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Speechless

Feb 1st, 2010 by Jonathan Goff

Holy Crap! Obama’s NASA Budget Proposal is Amazing! For once in my life, I think I’m actually speechless for now.

Posted in NASA

179 Responses to “Speechless”

on 01 Feb 2010 at 11:30 am1Dave Salt

Jeff Greason should be awarded an honorary knighthood!
on 01 Feb 2010 at 11:31 am2Mike Puckett

You don’t get to be speechless today! Open you yap and start hugging your prop depot!
on 01 Feb 2010 at 11:48 am3Patrick

Giddy. That’s what I am. Is it some sort of elaborate Internet hoax?

Lots of confused people are mourning the old program, and predicting The End of the World As We Know It. Were all those space enthusiasts just deeply satisfied with 40 years of stasis?

Happy for you, Jon, and all the others who championed fuel depots and such. It’s like we won the lottery or something.
on 01 Feb 2010 at 11:50 am4Michael Kent

Those first two words were the first out of my mouth too!

This is looking even better than the rumors. They’re talking about possibly adding the centrifuge and TransHab back to the ISS, development of closed-loop life support systems, tests of autonomous rendezvous and docking and in-orbit propellant transfer, and COTS-D.

Yikes! Someone in the White House has been reading my private email.

Mike
on 01 Feb 2010 at 12:15 pm5john hare

When you come up with a loose ball, the polite thing to do is take it to the hole. It seems possible that NASA is going to get something that works and gets the troops behind it because they can see real progress. The commercial side has a window now to do what hasn’t been done before.
on 01 Feb 2010 at 12:34 pm6Martijn Meijering

It ain’t over till the fat lady sings, but this is wonderful news. Wow. Just wow.
on 01 Feb 2010 at 12:45 pm7Will McLean

Woohoo!

The challenge will be getting this through Congress.
on 01 Feb 2010 at 1:57 pm8Marcel F. Williams

This budget really doesn’t commit us to anything except the ISS boondoggle. And $600 million a year to develop an HLV is a joke. The only real winners under this budget are the emerging private manned space launch companies. Good luck to them!

But there’s no way you can maintain a $19 billion a year government program with no specific goals to really do anything! As Bolden said in Israel, this could be the end of the NASA’s astronaut corp.
on 01 Feb 2010 at 2:55 pm9Michael Kent

And $600 million a year to develop an HLV is a joke.

Boeing developed the entire Delta IV Heavy for $500 million (not per year — total). There’s no reason the development of a reasonable HLV should cost more than a small multiple of that.

Mike
on 01 Feb 2010 at 2:58 pm10A_M_Swallow

This is the US Government Budget for the general public and the money men. President Obama is playing Scrooge so he has announced large cuts.

The USA has been borrowing large sums of money and may be getting near the point that the bank manager starts asking questions like – can this man afford to repay the loan? A cut in spending, increase in income and repayment of some loans normally helps.

The cut in spending that ‘Scrooge’ is advertising is NASA’s Moon budget. This is working, for instance the BBC tv news has ignored the total spending to show pictures of Apollo.

Hopefully over the next few weeks we will find out how much NASA is actually going to get. I expect this will come from minor officials, the NASA Administrator and midnight additions to the budget law.

Well done about the propellant depot.
on 01 Feb 2010 at 3:05 pm11Seer

Jon, have you been moonlighting as the White House science advisor?
on 01 Feb 2010 at 3:15 pm12Marcel F. Williams

“Boeing developed the entire Delta IV Heavy for $500 million (not per year — total). There’s no reason the development of a reasonable HLV should cost more than a small multiple of that.”
Then why did the Augustine Commission say it was impossible for NASA contractors like Boeing to fund a HLV with $3.4 billion a year. That’s what NASA would have had for HLV development after the completion of the Ares I. So first we hear its too expensive to develop an HLV with $3.4 billion year and now we hear that hey $600 million a year is just fine to to develop an HLV.

Of course, no one’s going to support a $19 billion a year NASA budget in the long run with no real goals.
on 01 Feb 2010 at 3:27 pm13Mike Puckett

Elon Musk said he could develop a Saturn V class rocket for $2BN.

There should be plenty of $$$ in here for an Atlas Phase II and ACES too.
on 01 Feb 2010 at 4:24 pm14Jonathan Goff

Michael in #9 and Marcel in the others,

Delta IV cost $500M *to the government*. Boeing sank quite a bit more of their own money in (somewhere between $1.5-3B depending on whose numbers you believe). Also, Marcel, the $600M/yr isn’t to build a new HLV, it is to develop HLV technologies. Stuff like high thrust, low-cost first stage engines, advanced propulsion upper stages. Stuff that can make an HLV more affordable in the long-run. The actual development of an HLV would start after this initial R&D. As it is, the PoR wouldn’t have spent much money on Ares V by that point anyway, and in this case you’d be starting from a more advanced technological base.

