With all due respect, I legitimately don’t get this.
The major failure of Constellation was trying to build too much, too fast: a capsule, the Ares I, the Ares V, a lunar lander, and a host of associated systems. It couldn’t all be paid for. One of the last things that happened before Constellation was canceled, reported here on NASAWatch, was the Altair lander was given the ax. NASA was not afforded enough money to develop all these different systems and vehicles within the time allotted.
Now let’s look a the current Journey to Mars. Realistically speaking, when are we going to Mars? Well considering that NASA will probably want to Orbit Mars or a moon of it before landing on the surface, your likely landing attempt mission could launch either in September 2039 or October 2041.
You can logic out why it won’t be earlier. The 2020s are filled with Asteroid mission stuff and optimistically, the SLS Block II doesn’t appear until 2028. So between 2028 and 2039 we have 5 launch windows – starting in 2029 and coming about every 2 years. Let’s say with the a Mars Orbit or Mars moon mission eating up 2 of those launch windows (as in, we’ll wait for them to return before launching a landing mission).. you start running out of dates in the 2030s pretty quick.
All this is a way of saying: the chief complaint about the current plan doesn’t actually make sense. We don’t need it all tomorrow. We don’t need it all 10 years from now. Really, we need it 25 years from now. How many hundreds of billions will NASA spend on Mars mission-related activities before 2039? The number is titanic.
But what will absolutely foil going to Mars, yet again, is trying to build too much in too short a window. So let’s put the kibosh on Orion and SLS. Let’s build a “modern” system in the 2030s. Okay… first, there isn’t ever likley to be the money and the political consensus to to “Apollo, Mars Edition” in a decade, ever again, especially when the country is about to see a wave of Baby Boomer retirements and money directed to the old skyrocket. Second, what is to stop it from having the same “too much too fast” failure of Constellation?
I suppose we can hope that SpaceX is able to do that by then… but let’s be clear, as great as that would be, that’s hope and nothing more… the same kind of hope that had the first Falcon Heavy launch delayed for the past three years. SpaceX can’t be the universal solution.
And you know… let’s say we just kicked the Mars can to the 2030s. Okay… what do we do now? Commercial financing, technology development and the ISS? The ISS as a prototyping platform for Mars has been a scam from start to finish. The scam starts with pretending that a year long mission to space is something ground breaking (pardon me while I think my my best friend’s year long deployment to Afghanistan and am hardly impressed by such a flight). The scam ends with the realization that essentially nothing that will be used on a Mars mission is scheduled or for the most part even imagined, for any ISS flight.
I’ll be blunt: I support SLS and the “Journey to Mars”, and it’s pretty much by default. I’m willing to say “we’re going to Mars, 25 years from now”, which is patently ridiculous because with the right investment it could be done in a third that. But that’s the imperfect world of compromise we live in, and we’ve gotten to that point after a mountain of disappointment, from X-33 to OSP to Constellation to an ISS far less grand than once envisioned. From my perspective the options are, start a downpayment and pay for Mars over 25 years – capsule and base rocket today, upper stage tomorrow, lander 15 years from now and so forth – or, conversely, pray at shrine of Elon Musk and hope he bails out the human race with a commercial plan.
Is what we’ve spent nearly enough? Nope. But neither do we need the SLS Block II, and any money spent on it, for 15 years down the line. So why does that even count as a mark against this?
Right now it’s the 24% of the budget that goes to Exploration. Post 2024 it will be the the 21.3% from Space Operations post-ISS.
It is that, every year, through 2039. That’s just under half the NASA budget.
The problem here is the ISS. It needs to go away after 2024. Really. NASA cannot support both a mission beyond earth orbit and the $3.8 billion ISS. The question of money is a question of paying for yesterdays destination. That’s two parallel, mutually exclusive, manned space programs. We need to go down to one. I know ISS interests will try and say the station will be good until 2028. And then 2032. And maybe 2036. And then maybe the end of time. Because NASA doesn’t do giving up things well. But too bad. There is no going to Mars, ever, so long as there is a government funded space station.
As to ‘where’s the money’? It’s right there. And the nice part is: with the ISS deorbited in 2024, it gets freed up just when the Exploration program needs it to start on SLS Block II, a crew habitation module and so forth. No point making those now… they’d sit in storage for decades like the J-2X.
If we want to do Mars quicker, the solution is equally obvious: deorbit the ISS in 2018. But that’s not happening, so we have to get to the other side of it before “show me the money” goes away.
There’s a nightmare scenario for you – it’s 2019, some critical system on the ISS is failing and forcing a do-or-die decision on whether to end the mission early or spend billions to bring up new modules and fix it. Then the ISS supporters get a big surge of funding to fix it, while SLS gets delayed to death.
And of course, fixing it means it’s more functional in 2028, and the ISS supporters start talking about having it longer so they can keep on running ever more microgravity experiments.
I’d say in that case, stick a fork in the American manned space program. It had a good run, but it’s done, son.
You know, I was not remotely opposed to canceling the Space Shuttle. Or the gap. Much hay was made of the launch gap. I say “so we’re between programs, big deal”. We had to free up money, so retiring the old girl made sense.
There is zero point to launching people into space unless the country is doing one of two things
(1) keeping an American in space constantly as some kind of completely irrelevant showing of the flag / perfect attendance record.
(2) actively planning for the next step.
The ISS is completely #1. It should be #2.
People talk about #2 all the time, but talk is cheap.
I think it comes down to the rack science. How many thousands of jobs does that support? Because that science – the 3rd rate and unimportant research that get’s published in obscure journals – that it is, doesn’t get done unless it’s on something like the ISS or an independent satellite. It’s amusing in a sense that this monument to jobs is so protected, but it’s true science-friendly capability – it’s immense electrical power – is utilized by only a handful of experiments, like the AMS-02.
If the ISS is irrelevant, why is the next step relevant? I agree microgravity science is somewhat limited but there have been a variety of other roles proposed for stations in LEO.
My point was a little different. I don’t actually think that prolonged exposure to weightlessness (the main role of the ISS in preparation for BEO missions) is a roadblock. But if humans cannot find productive and sustainable ways to live and work in LEO, how can we possibly do it on Mars, where the costs will be orders of magnitude greater? We need to identify the values and costs of human spaceflight, and find ways to reduce the cost so that it will be less than the value to both the taxpayers and other potential customers.
In strictly practical terms? Mostly just the benefits that usually happen when you do a cutting-edge technological project – you figure out stuff related to the mission that has applications elsewhere.
Specifically, not much – it’s a pure science mission. If you don’t think that’s an acceptable trade-off in terms of cost for pure science, then that’s okay. I think something similar about the ISS – I think it’s an over-expensive way to do microgravity experiments in Low Earth Orbit compared to just periodically launching up automated labs capable of being guided into re-entry and retrieval once they’ve completed their research missions. Even if it is more cost-effective to have humans in long-term duration up there (with all the risk and life-support systems that entails), I think it’s fair to say that at some point down the line, we’re going to have telepresence-plus-robotics that will be able to do that as well because of the low communications lag with Earth.
I am skeptical that we can justify such an expensive and focused program as sending a man to Mars on the basis of inadvertent side effects that might be useful for other purposes. Putting the money directly into research and development would likely be more effective. In the case of science, the communications lag with Mars is quite long but AI is rapidly advancing and any suggestion that we need direct teleoperation from humans in mars orbit is IMO on shaky ground.
Does that mean we should not send people to Mars? Not at all, but it means we need to get the cost down to a level at which it will be possible to send tourists and feasible to send human scientists rather than robots.
Interesting. Aeronautics, the most practical and immediately useful technology NASA develops, is woefully neglected and in fact the FAA is being forced to take over some areas of R&D already.
