NASA Is Building A Rocket That It Can't Afford To Use
NASA budget proposal widens divide between White House and Congress, Ars Technica
“Although NASA is proceeding with development of the SLS, a number of outside panels have questioned whether NASA can afford to build, fly and, sustain the expensive program, especially with projections of low flight rates of one launch or fewer per year. The biggest concern is that the rocket is so expensive to fly it precludes a meaningful exploration program within NASA’s existing budget.”
Keith’s note: With the cuts to both SLS and Orion in the Administration’s FY 2017 budget you can expect the same food fight with Congress to pick up where it left off last time. And as was the case before, Congress will go after Commercial Crew and Cargo, Technology, and Earth Science to put SLS and Orion back at the level Congress wants. Of course, election time will soon skew everything and the chances that there will be a formal budget will drop. The net result is that NASA will not know for certain what its budget will be and this uncertainty will cause launch dates to slip to the right. With these slips the overall cost of the SLS and Orion programs will increase – and commercial crew will take longer to happen than might otherwise be the case.
Naturally, the next Administration will stall for time and eventually appoint a blue ribbon panel to write a report and the cycle will start all over again. Their conclusion will be that NASA has no plan (and that it needs to hurry up and develop one) and, by the way, NASA cannot do all of the things it has been tasked to do under a budget that does not grow. Considering that all of these arguments are set to occur under a NASA budget that is likely going to stay flat, nothing will change since no one will give up pushing for the things that they want NASA to do. The inevitable result will be that NASA will end up with a launch system that will have nothing to launch on the imaginary #JourneyToNowhere.
I’ve known that this system wouldn’t fly since it was announced in 2004. But then, I’m a student of history…
The SLS wasn’t announced until 2011.
It was part and parcel with the Orion initiative, a repurposing of Constellation.
*sigh* It’s so much more complicated than that. Constellation was cancelled outright in October 2010.
SLS was announced September of 2011. It’s quite different from Constellation’s Ares V, despite the similar appearance.
Notably:
Ares V – 10 m diameter core, five RS-68 engines, 5.5 segment SRBs.
SLS – 8.4 m diameter core, four SSME-derived engines, 5 segment SRBs.
I know that talking up SLS/Ares V isn’t very popular, I will say that going down to the old Shuttle ET diameter was a really GOOD idea.
The American need to change EVERYTHING, each time we have a new program has really set us back. Europe has used SpaceLab structures for Shuttle, ISS modules and now Orion SMs. Russia is the best at this with Soyuz rockets and capsules. Heck, their entire space program is a grown up version of Legos and Tinker Toys!
We could get so much more space program for our $, and SLS is actually a better value for America than a lot of what we have done.
The problem is not the diameter of the SLS core stage. The problem is that after decades of Shuttle, Ariane, Delta IV and SLS we should long ago have realized that hydrogen is not an appropriate core stage propellant, simply because its extraordinarily low density requires a massive fuel tank and it produces much less thrust than a hydrocarbon stage of similar size.
As von Braun knew long ago, hydrogen is valuable in upper stages where mass is critical but tanks are smaller and much less thrust is required.
Agreed that LH2 isn’t a good choice for a first/core stage propellant. Kerosene works just fine for Atlas V and Falcon 9 at far less cost than the LH2 Delta IV.
Now for upper stages, LH2 still has a place. Its vacuum ISP is far better than the alternative chemical fuels. And once the stage is in vacuum, it becomes a lot easier to insulate, making the ACES upper stage quite viable for long periods between firings. LH2 fuel depots (based on Centaur/ACES technology) are a real possibility too.
Here is something really funny:
In Kerbal SP, you can do a single launch lunar landing mission with an SLS core and 4 falcon 9s as boosters. I say we go for it, and you have flyback boosters to save some $$.
As in have a very long ladder all the way down the side of the ~320 foot tall rocket?
Sure. I don’t see anything that could possibly go wrong.
or a trampoline?
Probably not a good idea since the life support backpack would throw off the astronaut’s balance. A better idea might be a rope to rappel down the side with.
Fun fact: that was originally the plan for how to get the Apollo astronauts to the lunar surface, but there was a lot of difficulty getting the rigging right to make it easy to get back up, and so a ladder was installed on the side of a leg instead.
If you are talking about a Kerbin-Mun mission, just remember that Jebediah Kerman only has to worry about a fraction of our gravity.
Jeff Smith Sorry, but Kerbin gravity in KSP is 9.81 m/s^2.
And Hug Dug, the vehicle has an upper stage, the whole stack does not land on the mun. KSP has staging and separable vehicle sections
If the engineers in the 50s had KSP to work out the first order approximations, we would have made FAR more progress on spaceflight. It is actually very good as a learning tool.
SLS is an Ares V with the core stages reduced in diameter to make its tankage/structure common with Shuttle ETs. Congress was trying to maintain the ET assembly people and lineage but unfortunately they came in about 4 years after NASA had shut down and laid off many of these.
And NASA built all new welding equipment for the SLS anyway.
True. But you can still use all of the handling equipment, storage equipment, launch/test stands and other related tooling for the vehicle, which is a benefit. Also, you don’t have to re-re-redo the aerodynamics. To reiterate a fact you already know, a process change (like the new weld process) can be a very easy way to improve performance without gumming up the rest of the system.
I’ve been wondering this for some time now: what if Mike Griffin had ditched Ares I and gone straight for a vertical stack SLS/Ares V? Yeah, the initial version would look like a Ariane 5/Energia knockoff, but that could have flown in ’09 or ’10. Add the 5 segment booster later, the new upper stage later, Orion later… man, THAT would have been something to see. We might have had a real space program then.
But no, we have to throw away everything each time and start all over again.
And they spent 349 million to restore a test stand they are not going to use and did the new J2 engines and set them on the shelf… this is not a surprise. Congress wants money spent in their districts..
