More #JourneyToMars Hype
Keith’s note: As if Orion with only a service module will be in Mars orbit.
#JourneyToMars Facebook hype from @LockheedMartin As if Orion with only a service module will be in Mars orbit pic.twitter.com/Mwyjk1E5I6
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) November 22, 2015
Nice artwork!
Inspirational for someone, but they might not have been born yet.
The vehicle in that configuration, in Mars orbit, doesn’t have the longevity to orbit for that long and doesn’t have the capability to return to earth, both because of duration and inadequate thermal protection.
Probably won’t matter because I figure in another 2 years we will back to a lunar focus.
Maybe Mars sometime late in the second half of the century?
What century??????
Not in two years. More likely in 5-8 years or so, when ISS is closing in on the end of its primary mission. At that point, we’ll hopefully have crewed Dragon capsules going up and down as well as a ready-to-go SLS, and there will be a genuine debate over whether we should then commit to the crewed Mars mission or do an international mission to operate a research base on the Moon.
ISS is already approved through 2024 and more than likely will next be extended to 2028, and in fact as long as it is maintainable I do not foresee it being shut down anytime for many years-and at least on the US side it was designed from the outset to be maintainable. Key is to make ISS the centerpiece of an Earth orbit and even beyond Earth orbit infrastructure..ISS is off to a super slow start but maybe as the lame management leaves things will turn around for the better-we can only hope.
Human missions to Mars anytime in the foreseeable future-very unlikely; there is no rationale for it and certainly no budget to support it.Mars will remain 20 years away for at least the next fifty years..
Go ahead and prove me wrong. I’d be ecstatic to see it.
It’ll only be extended until 2028 if there aren’t some serious issues with it by then, which I don’t think will be likely (at least some of the key modules will be over two decades old at that point). It will also be competing with the SLS and Orion folks lobbying for a better mission for their hardware.
I don’t see it happening. More likely is that the whole thing burns up, or the Russians detach their modules from it and integrate it into a new space station while the rest burns up.
By 2024 we’ll have a fully functional launch vehicle for a Mars mission, plus a capsule to get us up to Earth orbit and back down. All we’ll need is the Deep Space Habitat, a Return Vehicle, and an upper stage to boost the former to Mars to do a crewed Mars Orbital Mission. We’ve built ISS modules in less than a decade before, and we built Skylab from design to launch in 9 years.
Doing such a mission by 2033 or 2035 is not even remotely a stretch. A landing mission is harder, but we still might be able to do one by the early 2040s (assuming we want to – the state of robotics in the early 2030s may be so good that it’s preferable just to keep doing orbital missions).
Agreed.
Poor Orion. It’s over-developed for something that will just go up and down to LEO – they could probably just use Dragon capsules for those once they’re ready. And it’s not good enough to go on Deep Space missions unless you develop a Deep Space Habitat to attach to it.
The only thing it’s really good for is a two week long lunar crewed mission, and NASA’s not doing that anymore (for now). And if they do a moon base at some point, they’ll have a base on the surface and won’t need something with that long life support anyways.
The Shuttle’s systems were heavily modified over the course of it’s lifetime. The exterior never changed much other than differences in thermal tiles / blankets between the orbiters and over the decades. Enterprise never needed to be refurbished reflown to verify the shuttle design could land due to a design change.
If Orion is to be the country’s BEO capsule for the next 40 years – and there is really no reason why a big capsule like it shouldn’t be – it’ll almost certainly see substantial modifications to it’s systems over it’s life time. But they’ll probably never have to do an ETF-1 mission again.
Like isn’t bringing Orion, heatshield and all, to Mars incredibly wasteful? A proper Mars transit vehicle would have it’s own spacebourne command module that never landed and of course it’s own dedicated Mars descent vehicle, which wouldn’t be an Orion of course. And on the return trip, commercial crew could just dock with the transit vehicle that enters Earth orbit again, launched when the crew gets home.
I would expect an “Orion light” that carries more people for exactly what you’re talking about.
“Orion light” concept is really the Starliner and Crew Dragon. Both are being designed to be LEO workhorses.
Not sure what systems you are referring to on Shuttle? Heavily modified? Not really. It could have used some serious changes but aside to some ‘in line’ upgrades, not much else happened.
Like Shuttle, which for systems like avionics there were few replacement parts available after 35 years so it forced upgrades, Orion could very well face the same problems. All the more reason to use a vehicle based on the operating LEO vehicles that are being maintained and upgraded to the latest technologies, rather than trying to maintain a unique vehicle that has no use at all for the next 35 years.
Glass cockpit. New computers and sensors (to detect damage). SSME upgrades. Lighter ETs. New, larger airlock. Several different and lighter seats over the years.
Nothing on the scale of replacing the TPS with X-33 like Metallic TPS or retrotting VentureStar-sourced technology. But changes that cut weight and added capability just the same.