Bass-ackwards. If boots on Mars is the goal, there are a dozen or so technologies and some basic research that require billions of dollars of investment before we can intelligently design a human Mars campaign. Building a really expensive HLV (SLS) and lunar capsule (Orion) now and trying to keep their marching armies together for the next 20 years sucks up the budget and talent we need to gain the knowledge and mature the technologies and systems that are actually on the critical path to Mars.
If we just want to put boots on Mars, we should send a pair of boots on the next robotic lander. If we spend all our resources on a human mission with current technology, we will have another Apollo; a few pictures and a cancelled program. If we can build a sustainable infrastructure in LEO, we can expand outward from there as we develop more practical technologies for human spaceflight.
Just having infrastructure in LEO that survives because of loss aversion in Congress and NASA isn’t a virtue in of itself unless it fulfills a mission and leads to something else.
ISS is a functional (if extremely expensive) microgravity research laboratory, but it’s not a useful platform to go anywhere else we might likely send crews to this side of 2100. Right now, it’s still vastly cheaper and safer to front-load all of the production work on Earth and send it up versus trying to build it at extreme expense in LEO, and that’s going to stay that way until such point that you’ve got robots capable of disassembling asteroids and turning the material into something useful.
ISS has potential as a platform for Earth and space observation, spacecraft checkout and fueling prior to departure, and as a tourist resort and port of call for spacecraft of all nations. We need to reduce the cost of putting a human in space. One step we should take immediately is to invite China to join the program. If we cannot find a way to use ISS productively, there is no way we can use a lunar or Mars base productively.
The orbit of ISS was chosen due to requiring Russian participation. Because of this, ISS is in a really bad orbit to use as a location for “spacecraft checkout and fueling prior to departure”.
Agreed that “We need to reduce the cost of putting a human in space.”, but SLS/Orion certainly doesn’t advance NASA towards that goal.
True, but completely misleading since all other international partners other than Russia have launch site latitudes of 30 degrees N or less. so Russia is *the* reason for the unusually high orbital inclination of ISS at nearly 52 degrees.
Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome, (ISS Proton and Soyuz launchers) is at 46° N.
The US Kennedy Space Center (was space shuttle launch site) is approximately 29 degrees N latitude.
The Japanese Yoshinobu Launch Complex is approximately 30 degrees N latitude.
ESA’s Guiana Space Centre (HTV launch site) is approximately 5 degrees N latitude.
The very high orbital inclination of ISS resulted in such a huge payload it for the space shuttle that the Super Lightweight Tank needed to be developed.
You need some accomplishment in the relatively near future to tie it to Mars, otherwise there’s a pretty big risk you’ll get diverted in the 2020s when ISS ends its mission. What do you think is going to be more politically tempting to NASA at that point – a Mars mission that requires another 10-15 years of hardware development and risky missions (including more than 2 years in space for Mars flyby and orbital missions), or a lunar landing/science mission that would be cheaper, closer to home, and something they can defray the costs with by engaging international partners?
The scam ends with the realization that essentially nothing that will be used on a Mars mission is scheduled or for the most part even imagined, for any ISS flight.
Yep. That was always a scam the ISS boosters played up because they feared that an interplanetary mission bypassing the ISS would “degrade” the value of the mission (which if true would be a rather telling judgment about the value of microgravity research that it’s supposed to be providing).
That’s also the Worst Possible Post-ISS Mission short of total cancellation of funding: another decades-long space station. I know the Russians want to do it, with all the same empty promises about it being a “gateway” to the planets complete with proposed hangers/etc.
The decision needs to be taken out of NASA’s hands, and the SLS is evidence of that happening.
NASA has promised, since the 1980s… the NASP, the Space Station freedom space transports, X-33/VentureStar, OSP and Constellation. I’m sure I missed some.
NASA cannot be trusted to make the decision this time. I was in middle school when I read about the X-33 in the Boston Globe science section the first time. I was 31 when the actual shuttle successor prototype launched for the first time last December.
I’m going to tell you why I like the SLS so much. Because it was forced upon NASA. NASA’s leadership is poor. It’s been poor for years. It’s allowed insurgencies to undermine programs. It’s allowed different parts of the agency to wage scortched earth campaigns against other parts in order to maximize their share of the budget pie. It’s been truly myopic about programs. If we left the decision on “what to do next”, we’ll spin our wheels for another 20 years like we have the last 20. There is no internal consensus and probably can never be. NASAWatch has reported many of these.
And that’s actually completely correct if you think about it because what NASA is, is essentially, the executing agency. Going to Mars, going to LEO, building a Space Station, launching a probe – what the country spends it’s money on is rightfully a POLITICAL decision. NASA can and should advise, but Congress is WELL within their rights to to ignore it.
And given NASA’s track record, I find ignoring it to be a very easy thing to do.
So how to protect the ISS nightmare scenario? Have a Congress that sees the ISS as yesterday’s destination and will cut off funding for it in the 2020s. NASA will protest. It needs to be ignored. The decision needs to be made by Congress and endured by Congress. NASA just needs to execute it and frown while doing it, much like they are with the SLS today.
I’ll be blunt. If we go to the Moon, instead of Mars first… that’ll be consolation prize. But it’ll still be something. Even if we go to some random asteroid. The point is, any of these, and building the capability it will take to do them, is better than what we have now, and what it’s taken to get here. And much of that capability can be turned around and used to get to Mars. Even if it is beyond 2039, it’ll at least be the right track.
Which contrasts with today and delaying everything because the ISS exists.
This goes to the heart of our discssion. What is our goal? I believe that human spaceflight, to be meaningful, must permit hundreds or thousands of people to work, vacation or live in space sustainably. That can only occur within a fairly fixed federal funding level if we can reduce costs significantly. I do not regard the ISS as a detour. There is nothing intrinsically more meaningful about putting boots on Mars than building a growing base of operations in LEO. If we can reduce the cost of maintaining the ISS then it will have more customers. If we cannot afford permanent human presence in LEO, we certainly cannot afford human presence beyond LEO.
I only think human spaceflight should be a government-funded operation as long as it’s providing a useful scientific purpose, because the potential economic and political gains are very slim to none. In that sense, I don’t care whether our crewed missions lead to the ability for large numbers of people to live sustainably in space for long periods of time – I care about whether they can live in space long enough to do useful missions, be it to orbit, the Moon, Mars, or beyond.
Truth is, if there was no particular value for crewed expeditions and no risk that cancelling the crewed program and giving its funding to robotic missions would lead to NASA’s overall funding going down, I’d be in favor of doing it and maybe kicking some money towards commercial spaceflight for research purposes.
JonathanN3 wrote: “The major failure of Constellation”.
I do not believe that is the case. It was a total departure from what was outlined in “The Vision for Space Exploration”. It also was relying on one of the most broken contracting systems there is. Constellation was DOA the day Griffin announced that EELV’s were going to be more expensive, more unreliable and to unsafe to use and then he foisted the Ares I nightmare onto the American taxpayer.
Star liner is going to ride into space on an atlas. I thought atlas was NOT man rated?
Was it up graded to meet the man rated requirements in the last few years, or was the whole EELV man rating thing just some political CRAP to justify building the constellation/SLS monster?
Obviously atlas was and is still the safest vehicle flying.
“Thursday’s announcement confirmed the completion of what is the fifth milestone of its SAA process, with ULA’s Engineering Review Board confirming that Atlas V can readily comply with NASA’s stringent safety and performance requirements for human spaceflight, leading the way to develop a “safe, reliable and cost effective” Crew Transportation System (CTS).”
Okay… first, there isn’t ever likley to be the money and the political consensus to to “Apollo, Mars Edition” in a decade, ever again
There is no political consensus to go to Mars.
Congress doesn’t want a Mars mission as such, they want a Big Rocket, with contractors in the right districts. There’s not an ounce of support for the rest of the requirements for a Mars mission… you know, the actual mission hardware.
