Changing The Way We Explore Space
NASA cuts funds for Mars landing technology work, SpaceNews
“In September Elon Musk is going to reveal his plans for colonizing Mars. “NASA is cutting funding for a Mars landing technology demonstration project by about 85 percent in response to budget reductions to its space technology program and the need to set aside funding within that program for a satellite servicing effort. In a presentation to a joint meeting of the National Academies’ Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board and Space Studies Board here April 26, James Reuter, NASA deputy associate administrator for space technology, said the Low Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) project would get only a small fraction of its originally planned budget of $20 million for 2016.”
Modified NASA/SpaceX Space Act Agreement
“The purpose of this Amendment No. 1 to Space Act Agreement No. SAA-QA-14-18883 between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (“NASA”) and Space Explorations Technologies Corp. (“Partner” or “SpaceX”), effective December 18,2014 (the “Agreement”), is to (1) further define areas of insight and assistance to SpaceX under the Agreement, (2) further define areas in which NASA will have access to and use of SpaceX data and technology to advance NASA’s understanding of the development of SpaceX’s propulsive descent capabilities and enable NASA’s own Mission to Mars, and (3) extend the period of performance under the Agreement.”
Keith’s note: Wow, how odd that this all happened at exactly the same time. It is probably just a coincidence, right? With near-perfect simultaneity we learn that NASA has decided to cut funding for new technology needed to develop systems to land large payloads (you know, human-related stuff) on Mars. As this news was making the rounds, SpaceX announced that it is sending its own mission to the surface of Mars. If you read the opening section of the Space Act Agreement between NASA and SpaceX (signed 25/26 April, announced 27 April 2016) it is clear that NASA will be obtaining information from SpaceX while (maybe) providing some sort of unspecified assistance. To be certain, NASA has the world’s pre-eminent expertise in landing things – big things – on Mars. But in the end, the bulk of the data flow is going to be from SpaceX to NASA – and SpaceX will be doing the vast bulk of the technology trailblazing – and all of the funding.
Did NASA cut the funding for its own Mars entry research knowing that SpaceX was going to go off and do this research? I can’t say. I get answers all over the spectrum when I ask around. I do know that there were a lot of people at NASA – all the way to the top – who did not like this. But others see this as a vindication of various policies that NASA has been pursuing.
This would not be the first time that two announcements about a cancellation and a new project would happen simultaneously. Recall this episode from 2015: “NASA Cancels B612 Sentinel Agreement and Then Picks JPL NEOCam“: “Isn’t it a litte odd that the decision to cancel the Space Act Agreement with B612 for its “Sentinel” asteroid hunting mission suddenly came to light on the eve of Discovery mission finalists being announced — and that JPL’s asteroid hunting “NEOCam” mission is among those selected for further work?. These spacecraft even look a lot alike. JPL folks clearly saw Sentinel as competition – even if it was Sentinel team that first pushed the envelope on this whole idea. JPLers were pushing Lindley Johnson and others at NASA HQ to end the Sentinel agreement.” NASA HQ staff would often try to end or avoid discussions about NEO searches from its planetary science community by Saying “B612’s Sentinel will do that”. And then they changed their mind.
In the case of B612 there were some valid (but overblown) concerns by NASA as to whether the B612 Foundation had generated enough financial resources to do what was spelled out in their Space Act Agreement. Of course, NASA was getting the lion’s share of the value from this project while B612 was going to do all of the heavy lifting. But NASA got cold feet and pulled the plug – only after B612 had shown that such a concept was credible and then surprise, surprise, NASA approved its own version of the B612 concept.
In the case of SpaceX sending a mission to Mars, well, its markedly different. SpaceX has their own vertically integrated launch and spacecraft company that can produce absolutely everything needed to do this mission. And they have enough money to do missions on their own. More importantly they have a leader who is compelled to explore Mars and he owns the company. They do not need NASA to do this mission.