Same happens in military procurement (V-22) and – hope I have this right- keeping one of the heavy lifter lines open years after the military wanted closed (which now it is).
Here is another one
http://gizmodo.com/the-air-…
Bizzaro-History, Yale! 🙂
Can’t see what you are commenting on. The thread is too stretched out.
Well, I predict that the incoming administration will recognize what Obama’s administration did as well way back in 2009, and say we cannot afford to go to Mars (ironically, Obama said we couldn’t afford to go to the moon, and yet his administration is lobbying so strongly for Mars! Now that doesn’t make sense at all!) Therefore, since the SLS and Orion are basically already designed and built, a new administration, regardless of whether it is Democrat or Republican, will opt for the moon. The only new piece of hardware needed will be a lander, which is way less than what is needed for mars.
I agree (and approve) that nasa will re-aim to the moon. BTW, spacex is targeting 2025 for sending people to Mars. By the time NASA is targeting humans to Mars in the late 2030s, spacex is planning to be sending thousands of people every two years to its active city.
SpaceX was supposed to be flying people to orbit and the ISS some three years ago.
No they weren’t. I suggest you take a close look at the original CCiCap contracts.
The earliest they could have done a test flight with crew was 2015.
As we all know, the Commercial Crew program has suffered from chronic shortage of funding leading to delays.
I was referring to Musk’s original 2002 SpaceX founding schedule
This is a chart of funding requests by Obama versus what Congress authorized:
http://www.parabolicarc.com…
I believe the Obama administration asked for 400 million in the stimulus for CC and opposition by Shelby had it reduced to 50 mil.
founding, NOT FUNDING. In 2002, when SpaceX was incorporated, Musk presented development schedule that had them flying passengers to the ISS by late 2010.
I still don’t understand why the public sector has to subsidize the development of private enterprise when it will be buying the product from them for full (more like severely overblown) price.
LOL
Okay, so we’re going to build a lunar lander and go to the moon and do what?
I have a feeling NASA isn’t going to land anywhere else except back here on earth until the 2040’s or later.
They have to stay out of gravity wells to actually explore space. Landing on Luna is lunar geological exploration, not space exploration.
A new habitat facility at a Lagrange point is the next stop and bring commercial space with every step of the way.
We need to land at the edge of one of the polar sunlit craters and establish a base. Then you have light 100% of the time, and water (ice from the crater). Once that system is operational, you establish a shuttle service to/from lunar orbit using the lunar resources as fuel supply. NOW if you want to go to Mars you launch an empty Mars transfer vehicle to lunar orbit where it gets fueled. After the many months of fuelling and checkout, then the astronauts rendezvous with it in lunar orbit and leave from there.
Propellant from the Moon is way, way in the far future. If ever. For the near term propellant from the Earth will be a lot cheaper than developing cis-lunar transport infrastructure plus mining, propellant production and base/spaceport on the Moon. Especially since you need cheap heavy lift to set up and maintain cis-lunar infrastructure. Of course if there is cheap heavy lift than orbital propellant depots can be filled from Earth.
It is only far in the future because we choose to not pay for it.
There is nothing technology related to stop us from doing it right now.
Hard to see the benefit of obtaining fuel from the moon; delta-V from Moon can’t be much different from Earth.
A moon base is about as hard to justify as a Mars base, although the moon is arguably much less expensive to maintain. But saying it supports refueling just isn’t one of the argument.
You are kidding right?
So you are saying that “it does not take much more energy to launch a payload from Earth to Mars than it does to launch from the moon to Mars????”. The difference is HUGE. And the bigger difference is that you dont need to lift the hundreds of tons of fuel from the surface of the Earth. I saw a prediction that a Mars transit vehicle would need MONTHS to transit the van-allen belts to leave earth orbit if fully fueled using current rocket technology.
Launching the same vehicle unfueled to the moon would take days.
Hmm. Going from memory here, which might be (probably is) incorrect. I’m recalling comments by one of the real scientists here about the delta-V from Luna vs Earth. Thanks of the correction.
To compare apples and apples, though, I think the thread I was remembering talked about leaving earth orbit vs. leaving moon orbit.
On the larger point of utilizing lunar resources, though: at some point the Powers That Be will realize the economy of actually manufacturing in space using the materials widely available.
Here is a delta v budget for moving around in cis lunar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
Showing, if I read it correctly, that SGJ is correct, taking as the common point Earth C3 (escape velocity).
And that’s a stunning chart, too, Vlad, demonstrating out that once you are in Earth orbit the solar system is your oyster. Or something.
Once you get to earth orbit, you’re halfway to anywhere in the solar system.
(Attributed to Robert Heinlein, but without evidence.)
The US has to demonstrate its capability and superiority in space, not establish a colony as SpaceX wants to do. In addition, the US wants to foster excellence in the sciences, and advance US industry by undertaking hard (and expensive) Research and Development projects. The goal for NASA on the moon should be to demonstrate the technology needed for living off the planet (ISRU), to further enable US industry to take advantage of space natural resources. As a spin-off to this basic scientific and engineering goal, it will demonstrate the capability to operate in cis-lunar space, and be able to visit all the important locations that implies, including everything from LEO, GSO, and all the Lagrange points.
I do look forward to the new administration but if you look at the CBO charts we don’t have enough money now and we’re not going to have enough money in the future to fund humans on the moon or anywhere else for that matter.
What I hope for is the new administration to care enough to come up something clever, they’ve done it before with rovers/probes so a clever mission for the SLS/Orion is possible.
As opposed to many people I do have some faith in our Congress as I’ve seen them come up with money for missions that we thought were dead in the water.
Presidents do not lobby hard for NASA.
True. But they have to assign something for NASA to do with their human space program, that is their duty, or else totally abrogate this to Congress (which may be the best idea). So, to save face at least, the new administration will have to set some kind of goal that is hopefully more realistic than the present one.