Airlock is the same identical, just moved to the other side of the bulkhead, and that capability is nothing new.
“If Orion is to be the country’s BEO capsule for the next 40 years – and
there is really no reason why a big capsule like it shouldn’t be” – well, for one, it shouldn’t be because it’s TOO EXPENSIVE. For much less, even discounting all the money already spent as inconsequential, any commercial crew ride could be easily modified to a cis-lunar equivalent capability (21-days, quiescent mode/time, etc.), leaving over BILLIONS of dollars across a life time for other payloads such as habitation, landers, etc.
Orion is to be the government’s BEO capsule for the next 40 years. Private companies will have to build their own BEO capsule using NASA’s experience with Orion. We have two separate manned/unmanned spaceflight programs. Government owned and commercial/private company owned.
Orion was indeed intended for the lunar mission, but unlike Apollo, the capsule was designed completely independently of the service module, whereas they were closely integrated in Apollo. This resulted the capsule carrying hardware and consumables that were in the service module in Apollo, making it so heavy that the use of air bags became untenable and it must be recovered at sea.
SLS/Orion as designed is for immediate unfettered American access to the areas in/around cislunar space and the Lagrange points. For any additional missions it will need a myriad of supporting vehicles, habitats and other equipment built by private/commercial companies and our international partners.
This is getting so exciting now, after almost a decade of work, it is finally coming to all together. Just think … ONLY … eight more years and they will be launching humans.
Hey, remember when it was the End Times of Human Spaceflight because Ares I+Orion would fly in the distant future of March 2015 and how unacceptable that was? And how because of that we should swap to DIRECT immediately, since it would do it by 2013?
2007 was a hell of a year.
You know, one reason I like the SLS, also known as Direct 3.0’s cousin by the way, is because of what it represents. Vertically down the core instead of “United States” they need to write these letters. ‘T’ ‘O’ ‘U’ ‘G’ ‘H’. Because it’s happening, and it’s tough luck for it’s detractors that that’s the case. I’ve said it before. 20 years of debate, since I was in elementary school, of what would replace the Shuttle lead to dead end after dead end because no solution that would make everyone happy was found.
I like the SLS because it was forced on NASA. Because saying ‘you come up with the best solution’ lead to 20 years of concept art, X-33/VS, SLI, OSP, Constellation. I’m sure I’m missing a few. It’s amusing to me that just a few years the “Senate Launch System”, which is an honorific in my view given NASA’s long and terrible history of self-generated plans, was made law, stuff started actually getting built after years of just talking about it and fighting over it.
No more restarts. No more do-overs. Debates over. Everybody go home. Nobody cares. Orion will fly and the SLS will fly. Congress owns these programs, not Obama who has tried to kill or underfund them for years, so it will survive President Hillary or President (Insert Republican). They’re going nowhere except space. If it’s 8 years before it takes a human crew, you know what? It’s been 8 years since Ares I, as flawed as it was, was assaulted for it being unacceptably long into the future. So we wait. I’m sure we’ll survive.
That’s why I like the SLS. It represents the end of compromise / debate and the start of action. Because 20 years or trying to find a solution that doesn’t alienate some segment of the spaceflight world, arguing, infighting and turf battles got us into this mess. If it takes another 8 years to get us out of it… know what? Oh well. We’ll wait. Space isn’t exactly going anywhere.
Reminds me of something I heard years ago from a Navy guy, that struck me as amusing and sadly true in the same way. He said eventually Congress completely lost patience with the Navy’s incompetence at procurement and development and essentially took it over itself.
You’re right about NASA, too, and it’s always been that way. Even when Bob Zubrin talks about the “mission-driven” NASA of the 1960s, he points out that the key factor there was the deadline – NASA was just as fractious in terms of plans then as they are now.
I can understand the impatience of some of the older folks, though. They’re old enough that they saw Apollo happen, and they’d preferably like to still be alive when NASA does its next great Trans-LEO mission.
Well let’s be blunt. For older folks, especially the ones that saw Apollo, it’s not happening. Not even close. The ISS is their mission.
Optimistically speaking, most well formed plans for Mars have… what… missions around 2037-2042 thereabouts? If you’re in you’re 40 or younger you’ll probably see it. If you’re 50 or older, probably not.
That’s too bad. But I mean… what did they expect was going to happen? The ISS was – and to a degree remains – the center of the universe for human space flight. It’s been that way since the Shuttle-Mir’s dress rehersal. It was that way after Columbia. It’s even that way today with vocal corners already wanting to extend the ISS past 2024 (never mind that it’s mere existence eats $3 billion from the HSF annually).
I mean the 50+ crowd chose this. They chose this when Clinton to Bush-pre-Columbia to Bush post-Columbia to Obama had proposals change, and change and change. If X-33 / VentureStar was never canceled it could have been flying for years now. If Ares I had continued, it would have flown a few times by now. 180t Ares V would be far closer than the 130t SLS.