A lot of the SpaceX haters (starting with Neil Tyson) whine about there being “no business case” for deep space exploration by the private sector. These people (e.g. Tyson) are usually not business people, and they are certainly not billionaires – yet they seem to be business experts. Elon Musk and SpaceX can do what they want with their own funds, yes? End of discussion. There does not really have to be a business case any more than there is for What Bill and Melinda Gates do with their billions in developing countries or Jeff Bezos does with Blue Origin. If the people who put up the money – their own money – think this is a great idea then that’s the end of that.
But wait: there is a business case here. Assume it is a given that NASA’s #JourneyToMars, an effort that will take 2 decades to complete at some huge but utterly unknown cost using hardware that is over-priced and behind schedule – a mission that could be (and has been) hampered by simple congressional or presidential decisions. If SpaceX pulls this first mission off, would not critics of NASA’s approach – who still want to send humans to Mars – take notice and ask why it would not be more prudent to pursue other (less expensive and faster) means to get to Mars? In other words, the investment of a hundred million or so in this 2018 mission could turn into billions in possible business for SpaceX. Not an unusual investment for a large business to make especially if you have something that a certain customer might really, really want.
Just the other day Charlie Bolden was asked why NASA was developing SLS when SpaceX had a Falcon 9. Say what you will about Congress – some of its members do pay attention to things such as mounting costs and delayed schedules.
SpaceX has put a lot of their own money into things. Musk risked everything he owned – and a lot of people’s jobs – more than once. Yes, NASA gave SpaceX a lot of money (as they gave to other companies) but the hardware and capabilities that resulted, at GAO’s own appraisal, cost a fraction of what it would have cost NASA to produce. And now SpaceX is off doing things (landing stages and reusing them) that NASA itself is not capable of doing. SpaceX has an ever-growing backlog of launches worth a lot of future income. Real businesses take risks with their assets and their futures. If they take the right risks they get rewarded by the market. If they fail, they suffer financially or disappear. Governments do not have to worry about things like this. They risk other people’s money and share little if any risk (certainly no personal risk) if things do not work out.
What you have seen this week is a paradigm shift hiding in plain sight. In September Elon Musk is going to reveal his plans for colonizing Mars. This announcement was just the opening note. A private sector company has committed to spend its own blood and treasure on a mission to another planet. They have not asked NASA for a penny for this mission and have offered to tell NASA what they have learned – for free. Meanwhile, NASA decided to cut its own research in an area of related technology that they deemed as being crucial for their own plans to send humans to Mars. In so doing they have taken a step back from Mars while SpaceX has taken a big step forward.
NASA could have made a big stink about this and made things difficult for SpaceX. They didn’t. SpaceX could have just gone off and done this without NASA. They didn’t. They both made the right decision.
The rules for exploring space have just changed folks.
Guess we’ll find out in the Autumn when/if SpaceX releases more information.
It can’t just be landing a Red Dragon on Mars and measuring how it did getting there and hopefully landing. Will more than one Red Dragon be on it’s way, are Elon and SpaceX taking a page from the Mars Direct book and getting ready for a ground game? What about Habitats, Suits? NASA cargo?
Think of it as Surveyor-1. A technology and engineering mission.
Devils in the details. Do they have a plan showing what and when they are going to send to Mars?
Elon Musk is going to make the official presentation of the plans at the International Astronautical Congress, which will be September 26-30.
Very little has leaked out, so there’s tons of speculation but no solid facts yet.
He’ll make the official presentation of the MCT plans at the International Astronautical Congress, I guess the presentation of the Red Dragon plan will be much sooner.
This is indeed a paradigm change, one that promises to make space exploration more like exploration on Earth where the majority is driven by private funding and interests.
People have been advocating this approach for some time – NASA channelling funding and bleeding-edge R&D results to private contractors so that they could build applications for their own purposes. In exchange (as we’re already seeing with NASA getting access to the Falcon-9 core return data as part of the Mars EDL research program) NASA gets a free look at any data generated for further R&D along the same path.
Some would argue that this is closer to the purpose for which NASA (especially the aviation end) was set up. It remains to be seen whether the ‘big arsenal’/legacyspace factions are willing to accept this new way of doing things.
It’s certainly what NACA was tasked to do. When it became NASA, things changed quite a bit on the space side.
