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Artemis

Observations From Today's SLS/Orion/Artemis Hearing

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
September 18, 2019
Filed under , , ,

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

52 responses to “Observations From Today's SLS/Orion/Artemis Hearing”

  1. MAGA_Ken says:
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    I was reading your tweets as they were coming up. One word: SAD!

    Sometimes I think the best outcome of the SLS program would be for the core stage to blow up during the Green Run test, simply because that may be the only way to kill the beast.

    I still think that Bridenstein could kill the SLS program by having NASA accounting reach the 30% over budget that would require Congressional reauthorization.

    • Matthew Black says:
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      Agreed. Repurpose Orion for the Vulcan launcher – even if it needs a couple more solid strap-on boosters added.

      • ThomasLMatula says:
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        Or just use the Omega Booster that NG is building for the USAF.

        • Matthew Black says:
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          Well… Possibly – but I doubt it could lift the 26 ton Orion into low Earth orbit. Vulcan with six solids and the Centaur V stage should get more than 30 tons into LEO. And there might be (?) a fair bit of the ‘solid booster thrust oscillation’ issue for Omega, as per the Ares 1.

          • Terry Stetler says:
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            Bridenstine already said Falcon Heavy could send Orion to LEO, where it could dock to a departure stage. ISTM the departure stage could go up on Vulcan.

            However, Bridenstine also said the only flight-proven vehicle side docking adapter in the US is SpaceX’s implementation of NDS as used on DM-1 (developed in-house, simpler/cheaper than Boeing’s but compatable).

            Correction: spellcheckitis

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            NG is claiming Omega would be able to lift 75 tons to LEO, so it should be easy to launch the Orion on it. And it meets the key Congressional requirement of recycling Shuttle technology. ?

            And most important, it would allow Dr. Griffin to show everyone he was right all along with Ares I.?

          • MAGA_Ken says:
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            Ares 1 reborn!

            It has a 5.25 meter diameter upstage, it just might work. Though I doubt people would want to go the solid rocket route.

          • Matthew Black says:
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            I sincerely doubt that 75 ton figure: no L.E.O. cargo figures have been published that I know of. I’ve seen quotes for a GTO payload of 10.1 tons. Even with 6x GEM-63XL solid strap-ons, that total takeoff thrust would be barely 5 million pounds and with all the traditional solid rocket bugbears of immense mass, low specific impulse and short burn time. I’d be surprised if a OmegA ‘heavy’ could get more than 30 metric tons to L.E.O… https://www.northropgrumman

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            I am not able to find the link to the 75 ton figure, but 30 tons does seems more realistic. Guess NASA will have to spend another 10 years doing Orion Lite.

          • Skinny_Lu says:
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            75 tons to LEO has got to be in error… a (1) ton is 2,000 lbs, right? =)

          • Matthew Black says:
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            1 metric ton (tonne) is 2205 pounds.

        • Richard Malcolm says:
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          Not sure NASA or ASAP will be super keen on flying Orion on a 100% SRM stack.

          But it hardly matters. Northrop is not going to win a Phase 2 award, which means OmegA will go bye-bye.

          • MAGA_Ken says:
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            I’m shedding a tear here. It’s every young boy’s dream when firing an Estes model rocket to make one big enough to achieve orbit.

      • MAGA_Ken says:
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        Orion is not in much better shape financially than SLS. But keeping Orion may split the various Congressional factions.

    • fcrary says:
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      Of course Mr. Bridenstein could declare SLS over some threshold, and send it to Congress for reauthorization. But what’s the point?

      First, NASA accounting is pretty flexible. Does that 30% you mention include margin? (Or, more correctly, is it 30% before or after margin is applied?) Fixed costs of facilities SLS uses? (E.g. maintenance on the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy.) Salaries of civil servants (they would get paid anyway, and technically, their salaries are in the budget for the center they work for, not the budget of the project they work on.) Shifting the official cost of a big project by tens of percent is just an administrative stroke of a pen. And the Congressmen pushing SLS know it. And they would complain his pen should have shifted the accounting in a different direction. There is too much administrative discretion involved for Mr. Bridenstein to simply claim he’s forced to get reauthorization because he’s just following the rules.

