NASA Decides Against Putting Crew On EM-1
NASA Decision On Crewed EM-1 Feasibility, NASA
“We are grateful for the near-term flexibility offered by the FY 2017 Consolidated Appropriations Act, and we are confident that we remain technically capable of launching crew on EM-1. However, after evaluating cost, risk, and technical factors in a project of this magnitude, it is difficult to accommodate changes needed for a crewed EM-1 mission at this time.”
NASA pays the price of being subjected to a massive, expensive rocket, Ars Technica
“In the face of political pressure, then, NASA chose prudence. Yet the evidently shrewd short-term decision to hold crew off the maiden flight of the SLS rocket could not mask a larger political problem that NASA has grappled with for nearly this entire decade. Simply, it has been tasked with building a massive, complicated rocket that it can’t really afford.”
NASA delays debut launch of $23 billion moon rocket and capsule, Reuters
“By the end of the next fiscal year on September 30, 2018, NASA will have spent $23 billion on the rocket, capsule, launch site and support systems, according to an audit by NASA’s Office of Inspector General. That excludes $9 billion spent on the mothballed Constellation lunar exploration program, which included initial development of the Orion and a second heavy-lift rocket.”
NASA won’t put astronauts on first flight of new rocket, Washington Post
“We’re essentially building a multi-decadal infrastructure that allows us to move the human presence into the solar system,” [William] Gerstenmaier said. The commercial space sector – including SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk, and Blue Origin, owned by Jeffrey P. Bezos (who also owns The Washington Post) – is racing to develop its own rockets that are comparable in scale to the SLS. “This really isn’t about NASA vs. SpaceX, or NASA vs. Blue Origin, it’s more about the past way of doing business vs. how do we run the government more like a business,” [Phil] Larson said.”
Keith’s 11 May note: This is not going to position NASA in a good place. Safety issues not withstanding, NASA has big, chronic delays with the overall SLS program. Then the SLS software program is shown to be bogus. Then they have welding issues. Then they drop the LOX dome. Now there is no way to do EM-1 without money that will never be there. And even if the money was there the existing slip would simply be magnified by attempts to human-rate the SLS to be used for EM-1, bring Orion systems forward etc. There are not enough people or capacity to take the extra money even if it was there.
Slipping to late 2019 is just going to give fuel to those who think that there are SLS alternatives i.e. commercial. SLS is not necessarily dead, but the chance that humans will ever fly on it are becoming increasingly remote. At best, one might expect a batch order for a half dozen or so planetary missions or large cargo launches so as to save face and do something with the immense investment made in the whole AresV/SLS thing. If Trump wants NASA to go to Mars while he is still in office he is going to need a Plan B. But Boeing and SpaceX would have to show that they are up to the task since they have been slipping launch dates too.
Keith’s 12 May additional note: At the end of the day this is all about risk – engineering, programatic, and human. Dealing with risk takes time and time = money. There comes a point when the time/money you need to retire added risk exceeds the benefits that come with adding that new risk. That seems to be the case with the EM-1 crew exercise. Trying to retire risk atop a program that is already struggling to reduce risk is just asking for trouble – and the unlearning of lessons learned with great difficulty. It would seem that NASA has come to this conclusion – and they would not be making this announcement without coordination with the White House. One would assume that the White House understands the rationale behind this decision to decline putting a crew on EM-1.
|
|
NASA Holds Media Teleconference Today on Exploration Mission-1 Status
“NASA will provide an update on the status of Exploration Mission-1, the first integrated flight of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft, during a media teleconference at 3 p.m. EDT today, May 12.”
Now it is really stating to sound like the ideal pork project. Money will continue to flow to it for years to create jobs, but with no flights for years there is little risk of managers having to explain an accident, especially if no humans fly on it. Delays yes, but delays may always be explained as being due to the job being hard and not having enough money, please provide more. Yes, this is looking like the perfect pork project, one to measure others against 🙂
Actually there is a Plan B, his good friend Elon Musk 🙂
I think a manned mission to Mars by 2024 is a steep hill to climb even for Musk. Sending a handful of unmanned Dragons is one thing, but….
OTOH, Musk can certainly deliver crew for a circumlunar flight by November 2020, if Trump really wants a quick win. And if Charles Miller’s 2015 study still holds, a lunar surface sortie by 2024 is not out of the question, if NASA puts things in motion this year.
