Radical Shift in SLS Launch Plans Discussed at MSFC (Update)
(revised) @NASA MSFC Center Director Todd May has talked to #NASA employees about new plans for the first 4 @NASA_SLS flights to be on identical rockets with @NASA_Orion but without crew. The first launch would be in 2021. First launch with a crew would be EM-5 in 2025/26 #34SS pic.twitter.com/z9DKCsciNe
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) April 16, 2018
Per our earlier tweet about @NASA_SLS changes, @NASA PAO says "Todd May says this is not what’s being discussed for the first flights of SLS. He says he never said no crew on these flights." That said @NASAWatch stands by its earlier tweet.
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) April 16, 2018
Orion is looking more and more like the capsule that will never fly. It would be funny if it wasn’t burning through so many tax dollars.
Maybe SpaceX will make NASA a good deal for delivering the Orion to lunar orbit on one of its regular lunar base supply runs. It could then pick it up on the return trip and land it at the spaceport. Or if NASA is still worried about the risks of a landing on rockets like the BFR it could just drop it off in Earth orbit on its way to the spaceport and NASA could enjoy doing a old 1960’s style re-entry and splashdown with it. 🙂
So, one SLS launch per year of an empty Orion capsule, for four years, at presumably something like the current $4.5 billion baseline annual funding.
One way of looking at it is that four uncrewed test flights with no major configuration changes before the first crewed flight is a far more realistic approach than the previous plan, given the specific issues that have been piling up and the general unknowns of flying a major new launch system.
From a cost-effectiveness angle though, that’s three years before first flight, plus four annual uncrewed test flights, plus one or two more years for the first crewed flight, at $4.5 billion-plus per year. Ignoring the huge sunk cost, that’s $36 billion ($4.5G/yr, 8 years) to $43 billion (the current overall total $4.8G/yr, 9 years) in future (and thus still optional and redirectable) costs to reach first crewed SLS/Orion flight.
Even if they were trying to, it’s hard to see how they could do a better job of calling into question whether this is a wise use of near half of NASA Human Spaceflight’s likely funding for the next nine years.
actually .. this would use up all the old engines.. 16 .. on four identical flights and would not have to worry about human ratings AT ALL and then 2025.. right about the time SpaceX is planning BFR(S)
it would actually save money potentially because there would be no block 1b or a pad renovation?:
SpaceX is moving ahead at full speed on the BFR, building the prototype in a tent while the factory is being built. Yes, in a tent…
https://www.teslarati.com/s…
SpaceX moving fast on Mars rocket development, BFR tent spied with more tooling
By Eric Ralph
Posted on April 15, 2018
If it was NASA they would spend a year or so designing the building, then another year or two building it. I mean, imagine them building a Saturn V class rocket in a tent…
But that is not the SpaceX way. No Building! No Problem! Put up a tent and move forward! The BFR will be in routine service long before a crewed Orion is flown on the Great and Powerful SLS. 🙂
Again, Elon Musk has become fed up with the NASA way and he is very very motivated to leave NASA in the Martian Dust… And he has the money to do it.
If memory serves, some of the early work on the Mercury capsule was done in a previously empty and spare warehouse. That’s not a tent, but it also isn’t the way NASA would do things today.
Yes, it was a very young and creative organization then not burden by bureaucrats. Now it would probably take longer to get permission to use that warehouse than to build a new one.
Well, I don’t know how much of that is true; but I do wonder about the reaction around the country, in the vanilla press, and in the space press, if NASA actually did do something like that.
Keep believing that
Well, maybe for a very odd definition of “saving money”. It could well be a matter of trimming out program elements that otherwise require adding yet more billions to what’s already approaching $5G/year.
The recent discussion of postponing EUS could be taken the same way. Perhaps they’re now realizing that the current program structure will eat the current budget indefinitely, so that new elements – EUS, the new EUS tower, and as you indicate perhaps new-production son-of-SSME engines – simply can’t be ramped up?
Something similar killed Constellation. It’s not a huge stretch to guess that essentially the same development organization may again be running into essentially the same problem.
