of the program won’t be enough to pay for the development cost. That is even before the inevitable cost growth that will happen as actual flights get closer. Not to say that the program shouldn’t be continued, just that the reality is there does not exist, as yet, any real attempt at the sort of cost savings needed to enable a major leap in development of the space market.
And what is SpaceX going to do with all those used Dragon 2s and used falcon 9 boosters again?
Let them collect dust?
There are as yet no used Dragon 2s or Falcon 9s (other than pieces at the bottom of the sea). The used Dragon 1s that exist so far are “collecting dust”. The used Dragon 2s that are currently contracted to someday come into existence are currently only contracted for single flights.
Which is irrelevant to the discussion. The currently contracted per seat prices for Dragon 2 versus Soyuz do not show enough savings over the currently planned remaining life of ISS support to pay for the development costs. I don’t disagree with the drive to replace Soyuz for other reasons, but on a purely fiscal basis, CCDev failed, the point of which is that SLS isn’t the only money drain in NASA’s budget.
SpaceX *is* lowering launch costs, and they’re working on reusability, which should lower launch costs even more. Their approach is quite different than Skylon, but it’s gaining attention and forcing the existing competition to think about reusability as well.
Because things like the Space Shuttle, Kistler, Air Force flyback booster, von Braun’s shuttle concept in Collier’s, and countless other proposals since, well pretty much anybody started thinking about space flight, never “gained any attention” or got anybody to “think about reusability” before SpaceX came along??
Fine, three cheers for SpaceX for putting some real effort into reusability after NASA gave up on the Shuttle. So far though, they haven’t even gotten as far as Shuttle (the only reusable launch vehicle yet to have actually been reused) and there are lots of good arguments that as successful as Shuttle was at reusability, it never managed to show any real net cost savings over it’s predecessors. That is pretty much where SpaceX is at – even with optimistic assumptions about ultimate success in reusability of their system, the prices they are currently contracting to show only marginal costs savings at best. Even if they are ultimately able to offer pretty big marginal cost improvements, that’s still not good enough to break out of the government funded paradigm of the space flight industry. Until we see order of magnitude and better cost reductions, we will not see a self sustaining industry. (For the record, I’m not necessarily a Skylon fan, just fairly exempting them from my complaint that nobody is trying anymore for the level of cost reductions we really need to see.)
But I digress. The point remains, as currently contracted, the CCDev (or whatever the name de jour is) program for remaining ISS crew support is a net dollar loss compared to the alternatives. That doesn’t mean NASA shouldn’t do it, but it does mean all you fanboys look silly pointing your fingers at SLS for being a money sinkhole. Mr. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle.
“The point remains, as currently contracted, the CCDev (or whatever the
name de jour is) program for remaining ISS crew support is a net dollar
loss compared to the alternatives. That doesn’t mean NASA shouldn’t do
it, but it does mean all you fanboys look silly pointing your fingers at
SLS for being a money sinkhole. Mr. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle.”
CCDev may be a loss compared to continuing to pay the Russians cash, but relying on the Russians has become politically undesirable. And it *is* cheaper than Orion, since it “can’t” be launched manned on anything smaller than SLS. The only way Orion/SLS to ISS might make sense would be to use it to launch a crew *and* 6 months to a year’s worth of cargo on every flight to ISS.
The advantage that CCDev has over Orion/SLS is cost and flight rate. Currently the flight rate for SLS is zero per year. The CCDev winners have at least picked launch vehicles that are currently flying, instead of insisting that Orion “can’t” launch on anything smaller and cheaper than SLS.
Mr. Abbey is essentially correct, but I see no reason to hope for a sudden coherence of policy from the present administration this late in their term. The reality is nothing of significance policy-wise will be changed in the next 16 months, but on the other hand, there is little reason to think there can’t be dramatic shifts in policy under the next administration. The current administration is essentially a lame duck as far as space policy at this point, giving us little reason to expect anything more than timing out the clock with the current status quo.
