NASA Begins Its Journey To Nowhere
NASA finally talks Mars budget, and it’s not enough, Houston Chronicle
“At the Capitol Hill luncheon, Lightfoot said a Mars program would have to be accomplished with a budget that is one-tenth of the budget that sent Apollo astronauts to the moon. “From a NASA perspective it’ll be done for about one-tenth of the budget that we were doing back then,” Lightfoot said, according to Space News. A NASA spokeswoman said after Lightfoot’s speech that he was comparing the Apollo budget and the agency’s current budget based on percentages of the overall federal budget. NASA received 4 percent of the total federal budget during the height of the Apollo Program, and today NASA has 0.4 percent. “We intend to carry out our current ambitious exploration plans within current budget levels, with modest increases aligned to economic growth,” NASA’s Lauren Worley said. The release of the “Journey to Mars” report that contained no specific budget for a Mars mission frustrated some members of Congress.”
Keith’s note: NASA’s answer just confuses things further. No one with even a shred of fiscal accumen will tell you that a multi-decade program to send humans to Mars – as is typically done by NASA (delays, overruns, and PR hype) – is going to be done “within current budget levels, with modest increases aligned to economic growth.” This is just back peddling NASA PR mumbo jumbo designed to try and make it seem that Lightfoot said something other than what he actually said. Oddly, as they berate NASA for its delays that are often due to wacky budget actions by Congress, Congress neglects to mention that between FY10-15 the White House has given $1.8 billion more to NASA than Congress wanted to give the agency while Congress simultaneously and consistently cuts the President’s request for Commercial Crew every year.
No one has a plan or a budget. This is no way to send people to Mars.
NASA’s New Mars Plans Are Total Fantasy, Lawmakers Say, Buzzfeed
“What is really going on in the fight over NASA’s Mars plans is a battle between the Obama Administration and Congress over the funding of private company rockets from SpaceX and Boeing to send crew to the International Space Station, wrote Keith Cowing of NASA Watch. Congress keeps trying to cut this commercial crew program, while the administration cuts SLS in a political game of tit-for-tat. “No one has a plan or a budget,” Cowing wrote. “This is no way to send people to Mars.”
GOP: NASA on ‘journey to nowhere’, The Hill
“Congressional Republicans are pressing NASA for a more detailed plan to put an astronaut on Mars, warning that agency’s lack of specifics jeopardizes the program. House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) criticized the 36-page “Journey to Mars” report that NASA released this week, suggesting it was substance-free. “It’s just some real pretty photographs and some nice words. That is not going to do it,” Smith said at a Friday hearing on NASA’s deep space budget. Interest in Mars is soaring, thanks to a blockbuster film and NASA’s discovery of flowing water on the planet. But Smith said a mission to the red planet couldn’t really get off the ground until NASA provides firm details about the budget and the deadlines that would be set. “This [report] sounds good, but it is actually a journey to nowhere until we have that budget and we have that schedule and we have the deadlines,” Smith said.”
– NASA Is In Total Denial Over Humans To Mars Costs, earlier
– Yet Another NASA Mars”Plan” Without A Plan – or a Budget, earlier post
– Hearing on NASA’s Budget and Exploration, earlier post
There is no one at NASA that has the “von Braun” charisma to sell the program to the taxpayers, albeit if they had a programs to sell.
I’m not sure even von Braun would have that kind of influence in the current environment. These are completely different times and the conditions that made the Apollo Program possible do not exist today.
My point was not trying to tie the Mars mission to Apollo, but to point out that NASA does not have anyone with the charisma of a von Braun to get taxpayers excited.
It has never been a person’s charisma that got people excited about NASA. It was the cold war… and public support for Apollo funding was never as high as people assume.
Even von Braun didn’t have “the charisma of von Braun to get the taxpayer excited.”
For the most part on average, the taxpayer has NEVER been excited about funding NASA. Willing at best. Interested in the pretty pictures for a few days, as usual.
No person can ever get the public solidly behind funding an expensive space mission, because no person ever HAS.
What we had was a political system full of elected people who were willing in concert to back and fully fund a program continually for many years, in some cases despite lack of public support.
We aren’t going to get that again any time soon, if ever.
The will of the taxpayers has never been the force driving the space program, and we can’t expect it to be now.
If the will of the taxpayers were ‘in charge’ we’d think more sensibly about guns, among other things. Our Congress doesn’t reflect public opinion, for many reasons, chiefly being it’s not proportional.
von Braun was successful in the 1950s in enlisting media and the people to support space and he had Soviet firsts and the military to thank for spurring the efforts.
von Braun was not so successful in the 60s or 70s in selling things. He did not get a space station. He did not get the continuation of Saturn production or of the Apollo moon landings. Even technically, he did not get Nova or EOR. By 1970 his NASA career had pretty much come to an end.
How was von Braun successful in the 50s? In writing and illustrating how missions could be developed and how they would take place and in communicating these to the public through a variety of means and mediums. He had plans, not all of which were right or would come to fruition but he got people thinking.
In comparison, the current NASA managers do not have plans, do not have goals, and do not identify how they think they could implement the missions.
There is no leadership.
Yes, ready, fire, and now they are thinking about aiming.
