NASA Throws Some Shade At SpaceX (Update)
Question about @JimBridenstine's tweet last night @ElonMusk our resources are overwelmingly on Falcon and Dragon. Starship is less than 5% of the company".
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) September 29, 2019
Meanwhile @JimBridenstine the NASA-managed @NASA_SLS built by @BoeingSpace is years behind schedule, billions over budget, and is still years away from flying.
Maybe the #SLS folks could learn a little something from that @SpaceX enthusiasm. Just sayin' https://t.co/BtWMRkbmzC
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) September 27, 2019
Keeping the Alabama Senators happy?
Pretty much. The SLS Mafia’s going to pull all the strings they can to distract from tomorrow. Meanwhile, there’s a twittergasm over images from Boca Chica
https://twitter.com/SpacePa…
https://twitter.com/elonmus…
Lookin’ more & more like Fireball XL-5.
‘Let’s go!’
Were that thing the product of just about anyone else it would have been laughed off the island. Padre, that is.
I just hope that the damn thing works. It is single handily bringing to spaceflight a sense of beauty and grace. It’s nearly beyond belief that those additional control surfaces are function-driven.
I wonder what it will look like once flown to orbit and back? No soot marks, for one (am I right about that?). Her beauty derives largely from form, yes, but that shine!
How will that glorious glow age?
She is gorgeous as she stands.
EDIT: Of course, as she stands, orbit isn’t achievable, a fact that changes visualization. I understand that she can teach 20km by herself (just try THAT, SLS, without your boosters!)
Some windward-ish stainless steel parts without thermal tiles may turn dark, but that can be polished. The tiles themselves were tested on Dragon CRS-18 and survived reentry nicely, mainly showing ablated material from the rest of the heat shield.
The stainless steel will also turn iridescent yellowish/bluish colors due to the varying oxide coating thickness, rather than just blackening.
At least, it will in Earth’s atmosphere. No idea what it’ll do when punching through plasma formed from a CO2 atmosphere.
If Trump is defeated then I hope Bridenstine is the first to go. What a lying dishonest hypocrite! “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” Keith Cowing once again nails it.
Jim is a good honest man and he cares about NASA. He also has political masters who pull and push him in certain directions.
I hope you are right, but I am tired of decades of excuses from NASA. Many start off “Blank was basically a good guy/gal, but had no choice because…” This includes the 1960s astronauts as well as NASA heads and presidents from both parties.
I agree with you, Keith, and SLS shortcomings are not his fault, he walked into it. I like Jim Bridenstine. However, that does not excuse this very poorly worded remark that does not reflect NASA’s own written pronouncements regarding the CCDev projects. They EXPECT these Space Act Agreement contractors to take their lessons learned and go off and do other projects. Those projects do require effort…investment in time and money…and if they are not Government projects then they require advertising. Boeing’s capsule (last time I checked) was still behind SpaceX on the schedule in spite of their little booboo with the exploding Dragon. Also, Starship, Crew Dragon, and Boeing’s capsule combined still costs less then SLS and will all fly before SLS. Even freaking New Glenn…second gen New Space…will fly close to or before SLS. If you count Constellation in its development history, SLS development will span FOUR different generations of space flight innovation periods.
This remark of his has generated much anger and will generate much more anger and satire regarding the irony (see my Tweet). I hope he has really thick skin!
Update: This comment has been edited to correct my idiotic misspelling of Mr. Bridenstine’s awesome name.
BridenSTINE not Bridenstein, please Mr Housley.
Sorry. It’s late and I’m tired and agitated.
Well… Okay. But I’ve not been sure if people have been mangling the Administrator’s name lately for parody, or a simple mistake. It’s been happening a lot. My surname is Pavletich and that has been misspelled both accidentally and on purpose for decades. I apologize if I seem sensitive to the process.
I won’t say I’m above parody of a person’s name, but I generally don’t do that. I would have to dislike someone quite a lot for that.
I think my concern stems from the fact that Bridenstine’s name shows up a lot on news articles, Space sites and online posts about NASA – yet people seem to keep getting it wrong nonetheless. Could be because he is not a household name, I dunno. Still… (shrugs)
Let’s not get too picky about how names are spelled. I always feel embarrassed when I get it wrong, but human errors and automatic spell corrections make that a fact of life. And names can change. In college, I dated a woman whose last name was “Childs’’, although her grandfather’s name was “Child”. Pevious generations had changed their names, back and forth, including and excluding that “s”’. So I don’t think we should be too picky about accidental misspellings of someone’s name. (Written by Frank, who doesn’t get upset when the French spell it Franc or Franck)
No, he thought I did it on purpose. If I haven’t ever done that Adam Schiff (though it is tempting), I’d never do it with Jim Bridenstine. 😉
No matter, I fixed it. What about my actual remarks? I irritated some lady in Washington on Twitter last week by referring to the SLS as a dodo bird. This remark by Jim Bridenstine will probably trigger more such deviant behavior from me. I need professional help! 😉
We certainly shouldn’t go to the effort to step in when our computers over-rule us or when we do things that are wrong. Those are, after all, just facts of life.