So, any information on where the various candidates stand on space policy, if at all? With the rather large and diverse field of candidates at this early stage, it certainly seems difficult to predict who will win. Perhaps it’s reasonable to expect that Bush would be like the previous Bushes and Clinton would be like the previous Clinton? As for the rest, Cruz seems generally interested in ‘space exploration’ of some type? Anybody heard anything on the subject by the rest of the field?
I don’t see any of the current candidates being supportive of space beyond the current budget. Some are likely to cut the budget – remember that the current administration was going to cut NASA quite a bit until electoral politics became an issue.
It’s possible that some of the candidates will be more supportive, but most of them are unlikely to have much understanding of science or technology given their backgrounds.
I’m not aware of any information that contradicts your point. But even with continuation at current budget levels (or even with reductions), differences in policy could still have very substantial differences in outcome. Even with a relatively hands-off approach to policy at the top level, selections in delegation of policy making authority could still make big differences. Not that I have any insight into how the various candidates stack up in that regard either, other than the aforementioned.
After reading that article, one question has popped into my head. Why do people keep assuming that you needed a 100mT winged orbiter to repair Hubble? The shuttle actually greatly limited Hubble’s orbit, since it could only reach so low, and at the same time it ballooned the launch costs, since you used a (expensive) 100mT HLV to put a 20mT payload on orbit, then more 100mT launches to service it. But hey, wings, they look cool, right?
One assumes the rest of the opinions in that article are similarly grounded on sound rationales, and not romantic cowboy fantasies. Yeah.
I think the point of Shuttle was that it not only provided the crew to do the maintenance and refurbishment, but the work platform as well. Earlier programs showed you could not do a lot of maintenance or assembly work without having a platform for attaching the satellite and from which the astronaut could base their operations.
For the integrated cost per shuttle flight we should have discarded and replaced the scope many times over.
The US has launched about 16 Keyhole spy satellites on expendables vehicles which are sorta Hubbles that point down. NRO gifted 2 surplus scopes to NASA a couple of years ago. Apparently, they are in a number of ways far superior to the Hubble, which was a dumbed-down version.
I don’t doubt that there were other ways to do the job.
As far as the Keyhole, I wonder how much that program cost? DOD gets a lot more to spend than NASA.
Shuttle was probably a bit too big and having worked in the program, felt it was never operated efficiently. It doesnt mean the capability was unneeded. It is a trade off. If you could fly a slightly smaller shuttle or an in-space only vehicle with similar servicing capabilities, but considerably less expensive as had been the original intent for Shuttle, would it have been more cost effective to bring up replaceable modules for the Keyholes or for other satellites, instead of buying them by the dozen?
I think the Shuttle design selected in 1971 was a bitlittle larger than what NASA wanted and expected (45 foot x 12 foot payload bay)
I am firmly convinced that the mistake of the Shuttle program was in program management. Once the program managers saw what it was taking to operate, no one ever tried to substantially improve on it. They were putting humongous amounts of money into a program technical staff and operations staff, none of whom had duties beyond turning the vehicles around to fly. As the program progressed through the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, neither the staff nor the budget got substantially smaller from the size during the design and build phase from 1971-1981, Why was that?
They started at program budget of a bit over $1billion/year during the 1970s when the NASA budget was $4.5 billion. They were learning a lot about building the technology and they had a half dozen vehicles in flow. They were procuring new assets like SCAs and OPFs. By the 2000s, the NASA budget was at $18 billion and the Shuttle budget was at nearly $4 billion. They were not inventing much that was new. They were no longer procuring major assets. There was a lot less work being done.
It probably would have been nearly as cost effective to just maintain an assembly line for continuing to build Shuttle Orbiters, improving on them over time. Instead all the money, not much different than during the 1970s was going into operations and logistics.
The missions were serial and the vehicle configuration should have been handled in a serial manner-only change things-hardware, drawings, documentation, as required and keep most things the same. Instead every launch was treated as a new and different vehicle configuration.
This was a management problem.
Keyhole wasn’t DOD, it’s NRO (National Reconnaisance Office). Per-unit costs of Keyhole satellites were about the same as the cost of Hubble, around $2.5 billion each. The NRO’s budget is currently about $10 billion per year. In the 1990s it was in the $6 billion range.