Actually I think a flight around the Moon would probably be enough to claim victory given the current dismal state of affairs in HSF. If NASA is able to fund a Bigelow B330 at the EM L1 for future NASA funded Dragons that would also be seen as a big step forward.
Interesting idea. But I wonder if a moon landing needs to even be a NASA project for Trump to claim victory. He has advertised himself as pro-business. All he has to do is find a bottleneck…any bottleneck…and help clear it for SpaceX and/or Bigelow and he can spin a win.
Redirecting a small amount of SLS funding (maybe to send a NASA employee on the flight), and successfully selling that redirect through Congress, should about do it.
Maybe even just smoothing negotiations on flight schedules, or applying pressure here or there on back-door NASA support for the flight or something.
But at some point between now and then SLS/Orion might take enough PR damage to where NASA could get away with unfunded Space-Act Agreement support for the flight.
Redirecting a small amount of SLS funding (maybe to send a NASA employee on the flight), and successfully selling that redirect through Congress, should about do it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what happens. I suspect the White House will now put in a query to NASA to explore coming on board to SpaceX’s cislunar mission. If they have not done so already.
I think just a directive to NASA, to buy the launch services for a lunar mission rather than building it themselves, could be something the President could call a victory. He could spin it in terms of clearing away inefficient government agencies and congressional pork, and letting an American company get the job done. He’s certainly claimed less plausible things and convinced many people he was correct.
In my business we frequently prepare quick site plans for developers that explore possible land uses and yield counts on parcels they are considering. It’s part of due diligence, often called ‘look sees’.
Perhaps 10% of these projects ever see construction; our work is never actually checked. Yield figures or density calculations or cut and fill calcs could all be totally wrong ( I hope not).
Isn’t SLS analogous? The real crime here as I’ve said many times is the careers of engineers and others who, taking a natural pride in their work, find themselves on the wrong end of a not-funny joke. They are being cheated, just as the country is being cheated by tax dollars – and by the diversion of so much talent.
Yes, it is sad to see their talents and skills wasted. That is the real tragedy of SLS.
Bottom line, the sad outcome of the Ares Launch System and SLS is this: NASA is no longer able to manage and operate a capital vehicle development project like this. The Contractors will run rings around them and nothing will be achieved.
It’s not that they’re not able to. Project setbacks, schedule drift and cost overruns have always been part of the game. Under other circumstances, this would amount to just a small setback only that would not endanger the project. However, the world has evolved past the SLS/Orion way of doing things.
The problem is that the military contracting paradigm cannot compete with independent, commercial market disruptors. The upcoming FH and New Glenn are applying schedule and pricing pressure with which the Senate-direct funded, military contracting paradigm simply cannot compete. Did anyone really think that it could in the end? The shocking thing is that some people still cling, with white knuckles, to the old rusty tracks when they should let go and jump on the train.
Yet the degree of NASA setbacks, schedule drift and cost overruns have arguably gotten worse over the years. Something can always have been part of the game, but the rate of decline has been increasing. This is what makes something unsustainable perhaps, that there is not just some inefficiency factor of X percent to apply to a large scale project, it’s that the factor increases year after year, till eventually all that is left is noise and no signal.
Why the rate of decline increases, well, that’s a problem. Another discussion for the historians.
When something goes wrong, it is common practice to add official requirements or procedures to keep it from happening again. I haven’t noticed much in the way of evaluating the costs or drawbacks of the new requirement, or vetting these additions (does the risk of a recurrence worth the cost?) Often, requirements are imposed on all projects, even if the issue might not be relevant, and there isn’t much in the way of revisiting old requirements which may no longer be relevant. (My favorite was being asked, around 2005, for an accepted, alternate way of getting in touch with me. Fax was an accepted means; a cell phone was not.)
The increasing rate of decline I.E. the increasing cost of production problems was started as far back as the suttle program. There was a policy of FASTER PRODUCTION, CHEAPER PRODUCTION, BETTER PRODUCTION. Of course in the real world this would be great, but building man rated hardware this way of thinking alot of things suffer like SAFETY. Not only of the final product, but the safety of the assembly process (hardware damage, software processes, software lacking in it’s true function) and of course human safety (astronauts, assemblers and tecnicians). This all started in the late 80’s when there were more bean counters than actual hands on personal. ALL THIS GOT THE SHUTTLE WAS TO HAVE MORE ACCIDENTS AND CANCELATION OF THE PROGRAM.AND LOST OF LIVES. NASA has to change this way of thinking a FASTER, SMARTER, SAFER mentality for all humans involved. With this way of thinking it will eventually become CHEAPER.