Also, regarding the cost of developing HLVs, doing something commercially is a lot cheaper than having a NASA managed program. They’ve spent more on getting Ares-I to PDR than was spent on all four EELV-class vehicle developments to-date (Atlas, Delta, Taurus II, and Falcon 9), and two of those four are flying today. That should tell you something.

~Jon
on 01 Feb 2010 at 5:15 pm15kert

Speechless indeed. Santa Claus came a tad late this year.
on 01 Feb 2010 at 5:46 pm16Marcel F. Williams

“Also, Marcel, the $600M/yr isn’t to build a new HLV, it is to develop HLV technologies. ”

Exactly! Its just an R&D program with no real commitment to develop anything. We don’t need another R&D program to learn how to build a heavy lift vehicle. We already know how to do that. We just need to build one!
That’s what we should have been doing instead of fooling around with trying to do something we had no experience in doing like trying to launch a human on top of a solid rocket booster.
on 01 Feb 2010 at 5:50 pm17Jonathan Goff

Marcel,
Yes, we already know how to build HLVs expensive enough to preclude anything much more ambitious than flags-and-footprints missions. I know you seem to be obsessed with watching astronauts on TV, but some of us would like to actually see NASA run a space program that’s meaningful to people other than space voyeurs.

~Jon
on 01 Feb 2010 at 6:19 pm18Danny

We’ll see what Congress does with the proposed budget. But in the mean time, I’ve already sent a message to the White House (which will never be read, no doubt), saying that I really support this move.

Marcel, Ares and Constellation were goals, but they were the wrong ones. NASA’s budget may very well shrink in coming years without a clear goal, but that’s better than throwing billions of dollars in a wasteful endeavor. On the other hand, enabling and encouraging commercial development of manned spaceflight can lay a foundation for going the moon within the context of expanding an existing infrastructure.
on 01 Feb 2010 at 6:56 pm19Kelly Starks

>Holy Crap! Obama’s NASA Budget Proposal is Amazing! For
> once in my life, I think I’m actually speechless for now.

Are you kidding?
Throw a couple crumbs at you like ECLL and fuel transfer (hardly cutting edge tech here) and you overlook NASA has not just lost any launch capacity, or intentions to build one (just research HLV tech like its something new and exotic), NASA focused on ISS servicing and climate change studies?

Auto docking and fuel transfer arn’t something NASA needs to research – its something you order from a vendor if you want them!
Are 10 – 15 COTS-D flights going to open up a industry? Assuming NASA or a future congress doesn’t just drop them for political convenience.
on 01 Feb 2010 at 6:57 pm20Rufus Flyer

“Of course, no one’s going to support a $19 billion a year NASA budget in the long run with no real goals.”

What’s special about $19 billion? For the last decade or two human space flight had no real goals, and it was supported handily. As long as there are jobs to be bought, and vague handwaving goals, most of the public, and Congress, is very happy.
on 01 Feb 2010 at 7:13 pm21kert

you overlook NASA has not just lost any launch capacity
No, im not overlooking that. This is the bit that is crucial. NASA needed to get out of trying to build launchers and operating them like decades ago.
Launch capacity to NASA will continue to be available.
on 01 Feb 2010 at 7:20 pm22Roga

But there’s no way you can maintain a $19 billion a year government program with no specific goals to really do anything! As Bolden said in Israel, this could be the end of the NASA’s astronaut corp.

Uh, NSF? Department of Education?

Also, the fat lady. VSE looked pretty good too until it was handed to Griffin. And I am sure a lot of congresspeople won’t like this either. I just wrote my congressman in support, you should all do the same ASAP.
on 01 Feb 2010 at 7:31 pm23Fred Willett

It should be noted that The European and Russian space LV’s have been commercial for quite some time now, and between them they have 99% of the commercial launch market. This annuncement gives the US LV industry a chance to finally, get commercial and catch up.
on 01 Feb 2010 at 7:36 pm24Kelly Starks

>> you overlook NASA has not just lost any launch capacity

> No, im not overlooking that. This is the bit that is crucial.
> NASA needed to get out of trying to build launchers and
> operating them like decades ago.

So NASA is not going to explore, not going to build anything, not going to develop new technology (no fuel transfer and a centrifuge doesn’t count), and isn’t going to foster a launcher industry. So no CATS, no reason for Washington to fund NASA, no plan to do anything later except tinker.

Oh joy.
on 01 Feb 2010 at 7:39 pm25Jonathan Goff

Kelly,
Building HLVs is not exploration. Building HLVs is not developing new technologies. Building HLVs is not going to lead to CATS. Not building HLVs actually allows NASA to focus its resources on the part that commercial industry isn’t already doing on a nearly monthly basis (putting stuff into low-earth orbit). Exploration starts when you leave LEO, not when you leave the ground.

