NASA Future In-Space Operations: Space Launch System to Mars
NASA FISO Presentation: NASA’s Space Launch System: Powering the Journey to Mars
“Now available is the August 3, 2016 NASA Future In-Space Operations (FISO) telecon material. The speakers were Chris Sanders (AeroJet Rocketdyne), Mike Fuller (Orbital ATK), and Bob DaLee (Boeing), who discussed “NASA’s Space Launch System: Powering the Journey to Mars.”
Note: The audio file and presentation are available online and to download.
Marc’s note: The future is SLS folks, that’s it. Just have a look at slide 9 for the comparison to existing rockets such as SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy (soon to fly) and ULA’s Atlas V and Delta-IV. Oh, and the comparison is to the possible future SLS Block 1B and 2B, neither of which are funded or will be built anytime soon.
Keith’s note: And of course what the BoeingLockheedMartinAerojetRocketdyneOrbitalATK guys never, ever mention is cost – what it cost to develop SLS, what each flight costs, what it would take to fund these larger versions of SLS. Yet they compare their rocket with things like Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy that you can buy – now. How many Falcon Heavy’s can you buy for the the cost of one of these SLS vehicles? How many could you buy with what it cost to develop the SLS overall? That question is impossible to answer – since no one knows what SLS actually costs.
While I agree that it is a wrong idea not to include commercial entities and rockets in a Mars mission plan I have to disagree with your assertion that Block IB is “unfunded.” If I recall correctly money for the EUS, which turns Block I into Block IB, has been included for the last two fiscal years and the first launch of IB is within the next five years.
How many total launches are funded?
At least 3 at this point. EM-1 (Block I), EM-2, and the Europa Clipper launch.
This definition of funding does not mean that every dollar that will be spent on every facet of the mission has already been appropriated. No program receives all its funding in advance. The fact is though that funding for at least the major parts of these missions (EM-1/2: SLS/Orion, EC launch: SLS IB/EC) is flowing.
Look I know almost everyone here hates SLS/Orion but can everybody at least be accurate and not post incorrect assertions about “X isn’t funded” when the funding for it has been there the last two years.
There was a presentation on using SLS for (unmanned) planetary missions at last week’s OPAG meeting. In the question and answer, the presenter and the Europa mission’s program scientist said that SLS launch was still being negotiated (i.e. over how much planetary science would pay and how much the SLS program would consider part of their fixed operating costs). I agree the definition of “funded” can be a little vague this far in advance. But when the price is still being negotiated, I wouldn’t call it “funded.”
It is my understanding that the law says EC must fly on SLS. I don’t think Congress should have mandated which launch vehicle EC uses but the fact is they have.
Therefore the money that is going towards EC as well as the money being spent on EUS and other ground systems (since EC would use a Block IB) counts towards a funded launch IMO.
I don’t feel that I “hate SLS”. I am happy to work as hard as I can to make it successful. But I also we have to be accurate regarding cost. NASA has had several major projects for which costs were vastly underestimated, making rational management choices impossible.
Aside from the obvious cost inflation from underfunding projects that are well underway, why does the science community miss on so many large projects?
I wonder why the science community isn’t more alarmed by these misses.
The difficulty of predicting costs for new technology, for underestimating the costs of integration, or ?
Consider Apollo. The Agency team estimated the total cost at $5B. James Webb looked at the number, said “No way.” and told Kennedy it would cost $20B ($153B in 2016 dollars). Kennedy was shocked, but he said “do it”. Webb was within a few percentage points of the total.
It’s possible to make reasonably accurate estimates, but not by groupthink. It takes one person with engineering judgement and the nerve to be totally honest.
Hmm. Are you saying that the estimates for the Webb, for instance, among others, was missed because nobody would say what they really thought? (delay costs aside).
Are you SURE the Europa Clipper’s LAUNCH is funded? I believe you are incorrect about funding.
EC is funded, SLS IB is funded. The specific “launch” funds may not have been appropriated yet but that won’t happen until the year of launch.
Space Shuttle launches didn’t get “launch money” until the year of launch but the payloads for those missions were funded years in advance. Would you say those missions were not funded?
While we might dwell forever on the mistakes that got us down the path of SLS and Orion, it is time the discussion moved on to planning for a post SLS post Orion world. Once these are canceled, the number of problems to be tackled will be overwhelming if left to be addressed until the last minute. A first priority is establishing a strategy to assure that how we got here does not repeat itself, that we lay the foundation for the centers and industry partners most involved in SLS and Orion to move in a new direction on a more sustainable basis.