Ben Russell-Gough, I respectfully disagree with you 104 percent.
This is what happens when you have senators playing rocket scientist via the legislative process. I will never forget standing and watching to Senator Nelson singing the high praises of his “monster rocket”.
Just watch – this will make your heart bleed with the amount of resources that have been wasted on this unmitigated disaster:
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
And I respectfully disagree that the delays and failures of SLS belong to those senators.
Yes those corrupt politicians were responsible for setting NASA a worthless task, they and their paymasters are responsible for the stupid wasteful concept. But NASA was in charge of actually managing the project. They never received less funding than they requested for SLS (occasionally receiving more than they requested) and yet they still failed.
Just as Griffin’s Ares failed. (A billion dollars to launch an SBR with a dummy upperstage?)
SLS is not necessarily dead, but the chance that humans will ever fly on it are becoming increasingly remote. At best, one might expect a batch order for a half dozen or so planetary missions or large cargo launches so as to save face and do something with the immense investment made in the whole AresV/SLS thing.
Which is more or less what Eric Berger suggested is likely on Main Engine Cutoff the other day: The support just isn’t there to kill SLS yet in Congress, so it will be allowed to stagger on for a while longer, as a hedge against commercial setbacks if nothing else. By 2020 Falcon Heavy and and New Glenn will be in operation, and the awkward questions will be hard to avoid. A handful of flights will still be manifested for SLS, including Europa Clipper, but plans are then put in place to wind the program down and start transitioning to commercial heavy launchers by the mid-2020’s. NASA might keep Orion for a while longer, but only to be launched on commercial heavy lifters (probably Vulcan). Still billions more wasted, but this is in all likelihood how it plays out.
Korolev had a similar problem with N-1. He only had the money to build 1 or 2 a year. So he had to find a way to get men on the moon with only 1 rocket launch, and we know how that worked out. http://www.robert-w-jones.com
Well, it worked out badly in part because he died before he could see it to fruition.
“If Trump wants NASA to go to Mars while he is still in office” … then (IMHO) he’s dreaming worse than usual.
“a manned mission to Mars by 2024” … as the poster noted is an steep hill to climb. IMHO, impossibly (well, at least extremely) steep.
Kennedy’s “land on the moon within the decade” commitment was made in the presence of a very real (cold) war (ok, international competition). Without that driver, and with “pork” being perceived as the main driver, it’s hard to think of Mars before 203x.
Circumlunar by 2020 would be a reasonably impressive (and quite achievable) feat. Returning (long duration initially, becoming permanently) to the lunar surface by 2024 should be achievable.
Trump never said a NASA manned mission to Mars by 2024.
Yes he did https://www.washingtonpost….
That’s what the Washington Post headline says. But when I read the text, I can’t see it. Specifically, the actual quotes of what Mr. Trump said don’t mention who would be doing sending people to Mars. The most specific is “Mars, what do you see a timing for actually sending humans to Mars?” The reporter from the Post thinks he meant NASA, or the headline wouldn’t read the way it does. But that could be the reporter’s interpretation.
More trolls.
Well, the first paragraph of the Washington Post story does say, “It’s in that foggy realm of Trump news in which everything is slightly ambiguous and wobbly and internally inconsistent and almost certainly improvisational…”
He was asking a NASA employee, a NASA astronaut on the International Space Station.
Yes he was. But Mr. Trump is not known for making clear, logically consistent statements. If his statement about going to Mars was consistent with the context, I would probably agree that he meant NASA going to Mars. But given his past history of vague and ambiguous statements, I don’t think that is a safe conclusion. He did not literally say that, and interpreting his statements based on logic and context is a dubious effort.
Fine, perhaps Trump was just speculating about the coming season-arc for The Expanse, and not speaking at all about the actual space program in the real world.
How far down that rabbit-hole do we have to go before we are allowed to say, “What Trump said was stupid”?
I think you misunderstand me. Mr. Trump’s statements are, usually and as you put it, so “far down the rabbit hole’’ that trying to understand them is almost pointless. We could say his statements are stupid, but those statements are so ambiguous that someone else could come up with a less stupid interpretation. This strikes me as a waste of time. My point was that Mr. Trump’s statement was ambiguous, and we can’t tell if it is about a NASA, a private, or a joint Mars effort. Based on what he actually said, he could mean or be thinking about more or less anything.