“this would use up all the old engines”
This heartbreaking truth is one we overlook.
One of the finest and most reliable rocket engines ever created. Reusable.
And splashed.
I don’t think that they will be launching Orions on the those flights. More likely they will be launch modules for the next great money pit, the LOP-G.
Yes, the first crew Orion will be launching on a rocket with brand “new engines”, but since its NASA it will be OK…
Two things
One, in Keith’s tweet, four flights of identical configs with Orion, 2021-2024 is specified.
Two, given NASA HSF’s current development model track record, no way LOP-G modules will be ready for launch that soon. (As best I can tell they don’t even plan to seriously ramp up LOP-G funding till Station’s notional commercialization funding-phaseout in 2024.)
Now, given that MSFC has already denied saying this (me, I trust Keith’s sources) it’s a mostly moot point. Best perhaps to think of this as a clue as to what sort of problems they’re now trying to solve at SLS/Orion HQ.
Yeah. No LOP-G modules are even funded at this point. And you can’t just develop and whip those together in a few years – not on a FAR contract.
And not the way that NASA does big projects. The ISS took 15 years from the first studies to first module. The Orion capsule has been under development for over a decade. So you are probably look at a dozen years or so if NASA puts the LOP-G on the fast track to build 🙂
FAR or not, you can’t start building without a design, and you can’t start designing without some idea of what the thing is supposed to do. NASA can take the process of defining requirements to excess, but some level of detail really is necessary.
NASA put out some study contracts last November for the Power and Propulsion Element, and they were supposed to take four months. But those were five parallel studies for half a million each. In NASA terms, those sound like they would be pre-Phase A studies. For an unmanned spacecraft, that’s about a year of work short of having a well-defined concept. I.e. defined well enough to start working on the preliminary design.
Well said. We’re talking several years from the word “go” to have actual flight hardware, minimum. Even if it were approved TODAY, it’s hard to see how anything could be ready to fly when the third, fourth flights of SLS are supposed to go up (even allowing for inevitable delays).
They’re obviously trying to buy some time by offering to let commercial contractors build their own power modules and launch them (presumably on Space Act agreements), but those aren’t supposed to be going up on SLS anyway.
Your second graf:
Is this another way of saying “well, yea, but NASA is bound by an obligation to seek some sort of consensus, and others are not”?
I wasn’t thinking of that. The NASA process, with multiple parallel pre-phase A and sometimes parallel phase A studies, does help build some sort of consensus. They are reviewed and competitively selected; even if NASA doesn’t select your idea, they did at least consider it.
But even if you dropped that, and did away with the months involved in writing proposals, and reviewing and selecting them, there is still a certain, minimum amount of work required to flesh out an idea. The engineers working on the power system need some idea of how much power the spacecraft will use; the propulsion systems can’t be designed without knowing if the requirement is just needed for station keeping or, if so, what orbit will it be on, how long before refuelings, etc.
At a normal level of effort, I’d expect that to take a year or more. With a crash program, you can do some things in parallel and duplicate effort (i.e. develop two solutions to the same problem rather than working out in advance which one is most promising and then only working on that.) Or you could settle for minimum functionality and a just-good-enough-to-work design (as opposed to an optimized one) and plan on building a second one incorporating lessons learned. The former is expensive and the later isn’t how NASA does things. But either one could shave time off the design and development process.
“The engineers working on the power system need some idea”
My work frequently involves preparing something called ‘look sees’. Developers will option a piece of property, and then ask me what they can do with it.
I give them a range of solutions, and sometimes, alternatives within each solution: high density single family, low density single family, attached product, detached villa, etc. In the case of commercial property, same applies, though here comprehensive plans tend to limit the choices.
I simply start with an assumption and run with it. Then change the assumption. Repeat as needed.
How is this different?
It’s pretty similar, but NASA does things in a more formal and structured way. I’m assuming your look see wouldn’t be too detailed, since your customer wouldn’t expect blueprints before he decided if he wanted residential or dual use residential/commercial, or houses or condos.
