Keith’s note: This comment was posted in response to this NASAWatch post. I hear this a lot – sadly with increasing frequency.
“This (below) was written on FACEBOOK this week. I know the person who wrote it and it speaks volumes on why NASA should no longer develop rockets.
“Thursday will be my last day to work. I don’t retire until 3 January, but I will be on leave. I hate to end on such a low note, but it’s that or go bonkers. I dared to speak up on a safety issue on the new launch vehicle a couple of years ago and I got shuffled into a useless and meaningless job. I do little to nothing and when I ask for more work, I get nothing. They won’t let me transfer either. I’ve been fighting to move and no manager in my chain of command will lift a finger. So much for speaking up. Certain managers at NASA made my dream job into a nightmare. You can’t buck the system even when they tell you that it’s your job to do so. I hope that nothing bad comes of the issue but my conscience is clear. I made a safety concern known. Anybody need a slightly used engineer?”
6 @NASA_SLS flights at $1-2 billion each; 6 @NASA_Orion flights; 3 commercial cargo flights – all to cislunar space yet there's still no lunar landing after 6 yrs. Apollo did a landing with 1 Saturn V flight 2 yrs after its first launch on the 5th crewed Apollo flight Just sayin' https://t.co/ptp8Mo6lUS
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) December 7, 2018
First, whats the point? Why do we need a mini station out in the middle of nowhere? There were a lot of reasons for a space station: research, observation, commercialization; this doesn’t support any of those reasons. How is it going to support future moon landings? Second, the current schedule is running 2-3 years behind this to start and the advanced SLS is not even in work any longer, so this might be someone’s notion, but its not real. Remember when we said we could not afford $500 to 750 million a Shuttle launch? At costs of billions each launch, this is not sustainable. Just what is NASA trying to pull? What a waste.
A trans-lunar space station makes sense if the optimized design for a lunar lander module and for an earth to moon transfer vehicle are significantly different enough that a transfer point for cargo/crew is desirable. That, however, doesn’t seem to be any part of this plan, so the logic of this particular design path eludes me. Not to seem terribly overcritical but the current plan looks a lot like someone is spitballing ideas and just throwing them out there to see what takes hold (oh and what will justify SLS enough to excuse the whole program) but that might just be my cynicism leaking through.
A temporarily, occasionally occupied Cislunar station might only make fiscal sense if it wasn’t tied to the $1.5-to-$2 billion per launch SLS. If a Mir-sized station could be assembled under a commercially supplied and competed bid(s) using cheaper expendable AND reusable launchers, then – have at it… They should’ve been building the most powerful 130 ton capable SLS from the word go (in 2011), or not build it at all…
Except this station is the only thing that NASA can afford to do with SLS/Orion that’s extremely low risk. Despite the pretty pictures we’ve seen recently, there is no real budget for actually developing and flying human rated lunar landers. And if there was, today’s NASA would be so risk averse that anything developed would never fly with people on it.
NASA won’t make any progress in human spaceflight until SLS/Orion is cancelled and they become willing to take a bit of risk (besides flying on Soyuz).
Or better yet just use a Bigelow Aerospace B330. Three times as much room as the Gateway for less than the rounding error on the current estimate for the Gateway. And since it could be launched on the existing Falcon Heavy, you could have it in position as quickly as Bigelow Aerospace could prepare one for launch.
An interesting point. But I have in the back of my admittedly poor memory this nugget: that the delta-v to Mars from cislunar space > than from LEO, a factoid that bears review by some of the actual rocket scientists.
It depends. If everything is coming from the Earth, going by way of the Moon is a detour which increases delta-v. But if you can refuel in lunar orbit, you only care about the delta-v on the LEO-lunar orbit leg. But that requires a sizable amount of lunar infrastructure.
In addition, that all assumes chemical propulsion. For a low-thrust system like an ion drive, staying away from planets is the best choice. So a system with chemical transport to a distant, lunar orbit, and a transfer to a vehicle using electric propulsion for a distant Earth orbit to distant Mars orbit trip, might make sense.
Dr. Zubrin & I have a better idea. Keep watching the op-ed page of a little newspaper near the Potomac.
Don’t know what y’all have in mind but even if it is a good idea, it is very doubtful that anyone in charge will listen.
If its based on the early draft of Dr. Zubrin’s work I saw a couple of weeks ago it makes much more sense since it gets rid of the Gateway and leverages existing systems. But getting anyone to listen to good ideas, especially today’s NASA, is the big barrier.