      Second, even if it does go to Congress for reauthorization, what, exactly do you expect them to do? They are the same people who have insisted on funding it, and mandating the use of STS-heritage hardware, in the first place. In all likelihood, they would just get irritated and pass a reauthorization.

      If anything is going to kill SLS, it’s going to be something which makes it visibly and publicly unpopular. Enough so that the average Congressman, normally content to leave other people’s pork alone, will start objecting. That happen when the public discontent is enough to reflect poorly on _all_ Congressmen and they don’t want to be tarred with the gentleman from Alabama’s mistakes.

      • MAGA_Ken says:
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        Of course Mr. Bridenstein could declare SLS over some threshold, and send it to Congress for reauthorization. But what’s the point?

        Its actually law that requires him to notify Congress when a program goes 30% overspending. I would think GAAP would apply to how you account for the project spending. But even with leeway, its politics.

        There is too much administrative discretion involved for Mr. Bridenstein to simply claim he’s forced to get reauthorization because he’s just following the rules

        The GAO in their last report indicated that NASA managers rigged the accounting to keep the project under the 30% threshold which tells me they know there is a problem they are trying to avoid.

        Second, even if it does go to Congress for reauthorization, what, exactly do you expect them to do? They are the same people who have insisted on funding it, and mandating the use of STS-heritage hardware, in the first place. In all likelihood, they would just get irritated and pass a reauthorization.

        $X billion a year for other projects would mean that reauthorization would not be a slam dunk. At the very least put the ball in Congress. Sometimes they surprise us.

      • Jeff2Space says:
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        “If anything is going to kill SLS, it’s going to be something which makes it visibly and publicly unpopular.”

        I’m rooting for both New Glenn and Starship/Super Heavy to show that large launch vehicles can be both reusable (at least partly) and affordable. At that point, SLS simply becomes an expensive “launcher to nowhere”.

    • George Purcell says:
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      SLS is dead. It will never launch anything of consequence.

      I’m not saying money won’t be thrown at it in the future but it’s pretty clear at this stage that NASA/Boeing are completely unable to build a new launch system. First realistic launch date for SLS now 2021? Please.

  2. ThomasLMatula says:
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    If Elon Musk succeeds the SLS, Orion, & Gateway will be as irrelevant as a horse drawn railroad. Reports are he is already starting modifications needed on Pad39a to do orbital flight testing of it. It would be a hoot if he reached orbit before the SLS launched.

  3. Bill Housley says:
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    My blog article “Will the Big Falcon Eat the SLS” gets more hits than anything else that I write there.
    I’m not saying that to promote myself, nor to push that it is a good article…it isn’t. I’m just saying that folks get where this is going. Anyone who’s been following the launch list for Orion/SLS can see that that list has now shrunk from 12+ launches to something like four or five launches. Not viable.

    • MAGA_Ken says:
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      Read your article, this stood out to me:

      Money is the main enabler for doing things in space, so doing more for less means doing more much more frequently and for a wider list of payloads and industries.

      This is the much ballyhooed “sustainability” that NASA claims it wants so very, very much. When they speak of “sustainability” they mean something different but I don’t know what that is as they never explain it other than as a fact.

      • Bill Housley says:
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        I don’t think it works as well for NASA missions, but they did do a study long ago projecting $ per lb to enabled space related industries. I don’t have the link here handy, but low launch price as an industry enabler is SpaceX’s war cry.

  4. Jeff2Space says:
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    Doug Cooke just sounds like a shill for Boeing at this point. It’s clear NASA can’t get crew on the surface of the moon without commercial launch vehicles because SLS is too expensive, will only fly about once a year, and doesn’t even have an Exploration Upper Stage.