They do pass it off to congress. Congress controls the checkbook. Congress determines who is the head of the Agency and their pick for the head manifests all the way down the line.
Every administration since Nixon has tried to bust up the congressional control after the windfall of Apollo and congress has tried to maintain that same largess as long as possible. There has always been this battle between the executive branch and congress over NASA.
The first real chink in the armor came with President Reagan and the Commercial Space Launch Act of 1984 https://en.wikipedia.org/wi… and changing the Space Act of 1958 which gave the mandates for NASA. It was amended to include:
“(c) The Congress declares that the general welfare of the United States requires that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (as established by title II of this Act) seek and encourage, to the maximum extent possible, the fullest commercial use of space.”
The next challenge came with President Clinton and the Commercial Space Act of 1998. This allowed for commercial cargo and crew.
The next President, Bush 43 tried, with “The Vision of Space Exploration” which called for no new rockets and commercial cargo and crew. That didn’t fly with Congress and the VSE was rewritten by a new Administrator brought in by Congress, This with Dr. Griffin and the 60 day study. Suddenly the EELV’s were out and in came TWO new rockets and the ESAS. President Bush did get commercial cargo started though and the Commercial Space Launch Act of 1984 was amened into the new Commercial Space Launch Act of 2004.
Now in comes the next new Executive branch member and a Bi-partisan congress ends Constellation and the President gets to start commercial crew and in trade congress gets another pork rocket to nowhere, the SLS.
What can we expect from the next Executive to the White House? I would bet that they will, in their second term, start the drive for a commercial replacement for the ISS and the cancelation of SLS.
It might fly, but with only one launch every 2 or 3 years it may not be safe unless they are going to maintain an army to produce its infrequent launches and how do you maintain competence in a workforce that only performs critical tasks every couple years?
Of course one of the arguments for Orion and for discontinuing Shuttle was how cost effective it was going to be to fly by comparison with Shuttle costs. That is not happening.
If you look at how the Russians fly inexpensively and safely, they do so by producing spacecraft, rocket motors and stages for the R7, by maintaining an assembly line, sausage factory production process; a half dozen stages and 20 main engines every launch with launches 10-12 times a year. It has been a brilliant and simple process for 50 years. Americans will be building everything almost as a one-off. It can’t get more expensive or probably less reliable.
the russian strategy is exactly the strategy of spacex. Plus throw in reusabilty and you slash prices and you own the market.
but it will be phenomenally profitable for all the contractors
It will also be one hell of a bird.
Fun to watch. And feel.
SLS and Orion development and testing feed the NASA tech database that its commercial partners have access to. I’ll bet spaceflight engineers all over the country were salivating when Orion reentered with that new heat shield, then popped their knuckles and hit the database. I think you can expect to see that tech on the first SpaceX capsule that goes to Mars. That is why I think that NASA knows that those spacecraft are just a flash in the pan but do not regard them as a waste.
Other way around. The SpaceX Dragon reusable heat shield is composed of PICA-X, a spacex upgrade of Nasa’s PICA and is currently rated for deep space re-entry and is much more advanced then Orion’s antique AVCOAT. In many ways the Dragon is far advanced over the Orion, including re-usability, propulsive landing, integrated pusher abort system.
That being said, The Dragon 2, while being offered as an interplanetary robot lander, will not be human flown as-is beyond the Moon.
Same thing for the Orion, except for the interplanetary robot probe part.
I really can’t see a thing that SLS or Orion brings to anyone in the business (except in the sense of how and what not to do under any circumstances). Almost everything about it is retro and grossly overpriced and, like the sinking vertical mega-welder and failed flotation balloons on the last flight, a poor system to emulate.
If I remember correctly, there were problems building a PICA heatshield greater than a certain size, hence why Orion used AVCOAT. Has SpaceX licked that problem?
The Orion heat shield is 5 meters in diameter.
The heatshield for MLS – Curiosity was 4.5 meters diameter PICA, reasonably similar.
The main difference is that AVCOAT can be applied across a large area in a monolithic coating.
PICA (and the more advanced, PICA-X) is applied in large tiles.
Ironically, after the Orion test flight, Nasa decided to abandon the monolithic shield and use tiled AVCOAT.
I think Mars was a shill on Obama’s part. He figured it was so far away in space and time that it would never happen without a major sustained commitment. And that is not happenning. Besides, Orion is designed for lunar flight and not for Mars trajectories. Bolden hums the Mars tantric simply because he has been ordered to do so and he is a good soldier. What we needed was leadership and we have not gotten it from this Administration, which includes Obama and Bolden.
ISS is designed to maintain crew members for a period shorter than a Mars mission will take. A meaningful and sustainable Mars program with a series of landings and slow build up of capability will require a vehicle that is either smaller and fast, powered by a propulsion system that does not yet exist, or that takes the 3 year mission time and will be something on the order of the size and complexity of an ISS. Think about the ship in The Martian film. It will fly on an Aldrin cycle from Earth orbit to Mars orbit.
A crew of 2 in something like a double ‘kissing’ Orion perhaps with a BEAM or other hab module attached will be good for nothing more than a ‘flags and footprints’ throwaway mission, which is unlikely to be supported and no more likely than Apollo to be sustained.
Administrator Bolden is personally committed to Mars as the primary goal for NASA human exploration. He does not want the agency to get trapped on the Moon.
Talk is cheap.
Easy enough to say but we need to see a logical, affordable and sustainable plan that makes this achievable.
No one has seen such a plan.
An Orion will not do it, and in fact may have no role in such a program. Especially with several other return capsules available, Orion is an expensive diversion,
A super booster might be needed, but how is it going to be used, how often, to carry what payloads?
So you are saying .. THIS President could have proposed somthing to THIS congress and they would have fell all over themselves to support it?
A congress that swore and signed a pledge to oppose EVERYTHING President Obama proposed? Even if he proposed something they favored they would still vote NO?