You’re missing the point entirely. The manned space program in the 1960’s got “blank check” levels of funding due to the Cold War. Go listen to the Kennedy tapes so you can hear the frustration in Kennedy’s voice when he tells the then NASA Administrator the following:
“I think it’s good [to explore space], I think we ought to know about it, we’re ready to spend reasonable amounts of money. But we’re talking about *fantastic* expenditures. We’ve wrecked our budget, and all the other domestic programs. And the only justification for it, in my opinion to do it [on this schedule] is because we hope to beat [the Russians], to demonstrate that starting behind, and we did, by a couple of years, by God, we passed them.”
Reference: http://history.nasa.gov/JFK…
good find.
Apollo/Saturn funding had nothing to do with von Braun’s charisma and everything to do with the Cold War and showing those “godless commies” that capitalism trumps communism.
I am a little surprised that Congress caught on and vocalized their issues so quickly, or at all. Maybe they read NASAWatch?
NASA needs to define a system development effort and they need to provide details of how they will pay for each step of that process and when additional costs or alternatives will kick in such as commercial space competitions or international collaborations.
Unfortunately NASA got off on the wrong foot with Orion and it has them over the barrel. They are wasting money and time on a system that will not be needed, instead of on systems they do need. Because it is not about going on an immediate flight to nowhere with no capability to do anything worthwhile (asteroid and Mars moon missions).
What it is all about is developing first, economic transportation from earth to orbit, second cislunar infrastructure, and third long duration transplanetary capability. What is the plan and scheduling for developing those?
Orion is not needed. If they do it properly, they will never throw away their space vehicles in the future. And for more immediate earth to space capsules, or for emergency return to earth space pod capability from LEO or beyond, Soyuz, which was originally built for lunar missions, already flies and Boeing’s CST and Space Xs Dragon are further along than Orion and could do the same job.
One of NASAs problems now is that they have an international collaboration building a one-off Orion service module, so to stop Orion now requires a total shutdown and switch in direction. Maybe the ESA Orion SM could be turned into a space tug?
It’s so telling that just now are they starting to ask questions, after committing tens of billions to Orion/SLS. What we have had for some years now is a Ready! Fire! Aim! approach that doesn’t do anything except funnel money to the “right” places. Yes, I’m angry about it – I’m angry about lost opportunities and time.
You’re not the only one. Might as well call SLS/Orion welfare for aerospace engineers.
Keith,
This is nothing more than Republican Congressmen demanding more money for their NASA districts.
“No bucks, no Buck Rogers on Mars.”
Any plan they give would be pretty speculative, dependent on budgets starting ten years from now and with equipment that they won’t really start developing until then (at the earliest). I’m not sure what they’re expecting from NASA, especially without providing any additional funding.
Well it seems somebody may be detailing a Mars Plan?
http://www.techtimes.com/ar…
Chris Bergin is the managing editor of the Nasaspaceflight forum. Please credit the Nasaspaceflight site.
A lot of so called news websites are reporting on this News with contents from the Nasaspaceflight site.
SpaceX is not going to be announcing a Mars plan any time soon. Sorry. Wish this was true.
SpaceX is not going to be announcing a Mars plan any time soon. Sorry. Wish this was true.
Keith,
How soon is soon?
If all you are basing this on is logic, I disagree with you.
SpaceX has been working on raptor for some time now. About a year ago they decided its size. I would think that before June they already had a design for the MCT or family of MCTs/BFRs
Seems to me that how MCT will work, land, return, is the core of a Mars mission/colonization plan.
Also Musk has had a history of releasing hopeful plans when things are slow.
So if MCT is already conceptually designed, why wouldn’t he release it?
My guess is right after FALCON 9 returns to flight and possibly makes a soft landing on that barge, that SpaceX will release a MCT video.
Just in time for Christmas 🙂
Merry Christmas Keith 🙂
Four years ago SpaceX released their reusability video.
It is time for the next step, the reusable BFR.
I would be surprised if an MCG video isn’t already made.
Yeah, I like the “if only half of it becomes reality” quote. Yup, sounds like SpaceX. How about making 1/2 of that 2011 video reality first?
Booster on a barge for Christmas, coming up 🙂
It might be more like St. Nicholas’ Day, but yeah.
All mission designs plans start with a lander.
When’s their next Mission To LEO launching again?
This year I hope. Got my fingers crossed!
NET November 20, SES-9 from Cape Canaveral LC-40.
http://advanced-television….
There’s another graphic you’ll use over and over, Keith.
Well, it worked in Kansas, right?
I was going to say this is a collossal failure of NASA in communications, which it is. But more significant is the lack of a useful and meaningful plan.,
First Congress insisted NASA build SLS and Orion after the agency attempted to cancel them. Then Congress demanded that NASA produce a plan for how they would be used to justify the expense. Now they demand a better plan with no more money. We should tell our representatives the truth. They are on the wrong path.
I’d be interested in seeing some references to NASA attempting to cancel these, particularly Orion. I know Obama cancelled Constellation and Congress, two years later, forced SLS as a replacement for the defunct Ares 5, but I have no recollection of anyone trying to cancel Orion.