~Jon
on 01 Feb 2010 at 7:43 pm26Martijn Meijering

If fuel transfer isn’t an issue, then surely an HLV isn’t needed!
on 01 Feb 2010 at 7:44 pm27Jonathan Goff

Also Marcel and Kelly,
We know how to do really expensive HLVs. We don’t have all the stuff we’d want to do more affordable ones. Ultimately I want to see a space transportation network that gets to a cost point that enables commercial markets and eventually space settlement. Continually rushing off to repeat NASA’s glory years wasn’t going to do that.

~Jon
on 01 Feb 2010 at 7:45 pm28Roga

Kelly Starks said:
Throw a couple crumbs at you like ECLL and fuel transfer (hardly cutting edge tech here)

You’ll be amazed what these companies can do with “a couple crumbs.” See: COTS A-C competitors, SpaceShipOne, Pegasus.

and you overlook NASA has not just lost any launch capacity, or intentions to build one (just research HLV tech like its something new and exotic),

1) NASA has not lost any launch capacity, at least for 7 years at the minimum in the rosiest possible Ares 1 scenario. They can still buy lots of rides from the Russians, since you seem so eager to maintain the status quo.
2) Remember how the entire airline industy and military aviation sector collapsed when the FAA stopped designing airplanes?
3) Gotta feed the monkey something. That seems to be the idea with the HLV research. I doubt it will be enough.

NASA focused on ISS servicing and climate change studies?

Well, you’re a little late with this one. They already turned ISS servicing over to the private sector. The horror! Remember, NASA kicked a couple crumbs to SpaceX, Rocketplane, and Orbital, and now all we’ve got to show for it is two new medium lift launch system prototypes with completely distinct operational and technical specs which are extremely unlikely to have a common point of failure and hence ground our ISS supply missions indefinitely?

Auto docking and fuel transfer arn’t something NASA needs to research – its something you order from a vendor if you want them!

As far as I know, there are no published ANSI standards for either of these. You cannot license the patents. There are no catalog or specialized vendors who will sell you these capabilities. That is true of most of the things NASA does, and that is the problem this path would start to fix.

Are 10 – 15 COTS-D flights going to open up a industry? Assuming NASA or a future congress doesn’t just drop them for political convenience.

The vehicles would not be constrained to only NASA payloads. EELVs would still launch Air Force contracts, Falcon 9s would still launch satellites for foreign payloads and Bigelow modules. Again, that’s the point.
on 01 Feb 2010 at 8:10 pm29Trent Waddington

It’s such a shame the cancellation of Constellation had to come with this budget request. If Obama had canceled it as soon as he took office, by executive order if necessary, starving NASA of budget until today, this budget request would have been hailed as a victory.
on 01 Feb 2010 at 9:30 pm30Brad

http://www.transterrestrial.com/?p=24520#comment-105361
on 01 Feb 2010 at 9:37 pm31Chris Winter

Patrick wrote: “Lots of confused people are mourning the old program, and predicting The End of the World As We Know It. Were all those space enthusiasts just deeply satisfied with 40 years of stasis?”

You wouldn’t believe the gloom and doom over on Bad Astronomy’s thread on this subject. Some of you might want to wander over there and set them straight. (Not everyone is down in the dumps — Phil Plait, the “Bad Astronomer”, certainly isn’t — but there sure is a passel of nay-sayers.)

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/02/01/president-obamas-nasa-budget-unveiled/
on 01 Feb 2010 at 10:08 pm32Tom D

I’m fairly happy. This is the first Obama administration proposal I actually like! Perhaps, as some cynic has noted, this big change to NASA was made just to distract us from the record deficit. I’m still not happy with the deficit, but I’m I like this change. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Congress insist on a Jupiter 130-type shuttle-derived HLV.
on 01 Feb 2010 at 10:26 pm33David

Well, after all these years I’m pretty cynical and pessimistic about a lot of this stuff. Yes, Constellation was a bit of a mess, but it was based on proved technology, would have worked, and at least would have left us with a manned vehicle after the shuttle’s proposed retirement. Without the shuttle, we’ll be solely dependent on the Russians for our manned program. I guess that’s okay since we’re not going much of anywhere.

I regard this as a mixed bag. The budget increase is nice. The Constellation cancellation is okay if it really is replaced with something better and more innovative. Losing the Moon as a goal is okay if it’s replaced with another goal. Or better yet, several other goals, giving NASA a truly long range plan. However by now surely everyone must know that losing one bad thing doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to gain another good thing. That’s just the real world and, unfortunately, politics.