That would be the smart option. Transition the huge & expensive infrastructure we have been carrying from Apollo to Shuttle to SLS to a sustainable one. Transition the workforce to design and build the systems necessary to travel Beyond Earth Orbit we do not have, like Environmental Control Systems, Radiation Protection for the Crew, Solar Electric (or Nuclear) Propulsion, habitats, etc. Unfortunately, that is not the way we are going. Instead, we are building Senator Bill Nelson’s “big rocket”. Yay!
If we’re going to replace SLS, we basically need something that keeps job levels about the same in the politically connected constituencies underpinning the program in Congress. Otherwise, it’ll just come back again.
SLS is a colossal mistake; can’t everyone feel this in their bones?
Shuttle & ISS (and Salyut & Mir before them…along with a nod to Gemini & Apollo where it began) developed & demonstrated in-space assembly of modular components as a robust, fully capable (and inherently flexible) operational path.
Size does matter…because once you go past a certain size, the overhead of producing & operating the rocket (especially when you toss it all away) consumes all available funds that might be spent on actual payloads & missions.
Industry can provide the necessary boosters for an intelligently designed, sustainable exploration architecture. SLS is old thinking…and it is a colossal mistake.
Think you are a bit late. The future space exploration path is going to roll out from the folks from Hawthorne at the IAC conference in Mexico on September 27th.
There will be a lot of rethinking by everyone after the event.
If the BFR & BFS are unveiled at the Mexican conference than the SLS & Orion look kinda pointless and fiscally bloated.
Good comment but what is BFS?
Taken from Spaceflight Insider. “The “Mars Colonial Transporter” will consist of a first stage booster (code name BFR) and a second stage spaceship (code name BFS).”
I can guess what that stands for, and if I’m correct, the moderator probably wouldn’t approve of expanding the F. Has someone come up with a sanitized version?
F = Freaking
The wikipedia have the un-sanitized version.
“Falcon”. Phonetically it works better than other suggestions.
You know, maybe Capricorn One (the movie), really was a prediction of the future 🙂
http://www.imdb.com/title/t…
“A NASA Mars mission won’t work, and its funding is endangered, so they decide to fake it just this once.”
Billions of dollars just so someone can take a selfie with Mars in the observation window. Cancel it now.
Whoever built the PowerPoint forgot to leave room to the right of the SLS Block 2B for the SpaceX BFR.
The picture on page 9 which compares the payload of SLS to other vehicles is laughable since the graph does not include cost. It seems SLS is “better” than the existing (or nearly existing) commercial alternatives in everything but cost.
Also, I didn’t see anything in there about the flight rate problem. That can’t be solved without throwing even more billions of dollars each year at the problem. The existing manufacturing, processing, and launch facilities won’t support the flight rate needed for a manned mission to Mars using only SLS as the launch vehicle.
> The existing manufacturing, processing, and launch facilities won’t support the flight rate needed for a manned mission to Mars using only SLS as the launch vehicle.
True! So we’ll need bigger, more expensive job-producing facilities in the appropriate states and ZIP codes to do it with SLS! What’s there not to love?
FWIW, I’m expecting SLS to wither on the vine; few payloads will be authorised and few missions will happen. It will become a once in a blue moon rocket fired for national prestige reasons on make-work missions to cis-Llunar space. Everything else will be quietly sidelined.
In the end, they’ll just stop appropriating money for it and it will be quietly cancelled with a smooth hype transferrence to commercial-enabled LEO and cis-Lunar missions. There is a very real possibility that the general public will be more interested in MCT by this point and NASA’s work will be considered somewhat quaint and backward.
The SLS exists to feed contractors. It will continue life regardless of whether it has any use.
For a while anyway…no predictions on how long that while might be.
From the presentation:
“A human could do in about 15 minutes what a rover could do in a
day,” Steve Squyres, Mars Exploration Rover principal investigator
Interesting… assuming an average of 4 hours/day of productive EVA activity for each crewman this would mean that a human is 16 times as productive as a rover per average day on Mars. Curiosity has been on Mars for 4 years, so is equivalent to a human mission with two EVA crewmembers for six weeks. Assuming the humans would stay six months, that would be equivalent to another 12 years for Curiosity, probably about the limit of its operating lifetime.
Curiosity cost $2.4B to put on Mars, and maybe the same amount to operate for its full lifetime. About $5B total. So that might be a reasonable goal for the total pricetag for a human landing mission, if its primary goal is science.
Look at Apollo. Miles driven by the lunar rovers. Rocks brought back to earth. Equipment and sensors deployed. All of this was done on missions which measured EVA time on the surface in hours.
