NASA Delays Commercial Cargo Award Yet Again
Keith’s note: If you look at the JSC webpage for Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) 2 Contract you will see a schedule page that shows that proposals were received on 12/2/14. NASA originally planned to have a CRS2 award announcement in May 2015 but was delayed with the rationale being “4/16/15 Updated the Milestone Schedule Award date due to additional time required to evaluate proposals.” There is a new note stating “8/7/15 Updated the Milestone Schedule to reflect an updated award date to provide additional time to evaluate Final Proposal Revisions (FPRs).” The planned CRS2 contract award date is now shown as 11/05/15. No CRS2 contract start date is shown.
Oh yes: both of the two current contractors lost a rocket and its cargo in the past year.
Well yes, with CRS1 schedule slipping to the right significantly due to problems by both commercial suppliers, why wouldn’t NASA let the CRS2 contract award dates also slide? I’m thinking there is much revision to consider. And no great hurry.
How about the other way. They might need to drop the ones they have and get new ones that would do a better job. They need the extra time to get ready. Gerst. said they expected a 10% failure. Is it nice to be right? 12 missions by SpaceX and 8 by Orbital. 20 and 2 failures. 10%. USAF said there was some that said a 10% failure rate was OK. They must mean NASA. Disgraceful. If they had used solids they would not have the failures, since they do not use the parts that failed. We just can not live with a 10% failure rate that NASA says is OK.. It is not good for the USA or Space.
A failure in the first 10 flights of a rocket is par for the course. In fact it was surprising that SpaceX didn’t have a failure sooner.
Now, you could argue that if they drop the current contracts and select SNC and Boeing, they would be switching to the Atlas V, which has a much longer history and therefore is more reliable. However, that doen’t mean the cargo vehicles would be any more reliable. It also puts a damper on your grand plan to only use solid vehicles, doesn’t it?
Not my plan. Planet Space. L-M and ATK, but I agree with them. There may be other entrants that are better than SNC and Boeing.
So 8.33% for spacex and 12.5% for orbital. Can’t lump them together of course as each entrant should be assessed on own merits.
These numbers suggest orbital should be out of the running and spacex is still in with a shot alongside a new entrant.
The only issue with this argument is that both CRS1 vendors got extra misions beyond the original contract. Why not issue those new missions under CRS2?
NASA says they will not be ready. Of course NASA not giving contracts is the reason they will not be ready. Companies are not going to spend any money until they get a contract. Nobody will loan them money until they do.
hmmm… Must be more than 2 competitors then huh? I’d say there’s at least 5.
NASA delay is inexcusable, regardless of the number of Offerors.
You have no idea how much paperwork is involved if there is only one bid on any government contract.
I think I heard NASA say 50.
Ridiculous. I hope it is because there are new entrants that want to use SRM. In theory, they are the best available technology. Which NASA should use. It has become expected if it is not complicated,like PC, it is not any good. Goddard probably did not think a 12′ diameter sky rocket would work. Shuttle SRM showed that it works well and super reliable. Some shaking but HST made it ok. A 1 segment would use only 2 half segments. 750,000lb. of thrust. The nozzle and cap segment. Add a 1/2 plain segment and get 1 million lbs. These smaller boosters may have less shaking being so short. They are the closes thing to assured access to space. Liquids are not logical. They are toys, gadgets for engineers. They have to have fun too, but not on the job.
Solids are the best, except for the combustion instability and vibrations that increase with motor size (watch an in cabin video of a space shuttle launch and pay attention to what happens after SRB separation). And don’t forget the occasional unscheduled rapid disassembly spewing chunks of casing and burning solid propellant chunks all over the place.
My favorite solid failure:
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
ATK says they had 4 fail out 400 And 2 of those was caused by ground handling. I guess it could be called a solid failure. It was destructed. A 15′ crack caused by dropping to the ground in handling. I do not recall one ever blowing up on its own. Leaks , but not blowing up like liquids have been doing since Goddard invented them. If one was built that could not take the pressure it could burst. The fuel burns and would not explode like a mixture of LOX and kerosene.
