Sirangelo Hired To Develop #Moon2024 Plans That NASA Claims To Already Have
Mark Sirangelo is the new special assistant to @JimBridenstine to develop plans for @NASA Exploration Campaign & Moon To Mars Mission Directorate. If he is going to be developing plans for the #Moon2024 thing that suggests there is no "plan" – even if #NASA says there is one. pic.twitter.com/I6VUWCHcYG
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) April 8, 2019
NASA Internal Memo: Appointment of Mark Sirangelo
“I am pleased to announce the appointment of Mr. Mark Sirangelo as a Special Assistant to the Administrator. In this role, Mark will have broad responsibility to work across the Mission Directorates to further develop the agency’s plans for the Exploration Campaign. This includes a strategy to meet the Administration’s policy to return astronauts to the lunar surface by 2024. He will also lead the planning for the proposed agency restructuring to create the Moons to Mars Mission Directorate that will manage the programs to develop the Gateway, human rated lander and surface systems to return to the Moon and establish a permanent presence. The new proposed Directorate will also manage the Exploration Research and Technology programs to enable capabilities required for exploration of the Moon, Mars and beyond.”
NASA has a plan which has nothing to do with getting to the Moon anytime in the near future. They are building a big rocket, a big capsule, a small space station, but it is difficult for them to tell anyone what they are for. Orion, Apollo on steroids, not simple, not soon, no safer than any other capsule, under-powered, cannot do a real Moon mission, and a hell of an expense, especially when you consider ESA has built its quota of ATVs and so now someone needs to design and build a new service module. The real question is why try to repeat Apollo since Apollo was not sustainable and Orion is less so. SLS – a big rocket with some potential if anyone could afford it. It was good for the military since it makes use of the overabundance of solid fuel they need for missiles, but its not particularly great for safety, costs or NASA. And the real issue is that no one seems able to build it on any kind of a schedule. Gateway was a great idea for engaging internationals. Once they figured out a design they convened a group to try to figure out what to use it for. They will let us know if they come up with something.
Apollo was sustainable if Nixon would have wanted to do it. He didn’t.
You mean if Johnson had wanted to do so. Saturn V and Apollo production was terminated before Nixon took office. But even so, I don’t think I’d call Apollo sustainable. It was a large enough program that would always have been venerable to election-to-election changes. Technically, that’s true of any government program, but if the budget is small enough, no one cares enough to make it a political football. Apollo was never below that line.
Not too surprisingly, the $500 million per launch of a Saturn V in 1972 would equal the $2.5 Billion dollar cost of an SLS launch in 2022, if 15 SLS launches actually happened. The key was always keeping the same number of dependents employed as did Apollo.
“Apollo production was terminated before Nixon took office.” Are you sure about that? Here:
https://www.hq.nasa.gov/off…
It indicates the decision was made to suspend Saturn V production in the Feb. 1970 budget proposal, so one year into Nixon’s term…
Now that you mention it, what I wrote was not what I was thinking, and isn’t literally true. Could I try again?
The contracts for Saturn V production were for 15 launch vehicles, which was the planned number to fly missions through Apollo 20. The contracts for the Apollo spacecraft were to support a similar number. There were also plans for more ambitious post-Apollo lunar missions.
Under Johnson a decision was made not to order more Saturn V’s (in 1968). At about the same time, I believe a similar decision was made for the Apollo spacecraft. Also, the post-Apollo plans started becoming less ambitious, and eventually turned into the Apollo Applications Program, which ended up being Skylab and nothing more.
But you are quite correct that production of the Saturn V continued well into Nixon’s administration. And he did decide to scale back Apollo even further. But in terms of Apollo being a sustainable program (i.e. ongoing, with no final mission in the plan) or for a continued presence on the Moon using Apollo-derived technology, the decisions not to do that predate the Nixon administration.
I don’t think it was politically sustainable. It’s a low flight rate, expensive rocket that would be overkill for stuff done in LEO, and which doesn’t really have any purpose other than launching crewed spaceflight stuff (i.e. there’s no real need for it for other government launches, or commercial launches).
Plan to buy spaceX
Who is Mark Sirangelo?
Ever try something called Google?
What’s that?
Let me Bing it. 🙂
I have the plans right here:
“Dragon 3 Lunar, Dragon 4 Martian”
https://forums.teslarati.co…
Keith are you aware of any connections between Mark Sirangelo and Axiom space? The company that wants to build space stations?
He was the CEO of SpaceDev at the time they were trying to do a private mission to the Moon. When SNC bought out SpaceDev he stayed on and pushed the idea of the Dream Chaser. So he is an interesting choice for planning a lunar return, someone who will seriously consider commercial options. One more worry for Senator Shelby and the SLS/Orion/Gateway advocates.
Looking at the stats on the New Glenn it is yet another LV that could well launch a lunar mission with capabilities slightly above even the Falcon Heavy.
I think Orion, SLS and Gateway could all be cancelled with no great loss. Gateway is not needed, and Orion and SLS could be replaced by other rockets and spacecraft that are further along and less expensive. The only thing needed is a lander and no one is even working on that.
So what do you do with all the people? Some of them very smart engineers?
Maybe they could go into technology development, as Obama’s original plan called for when he tried to cancel Constellation and use the money to fund space technology and commercial crew. of course he was attacked, but in retrospect can anyone still claim he was wrong?
Re-task the Marshall People to figure out a couple of nuclear thermal and/or electric engines, and have them and the Johnson people work on orbital rendezvous with propellant depots, plus lunar surface base-keeping and development. Fcrary said here once that the Johnson People seem to want to keep on doing space-station stuff, and that’s close as can be useful to it.
Or if they specifically need One Big Piece of Hardware to work on, have Marshall design the lunar lander and a landing system to get one-way modules down to the lunar surface, and Johnson to design either those modules or an orbital propellant depot (or a lunar tug – I’m not picky).
FYI, Glenn Research Center is the center of excellence for electric propulsion.
Then Nuclear Thermal Rockets for crewed propulsion.
Unfortunately, the people at Marshall don’t have a whole lot of experience with anything nuclear. And since you can’t do open air tests of nuclear thermal rockets (anymore) the facilities at Marshall might not be up to it. I think most of the talent and facilities are at the Department of Energy labs.
Where’s the money though?