It was the same with Constellation, they funded the SRB-launcher that steered money to their districts, but added not a dollar of additional funding required for the basic lander. And they certainly added nothing for long term habitation systems that would be required if Constellation was ever going to be more than a handful of Apollo-style flags’n’footprints missions.
(Griffin thought he was the new James Webb and could get the President and Congress to commit to an unaffordable Grand Vision, forcing them to increase NASA’s budget drastically. But modern Congress has played that game too many times. So Griffin utterly failed to get a single extra cent, and the program floundered.)
No point making those now… they’d sit in storage for decades like the J-2X.
And that’s exactly what people are saying about SLS/Orion. What’s it for? It has no purpose until the mission hardware is built, but it will consume $2-3b/yr keeping it operating. At least most of the mission hardware could actually be mothballed at minimal cost while waiting for a launcher. A launcher must be flown.
The development of Block Ia and then Block II will consume any extra funding freed up from killing ISS. (Congress will not tolerate NASA diverting money from SLS to Mars mission hardware, when Block II inevitably runs over time & over budget.) So development of mission hardware will not begin until SLS Block II is flying. Late 2020’s at best, and more realistically early 2030’s.
And you are not going to develop long duration habitats, Mars EDL landers, Mars habitats, Mars rovers, etc etc etc, between the end of the Block II development and 2039; not while the majority of the available budget is spent keeping SLS block Ia and block II and Orion alive.
By 2039, SLS will be like the later-years Shuttle program, where none of the developers are still attached to the program. (Some of the designs (for eg, engines) will be decades older than the guys working on them.) You’re flying hardware that the ops people don’t really understand and are a little bit afraid of. Only worse, because you’ll gain a fraction of the ops experience during the 2030’s.
Starting with SLS is perhaps the worst path NASA could have chosen. Even ignoring SpaceX, or EELV-based depots and other architectures.
Congress doesn’t want a Mars mission as such, they want a Big Rocket, with contractors in the right districts. There’s not an ounce of support for the rest of the requirements for a Mars mission… you know, the actual mission hardware.
Exactly, with the added part of “Right now.”
This is the problem. This is THE problem with NASA. You view this as a bad thing. And for the world we live in, that makes absolutely no sense. You know what I call protecting a hugely expensive program by putting it in many districts and states? Armor.
Let’s not forget the dirty little secret of the romanticized Project Apollo. Kennedy was a New Deal Democrat. Social Wellfare was his bread and butter. He didn’t know much of anything or particularly care, about Space. He refered to it as “the Heavens” for cripes sake. There was no Kennedy vision. There was a nice speech and that’s it. Johnson? Vietnam consumed him. Nixon? Inherited an almost complete program.
Project Apollo happened because the program’s money was divided into powerful states and congressional districts that protected it for years, until those Congressmen and Senators started dying or losing their seats.
My point is, the quest for programmatic purity in this world, is a foolish one. Yes, in a perfect world, you would be right. But we live in a world where every single space program tied to a President since Reagan died. The SLS… the “Senate Launch System”… that’s an honnorific as far as I’m concerned. If you want to actually go to Mars one day, the country needs Senators across decades to stand for this thing, not a mere President – who probably doesn’t particularly care for space anyway – serving a mere 8 year term.
It may not be ideal but you know what it is? The only way this is going to happen in a world where a $5 billion a year program that is – lets be clear – the very definition of discretionary spending – ripe for cuts as the political winds change.
And that’s exactly what people are saying about SLS/Orion. What’s it for? It has no purpose until the mission hardware is built, but it will consume $2-3b/yr keeping it operating. At least most of the mission hardware could actually be mothballed at minimal cost while waiting for a launcher. A launcher must be flown.
The development of Block Ia and then Block II will consume any extra funding freed up from killing ISS. (Congress will not tolerate NASA diverting money from SLS to Mars mission hardware, when Block II inevitably runs over time & over budget.) So development of mission hardware will not begin until SLS Block II is flying. Late 2020’s at best, and more realistically early 2030’s.
Okay. What’s your point? So we do it then.
I mean you do realize there is no world out there where we wave our hands now and do research, then come back in the 2030s and do a launcher, capsule, lander, habituation module and everything else mission specific. That’s the part you programmic purity advocates seem utterly fanciful about. You want this thing that is impossible because congress will never drop the $15 billion a year – as much as the Navy Shipbuilding budget – to make it a reality.
The only way we’re going to get all the components we need for Mars is to spread out paying for it. Ideal? Certainly not. But really. It is that, or nothing.
And your claima bout it being the “worst path” is questionable at best. The hardware SpaceX would use for Mars doesn’t exist yet. It is very conceptual. Will they deliver? Probably. But SpaceX is uncomfortably used as basically an article of faith that they can wave a magic wand, and make something intrinsically superior. The difficulties of Falcon Heavy development – which lets be clear has slipped in it’s schedule twice as much as the SLS has – should be caution against thinking SpaceX is the universal solution.
And to be blunt, I think it’s unwise to mortgage our country’s long term space future on the health and welfare of Elon Musk. What happens if SpaceX goes public and all of a sudden shareholder returns becomes their driving motivation. And don’t say “it can’t happen.” We’ve seen it happen. Sergie Brin spends huge amounts of effort protecting Google X from shareholders pretty mad about the extreme amount of money being spent on it.
And EELVs? As an alternative to the SLS? That’s odd, considering that it’s the SpaceX Falcon 9 that is putting them on the chopping block.
It comes down to this for me: it’s SLS, over 25 years, warts and all, or nothing. Because there is no alternative. We’re going to to Mars because capability-gain-by-capability-gain, NASA will have all the pieces in place… eventually. That is the only way it happens.
To give an example of a better path, to show you what I’m talking about, here’s an alternative time line:
If Congress wasn’t obsessed with the Big Rocket. No Orion. No SLS.
You instead start by focusing on a DSH. Building directly on ISS experience. This potentially leads to a US-only replacement for ISS, starting with an expansion and upgrade program for ISS. Ie, using ISS as a handy test-bed for components. The stuff that ISS should have been used for in the first place.
(For a mission to Mars, you need power systems, propulsion, very long duration ECLSS, shielded habitats, and the ability to put it all together. That’s basically a space station. But instead of building on the knowledge gained developing the hideously expensive ISS, it was ignored for a decade to chase Big Rockets. By the time an SLS-based Mars program gets to developing a DSH, the ISS dev people would be scattered to the four winds, and twenty years out of practice.)
As a secondary track, you throw a few dollars to commercial players like Bigelow. If you’re lucky, this gives you a relatively cheap way to double your development; the two paths feeding and reinforcing each other.
Second major focus, new heavy-lift-class engines. First major hydrocarbon engine development since the F1. First major engine development since SSME/RS-25. What’s the point developing it early? Simple. A single engine rocket can become the basis of a new medium-heavy core to replace Atlas V (Russian engines) and Delta IV (too costly.) This new medium-lift launcher provides you with a proving ground for the new engines and associated systems, plus it builds up an experienced workforce (designers, engineers and ops) on a new rocket.
When you’re ready for the big step to a 5-8 engine Saturn class HLV (if it’s determined to even be necessary), your guys have already cut their teeth. And if HLV turns out not to be necessary for BEO missions, you haven’t thrown $3b/yr keeping the Big Rocket flying for two decades, you’ve upgraded EELV.
As an secondary track, and to end dependence on the Russians, you fully fund commercial cargo and commercial crew. One side (SpaceX) gives you a potential HLV as a bonus, the other (Boeing/etc) provides a HSF customer for the new EELV replacement. And as these new CC capsules mature, they may prove sufficient to eliminate the need for a dedicated Mars/lunar capsule. If not, they provide a training ground for designers, engineers and ops on a new generation of capsule technology; ready to be called upon to develop the Big Capsule.