I look forward to seeing it. But you may be damning yourself with faint praise. How could you _not_ have a better idea?
If you mean a version of ‘Moon Direct’ with Falcon Heavy or a similar booster – then yes, I’d cheerlead that. A Gateway Station would mean very little unless it were a propellant depot. And if a reusable, single stage Lander were refueled in LEO (or L-1) between missions by cheap(ish) Commercial Propellant resupply – then you wouldn’t even need the Orion. You could shuttle fresh crews to the reusable Lander in LEO on Dragon, Starliner or even Soyuz. But because NASA didn’t come up with these sort of ideas; expect ‘Not Invented Here’ syndrome.
…And when it comes to humans being in the loop; it should always be about Landers, Landers, LANDERS!! Some people might tell you that “It’s the journey that counts, not the destination”. When it comes to crewed Space Exploration: I don’t buy that for a split second!! The *Destination* is what counts – LANDING someplace, then working and then living there. Otherwise; we might as well let probes and Robots do everything.
1) Design a “deep space” capsule so heavy it can only launch on your paper heavy lift vehicle and not any existing system.
2) Have your “heavy lift” system be so underpowered it can’t actually send much to “deep space.”
3) Position your “Moon station” at the orbital height your “deep space” capsule and “heavy lift” vehicle can reach.
Exactly, number 1) is their biggest problem. Scale Orion to fit on Ariane, Delta and F9 and suddenly the world, or cislunar space, is your oyster.
Better yet .. just buy seats on commercial passenger services do LEO and have Space Based, reusable ships ..
Even better, combine the lander and the heavy lift rocket?
We’ve been over it before, but I’ll see the merits of a single vehicle when I can fly from my doorstep to the doorstep of my conference hotel on the other side of the country. But it’s usually a bus/bus/airplane/airplane/subway combination. Even sailing ships like Cook’s Endeavor used small boats to get from ship to shore, when (as often as not) they wanted to land somewhere without a deep-water harbor and piers.
Your point being that bespoke vehicles, given the deep exigencies of space travel, make sense. If Mr. Musk settles his design, which is understood in the broadest sense as a very large and comfortable spaceship capable also of landing, and limited only by the availability of fuel, in the manner of every other mode of transport – the entire discussion shifts.
Falcon Heavy can lift a fully fueled Orion and then some.
It may even be possible for Falcon Heavy to lift Orion + the ICPS to LEO. So in theory a Falcon Heavy could launch Orion to the Gateway Station.
In other words, this is what NASA is planning on spending all of its human spaceflight budget on through the 2020s.
When you have to spend the money, Fly SLS!
the NASA/ESA Orion spacecraft should be completed. It benefits both. But 100% NASA should get out of the launch vehicle development business. US commercial providers can do it better, faster, cheaper (and cooler).
Orion should be scaled back so an existing launcher can put it to orbit, even if dry. Delta IV-H launch, at most.
Are you suggesting that a commercial capsule with a hab module can replaced the Orion?
If yes, then there is no point in continuing the SLS in any form. Since you could assembly a Moon mission stack in LEO with commercial launchers. Including something with more Delta-V then the ESA service module.
Exactly!
It has already eaten up BILLIONS in funding, still have billions more to go and years and now you say it should be redeveloped? What another 10 year cost plus fixed fee sole sourced FAR development contract for Lockheed Martin?
How about NASA build space based, reusable, modular space ships instead… They should be on the bleeding edge..
You mean build an actual space ship? What a concept. and I think that is what r. Musk has in mind.
While everyone else blabbers about throw weight and launchers and capsule mass, he simply combines lander and lifter. It’s not exactly the plan Vlad (and others) advocate, but is is a huge step forward to a more mature system of actual spaceships that live in space and are fueled to accommodate the mission.
I just feel if you optimize a vehicle to exit and enter the gravity well why not simple switch to a space based ship that is optimized for zero G ,,, there is just so much hardware you do not need past the first 200 miles .. seems silly to haul it back and forth.
Yep. It’s the kind of thing that truly lifts the heart. Imagine we’d have half a dozen of these critters, all parked somewhere most convenient to refueling. Each could be sent on a scientific mission to just about anywhere. They’d be supported by following tankers; the military depends on this type of kit topology and it works quite well.
But: as I deal with clients, I meet “google experts”. With a few keywords these well-meaning folk behave as experts, even though they have at command one or two facts, and no grasp of the larger professional issues whatsoever. It is irritating, on the one hand, and it is distracting as well.
Sort of like some guy in deep tropics Florida spouting off about space policy, I suppose.