Gosh, I bet President Obama didn’t even understand this .. wow .. all he had to do was present the conservative republican controlled house with logical and affordable and sustainable plans and they would have jumped on board and funded it…
Obama proposed terminating Constellation and Congress saw to it that Orion was continued and SLS emerged out of Ares V. Fact was Congress wanted to make sure jobs and spending that had been ending on Shuttle and Constellation was continued in some form.
Technically, NASA leadership failed the first time when Griffin took control and proposed Apollo on steroids.
Griffin had a naive and foolish concept. He was urged on by a couple idiot astronauts who had no idea what was needed. In the case of earlier US spacecraft they went through elaborate and extensive studies to determine appropriate dimensions and configuration. They did not even think about it in the case of Orion. Griffin got support from his underlings, like Gerstenmaier. I know of other incidents where people explained to Griffin why he was wrong and he changed his mind. No one did it in the case of Orion.
If he really was going to go with a flags and footprints repeat of Apollo, the fastest and least expensive way would have been to take the original Apollo and update it. For some stupid reason he had to go with an over sized capsule-which could not fit on his rocket, which could not be made reusable, and so which had to be reduced in size and mass multiple times.
There were several times from Griffin’s steroid decision right up through 2011-12 that other alternatives could have been proposed. NASA leadership failed again when they kept on with the stupid nonreusable capsule approach. By this time Bolden and Gerstenmaier knew they had other capsules available in the form of Dragon or CST100 and they could have logically turned their attention to the long duration hab module or to a lander. But NASA leadership failed to make the appropriate changes.
“Easy enough to say but we need to see a logical, affordable and sustainable plan that makes this achievable.
No one has seen such a plan.”
Could that be because there IS no plan meeting those requirements?
And even if somebody could figure out a path to Mars meeting those necessary requirements, nobody talks about what the hell we are going to actually DO on Mars. Follow the Apollo model? Send a couple of crews to dick around and then finally send a Dr. Schmidt?
Or establish a colony? Seriously? And just how sustainable will THAT be? Transportation costs will be dwarfed by the stunning costs of sustaining people on Mars.
I wish I knew what the hell is going on because Mars as a destination makes so little sense. NASA and minions are full of smart people. Where are the ones who recall Apollo?
SLS is a lot more akin to a Polynesian outrigger than it is to an interplanetary vehicle. At least the islands had coconuts.
pfft…join the pandering, James
Jim, thanks for the insight.
This may well be his honest viewpoint. However the resources are not available to maintain a meaningful human presence on Mars with the technology that has been selected for the task.
I agree. That doesn’t change my point. Bolden isn’t “mouthing” Mars out of loyalty to Obama. He genuinely prefers Mars. Obama may not have wanted Apollo 2 to the Moon, but his problem was with Apollo 2, not with the Moon.
How many Saturn V launches could we have purchased with all the money NASA has spent on #RocketsToNowhere? You know, the Saturn V that was too expensive to keep flying? We could have done more exploring in the last 45 years with more unique missions had we not developed shuttle and the rockets to nowhere. And it would have allowed a permanent manned outpost, so Gene Cernan wouldn’t be the last man to walk on the moon.
The “if we’d only kept the Saturn V flying” argument ignores the fact that it *was* too expensive to keep flying! It would have been cancelled even without the proposed space shuttle as a replacement.
SLS/Orion is quite simply repeating this failure. The only difference is that today, there is no Cold War fueled Space Race to provide the necessary political climate. It was the unique political climate of the early 1960’s that assured virtually unlimited Apollo/Saturn development budgets. Without that sort of “blank check” funding, the SLS development schedule just keeps slipping further and further into the future.
Saturn V production was shut down in 1968, 3 years before Shuttle was approved.
Noted, but there was a bit of overlap. USAF and NASA had already been studying reentry vehicles which could land on a runway. The idea of a “space shuttle” wasn’t entirely new. Discussions concerning the need for a space shuttle in the post-Saturn V era were definitely happening in 1968. The official RFP for Phase A studies came shortly thereafter. http://history.nasa.gov/sts…
You are correct. The idea of a space shuttle goes back to the Sanger Bredt anti-podal bomber of t\he NAZIs in the 1940s.George Mueller was talking about a space shuttle as early as 1967. NASA, like most of the federal government, works to a 6 year planning horizon. NASA knew something was going to be needed if they had no Saturns to launch things into orbit..And wit Saturn production ending, and the flight run out through Apollo 20 (18-20 were cancelled later, the same time the decision was made to fly Skylab on a Saturn V) they would run out of Sagturns by about 1973.
I have to agree that this year’s budget process will likely result in more delays for CC and SLS/Orion because of Congressional fecklessness.
I take issue though with the use of the term “expensive” here. If you look at the FY2016 budget and include Orion, GSDO, and Exploration R&D the SLS program is around $4 Billion a year. That is about the same as the shuttle cost in years past. If you want to say that the program is costing as much as the shuttle I think that is a fair point. However, the tone in articles such as this make SLS out to be a huge beast costing way more than shuttle. That isn’t the case.
ISS+CC is costing $4 Billion right now. Nowhere in the article is that mentioned. Apparently that $4 Billion is not too “expensive” for Mr. Berger.
After CC is flying some of its development money should be available for the BEO program. If managed correctly NASA could get at least a toe-hold in cis-lunar space even if budgets aren’t the best.
However, NASA won’t be able to do anything meaningful BEO on a completely flat budget no matter what rocket is used.
Your last paragraph is incorrect. NASA could do much more in BEO by utilising existing and future commercial launch vehicles. There have been offers by both ULA and SpaceX to build a heavy lifter for much less however there was also far less pork and, let’s call a spade a spade, kickbacks in the form of political donations.