Oh, good. Variations on a theme. I’ve been saying this about spacecraft for years, and now I get to say it about language.
Is it realistic to expect greater than 99% reliability? Is the time and effort to go from 80% to 99% really justified? Especially if the error does not compromise the primary objectives?
Of course you should try to avoid mistakes, and overrule auto-correcting software when it messes up. (Although I once had a very cheap tablet which wouldn’t let me. It kept re-re-correcting.) But mistakes are going to slip though. And they can come in strings. Autocorrect software does base corrections on past words the user has typed, and I think some also look at frequency used words in the document or page in question. Personally, I tend to cut and paste from previous text when I’m not sure about spelling. Both tend to perpetuate previous errors.
Languages are actually a pretty good error correcting code. Even if there is an error in a sentence, the spelling, grammar and syntax make it likely the audience will understand the meaning. Of course, completely ignoring things like spelling and grammar poisons that (one reason I dislike Twitter), but languages are pretty fault-tolerant to the occasional error.
We are both old enough to remember when autocorrect was a dreamy future (and speech to text was waaaay in the future!). I tend to be very patient with computers and very grateful for the assistance.
Way back when I was fortunate to take the Dale Carnegie Course- it was a life changing experience for me. One of the things drilled into every graduate is the importance of a person’s name.
I’m fussy about mine. I’ll introduce myself only to hear “Oh, hi, Mike;” to which I respond “It’s Michael.” Gotta nip it in the bud!
And sometimes I hear folks say they don’t care what they are called, aside from “late for supper,” of course. I wonder about those people… 🙂
Spot on Keith. I wouldn’t put it past certain Senators & Congresscritters to make a call demanding he shade SpaceX.
It should be pointed out that the presence of “political masters” is a feature, not a bug, of our democracy.
I don’t know Mr. Bridenstine. And I don’t agree with everything he does. But he’s been one of the best Administrators in many, many years.
That tweet has the feel of a forced confession. Anybody paying the slightest bit of attention will have no trouble reading between the lines.
I forgive you, Mr. Bridenstine. He is the best administrator we’ve had in recent times, by far. His job is to appease congress while keeping the eye on the ball (i.e. spending money to do things) All congress wants is “to do things” to spend money.
Ouch. Stingy. But maybe Jim should check their own financing of the Commercial Crew program before blaming SpaceX…
I laughed at it. He’s got them there – both they and Boeing are pretty behind schedule, and I think you can tell that Commercial Crew is not exactly SpaceX’s highest priority. SpaceX would probably prefer to phase it out entirely for Starship flights once the latter is ready.
Yes, they are behind schedule. But NASA and the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel have more than a little responsibility for that. SLS is an all-NASA thing.
Blowing up a capsule in a test is also a good way to get behind.
I think that Musk only cares about the NASA contracts as cash flow.
Gee, just like Boeing and the other government contractors at NASA.
Yes, if you never test anything nothing ever blows up, does it?
Blown up while testing a previously flown capsule for a reflight. NASA has specificly required that no astronauts will fly on reflown capsules. That delayed them by a whopping three months, for an incident investigation to identify the problem, and a month or two more to implement the fix.
Hmmm. SpaceX just got their FAA approval, starting some time in November, for Crew Dragon’s inflight abort test. Of course, Crew Dragon has already got one successful flight and ISS docking under its wings. Boeing’s CST-100 is supposed to make its first flight in November. So it doesn’t seem that SpaceX is really behind Boeing at all.
You are forgetting, Boeing still has to do a pad abort test before their DM1. SpaceX did their pad abort test years ago.
Boeing has nothing to do with SpaceX and their performance on the crew contract. Did I mention them?
Yeah. How dare them? Boeing does it for the love of the game. Please.
Whataboutism with respect to Boeing. They have nothing to do with SpaceX and their performance on the crew contract.
“Blowing up a capsule in a test is also a good way to get behind.”
You’re asserting that SpaceX is behind. Others are rightfully pointing out that SpaceX isn’t behind, but ahead. It just so happens they’re ahead of Boeing, so your cry of “whataboutism” seems quite unjustified.
“I think that Musk only cares about the NASA contracts as cash flow.”
I think you’re wrong about this. Commercial Crew gives SpaceX experience with crewed spaceflight. That experience can be directly applied to crewed flights of Starship.
Since day one, SpaceX has had the goal of putting humans on Mars. That’s why Elon Musk founded the company in the first place. Everything they do for all of their customers feeds into their experience base and allows them to develop things like Starship. Yes it’s also about the money, but at this point they’re the leader in reusable launch vehicles, which means getting money from investors is a lot easier than it would be without flight experience.