    • tutiger87 says:
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      $465K. How can I get that job?

      • fcrary says:
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        That’s $465k over two years. I’m not sure about the current, going rates, but I get the impression a bit over $200k per year is on the low side for corporate lobbyists. Not that I ever expect to make that much, but he’s someone helping them pull in billions in contracts. $200k per year is 0.02% of a $1 billion per year contract.

    • fcrary says:
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      According to an Ars Technica story today, Cooke is currently paid by Boeing as some sort of consultant or lobbyist. That might explain why he sounds link a shill for Boeing.

  5. ThomasLMatula says:
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    I am puzzled by the tweet about getting the Orion to Plum Book. Won’t it fit inside a C-17?

    • Zed_WEASEL says:
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      The interior ceiling of the C-17 is 3.76 meters high. The specification is dictated by the heights of armored fighting vehicles.

      FYI the C-5 got interior ceiling of 4.1 meters and the Antonov An-124 & An-225 got interior ceilings of 4.4 meters.

      NASA should booked an Airbus Beluga or maybe a Boeing Dreamlifter for flying the 5 meter diameter Orion stack on its cradle to Plum Brook.

      • ThomasLMatula says:
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        This is what happens when you locate facilities based on pork rather than logistics. It’s why Elon Musk moved Starship/Super Heavy production from California to Boca Chica and Florida, having the advantage of not having to worry about spreading the pork around.

        • Jeff Greason says:
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          Well, a bigger driver was that Orion was originally sized by the requirement to be too heavy for Delta IV heavy to lift. If it has been Apollo-sized, wouldn’t have had any excuse for new launch vehicles and it would have fit inside all the existing infrastructure. (Fortunately for the program, they used the wrong numbers for Delta IV heavy and it turned out that Delta IV could indeed lift it).

          • kcowing says:
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            Yup. It was truly Apollo on Steroids.

          • Matthew Black says:
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            Constellation should have become the large ‘Sidemount’ Heavy lift vehicle. Two launch mission architecture of 2x identical launchers; from the same Pads 39A & B, using the same External tanks, engines & 4-segment solid rocket boosters as the Shuttle system. Minimal modifications (if any) would have been needed for the VAB, Crawlers and Pads.

            The Altair Lander would have had to be descoped for a 2x person crew – but who cares?! They still should been able to accomplish one week Sortie missions with that architecture. And if the Sidemount needed upgrading: uprated RS-25 engines (expendable anyway), perhaps 5 segment SRBs to help get another 5 metric tons into LEO. And if the upcoming Commercial launchers were to make the Sidemount obsolete – they could run out the system and the supply of SRBs by deleting the recovery systems and expending them; allowing a couple more tons to reach LEO and beyond.

            And as for Orion? They could’ve left it largely as-is, including the escape system, which analysis showed would work just fine with the Sidemount configuration during aborts. And the Earth Departure Stage? John Shannon’s Sidemount team had a couple concepts for either a J-2X powered LOX/LH2 stage, or a quartet of uprated RL-10s. Much like the coming Centaur V stage that Vulcan is going to use.

            But NO: rather than doing all the pragmatic things like those listed above – they had to rebuild and redesign so much; forcing the SLS to be more Clean Sheet than Shuttle heritage. What a bloody waste…

            http://www.parabolicarc.com

            https://www.sfgate.com/news

          • Jeff Greason says:
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            Matthew, you make a very common and very understandable mistaken assumption in that analysis. The design goal of Constellation, like many previous post-Apollo programs was to *be expensive*. It is obvious (and was known in Apollo) that you minimize cost by minimizing mass lifted from the Lunar surface. Given the technology of the day, it was thought (probably correctly) that 2 was the minimum crew, so the crew was 2. It was unthinkable in the day to rely on an automated docking/berthing as a mission critical element (it was hard enough for them to accept it even with a crew member on both docking vehicles), so 1 more crew was needed in the orbiting Lunar node (the command and service module, in Apollo). If you want to go back to the Moon and you regard high cost as a problem, you start with minimum crew (and you can have a re-think about whether today, we need 2 or 1 crew on a lander, and whether today we need 2, 1, or 0 crew on the orbiting docking/berthing node). But if you start with “but it must be BIGGER” then you are clearly regarding high cost as a feature, not a bug.