There was some uncertainty after Constellation ended, but NASA kept at Orion, hardly missing a beat. Earlier, during Constellation, NASA had to go back to the drawing board 3 or 4 times to keep reducing the size and mass of Orion to something that could be launched, and arguably, at the end of Constellation, it still was too heavy. Of course the real question was why did anyone think they had to have such a large escape pod/return craft? For lunar missions they were going to have a lander and for planetary missions they obviously were going to need a habitation module. No one was ever going to ride all the way to and from Mars inside of an Orion.
I always felt a Shuttle-derived heavy lifter made sense. NASA’s mistake was not developing it long ago, during the active days of the Shuttle program, or at least during the final days of Shuttle so that plants could have been kept open, tooling and suppliers maintained and workers kept on the job. NASA managers were all for trashing Shuttle and its derivations for something new and different. That wound up costing the program and the people who supported it.
The Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) was cancelled along with the rest of Constellation. However, work on a stripped-down “Orion Crew Return Vehicle (CRV)” was to continue, to serve as a lifeboat for the ISS. Later, when the SLS was announced, a heavily Orion-based Multipurpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) was announced as well, which was eventually renamed Orion again.
While Orion waits on SLS, I wonder what Orion employees do all day????
Well, currently the EM-1 Orion is being built.
https://www.facebook.com/NA…
The first weld is complete and I believe they are currently working on or may be done with the 2nd weld.
http://i.kinja-img.com/gawk…
Eventually they will need to start work on the orion for EM-2, and so on.
And this thing lands in the water and can only be used once, right?
Will this EM1 fly humans or is this another test vehicle?
EM-1 will not be crewed. Tentative plans are for a shakedown in LEO then it will be set on a free return trajectory around the Moon and back.
Orion was initially designed to be reusable, and the majority of the electronics and critical systems are within the pressure vessel and should not be exposed to salt water, and so could be reused. There are tentative plans to strip out the reuseable items and put them in a new Orion.
http://spaceflightnow.com/2…
Also, the Orion used in the Exploration Flight Test will be reused for the in-flight abort test.
Manage requirements documentation necessitated by pointless NPRs, push powerpoints slides around, the usual.
IMO Orion was designed specifically for a 28 day lunar mission. The placement of so much in equipment and consumables in the capsule made it larger and heavier than would have been needed for an ascent and entry only vehicle. The weight and mass of the entry vehicle is a major cost driver, and separating the inflight habitat functions from the entry vehicle would be more cost effective.
2nd weld complete!
Their Facebook page is pretty informative.
https://www.facebook.com/NA…
Orion is Orion is Orion. Orion started with Apollo redux; little difference regardless of the adjectives you apply. Orion has been going continuously for 10 years. The only significant differences were the reduction in diameter, reduction in mass, reduction in crew size and capacity, replacement of the Lockheed built service module with one provided by ESA, and increasing costs all the while.
And the launch date slipped. In 2005 it was simple safe and soon, flying in 2009 or 2010. In 2009 the Orion program manager told Augustine it would fly in 2014 (the Augustine committee response was, maybe 2017, more likely 2019). It is now 2015 and a launch date sometime in the early 2020s is now a possibility.
Reusability-not likely. Maybe they will strip out a couple component parts, as was done during Apollo, but it is usually as difficult and as expensive to recert a used component for another flight as it is just to build another. During Apollo mostly what was reused was analog instrumentation. With a mainly electronic Orion, there are few of those kinds of parts. Reusability of the vehicle was lost when mass and complexity prevented the heat shield from being dropped and they lost the capability for land landings.
Its kind of like the Mars non-plan; what you say is a lot of wishful thinking which is not backed by any technical knowledge.
Wrong is Wrong is Wrong.
Orion is not Apollo redux. Everything in it uses today’s technology.
The CEV underwent several major revisions to its design, yes. Then it was cancelled, then revived as a stripped down lifeboat for the ISS, then became the MPCV. Each iteration added costs and pushed back the launch date, yes, OF COURSE, because it was reconfigured and redesigned!!
As for reuse, I only know what has been made public in statements. The current idea is to at least reuse the avionics.
None of what I’m saying is wishful thinking. This is factual based on the historical record and public statements.
Orion, MPCV, or CEV (whatever nomenclature) is a cis-lunar transit habitat & Earth return vehicle. That is why it is so complex and costly. You could have a bigger & cheaper disposable habitat module and a simpler & smaller return capsule instead. The smaller capsule could also be a LEO crew taxi to the ISS
However such a smaller capsule will not need the troublesome Ares-1 launcher. One of the EELVs would suffice.
I consider the SpaceX Dragon over-sized for the Earth return role in place of the Orion in the current NASA Mars architecture.
I think of it as the product of the designers being forced to make a spacecraft without knowing what it will be used for. In absence of a specific role, you wind up having to design it to be able to do everything.
I think the Orion enables a large, disposable habitat module, though, since the brains are all in the Orion, the habitat module can be just a big dumb box full of supplies.