Aside: This is 90% equivalent to what Obama wanted in 2010. So if we’d started then, we’d be five years into an engine program, with ULA probably deep into developing the replacement EELV. At least one CC player would be flying to ISS, maybe two, with a third on the books. Maybe a new US test propulsion module for ISS, and possibly Bigelow would be flying a major test module, either on ISS or free-flying.
And so in 2015 with new space-station hardware on the way, a major engine program reaching maturity, Atlas being replaced, and NASA no longer dependant on Soyuz to ISS… Russia would suddenly be much less able to play “trampoline” games with the space program. Their own lack of progress would be obvious. They start hinting at a separate space station, oh fine, how’s next Thursday? What’s that, you don’t have most of the modules required yet? Funny, we do.
And if, in 2016/2020, a new President comes in with another idiotic Grand Vision, pushing NASA in a new direction (whether moon, Mars-surface, Phobos, asteroids, L2, L5, or ISSv2), not a penny has been wasted, because the technology being developed can be pointed in nearly any direction.
It wasn’t clear to me how credible the cost and performance estimates for the Starraker were. In particular, the “wet wing” LH2 tanks seem challenging given the large surface area and consequent problems with insulation and ice formation, and the total mass put into orbit is daunting. Other concepts for SSTO have encountered significant problems when actual implementation was attempted. Nevertheless it is worth thinking about.
first ANOTHER Space Station? Really? No. That’s another 20 year detour. And at the other end of, we’ll just have the Space Station lobby looking for third third Space Station in a century. Why not just test on the ISS itself and then built the the Mars vehicle? More to the point, the NASA plans for a Mars Transfer Vehicle is something around 2/3rds the mass of the ISS, launched in 6 SLS flights. The promise of a “testing ground” is a key justification for the ISS being utilized beyond 2018. Your basically saying “no we need another and we can test there”. That’s nonsense. Then what’s the point of the ISS at all? A bridge to a bridge? I’m sorry but that’s not a manned space program worth supporting whatsoever.
Second major focus, new heavy-lift-class engines. First major hydrocarbon engine development since the F1. First major engine development since SSME/RS-25. What’s the point developing it early? Simple. A single engine rocket can become the basis of a new medium-heavy core to replace Atlas V (Russian engines) and Delta IV (too costly.) This new medium-lift launcher provides you with a proving ground for the new engines and associated systems, plus it builds up an experienced workforce (designers, engineers and ops) on a new rocket.
Well a few problems here, the Atlas V is already going away, because of the Vulcan with BE-4 or AR-1… maybe. Who knows with ULA. Fact is, you’re proposing a replacement engine to a replacement engine essentially for a rocket that is being made superfluous by the Falcon 9.
Upgrading the Atlas V is foolhardy. It is dying a much deserved death thanks to sanctions and the Falcon 9. ULA deserves this, due to a good decade of underinvestment on Atlas V while SpaceX was doing pretty much everything your saying.
The key justification for having an SLS at all, is that SpaceX will not have something comparable by the time it’s needed. If you could garantee that SpaceX would have a super heavy lift vehicle ready, then sure, deep six the SLS. I think, that putting all our eggs in the Elon Musk basket is foolhardy. But at EELV masses – the Falcon 9 has made it’s competitors obsolete, so expanding Atlas V to expand THAT into a new rocket, seems like furthering development on a dead end.
When you’re ready for the big step to a 5-8 engine Saturn class HLV (if it’s determined to even be necessary), your guys have already cut their teeth. And if HLV turns out not to be necessary for BEO missions, you haven’t thrown $3b/yr keeping the Big Rocket flying for two decades, you’ve upgraded EELV.
The thing is, that $3 billion a year isn’t wasteful at all if it is doing things like putting Orion in lunar orbit or launching large probes. That $3 billion a year also, is not terribly different from US spending on the Space Shuttle, which by the way, also built the space station contemporaneously, and it did it on a time scale of about half of what getting all the mars pieces into place will take.
Furthermore a HLV from an upgraded EELV is a dead end in the world of Falcon 9. I mean the US technology bases for rockets are this: STS tech, Atlas tech, Delta tech, Falcon tech. STS tech is the most logical government-funded baseline. It has the powerful RS-25. It has the SRBs. It has many components that need to be put in a different configuration.
[blockquote]Aside: This is 90% equivalent to what Obama wanted in 2010. So if we’d started then, we’d be five years into an engine program, with ULA probably deep into developing the replacement EELV. At least one CC player would be flying to ISS, maybe two, with a third on the books. Maybe a new US test propulsion module for ISS, and possibly Bigelow would be flying a major test module, either on ISS or free-flying.[/blockquote]
Lots of maybes here. And you mention Bigelow too much for a company that’s been long on promises, short on results.
And more to the point, not developing the SLS so we could spend money on something comparable to the AR-1 or BE-4, seems ridiculous. The country simply does not have a legitimate EELV-sized launcher problem. It has a kind of moral problem in that ULA decided to take a good decade off from improving the Altas V. But it has a sound replacement in the Falcon 9. Rather than spending money in duplicating capability that already exists, Congress was right in rejecting Obama’s plan as it spend money on developing capability we don’t have, which is HLV.
[blockquote]And if, in 2016/2020, a new President comes in with another idiotic Grand Vision, pushing NASA in a new direction (whether moon, Mars-surface, Phobos, asteroids, L2, L5, or ISSv2), not a penny has been wasted, because the technology being developed can be pointed in nearly any direction.[/blockquote]
Want to go to Mars one day? I do. The key to doing that is making the President utterly irrelevant in that process. Buying rockets to go to Mars needs to be something that the government does, independent of some “visionary” (not really) politician. It needs to be as routine as the country deciding to buy two Virgina class subs every year.
That is to say, if it is to be largely non-political, and safe from the budget ax, it needs to be protected by Congressmen and women who are sending money to their home districts.
If we’re not doing that, why would ANY congressmen vote to spend money on it. Higher idealism? Not on this planet. We’ll go to Mars by being deeply cynical about the political process that makes it happen, not hoping for the perfect plan… the pure immaculate efficient path, that will never get funded because despite what space lovers say “show me the money”, except by the Congressional district, always has and always will matter.
Want to go to Mars? Pork is you friend. That’s the dirty little secret of pork. It makes things happen.
Having read your plan, with respect I must say, I emphatically disagree that it’s remotely a “better” path. More idealistic certainly. Maybe in a perfect world. But this one? The world of the F-22 being canceled in favor of the F-35? I’m sorry, but you’re vision is a dead end.
Any development program needs customers willing to pay what it will cost. Although there are customers, even the taxpayers, who will pay for human flight to Mars, it is not at all clear that they would pay what it would cost with this technology. Consequently the best and possibly only way to advance human spaceflight is to reduce its cost.
There’s no doubt that Britain and many other European countries spent billions and trillions on exploration, colonization, and settlement and got a lot of return for their investment. But the US has also spent a lot of taxpayer dollars on NASA’s human space flight program over the past few decades — about a half-trillion in current dollars — and we’re not getting anywhere near the same level or kind of return. And it’s far from clear that spending another couple or few hundred billion dollars landing 4-6 astronauts a few times on the surface of Mars will produce the same level or kind of return, either.
Yep, it’s not even a comparison. Expeditions to South and Central America brought back goods, slaves, silver, and gold (as well as trading goods bought illicitly with that silver from China). The folks who went to the Virginia Colony and survived the first year made 1000% profits on tobacco crops, and so forth.
Whereas with space . . . who knows? The per-kilogram mission cost of sending hardware out to mine gold off asteroids is probably greater than the per-kilogram value of the gold they might bring back.
I agree! But we still have $18 billion a year. We can cry in our beer or we can learn to reduce costs, be realistic about our goals, and provide practical benefits for America.