There are about 32 satellites that are currently operated by the NRO, roughly divided between communications, signals interception, and observation satellites. In comparison, NASA has about 37 active satellites, about half are Earth-observation, the rest are scattered through the solar system.
Yes, the Shuttle’s design was changed pretty dramatically in order to carry spy satellites. NASA planned a 40 feet-long and 12 feet-wide cargo bay, but NRO specified a 60 feet by 15 feet bay because it expected future intelligence satellites to become larger.
Operational staff / costs for the Shuttle never went down due to the large amount of refurbishment that was required between flights, it was never a “gas n go” spacecraft. The three main engines, for example, were stripped down and rebuilt between every flight. This was improved upon over time, the Block I and Block II turbopumps for the engines each required less maintenance and provided higher thrust ratings.
The engines provide an example of how the Shuttles were continually improved and upgraded through their lives, much as you suggest they should have been. To conclude that “nothing new” was being made and “less work” was being done is simply incorrect.
I think (and may be wrong) that Keyhole costs include launch, which if true made the various service and repair missions possibly misguided. Maybe a new “Hubble” every few years with all the latest and greatest.
For some reason I couldn’t find a great deal of information about the NRO’s budget in my internet searches, but I would say that the price included the cost of launch would be a reasonable thing to think.
And you’re right, launching a new Hubble every 5 years or so would have had much the same effects that flying upgrades up to Hubble did, and cost about the same.
Even if you had to throw away the 1st Hubble with the mis-ground lens, the older multiple “Hubbles” would be extremely useful until they died, with say different universities and consortia, both domestic and international, managing each scope, raising funds, coordinating projects on occasion, etc.I see it as a lost opportunity. Oh well. The 2 spare Keyholes given to NASA, altho over-specialized, can provide some of the benefits.
Completely not true. Separate launch and repair missions, and you slash the weight of each launch in half, at least, doing the job on something, say, the size of the shuttle’s crewed section. Like, for example, a Dragon/CST-100/Shenzou/Soyuz, in order of roominess.
I’m not sure why George thinks we are lost in space. According to Charlie Bolden we are on our way to Mars. Didn’t I see this week that even yesterday’s Pluto fly-by was a stop on the way to Mars? We are building the Mars rocket. We have an Orion Mars capsule. Anyone who thinks we are lost in space needs to get behind and support our Mars mission plan.
Include a section in the documentation of equipment for the Moon saying how it can be adapted to work on Mars. The hope being machines that can do both jobs costing less than developing separate designs for both planets.
Stuff that would work on the Moon wouldn’t work on Mars, and vice versa. The environments are far too different.
Not as much as you might think. Quite a bit of what you need for extended stay life support and logistics would be inside pressurized spaces and be close to identical. The power supply and heat rejection systems would be very different.
Food and air / water scrubbers could be the same, yes, but this is comparatively minor when considering the things that have to be different.
EDL hardware, spacesuits, ISRU equipment (if any), all vehicles and tools that are used outside the habitat, and as you noted, the power supply and heat rejection, all have to be different to handle the different environments.
However, the life support and other internal equipment is among the ones with lower technology levels for habitats, and prototyping and debugging on the Moon is considered useful. (I worked on this for NASA in the 80s and 90s at JSC.)
True, it would be useful to have that experience with life support on the Moon, but in most all other ways going to the Moon really doesn’t develop the technology you need to go to Mars.
The outside of the land vehicles has to be different due to temperature ranges but the insides can be the similar. Much of the avionics can be inside, see the Orion space capsule.
Since the Moon has the worse temperature range Mars equipment may simply use the same design for e.g. motors.
Lunar temperature range min at 85°N is 70 K, mean 130 K and max at the equator 390 K.
Mars temperature range min 130 K, mean 210 K and max 308 K.
In general, the “insides” are the easy parts. (If somebody had vehicles that could fly people to Mars and land them on it, they’d get the necessary ECLS systems built overnight.)
Hug Doug’s points in this thread are quite correct. I’d also add differences in radiation and gravity environments, particularly in regard to mission exposure times. (Cosmic ray and zero g exposure for three days is an entirely different class of problem than for 6 months.) As far as surface operations, he was right to list EDL first – if your Mars lander looks anything like your moon lander or vice-versa, you are doing it really wrong.