So really, I’m not sympathetic to them. I mean from my perspective, someone who sees the ISS only meaningful accomplishment being getting built, I see my wishes for HSF being burned by $3 billion a year through 2024 that I would much rather be spent on pretty much anything else other than a perfect attendance record for Americans in space and mostly worthless space station science.
The over 50 crowd has to accept that maybe they’ll see something on the Moon 15 years from now. But that’s probably it. Mars? We’re not even close. And that’s perfectly fine because we’ve spent the last two decades building a space station which does nothing towards the goal of Mars, and little to actually get there. The SLS+Orion, flaws and all, at least is a tangible first step, that again, came only when it was written into law.
We shouldn’t be driving our long term planning just so the over-50 crowd can see it.
You should post-fix each of your time-line predictions with the words “from NASA”. The private sector will send folks to both the moon and Mars much sooner. The world is tired of waiting for Congress.
It’s a nitpick, but I thought VentureStar was abandoned because the design ended up not working.
Gosh you almost make it sound like congress really DOES want to go somewhere. Unfortunatly senators expressed over and over that this was a jobs program for their districts. It was forced on NASA because it is an unsustainable system that will be canceled. NASA knows this and so does, apparently, most people who watch space issues. If congress was serious about actually wanting to go somewhere, they would not have pushed this boondoggle onto the taxpayers.
If you believe that NON space state congressional members are going to cheer everytime 4 billion in hardware gets drowned in the atlantic I feel you are in for a sad awakening.
NASA’s internal documents are clear .. SAA’s that are milestone based and fixed price are both faster and less expensive. That utilizing in-space fuel depots are a less expensive way to push into cis-lunar space. If we do not get a handle on vacumn and zero.low G fuel transfer and strorage we not going anywhere.. time to ax this monster and pursue it in a more rational and intelligent manner… pork is not the answer.. EVER.
Well, history shows that government owned transportation systems weren’t the best. At most they were expensive. The savings will come in the private/commercial sector. Because the private sector have to be more efficient to stay in business. So the SLS/Orion just follows the historical expensive government transportation trend. Still, I can’t wait till it launches.
The private sector will utilize fuel depots before the government owned SLS/Orion will.
I agree, the sooner it is all handled by the Dept. of Transportation and away from space state congressional members controling NASA
the better.
Vlad: maybe I missed comments by Shelby and others calling SLS a jobs program? Sure, they will tout the jobs- who wouldn’t? But did any Senator ever say it’s primarily about jobs?
It is worth pointing out that ANY large rocket program brings jobs.
And more to the point – AGAIN – why would it being about Jobs in part intrinsically be a bad thing?
Am I insane for thinking that a taxpayer funded program – any taxpayer funded program – that costs millions or billions of dollars, should be as politically armored up as possible? Jobs and pork doing should be a core feature of any program.
Moralizing about how that’s wrong is self defeating. It reminds me of all the moralizing about earmarks, neglecting the fact that earmarks have a long and happy history of greaseing the wheels of politics and making previously reluctant political allies far more willing to compromise, because they will have something to show for their vote.
That’s not corruption and that’s not wrong. That’s politics. That’s winning political battles, which is going to come with any billion dollar investment of taxpayer money.
If the merits of a program were enough, we’d have 100 B-2s instead of 20. We’d have 450 F-22s instead of 187. We’d have had the Air Force buy the AirLand Scorpion instead of use B-1Bs over Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria (super cheap dollars-per-flying hours comparatively). But it’s never been about the merits. It’s always politics. The B-2 and and F-22 weren’t protected compared to the B-1B (100 built) and F-35, and only aerospace junkies know what the Scorpion is.
Anything that goes anywhere… be it on an SLS or Falcon Heavy, will need to be as obscenely political as possible.
All you have to do is to back to the meetings on the hill when O’Keefe was telling members of the committees how many jobs were going to disappear when “The Vision for Space Exploration” was fully moved forward. Congress almost blew a gasket when he told them 14,000. You have to remember the VSE said, in Feb of 2004, no new rockets, and if NASA eventually DID need a heavy lift it would not even be started until the end of the decade.
“For cargo transport to the Space Station after 2010, NASA will rely on existing or new commercial cargo transport systems, as well as international partner cargo transport systems.”
President Bush was VERY clear, commerical cargo and commercial crew were PRIORITIES for NASA. Building a new rocket was NOT.
“NASA does not plan to develop new launch vehicle capabilities except where critical NASA needs—such as heavy lift—are not met by commercial or military systems. Depending on future human mission designs, NASA could decide to develop or acquire a heavy lift vehicle later this decade.”
So even IF the NASA DID decide on heavy lift, it would not be until the end of the decade and commercial was supposed to be an option.