That’s the whole point. Ground handling is part of space launch. The massive facilities needed for hazardous, tedious, expensive assembly and ground operations. No practical way of ensuring the grain and seals are flawless before launch. No economical path to reuse. If our long term goal is a world in which human spaceflight is actually practical and affordable, we need to look at the whole picture, not just the napkin sketch in which the Shuttle and SRBs looked like a simple solution.
So 2 out of 400 and you say you can’t use solids. Not logical. Logic would dictate that only poor supervision caused it. 2 out of 400 are good odds. They must have a way since they do not fail. The o-rings are heated. Some extra expense found to be needed. 1 thing to monitor in countdown. No need to reuse since it is made of steel. I do not use napkin sketches. How about the massive facilities needed for liquids? SpaceX would not have to pre-fire the engines. I disagree with all your points and I say they are false. The number of things needed to monitor a SRB are so small they can be put on one monitor. By using costs given for Shuttle SRB and Castor 120 it would be around 25 million a launch for Cygnus by my research. The reduction in people needed would be huge. That is why these pople were hired. Obama’s Jobs, Jobs, Jobs. If SpaceX went to solids they would have to fire nearly everybody. Close McGregor. They probably getting money that says they have to create so money jobs at a certain level. NASA planned on a 10% failure rate for CRS. They have already got it at the 50% mark. It looks like jobs are more important than using a system that cheaper and more reliable. No Shuttle SRB failed. Just had some leaks. a 100% success rate. I never thought Shuttle and SRBs were a simple solution. I now think different segments of the Shuttle SRB design are. I hope that O-ATK does not have a patent on them and someone else can build them. They just want to buy Russian engines. I do not expect them to use their on motor.
Saturn1300 “No Shuttle SRB failed. Just had some leaks. a 100% success rate. ”
I can’t believe you just said that with a straight face.
Not at all. Tell me one that failed. Even on the Challenger, they kept thrusting and arced off. They did not fail. The structure they were attached to, did.
The SRB failed. It burned through an o-ring, and this caused a breach in the casing of the SRB at the joint. This breach gradually widened, and pressure within the SRB dropped. In less than two seconds the flame from the burn-through was hitting the external fuel tank. Less than five seconds after that, there was a drop in pressure in the external tank, indicating the flame from the SRB made a hole in the ET. About 8 seconds later, the SRB ripped free of the ET, the ET failed structurally, and aerodynamic forces ripped the Shuttle into pieces.
I don’t know what planet you are from, but here on Earth, if your SRB is burning through the side of its casing, that is a FAILURE of the SRB.
And the news you give about Challenger is for the aliens that just came in from Alpha Centuri. It did not burn through the side of the casing. An o-ring burned out. If it had not destroyed the Shuttle there would have enough thrust to complete the mission. Just unlucky that the leak was not pointed out and there had been leaks before? It could be since it was at a strut attach point, the thrust might have opened the joint enough and it would point at the strut. As I said it functioned as designed. The leak did not affect its’ performance. A 100% success rate.
Last I heard the joint is part of the casing. So yeah, if the joint burns through, the side of the casing has burned through.
No o-rings had ever burned completely through before. Some had been partially burned – the joint was known to be the weakest part of the SRB design.
Yes, the leak did affect its performance. Internal pressure and thrust decreased significantly and the SSMEs had to pitch over to compensate for the difference in thrust between the SRBs.
A burn through means the SRB failed.
Your insistence otherwise is idiocy of the highest level.
With a name Hug Doug, are you 8 years old. You do pretty good for an 8 year old.
You can’t pick apart my argument, so you pick on my name. Real mature, yourself.
Name calling and temper tantrums. An 8 year old. None of your arguments are true. Solids are safe and liquids are not. Keith said no Trolls. I looked it up to see if I was one. I really believe in SRBs and the safety of Astronauts.
The only one throwing a temper tantrum is you.
All of my arguments are correct, as you have yet to show any of them are wrong.
A firmly held belief can still be wrong. In this case, you are wrong. As has been mentioned elsewhere, solids are more risky since they cannnot be shut off or throttled, and must be explosively destroyed in an abort situation.
Pegasus, Taurus, and Athena are not exactly known for their cheap price. Neither were the SRBs. You can argue that perhaps that is due to the fact that Thikol/ATK/Orbital ATK have a monopoly on large solids in the USA.