A Washington Post headline? Really?
That’s what Trump said : “Well, we want to try and do it during my first term, or at worst during my second term, so we’ll have to speed that up a little bit, OK?”.
“We” doesn’t necessary mean NASA, it could mean “we the USA”. And if you look at the WaPo article you can read this:
Trump noted that he has “many friends” involved in commercial space exploration. “Many American entrepreneurs are racing into space,” Trump said.
Two prominent businessmen — Tesla founder Elon Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post — have companies, Space X and Blue Origin respectively, at the forefront of commercial space activities. Musk has said he wants to launch the first humans to Mars in 2024.
During his call with the astronauts, landing humans on the surface of Mars seemed to be top-of-mind for Trump.
(sigh) another troll.
Kennedy too was dreaming worse than usual when he made his comments. But the dream came true. What have we been reduced to as a country where dreams are attacked as evil. We used to have bold dreams, and then go do them. With SLS, we have a pretty mediocre dream, and we cannot even accomplish that. Now we should not even dream at all. Good thing Dr. Martin Luther King is not around to see what has become of us.
hmm… Whats the Trans Lunar Injection capacity of a full ACES tug? The Deep Space Transport if launched in one piece would weigh in at roughly 50tons dry iirc and was the only paper payload I’ve seen that explicitly needed SLS in terms of both fairing volume and lift capacity.
Go nuts: http://www.strout.net/info/…
RL10 has an Isp of around 450-460s. LEO to LTI is roughly 3.1km/s, LEO to LLO is roughly 4km/s.
ACES looks like a fairly modular concept, so it depends on which configuration you mean (and which configuration they actually build.) I get anything from 30 to 70 tonnes final mass, but that includes the dry mass of ACES itself (whatever than turns out to be.)
NASA made the right decision in recommending aginst manning EM-1. It is not simply a question of spending money to mitigate risk. The real problem is that despite years of fault tree analysis, there simply is no way to accurately predict the reliability of an untested launch vehicle. The failure analysis only includes failure modes that can be anticipated, and for which failures are random and the probability of failure is accurately known.
Yet the majority of launch vehicle failures are due to unanticipated failure modes, many of which are deterministic rather than random. Redundancy may provide no protection against a deterministic failure, as both of the redundant systems may fail simultaneously. By all rights STS-1 should have been doomed by the unanticipated SRB ignition shock wave reflection which impacted the body flap and stressed the (redundant) hydraulics well beyond their specified burst pressure.With a reasonable program of at least 3-6 (and preferably 12) unmanned launches the major failure modes can be identified and corrected in the design before lives are put at risk. When there is a major design or procedure change it should also be first tested in an unmanned launch.
In the real world, outside of NASA engineering, we put a price on human lives even though we hate to admit it. Assuming a cost of one billion dollars for an unmanned launch of SLS, it is too expensive if we are talking about 2 -4 astronauts. Their lives just do not have that much economic value, and the probability of loss of life is too low, to justify an unmanned launch of SLS after every major design or procedure change. If an manned launch has a 1% probability of a fatal accident and there are 3 astronauts on board, you are talking about a value of over $3 trillion for each human life. Its easy for nerds to spout platitudes about spending infinite amounts of money to avoid infinitesimal risks but we taxpayers, and our elected representatives, will not tolerate it. What Daniel Woodward is advocating is the death of the program. I love our astronauts as much as the next guy, but they knowingly take on high risks for the high reward of getting free space travel, and the job is voluntary, so I have no issue with subjecting them to reasonable risks to keep costs under control.
The problem is we won’t know the *real* probability of failure of EM-1 until we fly it. It might be 1% or it might be 75%. How could it ever be as high as 75%? Easy, there could be a part or subsystem in there that passes all of its simulations and ground tests just fine, but in flight has a high probability of failure due to something unexpected.
For example, the acoustic pressure wave of the SRBs igniting on STS-1 was far higher than simulations and ground tests predicted. As a result, the orbiter’s body flap was shoved so hard the pressure in all three of its (redundant) hydraulic hoses exceeded their pressure ratings. In other words, that was just one reason we were very lucky that STS-1 wasn’t lost along with the crew. STS-1 also had several other very serious issues. All of these had to be corrected before STS-2 flew.
There is no substitute for flight testing.
For example, the acoustic pressure wave of the SRBs igniting on STS-1 was far higher than simulations and ground tests predicted.