Look what else was stated:
“In the days of the Apollo program, human exploration systems employed expendable, single-use vehicles requiring large ground crews and careful monitoring. For future, sustainable exploration programs, NASA requires cost-effective vehicles that may be reused, have systems that could be applied to more than one destination, and are highly reliable and need only small ground crews. NASA plans to invest in a number of new approaches to exploration, such as robotic networks, modular systems, pre-positioned propellants, advanced power and propulsion, and in-space assembly, that could enable these kinds of vehicles.”
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/555…
Just what EXACTLY is President Bush calling for in the VSE?
1) Low cost vehicles ( vehicles – plural)
2) Have to be resuable
3) The vehicles must be used for more than one destination (flexible path)
4) Small ground crews (no NASA standing army in every district)
5) Modular systems
6) Fuel depots
7) Advanced power and propulsion *project Promethus canceled under Griffin
8) Asembled in space
Now when you read that .. what do you envision? Ares I and Ares V? Or do you envision a Nautilus X and a commercial fuel station?
How does the Orion capsule fill those requirements?
Once congress heard NO NEW ROCKETS, commercial crew, commerical cargo, commercial heavy lift, and massive layoffs .. it was a done deal. O’Keefe was out and Griffin was up on the hill with the ESAS and Ares I and Ares V and only a few jobs would have to be lost. Members like Kay Bailey Hutchenson and BIll Nelson were VERY VERY clear about job retention.
“WASHINGTON – U.S. Richard Shelby’s office, responding Wednesday to a report criticizing the Alabama senator’s role in NASA programs, says he “makes no apologies” for pushing NASA’s human space flight program in the Senate. The comment followed a May 18 story in the Houston Chronicle quoting unnamed sources accusing Shelby and other senators with NASA centers in their states of harming NASA by turning the agency into “jobs programs for their districts and states.””
http://blog.al.com/breaking…
Sen. Hutchison Leads Fight For NASA Jobs And Programs
https://2onthebeat.wordpres…
Thing is, more than half of the new, large, rocket programs fly more, sooner, and a lot less expensively. Because of that many are projecting that all SLS will ever be is a jobs program.
I add that it is also a Rocket Tech Research Project to aid the development of private rockets.
First, yes, NON-Space state congressional members support it. There is literally decades of history to support that claim. The Shuttle launch for 30 years at a rate of what… 4-6 times annually? The SLS is cheaper. Sure the SLS may devour the ISS (a feature not a bug in my opinion) but the money is there. What’s changed? Not a thing. Because just like before funding for Space is folded into larger appropriations bills that those pesky Non-Space state congressional members readily vote on.
http://spacenews.com/senate…
And who said anything about going anywhere? Was my post not clear? This isn’t about actually going anywhere. That’s later. For right now, the capability driven design that gives the US a 105-130t launcher for the next 40 years is a superior solution than the integrated special snowflake mission design some here have advocated. A C-5 Galaxy for Space is just the ticket for infrastructure building. This is about gaining capability.
This is most of all, about making a decision and sticking with it. NASA could have gone with Ares I, scrapped Ares V and expanded Delta IV into an even larger launcher. NASA could have gone the Ares IV route. NASA could have put Orion ontop of EELVs. NASA could have ressurected tne VentureStar or built an all new EELV. To me? It really doesn’t matter.
I’m not even particularly picky about Mars versus the Moon versus anywhere else. Because we’re not landing on any of these destinations for another decade and a half most likely.
No. My support for SLS comes from the fact that again, for over half my life, NASA’s future direction post-Shuttle, post-ISS yielded nothing – legitimately nothing – until the day Orion flew on top of a Delta IV Heavy. It’s time to put an ends to the changes in direction that made that tragedy possible.
The SLS is what has been chosen. It could have been something else, but that time has passed. It’s what’s being paid for. It’s what has companies working on it. The SLS is what has the infrastructure built. And you want to do something different at this point? Really? Start over again? With all due respect. No. Just no. We’re not going to go down another 15 year path of “figuring out what to do” just because the SLS isn’t the perfect rocket.
You wanna talk about destinations. Let’s do it after we have a rocket that actually enables us to ask the question “so where do we want to go?” and have the technical means to answer it. Because right now, it’s dumb debate. Conflcit between Mars camps and Lunar camps? Orbital Fuel Depots for that or something else? That’s best used a compliment to a heavy lift rocket, not a replacement. Step one is being able to things of sizable mass off the ground which SLS will do and Falcon Heavy will do. But that’s it.
You call it pork? Good. If you love space, you should certainly hope so. You know what pork also is? Protected.
Keep that in mind late next decade when tens of millions of elderly baby boomers and and exploding healthcare costs start devouring even larger parts of the budget than they do now. What do you think will be cut to pay for that first? A few warships that would be useful in the turbulent Western Pacific, or a $1.5 billion proposal for SpaceX to put refuel some orbital depots so we can do some space things which in the big scheme of things, matter a lot less to the American people?