Cheers
Lets say that SpaceX or ULA does what you suggest and builds an HLV at much less cost. For a little while NASA would be able to do something BEO. However, as time goes on and the budget remains flat even cheap BEO options become non-viable. Inflation is a killer and with a flat budget you have less and less buying power as time goes on.
That is why I want space transportation treated like ALL other transportation systems and moved to the Dept of Transportation, they have a LOT bigger budget than NASA and could start kicking in like they do for shipping ports, roads and bridges, airports etc …
That is an interesting idea and one I’ve not heard before. I would only point out that funding for the DOT is woeful at best; everyone in the country knows that infrastructure is crumbling.
Oh. and completely off-topic: with interest rates at historical lows, why are we not bonding new bridges, roads, airports, rail lines?
Their budget is around 80 billion and they give out grants that could benefit space transporatation. Because infrastructure spending is considered socialism? If you look at the engineers report card http://www.infrastructurere…
No one can argue that ours is falling down. If you want to attract world class businesses you need world class infrastructure.
Socialism! Have to laugh when I hear that word used as an epithet. We already ARE a socialist country. Sheesh.
Oh. And thank you, everyone, for covering my recent cataract surgery, and my recent hospitalization with kidney stones 🙂
The ISS has been occupied non stop for over a decade. To compare that to SLS/Orion the make work programs that maintain jobs as the number 1 desire can hardly compare.
Are you honestly going to say, that if the Nation required heavy lift and a capsule, this is the best and best price systems American aerospace companies could come up with ?
A 17-23 BILLION dollar DISPOSABLE, four person, water landing capsule? Really?
Joe I have grown to respect a lot of your opinions, but this is an insult to American entrepreneurial spirit and drive, the ability of American capital markets, the ability and innovation of American aerospace workers and companies. For you to not be screaming and pulling your hair out over Orion is beyond me.
No, I am not saying that SLS/Orion are the best that anybody could come up with. Believe me I am quite disappointed with the way SLS/Orion are managed and how much they are costing. At this point though I still think SLS/Orion is worth it.
Here is what I am saying:
1. I think it is incorrect to treat SLS/Orion as if they are costing far more than the shuttle. They aren’t.
2. With a completely flat budget NASA will not be able to do anything meaningful in humans BEO. Even if you change architectures and assume that everything costs less than a third of the current budget eventually inflation overcomes the BEO budget.
I am not saying that SLS/Orion is the only way or anything. (Nothing else is funded at the moment though) What I am saying is that if you are arguing that NASA will always have a flat budget then arguing about SLS affordability is pointless.
3. The reason SLS/Orion is costing more than I would prefer is mismanagement on the part of some at NASA and flat funding by a Congress that treats NASA as a jobs program vs. a space program.
Funding spikes are needed on big projects in order to be able to test and build more than one thing at a time and decrease cost over time. That isn’t happening with SLS/Orion.
Fortunately that is happening with CC.
4. I believe that if SpaceX can make BFR/BFS or an enhanced FH that can match SLS/Orion then the latter should be phased out. Right now the future is not clear and I think SLS/Orion should be supported until a clear alternative emerges “on the field.”
5. I believe in the US entrepreneurial spirit and commercial companies. That is why I fully support commercial crew and NASA turning over LEO to the commercial side.
In defense of Shuttle it maintained a reasonably high flight rate despite being more complex thanSLS.
I’ve been listening to the excellent Space Rocket History podcast, now embroiled in the discussions over Apollo as we wrangled the form of the proposed program while some argued that the program was a colossal boondoggle and that the money could return far more scene without those pesky humans involved.
I mention this as a reply because your comments like this one often reflect a sense of history.
(And BTW Apollo went from a standing start to a fully functional system in 7 years and was arguably as complex as shuttle with probably more newly-invented tech).
We actually got something for the $4b a year spent on Shuttle.
You have to pay to develop something before you can use it.
Well, sure; nobody disputes that. The issue is how much one pays and for what.
In the case of SLS/Orion, the costs are seen to be so high because we finally have something to compare. Nobody knew what STS or Apollo or even Mercury might have cost under an umbrella of private/public cooperation (which would have been unthinkable at the time, admittedly).
But now we know. Oh, boy, do we ever know.
In fact, we can compare not only the costs of operating a fully functional rocket; we can also compare the costs of developing the new system. And while it’s true that the US did pay SpaceX and others some of the development costs, much of those costs were borne internally. Even if those costs were borne by the taxpayer they (the costs) were so comparatively low that SLS/Orion stands alone as a huge boondoggle.
Seriously. Watching Boeing and Mr. Bruno and the other club members representing their efforts without shame is quite a spectacle. It’s almost as if they believe what they are saying.
Which can’t be true. These are very smart people.
The entire COTS program gave us how many new launchers, new cargo vehicles, launch pad renovations, new factories built? Now toss in commercial crew and you STILL not spending as much as Congress has poured into the DISPOSABLE 4 person water landing capsule.
The disposable mind-set bugs me as well. Building so much very expensive gear for a trip to Mars and then just trashing it makes no sense and it is why Mars will not be a colony until the 2080s, if then.
The mindset must change. Something akin to an Aldrin shuttle, or other true spaceship with rendezvous at both ends will make expansion much more affordable in the long run.
It’s not without huge problems, true, but the effort to resolve those problems moves the ball forward in was that disposing of equipment worth tens of millions will never do.
To reuse hardware, you need to be able to refuel it. Developing LEO fuel depots would be a step in that direction. In-situ fuel manufacturing at Mars would be the next logical step after that.
Next up should be commercial HLV. I’d like to see Falcon Heavy and Vulcan Heavy competing for launches. Real competition does wonders for lowering costs and shortening schedules.
Yeah and cringe when I see Bruno and his cronies applauding every time they succeed with a 500 million dollar launch.
Gives “laughing all the way to the bank” a whole new order of magnitude. Or several orders.