Or think also of the pogo oscillations on Apollo 6 – something quite unexpected.
As a matter of fact, Ariane 501, the first (attempted) launch of an Ariane 5, is a perfect example of this. Given the guidance and navigation software bug, which passed all tests, there was a 100% chance of a launch failure. Admittedly, they skimped on the tests, but the vehicle they launched had absolutely zero chance of flying for more than 40 seconds.
EM-1 is one thing. But Daniel Woodward wants unmanned test flights after every major design or procedure change. If you look at NASA’s proposed timeline, there are numerous such changes planned. So he is advocating numerous billion dollar unmanned test flights. While we may not be able to assess risk levels on a rocket that has never flown, once we are deep into the program, and the rocket has flown multiple times, we will be able to make fairly accurate risk assumptions.
I cannot believe how many people are arguing that the life of an astronaut justifies spending trillions of dollars. I gave my hypothetical math, I would be interested in hearing how others do the math on assessing at what financial threshold do we go ahead and accept risks. Without risks, there would be no space program. And if we had had the standard that only commercially proven rockets can be used for manned spaceflight, not a single one of the manned space programs globally would have ever gotten off the ground in the last century. Risk aversion is one thing, but when it becomes such an obsession that you are always testing and never flying, as is the case with SLS, something is seriously wrong. Everyone here knows that an EM-1 flight in 2019 will never happen, and sooner or later, the man who got fed up with James Comey is going to terminate SLS with no flights ever occurring and NASA will be permanently out of the manned spaceflight business.
I’m not sure where the trillion dollar number came from (removing a 1% risk of failure at the cost of a dozen unmanned flights at $1 billion each?) but let’s try some alternative math.
At the risk of starting a historical debate, I’ll suggest that the end of the Shuttle program (before a replacement was available) was not due to technical issues, but due to the bad press surrounding the Columbia disaster. The President just didn’t want a repeat of that. Let’s also consider what a fatal accident involving SLS could result in ending the SLS program and all NASA human spaceflight shifted to flying passengers on commercial vehicles. That may be an extreme hypothesis, but let’s see where that takes us.
If such a thing were to happen, then NASA’s budget would go down by about $5 billion per year, and the impact to some local economies would be greater. Making, or retaining, $5 billion per year is enough to justify about a $100 billion investment. In other words, the cost of a fatal SLS accident could be around $100 billion. Even if you assume the lives of the astronauts had zero value. Reducing that risk by 1% would be justify a $1 billion investment. That’s the cost one unmanned SLS flight.
Of course, you could argue that the bad press is a result of the value the American public places on human life (or, at least, famous human lives in well-publicized and popular professions.) That could be true. But I don’t see what any way a launch vehicle development program can change that.
I tend to agree with you (echoing Rand Simberg’s book “Failure is Not an Option”). Every industry places value on human life, especially the insurance industry.
The issue I see is NASA’s blatant hypocrisy. They want SpaceX to have several successful launches before flying astronauts on Falcon 9 and they no doubt would require several more successful flights after any major design changes to Falcon 9. With EM-1 as the only SLS test flight, NASA is ready and willing to put astronaut’s on top of SLS with a brand new upper stage that’s never been flight tested.
Now you could argue that since Falcon 9 is cheaper to launch and will be launching other payloads *anyway* that requiring a certain number of successful flights is prudent.
To me this just points out the stupidity of NASA owned and operated heavy lift. Since it’s far too expensive to have a reasonable test program, we just won’t have one. Since no one else will ever launch anything on it but NASA, we’ll live with the very low flight rate (which reduces the odds of launch success by never getting rid of all of the issues). Since it’s too expensive to design any of it to be reused, we’ll just live with the “infant mortality” problem of every flight being the first (test) flight of that copy of the hardware.
The whole problem with SLS is the fact that it’s NASA’s baby. It will never be as safe as “off the shelf” launch vehicles. But we’ll also never be able to prove that without a launch accident. When each flight’s success or failure makes a *huge* difference in the overall safety numbers, you’ve got a big problem.
I’m not sure I’d call it “NASA’s blatant hypocrisy.” The end result is the same, but I can see how people within NASA would honestly believe the differences in testing and qualification are justified.
SLS and Orion are being developed using a process NASA internally developed to assure reliability. If you have faith in those processes, extensive testing is not necessary.