To be fair, the long pole is cost. Curiosity cost about $2.5B and has been operating almost continuously for four years. The total cost of Apollo in 2010 dollars has been variously estimated at $100B to $170B
Agreed. The cost of manned missions is quite high, but the science returns are quire high as well.
Also the qualifications of the people you land on Mars. The last man on the moon was a geologist that brought back more than all the others combined… because he knew what to look for.
If we send fighter test pilots versus geologists…
Considering that both commercial cargo vehicles are fully automated, I personally don’t see the utility in sending “fighter test pilots” on Mars missions. Train the geologist how to push the big red button, if need be.
Just watched Dragon released from the SSRMS this morning on NASA TV. It should deorbit and splash down without an astronaut inside at the controls. This SpaceX Dragon mission is numbered CRS-9. Add in the two demo missions and this is the 11th Dragon mission.
“A human could do in about 15 minutes what a rover could do in a day,”
I say first get a human on Mars then can argue this position. Right now and for next decades, only choice are robots. Arguments should be what robots, what areas of Mars, and perhaps other places besides Mars.
The power on Curiosity’s RTGs is decreasing with age. It’s decreasing faster than the half-life of plutonium, since the conversion system degrades. That seems to be a bigger problem for the MMRTGs than older designs. I’m not sure Curiosity is good for another 12 years. I could also question the four hours per day of productive EVA work. But that doesn’t really matter. If I said you’d have to combine Curiosity and the 2020 rover, as well as fly a third, similar rover, that would simply change the equivalent cost to $15 billion. I don’t think that alters your point.
In return for the higher cost maybe we can at least get a billion dollar rover with as much computing power as a cell phone.
I wouldn’t disagree. But then, I’m one of the people who advocates higher risks. If your cell phone worth of computing power would enhance capability and results by a factor of four, but have a 50% risk of failure due to using rad-soft parts, I’d say it’s a good idea. 50%*4 + 50%*0 = 2 > 100% * 1.
While I don’t think that SLS will be successful – and I agree with Ben that it will ‘wither on the vine’ – I have to say that it is one beautiful piece of machinery. Even the support systems are grand.
And even so while listening/ watching I had to wonder if space people ever talked to one another? I know they do. I’m sure the SLS people and the FH people know each other, have kids in the same school, go to the same conferences, whatever, even though they are spread across the country. What do you suppose those conversations sound like?
How will those conversations go after this coming September? After FH actually flies? After there’s a Dragon on Mars? What will people say to one another then – how does one begin to support SLS?
“We can carry bigger stuff! And we don’t have to fold things up!”
That’s about the extent of the advantages of SLS. Fewer trips – that’s it. Fewer trips. How much is that even worth in a world where SLS is many, many times more $$$ than FH?
How does the conversation go with a PI watching her project whittled into nothing as SLS eats her budget? “The good news is you get to Jupiter in 2 years! The bad news is that rover/lander/return mission is now a fly-by”. But it’s a fast fly-by!”
“You scientists always want your cake, too!”
If SLS is canceled the money would just go elsewhere so the hurting PI would be in the exact same position (although I dispute that SLS will cost massively more than it does now).
The point is that a cheaper rocket means a better payload.
I did recently hear a planetary scientist say that the problem with SLS is that it has too much payload: NASA’s planetary science division couldn’t afford to build a spacecraft that big. That bothered me, since it implies someone stuck in a particular way of thinking. If we had the mass, we should be able to cheaper but less mass-optimized spacecraft. Lots of mass only implies high cost if you’re glued to the idea of a particular style of hardware development.
Marc this is just part of Darwin’s master plan. There are more and more wonderful scientists and engineers who know how to build rockets that do not use shuttle heritage technology. Sadly, inside the 495 is still under the siren song of the usual suspects who do not need to be named.
Seriously folks – lets enjoy the ride. SLS is crushing itself under the political bureaucracy of the House and Senate. It really is useless to resist the funding that will be wasted on it.
The best thing we can do is CONTINOUSLY remind the House and Senate on how well our commercial investments are doing. The obvious is SpaceX but we can brag about CST-100, Dragon v2, Blue Origin, Made in Space, and other NewSpace companies.
Trust me when I say there is something very pleasurable about reminding House Staff when commercial is going down the right path. You will derive enormous utility from those letters, emails, phone calls, and visits. Try it and see.
I doubt anything would happen to SLS based on technical merits or weaknesses. But it has the potential to become an embarrassment to many congressmen who otherwise wouldn’t care. If it becomes a symbol of government waste and misspending, it might get more attention that it ever would as a rocket.