This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while. Both Dragon and CST-100 have their own abort systems and are better scaled for launch / reentry capsules when you accept the necessity of a hab module. The Orion service module is a modified ATV with the pressurized front section removed. Keep the pressurized section and docking port, and transplant the Orion’s life support / avionics, and you have a vastly greater volume, decreased launch mass and significantly lower development cost. The mass / development cost estimates shown do not include necessary radiation hardening of the Dragon nor the Orion ECLSS / Avionics, but there is clearly a healthy margin on both compared with the Orion.
I agree that the Dragon is a little larger than the optimal capsule for this role but it is much lighter than the Orion and much cheaper than designing a new capsule.
AIUI the cis-Lunar service module for the Orion is based on ATV technology. But is a brand new customized design with a limited production run of 2 units. Since the ATV production lines was close down years back.
See one issue with your Dragon vehicle stack design. Where do you put the lander?
IMO If using the Dragon for a Lunar mission. You send the habitat module & lander on one flight and the Dragon V2 & additional tandem extended trunk with propulsion system on another flight.
Moon Dragon stack:
Inverted lander
Habitat module with solar & radiator arrays
Dragon V2 with launch abort trunk
Additional extended trunk with propulsion
For this comparison, I explicitly limited the proposed craft to be roughly equivalent to the base Orion. The stack shown is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, in actuality the smaller modules would likely be launched individually on non-SLS vehicles.
Note that even the SLS with a lunar lander mission is LOR/LOR anyway, meaning two SLS launches and having to break up the stack anyway. The Apollo version of EDS, lander and spacecraft in ONE launch is not the scenario with SLS.
It’s already orbiting the moon. Or are you still stuck with NASA’s all-in-one thinking?
Whereas with Orion, the lander is still a powerpoint presentation, because the cost of Orion means you don’t have the funds to develop it until some handwaved future date when funds will be “freed up” to let you start the design process again. Which it never does, because you inevitably consume that funding flying faux Apollo 8 missions with Orion.
Freeing up 80% of funds at the very beginning allows you to develop actual lander hardware.
[Well, one lander is orbiting the moon, the other would have already landed at the mission site. The former being the simple crewed lander, the latter being the larger hab for the extended stay mission.]
No.
First you send the surface hab module and its lander. Then you send the insertion stage. They dock in LEO and fly to the moon. (You lose Oberth efficiencies, but gain from not trying to do an all-in-one launch.) The insertion stage serves as a “crasher” stage, providing the majority of the lunar deorbit burn (2.4km/s), leaving just a few hundred metres/second for the hab’s lander. That allows the lander to be much smaller.
Then you send the crew lander and its insertion-stage-cum-crasher-stage into lunar orbit using the same process. The crew-lander is much smaller than the hab, but has to carry the ascent fuel for the return; the overall mass will be the same. Since the hab doesn’t need to launch again, it carries all the heavy long-duration ECLSS and mission supplies. (Or else the supplies go on a third lander-stack.)
The crew’s insertion stage, flight-hab, and the crew in their Dragon capsule are the last to launch. Obviously, there’s the option to launch the crew separately from the insertion-stage and flight-hab.
In lunar orbit, the crew transfer to the lander. (For example, the flight-hab might have a spare docking port on the side. Since it won’t be under thrust with the lander-stack docked, it doesn’t need to be in line.) The lander-stack undocks and the crew land near the surface-hab.
At the end of the mission, the lander re-ascends, docks with the orbiting flight-stack again. Crew transfers, jettisons the lander, and returns to Earth. The capsule separates and re-enters in the usual way.
If you’re willing to develop a SEP tug and on-orbit refuelling, many more options open up. For eg, not only does the mass you can put into lunar orbit increase, but there’s enough fuel for the crasher stages to become reusable “uncrasher” stages, meaning that the whole lander-stack can be reused and new surface modules can be regularly landed to expand the surface infrastructure or increase the number of sites.
The ATV was 22.8 tons, I don’t know where you get the idea it would weigh less, especially since it would be modified as a habitat (would have to be larger), equipped with life support, etc., and packed full of supplies. That’s the biggest hole in this diagram, the weight of the ATV-derived habitat is grossly underestimated. Cost is also underestimated, since the parts used to build the ATV are now obsolete, it would have to be redesigned before more could be built.
Mass given is for the (fueled) vehicle alone. An ATV is normally packed with supplies / expendable liquids, whereas a hab would be more open space. I noted that the mass estimate did not include the Orion ECLSS, but there is a large mass margin for these and other supplies (a large fraction of the total Orion mass). You are probably right about the difficulty of producing the ATV storage section now that the lines are closed down, but my purpose in creating this was to show how a deep-space craft superior to Orion could have been designed and created for less money.
I am certain that this does not represent an ideal design, I used available components in order to be able to more accurately estimate mass, volume and development cost. The (bare) ATV-derived hab is indeed startlingly light, but this is exactly my point: enclosing habitable volume is much lighter and less expensive for if it doesn’t need to be capable of abort/reentry, so there are significant savings available by using a smaller capsule.
Well, it wouldn’t be superior to Orion on a spacecraft-comparison basis. But a Dragon V2 would be cheaper. It’s a matter of balancing where you want to put your costs. Do you want to put the ECLSS, radio antennas, etc. in a disposable habitat module, or in a recoverable capsule? With Orion, the habitat module can essentially be a big dumb box full of supplies.