It was whataboutism. I said nothing about Boeing. Boeing’s performance has no effect on SpaceX. And blowing up a test article has put SpaceX further behind. They are years behind flight with crew onboard. The original plan was flights in 2015. The NASA IG said that about 2 years of delays was due to NASA funding shortfalls. The rest is on SpaceX. (And on Boeing for their vehicle, but that isn’t the subject here.)
The SpaceX contract (to build and fly) was awarded in 2014. At that time there was no expectation of crew flights (or and flights) within a year. And no, the subsequent delays were not all SpaceX. ASAP spent plenty of time dragging their feet over things like load and go fueling. NASA certification requirements (unanticipated in 2014) also contributed. In a comparison to Boeing, it is fair to say NASA itself was a common element to both Dragon 2 and Starliner. Both experienced delays. Maybe the common element had something to do with that.
Yea, sure. But how would it have looked if SpaceX was flying a year before Boeing? Isn’t it strange how the two seem to move forward at about the same pace?
Your commented that SpaceX only cares about cash flow. I countered with Boeing (could have used any other defense contractor) does the same, even worse. Do you see the relevance? Especially when SX is “notorious” for using their profits (not to shareholders, if they had any) from government contracts to improve their system, without being asked to. In the end, SX is dominating the space race, much to the aggravation of old space and NASA. Don’t you hate that?
That’s true. If I recall correctly, one of the amusing things about the standards they’re applying to the Commercial Crew spacecraft is that neither the Shuttle nor Soyuz would pass them.
You recall correctly. Commercial Crew has requirements on demonstrating a low risk of failure (one in 270, if memory serves) and on the number of successful launches of the same launch vehicle (same version of the same vehicle) before astronauts are allowed on board. SLS and Orion are not subject to those requirements, because they are being developed by NASA and through a NASA-approved process. As I understand it, the justification is that NASA feels that process will achieve the same results without the need for formal requirements. Nor were those requirements imposed on the Shuttle (first launch had two astronauts on board) or Soyuz (I’d love to hear what D. O. Rogozin would say if NASA suggested it.)
Sounds a bit like the rationalizations regarding the 737MAX.
I have a sneaking suspicion Musk will fulfill the terms of the contract and once Starship is flying tell NASA: “You deal with me on my terms now.”
That would be poor marketing and a bad thing to tweet. Oh. We’re talking about Mr. Musk. Well, maybe Ms. Shotwell could talk him out of it. A better approach would be to complete the contract, and in the next round, propose to either provide NASA with Starship flights _or_ more Falcon/Dragon flights. But, of course, the later would require keeping the Falcon and Dragon production lines open, and that would make them cost a whole lot more than they used to. If that’s what NASA wants, SpaceX should laugh all the way to the bank.
Probably the latter as SpaceX did do that with commercial cargo.
https://www.businessinsider…
SpaceX cargo launches may soon cost 50% more — but it’s still an offer NASA can’t refuse
Dave Mosher
Apr 28, 2018, 8:14 AM
If NASA wants to stay in the stone age of spaceflight then it if only fair to charge them for it.
That’s kinda what I meant; fulfill CC and then say “We’re done with your oversight. You want to fly with us, here’s the cost. If you want your astronauts riding simulators waiting for SLS and Orion, go ahead. But this low level war your SLS people have been waging against us is over.”
How can you tell? Unlike Starship prototype, they’re working on CC behind closed doors, I think it’s pretty much for certain that CC still has the highest priority, it’s in the last stretch and the end goal is already in sight.
In the past Musk has said that the majority of resources will be on CC until it is flying, then it will switch to Starship. Because of that I expected much slower pace on Starship than what we are seeing. But it may not mean that priorities have changed, just that development resources have been freeing up based on what tasks are remaining on CC.
EDIT – in the Q&A tonight Elon said that current SpaceX resources are overwhelmingly on Falcon and Dragon especially Crew Dragon, and that only about 5% of SpaceX is currently on Starship. He said what really needs a lot of resources is when you are optimizing something past the initial prototype phase and bringing it into production.
I think it has a lot more to do with the fact that NASA insisted that Falcon’s design be frozen at Block 5 with the redesigned COPVs. Since Falcon’s design has been frozen for some time, you simply don’t need development engineers on that program anymore. Furthermore, transferring launch vehicle development engineers to Dragon 2 wouldn’t be much help (adding more people to a late project makes it later).
So what do you do with all of those former Falcon engineers? You put them on Starship. That’s the most logical choice to make. And since they’ve changed to stainless steel for Starship, they can make progress much faster than they would had they stuck with composites.
I think the other point that Musk was making is that it doesn’t require nearly as much resources to build Starship prototypes as it will to finalize the design and the build processes and then go operational with crew and passengers. So they can crank out hoppers and test vehicles in their spare time so to speak, since they are not intended to be the final product.