Let me try to do the analogy. A pre-phase A concept would be more or less like the look see you describe. NASA would probably have different people do each of the different concepts separately. NASA might pay for the work, or it might be done for free (well on your own dime) as part of writing a proposal. At this point, the concepts aren’t very detailed; it’s more a proof that something along those lines will fit in the planned budget and schedule and would be worth doing.
Phase A would be when NASA selects a few of the proposals or pre-phase A concepts, and it would require more detail. That would be like what you’d do once the developer says he wants mixed condos and commercial (e.g. restaurants and shops.) You’d do various trade studies, over how many units, how many one, two or three bedroom units, large versus small shops, where to put the parking (zoning in Boulder, at least, requires developments to worry about that.) But you wouldn’t start working on blueprints and probably not even floor plans.
Phase B is when the details from the Phase A study are approved and finalized. Then you do start working on the details, but not too specifically. That’s developing a preliminary design and the analogy would be things like the floor plans and the landscaping (but not down to the specific species of tree and flower.)
After the preliminary design review and a key decision point (approval), the real design work start. Phase C is where you do things like the actual engineering diagrams and circuit designs and the analogy would be the blueprints, where the pluming is going, where to run the wires, etc. Basically getting plans that you could hand off to the builders.
So I’m saying this Deep Space Gateway or whatever, is probably done with the pre-phase A or look see. At least it should be based on the contracts for studies they put out last November and which would have been due last month. They still have to do phase A and B before they can even start work on the blueprints, and I’d expect that to take a couple years. (Assuming it’s done according to usual NASA schedules and practices.)
“you can’t just develop and whip those [LOP-G modules] together in a few years”
That’s what we used to say about medium duty orbital launch systems.
That is really interesting as Lockheed has just started construction of the version of Orion Capsule that will carry astronauts for EM-2. If they are going to be flying Orion capsules every year after EM-1 they better get busy building them as it appears they only have funds for the EM-2 Orion.
https://newatlas.com/orion-…
“This week, Lockheed Martin technicians and engineers welded together the first two components of the Orion crew capsule for Exploration Mission-2 (EM-2), which will carry astronauts beyond low Earth orbit for the first time in almost 50 years.”
There also appears to be major differences between the EM-1 Orion and EM-2 Orion.
“For example, look at the progress we’ve made on the EM-2 pressure vessel compared to the first one we built. The latest version is 30 percent lighter and has 80 percent fewer parts. That equates to a substantially more cost-effective and capable spacecraft.”
In other words, the Orion design is still evolving rapidly. Perhaps that is a factor in the – trial balloon? thinking out-loud? – about flying Orion uncrewed four times. Give the capsule designers time for working out bugs in flight test and arriving at a stable configuration?
At the current $1.35 billion/year, they ought to be able to build one Orion per year… Perhaps the thought is, give them production practice.
Also possibly a factor: No other potential SLS Block 1 payload is likely to be ready in that time frame. Flying one SLS per year with nothing but ballast on board would be embarrassing. Not flying at ~$4-$5 billion a year would also be embarrassing. So, fly Orions?
All speculative, of course, absent more data.
As a side note, if the first crewed Orion isn’t launched until the 2025/2026 it means it would have taken Lockheed and NASA 20 years from the first contact to build it to its first crew mission. That is a period of time equal to the period between the first sub-orbital flight of Alan Shepard and the first orbital flight of the Space Shuttle.
Thank you.
I’ve not [yet] found a single project descriptor not worthy of laughing out loud.
You have to wonder how people go to work everyday, etching their talents being squandered.
As long as we are ‘comparing’, let’s ask Boeing how they designed a brand new jetliner and got the 80% reduction before any metal was welded.
Define insanity on a bun …
American space policy …
No, NASA HSF, lost in the past like an old silent movie star…
To be fair it’s Congress ordering them to do it. Surely they would not choose to otherwise.
To be blunt, Congress didn’t order them to do it badly.
Agreed. The interim Saturn upper stage (used on Saturn I) was LOX/LH2 powered by six RL-10 engines. The fact that it’s taking NASA far too long and far too much money to create the RL-10 powered Exploration Upper Stage is bizarre at best and incompetent at worst.