It is the other way round. We have plenty of rockets that can get objects and people into space. NASA flight tested that in 1973 (Skylab) and with new hardware (ISS and Shuttle) in December 1998.
The problem has been keeping people alive on the planets and during the interplanetary journeys. So life support is the VERY HARD part.
The moon scopes… The moon environment is the design driver. Any reasonable down mass to Mars requires propulsive descent, as for the moon. There is convective cooling on mars, not much, but some (600pa). Most of the heat rejection still has to be radiative (Convective rolls off around 100Pa). The dust management on the moon will be more challenging than Mars. Regiolith produces electrostatically charged dust. That is sharp, fine and unweathered. Martian dust will be weathered. The ISS looses 0.227 kg air per day. How are we to manage the N2 loss for a Mars trip (~220kg additional mass in N2, not including the tanking etc)? ISS is under the radiation belt how are we going to manage in BLEO? Bone density loss and all the physical adaptions to zero G need to be managed for a Mars trip if we want anyone to survive EDL never mind stand up on the surface. How much G do you need to mitigate the issue. 1/5th on the Moon would be a good second data point no? logistics solutions to the moon require similar delta V as Mars, however the moon is closer and easier to reach, communicate with, and abort from. Homesteading and operational techniques perfected on the moon would be relevant on Mars. The lunar logistics train once established can be easily repurposed the only significant parameter difference is time. In addition the moon lacking significant atmosphere presents many astronomical observation opportunities not available on Mars. The way to Mars or anywhere else is through the moon. Why this is an open issue is just bizarre to me as I such a position is to a Mars first advocate… Either way the destination is really not that important. Pick one and go… pick one we can afford and go… Pick one that we can sustain and go. Just no more boots and flags please. We need to be out there, working out there not just going to mark posts.
The list has already been compiled and the lunar program with HLV and Orion has left all of the Space Grand Challenges off the list. Key omissions include Economic Access to Space, long duration space flight beyond 3-20 days, and the ability to land heavy objects on Mars, to name but a few.
The current lunar program provided an uneconomical HLV incredibly expendable architecture, a capsule that cannot reach Mars nor asteroids, a new mothballed test stand, but the HUGE loss to HSF was the obvious omission to service satellites at L2 due to ‘a focus on the moon’–a very costly mistake indeed.
A return to the moon did not require Shuttle nor its reassembled components. A return to the moon did not require an ability to assemble large structures in space, nor the ability to service satellites, nor the ability for long duration space travel-lost in space indeed.
A lunar exploration program will once again distract from an economical architecture to explore to all destinations beyond the moon. Prior to such an endeavor:
– LEO gas station–reduce LV size and increase flight rate
– EP tugs-ferry supplies + propellant on more eff. trajectories
– LV and transfer stages with reuse as the goal
– DSH Voyager at L2- extend duration of crew/hardware
– L2 Gateway for communications and lunar safehaven
– Add Missions that avoid gravity wells
Stage 70% of the mass in LEO–the dirt cheap, Class D propellant and shield this depot for MMOD.
Most importantly: Stage the other 30% at *L2* and avoid the weight penalties of LEO space debris.
With the ability to refuel, focus on reuse of common hardware, the US can lead the way on economical next generation Exploration architecture and most agree would merit a plus up. The vision of depots and staging, in work for decades, points the space-fairing nations toward that limitless frontier.
Dear colleagues,
It was a pleasure to read George Abbey’s thoughtful and in my view quite accurate account of the past three decades of human space flight, and encouraging to see a strong statement of support for a rational future. I can only hope that candidates on both sides of the current contest will pay proper attention to this essay.
Although he understandably feels the first human target beyond LEO should be the Moon rather than Mars, this isn’t the main point. Abbey generally agrees with the Obama Administration’s efforts to reduce launch costs and use our LEO infrastructure as a base for BLEO operations rather than repeat Apollo, on or off steroids. Abbey makes no mention of SLS/Orion but suggests a new human-rated fully reusable launch system. Interesting.