“Do you want to put the ECLSS, radio antennas, etc. in a disposable habitat module, or in a recoverable capsule?”
This is a matter of development vs. per-mission cost. It is certainly possible that long-term ECLSS / avionics recovery would make a Orion-capsule mission cheaper than a CC-derived capsule mission. But by how much? How many missions would it take for the difference in development cost to be worth it? And is it worth the increase in mass/decrease in launch flexibility?
Much depends on the specific mission design and the architecture that is used to enable it. It’s a shame the engineers didn’t have that information when they were designing the Orion. Hell, it’s not even available now.
On this we certainly agree.
Give up! Hug Dug talks out of both sides of his mouth and will never give up trying to prove points and meaning that wander as people find fault with his statements.
Since Orion isn’t reusable, what difference does it make to EtOH’s comparison if the Dragon-version puts equipment in the disposable hab? All that putting it on Orion has done is make Orion heavier and more expensive.
I never said it was reusable, I said it was recoverable. And NASA does plan to strip out and reuse at least some components, like the avionics, from previously flown Orion spacecraft.
And my point was that it doesn’t matter. Since the Orion stack isn’t a reusable system, salvaging a few parts to put in another Orion doesn’t suddenly make Orion cheaper than EtOH’s proposed Dragon stack. Saving 10-20% of the cost of one component doesn’t make up for the entire system being 5-6 times more expensive.
I never said it would be cheaper, either. However, having all the brains in the Orion means that the habitat can be a big dumb box full of supplies / habitable space. That can be much cheaper.
So are you saying that making the hab cheaper makes up for the 5-fold increase in cost of the overall Orion-based stack compared to a Dragon-based stack?
If not, then as I asked originally, what difference does recovery make?
[I edited “80+% increase in cost” to a more correct figure, I meant that cost of EtOH’s Dragon-base proposal was given as 15% of the Orion based one.]
Sure. I could see the hab being 15% of the cost. That would be great, actually.
Any recovered sunk costs make it that much more affordable in the long run. I’m kind of surprised you’re arguing against recovery and reuse.
No, they don’t. Reusability isn’t magic, recoverability even less so.
If the cost of designing a system with recoverability, plus the cost of salvaging those parts, refurbishing and re-inspecting them, and integrating them back into the supply chain for the next unit, outweighs the cost of disposability, then no, “any” recoverability clearly doesn’t save money.
For example: the Shuttle averaged as much to launch (about $1.5b per launch) as the expected cost of continuing with Saturn V launches (around 1.2b per launch). Recovery and partial reuse did not lower its cost over a disposable system.
Example 2: SpaceX wants to recover and reuse first stages for F9, but realised that recoverability of a second stage would lower the payload so much that the system would no longer be affordable. One should save money, the other won’t.
Proximal example: In order to build the 4-man Orion to include all the ECLSS, avionics, etc, in the capsule, it has to be twice the pressurised volume and twice the mass as the 3-man Apollo capsule (as well as being larger and heavier than the 7-man CST-100 and Dragon capsules.) As a result, it is an [b]order of magnitude[/b] more expensive. Much more than any possible savings from salvaging those components.
Obviously, the costs of recovery and inspection / repair for reuse have to be considered.
Blindingly obvious. Not something you need to lecture me on.
I’m well aware of the costs associated with the Space Shuttle’s reuse and of SpaceX’s decision to not reuse the 2nd stage (which I had always figured would turn out to be impractical anyway).
Of course the cost of the avioncs, etc. isn’t going to recoup the costs of the Orion overall. I never said it would.
You’re creating strawmen and covering old ground. Come up with something new to say / relevant to what I’ve actually said, or just end this rapidly-becoming-pointless conversation.
And yet you made your original comment, and kept on trying to defend it.
Look, maybe I misunderstood what you were saying. I tried more than once to paraphrase your point as a question, I’ll try again.
In your original comment to EtOH, were you saying that you believed that the cost of adding ECLSS/avionics/etc outweighed the savings from not using the horribly expensive Orion capsule?
If not, then what was the point of your comment?
No, I never said that at all. My comments were not comparisons based on overall cost.
I’ll quote myself. I think this is very straightforward: “It’s a matter of balancing where you want to put your costs. Do you want to put the ECLSS, radio antennas, etc. in a disposable habitat module, or in a recoverable capsule? With Orion, the habitat module can essentially be a big dumb box full of supplies.”
Having all the brains and guts in the Orion enables the building of a relatively simple, hopefully that makes it cheap, habitat module.
With Dragon, the capsule is simpler, lighter, and smaller, but also has much less capability than the Orion does. So you’d need to put more costs into life support, etc. into the habitat module.
My point to EtOH was that that wasn’t really considered in his drawing. There’d be more mass and more costs associated with the habitat module than he thought, a point he later agreed with.
There are a lot of other valid questions about what’s worth doing based on comparing overall costs, which is where you’re trying to railroad the conversation.
Ultimately, as I later said, “Much depends on the specific mission design and the architecture that is used to enable it. It’s a shame the engineers didn’t have that information when they were designing the Orion. Hell, it’s not even available now.”