NASA’s budget is a favorite target for politicians hoping to score some populist points (unless they represent Florida, Texas, or Alabama). This is because most people have very little understanding of the Federal budget. On one of Phil Plait’s blog entries, he says that in one survey people said they thought NASA’s budget was 25% of the Federal budget. They just hear these enormous numbers and see these huge rockets and things going into space and figure it must cost a lot of money. Well, it does, but I’m sure everyone here knows it’s less that 1% of the budget.

Just because Obama has proposed an increase over the next five years is no guarantee of anything. The engineers may come up with spectacular designs for something, but by the time the budget increases revert to budget cuts we could end up with another compromised vehicle like the shuttle.

I like the bit about NASA partnering with the private sector. They should do more of that (as long as safety isn’t compromised in the manned program). If private industry can put a vehicle into orbit around the time (or shortly after) the retirement of the shuttles, our manned vehicle problems might be solved. It would depend on how many people it can carry, the turnaround time on getting another one into space (or refurbishing the orbiter if it’s reusable), etc. While extremely doubtful it would have the capacity of a shuttle, it should be able to match a Soyuz at least.

But it’s all up in the air as far as I can see. I didn’t get excited about Constellation until I actually started seeing designs and hardware. And then, of course, the problems started and my usual post-Apollo pessimism came back. Now this is happening. While it’s interesting, and there’s potential, I’m not getting my hopes up. More and more I’m coming to the belief we’re not going anywhere. I in no way want to believe this. It depresses the hell out of me to think that way. But I don’t think I’m going to live long enough to see humans set foot on another world again.

Of course, I could be wrong. I sure hope I am.
on 01 Feb 2010 at 10:34 pm34Tom D

The thing I like best about the change in NASA’s plans is that their new efforts might actually help bring about cheap access to space (CATS) that very important, but woefully ignored, prerequisite to actually making use of space. I’d much rather have cheap access than heavy lift.
on 01 Feb 2010 at 10:52 pm35Doug

Holy Crap….Wow capsules to the boondoggle ISS. Seems like we’ve been doing this since Apollo. So now we do it with a cheap but throw away early sixties capsule rather than an rlv space shuttle. What is so great other than “you” might get some tax payer dollars? The rest of us get an aimless, meandering space program with no coherent goal to drive it forward. I’ve not seen any mention of a space depot (to nowhere) just LEO ISS resupply and “maybe” crew transfer, climate gate monitoring (like we don’t have enough weather satellites already) and sustained ISS. So we chuck a moon based agenda for this a bridge to nowhere? A focused commercial based back to the moon program by 2020 I could have gotten excited about. Like what ULA proposed. LEO forever…boring as hell just another rerun, different capsule same mission. Only now we’ve sucked some of the major private based companies into its stymied muck. You just opened the gate and let the Trojan horse in. The Ruskies are tucked away inside trying to subdue their LOL.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 12:56 am36Trent Waddington

Doug, deliberately making yourself ignorant by not reading the budget proposal and then crying exactly the way the special interests are telling you to cry doesn’t make you very interesting. Please stop.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 1:01 am37Jonathan Goff

Now Trent, let’s play nice with the others please.

~Jon
on 02 Feb 2010 at 1:13 am38Danny

Doug,

What do you mean by “the rest of us”? Which particular benefit were you deriving from an over-cost, underfunded, behind-schedule Ares?

-Danny
on 02 Feb 2010 at 5:22 am39pG

Sadly – I don’t think NASA’s going to get the promised money.
It would have been very cool and a fellow South African would have shown you yanks how to build a private rocketship (Go Elon), but they lost that funding the moment Sukhoi flew the T-50 for the first time.
“Forget China. Russia has stealth fighters armed with, with … stealth stuff. Those commies won’t get one over us. Quick – someone phone Lockheed. And my stockbroker.”
And one problem with NASa partnering with private industry – NASA will have to seriously change the way it operates – the ‘engineer with a checklist on every level’ mindset is not going to cut it with private industry.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 5:43 am40Brett Thomason

I know those who are saddened murt be a sort of unpleasant minority around here. And, like David#33, I have mixed feelings. Actually been waffling. But at this moment, have to say…WHAt in the world!?!? FALCON thrust….80 – 150k lbs. ARES 1-X….2.6 MILL!! With verified tech way quicker to safety rate for crew vs. who knows how long for brand new experimental rockets. I’m starting to wonder about anti nasa bias a bit, too, and even Augustine reccs. Has it really been said $6B per Ares launch, while the test was $400M?? And if we’re gonna say the 1-X test was too costly, how much do you say the test should cost, for a complete new package giving us a full 2.6MILL lbs perfectly, and all its new support etc. I’m thrilled beyond belief at the spectacular achievement of Elon & his team. And the other commercial achievements/fronties. But I was also fantastically thrilled at, truly, a glorious new rocket at NASA. Must we be so pro-private & anti-nasa that we can’t permit ourselves some thrill at a cool launch?
on 02 Feb 2010 at 6:41 am41Brett Thomason