Without a doubt SpaceX rides on NASA’s shoulders when they do something hard for the first time. Also, contracting for NASA has to be as hard as space flight itself, espessially with some over there being hostile to New Space and wanting to make it hard. But also, they must fulfill contracts once they make them.
They must have government contracts to push the envelope. However, they must not tie all of their innovation efforts to those contracts. That’s what Boeing does and we can all see that that doesn’t work. Space Act Agreement Contracts are designed to encourage the kinds of things that SpaceX is doing with projects like Starlink and Starship. NASA benefits from any new innovation and development effort that doesn’t have its future tied up in Congressional funding priorities.
Like someone over there said recently, they’ll go with SpaceX if SoaceX gets to the moon first.
But note that SpaceX isn’t doing any Space Act agreements on Starship. Indeed, it is keeping NASA at arm’s length which is why I suspect he is working on it at Boca Chica as well as Florida. SpaceX is really good at learning from experience and I suspect they learned from commercial crew the best way to work with NASA is to not work with NASA. ?
Indeed. And while I can’t recall the comments verbatim, last night Mr. Musk was about as direct as I’ve heard in characterizing NASA-led review delays.
Yes, soon two brand new modified Dragons2 will be at the Cape. How soon they fly will be entirely up to NASA and its reviewers, just as DM1 was.
No, he is still soliciting business with NASA and the Air Force. If they wave money under his nose on Starship he’ll take it. He knows they can’t do that right now and doesn’t feel inclined (now that SLS is on the ropes) to beg for NASA business. Once Dragon is crew-rated and flies a bit, he can use that experience elsewhere, including future NASA missions.
Perhaps, but I suspect that he will want an arrangement more like Southwest Airlines has with NASA than the CCP.
My understanding is that what you suspect is something like where NASA and SpaceX want CCP to cause in the long run.
This is incorrect. This webpage lists NASA’s Space Act agreements:
https://www.nasa.gov/partne…
From the second “domestic” link on the above page:
Space Exploration Technologies Corp.
Annex One to the Reimbursable Umbrella Space Act Agreement Between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Ames Research Center and Space Exploration Technologies Corp for Thermal Protection System Material Support for the SpaceX BFR
and:
Reimbursable Umbrella Space Act Agreement Between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Ames Research Center and Space Exploration Technologies Corp to Support SpaceX Commercial Space Transportation Development
Note: There are several mentions of SpaceX in the first “domestic” link, but the descriptions of each agreement are so terse, it’s hard to tell exactly what they’re for.
Yes, but it looks like they are mostly generic like the one for orbital refueling and none are in critical path of Starship design and development, unlike the CCP.
I expect NASA has no more information on Starship than the public has, and no say in his decision making. He learned his lesson with CCP on the drawbacks of getting help from NASA.
Hipocrasy at it’s finest.
Cheers
Neil
Another MAX, it will be 2030 before it works and then it will kill a group of astronauts. Solid rockets up their ass!
What?
Maybe Congress should have some hearings to see why it’s years behind. Then again, someone might tell them why if they do…
Every witness would tell Congress that they are the problem!
Those witnesses would never be called to testify. They will just pick those who will go along with the planned outcome of the hearings.
Congressional hearings are political horseraces. They do not find facts. What this situation needs is a lawsuit. Federal lawsuits have a broad evidence discovery process and felony consequences for lies. That is how SpaceX kicked in the door of Air Force launch contracts. No one wanted to risk their freedoms lying about the shady doings going on behind the scenes…so they settled.
I and Keith and several others here have pointed out that Boeing received their bonus on that Contract in spite of the fact that they are milking it. There are some at NASA who seem to defy logic in their continued support of cost+ contracting. Any guesses where those people will go to work after retirement?
Either that or just wait it out. NASA seems to have ditched cost+ contracting on new projects.
Of course they are and it’s why, if Starship succeeds, Sen. Shelby will have hearings to find out who At NASA was responsible for wasting so much of the taxpayer’s money on SLS. ?
The game is called politics and it a rough one.
Let’s review:
Orion started 2006, always funded by Congress, still years away from crewed flight.
SLS started 2011, always funded by Congress, still years away from crewed flight
Commercial crew started 2014, funding was raided several times by Congress, at most a year from both having crew flights.
While the tweet plays well with the Alabama mafia it falls flat with the rear of us disappointed by the anemic pace of the budgetary albatrosses
Haven’t really been following commercial crew development closely, but according to Wikipedia, funding started in 2010, and it looks like by 2015 SpaceX had received $3.1B is that info wrong? Also, not sure what you meant by “raided”…
The funds leading up to cctcap kept getting diverted to SLS prior to the 2014 contract award.