Your fuel depots would be left dry, and it would amount to little more than a post on SpaceNews. The American people wouldn’t notice and few would care.
If nothing else, least with the SLS ‘pork’, there’s a fighting chance. You can call pork another feature not a bug in my opinion. Because billion dollar programs need allies in a world where merits matter very little.
You must be a stalinist big government kind of a guy. I am a capitalist .. I do not believe in socialsm above the karman line. American aerospace workers carry all the talent we need for NASA to BUY from commercial vendors.
NASA does not need to own and operate a monster rocket. If the Nation’s space agency needs astronauts moved from california to florida, they buy a commercial ticket. If NASA needs some cargo moved, they hire a commercial transport. In NASA needs cargo in space then they can buy commercial launch services .. faster and cheaper, for the taxpayers, then doing it inhouse.
Excellent rant. Interesting angle. We’ll see how long it can last against the Falcon Heavy.
Well, that’s at least one observation I hadn’t heard- that Congress forced SLS on NASA because NASA couldn’t make up its mind.
You cite several false starts- in itself false starts are not to be discounted as they can represent research into final suitability or workability.
More to the point- could any of those abandoned programs have succeeded? If so, why were they abandoned? Was there nothing learned from any of them? Were they politically motivated?
“Make up it’s mind’? I wouldn’t put it like that. More like Administrations changed, priorities changed and plans changed… and kept changing every few years. Congress, by having an adversarial relationship with Obama’s post-Constellation space vision, took ownership of it, and moved the future of NASA out of a 4-8 year political office, and into a chamber whose members are often there considerably longer than that. That gives longevitity to whatever they’re doing, which is exactly what megaprojects like rocket programs and manned missions need in order to succeed.
It’s worth recounting the history of the Apollo-era. Kennedy was a New Deal Democrat. He didn’t care (or like people of his time, understand) particularly much about Space as we think of it. He called them “the heavens” and wasn’t being poetic in his use of the phrase. By the time Johnson (who was much better informed and interests) was President and shortly after when Apollo was kicking into high gear, Vietnam was growing worse and that President’s concerns were elsewhere. The 1960s space program may have been sourced at the White House, but it was protected by powerful Senators and Congressmen, such as Senator Clinton P. Anderson who made sure it happened. Many of which, by the way, were out of office or deceased by the last couple of years of the 1960s and early 1970s when Nixon, no friend to space, became President. Apollo was curtailed, NERVA was canceled, ambitions were scaled back, because NASA’s political support dried up.
I think that pretty much any post on these forums that call the SLS – or any multibillion dollar program for that matter – pork, is terribly naive. How could something that costs tens to hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money, per flight (depending on your rocket), not be political? SpaceX isn’t any different. It is just on a different scale.
I say this as a lover of space since childhood – let’s cut through it, Space Exploration is an entirely frivolous activity. For example, the only in-orbit pictures that the human race has of Neptune were taken by Americans – NASA and Voyager 2. Except for those collection of pictures, the 8th planet in the solar system, our local space, is hugely unknown to us. For us space lovers, this is significant, because Voyager 2’s photographs enriched our knowledge of the universe we live in. But it doesn’t have the impact of say, a transportation bill that fixes some roads and bridges. Most of the human race has no clue that Neptune had a Great Dark Spot, or even that it’s blue, if they even know it’s name and that it exists, and they don’t particularly care. Dozens of extremely developed countries get by without a Space Program. We have one, and have done these things, because Americans politically decided that expanding our knowledge of the universe fulfills a core aspect of our national identity and is something worth spending money on, despite the fact that most Americans do not care do not follow the space program day to day. If the day came when money was actually tight (rather than merely unresolved debates on how to spend it), Space exploration would be among the first things to go, well before, say, Social Security.
Which is all to say that this ridiculous notion that some people have that the merits of the system or the plan is enough, is disconnected from the reality that we live in where Space Exploration is not a national priority. It’s a national hobby. It is the American people’s equivalent of it’s national XBOX. It takes us far away to distant worlds, and we pay for it because we’re rich enough to. Not because we have to, but because we can.
So we should want our space program to be porky. We should want our space program to have an army of senators and congressmen lining up to make sure it’s well after a huge number of other, less worthy endevours, before it gets cut.
Which takes us back to your post. It wasn’t that NASA couldn’t make up it’s mind. It’s that for years Administrations kept coming up with different schemes and Congress didn’t really pay attention to it over the immediate priority of reflying the shuttle and building or finishing the ISS. It took a completed ISS and Obama’s truly terrible ‘vision’ to make Congress take ownership of space again – and fund it against the administrations’ wishes mind you – and because of that the future of the Space program is far more secure than it’s been in years. These congressmen will inhibit a change of direction yet again. So maybe, just maybe, we’ll be able to go somewhere thanks to to that.