(Sorry to carry on! But…) ESPECIALLY when internet experts who thought they’d outdone NASA kept on, month after month, joyfully hammering at the vibration load & crosswind impossibilities, etc, with a steady buzz disolving confidence & support, to the point we are now at, when you’d think they’d aquiess. But then they faulted the necessity of the test, while at the same time boasting about neglible flaws born out with the test. So the always shred NASA bias is there. And I saw Elon’s site saying one of their engines’ power is like a Saturn F1. Not bias, just over rosie for the private effort’s side. And that’s really the main point. SpaceX got way behind with a little Poodle (sorry – I love thier achievement thouh!) and NASA got behind with a Pitbull, a massive one, giving us everything from stack to LAS to control. Work in 1-X, e.g. LCC, that’s also a downpayment to the future program.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 7:16 am42Brett Thomason

Now I LOVE commercial space, like the companies Pres Obama is highlighting today. And SpaceX building engines from scratch, that quickly & cheaply. And especially you folks around Mojave. (Jon, a hearty congrats on you & good ol David’s double X vessels winning the big X!) Hope ur good & proud! Also Jon, I love your blog work, so incredibley cool, thanks, I’ll go back to quiet appreciation soon. Saw that you replied quick in the PoR thread. And Jon, did u see my VIRGINMOBILE account!! We need to support Virgin! But…
on 02 Feb 2010 at 8:24 am43Brett Thomason

Incidentally, someone said to read the true & unbiased look at Ares 1-X in Wikipedia’s thorough article, instead of in ultra pro private space development circles — and they’re right! I also read the idea of helping ESA’s mission control take over ISS. That’s a great idea to free the budget & let America use it’s resources & expereience to resume a role of leadership & inspiration — for a young generation that’s facing decline & aimlessness, for education, for the world, in a way that a bold & visionary central national program, which can only be executed by NASA, could achieve. It really is jumping the gun to think that private space companies at tis time can centrally lift up the whole nation in the way that a bold program could. They don’t have the capability to do it, and maybe there’s a little better feeling & celebratiom with the NASA & USA flags, a little more pride, a touch more sense of ownership off in the back of all our minds (if not in the front), vs the beautiful flag of Boeing or SpaceX.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 8:49 am44Kelly Starks

> Jonathan Goff
>
> Kelly,
> Building HLVs is not exploration. Building HLVs is not developing
> new technologies. Building HLVs is not going to lead to CATS. ==

Obviously

> == Not building HLVs actually allows NASA to focus its
> resources on the part that commercial industry isn’t already
> doing on a nearly monthly basis (putting stuff into low-earth
> orbit). Exploration starts when you leave LEO, not when
> you leave the ground.

HLV tech is old hat. If Obama proposed going to the moon with a commercial, or launched from a orbital fuel depo – that would be steping out adn a big improvement. But hes not. What they are proposing is maned space travel adn exploration other then ISS is stoped. Not transfered to commercials. Not restructured to demonstrate better designs (adn what wouldn’t be better then Ares / Orion). its just stoped, and NASA is being refocused no redemonstrating old technology

>== We know how to do really expensive HLVs. We don’t
> have all the stuff we’d want to do more affordable ones. ==

All the big aero firms have disagreed with that for over 40 years, adn certainly nothing in the new budget is proposing developing any new technologies. Just keep study to death stuff, adn don’t do anythnig with it.

> Ultimately I want to see a space transportation network that
> gets to a cost point that enables commercial markets and
> eventually space settlement. Continually rushing off to
> repeat NASA’s glory years wasn’t going to do that.

Agreed – what your missing is nothing in this will do that eiather. All it dose is go from a crappy program to no program.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 8:53 am45Kelly Starks

> on 01 Feb 2010 at 7:43 pm26Martijn Meijering
>
> If fuel transfer isn’t an issue, then surely an HLV isn’t needed!

Nope – not unless you have a ship that needs to be lifted in a HLV sized bay or something.

This isn’t news. I mean NASA fielded plans in the ’90s no how they could return to the moon with landers launched from the shuttle bays in LEO and recovered and reused, etc.

I mean come on. Fuel transfer involves docking, conecting the hoses, pumping the fluid between, then disconect. This isn’t something pushing the boundaryes of technology. Its just a different product to order.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 9:08 am46Kelly Starks

1. > 01 Feb 2010 at 7:45 pm28Roga
>> Kelly Starks said:
>> Throw a couple crumbs at you like ECLL and fuel transfer (hardly
>> cutting edge tech here)
> You’ll be amazed what these companies can do with “a couple crumbs.”
> See: COTS A-C competitors, SpaceShipOne, Pegasus.
Musk and Rutan disagree. The money in these awards is just to small.