It usually takes longer to recreate outdated technology than it did to build the original. The reason is that you simply don’t have the industrial base and experienced experts available at the time it was designed over 50 years ago. Plans are good, but the skills to build to them have to be recreated all over. Look at how long it takes to make replica biplanes from WWI replica steam engines as an example.
They’re not recreating outdated technology, though. There are no plans to go back to the old Saturn RL-10 stage.
What they’re doing is managing the EUS project the same way they always manage projects in recent decades. Picking a contractor with no recent hydrogen experience is icing on the cake.
Boeing is designing the SLS upper stage. They originally did the Delta IV’s LOX/LH2 RL-10 powered upper stages. In fact, a modified version of that same stage Delta IV upper stage is the basis of the SLS interim upper stage. So, it still seems quite odd that the Exploration Upper Stage is this far behind schedule. On the upside, I’m sure Boeing is making quite a bit of profit on this contract.
😛
Is ‘laughable’ the word you are looking for?
Time to kill it and focus on the things in HSF we can do with commercial rockets.
SpaceDevelopment.org
We can do a whole lot with near-term commercial launchers and landers. In fact, we can do just about everything including settlement.
Well, let’s assume that at least *some* of these four Block 1 flights are uncrewed. What would go on them, exactly?
1) EM-1 is the first uncrewed test flight – we know about that.
2) Congress requires, by law, NASA to fly the Europa Clipper on SLS. Eric Berger’s article today confirms that Culberson and Shelby are dead serious about this. So that’s likely two.
But what would go up on any additional SLS Block 1 flights, if not crew? It looks like the power module(s) will go up on commercial. So if there’s any additional payloads for uncrewed flights, what *are* those payloads?
P.S. Do I understand that May is saying that EM-1 is now going up in 2021 when he apparently claims “The first launch would be in 2021”? Or is this the first post-EM-1 flight?
The headline says it is a radical change in plan. But remember, NASA hasn’t built a real rocket since the Shuttle over four decades ago, so it’s understandable they are having problems learning how to do it…
No. They dont have to learn how to do it. They have to rely on their Washington overlords direction, which changes like the wind every 4-8 years.
Quite honestly if you look at the records of any and ALL of the NASA human space flight managers, not a single one of them, from the last Administrator, to the current Associate Administrator Gerstenmaier, to the recent Program Managers have ever designed, developed or built anything. A few came out of ISS and were handed some parts of spaceships their predecessors designed or built; the last US built module was the US Lab in the late 1990s, 20 years ago. All of the more recent human spaceship modules were built by ESA, which is apparently why they keep bartering with the internationals for them to provide modules like the Orion service module, because quite honestly no one in the US has done anything in multiple decades. Unfortunately the services they bartered were Shuttle launches and they ran out of those a long time ago, and more recently they have been bartering crew positions which is why the US is down to only 1 crewmember on board ISS for most increments. It is really all they have left to offer.
Most of the people with any experience in NASA came out of operations where they were handed spaceships built by prior generations and procedures written by prior generations and told to go fly. No wonder they keep repeating the mantra “space is hard”, because they really have no clue of how to do it. The current state of the program is the result. Failure has become the only option. The US leadership in human spacecraft now lies with Space X, Boeing and Sierra Nevada.
As far as Orion, remember it was, in 2006, safe, simple and soon and was going to be flying in 2011. It has now slipped more in schedule than gotten closer to flight. I remember when Mark Geyer told Norm Augustine that Orion would be orbiting the moon in 2013. Sally Ride responded that her estimate was more likely 2018. 2018 has now come and gone and at the rate they are going 2022 might not be a safe bet.
Europa clipper and then the lander would consume two SLS but ICPS would be a longer flight
If you are willing to accept a longer flight, can get Clipper there on an Atlas V 551. There really aren’t many options for the trajectory. Once you aren’t able to launch on a direct trajectory, the next fastest option requires a substantially smaller rocket. I suppose a SLS Block 1 (not 1B) could be used, but it would have payload mass to spare (to put it mildly). Not enough to launch Clipper and the planned lander together, but way more than you’d need for just Clipper. That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense compared to using an Atlas.