The only other solid manufacturer is Rocketdyne Aerojet; they make much smaller motors so it would be a massive learning curve.
Oh, and as for massive facilities, check out the facilities used to make the SRBs in Utah.
O-ATK just got a launch at he Cape from USAF. 28 million I remember. Something 12’x12′ does take up some space. A tall building for the crane. Got to have a big mixer for the fuel. Those LRB are long and take a lot of space. A modular SRM takes up much less space and only at the launch point. It is logical. You must not be Vulcan, although your name sounds like one. This is not my idea. L-M and O-ATK did. I just think it is logical and I am an advocate. But people are probably tired of hearing about it. They like their LRB toys. A hobby rocket as has been said about F-9. More correct would be a SRB since it is very close to hobby rockets some people launch.
An SRB is to a “hobby rocket” as a P90 machine gun is to a bb gun.
Laughable. Were you been with your snide remarks Hug Doug.? On vacation. You must work for government.. They take August off.
My point is made – the SRB is a complicated piece of hardware. Some nutjob with a welder could not build one.
Who is the nutjob you are talking about. You?
You’re the one who thinks because you can weld, you can make an SRB segment.
I could build a middle segment all by myself. A roller to get the curved sections and weld them together. I can weld steel. Al is harder, another good point. Ever done any welding? It is not hard.
No, you couldn’t.
The segments are considerably more complex than you think they are.
I could get the plans from NASA. You don’t know my abilities.
Your abilities are irrelevant. Building an SRB is not a one-man job.
You should get the plans from NASA, then you would see just how complex the SRB is. Perhaps then you would reassess your Dunning-Kruger magnified abilities.
“The fuel burns and would not explode like a mixture of LOX and kerosene”
“Mixture” being the operative word. In liquid boosters, the LOX and fuel are stored separately. To get a large explosion you need to first compromise both tanks and then intermix the contents. You can get explosions in the engines, but these only contain a tiny fraction of the total fuel at any given time. The recent Antares explosion is a good study in liquid failure modes. Engine explosion only compromises the engine. Detonating the rocket required impact with the ground. Catastrophic loss of control around max-Q might also intermix the fuel, but even this takes time. In a solid the fuel and oxidizer are pre-mixed, but the biggest problem is the much larger volume placed under high pressure. Even if the solid fuel continues to only burn on the surface, any compromise of the casing = giant explosion because the entire booster is at the engines operating pressure. Catastrophic compromise of the tank structure on a liquid booster looks more like the recent Falcon failure. Relative to solids, the explosion of a liquid booster is significantly delayed from the first moment when things go wrong. This, plus the ability to turn liquids off, makes designing LAS systems much easier. For unmanned payloads, solids sometimes make sense, although I don’t think the economic case is as straightforward as you say. But for crewed craft, all-liquid is the only rational choice.
How about the air explosion fireball when the turbo pump failed mixing LOX and kerosene. No problem for the crew of course. None of the shrapnel would reach them. My cost is probably incorrect. Research and theory is all it is. Alaska is setting up to launch Athena 3. I have not heard of mission though. Might get a cost idea if they do. Space Fl. should do the same. I think I am as rational you and SRB is the only safe choice for crew. I would miss all of the gadgets that I have admired and test firings and vopor. Nothing to talk about with SRB. Just how few failures.
Solid failure, or alien invasion?
Not to mention the crappy ISP of solids and short burn time resulting in high acceleration and G-load.
Remember also that most payloads have a G-limit of about 6G unlike the special retribution packages from the USAF & USN.
You should read my whole post. Shuttle launched many payloads, besides people. Yes a single stick may be different. O-ATK launches payloads with solids every so often.They make the fuel in a star pattern to control g’s. The burn time is shorter, but just add another .5 segment. Antares had about 750,000lbs of thrust. A 1 segment has the same. The burn time is shorter. That is why I say they would use 1.5 segments to get the same performance. They replaced the insulation and it is thinner. This gives more fuel and more performance. Also the steel nozzle will erode and lower thrust. If you like, I have a graph of the thrust vs burn time that I may be able to post.
Rockets aren’t legos. They especially aren’t legos that you can cut in half… this “half segment” stuff is nonsense.