A typical design review of small SLS component consists of 30 Boeing folks and 10 NASA folks 9 with no experience in the component. Little gets done, questions go unanswered. Go figure the bill for a component is astronomical. Boeing has a long experience of surgically removing every nickel NASA has before anything gets built.
oops
🙁 Perhaps it’s time to use the RS-25 engines on some sort of Delta IV derivative if they’re gonna chuck them away anyhow, and cut their losses… Or in the next administration; ask an ESA/JAXA/Commercial alliance to build a Lander and combined with America’s SLS and Orion ‘Mothership’ aim for the Lunar South Pole – as it always should have been, and leave Mars to Elon Musk!! In fact, building three separate small 4x person ‘Wildeness Cabin’ Habitats to be man-tended at different times could allow three very interesting areas of the Moon to be explored on a rotating schedule – I suggest one polar, one middle latitude (like Apollo) and one on the Farside.
Except ULA is discontinuing the Delta IV because it is far too expensive. Although Vulcan is still under development, ULA does have plans for a “heavy” version of Vulcan to replace the Delta IV Heavy.
NASA could save a boat load of money by purchasing “commercial” Vulcan Heavy and Falcon Heavy launches instead of spending billions each year on SLS. With some of the savings, it could develop LEO fuel depot technology to refuel the Vulcan and Falcon upper stages, further increasing their ability to perform beyond LEO missions.
I totally agree with much of what you say – from Depots to NASA procuring commercial launchers etc. However, I don’t consider the Vulcan project to be a sure thing at all yet and Falcon Heavy may not have as bright a future as has been previously hyped. And my remark about the RS-25s and Delta IV had more to do with not seeing those engines merely end up in museums if SLS goes belly-up.
RS-25 is an engine ill suited for much of anything new, IMHO. Yes it’s high thrust and high ISP, but it’s also powered by LH2. LH2 is more expensive than hydrocarbon fuels for first/core stages. The downside for the RS-25 as a possible upper stage engine is that it was never designed for air-start (which is one of the reasons it was dropped as the upper stage engine for Ares I).
Yes, I’m aware of all that. I followed closely (and critiqued) Constellation from day one a decade or more ago.
yikes.
The United Stated is determined to build it’s own N-1.
The best way to prove past History was wrong, is to keep repeating it!
Once upon a time we used to have budget sand charts for these big programs like SLS, like the sand charting done in the Constellation program, and many studies before that. Gerst put a stop to that, knowing all this accomplished was to show clearly just how SLS and Orion were unsustainable. Today we still hear certain myths being propagated by SLS defenders, like that the SLS flight rate will be two a year, and the distraction that this will be difficult due to some budget being flat. The real SLS Orion issues are much worse, and much nearer.
The SLS Orion programs will nominally (highest likelihood), assuming a flat-ish budget, launch once around the late 20-teens, again by about 2023-ish, and then once more before 2028, with that last date marking a notional end of life for ISS.
That’s 3 launches of SLS in the next 13 years. Yes, 3. Not once a year. Not twice a year after 2021. Just 3. Or about 0.2-ish decimal something a year after it’s initial flight.
During this time most everyone in the SLS and Orion programs will retire, demographics being …what’s that saying…destiny.
Senator Shelby in 2024 and that 2nd launch will be 90 – and unlikely to still be around as defender.
The commercial crew vehicles by the early 2020’s will be in their regular routine one can expect, arising questions about what Orion is doing, nearly 20 years into it’s funding having flown only a couple of times.
Who will want to be the President that de-orbits the Space Station, saying were putting that money towards some ship that will be ready only by the time today’s new hires are contemplating retirement. More importantly, who wan’t to be the President who say’s it’s time to de-orbit the space station so that another President can maybe test a Mars ship in Lunar orbit. Or is it more likely a President sometime says do something that shows real progress – in my time.
It’s very likely as well that LEO activity will increase around the ISS, that even it’s end will leave many strong advocates of a new co-development, or partnership with NASA, to support private stations.
So this Mars plan’s delusions that somehow this is about just waiting for ISS dollars to build payloads for SLS will be shown that day to have been as ill-conceived as many deny today. Sure, will the advocates of SLS be around to hear this? Probably not.
A good space expansion plan would have ingredients that build on trends and make for a self-reinforcing approach that grows stakeholders, rather than protecting un-productive stakeholders from past programs, which is the only purpose of SLS and Orion.
Denial is strong though, and some people (with cognitive dissonance at it’s best!) actually think SLS and Orion are good choices by Congress, and they’ll go along and cheer, and put down the detractors.
We’ll see what the historians write about what happened. Though I have to admit, I doubt even the advocates of business-as-usual, SLS and Orion and their cadre, will ever admit they were wrong, no matter what happens. After all, if only we had never canceled the Saturn V …and we could have won in Vietnam too, if only this, or that…followed by a long list of how things could have worked out, in an alternate reality where they work out (circular arguments and all).
Great post and points.
B…b…b…but we want to go to Mars!
ooop’s
This is a biblical post…
One of the biggest errors in the arguments constantly used against SLS is the assumption that NASA will always have a flat budget – it was $17.6B in FY14 and it’s $19.3B now with $19B proposed for FY17, a number that could well go up thanks to a friendly Congress. If we ever want to go beyond Earth orbit, we have to get out of the stupid “flat is the new up” mentality and increase NASA’s budget. The real problem with SLS is we are starving its development; if we could develop Space Shuttle in five years even at budgets well below the Apollo, the only reason we can’t have SLS sooner and cheaper is foot dragging by the Obama Administration which has never wanted a new heavy lift rocket.
” if we could develop Space Shuttle in five years even at budgets well below the Apollo”
Back in those days there was a huge infrastructure from machine shops, skilled people, test facilities, lots of old guys with direct experience developmental programs, etc. It seems much of that is lost so it takes so much longer to get anything done. i.e. years to build just a few F35s where back in 1970s they were cranking out F14s and F15s like Toyota cranking out Corollas.