But I wasn’t referring to the budgets, I was referring to the programs(like ECLL and fuel transfer ) being crumbs. Trivial study programs for stuff that really doesn’t need years of study.

>> and you overlook NASA has not just lost any launch capacity, or
>> intentions to build one (just research HLV tech like its something new and exotic),
> 1) NASA has not lost any launch capacity, at least for 7 years at
> the minimum in the rosiest possible Ares 1 scenario. ==
And now there is no intention for them TO EVER get it. No missions, means no reason to build or hire capacity.
> Gotta feed the monkey something. That seems to be the idea
> with the HLV research. I doubt it will be enough.

>> NASA focused on ISS servicing and climate change studies?
> Well, you’re a little late with this one. They already turned
> ISS servicing over to the private sector.==
No they turned cargo fery service over to spaceX. NASA adn Russian staffs will be the facilities staff no the ISS.

>== NASA kicked a couple crumbs to SpaceX, Rocketplane,
> and Orbital, and now all we’ve got to show for it is two new
> medium lift launch system prototypes ==
No, Orbital hasn’t fielded anything to my knowledge; and Musk was already fielding Dragon/Falcon regardless. The fact COTS program was deliberately defunded to the point no one could build anything and make a buck for that price. The problem was some one was already building a craft that could do all that anyway.

>> Auto docking and fuel transfer arn’t something NASA
>> needs to research – its something you order from a
>> vendor if you want them!
> As far as I know, there are no published ANSI standards for either of these.
And this relates to researching the products how?

> You cannot license the patents. ==
What in this could you possibly patent? ! Patents require something be a new niovative concept or technology – which this ain’t

>> Are 10 – 15 COTS-D flights going to open up a
>> industry? Assuming NASA or a future congress doesn’t
>> just drop them for political convenience.
> The vehicles would not be constrained to only NASA payloads. =

So? Bigelows taking options for potentially hundreds of maned launches – could open up a market. NASA ordering 15 COTS-D flights – nope.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 9:16 am47Brett Thomason

(As great as those flags may be). And I therefore would say its also jumping the gun, quite yet, on what’s tantamount to eroding NASA’s greatest roles to hand things to space start ups. Especially (and Jon, this is to offer a thouht about your wondering if the United States should even continue having a global role in leadership & inspiration) with China ever growing. There are faults in America. But who can deny the many vestages of freedom and of opportunities you can take hold of. There are 6 flags, with that mighty pertty blue, red and white, I think they were. They look great in the stark beauty up there on the surface of the moon, and I think they do represent some things that stand out. I won’t give a blanket condemnation of China, but why just let our kids watch as the government of Tianemen Square & of all pervasive military uniforms, the government of the steadily increasing, looming power of China advances to the moon. The goal of a NASA science base would be more inspiring for young Americans.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 9:19 am48Kelly Starks

> Doug
>
> Holy Crap….Wow capsules to the boondoggle ISS. Seems
> like we’ve been doing this since Apollo. So now we
> do it with a cheap but throw away early sixties capsule
> rather than an rlv space shuttle. What is so great other
> than “you” might get some tax payer dollars? ==

BINGO!

We go frmo a station built to build a station with Russians. To a proposal to return to the moon adn if NASA can do that without screwing up, no to Mars. NASA screwed up royally and did the design-to-pork Constellation design. Now thats dump, shuttles dumped (adn NASA execs are denynig it or any reusable could ever have existed) and Boeing or Musk get contracts for a couple taxi runs to deliver the station servicing crews to study maintaining a pointless station — except it was designed to be serviced and manitained by a shutle – which no one has, adn now can be focused on providing bogus climate change data.

But on the bright side, some grants will be issued to restudy and MAYBE redevelop 1960s or older technologies for space travel. HLV boosters like Saturn-Vs could someday be developed with these new studies!!! Inflight refuling!! Lifting bodies like Dream chaser!

All the stuff designs were proposed for nearly half a century ago.

;/

The rest of us get an aimless, meandering space program with no coherent goal to drive it forward. I’ve not seen any mention of a space depot (to nowhere) just LEO ISS resupply and “maybe” crew transfer, climate gate monitoring (like we don’t have enough weather satellites already) and sustained ISS. So we chuck a moon based agenda for this a bridge to nowhere? A focused commercial based back to the moon program by 2020 I could have gotten excited about. Like what ULA proposed. LEO forever…boring as hell just another rerun, different capsule same mission. Only now we’ve sucked some of the major private based companies into its stymied muck. You just opened the gate and let the Trojan horse in. The Ruskies are tucked away inside trying to subdue their LOL.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 9:21 am49Marcel F. Williams

@Jonathan Goff

And HLV would allow us to place habitat modules on the lunar surface for a lunar base in order to:

1. Determine if a 1/6 hypogravity environment is inherently deleterious to the health and reproductive ability of humans and other animals. If it is not, then colonizing the Moon and Mars could be relatively easy.