The Falcon 9 and Dragon 2 are being developed using whatever internal practices SpaceX feels are appropriate. Since NASA has less control over or visibility into these processes, naturally they require testing to demonstrate reliability.
Personally, I have no such faith in NASA’s development process as a substitute for flight tests. But, for someone who does, I think the hypocrisy is unconscious not blatant.
If it’s unconscious hypocrisy, I’d simply call that hubris. History has shown that even when you think *your* process is superior, the unkown unkowns still come out to bite you.
That’s not entirely correct. You would have a good point if this were an entirely financial issue. However, there are non-financial issues. I know it’s written for unmanned spacecraft, but NASA’s definition of risk categories includes, “Priority (Criticality to Agency Strategic Plan)” and “National significance”, with class A missions being “high priority” and “very high” respectively. The same issues apply to manned spaceflight. It still doesn’t make sense to spend vast amounts on very small risks, but a fatal launch accident would “cost” significantly more than the lives of the astronauts. Actually, that even extends to commercial activities: The Li-ion battery mess cost Samsung far more than the financial costs associated with a few injuries and potential law suits.
The added human risk is only part of it. The Orion vehicle in EM-1 vs EM-2 is a test vehicle…with plans moving along to that end. Re-purposing it would mean replanning a lot of stuff and it is just too far along and, like Keith said, the project is already running late. Human-rating the flight doesn’t save the program if it just adds more schedule risk.
I am not advocating the death of the program. I am advocating that we recognize the fundamental principles of industrial engineering, including safety, reliability, maintainability, and the accurate prediction and minimization of cost.
These principles make it clear that only launch vehicles that have a substantial customer base of unmanned payloads can safely and economically be used for human launch. Fortunately there is an ample selection, including Atlas, Falcon, and soon perhaps the New Glenn and LM-7.
Thinking about this risk-adverse view, I’ve come to understand that NASA’s attitude is governed more by optics than anything else (forgive me for using the word of the year, but ‘optics’ really works here).
Those with no knowledge of the industry will see any effort falling short of the goal as a ‘failure’. Thence will come sanctimonious comments about protecting the taxpayer, and pretty soon you have a cancelled project and an Agency so fearful of ‘optical failure’ that the costs and the projects become self-fulfillingly prophetic.
True, and as you put it, this is about the industry as a whole, not just NASA. Note the reaction to the SpaceX CRS-1 launch, which was successful despite an engine failure. Arguments about the secondary payload aside, the engine failure was frequently described as a reliability problem rather than proof that the vehicle as a whole is fault-tolerant. Or the recent European ExoMars. The main mission, Trace Gas Orbiter, successfully entered orbit and everything is going well. That was completely eclipsed by the EDL test lander’s crash (and, technically, it was a successful test based on knowledge gained from the telemetry it returned.)
But on additional issue is the scope of NASA projects. They tend to be a bit grandiose. There is a tendency to set ambitious goals (e.g. the Shuttle’s originally planned flight rates and cost, or even the common expectation that the next generation orbital telescope should be an order of magnitude better than the last.) In some sense, that’s built into NASA’s charter. The agency is, in part, supposed to be a showcase for American technological prowess and to inspire the next generation to study science and engineering. A few dozen incremental steps just aren’t as inspiring as one great leap. Even if the incremental steps might add up to the same result and do so more efficiently.
So, as well as anything short of complete success being perceived as a failure (as you note), there is also pressure to make each project ambitious, impressive if successful, and unlikely to actually be a complete success.
We’re going to put an 7 billion dollar payload on a non-human rated launch vehicle. Which makes me wonder what human-rated can possibly mean if there is a level of care above the care needed for JWST to reach orbit.
Human rating isn’t all about the risk of a launch failure. There are also things the vehicle must be built to avoid. Strong vibrations at certain frequencies (1-10 Hz, if memory serves) is very unhealthy and human rated vehicles are often designed to minimize this from the start. Vehicles designed for unmanned launches more typically just document the vibration environment and pass the problem over the the payload’s mechanical engineers.
On a more philosophical level, one could argue that the Ariane 5’s track record (88 successful launches and two partial successes, out of 92 launch attempts; no failures and 78 successful launches since 2003) demonstrates reliability. In fact, I think Daniel Woodard’s point was that this is better evidence of reliability than any amount of testing and analysis prior to the first flight. Arguably, SpaceX is taking this approach with the Falcon 9. They are demonstrating and improving reliability through flight experience with unmanned payloads, while also paying the bills.