“From 2009 to 2011, three full-duration static fire tests of five-segment SRBs were conducted under the Constellation Program, including tests at low and high core temperatures, to validate performance at extreme temperatures. The 5-segment SRB would be carried over to SLS.”
SLS started 2011… but really started in 2009.
“NASA designed other spacecraft for use during Constellation, including the Orion crew capsule…”
The Constellation program was developed by NASA from 2005 to 2009.
The SLS/Orion started in 2005.
“The SLS core stage will be structurally similar to the Space Shuttle external tank, and initial flights will use modified RS-25D engines left over from the Space Shuttle program.”
Okay… so the SLS started in 1981.
commercial crew was not started in 2014 but the first flight was supposed to be 2014 and in 2019 we are still waiting .
The contracts to Boeing and SpaceX for cctcap were awarded in 2014. Prior to that congress kept raiding those funds to pump into SLS.
No. Commercial Crew involved some seed money for development, starting in 2011 and back _then_ they thought they could have a first flight in 2015 (at least, I think it was 2015 not 2014 back then.) The awards to actually build, test and qualify the vehicles were made in 2014. By then, no one was expecting a 2014 first flight. That would be insane. No one, not even Mr. Musk at his most “aspirational”, would claim they could go from an award to first flight in under one year.
BS ALERT .. late 2015 was supposed to be the first human flight .. THAT number was based on the funding they requested…
requested 400 mil
received 50 mil
requested 6 billion over five years
received 270 mil for one year
requested 890 mil
received 405 mil
you can spew your nonsense .. but everyone understands that you are just spewing nonsense.
So I am only one year out , and I agree with you it was under funded . Obama was told at the time funding was not adeqwit. No need to be nasty about it.
Delays to SLS and Orion down to Obama also .
Should included the money and time from the Constellation program, since the SLS is really a reimagined Ares IV.
Musk is in good company. Seventy-five years ago, Wernher Von Braun was reprimanded for putting his enthusiasm for interplanetary flight ahead of his government job!
Seventy five years ago? I’m fairly sure von Braun got complaints about that from two governments, one a bit over 75 years ago and one a bit later. And S. P. Korolyov would have gotten in real trouble if the wrong people noticed he’d over-designed a ballistic missile to make it easily converted into an orbital launch vehicle.
Yes, and it wasn’t the first time Dr. Von Braun was in trouble. in 1956 when the U.S. Army heard stories that Dr. von Braun was going to use a Jupiter-C test to launch a satellite they ordered him not to do so and even had someone inspect the fourth stage to make sure it was a dummy filled with sand. After all, it was agreed that Project Vangard would put the first satellite in space.
The hot defense-related issue of the day in the mid 1950s was whether the US would go full blast into building Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles with nuclear warheads — the US Army’s recommendation — or Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles — the US Air Force’s idea. Obviously, whichever side won this struggle would become the largest and most important of the US military services, and the Eisenhower administration was stretching out a decision as long as possible. There was great fear in White House circles that the Army would sort of accidentally-on-purpose launch one of von Braun’s Redstones or other IRBMs, increasing their credulity with feeble-minded Senators and Congressmen who might interfere with Ike’s orderly decision making, Thus von Braun’s would-be satellite was confiscated and locked up. Space launches were to be left with scientists and the US Navy, which had yet to dream of launching its own nuclear missiles.
Of course, Sputnik came along in October 1957 and also upset orderly ratiocination at the White House and the Navy’s Vanguard blew up on the launch pad a month or so later …. so the White House ended up giving von Braun his satellite back and assuring him it would be all right if Explorer got into space….
Unprofessional and uncalled for whatever internal pressure from the SLS Mafia was being imposed.
Well deserved shade. You can complain about congress slow funding all you want, but 6 years late with multi-billions in total spend is not cool.
Neither is it cool for the NASA administrator to make the conscious decision to single out only one of the two tardy commercial crew contractors in a public criticism timed to intentionally detract and distract from that specific contractors impending public event. (Pusillanimous early CC funding ignored – of course the game was rigged – read your Robert Heinlein!)
To me it was completely beneath the office of administrator – small-minded, mean-spirited, and it reeked of insecurity in the existing space establishment and its political enablers. And that is coming from a person who once proudly worked within that establishment. I’m an old SSME guy, proud of helping get some iconic payloads up – but nothing I did in those years did anything to move the needle on making space access routine or less costly, as much as I wanted it to.
For all his erratic behaviors and sometimes cavalier hand waves (like last night in reference to life support systems for interplanetary journeys), Musk is finally shaking things up and forcing change. Call me paranoid, but personally I sometimes wonder if his security precautions shouldn’t be beefed up – he is threatening a lot of lucrative status quo.
I don’t believe most of his time lines, but I do believe that given funding he will press ahead and fly prototypes, probably succeeding eventually in placing this system in operation, even if the capability falls short of his current projections. If that happens, what does the rest of the space flight world do with their systems? SpaceX poses an existential threat to everybody else in this field of endeavor, and the early efforts at strangling it in the cradle via ridicule failed.