2. Determine precisely how much regolith shielding is required to protect humans from galactic radiation and major solar events. Something we need to know if humans are ever going to go on interplanetary journeys

3. Determine how efficiently can we extract oxygen from the lunar regolith. This might also help us to extract oxygen from the moon’s of Mars for air and fuel

4. Determine what sort of technical problems are we going to encounter maintaining a habitat on an alien world. If we ever send humans to Mars, they may have to stay a while. So we might want to know how well such habitat modules work on a nearby world

5. Determine if dust on the Moon is a problem that can be successfully mitigated in order to enhance humans survival on the Moon and possibly on Mars where the dust problem could be far worse and could increase the rate of cancer

6. Determine how humans adjust psychologically to living on an alien world for months or even years at a time in artificial environments which is something we’ll have to know if we ever send humans to Mars

7. Determine how efficiently humans can grow and raise food on an alien world

8. Determine if large spacious inflatable habitats 50 to 100 meters in diameter can be successfully deployed and properly shielded to provide substantially more room for astronauts and tourist which would be something that would be useful on both the Moon and Mars

A continuously growing lunar base would also be a prime destination for the emerging private commercial space tourism industry. So there are numerous reasons why its important to set up a permanent base on the Moon.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 9:26 am50Kelly Starks

1. > Brett Thomason
>=Has it really been said $6B per Ares launch, while the test was $400M??
Closer to $8B a launch according to the GAO, and the test didn’t use ant Ares related parts.
> And if we’re gonna say the 1-X test was too costly,
> how much do you say the test should cost, for a complete
> new package giving us a full 2.6MILL lbs perfectly, and
> all its new support etc. ==
Ah, no new package. No new Rocket. No test of anything that would fly no a Ares. Just a old shuttle SRB with a mock up on its nose – and it banged itself up pretty bad.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 9:39 am51Marcel F. Williams

@Jonathan Goff

The expense of an HLV will be determined on how frequently its used. If an HLV is used to launch humans towards the Moon and Langrange points and is also used to continuously launch habitat modules, vehicles, and supplies for a lunar base and perhaps launch customized Skylab-like space stations for science and commercial space tourism– then they could be relatively cheap thanks to the high demand.

So if we build it, we really have to use it!
on 02 Feb 2010 at 10:03 am52Martijn Meijering

The expense of an HLV will be determined on how frequently its used.

Yes. And what could we afford to launch on it? Propellant and people. And guess what, neither of those require an HLV. If you wanted to launch a lot of propellant (say for exploration, which needs to launch mostly propellant) or a lot of people, you could do so on commercial launchers. This would spur innovation and lead to RLVs and/or cheap expendables that would be cheaper than the HLV could ever hope to be.

This has the potential to lead to large scale commercial activity in space. Surely that has to be more important than the joy that comes from watching a big honking rocket?
on 02 Feb 2010 at 10:12 am53Brett Thomason

So, since independent companies & start ups don’t have the capacity for it, for the multimillion lbs of thrust and the whole package etc, and for other reasons like the value of the NASA flag vs a ULA flag or whatever, the White House is jumping the gun. The red dragon of China will inevitably rise. But NASA’s last big act could be an outpost reclaiming that inspiration of before and planting it shiningly into this 21st century for our youth & all our nation, as something we all own in the form of a science base on the moon, standing peacefully stalwart into the decades and hearkening back to the great first steps, before the age of private space, of mining compounds & Hiltons advances. (Jon, dont know if you’d get time to wade thru all these thoughts. Using a limited device this week as I go about. But if so, notice how I tried to get that conservative part of you that I read about! And
on 02 Feb 2010 at 10:16 am54Kelly Starks

1. > Marcel F. Williams
> And HLV would allow us to place habitat modules on the
> lunar surface for a lunar base==
You don’t need a HLV for that. You cuold do it from shuttle if you park a fuel depo ni orbit.

>== in order to:
> 1. Determine if a 1/6 hypogravity environment is inherently
> deleterious to the health and reproductive ability of humans and
> other animals. ==
It is. Thats known, theirs just debate on how fast the deterioration is.

> 2. Determine precisely how much regolith shielding is required
> to protect humans from galactic radiation and major solar events.==
Also known. Studies of amounts of shielding needed for various radiation types adn levels has been around for generations.