A meaningless chart. It doesn’t say whether the federal budget is going up, down, or staying the same in any particular year. And that means that the NASA budget could be going up, down, or staying the same, regardless of whether NASA’s percentage of the federal budget is going up, down, or staying the same. Better to just use the NASA budget directly.
I would welcome better funding for spaceflight and many other forms of research and exploration. i just have not found any way to persuade the taxpayers to increase funding. If you can do it, great. And I’m serious – $18b/yr is a significant investment for an R&D agency and i think we should be able todo more with it.
With all due respect, I legitimately don’t get this.
The major failure of Constellation was trying to build too much, too fast: a capsule, the Ares I, the Ares V, a lunar lander, and a host of associated systems. It couldn’t all be paid for. One of the last things that happened before Constellation was canceled, reported here on NASAWatch, was the Altair lander was given the ax. NASA was not afforded enough money to develop all these different systems and vehicles within the time allotted.
Now let’s look a the current Journey to Mars. Realistically speaking, when are we going to Mars? Well considering that NASA will probably want to Orbit Mars or a moon of it before landing on the surface, your likely landing attempt mission could launch either in September 2039 or October 2041.
http://clowder.net/hop/rail…
You can logic out why it won’t be earlier. The 2020s are filled with Asteroid mission stuff and optimistically, the SLS Block II doesn’t appear until 2028. So between 2028 and 2039 we have 5 launch windows – starting in 2029 and coming about every 2 years. Let’s say with the a Mars Orbit or Mars moon mission eating up 2 of those launch windows (as in, we’ll wait for them to return before launching a landing mission).. you start running out of dates in the 2030s pretty quick.
All this is a way of saying: the chief complaint about the current plan doesn’t actually make sense. We don’t need it all tomorrow. We don’t need it all 10 years from now. Really, we need it 25 years from now. How many hundreds of billions will NASA spend on Mars mission-related activities before 2039? The number is titanic.
But what will absolutely foil going to Mars, yet again, is trying to build too much in too short a window. So let’s put the kibosh on Orion and SLS. Let’s build a “modern” system in the 2030s. Okay… first, there isn’t ever likley to be the money and the political consensus to to “Apollo, Mars Edition” in a decade, ever again, especially when the country is about to see a wave of Baby Boomer retirements and money directed to the old skyrocket. Second, what is to stop it from having the same “too much too fast” failure of Constellation?
I suppose we can hope that SpaceX is able to do that by then… but let’s be clear, as great as that would be, that’s hope and nothing more… the same kind of hope that had the first Falcon Heavy launch delayed for the past three years. SpaceX can’t be the universal solution.
And you know… let’s say we just kicked the Mars can to the 2030s. Okay… what do we do now? Commercial financing, technology development and the ISS? The ISS as a prototyping platform for Mars has been a scam from start to finish. The scam starts with pretending that a year long mission to space is something ground breaking (pardon me while I think my my best friend’s year long deployment to Afghanistan and am hardly impressed by such a flight). The scam ends with the realization that essentially nothing that will be used on a Mars mission is scheduled or for the most part even imagined, for any ISS flight.
I’ll be blunt: I support SLS and the “Journey to Mars”, and it’s pretty much by default. I’m willing to say “we’re going to Mars, 25 years from now”, which is patently ridiculous because with the right investment it could be done in a third that. But that’s the imperfect world of compromise we live in, and we’ve gotten to that point after a mountain of disappointment, from X-33 to OSP to Constellation to an ISS far less grand than once envisioned. From my perspective the options are, start a downpayment and pay for Mars over 25 years – capsule and base rocket today, upper stage tomorrow, lander 15 years from now and so forth – or, conversely, pray at shrine of Elon Musk and hope he bails out the human race with a commercial plan.
Is what we’ve spent nearly enough? Nope. But neither do we need the SLS Block II, and any money spent on it, for 15 years down the line. So why does that even count as a mark against this?
Show me the money.
Sure!
http://i2.wp.com/www.univer…
Right now it’s the 24% of the budget that goes to Exploration. Post 2024 it will be the the 21.3% from Space Operations post-ISS.
It is that, every year, through 2039. That’s just under half the NASA budget.
The problem here is the ISS. It needs to go away after 2024. Really. NASA cannot support both a mission beyond earth orbit and the $3.8 billion ISS. The question of money is a question of paying for yesterdays destination. That’s two parallel, mutually exclusive, manned space programs. We need to go down to one. I know ISS interests will try and say the station will be good until 2028. And then 2032. And maybe 2036. And then maybe the end of time. Because NASA doesn’t do giving up things well. But too bad. There is no going to Mars, ever, so long as there is a government funded space station.
As to ‘where’s the money’? It’s right there. And the nice part is: with the ISS deorbited in 2024, it gets freed up just when the Exploration program needs it to start on SLS Block II, a crew habitation module and so forth. No point making those now… they’d sit in storage for decades like the J-2X.
If we want to do Mars quicker, the solution is equally obvious: deorbit the ISS in 2018. But that’s not happening, so we have to get to the other side of it before “show me the money” goes away.
There’s a nightmare scenario for you – it’s 2019, some critical system on the ISS is failing and forcing a do-or-die decision on whether to end the mission early or spend billions to bring up new modules and fix it. Then the ISS supporters get a big surge of funding to fix it, while SLS gets delayed to death.
And of course, fixing it means it’s more functional in 2028, and the ISS supporters start talking about having it longer so they can keep on running ever more microgravity experiments.
I’d say in that case, stick a fork in the American manned space program. It had a good run, but it’s done, son.
You know, I was not remotely opposed to canceling the Space Shuttle. Or the gap. Much hay was made of the launch gap. I say “so we’re between programs, big deal”. We had to free up money, so retiring the old girl made sense.
There is zero point to launching people into space unless the country is doing one of two things
(1) keeping an American in space constantly as some kind of completely irrelevant showing of the flag / perfect attendance record.
(2) actively planning for the next step.
The ISS is completely #1. It should be #2.
People talk about #2 all the time, but talk is cheap.
I think it comes down to the rack science. How many thousands of jobs does that support? Because that science – the 3rd rate and unimportant research that get’s published in obscure journals – that it is, doesn’t get done unless it’s on something like the ISS or an independent satellite. It’s amusing in a sense that this monument to jobs is so protected, but it’s true science-friendly capability – it’s immense electrical power – is utilized by only a handful of experiments, like the AMS-02.
If the ISS is irrelevant, why is the next step relevant? I agree microgravity science is somewhat limited but there have been a variety of other roles proposed for stations in LEO.
People calling ISS irrelevant usually have no clue about what the obstacles to Mars actually are, and what is being done on ISS to remove some of them
My point was a little different. I don’t actually think that prolonged exposure to weightlessness (the main role of the ISS in preparation for BEO missions) is a roadblock. But if humans cannot find productive and sustainable ways to live and work in LEO, how can we possibly do it on Mars, where the costs will be orders of magnitude greater? We need to identify the values and costs of human spaceflight, and find ways to reduce the cost so that it will be less than the value to both the taxpayers and other potential customers.
No, prolonged exposure to weightlessness is not the primary or only role of ISS in preparation to BEO missions, by far. You proved my point
Obviously we need to get beyond microgravity experiments. But what practical benefit will we get from an Apollo-style human mission to Mars?
In strictly practical terms? Mostly just the benefits that usually happen when you do a cutting-edge technological project – you figure out stuff related to the mission that has applications elsewhere.
Specifically, not much – it’s a pure science mission. If you don’t think that’s an acceptable trade-off in terms of cost for pure science, then that’s okay. I think something similar about the ISS – I think it’s an over-expensive way to do microgravity experiments in Low Earth Orbit compared to just periodically launching up automated labs capable of being guided into re-entry and retrieval once they’ve completed their research missions. Even if it is more cost-effective to have humans in long-term duration up there (with all the risk and life-support systems that entails), I think it’s fair to say that at some point down the line, we’re going to have telepresence-plus-robotics that will be able to do that as well because of the low communications lag with Earth.