Here’s the thing. Obama is gone in 13 months. Let’s say Congress accepted his plan and it being 2015, the plan for a superheavy lift rocket started now (per his proposal). What would have stopped President Hillary or President Republican from undoing everything yet again, just like their Predecessors did, unless Congress stopped them from doing that? That’s why the SLS is great. Whoever is President next doesn’t need to have a ‘space vision’. Really. They just need to not get in the way.
As for specific false starts, they were at various degrees of progress, most not actually building anything. The two most notable are of course, X-33 and Ares I.
X-33 was canceled due to a scathing – and surprising – congressional testimony. But the XRS-2200s were build and an aluminum fuel tank, which was better than the composite one in the end due to fewer wields (again as I recall) was built. The Metallic TPS was ready to go. The tragedy of X-33 is that it’s technology is not suitable for anything NASA has planned. Metallic TPS couldn’t be put on the shuttle or used on Orion. Linear Aerospike Engines wouldn’t work on SLS. Nobody’s talked about a lifting body not named Dreamchaser, for years.
As for Ares I, as deeply flawed as it was, the original vision – an American Soyuz – was sound. It had an oversized and over-complex capsule sure for that particular purpose. Butr really, it wasn’t a particularly good design. Ares V was always far more interesting to me. But more than anything else, it comes down to this: it’s “unbearably far in the future” date, was over six months ago.
So I’ll say again as I said in my reply to Vlad up there. We could have gone with X-33/VentureStar, or Ares I or something else. My personal opinion, is I don’t want to be, in 2019 wondering “boy when is the US going to get the ability to send people places again and what will that look like?”
So give me the SLS. Give it to me with two five-segment SRBs (that are really offensive to some people), four RS-25Ds, a capsule over-designed for lunar orbit and a price tag subject to creative use of math to drive it’s cost up or down depending on if you like it or not. Give it to me with 35 year old technology Atari-like racing stripes. Make a time machine and un-cancel the Ares I. Or go further back and commit to the VentureStar. Because all of that is legitimately better then starting over yet again and pretending that whatever new plan will be better and “pork free” (because that’s important… for some reason).
And if not, and it’s 2019 and the SLS is dead and there is yet another study with yet another Presidential scheme, you know what? We had a good run, but I think the Navy could use another aircraft carrier due to Chinese shenanigans. Where to cut to pay for that? Let’s start with HSF, because it will have at last proven itself incapable of achieving anything anymore.
You are incorrect, the adversarial context is not with President Obama, per say, it is and always HAS BEEN with the executive branch. Reagan, commercial space launch act, and modifiying the Space Act of 1958. Clinton, the Commercial Space Act, Bush, the ammeded Commercial Space Launch Act of 2004.
The exective branch has been at war with the PORKONAUTS in congress for DECADES.
President Obama is doing EXACTLY what was laid out by President Bush in The Vision for Space Exploration. Commercial crew. Bush gave us commercial cargo. The next president will give us a commercial destinition in Bigelow Aerospace and SLS will be canceled.
Unfortunately, the myth to all you just said lies in believing that ending the endless debate will now result in actual NASA space exploration. It won’t, as programs like SLS and Orion are first and foremost jobs programs with no real desire to advance NASA space exploration.
Consider this akin to a kid who takes home his bat and ball, the only bat and ball, rather than compromising with the other kids on the block about who gets to play. Sure, the debate is over. Only now, NO ONE is going to play ball.
Are you glad the debate ended that was keeping all the kids arguing over times at bat, and who was going to pitch, all the while losing time and not playing? Why? No one’s going to play ball ANYWAY!
This was never a debate. This was and remains trench warfare, with the line not advancing just now, as those who think jobs programs are in a stalemate with those who want to see a real, sustainable, ever more affordable, and ever growing space sector increasing access to space and beyond.
I detect a hint of sarcasm there!
And if they showed it connected to a complete Mars Transit Vehicle, the comment would be “nothing behind the crew capsule is funded”
And if they showed it artistically with the ISS in the background, there would be some comment about how Orion will never be used for such a purpose and why Commerical Crew is superior.
And if they showed it sitting on a platform in my grandmother’s Orlando living room, there would be some comment about NASA reaching out to the elderly rather than educating and inspiring the young.
NASAWatch is by far the best site about NASA there is. Been visting daily for well over a decade. Everyone is well aware of the editorial position against Orion/SLS. That’s fine. But the #JourneyToMars cheap shots is like the New York Times putting National Equirerer headlines on the front page. It drags it down. Way down. Just like with NASA’s big Journey to Mars flowchart, a promotional image is just a promotional image.