That’s basically NASA aeronautics in a nutshell.
I try to read widely in the space world- not like many here as I do have a day job. And as far as I have seen, the idea that SpaceX’ efforts are an investment geared towards selling access to Mars later to NASA in new. At least I haven’t seen it.
What we are seeing here is NASA making a proper and prudent decision, doing it in the autumn of an administration which is about the only time such a thing can happen.
Surprised the hell out of me, nonetheless.
Keith:
Well and concisely put!
Elon Musk did have a business plan for SpaceX from the very beginning, just as he did for Tesla Motors:
Build a commercial space launch business to fund the colonization to Mars.
That NASA became the ‘anchor tenant’ for this business model was a godsend and sped this whole process up by years. As we’ve seen, every piece of hardware SpaceX has built has been leading up to this point. Falcon Heavy is built for launching deep space missions, either by sending much heavy space probes then have ever been launched before or getting those probes to there destinations much faster. As Elon Musk has said, Dragon 2 can land anywhere in the Solar System, including Venus (though Elon said it wouldn’t last very long).
But now that we know what , how about the how of this SpaceX mission to Mars?
My first guess was that Dragon 2 would use a ‘classic’ Entry, Descent and landing: friction, parachutes, propulsive landing. But then our friend and intrepid rocket reporter DTARS (Doesn’t Take A Rocket Scientist) George Worthington tweeted a Dragon Moon Lander concept (See below).
How this might apply to a Mars landing is George’s idea of utilizing the trunk to store extra fuel. For a Mars landing, the trunk would have to be discarded before atmospheric entry. But couldn’t extra fuel in the trunk be used to slow Dragon 2 a significant amount? That would only leave two burns, a hypersonic entry burn and a landing burn. Extra fuel tanks could also be placed in the Dragon 2 as well, since interior volume won’t be an issue. Also, SpaceX may choose a slower than usual transit orbit to reduce velocity even further.
Regardless of how, this mission is designed to get Dragon 2 on the surface of Mars (in one piece) and little else. Any science that can be cobbled together will be a bonus.
Anyone have some ideas (or can work the numbers) on just how possible a fully propulsive Dragon 2 landing on Mars could be done?
tinker
For this first Red Dragon mission, my guess is that it will look externally just like a Dragon 2. Why? Aerodynamics.
As much of the velocity as possible will be shed by a combination of aerobraking and hypersonic lift (tilt the capsule on reentry to keep it as high as possible, as long as possible, to maximize aerobraking). After that, a propulsive landing ought to be possible using the SuperDracos (since Mars gravity is a fraction of earth’s, you’ll get more delta-V out of the same amount of fuel and oxidizer). If extra fuel and oxidizer is needed for the SuperDracos, there is certainly spare volume inside the Dragon 2.
I just checked the numbers, and they work very well. Suspiciously well. A Dragon 2 might have been designed for landing on Mars. As in some engineers who defined the requirements may have had this in the back of their mind and built it into the requirements. (That isn’t new: Korolev allegedly did this with an ICBM design, so it would be easily convertible to the R-7 launch vehicle.)
Specifically, 3.71 m/s^2 of gravity, a 3.7 m diameter, 6000 kg, and an atmospheric density of 6e-3 kg/m^2 (all rough numbers, but good enough for a back of the envelope estimate) gives me a terminal velocity of 590 m/s.
The Dragon 2 uses 8 SuperDracos, at 73 kN each, for an acceleration of 97 m/s^2 on a 6000 kg spacecraft. Less Mars gravity, that’s a 6 second burn to slow from terminal velocity to zero. At a specific impulse of 240 s, that would use about 1500 kg of fuel and oxidizer. So it all seems to fit quite well.
fcrary:
Wow, that’s just what I was looking for!
So, you’re saying that they’ll just discard a more or less standard trunk and dive in.
Do you assume aerobraking to get to terminal velocity? No parachutes?
Also, can the Super Dracos have deep enough throttling to perform a longer landing burn? I know it’s not as efficient but would give more time to pick a landing spot.
tinker
I assumed the vehicle would be at its own terminal velocity and not slowed by a parachute. Someone else gets to figure out how to do it without burning up. It should be possible: The thermal protection is designed for a Earth reentry from Mars, which is significantly faster than Mars entry coming from Earth.