I am skeptical that we can justify such an expensive and focused program as sending a man to Mars on the basis of inadvertent side effects that might be useful for other purposes. Putting the money directly into research and development would likely be more effective. In the case of science, the communications lag with Mars is quite long but AI is rapidly advancing and any suggestion that we need direct teleoperation from humans in mars orbit is IMO on shaky ground.
Does that mean we should not send people to Mars? Not at all, but it means we need to get the cost down to a level at which it will be possible to send tourists and feasible to send human scientists rather than robots.
Interesting. Aeronautics, the most practical and immediately useful technology NASA develops, is woefully neglected and in fact the FAA is being forced to take over some areas of R&D already.
Aeronautics has been given the short end of the stick for many, many years now.
Bass-ackwards. If boots on Mars is the goal, there are a dozen or so technologies and some basic research that require billions of dollars of investment before we can intelligently design a human Mars campaign. Building a really expensive HLV (SLS) and lunar capsule (Orion) now and trying to keep their marching armies together for the next 20 years sucks up the budget and talent we need to gain the knowledge and mature the technologies and systems that are actually on the critical path to Mars.
If we just want to put boots on Mars, we should send a pair of boots on the next robotic lander. If we spend all our resources on a human mission with current technology, we will have another Apollo; a few pictures and a cancelled program. If we can build a sustainable infrastructure in LEO, we can expand outward from there as we develop more practical technologies for human spaceflight.
Just having infrastructure in LEO that survives because of loss aversion in Congress and NASA isn’t a virtue in of itself unless it fulfills a mission and leads to something else.
ISS is a functional (if extremely expensive) microgravity research laboratory, but it’s not a useful platform to go anywhere else we might likely send crews to this side of 2100. Right now, it’s still vastly cheaper and safer to front-load all of the production work on Earth and send it up versus trying to build it at extreme expense in LEO, and that’s going to stay that way until such point that you’ve got robots capable of disassembling asteroids and turning the material into something useful.
ISS has potential as a platform for Earth and space observation, spacecraft checkout and fueling prior to departure, and as a tourist resort and port of call for spacecraft of all nations. We need to reduce the cost of putting a human in space. One step we should take immediately is to invite China to join the program. If we cannot find a way to use ISS productively, there is no way we can use a lunar or Mars base productively.
The orbit of ISS was chosen due to requiring Russian participation. Because of this, ISS is in a really bad orbit to use as a location for “spacecraft checkout and fueling prior to departure”.
Agreed that “We need to reduce the cost of putting a human in space.”, but SLS/Orion certainly doesn’t advance NASA towards that goal.
The ISS orbit allows participation by all nations.
True, but completely misleading since all other international partners other than Russia have launch site latitudes of 30 degrees N or less. so Russia is *the* reason for the unusually high orbital inclination of ISS at nearly 52 degrees.
Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome, (ISS Proton and Soyuz launchers) is at 46° N.
The US Kennedy Space Center (was space shuttle launch site) is approximately 29 degrees N latitude.
The Japanese Yoshinobu Launch Complex is approximately 30 degrees N latitude.
ESA’s Guiana Space Centre (HTV launch site) is approximately 5 degrees N latitude.
The very high orbital inclination of ISS resulted in such a huge payload it for the space shuttle that the Super Lightweight Tank needed to be developed.
Bingo!!
You need some accomplishment in the relatively near future to tie it to Mars, otherwise there’s a pretty big risk you’ll get diverted in the 2020s when ISS ends its mission. What do you think is going to be more politically tempting to NASA at that point – a Mars mission that requires another 10-15 years of hardware development and risky missions (including more than 2 years in space for Mars flyby and orbital missions), or a lunar landing/science mission that would be cheaper, closer to home, and something they can defray the costs with by engaging international partners?
Yep. That was always a scam the ISS boosters played up because they feared that an interplanetary mission bypassing the ISS would “degrade” the value of the mission (which if true would be a rather telling judgment about the value of microgravity research that it’s supposed to be providing).
That’s also the Worst Possible Post-ISS Mission short of total cancellation of funding: another decades-long space station. I know the Russians want to do it, with all the same empty promises about it being a “gateway” to the planets complete with proposed hangers/etc.
Ill tell you what I think.
The decision needs to be taken out of NASA’s hands, and the SLS is evidence of that happening.
NASA has promised, since the 1980s… the NASP, the Space Station freedom space transports, X-33/VentureStar, OSP and Constellation. I’m sure I missed some.
NASA cannot be trusted to make the decision this time. I was in middle school when I read about the X-33 in the Boston Globe science section the first time. I was 31 when the actual shuttle successor prototype launched for the first time last December.
I’m going to tell you why I like the SLS so much. Because it was forced upon NASA. NASA’s leadership is poor. It’s been poor for years. It’s allowed insurgencies to undermine programs. It’s allowed different parts of the agency to wage scortched earth campaigns against other parts in order to maximize their share of the budget pie. It’s been truly myopic about programs. If we left the decision on “what to do next”, we’ll spin our wheels for another 20 years like we have the last 20. There is no internal consensus and probably can never be. NASAWatch has reported many of these.
And that’s actually completely correct if you think about it because what NASA is, is essentially, the executing agency. Going to Mars, going to LEO, building a Space Station, launching a probe – what the country spends it’s money on is rightfully a POLITICAL decision. NASA can and should advise, but Congress is WELL within their rights to to ignore it.
And given NASA’s track record, I find ignoring it to be a very easy thing to do.
So how to protect the ISS nightmare scenario? Have a Congress that sees the ISS as yesterday’s destination and will cut off funding for it in the 2020s. NASA will protest. It needs to be ignored. The decision needs to be made by Congress and endured by Congress. NASA just needs to execute it and frown while doing it, much like they are with the SLS today.
I’ll be blunt. If we go to the Moon, instead of Mars first… that’ll be consolation prize. But it’ll still be something. Even if we go to some random asteroid. The point is, any of these, and building the capability it will take to do them, is better than what we have now, and what it’s taken to get here. And much of that capability can be turned around and used to get to Mars. Even if it is beyond 2039, it’ll at least be the right track.
Which contrasts with today and delaying everything because the ISS exists.
This goes to the heart of our discssion. What is our goal? I believe that human spaceflight, to be meaningful, must permit hundreds or thousands of people to work, vacation or live in space sustainably. That can only occur within a fairly fixed federal funding level if we can reduce costs significantly. I do not regard the ISS as a detour. There is nothing intrinsically more meaningful about putting boots on Mars than building a growing base of operations in LEO. If we can reduce the cost of maintaining the ISS then it will have more customers. If we cannot afford permanent human presence in LEO, we certainly cannot afford human presence beyond LEO.
I only think human spaceflight should be a government-funded operation as long as it’s providing a useful scientific purpose, because the potential economic and political gains are very slim to none. In that sense, I don’t care whether our crewed missions lead to the ability for large numbers of people to live sustainably in space for long periods of time – I care about whether they can live in space long enough to do useful missions, be it to orbit, the Moon, Mars, or beyond.
Truth is, if there was no particular value for crewed expeditions and no risk that cancelling the crewed program and giving its funding to robotic missions would lead to NASA’s overall funding going down, I’d be in favor of doing it and maybe kicking some money towards commercial spaceflight for research purposes.
JonathanN3 wrote: “The major failure of Constellation”.
I do not believe that is the case. It was a total departure from what was outlined in “The Vision for Space Exploration”.
It also was relying on one of the most broken contracting systems there is. Constellation was DOA the day Griffin announced that EELV’s were going to be more expensive, more unreliable and to unsafe to use and then he foisted the Ares I nightmare onto the American taxpayer.
Star liner is going to ride into space on an atlas. I thought atlas was NOT man rated?