But perhaps the most philosophical (or political) reason to worry more about JWST flying on an Ariane 5 may be bad press. I hate to say it, but a very small fraction of the public actually cares about astronomy. If something happens to JWST, there would be some bad press about wasting $8 billion of the taxpayers’ money. But it would be fairly brief, and if it was a launch failure, NASA wouldn’t be responsible. Compare that to the reaction to the Challenger or Columbia disasters. How much is it worth to avoid that sort of bad press?
In a well managed, well run program, there would be ample margin for uncrewed test flights, many, for designing with long term considerations in mind, such as low recurring cost, and for the unexpected in general, those unknown unknowns. Some would call this attribute program robustness.
That the practical expectation of demonstrating or improving reliability for something so new is considered a possible death knell for the program is a sign that something is really, really wrong with the program, not with the idea that such systems have to prove themselves before putting people aboard. A desperate person not thinking ahead balks at increasing expectations, reneging to even do what was originally promised, or to make any promises, while a person who planned things well says sure, no problem, actually I can go one better.
Yes, its a good call. As someone noted, the SLS is a slow train wreck in motion. Its no where ready to fly humans. If they really want a useful payload for the first flight they should try to place a Bigalow B330 at the EM L1. If it works it will give folks like Elon Musk, and later Orion flights, somewhere to go. If it fail, it wouldn’t be a huge lost.
Good observations. At the same time though, isn’t all this about a crew on the 1st flight of SLS just a distraction? The cynical side of me says SLS advocates come out ahead in this crew / 1st flight discussion, the conversation momentarily shifted slightly away from the topic of how the SLS and Orion systems are unsustainable. The only bad news is not being in the news.
Even on these systems being unsustainable, taking this news as a sign of how bad these projects are by their nature, we as a community asking more of NASA than just a jobs program run by Alabama/ Marshall, need to say what we mean by all this being unsustainable? The same observation about unsustainable real estate investment before the financial crisis only rarely had anyone, a few papers here and there, hit it right as to how the whole scheme would unravel. This is important, especially to help those who have to pickup the pieces, in a sense making the right “short” so as to move along well afterwards.
Enjoy the slow motion train wreck. Thomas is right. Not only will the money flow but congress will double down and send more.
Watch.
It’s not really possible for NASA to simply say that “we made a mistake” with SLS (true or not is a different issue).
To unburden themselves, they must build a rationale, and they must build wide support – find a suitable constituency for a change in direction. Neither of these are yet apparent.
But these continual ‘moves to the right’, as the cognoscenti term it, are collectively a big target that they can point to. The potential albatross that is so sorely needed:
Yes, and sadly, in the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act of 2015 the exemption the Shuttle had from commercial competition was passed on quietly to the SLS with the NASA Administrator given the authority to use it for any mission they deem “necessary”. So even if Elon Musk is able to show he would be able to do it cheaper, faster, better, they could ignore it.
Yeah, that was a huge loophole in the law that should have been worded in such a way that the loophole ended once the shuttle program ended.
Could have been worse, they could have left the original wording, where NASA was required to use the Shuttle for all payloads, whenever possible.
Very bad timing. Boeing should never have let this happen. It is a good solid nail in the coffin for the military contracting paradigm for NASA projects that will some day cost the company and its partners and direct competitors billions. It’s too bad too…with their good safety record the damage will be disproportional.
Musk has a chance to not just stick his foot in the door of Interplanetary Exploration, but if he moves quickly with a solidly-successful FH flight he can park a truck in it. Time for Boeing to accelerate their own business emphasis toward the New Space way of doing things or they’ll get pushed out of the upcoming market completely.
Evolution is sometimes painful, and NASA (as well as some other agencies) need that painful evolution. The near future doesn’t provide the budgets necessary to support the old style of managing/funding large projects as we once did (for a pretty short duration, actually) in the ’60s. It’s time to prize program and contractor agility and dispose of the old ways of doing things.
How about dusting off “Inspiration Mars”? A manned flyby of Mars is probably doable in the near term.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
This always seemed nuts to me – it’s the moral equivalent of not only putting astronauts on Apollo 4 (the first test of the Saturn V) but expecting to be able to send them to the Moon. Apollo 8 was dangerous enough as it was, but at least it was the third Saturn V launch.
Of course it was nuts. It’s the kind of comment made by someone who not only has no idea what he’s talking about, but also no real way to gauge the depth of the water.