The vehicle should be able to enter and land without significant changes from the Dragon 2. It they are landing empty, they might need ballast. They will need to modify the autopilot or copy software from the Falcon 9 landing system.
According to the specs I found, a Dragon 2 uses eight SuperDraco’s and they can throttle down to 20% thrust (each). Hovering could be done by one engine running at 30%.The there is a fuel penalty to a slower deceleration, and I don’t know how well-tested the deep throttling is.
It is so handy to have an actual rocket scientist around when you need one.
Thanks, but that wasn’t too difficult or accurate. That’s what you get from a physicist, not an aerospace engineer, on the back of an envelope and in about 10 minutes, while having lunch at my local pub. “Real” rocket scientists also wouldn’t look up the specs on wikipedia. I did skip a couple steps, and I think my terminal velocity probably isn’t good to more than +-50%. But if you want a more accurate/professional, it would probably take half a day from someone who gets paid at least twice as much as I do.
If NASA can leave Mars to Musk and start thinking about building a floating city on Venus it would be much better. Just my wishful thinking.
The ” unspecified assistance ” NASA would provide for any pioneering SpaceX Red Dragon mission to Mars is undoubtedly the use of the Deep Space Network , interplanetary communications links, navigation expertise , and jacking in to the flotilla of NASA orbiters now at Mars for the terminal phase comm and landing operations there. At least as much. I doubt that SpaceX will be able to realistically self-support a mission to another world for some time. Simply having a spacecraft and launcher is not sufficient.
Now that you mention it, I wonder how much a 34-m DSN station costs. NASA is in the process of building some, so the number should be available somewhere. But I couldn’t find it in a quick search. If SpaceX wanted one of its own, I wonder if they could afford it. (Or, more properly, how badly they would have to want it, for it to be a good investment.)
Currently about $55 million dollars.
Also quite convenient to pick up a phone and get someone with real experience in, say, interplanetary guidance of spacecraft to answer questions. Gotta be thousands of real-world questions from Hawthorne directed to JPL and elsewhere.
Keith, the length and depth of your post make me long for the good old days when I received Space Quarterly in my mailbox. Well though and written comments. Keep it up.
So Elon confirmed that a Red Dragon can be used on Mars or even it’s Moons for a Sample Return Mission. Also that Dragon 2 propulsive will be tested landing etc. several times on Earth before any go ahead for Mars.
Absolutely Wonderful Article! Your insight and nac of conveying that insight into simple common sense is such that… in my opinion… nails any rebuttal Moot, Null and Void!
Very impressive indeed and one of the best articles I have read in quite awhile!
And I read a lot to put it mildly…
I come here frequently and I would suggest that you write more often and elaborate as you have done in this article!
You have a gift!
Thanks for the Awesome Read Keith!
Edit: scratch write more often …. I meant to say Elaborate more often; )…
Point taken. I would only say that commercial crew, such as it was conceived, remains a very natural consequence of increasingly right-wing thinking in the Congress: the notion that the government will screw everything up and it’s better to let private industry do it. A broad statement, yes, and with exceptions, but still.
And I would argue that to see NASA cede development of soft landing on Mars to SpaceX simply dwarfs even CC. It’s a stunning development that could only happen when the tea leaves are especially aligned.
We will look back on this event in future recognizing it as a true watershed.
Or not. My prognostication isn’t as infallible as I’d have it.
If space is ever to amount to much, it will have to be because the private sector does more and more of the total work required to make it so. There simply isn’t, and never will be, enough strictly governmental resources available to space activities for matters to be otherwise.
You are correct that the Red Dragon mission announcement is a landmark on this path. So was the Sept. 2014 announcement that ULA had a deal for their new rocket’s 1st-stage engine with Blue Origin.
The inevitable transition from mostly governmental to mostly private sector investment/activity in space will be a process, though, more than an event. It will be a lot of events. You have correctly pointed one of them out.