Was it up graded to meet the man rated requirements in the last few years, or was the whole EELV man rating thing just some political CRAP to justify building the constellation/SLS monster?
Obviously atlas was and is still the safest vehicle flying.
http://www.nasaspaceflight….
Atlas is certainly safer than SLS at this point, assuming Mr. Putin continues to supply the engines.
http://www.nasaspaceflight….
“Thursday’s announcement confirmed the completion of what is the fifth milestone of its SAA process, with ULA’s Engineering Review Board confirming that Atlas V can readily comply with NASA’s stringent safety and performance requirements for human spaceflight, leading the way to develop a “safe, reliable and cost effective” Crew Transportation System (CTS).”
Yet when they wanted to fly the Orion and SLS was not available, it was launched on a Delta IV.
There is no political consensus to go to Mars.
Congress doesn’t want a Mars mission as such, they want a Big Rocket, with contractors in the right districts. There’s not an ounce of support for the rest of the requirements for a Mars mission… you know, the actual mission hardware.
It was the same with Constellation, they funded the SRB-launcher that steered money to their districts, but added not a dollar of additional funding required for the basic lander. And they certainly added nothing for long term habitation systems that would be required if Constellation was ever going to be more than a handful of Apollo-style flags’n’footprints missions.
(Griffin thought he was the new James Webb and could get the President and Congress to commit to an unaffordable Grand Vision, forcing them to increase NASA’s budget drastically. But modern Congress has played that game too many times. So Griffin utterly failed to get a single extra cent, and the program floundered.)
And that’s exactly what people are saying about SLS/Orion. What’s it for? It has no purpose until the mission hardware is built, but it will consume $2-3b/yr keeping it operating. At least most of the mission hardware could actually be mothballed at minimal cost while waiting for a launcher. A launcher must be flown.
The development of Block Ia and then Block II will consume any extra funding freed up from killing ISS. (Congress will not tolerate NASA diverting money from SLS to Mars mission hardware, when Block II inevitably runs over time & over budget.) So development of mission hardware will not begin until SLS Block II is flying. Late 2020’s at best, and more realistically early 2030’s.
And you are not going to develop long duration habitats, Mars EDL landers, Mars habitats, Mars rovers, etc etc etc, between the end of the Block II development and 2039; not while the majority of the available budget is spent keeping SLS block Ia and block II and Orion alive.
By 2039, SLS will be like the later-years Shuttle program, where none of the developers are still attached to the program. (Some of the designs (for eg, engines) will be decades older than the guys working on them.) You’re flying hardware that the ops people don’t really understand and are a little bit afraid of. Only worse, because you’ll gain a fraction of the ops experience during the 2030’s.
Starting with SLS is perhaps the worst path NASA could have chosen. Even ignoring SpaceX, or EELV-based depots and other architectures.
Exactly, with the added part of “Right now.”
This is the problem. This is THE problem with NASA. You view this as a bad thing. And for the world we live in, that makes absolutely no sense. You know what I call protecting a hugely expensive program by putting it in many districts and states? Armor.
Let’s not forget the dirty little secret of the romanticized Project Apollo. Kennedy was a New Deal Democrat. Social Wellfare was his bread and butter. He didn’t know much of anything or particularly care, about Space. He refered to it as “the Heavens” for cripes sake. There was no Kennedy vision. There was a nice speech and that’s it. Johnson? Vietnam consumed him. Nixon? Inherited an almost complete program.
Project Apollo happened because the program’s money was divided into powerful states and congressional districts that protected it for years, until those Congressmen and Senators started dying or losing their seats.
My point is, the quest for programmatic purity in this world, is a foolish one. Yes, in a perfect world, you would be right. But we live in a world where every single space program tied to a President since Reagan died. The SLS… the “Senate Launch System”… that’s an honnorific as far as I’m concerned. If you want to actually go to Mars one day, the country needs Senators across decades to stand for this thing, not a mere President – who probably doesn’t particularly care for space anyway – serving a mere 8 year term.
It may not be ideal but you know what it is? The only way this is going to happen in a world where a $5 billion a year program that is – lets be clear – the very definition of discretionary spending – ripe for cuts as the political winds change.
Okay. What’s your point? So we do it then.
I mean you do realize there is no world out there where we wave our hands now and do research, then come back in the 2030s and do a launcher, capsule, lander, habituation module and everything else mission specific. That’s the part you programmic purity advocates seem utterly fanciful about. You want this thing that is impossible because congress will never drop the $15 billion a year – as much as the Navy Shipbuilding budget – to make it a reality.
The only way we’re going to get all the components we need for Mars is to spread out paying for it. Ideal? Certainly not. But really. It is that, or nothing.
And your claima bout it being the “worst path” is questionable at best. The hardware SpaceX would use for Mars doesn’t exist yet. It is very conceptual. Will they deliver? Probably. But SpaceX is uncomfortably used as basically an article of faith that they can wave a magic wand, and make something intrinsically superior. The difficulties of Falcon Heavy development – which lets be clear has slipped in it’s schedule twice as much as the SLS has – should be caution against thinking SpaceX is the universal solution.
And to be blunt, I think it’s unwise to mortgage our country’s long term space future on the health and welfare of Elon Musk. What happens if SpaceX goes public and all of a sudden shareholder returns becomes their driving motivation. And don’t say “it can’t happen.” We’ve seen it happen. Sergie Brin spends huge amounts of effort protecting Google X from shareholders pretty mad about the extreme amount of money being spent on it.
And EELVs? As an alternative to the SLS? That’s odd, considering that it’s the SpaceX Falcon 9 that is putting them on the chopping block.
It comes down to this for me: it’s SLS, over 25 years, warts and all, or nothing. Because there is no alternative. We’re going to to Mars because capability-gain-by-capability-gain, NASA will have all the pieces in place… eventually. That is the only way it happens.
To give an example of a better path, to show you what I’m talking about, here’s an alternative time line:
If Congress wasn’t obsessed with the Big Rocket. No Orion. No SLS.
You instead start by focusing on a DSH. Building directly on ISS experience. This potentially leads to a US-only replacement for ISS, starting with an expansion and upgrade program for ISS. Ie, using ISS as a handy test-bed for components. The stuff that ISS should have been used for in the first place.
(For a mission to Mars, you need power systems, propulsion, very long duration ECLSS, shielded habitats, and the ability to put it all together. That’s basically a space station. But instead of building on the knowledge gained developing the hideously expensive ISS, it was ignored for a decade to chase Big Rockets. By the time an SLS-based Mars program gets to developing a DSH, the ISS dev people would be scattered to the four winds, and twenty years out of practice.)
As a secondary track, you throw a few dollars to commercial players like Bigelow. If you’re lucky, this gives you a relatively cheap way to double your development; the two paths feeding and reinforcing each other.
Second major focus, new heavy-lift-class engines. First major hydrocarbon engine development since the F1. First major engine development since SSME/RS-25. What’s the point developing it early? Simple. A single engine rocket can become the basis of a new medium-heavy core to replace Atlas V (Russian engines) and Delta IV (too costly.) This new medium-lift launcher provides you with a proving ground for the new engines and associated systems, plus it builds up an experienced workforce (designers, engineers and ops) on a new rocket.
When you’re ready for the big step to a 5-8 engine Saturn class HLV (if it’s determined to even be necessary), your guys have already cut their teeth. And if HLV turns out not to be necessary for BEO missions, you haven’t thrown $3b/yr keeping the Big Rocket flying for two decades, you’ve upgraded EELV.
As an secondary track, and to end dependence on the Russians, you fully fund commercial cargo and commercial crew. One side (SpaceX) gives you a potential HLV as a bonus, the other (Boeing/etc) provides a HSF customer for the new EELV replacement. And as these new CC capsules mature, they may prove sufficient to eliminate the need for a dedicated Mars/lunar capsule. If not, they provide a training ground for designers, engineers and ops on a new generation of capsule technology; ready to be called upon to develop the Big Capsule.