And amid all of this, even if Musk goes down in some personal fiasco or “accident” , isn’t it interesting that Mr. Bezos has been quietly doing his thing in that nice building a few miles from the Florida Starship yard? Long-term, if Old Space clings to the old models, all it can do is fight a losing rear-guard action against the coming transformations. Some of you are going to open up the solar system, and though I’m too old to go along, my heart will be with you.
I would like to know where you are getting the “6 years late” figure. According to the Wikipedia entry for “Commercial Crew Development”, the contracts were awarded in September of 2019. Were both parties supposed in use time travel to develop and test the respective systems in minus-1 years?
SpaceX did get a $75 million award in 2011 for some preliminary work, $450 million in 2012, for a whole lot more development work, and the contracts for flight and actual crew transport were awarded in September, 2014 not 2019. First flight was originally supposed to be in 2015, but much of the delays were due to government funding being less than planned. (By the way, that’s all off that Wikipedia entry.) But I can’t find anything saying they’re six year behind schedule.
SpaceX is NOT 6 years late. In fact, the contract for Commercial Crew was awarded five years ago, and nobody expected instant results. If memory serves me, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon was supposed to fly in 2017. We’re in 2019, and a flight should happen next year, at the latest.
Unless you mean MANNED Crew Dragon, then Crew Dragon has ALREADY flown. Orion block 1 did too. Not yet with Boeing’s capsule.
As a taxpayer I agree with Bridenstine’s expectation that contractors complete their work in a timely manner. Also as a taxpayer I extend that expectation to NASA administration and employees.
It’s telling that SpaceX’s non-NASA overseen vehicle is forging ahead, while the one that NASA has a hand in is going quite slowly (though still faster than Orion or SLS or Webb). Funny, that!
People attack what they fear. Right now NASA leadership is afraid of SpaceX.
If bridenstine is concerned that SpaceX can’t multi task, work commercial crew and starship then he should be doubly or triply concerned that Lockheed and Boeing bidding on the lunar lander appendix H while failing to deliver SLS and Orion.
#13yearsfororionisunacceptable
Double post?
If Bridenstine is concerned that SpaceX can’t multi task and work both commercial crew and Starship then he should be double and triple worried when Lockheed and Boeing submit lunar lander proposals for appendix H which would be an even larger distraction away from their undelivered SLS/Orion that the taxpayer is waiting on.
#13yearsfororionisunacceptable
I loved the image of the Starship in the Saturn system. As Elon Musk noted the Starship is SSTO from any Celestial Body in the Solar System other than the Earth, Venus, and the gas giants. Given that the gas giants likely don’t have surfaces, and the conditions on the surface of Venus, that is no loss. Elon Musk also hinted at launch costs at a fraction of current ones. I really hope he succeeds because IF he does the Solar System is open for exploration, development and settlement.
I wonder what the new NASA will look like in the Starship era? Will it be able to adopt to a world where you could put up the equivalent of the ISS in volume daily? Or easily return the existing ISS to the Earth to give to the Smithsonian? How will a thousand fold increase in launch capacity that could be delivered to any location in the Solar System change the space industry?
IF Elon Musk hits his schedule he may well have Starship in orbit before the SLS does it’s “Green Test”. And he says he is using only 5% of SpaceX resources to build Starship. Amazing!
It’s time to pop the popcorn and watch the fun. ?
NASA then could worry about the science, while companies deal with transportation. Sounds like a sweet deal, actually.
Yes, imagine if all the billions spent on SLS/Orion/Gateway were added to planetary science and then add in the reduced costs from launching on the Starship.
Maybe the folks in Huntsville should reposition Marshall to support planetary science instead of building outdated rockets. Then they would still have the money and jobs, but it would be put to more productive use.
I’m afraid NASA’s budget isn’t a zero sum game. If you shut down things like SLS and Orion, the money isn’t going to automatically shift to planetary science and exploration. Or aeronautics. Odds are, NASA’s budget would go down and it would become a space and aviation focused combination of NACA and the NSF. But if the costs of spaceflight really go down that much, then that unenhanced budget could accomplish a whole lot more.
Maybe the folks working in Huntsville should create a space development directorate at Marshall and Sen. Shelby could channel the SLS/Orion pork to it. I am sure Senator Shelby doesn’t care what the money is spent on as long as it is spent in Huntsville. If Starship works NASA will need to get serious on developing habitats, rovers, and other infrastructure for the Moon, Mars and asteroids.
YESSSS. NASA & especially Marshall need to switch and retrain their people. Launch vehicles already exist commercially and more will follow, making SLS obsolete. Overcome by events, NASA needs to evolve, work on payloads. Lunar or orbital outposts, modules, power generation, food production, suit technology, etc. Leave operations to SX and ULA, they will do it right.