The current version is already the result of three redesigns it has gone through in 15 years. First it was designed to be launched on the Ares I, then as a rescue capsule for ISS when President Obama killed Project Constellation, then to launch on the SLS when NASA created it in response to President Obama’s call in 2010 for a new heavy lift vehicle. It’s time to call it a mistake and get rid of it.
Falcon Heavy could certainly deliver Orion and its SM to Low Earth Orbit. It has twice the payload capacity needed to do that.
Of course, if all you want is to get to Low Earth Orbit, Orion is kind of overkill. And we already have two commercial capsules coming on line next year which can do it anyway (much more cheaply).
It’s just sad. I feel bad for NASA when I see this stuff. They have been completely boxed into a corner by politics, economics, and inertia.
I suppose you mean that you have feelings for the generations of top-rated engineers and scientists, watching a career spiral uncontrollably?
The rest of them? Screw ’em.
This (below) was written on FACEBOOK this week. I know the person who wrote it and it speaks volumes on why NASA should no longer develop rockets.
________________
Thursday will be my last day to work. I don’t retire until 3 January, but I will be on leave. I hate to end on such a low note, but it’s that or go bonkers. I dared to speak up on a safety issue on the new launch vehicle a couple of years ago and I got shuffled into a useless and meaningless job. I do little to nothing and when I ask for more work, I get nothing. They won’t let me transfer either. I’ve been fighting to move and no manager in my chain of command will lift a finger. So much for speaking up. Certain managers at NASA made my dream job into a nightmare. You can’t buck the system even when they tell you that it’s your job to do so. I hope that nothing bad comes of the issue but my conscience is clear. I made a safety concern known. Anybody need a slightly used engineer?
Some of us, even if we could, are not yet ready to retire. We go into work on a daily basis and see nothing happening; we contribute little, we expect no future mission of any significance; we expect no future promotions because we’ve been put out to pasture long ago just like Bad Horse. Its unfortunate because even if NASA were to do little they could be developing valuable things and yet NASA is doing nothing.
I guess we’re about the same age. But I don’t like the opportunity costs. At $500 million per astronaut back-and-forth, we could have another robotic mission like Kepler or Dawn. I know it isn’t a zero-sum game. If human spaceflight doesn’t spend the money, it isn’t going to go to planetary science. But that does sort of set my cost-to-value expectations. If human spaceflight is going to spend $500 million, I expect results on par with a Discovery mission. Just going back and forth to a lunar “Gateway” doesn’t do it for me.
Dr. C:
It’s a position you’ve previously staked out, and it has the same faults here as before: putting people on Mars, for instance, is done at least in part simply to do it, answering the yearning calls of the human heart.
Sure, there’s a science return. But that is where the usefulness of the comparison ends (even though a human can provide much more science that any machine).
No, I do see a great deal of value in going somewhere just to see what’s there. I do a fair amount of that myself. But I don’t bill it to one of my grants unless I can also justify it as legitimate business. Otherwise, I pay out of my own pocket.
But if someone were going to an interesting place, especially if it were for the first time, I’d get some vicarious enjoyment from it, and I’d be willing to help pay for it. Unfortunately, I was replying to a comment about sending astronauts to and from a high lunar orbit, just for the sake of sending them _anywhere_ beyond low Earth orbit. I’d be willing to chip in for a science-free attempt to climb the Olympus escarpment (which, by the way, would definitely be a technical climb…) but just to go to empty space moderately near the Moon? I just don’t see the point of that.
“but just to go to empty space moderately near the Moon? I just don’t see the point of that.”
OK, with your permission, I’d widen the discussion a bit by asking: Can a lifelong devotion to science steal all of the romance from a human heart? Ca we be so hardened by job codes not to demand an appropriate category for cultural satisfaction?
I’ll restate the point in a slightly different way, with this preamble: this argument has as much validity as any other ‘science’ mission.
And that is this: We are curious beings. It is curiosity that drives your own work, is it not? As to cost: the satisfaction of curiosity has as much relevance as learning the proportion of various isotopes. Do not diminish the cultural importance by speaking about what activity is billed to which account. By rights a relevant account should exist.
And, yes, there are the “ROI” types around, some lurking even here.
They are to be pitied as the products of a deeply capitalistic groupthink that they are.
Michael; When you’re spending other peoples money, then yes, you do need to show a return on the investment. Either science, technology or new sources of wealth. Doing it just to feel a burst of pride from our magnificent accomplishments sounds marvelous in a poetic ode or piece of prose, but it ain’t a purpose of government and it won’t get hard nosed congress critters reelected so they won’t approve the budget for it. It’s the National Council for Science that NASA most commonly works with, not the National Endowment for the Arts.