It’s just rather frustrating to have all this #JourneytoMars stuff out there as if this is some imminent thing, rather than something won’t even be a sure plan until decisions are made ten years from now. What is the point of it? There’s nothing to link it to.
What I’d really like Keith to do is ease up a bit on the shots at the Planetary Society for proposing an orbital mission first, and for expressing real concern about the possibility of forward contamination on Mars.
What I’d really like is for Keith to never ever let up on anyone.
(The heavy hand on comments even remotely political excepted, of course).
I don’t think anyone thinks it’s imminent at all. Frankly, I don’t think anyone knows about it unless you’re really into space. I don’t think “Journey to Mars” will enter the wider sustained public consciousnesses until successive SLS Mark IIs launch, well over 15 years from now, building a Mars Transit Vehicle.
It’s going to be a long decade and a half if there is sniping every time someone connected to that eventual goal posts a picture of something spacey that dare has Mars in the background.
So, granny is into space! 🙂
It really is frustrating that graphics like this make out to the uninformed that we are on track for an imminent manned mars mission, as almost everyone here knows this is not the case, the biggest irony though is that with proper direction, communication and cooperation we could without a doubt be well on the road to manned mars missions and well within current budget limitations but instead NASA and it’s pork farm contractors continue to march happily along along old and well trodden dead end roads while generating these pretty graphics to keep the public on side.
Battle of the imaginary rockets
Here we see yet another picture of the same old Space capsule that Lockheed Martin has been working on for years (or is it decades?)
Much has been said about SpaceX not launching Falcon Heavy,
However since we first saw FH
It has evolved.
Version 1
Track toe Merlin Cs with cross Rankin
Version 2
Circular Merlin Ds with cross tanking.
Version 3
Circular Merlin Ds with 30 percent more power, no cross tanking needed.
Seems Lockheed Martin is getting their ass kicked even in the imaginary rockets department.
My first thought on the tweet wasn’t a beef with the Orion sans transfer vehicle, but the massive understatement: “Engineers refine the Orion spacecraft’s thermal protection system….” Refine? Try: throw out everything but the basic TPS material, and go back to the drawing board. Who knows, with the current lack of interest and worse lack of attention span, the public may be sufficiently distracted by the tweets and posts about sticking foil-tape on the back-shell? (They had to redesign the heat sh…”Oooh…shiney!”)
EFT-1 tested a lot of sub-systems, I will give it that, but one of its primary goals was to test Orion’s TPS. I am curious when the decision was made to scrap the design. After…or before the launch? I’m not arguing with the change, it was the correct decision, in my opinion. The “let’s just copy Apollo” honeycomb design was massively labor-intensive and fraught with nearly unavoidable manufacturing defects and re-work. I would not have minded more even-handed that explained those issues and the need for the re-design, but NASA only gave two vague sentences.
I suspect that PAO or management were afraid that any further details would have raised concerns that EFT-1 just launched to check the box that they had achieved a milestone.
I’m not sure why you think they’re throwing out everything… My understanding is that the TPS for the backshell is the same (shuttle type tiles), just with an outer layer of reflective Mylar insulation over it for thermal control in space.
You seem to be confused, they haven’t scrapped the design for the heat shield. They did decide to make the AVCOAT for the heat shield in sections rather than in one monolithic piece, which was done to make it cheaper to fabricate and easier to handle. That decision was made before the EFT-1 flight test.
http://spaceflightnow.com/2…
There’s a considerable amount of information about this online, I would suggest starting with a basic google search and poke around related news articles.
No confusion here. You must have skipped the part where I said “…but the basic TPS material,” (i.e., AVCOAT). The original design wasn’t “monolithic” it was actually the far opposite: a fiberglass honeycomb (roughly pinky-sized holes) that was filled with AVCOAT. The “filling” process involved a handful of people painstakingly injecting the raw material with the equivalent of caulking guns.
The new designs use the AVCOAT material, minus the honeycomb, in large pre-formed blocks. This is a MAJOR change. There has also been considerable work developing how to bond the blocks (originally, the honeycomb was bonded to the shell, then filled, now, with no honeycomb, they had to develop a different method) and–as, or more difficult–how to fill the gaps between the blocks.
“That decision was made before the EFT-1 flight test.” Exactly my point. They conducted a flight test of a heat shield that they had ALREADY planned to NOT use. I hope that the other systems that were tested were worth the incredible expense of the launch, but testing the heat shield was one of the primary goals of the mission. Could they have not afforded a delay until they could test the final design of the heat shield? Were they under political pressure to launch meet a milestone, regardless of whether they were going to get the data they really need? That sort of thinking can get astronauts killed.
I am concerned that Exploration Mission 1 is launching with a heat shield that has never been subjected to an actual launch. That said, I am well aware that NASA is ground-testing the heck out of the design. However, I am also reminded of the words of a professor of mine: “Nature makes no assumptions.”