A lot of the problems with Orion have to do with its designers not having a mission to design it towards. If you have to design something without knowing what it’s going to be used for, you wind up having to design it to be able to do everything.
Unless you believe that the cost of adding ECLSS/etc in the hab module exceeds the difference between the cost of an Orion-based stack and a Dragon-based stack, how is your observation relevant to EtOH’s point?
Orion is not just more expensive because of the cost of the actual ECLSS/etc equipment, it is more expensive because including that in the capsule affected every other part of the design, and turned it into a monster. Therefore recovery of some of that equipment does not suddenly make Orion itself not a monster.
If you don’t disagree with that, I don’t see how I’m the one hijacking the conversation.
Nonsense. Orion was originally intended for Constellation. It is a four man lunar capsule. Pretty clear design requirements.
While there has some vague talk of using it as a BEO capsule, that has never been part of the design. ARM/ARCM, for example, are limited to lunar orbit for that reason.
Actually, a general purpose system would have not included the life support and other key systems in the capsule. It makes it extremely difficult to change the specs for different missions.
The problem with Orion is that it very much isn’t “designed to do everything”. It’s narrowly defined to a single mission, and that mission has gone away.
It’s mass and costs that he hadn’t considered, as he later acknowledged.
I agree, the Orion is quite expensive and recovering reusable items will not recoup that expense, as I already said.
You are the one trying to talk about the overall costs, which isn’t what I was talking about at all.
That’s what the Orion was, when it was the CEV in Constellation. But it’s not that anymore, it’s the MPCV. What’s its mission now? Nobody really knows for sure.
So congratulations, you’ve proved my point. The design requirements have changed repeatedly, Orion was originally meant to be reused almost in its entirety, so keeping the ECLSS in the Orion rather than in the service module made some sense. It doesn’t make sense any more, and NASA’s struggling to figure out how to make do with what they have while the whims of congress change where Orion is going every few years.
No, but it was what EtOH was talking about. Hence my original response. “How is your comment relevant?”
I really hate this kind of exaggeration. Orion was intended to go into lunar orbit. That is still the only mission being proposed for it. And it is still the only thing it is capable of. It’s “design requirements” have not “changed repeatedly”.
(The requirements would have changed if Obama’s 2010 “Orion lite” proposal had been adopted. But it wasn’t, so it didn’t.)
It’s relevant because his diagram contained an erroneous assumption.
Orion Lite originated way back in 2004/5, originally as work done for Bigelow’s space station, then later proposed as an alternative / compliment to the Commercial Crew program.
The stripped-down Orion to be used as a lifeboat for the ISS was the thing that was going to replace the Orion CEV of Constellation after congress decided to not cancel it entirely.
THEN it was changed into the MPCV, which had multiple envisioned roles. The scope of its mission has been in constant flux since then.
No, go take a look at your earlier post where you talked about reusability of Orion components. If the program architecture were properly defined, then no one would be throwing away hab modules or landers, or for that matter, launch and return capsules.
Yes, NASA does intend to reuse at least some parts. The avionics has been mentioned specifically. No, they do not intend to completely reuse all of the Orion spacecraft.
Is that clear to you now?
An important point. The mass and volume of the entry capsule (with its relatively heavy construction) are cost drivers for heat shield, parachutes, launch vehicle, recovery methods, etc.
Seems like a Great idea!
Good stuff. Is this from a paper / website of yours? This needs to get passed around.
I concur on your numbers there – if I am reading the graphs more or less correctly.
This scenario – to cancel Orion, and for MUCH LESS than the Orion dollars remaining to completion of development, to develop a better, more capable alternative – has to be on NASA’s agenda, simply to make for some funding freed up sooner rather than later.
Thank you. There is no paper to accompany this, just a spreadsheet. It only exists because I like to diagram my speculations, and I have to stress that the mass and budget estimates for the Dragon / ATV stack are not complete, in that they don’t account for some necessary elements like the Orion’s ECLSS / communications equipment. Nevertheless I think the margins are more than sufficient.
When you’re feeling energetic, perhaps extend the modelling to the actual mission costs as well. Sending the Orion stack to the moon requires an SLS launch (say $1.5b per).
The Dragon version might be split between an FH launch ($120-150m) and an F9 launch ($120-150m including capsule). Or an F9 launch and an Ariane launch (~$170m).
So another 5-fold reduction in costs.
This would be fun, but the tricky part is that much of the SLS stack for a lunar mission is actually the injection stage. This could very likely be launched in one piece by a Falcon heavy, but because docking / crew launch takes time, it would have to be equipped with enhanced insulation / cryocooling. Alternately a LEO fuel depot would enable a number of different modular architectures. These requirements are only a problem because I have no good way to estimate the cost.
Thankyou 🙂
Saved me from saying why the hell would you want to put this Dragon Stack on SLS anyway.
Representative Smith and his fellow Republican representatives…..If you want a more expensive NASA Mars plan, then you need to RAISE NASA’S BUDGET BY AT LEAST $6 BILLION/YEAR. The cancellation of the Constellation Program should’ve taught you that you can’t do Mars on Dollar Store planning and equipment.
So glad we learn from History…so we don’t repeat it. Whew!