Read the ATK ’12 catalog. You don’t know what you are talking about. Shuttle SRB are built in .5 segments. The nozzle and cap are .5 segments. Bolt them together and they make 1 segment. The catalog has this listed and a 1.5, (2,3,4,5) segment which puts out 1 million pounds of thrust. Nothing less than the 4 segment has been built or tested. At least they don’t say they have.
Having read the 2012 ATK catalog as you suggested, I’m not sure what I was supposed to take away from it. ATK offered 1.5 and 2.5 segment SRBs, which were only concepts that never launched. ATK may have been able to make .5 segment SRBs, but it appears they never actually did.
My information on segments were accurate.
Actually, your claim isn’t supported by the information you provided. It merely says they offer to make rockets with additional .5 segments, however, these have never been made.
They don’t cut them in half. They are made that way. They are bolted together. If they are not going to be reused, welding them together might be better. I t sounds like you nothing about them
OK, show me some documentation of these half segments. They may be made and then assembled this way, but you certainly can’t just slap a half segment in an SRB somewhere without redesigning the rocket. At the very least it would have to be made to match the fuel geometry wherever it is positioned, and the assembly process would have to be modified.
“special retribution ” ! 🙂
Did you just read a sentence or 2. I mentioned all that and explained it does not make any difference. The only blowing up was by destruct signals, of course.
Solids are fine if you want to launch a nuclear warhead on a moment’s notice. In fact, solids excel in areas where a single use, disposable, means of propulsion is desired.
But, for reusable vehicles, not so much. It’s questionable if refurbishing the shuttle SRBs saved any money, but it’s a fact that reusing them reduced the shuttle’s payload by a small amount due to the mass of the recovery systems.
Steel is cheap. Whats a few more rusting hulks in the Atlantic. Makes a nice new artificial reef. Soilds are the best no mater why you use them. I have found no negatives with them. Liquids are ridiculous and funny anyone would do it that way.
*cough* There are many negatives. Once ignited, they can’t be turned off, they are not throttleable (it’s possible to build a thrust profile into one, but that can’t be adjusted in-flight), typically they do not burn long enough to get a rocket into orbit (unless multiple short-lived stages are used), and they produce long-lasting pollution that can contaminate an area for years (look up how much work NASA has to do to clean up SRB byproducts).
Correct. They can’t be turned off, but they can vented so that they abort. I have suggested a ring of explosives just strong enough to melt the steel case. The 500psi would blow off the nozzle segment. It would drop into the sea, with gravity pulling it down. You don’t have any original ideas. You just ridicule other people ideas. You must have forgotten that another segment can be added if needed. Incorrect again.
You need to do more research.
You need to look at how much Orbital ATK is charging for the five segment SRB for SLS. Adding a segment has not been cheap for NASA. I believe the contract for two sets of flight 5 segment SRBs was awarded at $1.19 billion dollars.
I guess all the estimates were wrong on the Shuttle SRB. I did find an official price on a Castor 120. Antares only needs 2 stages since Cygnus does the rest. If going to GEO, more stages would be needed. ATK has them in their catalog though.
The shuttle SRB and the five segment SRB for SLS are not the same. You simply cannot add and subtract SRB segments without significant development costs. And the end product is *different* and will therefore have a different cost.
Yes, the only way to stop an SRB from firing is to make it explode. That’s a big negative.
If you make absurd claims, you should EXPECT them to be taken apart. Try to complain less when corrections are made on your bad ideas. Accepting criticism and reevaluating positions or ideas based on the input of others is the hallmark of an open-minded thinker.
Adding a 5th segment required a redesign of the fuel composition and fuel grain geometry. Again, rockets aren’t legos, they cannot be taken apart and put back together in different orders without redesigning them.
Wrong again. Venting works fine. USAF uses it to drop their warheads where they want. If ATK has to make large changes for each one of their advertised segment boosters, it may add expense, but it may be a simple process they are used too. The nozzle and cap segments are most complicated. The other .5 segments should be much lower price. They did have a problem with voids with the new insulation and had to recast the fuel. The recent test was said to go well. I read your input and I see nothing there to change my mind. Liquids are unsafe and SRB are not.
