Today's Sudden NASA Media Briefing on SLS Launch Fever
NASA to Hold Media Teleconference Today on Study to Add Crew to First Orion, Space Launch System Mission
“NASA will discuss plans for an ongoing study to assess the feasibility of adding a crew to Exploration Mission-1, the first integrated flight of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft, during a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EST today, Friday, Feb. 24. The call will stream live on NASA’s website.”
Lightfoot Tries a SLS Hail Mary Pass, earlier post
“If flying a crew on the first mission of SLS was a wise, prudent, strategically important thing to do then the program would have baselined it in the first place. I am not certain if I have ever seen a plan for SLS (Or Ares V) where this was planned. To move this rather important milestone up now in the midst of dueling and ever-shifting policy directions – for no clearly articulated reason other than politics – starts to smell like launch fever to me – the worst kind of launch fever.”
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Ignorant direction forward: A) retain expendable LVs with limited ability for reuse,B) retaining solids, C) launch crew on first flight of a non-common configuration, and D) sizing LVs above 10 to 20mT.
Sum (nonsense) == today’s reality. http://alternativefacts.com
The ‘conclusion’ of study will be that SLS needs test flights and it will launch inflatables..its all about the base and special interests 3B/yr.
A real future space market would be based on the following:
Common configurations for Class A Cargo & Crew would provide demonstrated reliability for LVs. With reuse and risks can be taken to further lower costs. The best case would be to launch dirt Cheap (200K), class D propellant, which is 80% of all NASA missions, to find that unknown, unknown and to ‘test as you fly’.
Class A certification however stifles design changes/innovation. The Shuttle was basically the same LV over its life. Delta III first 2 flight failed 1) heritage/analysis insufficient for maiden flight 2) incremental designs need testing which is expensive.
Adding Solids to LVs increases the number of configurations to be certified and significantly complicates the integrated LV, ascent vehicle, and abort system reliability assessments.
VSE:”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”
Sure. Choir, meet Preacher.
This proposal is difficult to understand, to say the least. We spent many painful years learning that an untested launch vehicle may have unanticipated failure modes that are not predicted by analysis alone.
I’m reminded of early Apollo flights. Apollo 8, 10, and 11 were in a free-return with no plane change orbit. Test. Several of the early flights, descending to within 50 miles (memory here) could have easily landed (but were not equipped). Test.
NASA was deliberative- and they were right. They entire Apollo program stands as a model to deliberation and testing.
Apollo 10 could have landed. But, overall, there was some conflict within NASA over the approach Apollo used. People who used to work for NACA thought it didn’t involve enough testing. Or, more properly, they thought each flight should only test one new thing. People with military rocket experience were inclined to build a complete system and test it as a whole. That was, more or less, what Apollo eventually did. Despite a few test flights, the tests did end up testing many new things in parallel on each flight. But even so, the program didn’t make as big a jump as going directly to a manned, trans-lunar flight would be on EM1.
For years (8 actually) we had an algorithm “What would W do?” Whatever W would do a rational person should do the opposite. I think it’s time for “What would Trump do?” Again, we should do the opposite. Manned launch on a new vehicle should not be scheduled at all. After an indeterminate number of test flights, once all issues have been addressed and some measure of reliability established only then do you place a crew on board. In fact, its best to launch crew only on old well proven vehicles. The Russians have only launched crew on the R-7. Other hardware and resupply can be on newer and less reliable systems. The Russians used Proton and had intended the same for N-1.
http://www.robert-w-jones.com