What is missing here in this discussion and at that pointless hearing was a recognition that our human space program is suffering from the same political disfunction as the rest of our government. GW Bush never funded Constellation adequately and when Obama came in, it was a mess – both from a management and budget perspective – with NASA’s other areas impacted as Griffin tried to rob other budgets to support his biggest priority.
Obama didn’t come in with much more money (Constellation wasn’t exactly a “shovel ready investment” in the parlance of the Great Recession) and between the WH and Congress there was a compromise in 2010 (never fully upheld by either side) where Congress got the Orion and SLS remnants of Constellation while the White House got a better balanced NASA budget, a bit more technology money and both commercial crew and CRS became bigger priorities. To utilize this kludge of an architecture, the Administration proposed the Asteroid mission, Congress did not agree but it also did not push more money to start a Mars or lunar mission since Republicans assumed President Romney would fix all this (oops!) and so here we are with a mess. Don’t blame NASA – it’s held being held hostage by both ends of Pennsylvania Ave and Charlie Bolden and his team are probably just praying they can promote a plan that, while under funded, shows how this can be made into a new architecture with just a bit of luck, more money and maybe some pixie dust.
So on to 2016 – as with the last two major elections, everyone will hope for a clear decision by the voters with a President who has majorities in the House & Senate and a vision and wallet for the future. Don’t bet on it; its almost certain that the Senate will go back to being Democratic, the House will stay Republican and the White House will be in contention (although leaning D in the larger turnout election). Its hard to see either side making NASA a bigger priority but don’t fret; they won’t agree on entitlement or tax reform either – so we will just continue to muddle along – as the saying goes, Ad Astra Ad Ardua – To the Stars (through great difficulties!)
Good recap.
that’s probably something like ut astrum aegre, or ad astrum aegre, for the pedantic amongst us.
I knew that classics degree would be handy some day. Glad to serve.
Ha! I’ll yield to your superior training; the phrase used by NSS, Ad Astra, is half of the RAF motto which was explained to me as through great difficulties; what does Ad Ardua really mean?
Well, your phrase certainly has a lyrical ring to it. But ‘ad’ usually means towards something, as you surmised, and ‘ardua’, does mean difficulty. Put them together as an english-style prepositional phrase. though, and it doesn’t make much sense. The word ‘aegre’ is in the correct case so the ‘ad’ can be dropped; the word alone has the sense of ‘difficultly’, more or less. Perhaps the phrase you are remembering is ‘per ardua’? ‘Per’ means ‘through’ or sometimes ‘by result of’ so ‘per ardua’ has the sense of plowing through obstacles.
So says my very rusty latin 🙂
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
MottoLatin: Per Ardua ad Astra; “Through Adversity to the Stars”
I’ll end this noting that modern Latin motto-making doesn’t always follow the rules. But then again, who cares? It just sounds so bitchin’.
The original failure sits squarely with then NASA Administrator MIke Griffin when he came up with the vision for “Apollo on Steroids” (yes, he actually called it that). He wanted an HLV (Ares V), but couldn’t afford to pay for its development in one go. So, Ares I would be used to fund development of some of the necessary components. To insure Ares I was “necessary”, the crew capsule was deliberately made “too big” to be launched on an EELV.
This entire fiasco started because Mike Griffin wanted to be known as the father of the largest launch vehicle in history. Never mind that this entire manned space transportation system architecture would eat up the lion’s share of NASA’s manned space budget.
Mike Griffin’s failure to accept a more reasonable, affordable, incremental, space transportation architecture is the original failure which has led us to the current SLS/Orion quagmire.
Mike Griffin’s arrogance is what ultimately doomed Constellation not just his von Braunian aspirations – from sticking with a launch architecture he first advocated in the mid 1990’s – before all the Boeing & LM investments in Delta IV and Atlas V – that could have been used to do in orbit assembly of a lunar mission, (exactly what we learned to do while building ISS). And then there’s the arrogant approach to the internationals despite all that had been learned from the international partnership.
Well the Window to visit Mars doesn’t stay open forever.’
Another chance may not come along in my life time.
Back in the sixties and seventies I was launched to the moon many times. Sometimes by NASA other times by Hollywood.
For me It is mostly Von Braun and Disney’s fault.
That dam launch box.
Transportation to the launch site, no problem.
Life support systems, all comfortable.
I’ll pick a seat up close.
Put on my 3D Glasses.
10 Bucks poorer and I’ll be on Mars!!!!!!!
Still Dreaming
Back then, you didn’t know about Kennedy’s behind closed doors meetings with the NASA Administrator. Apollo/Saturn was about beating the Soviet Union to the moon, nothing much else mattered. We didn’t even send a trained geologist to the moon until Apollo 17, so clearly science wasn’t the primary concern.
It’s not open now, George.
Yes it is.
In theaters for at least a few more weeks.
Why can’t it be done “within current budget levels, with modest increases aligned to economic growth?” It doesn’t take that much fiscal acumen to know that if you keep investing wisely and slowly eventually it pays off. The missing part is NASA isn’t willing to put out the numbers (or have the willingness to shut down the stuff that isn’t on the path to Mars) to show how to get there. I mean does it really matter if we land in the 2030s or the 2040s as long as we are moving forward?