Aside: This is 90% equivalent to what Obama wanted in 2010. So if we’d started then, we’d be five years into an engine program, with ULA probably deep into developing the replacement EELV. At least one CC player would be flying to ISS, maybe two, with a third on the books. Maybe a new US test propulsion module for ISS, and possibly Bigelow would be flying a major test module, either on ISS or free-flying.
And so in 2015 with new space-station hardware on the way, a major engine program reaching maturity, Atlas being replaced, and NASA no longer dependant on Soyuz to ISS… Russia would suddenly be much less able to play “trampoline” games with the space program. Their own lack of progress would be obvious. They start hinting at a separate space station, oh fine, how’s next Thursday? What’s that, you don’t have most of the modules required yet? Funny, we do.
And if, in 2016/2020, a new President comes in with another idiotic Grand Vision, pushing NASA in a new direction (whether moon, Mars-surface, Phobos, asteroids, L2, L5, or ISSv2), not a penny has been wasted, because the technology being developed can be pointed in nearly any direction.
Maybe we need to do something more practical like this.
https://horizontalspace.wor…
It wasn’t clear to me how credible the cost and performance estimates for the Starraker were. In particular, the “wet wing” LH2 tanks seem challenging given the large surface area and consequent problems with insulation and ice formation, and the total mass put into orbit is daunting. Other concepts for SSTO have encountered significant problems when actual implementation was attempted. Nevertheless it is worth thinking about.
So your planned alternative is..
first ANOTHER Space Station? Really? No. That’s another 20 year detour. And at the other end of, we’ll just have the Space Station lobby looking for third third Space Station in a century. Why not just test on the ISS itself and then built the the Mars vehicle? More to the point, the NASA plans for a Mars Transfer Vehicle is something around 2/3rds the mass of the ISS, launched in 6 SLS flights. The promise of a “testing ground” is a key justification for the ISS being utilized beyond 2018. Your basically saying “no we need another and we can test there”. That’s nonsense. Then what’s the point of the ISS at all? A bridge to a bridge? I’m sorry but that’s not a manned space program worth supporting whatsoever.
Well a few problems here, the Atlas V is already going away, because of the Vulcan with BE-4 or AR-1… maybe. Who knows with ULA. Fact is, you’re proposing a replacement engine to a replacement engine essentially for a rocket that is being made superfluous by the Falcon 9.
Upgrading the Atlas V is foolhardy. It is dying a much deserved death thanks to sanctions and the Falcon 9. ULA deserves this, due to a good decade of underinvestment on Atlas V while SpaceX was doing pretty much everything your saying.
The key justification for having an SLS at all, is that SpaceX will not have something comparable by the time it’s needed. If you could garantee that SpaceX would have a super heavy lift vehicle ready, then sure, deep six the SLS. I think, that putting all our eggs in the Elon Musk basket is foolhardy. But at EELV masses – the Falcon 9 has made it’s competitors obsolete, so expanding Atlas V to expand THAT into a new rocket, seems like furthering development on a dead end.
The thing is, that $3 billion a year isn’t wasteful at all if it is doing things like putting Orion in lunar orbit or launching large probes. That $3 billion a year also, is not terribly different from US spending on the Space Shuttle, which by the way, also built the space station contemporaneously, and it did it on a time scale of about half of what getting all the mars pieces into place will take.
Furthermore a HLV from an upgraded EELV is a dead end in the world of Falcon 9. I mean the US technology bases for rockets are this: STS tech, Atlas tech, Delta tech, Falcon tech. STS tech is the most logical government-funded baseline. It has the powerful RS-25. It has the SRBs. It has many components that need to be put in a different configuration.
[blockquote]Aside: This is 90% equivalent to what Obama wanted in 2010. So if we’d started then, we’d be five years into an engine program, with ULA probably deep into developing the replacement EELV. At least one CC player would be flying to ISS, maybe two, with a third on the books. Maybe a new US test propulsion module for ISS, and possibly Bigelow would be flying a major test module, either on ISS or free-flying.[/blockquote]
Lots of maybes here. And you mention Bigelow too much for a company that’s been long on promises, short on results.
And more to the point, not developing the SLS so we could spend money on something comparable to the AR-1 or BE-4, seems ridiculous. The country simply does not have a legitimate EELV-sized launcher problem. It has a kind of moral problem in that ULA decided to take a good decade off from improving the Altas V. But it has a sound replacement in the Falcon 9. Rather than spending money in duplicating capability that already exists, Congress was right in rejecting Obama’s plan as it spend money on developing capability we don’t have, which is HLV.
[blockquote]And if, in 2016/2020, a new President comes in with another idiotic Grand Vision, pushing NASA in a new direction (whether moon, Mars-surface, Phobos, asteroids, L2, L5, or ISSv2), not a penny has been wasted, because the technology being developed can be pointed in nearly any direction.[/blockquote]
Want to go to Mars one day? I do. The key to doing that is making the President utterly irrelevant in that process. Buying rockets to go to Mars needs to be something that the government does, independent of some “visionary” (not really) politician. It needs to be as routine as the country deciding to buy two Virgina class subs every year.
That is to say, if it is to be largely non-political, and safe from the budget ax, it needs to be protected by Congressmen and women who are sending money to their home districts.
If we’re not doing that, why would ANY congressmen vote to spend money on it. Higher idealism? Not on this planet. We’ll go to Mars by being deeply cynical about the political process that makes it happen, not hoping for the perfect plan… the pure immaculate efficient path, that will never get funded because despite what space lovers say “show me the money”, except by the Congressional district, always has and always will matter.
Want to go to Mars? Pork is you friend. That’s the dirty little secret of pork. It makes things happen.
Having read your plan, with respect I must say, I emphatically disagree that it’s remotely a “better” path. More idealistic certainly. Maybe in a perfect world. But this one? The world of the F-22 being canceled in favor of the F-35? I’m sorry, but you’re vision is a dead end.
Any development program needs customers willing to pay what it will cost. Although there are customers, even the taxpayers, who will pay for human flight to Mars, it is not at all clear that they would pay what it would cost with this technology. Consequently the best and possibly only way to advance human spaceflight is to reduce its cost.
Bingo!
There’s no doubt that Britain and many other European countries spent billions and trillions on exploration, colonization, and settlement and got a lot of return for their investment. But the US has also spent a lot of taxpayer dollars on NASA’s human space flight program over the past few decades — about a half-trillion in current dollars — and we’re not getting anywhere near the same level or kind of return. And it’s far from clear that spending another couple or few hundred billion dollars landing 4-6 astronauts a few times on the surface of Mars will produce the same level or kind of return, either.
Yep, it’s not even a comparison. Expeditions to South and Central America brought back goods, slaves, silver, and gold (as well as trading goods bought illicitly with that silver from China). The folks who went to the Virginia Colony and survived the first year made 1000% profits on tobacco crops, and so forth.
Whereas with space . . . who knows? The per-kilogram mission cost of sending hardware out to mine gold off asteroids is probably greater than the per-kilogram value of the gold they might bring back.
I agree! But we still have $18 billion a year. We can cry in our beer or we can learn to reduce costs, be realistic about our goals, and provide practical benefits for America.
A meaningless chart. It doesn’t say whether the federal budget is going up, down, or staying the same in any particular year. And that means that the NASA budget could be going up, down, or staying the same, regardless of whether NASA’s percentage of the federal budget is going up, down, or staying the same. Better to just use the NASA budget directly.
Keith LOVE the graphic. Cleaver.
I would welcome better funding for spaceflight and many other forms of research and exploration. i just have not found any way to persuade the taxpayers to increase funding. If you can do it, great. And I’m serious – $18b/yr is a significant investment for an R&D agency and i think we should be able todo more with it.