Expect many more. What Elon has to say in Guadalajara in September is highly likely to qualify for the list, for example.
Fun times ahead, people!
Thinking a bit more about Keith’s observation that NASA has chosen to support SpaceX rather than, as Ms. Neuman has said, ‘compete’.
This looks an awful lot like a white flag on SLS. In the same way that Mr. Musk is dribbling out MCT plans in advance of September by revealing propulsive Mars landing, NASA is similarly testing the waters before officially confirming what we already know: that FH is superior to SLS in nearly every way.
And now we are beginning to see comparisons in the more popular press. It’s a bit like the Berlin Wall. Pieces are starting to come down while the guards look the other way.
Throw in Keith’s speculation that SpaceX is posturing to sell Mars access to NASA.
You don’t need a weatherman to see which way the wind is blowing.
As with All Things SpaceX and timelines , the date of a first attempt to get a Dragon to Mars seems overly optimistic reckoned by the rigid launch window calendar. Can SpaceX qualify both the unflown Falcon Heavy and the unflown Dragon V2 for a Mars shot on or about May 1, 2018 ? That would require the planets AND the stars to align and a few minor miracles. But it’s doable. The next Earth—> Mars launch window of late June 2020 seems a better bet.
Or put another way, if SpaceX sends a Dragon towards Mars in 2020, it will still be about three years before NASA launches a manned Orion /SLS at all. By the time Orion is good to go with a crew in 2023 on its second SLS test hop , SpaceX could be well into its second Dragon mission to Mars. Elon just has to run up the Harbor Freeway from Hawthorne to Pasadena to buy a couple high gain antenna dishes and a few electronic units from the JPL bins…
SpaceX could have living things on trajectory to Mars before SLS/Orion has living things in Cis-Lunar Earth orbit , for ten cents on the NASA dollar.
Maybe he’s thinking ballistic. Nothing is surprising anymore.
The whole SLS thing just pisses me off in so many ways I can’t even count them.
And it has been done it in a manner that precludes anyone anywhere being held accountable for a massive huge screwup and theft that anyone with half a brain and even less interest in the space community knew all along was wrong, wrong, wrong from the outset.
I suppose that to some extent the experience with STS has inured people- some, at least– to an inability to discern frozen inaction from incompetence. I’m referring specifically at the very least to the refusal to make incremental changes and upgrades to the shuttle fleet over time. But that’s just the start of a process that has decimated much of NASA and certainly most of her HSF portfolio.
Here we are decades later in exactly the same situation we knew we’d be in even before SpaceX came along and very nicely grabbed everybody’s lunch all the while humming to themselves “oh thank you so much! we couldn’t have done it without you, don’t you know!”: namely that Apollo on steroids was simply the wrong direction; that splashing another throwaway capsule was just plain laughable; that solids are a bad choice for man-rating; that…well, this is the part where I lose count. And how did all the smart people miss the obviousness of mounting hypergolic engines on the side of a rocket ship?
Why are we all dancing in the streets over an obvious damn solution that has resulted in a real, live, space ship?
And to make things worse half of the space community wants Mars, half wants the moon, and nobody anywhere except in Hawthorne has a clue as to how to drag NASA beyond LEO.
Arg. Where is the outrage at what has been done??
I’m going to the beach.
.” I’m referring specifically at the very least to the refusal to make incremental changes and upgrades to the shuttle fleet over time.”
They did but the shuttle suffered from being a bad design for the purpose of simply putting a satellite in space. There is only so much you can do to a bad design(i.e. far more costly than the expendable it was meant to replace) and flying it so long precluded learning what went wrong with the last system and applying it to a new system.
“Why are we all dancing in the streets over an obvious damn solution that has resulted in a real, live, space ship?”
I am a Space X fan boi, but this solution is not obvious and has not been proven to be an safe cost effective solution for a earth return capsule. It very well could be but that has yet to be determined.
This kind of solution is the reason why having more than one spacecraft and more than one company(as well as competition) is important.
Late to the game Keith but thanks for the above post. This is why NASAWatch is my go to site these days. Normally I am away from a keyboard for weeks so it’s “catch up with Keith” 😉