Well, yes, slow but steady progress could eventually get NASA to Mars. But it does drive up.costs to do things too slowly. If the cost ends up around $500 billion because of that, and we’re putting $2 billion a year into it, we should be on track for a human landing at the time of the quinticentenial of the United States.
Why does it have to cost more? Inflation I get and this is a simplistic example, but if the hardware costs, say $10 billion, why does it matter if I spend $1 billion per year for ten years versus $.5 billion for 20? (Unless you need to feed a standing army which is probably the main problem).
Exactly. There is always a continuing overhead for personnel and facilities.
Oh. Now I feel stupid. 🙂
As Mr Woodard wrote, it is personnel costs, but I’d like to emphasize that some of them are real, not just the usual “standing army” problem. When someone is only working 10% time on a project (e.g. half a day each week) you typically have some inefficiency, where people have to remind themselves where they left off, what they were in the middle of the last time they were working on the project, etc. If your budget only supports.people at.the 10% level, that can add up to additional costs at the 25% level.
Many NASA activities that are not on the path to Mars provide practical benefits for our nation and the taxpayers who fund the agency. I’m not sure simply cancelling them is the best strategy.
Non-Mars NASA activities also include aeronautics which is meager funded compared to HSF even though millions of people fly in airplanes as compared to a few that fly into space. Just saying.
Does it really matter if we land in the 21 century or the 22 century as long the maximum number of engineers and civil servants can pretend they have productive jobs.
This will hit a brick wall for lack of two things: a compelling national desire to send humans to Mars, and a funding stream that is both adequate and sustained over 20 to 25 years.
Interestingly, Paul Spudis made the same points, especially the latter, in regard to lunar exploration a number of years ago. I’ve looked online and can’t find it easily.
But his point was that funding will be started under one presidential administration and all credit (or blame) will accrue to another, probably of a different party. Likewise, it’s difficult-to-impossible to get congress to fund things that reach fruition long after those who voted for it are gone.
Same story here, rinse and repeat.
First off NASA needs a budget increase to a minimum of $24 billion. Some members of Congress are frustrated, yet, they still refuse to raise NASA’s budget. I guess the cancellation of Constellation didn’t teach them anything or they reuse to learn the lesson of Constellation funding. Congress wants NASA to accomplish astronomical things, but at Dollar Store funding. Idiots.
Small ion Satellites continually accelerate.
To journey to Mars wouldn’t you want a rocket that continually accelerated at an amount which is equal to the gravity of earth?
How rapidly could you get to Mars if you could constantly accelerate that much for half the journey then turn around half way and accelerate in the other direction until you reach mars at near zero velocity?
This would eliminate the need for any rotating artificial gravity machines and get you too mars really fast.
Is it possible to build a nuclear powered thruster with that much power?
I watched a goofy DVD called ascension where the people on board thought they were traveling on an Orion project to a nearby star but were actually in a simulation still on earth.
I figured since they had earth like gravity, that they must have thought that their ship was constantly accelerating to create it.
That would be nice, and to answer your question, at 1g acceleration we’d get to Mars in 3-5 days, but there’s no propulsion system currently in operation or that will be operational any time in the near future that could do that, with one exception. Nuclear pulse propulsion, a la Project Orion, which could deliver a payload the size of a city block to Mars orbit within a week, and the technology to do this was around in the 60s. It would be horrendously expensive and definitely would be controversial, though.
Less expensive systems that could possibly produce that much thrust over the needed time scales would take several decades to design and develop. There are some promising ideas, though. One of my favorites is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
What you’re suggesting would require a delta v of 1,700 km/s. The trip would take 48 hours.
I suppose you could argue that there is enough energy in nuclear reactions to do it, there are a few engineering difficulties though.
Rucker says NASA will never be able to get off Mars anyway.
How does SpaceX plan to do it?
http://news.nationalgeograp…
Rucker doesn’t say NASA can’t do it. She does describe the many challenges associated with a MAV, but never says they are insurmountable.
As for SpaceX, I think we’ll have to wait until they release their MCT designs to see what they have in mind for the Mars-to-Earth leg of the trip.
Where’s Tom Matula comment? He said we need to give this “Mars First” a rest as we’ve neglected building a cislunar infrastruture (that would have enabled us to expand into rest of solar system) ever since the Mars Underground hijacked space policy back in 1980s with the policy of bypassing the Moon and everything else and go directly to Mars, and we’ve been stuck in LEO ever since.
I don’t think we should be too quick to lay the blame for a major national policy at the feet of the Mars Underground. Until Griffin the plan was for a LEO to Moon evolution. Griffin switched to Moon first while abandoning LEO. Obama decided he could not abandon LEO and the international partnership, so cancelled Constellation and put the money into ISS, Commercial Crew, and Space Technology. He was forced by Congress to restart SLS/Orion and drop Space Technology.
The precipitating factor in going to Mars was the demand by Congress that NASA also provide plans to actually use SLS and Orion. NASA could not claim they were going to the Moon as additional funding would be needed now for landers and habitats. So a destination that would be farther in the future was needed. Mars was the only one available.