            So arguing that Constellation should have picked X or Y or Z alternative because it would have been cheaper is counterfactual. Clearly, starting with the mission parameters, they did not want it to be cheaper.

          • Matthew Black says:
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            You are quite right and I actually realized all your points 10 years ago because of the MANY discussions and arguments back then. Like yourself and many others, I followed all the twists and turns of Constellation until my head spun. But if there were more pragmatic leadership and decision back then; CXP might have stood a better chance of survival and would have saved some money to boot. Billions with a B. Going to the Moon with a huge infrastructure based on ‘Old Space’ was never going to be cheap though…

        • chuckc192000 says:
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          Musk sure messed up the logistics in Florida. To move the vehicle from their facility in Cocoa to KSC, they’re gonna have to block major highways (driving down the left side of the road), raise power lines, etc.

  6. tutiger87 says:
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    Meanwhile, an entire generation of engineers has been kicked to the curb because of the complete lack of lleadership in Washington.

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      Remember to say Thank You to President Obama for his new space policy that killed Constellation, replaced it with the new heavy lift that became SLS as Congress sought to salvage Constellation, his cuts to planetary science and launching commercial crew, which looks like it will be in a photo finish with the end of funding for the ISS. Maybe six flights for SpaceX and Boeing each?

    • George Purcell says:
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      Blame Griffin, Gerst, and the idiots who came up with the architecture.

      • ThomasLMatula says:
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        Don’t forget the Planetary Society who paid Dr. Griffin to do a study on reaching Mars that later became Project Constellation. But even a substandard architecture like Project Constellation might have succeeded in reaching the Moon if the course hadn’t been changed by President Obama just when it was making progress moving forward.

        • Richard Malcolm says:
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          Well, if you threw enough money at it, sure.

          But it was already well over budget and behind schedule with with just Orion and Ares I in the pipeline. Development had hardly begun on Altair or Ares V, and both were were much more expensive and difficult systems to develop.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            And how much has been spent since then on Orion and SLS?

          • Richard Malcolm says:
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            Ares V was going to cost a lot more than SLS, by any cost estimate.

            Charles Bolden at one point suggested that Altair development was going to cost at least $10 billion.

            (But for the record: SLS has had about $14 billion spent on it, exclusive of work done on the 5 segement SRBS before 2011; Orion has had about $9 billion spent through 2018.)

    • MAGA_Ken says:
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      Don’t be so melodramatic. Blue Origin, SpaceX, NG and many other companies are hiring engineers.

      https://blueorigin.wd5.mywo

      Just because they are not government jobs doesn’t mean they are not important.

      • tutiger87 says:
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        Um…yeah, they are hiring. Younger and cheaper. Meanwhile, most of us 40and over who cut our teeth on Shuttle are left out of the party.

        • Skinny_Lu says:
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          Yes. It is unfortunate for the bright, young engineers working for NASA and SLS contractors. It is not their fault they got saddled with continuing to use Shuttle technology, albeit outdated and 100% expendable…. The worst one, IMO, SSMEs rebranded as RS-25 and destined for the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean after one more space shot. Ugh. It pains me explaining to people how the new NASA rocket is one shot and done. SpaceX has raised the expectations for all rockets…

  7. fcrary says:
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    What do you mean? I have complete confidence in NASA. I am completely confident that their human spaceflight projects will be behind schedule and over budget. With their flagship robotic missions, my confidence in cost and budget problems isn’t as high, but it is still a safe bet.