True and part of a much larger problem.
We talk a lot around her about the loss of skills, both STEM and in the shop. The issue is wider than that: the political direction of our country is diverted because education has become at once devalued and expensive. We have the uninformed voting, in other words. The uninformed, so feared by the right, has been manipulated into thinking that they, too, can become rich in America through hard work, but those days are over.
At the same time, as Tim Cook points out as he defends Apple’s policy of building iPhones in China, a situation where the number of qualified American vocational workers is far too low to support global manufacturing. “It’s not profit”, he points out.
A few decades ago there was much talk about the “information age”; it’s actually the “financial age”, a country dominated by uneducated masses and largely controlled by so-called “Investors” who create nothing but obscure paper to enrich each other. And it is unsustainable.
The fundamental strength of society, as the Germans are showing again, is in the ability to invent and make things. We have lost that ability in every namable industry.
From what I have experienced directly and see on a daily basis, NASA has been part and parcel to what you speak of and NASA has helped to devalue skills and experience. Twenty years ago I saw shops and labs shut down so that NASA could no longer produce things themselves. For at least the last decade I have seen people placed into leadership positions who had no substantive or demonstrated ability in the areas they were supposed to be competent in. For awhile we heard that competence and experience in engineering or design was not that important because we were responsible for operations and we were not designing or building anything. Then Shuttle and most of operations it required went away. Then we heard that NASA was mainly responsible for contracting with industry to design, develop and produce. So most of the NASA people were mainly contract managers and had no direct experience in R&D. Lately they have been trying to hire some new people who might be able to do the job but still we have 10 or more years of management who have no idea what their people ought to be doing.
“shops and labs shut down”
I heard 20 years ago, all techs had to attend week long soldering class every year to maintain certification.
Virtually all hands-on Shuttle work was done by USA contractors, who were later laid off.
At JSC there was still civil servant hands on capability through the mid 1990s and in a few areas right up to present day. STSOC and USA, I am becoming convinced, was a fiasco to try and shut down NASA JSC capabilities and turn it all over to contractors. Many managers predicted this would be disastrous for JSC in 1985 when the move was started. Now everyone knows, this was a dumb move.
“It is rare to find people than can be able to build with their and hands and have the discipline and have the drive to keep up with the calculations and the math” Video: Ligo: A passion for Understanding” starting about 10:55. Why does the USG take both away from very talented folks?
http://www.ligo.org/
When you lose focus on the hardware and math, many bad things can happen and when you dumb down the science and engineering, its higher costs and less productivity. Most companies charge what the the market will bear BTW. So let’s turn NASA over to the industry, let it be run by lawyers and MBAs. Caution: If you don’t know what the job entails, you will likely be ripped off when you go out for bid, but it will be great revenue for many companies.
It was a dumb move much like the Kansas Experiment and it was instigated from the same mind set.
Yep, back then having the NASA High Reliability Soldering Class was REQUIRED for electronic techs working for NASA. That went away in the mid-90s.
NASA Training Program Student Workbook for Hand Soldering. In Accordance With NASA-STD-8739.3 December 1997
125 page PDF (1.9MB) document with the NASA worm,
https://www.protostack.com/…
Soldering has changed since I put together my last amateur radio transmitter, but still Soldering?
This hit the nail on the head. NASA should be hiring MBA’s, lawyers and lobbyists.
This hit the nail on the head. NASA needs to hire more MBA’s and lawyers and fewer technical folks.
I am a big fan of Mike Rowe’s efforts to support skilled workers, the heart of a modern civilization:
http://profoundlydisconnect…
In addition to lots of old guys, also add back then there were lots of young guys with electronics and machine shop training from high school shop classes and the military (I recall hearing this guy talk about i 1960s being one of 10,000 privates learning about electronics and radar in Biloxi).
”With the cuts to both SLS and Orion in the Administration’s FY 2017 budget you can expect…” that the State of NASA is NOT strong, well guided nor prosperous (http://spaceref.com/news/vi…. Are we condemned to ride this continuously reinvented and misguided wheel indefinetly?
Yes.
Sadly, Keith is right.
Very well said Keith! You could have posted that every 4 years starting in the 1970s and been completely accurate. Unfortunately, I have a sinking feeling you can post it every 4 years from now until the day you die – regardless of your life span – and still be completely accurate. I hope you live long enough to say, “See, I told you so…many many times.”
Actually I DO know something about the “mental state” of Romans in the decades BCE; a parallel to Mr. Trump would be difficult to defend.
BTW – I much appreciate your use of the non-offensive convention of BCE (and the implied CE)! I also like use of BP and YA (those units make you really appreciate how old Stonehenge or the pyramids are)
we’re of the same tribe, dude.
While looking through the Augustine Committee report I found this, a commercial EELV-derived HLV alternative to the Shuttle-derived and Ares-V derived concepts that I didn’t even know they seriously considered, which in some ways anticipates the FH:
“The EELV-heritage super heavy would represent a new way of doing business for NASA, which would have the benefit of potentially lowering development and operational costs. The Committee used the EELV heritage super-heavy vehicle to investigate the possibility of an essentially commercial acquisition of the required heavy launch capability by a small NASA organization similar to a system program office in the Department of Defense. It would eliminate somewhat the historic carrying cost of many Apollo- and Shuttle-era facilities and systems. This creates the possibility of substantially reduced operating costs, which may ultimately allow NASA to escape its conundrum of not having sufficient resources to both operate existing systems and build a new one.”
https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/39…
Good find.
I’ve been mulling over the comments about NASA’s loss of in-house machine shops and the like. To someone not involved, I wonder how this is different from the way the military develops and then acquires hardware? Is the process necessarily the wrong approach? Are there insurmountable obstacles to cost and product control? Is the feedback loop from shop floor to acquisitions manager irreparably broken with this process?