Just thinking about this morning. You could do things like have a consortia of universities buy a one way ride out to, say, Saturn on an uncrewed Starship with a well shielded, huge interior volume that would drop the costs of experiments by orders of magnitude and have tons of dV. It could loiter out there for years doing long term studies and even bring along landers.
Starship success of course is not a given, but in a what-if discussion that assumes that it delivers on the current promises, some have said that NASA should go back to its NACA type of role. But I think that may be too extreme as I think NASA can still play a vital direct role in human space exploration. Musk has said in the past that he feels his job is to get people and equipment to Mars, but he is expecting others to figure out how to actually create a colony on Mars. NASA could definitively have a role to play in that, as I assume they will in a lunar exploration endeavor even if Starship is ultimately the vehicle used instead of SLS to build a lunar base.
NASA correctly decided many years ago that it needs to get out of the delivery business for LEO, they just haven’t realized yet that they also need to get out of the delivery business for BEO. And instead concentrate on leading in exploration not transportation, which is what has really bogged them down post-Apollo.
Why would’t they simply apply their current “industry best practices” and get nowhere just as fast as they are now?
If you think they are no longer capable of contributing anything worthwhile to HSF then no it wouldn’t make any difference if they no longer had to spend a huge part of their resources and planning building rockets and capsules.
I don’t really believe NASA will be irrelevant to HSF. But they are going to do some serious involuntary evolving over the next few years. After Shelby is gone (and no I do not wish him ill), the fun really begins.
I actually wish Mr. Shelby very well. After so many years of effort to benefit his constituents and get what they want for them, he deserves a long and happy retirement. I just wish he’d decide to take it as soon as practical.
Exactly. 🙂
“NASA correctly decided many years ago that it needs to get out of the
delivery business for LEO, they just haven’t realized yet that they also
need to get out of the delivery business for BEO.”
Which is because they failed to realize (or refuse to acknowledge) that the two are one and the same. If you can efficiently get mass to LEO, you can refuel there and go send far more BEO than you can on any other system with similar launch vehicle sizes.
But NASA’s been instead treating the low readiness level of orbital refueling as an excuse to justify Constellation and now the SLS.
The reason they are making poor choices in launch vehicle strategy is because they are still in the business of making launch vehicles. My point is they shouldn’t be involved in that at all other than setting requirements for the missions that they want flown. Fifty plus years ago leadership by NASA in rocket development for human spaceflight was needed because it was all new. That’s not the case anymore.
What you say is true with in orbit refueling. And as we all know, when ULA was first floating ACES as a reusable upper stage, Boeing told ULA in no uncertain terms that they didn’t want to hear the word “depot” out of ULA.
No doubt the Ares/SLS supporters inside NASA were happy about such a gag order. In orbit refueling is a clear and direct threat to SLS.
So Bridenstine trying to smack down SpaceX for the latest Starship update should come as no surprise to anyone. With his political experience, Bridenstine knows that he must support SLS in order to keep Senator Shelby and company happy.
From the numbers presented, I get about 5 to 5.5 km/s delta v for a fully-fueled Starship. That is single stage to orbit for all those worlds. But it isn’t enough to get from low Earth orbit to any of them other than the Moon and Mars. Unless you’re really thinking of a flotilla. With one Starship with passengers and cargo, seven tankers launched from LEO with it, and 56 tankers launched to LEO to fuel those either, you could probably get to Saturn on a direct transfer.
Sounds like you’re using the 200 t Mk1 mass, combined with the 150 t maximum payload they hope to achieve after trimming the dry mass down to 120 t.
Of course, you could load additional payload while refueling it in orbit, but the 120 t Mk5 or so should be able to get 6.3 km/s. And if their Mars plans work out, it could get 6.3 km/s from elliptical high Mars orbit.
Actually, I used both masses for the vehicle. I did, however, include the lower specific impulse for the sea-level expanded engines. If they only fire the vacuum engines (and 0.35 g at the start of the burn would be fine for in space propulsion), that’s 5.5 km/s for 200 tonnes, 6.3 km/s for 120 tonnes and 6.4 km/s for a highly optimistic 110 tonnes. But none of those change basic result: It’s not taking a 150 tonne payload (or even a 100 tonnes) significantly beyond low Earth orbit without tanking. And needing multiple Starship-class tankers (as in roughly half a dozen.)
Well, of course. The only way any rocket will get much past LEO while carrying its maximum launch payload is if its maximum payload is determined by structural limits or thrust instead of delta-v, such that it has excess capacity that it can’t use when launching to LEO. Starship is optimized for carrying the maximum payload to LEO and is delta-v limited when doing so, because it’s designed to refuel there using other Starships carrying max payload loads of propellant.