I’m not sure I’d call explosively reducing a large object into pieces “venting” but if that’s your definition of it…
Missiles / bombs use GPS, lasers, radar, and infrared tracking, etc. to put warheads where they need to go. Not sure why you think they blow up segments of their rocket motors for guidance.
Changes are definitely necessary. To go from 4 to 5 segments, the fuel composition and fuel grain geometry had to be redesigned. It has taken over 5 years and nearly $2 billion, with several full scale test fires.
It’s the other way around. Liquid fueled engines are far more controllable (specifically, they can be throttled and shut down without blowing them up) and are therefore much safer than solid rocket motors.
This is an unfortunate abort mode for any crew riding on top…
You insist that solids are obviously superior, as well as cheaper. Yet their usage by the launch market seems to suggest otherwise. Consider for a moment Russia, who have been at the launch game longer than anyone, and who are known to value thrift and reliability highly. Despite having the tech (for missiles), they seem to have never bothered with solids. Indeed, other than as boosters (generally much smaller than the shuttle’s), solid rockets are quite rare. There is the notably inexpensive PSLV with two solid stages (just slightly more $/Kg than the Falcon IX). But the recently developed solid rocket Vega isn’t cheap at all. Yes Arianespace is looking to throw in for solid stages for the Ariane 6, but this is the exception not the rule, and it isn’t at all clear that the rocket will be be commercially viable if reusability works.
Could be. I am basing what I say on the guesses of 10- 25 million$ for a Shuttle SRB and a price of 3 million For a Castor 120. Prices I have found. Divide by 4 for 1 segment. This is the same performance as Antares. What may be reason is that you can only make 1 million profit on a 10 million launch, but on a 100million, you make 10 million with a 10% profit. They are making a new Soyuz. Maybe they will try it and under cut everybody.
Your guess on the cost of a Shuttle SRB is low. Much of the associated cost of using solids isn’t in the cost of the stage itself. NASA accounted for this not as the cost of an SRB, so these costs were “hidden”.
You can’t ignore the infrastructure costs necessary to actually fly large segmented SRBs. NASA needed the VAB, MLPs, crawlers, pads, and etc. to do this, none of which were free. Solids are difficult and expensive to handle due to their extreme weight and presence of toxic and flammable propellant during assembly and handling.
Liquid propelled vehicles are assembled and handled empty, with final fueling done at the pad before launch. This minimizes handling and processing costs.
I would expect the people making the estimates took this into account with the higher numbers, but I do not remember what the articles said. The propellant is a rubber mixture. The 1 piece sounds hard, but they handle them ok. I have no interest in them. Just the segments. Those are for the LFR strap ons. There are infrastructure for both. Solids have a lot less O-ATK said when they got the recent order for the launch at the Cape. One example is no LOX or kerosene lines are needed. How many tanker loads of LOX are needed to launch a F9. I do not know if shipping by rail is more expensive or harder than driving down the Interstate. F9 stages are long. It sure makes a long trailer. Segments are modular. Should be a lot easier to handle.
SRB segments are far heavier and an empty Falcon 9 first stage. SRB
segments were transported on custom build railroad cars. Because of
their very large mass they are more expensive to transport and
“handle”.
Kerosene and LOX at the launch pad are far easier to deal with than assembling solid rocket booster segments in the VAB. During assembly in the VAB, all other work had to stop (and non-essential people had to leave the building) because of the moving and assembly of *fueled* segments. This is an adds time and expense to the processing flow compared to fueling the launch vehicle on the launch pad.
Your rosy view of large segmented solids simply does not match reality.
Try running the math on an all solids launch vehicle with the same LEO payload as a Falcon 9, Delta IV, or Atlas V and see just how big the thing would have to be. Then come back and let us know again how “solids are the best no matter why you use them”.
I have. Look at some of my other posts. I have not changed my mind.
The reason for the delay is to wait for SpaceX to get up and running because the most important dollar value of ISS is the money that is given to SpaceX to crash boosters on a barge.
You are ready for “Last Comic Standing”, George.
Making a CRS2 award while both CRS1 vendors are down would make for awkward congressional testimony. I think both Space X and Orbital ATK are planning to be back up and flying in the November timeframe – “coincidentally” the same time frame as the award.
Could be. Just could be the 50 or so usual applicants and NASA is being honest.