I understand that the shift away from in-house capability and towards commercialization was part of a larger effort to ‘harness’ the private sector; there is a sensibility that somehow private enterprise can do it better, faster, cheaper. That hasn’t worked out very well for the country at large, although a few big companies have shown what can happen.
In Mercury days, NASA designed and built the first Mercury prototypes in their own shops, and then once they understood what was required-configuration, materials, design, etc., they turned it over to contractors. NASA was a smart buyer and knew as well as anyone what was needed.
Right up through Shuttle, Shuttle-Mir and early Station days, when hardware was needed, or even if engineers wanted to try out new concepts, designs and hardware options, these could be built in NASA shops at little marginal expense. Most of the current design of the ISS was built first as low fidelity prototypes by NASA. It always took many attempts to develop, test and compare different configurations before a design was selected. There were carefully done trade studies.
Compare that to Constellation/Orion; requirements were poorly defined; there was no effort made to assess how large a spacecraft was required. There was no attempt made to assess the mass properties of a poorly defined configuration. There was no assessment of whether the incompletely defined over-sized capsule could fit and be carried on the intended booster. This sent them into a series of do-loops in which the capsule and booster were chasing their tails. NASA, having little idea of what a spaceship should cost, surrendered to Lockheed Martin.
In the case of Station, about 8 or 10 different configurations of modules, nodes, cupola, etc were built full scale before a design was selected, and then the contractors bid on that design or identified changes they felt were required and the rationale for the changes. On Station, when the contractors bid, NASA personnel could identify whether the RFP requirements were met and whether the costs the contractors were quoting were reasonable.
In the case of Orion, a spacecraft size was selected and some crude artwork provided; contractors bid and the prime contractor was selected, and then they started mocking up different capsule configurations to see what it might look like and what was actually required. The process was backwards. How could the contractor or NASA have any idea of how much the project was even going to cost? Yet the cost was determined when the contract was signed, years earlier.
When the NASA shops were done away with, then you couldn’t design, build or test anything without somehow knowing in advance the design details which often were not obvious, writing requirements which often no one had thought about, and going through a procurement process….this could take months or even years instead of days or weeks. It encouraged endless trips before management boards for review and what was being reviewed was someone’s incomplete thoughts instead of well thought out, already vetted designs and prototype hardware.
That is what you get when program managers were put in place who had no experience ever designing or building anything.
When the in-house capability was present it encouraged the engineers to think, design, build and test for themselves.
Once you could no longer do it yourself and at little expense, engineers were encouraged to be contract managers overseeing the design and development of hardware they knew little about..
One should point out that the Great Shift at NASA occurred because “the private sector can do better”.
You point out that this isn’t always the case. As I read through your piece I imagined a contractor building prototypes based on performance specs- and poor ones at that.
It’s been proven, even to this lefty, that the private sector is superior in many instances. Developments in the space sector are dramatic evidence and have given us Mr. Bezos, Mr. Musk, et. al.
And yet your comments about prototyping in-house also ring true.
If you tell Mr. Musk, for instance: “Build us a rocket and capsule to take us to Mars”, he will do it, is doing it, and at a stunning price.
If you tell the Tres Amigos the same thing they are also doing it and at a price that is also, well, stunning.
What’s the difference? Why are the outcomes so disparate?
I don’t think anyone is going to Mars for a long time. Mr. Musk’s capsule is no more likely to take anyone to Mars than is Orion.
Manned capsules have been flying for more than 50 years. They should not require a lot of new technology.
The value of government vs commercial industry should be compared and each should be used in optimal fashion. In establishing design standards and requirements, particularly in areas where the mission and technology are new, that is a good place for government to lead the way, particularly in spaceflight where industry and private parties usually are not going to pay for these. Where the technology is well established and the goal is to efficiently build new hardware, especially if it to be mass produced over a lengthy period of time, that is where industry should lead.
NASA has become confused over the last 20 years. It needs to figure out its proper role.
I mean, there’s nothing NASA can do since it doesn’t have the money. Mars is a half trillion dollar mission so it’s dead in the water for decades.
Yes, Charlie Bolden says we’re going to Mars in the 2030’s but that’s just BS and he knows it.
Mars is a trillion dollar enterprise if it’s approached with a half-dozen SLS launches, or more, plus billions in single-use high tech devices.
Approached in a different way it could be much more sustainable, as far as I can see.
Heard of MCT and MCS?
Cheers.
?? no idea what you are referring to?
‘Mars Colonial Transport’ – a B.F.Rocket Elon Musk intends to build in the 2020s. If the hype is real, this will be a LOX/Methane powered huge, reusable system that might undercut SLS financially and dwarf performance-wise. Also, his Dragon capsules were never intended to solely transport humans to Mars, if I’m understanding your statement correctly.
Read the history of NACA. http://www.history.nasa.gov…
Generally the most effective strategy utilized by NACA/NASA, DARPA, NIH and the technology developement elements of DOE, NIST, FAA, DOT and other federal agencies has been when they worked in partnership with private industry to advance technology that would provide practical benefits for America. NACA focussed in house on basic and applied research and long range R&D, and provided funding to industry to build prototype vehicles. It was up to industry to find customers.
Thanks for that and I did read it. Digestion will take some time.
I think NASA is going through the same sort of self-delusion that it did during the development of the space shuttle. During that time, many within the program actually believed the public facing propaganda that there would be a shuttle lifting off from the US every two weeks. The propaganda was even embedded in the program’s launch designations (STS or Space Transportation System). Unfortunately, it took the Challenger disaster to bring everyone to their senses and realize that there were not only huge technical problems, but programmatic and budgetary problems as well. It took an infusion of cash and a few years just to get the program flying again. But ultimately, this led to Titan IV, Atlas V and Delta IV, since the space shuttle would no longer be tasked with simply launching satellites.