Note though that it has around 8.7 km/s of delta-v with a 7 t payload, matching the heaviest GEO satellite ever launched on a Falcon 9. There’s a lot of Earth orbit work that’s entirely within its capabilities without taking on more propellant.
True, but Mr. Musk is very clearly interested in going well beyond geostationary orbit. He’s not building Starship to haul cargo to LEO, or even GEO. And there have been many vague and unqualified statements about 100 tonnes of cargo to Mars or 150 tonnes to the Moon. That’s led to some misstatements in the media, to the effect that this would possible without refueling. It isn’t, and my point was to emphasize that.
NASA has tested some of the technologies required for on-orbit refueling (Robotic Refueling Mission, for instance). And the Russians are adept at transferring small quantities.
As far as I know, there is no existing tech capable of moving the kinds of fuel loads that are so freely discussed.
And imagine if there were? The current system as envisioned by SX is already hugely ungainly. Reliable refueling would men that the rockets needn’t be so large, among other benefits.
So, what is the preferred fuel for lunar sorties? Are hypergols out of the question?
Starship burns Liquid Metha/Lox. AFAIK, NASA has not specified any particular fuel for the Artemis vehicles, so it will be up to the companies to choose the technology they bring to the game.
From where I look, all of the fuel to be used on the moon and beyond will be transported from Earth for a very, very long time. =) Theoretical methods to make fuel out of lunar regolith or Mars atmosphere are only conceptual and so far from working, HERE on Earth. Let’s not keep talking about making fuel, Ok? =)
So, we’ll have to transport cryogens such as LH2, LCH4 & LOX, LN2 and possibly others. Insulated tanks with internal baffles to reduce sloshing. Pressure control, relief devices and perhaps a refrigeration system to keep them below boiling point.
SpaceX will have to design these propellant tanks to sit on top of the F9 or FH.
Additional ground infrastructure at the pad to load the propellants at the pad, continue to top off until close to T-0
All these things have to designed and built, so let’s get busy! =)
I don’t think the mass of fuel is a problem. You can just let the pumps run longer. I’d hate to run them for a month or more, but a few days shouldn’t be a problem.
My understanding is that the issue is pumping cryogenic propellent (liquid oxygen) in free fall. It’s been done on the ground, and it isn’t as easy as pumping room temperature fluids. And room temperature fluids have been transferred in orbit. It’s just the combination of the two which is a novel technique. But I don’t see this as more complicated than building a rocket engine from scratch.
What is the numbers like for a Starship staging from either the L1 or the L2 Earth Moon Lagrange points for mission to Saturn?
Also does the numbers improves with Earth flyby burn afterwards with full Starship propellant tanks for flight to Saturn?
How long will it will take for inbound Starship flight from the Saturn to Earth with full propellant tanks? Presuming the Starship propellant tanks gets top up in the Saturn system.
Related to the above questions. Is it easier to staged outer system missions from high Martian orbit? Especially transit time to destination.
Starting from a Earth-Moon Lagrange point actually makes it worse. Orbits are about energy and rockets are about momentum and velocity. That means you get the most out of a burn if you make it while moving as vast as possible. To leave the Earth-Moon system, that when you’re as close to the Earth as possible.
But there is one way to make this work. If you can also refuel in lunar orbit (which is a big if), a relatively small burn of 1 km/s will put the spacecraft on a return trajectory to low Earth orbit. It would arrive going only about 100 m/s less and with nearly full fuel tanks. A burn at that point could not only gets you to Saturn, but on a fast orbit with a trip time significantly less than a Hohmann transfer (Actually, it could get you as far from the Sun as 25 AU, which is beyond Uranus.)
Stopping at Saturn is relatively easy; Titan is the most benign place in the solar system for aerocapture. (Especially if you actually want to end of in orbit around Saturn rather than Titan.) A return trip would be easier, and you could also use Titan gravity assists.
Staging from Mars does reduce the delta v, but not dramatically. It also means launch windows only occur half as often (tied to the orbital period of Mars rather than the Earth), so I don’t see think this is a winning option.
Prediction: SpaceX is, basically, getting ready to divorce NASA. One per day Raptors, plans for dozens of Starship hulls launching from Boca Chica that they have complete control of. Wrap up FH with a few more launches, so no Orion possibility, wrap up F9 sooner than expected and end CC at first contract opportunity. At that point NASA has no choice but to buy seats on Starship without any “human rating” issues.
Divorce is harsh. More likely just leave them behind in the dust, aka the Road Runner versus Coyote.
Most folks seem to interpret this as being a swipe at Space X, as I did at first, but it could be interpreted as taking a swipe at at the SLS clan to get their act together.
Maybe even a dig at “do-nothing” Congress, since they provide the money and direction by way of spreading the wealth through their districts.
As usual in most governmental agencies, the higher level is usually tone deaf to the real world. 13 years as a NASA contractor made that painfully obvious.