I’m sorry, maybe I’m just old and have lost my marbles, but that sounds 100% useless to me. If that’s the best NASA can so for human spaceflight — the high-tech equivalent of a bridge to nowhere — then we should close down the human spaceflight enterprise until we have a better idea/capabilities from the private sector.
Meanwhile China’s Chang’e 4 just launched and is on the way to a first time lunar far side landing in von Karman crater.
(drags out the dead horse and starts betting it again)
I still prefer NASA gets out of the launch business. All they need is to buy commercial seats to LEO and go from there. Reusable, Space Based, modular designed ships and fuel depots. We need gas n’ go ships and commercial companies handing fuel services.. all NASA needs do is take road trips and stay out of gravity wells until we have all the transportation hubs, fuel hubs etc .. in place .. NASA should be a customer of services but be on the bleeding edge of technology and then raise the TRL (technology readiness level) and shovel the tech into the private sector as fast as possible and prime the pump.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
The Nautilus-X concept have been superseded by the SpaceX Starship formerly known as the BFS. Which have the advantage of combining LEO access, propellant storage, interplanetary travel and access to other Sol system bodies in one vehicle design.
You just need to add some sort of artificial gravity capability to the design for long duration space missions.
The title might be wrong. Perhaps it should have been the “Assinine” Path to the Moon?
I was thinking more of Zeno’s paradox. But that and “asymptotic” both imply constantly approaching something without every actually reaching it. But the “approaching” part might not be accurate…
“all to cislunar space yet there’s still no lunar landing after 6 yrs. “
What is wrong with these people?
NASA is populated by very smart people; and therefore decisions of this magnitude are taken carefully, thoughtfully; factors, weighed; conclusions, dispassionately reached; current goals, resolved. Future doors, not compromised; or at least, remain ajar.
(Writing the above, I come to the conclusion that the job faced by these decision makers is possibly impossible.)
So if I could get a few of these folks in room, what would they say about the Gateway?
The problem is that the very smart people are not making the decisions. Its the bureaucrats that have clawed their way to the decision making positions.
It is no different than the decision makers who over ruled the engineers on the Challenger launch or failed to let higher ups know about the worries some engineers had about the debris strikes on the Columbia’s heat shield. That is the key difference between today’s NASA and the one that took America to the Moon as Bad Horse points out in his post on NASA.
You are painting a very dark picture (one that is alas true, demonstrably so in the political arena).
Competency inversion. Books have been written about it and it is a big part of the problem at NASA.
A fair number of those smart people don’t think it’s their place to consider those sorts of issues. I particularly dislike it when someone talks about decisions which are “above his pay grade.” So it isn’t uncommon for a decision to do something (like Gateway) to be made by senior management, and for the details to be handed off to some very smart scientists and engineers. But they then find the best solution or plan possible given, and without arguing about, the parameters and constraints set by senior management.
In some ways the this sort of behavior is endemic most particularly to governmental agencies.
I’d argue its lack of clear strategic direction from the highest levels of government (both Administration and Congress), consistent lack of funding, and lack of clear vision on the part of NASA. NASA is still thinking in an Obama era mindset which forbade a return to the lunar surface because the Trump Administration hasn’t given sufficient clear direction to NASA to shift gears. There’s been no ‘we choose to go to Moon’ speech by Trump or Pence. They talk about returning to the Moon rather than going to Mars, but they don’t clearly lay out what that means in practical terms.
Then NASA is saddled with SLS – once again, a hangover from the Obama period, inherited from the Ares concept of the Bush period, and cemented firmly in place by Congressional pork barrelling. They have this white elephant money pit, sucking up what little funding there is, without a credible mission to justify continued development. So they need somewhere for the SLS to go – a lunar gateway (itself a hangover from the Mars First days of Obama) further narrows NASA’s options to do something new.
Finally, NASA has to take the blame for letting itself be put in this position. The leaders of NASA have been passive recipients of this mess – not proactive shapers of policy. They can see that commercial space is changing how we access space, in technological terms and economic terms, but don’t respond to that change. They stick with Apollo-era solutions.
I don’t think NASA will get astronauts back to the lunar surface by the end of the next decade. I do think commercial space – SpaceX, Blue Origin – will. The real shame is that NASA will waste time and money on outdated technology and approaches and be left behind to watch as other actors – and other states – take the lead.