The back-shell TPS may have only changed by adding a tinfoil coating, but frankly, the minimal (but not negligible) back-shell heating is not nearly as concerning as the forebody. My post came from my exasperation that NASA / Lockheed was making such a big deal about what was such a tiny change, when a very significant change to Orion seems to be being glossed over.
I’m aware of how AVCOAT is made, which doesn’t change any what I said. They made the heat shield in one giant piece (monolithic) for the EFT Orion, and will be making it in blocks for later Orions. Otherwise still the same material and as far as I know, it still has the honeycomb structure. I haven’t heard that that is being removed, simply that they are gunning the honeycomb in several separate blocks for ease of assembly, then adhering the pre-made blocks to the heat shield sub-structure.
It’s still AVCOAT, just being assembled in a different way. Since the same material is being used it does not invalidate the flight test. EFT-1 had (if I recall correctly) 104 specific objectives, and only a couple failed (a couple of the air bags on top failed to deploy properly after splashdown).
It can be more or less glossed over, as it’s a change in how the heat shield is assembled, not what it is made of.
NASA has not published it widely, but one of the main features of the “block” architecture is that it gets rid of the honeycomb structure. Don’t take my word for it, here is a presentation by the Deputy Manager for the Orion TPS: https://www.youtube.com/wat…
The honeycomb was the cause of a number of issues, the most significant being voids (air bubbles) in the cells when the AVCOAT material was not injected thoroughly and cracks in the heat shield along the honeycomb ribs. All of these defects had to be laboriously located, drilled out, and plugged.
It IS important if you change how something is assembled, regardless of whether or not it uses the same materials (in this case it doesn’t, exactly). If you have a building made of poured concrete, versus a building made of concrete blocks, the walls will not have identical performance. The more changes you make to a design and the more fundamental your changes, the more risk you you have that your performance will have changed.
While there may have been 104 objectives, I hope you’ll agree that not all of them had the same priorities. The prime mission of EFT-1 was to test the heat shield. (In NASA’s own words: http://www.nasa.gov/home/hq… )
I want you to have your facts straight. I’m not sure why you’re fighting me on this. Aren’t you concerned that NASA may be (being forced into?) spending money to meet political objectives, rather than technical ones? Doesn’t it bother you when the government makes a big deal out of a minor point, while seeming to ignore major issues? Would it not give you greater confidence in the program if they were as up-front about the issues–and their solutions–so as to say, “We understand the problem; we’ve got this covered.”
As bothered as I am about these issues, I take comfort that the next flight around the back of the Moon, EM-1, will be un-crewed, so we will at least have one chance to validate the performance of the final design in the real world prior to putting astronauts in the capsule.
I will have to watch that video when I’ve got some free time at home.
Removing the fiberglass honeycomb structure is news to me, but I don’t think that actually changes the properties of the AVCOAT material any, and will certainly make it much easier to form into blocks. I’m sure they will pay very close attention to the heat shield performance during the EM-1 mission to see how it changed.
I want my facts straight, too. I do appreciate you finding a source for me to review. It definitely helps, and of course I’m always happy to learn something new.
If you’re worried about money, I’d think you’d be happy about this change, as it reduces the time and labor required to make the heat shield.
I suspect the announcement was made because the addition of the thermal foil changes the appearance of the Orion. There’d probably be more public confusion if the Orion were suddenly presented as shiny silver without an explanation. Whereas the general public doesn’t know or care what the heat shield looks like. There have been many, many other changes to Orion, mostly to save weight, streamline wiring, improve this or that capacity, etc. and little of that has been publicly announced. I generally trust the engineers actually working on the hardware to know what they’re doing better than I do as a layman.
Here’s a bit of SpaceX concept art that is essentially the same as the CowingSnark is concerned about:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/…
It’s rather GOOD concept art, and I can see why Elon Musk published it on Instagram. Can we NOT poke at concept art? That seems incredibly picky, perhaps even petty.
You might want to do a little more research. That image of a Dragon on Mars – all by itself – is accurate. It was designed to be able to do that. Just ask Elon.
As a reasonable guy, I looked deeper at Red Dragon, and the basic concept is the typical daring Musk approach. I’m a little skeptical of the stated mission only being the Dragon and not some inclusion of a hab being employed. But not wholly skeptical.
I stand by my general thought: picking at concept art seems like a waste of time.
Maybe. But “CowingSnark” is a home run 🙂
I still say that if NASA sticks to a 2030s time line, there will already be people on Mars to welcome them and throw an arrival party with home-grown burgers.
Also, if all they send is Orion and a service module, they shouldn’t need to wait until 2035. It’d be silly right?
Oh well, more hype/erroneous context for Mars news.
“NASA paying $1.16 billion so Aerojet Rocketdyne can start making engines for Mars”
http://www.theverge.com/201…
Just drives us sticklers for reality nuts.