Or use FH which is already available and which has almost the same payload available as the SLS.
Official word denies the uncrewed part…but not the 2021 part or the 4 missions ahead of LOP-G part.
Kicking the can down the road to Mars.
they just recently moved EM-1 into 2020 officially what is driving another year delay in the first flight?
There was reporting on software issues.
We should start measuring the days to EM1 in planned FH flights. Right now it’s just three (2018 till maybe early 2019).
If we start measuring it in BFR flights, then what happens?
Someone needs to put this broke-down horse down.
Please?
Sounds like a safer flight test plan. As to cost, I would prefer you only fly humans when you have to. http://Www.robert-w-jones.com
I’m thinking that someone over at NASA should follow Mr. Musk’s Twitter feed.
Building the second mobile launcher for Block 1B is what is enabling this path. They won’t have to modify the first mobile launcher until after the fourth flight. Was the second mobile launcher authorized specifically for this path? Or did this path get chosen after Congress unexpectedly gifted NASA the new launcher?
With the delays on EUS and possibly steady progress on New Glenn and
BFS/BFR it will make for some interesting discussions in the next few
years before Block 1B is flying.
And it occurs to me that leaking a plan to fly four uncrewed Orions on the first four SLS flights, then denying it, does something useful (to the program at least.)
Tower aside, they seem to be having some sort of problem with the Block 1B EUS upper stage. (Development issues? Funding issues? All of the above? Insufficient data.) Absent EUS to support Europa Clipper, it looks as if they will have no payloads ready for SLS Block 1 but Orion through at least the mid-2020’s.
Assume now that the stand-down problem is real – not flying SLS for years at a time will lead to safety problems as the operating staff get rusty (as well as the obvious political problems with nothing flying for billions a year.)
So they have to fly SLS Block 1, more or less annually, starting two-three years from now. They’ll have nothing to fly on SLS but Orion, and no place really to fly it to, for years afterward. How to make that look halfway reasonable?
Leak something even more unreasonable, flying those Orions-to-nowhere empty, then back away from that. They’ll have crew on board after all! A destination or purpose, no – but astronauts will fly!
But absent surprises it really does look like Orion/SLS is going to be a “rocket to nowhere” for a good part of the coming decade.
Back in Apollo the public interest for landing on the moon was waning by Apollo 13(pre O2 tank explosion) and NASA was the only game in town. This time even if they manage to put some crew on em-2, 3 and 4 not sure how palatable four apollo 8 missions will be given by then other space agencies and commercial companies will also potentially be doing things with crews. How many new earth rises justify the continuation of sls and Orion if they can’t actually build a lunar space station or go to the surface of the Moon?
On a related note, does anyone know what the press coverage for Apollo 9 and 10 was like? That might be some guide to what public interest in a Orion-only EM-2, -3 and -4 would be like.
A podcast called Space Rocket History chronicles every NASA HSF mission, including the development of the early boosters. Most of the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo launches are the subject of many podcasts; they’ve reached Apollo 12. None focus specifically on press coverage, but many reproduce contemporaneous news broadcasts. The website includes additional material.
Website: http://spacerockethistory.com
I was 11 and an avid fan of the space program. Watched every TV broadcast and cut out every newspaper article for a scrapbook. We only got one channel clearly, CBS and Walter Cronkite. NBC had lots of static. TV coverage of Apollo 9 and 10 was good, just not continuance, jus special reports and key mission milestones. Without a recorder these were hard to see if you had to go to school during the day.. There are some youtube videos of Walter Cronkite special reports. You can judge for yourself. I think the media coverage was more in-depth than what we see after Apollo, with details on the vehicles, the astronauts and the significance of what is being achieved, except SpaceX that provides their own narrative. The EM-1 mission profile, a distant retrograde orbit is fascinating but I’m not sure many people know about it or why its significant.
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
From what I’ve read, coverage of Apollo 12 was very light. The world lost interest after the goal of Apollo/Saturn was accomplished by Apollo 11.