> 3. Determine how efficiently can we extract oxygen from
> the lunar regolith. ==

Tested that some time ago. Pretty basic chemistry. You might want to get more samples to test proposed extraction systems before you buy them. ..or not.
> 4. Determine what sort of technical problems are we going to
> encounter maintaining a habitat on an alien world. ==
Little vague here? What kind of habitat? What world? (obviously the moon, or mars, or all others, would have dif problems.

> 5. Determine if dust on the Moon is a problem that can be
> successfully mitigated in order to enhance humans survival
> on the Moon and possibly on Mars ==
Mars has differnt dust == but your building a moon base to study dust control in your airlocks??!

> 6. Determine how humans adjust psychologically to living
> on an alien world for months or even years at a time in artificial
> environments which is something we’ll have to know if we ever
> send humans to Mars
Lots of studies of that no alien artificial places on Earth – or records of sea voyages going back centuries.

> 7. Determine how efficiently humans can grow and raise food on an alien world
??
What microgravity wheat growing no the moon? You cuold do that ni orbit if you wanted to – or ship food there.

> 8. Determine if large spacious inflatable habitats 50 to 100
> meters in diameter can be successfully deployed and properly
> shielded to provide substantially more room for astronauts
.> and tourist ==
Inflatable habitats the size of football stadiums?!! The inflatable bases being considered were the size of camping trailers!

> A continuously growing lunar base would also be a prime
> destination for the emerging private commercial space
> tourism industry.==

They can build their own, and really what they need is cheap transport.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 10:19 am55Jonathan Goff

Marcel,
As Kelly pointed out, you don’t need an HLV to do any of that. A depot-centric architecture can actually land more payload on the lunar surface than a non-depot HLV-centric approach.

Also while the per-unit price of an HLV will go down with higher flight rate, the total cost will go up, and since NASA will be the only customer of a NASA-developed HLV, there’s no one else to share that cost with. Using something 3 times will never cost less than using it twice. The problem with HLVs is that since their price is so high to start with, and their payloads so big, you end up with the problem of how do you fund enough payloads to keep the HLV’s flight rate up? Short answer–you don’t.

~Jon
on 02 Feb 2010 at 10:20 am56Kelly Starks

> Marcel F. Williams
>
> The expense of an HLV will be determined on how frequently its used.==

True. The margin cost of launch via shuttle is about $1200 per pound, but add ni the overhead and care and feeding of NASA staffs (mostly unrelated to Shuttle – but some program has to pay them), and your up to $30,000 a pound.

Nothing ships at low cost if yuo almost never fly it. For constellation they weer projecting 2 flights a year when the program really ramped up.

;/
on 02 Feb 2010 at 10:24 am57Kelly Starks

> Martijn Meijering
>
> == If you wanted to launch a lot of propellant (say
> for exploration, which needs to launch mostly propellant)
> or a lot of people, you could do so on commercial
> launchers. This would spur innovation and lead to
> RLVs and/or cheap expendables that would be
> cheaper than the HLV could ever hope to be.

It could, adn if NASA had been directed to return to the moon that way, it would be a huge step forward. But with the programs instead canceled – no ones going anywhere, so theres no demand to spure development of any new launchers, much less to have them drive costs down.

And with nASA costs down with no programs – theirs no political payback to districts.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 10:27 am58Kelly Starks

> Using something 3 times will never cost less than using it twice.=

Though in the case of space launchers – it can cost exactly the same. So little of the costs are related to actual use of the craft, grounding the fleets, or flynig a dozen times a year, might not increase costs at all.

8(
on 02 Feb 2010 at 10:32 am59Marcel F. Williams

@Kelly Starks

We don’t know if the hypogravity environments of the Moon or Mars are deleterious to human health. We do known that the microgravity environment of the space station is deleterious to human health. There were some indications from the Apollo program that lunar astronauts experienced less deleterious effects than astronauts that merely traveled into orbit. Its assumed that this was due to their time on the lunar surface. But we need to know for sure.

And all of the other things that you argued have never been actually tested on an alien world. And we need to do that!
on 02 Feb 2010 at 10:33 am60Martijn Meijering

But with the programs instead canceled – no ones going anywhere, so theres no demand to spure development of any new launchers, much less to have them drive costs down.

Very true, and you know, I’m perfectly comfortable with that. I’m a libertarian leaning kind of guy and I’m not convinced opening up space for mankind is a valid way to spend taxpayers’ money, exciting though it would be. It’s just that if we’re going to do exploration anyway, we ought to seek the maximum synergy with commercial development of space. I had some specific ideas for that which have been made largely moot by recent developments.

But all in all, I’m very happy. I’m worried what Congress will do with the budget request and not confident we have seen the last of SDLV/HLV. I’m also worried NASA will screw up the R&D into propellant transfer and long term storage.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 10:36 am61Jonathan Goff

Marcel,
I full-heartedly agree that we need to get data on the 1/6g environment ASAP. I just think that going the HLV route is not the way to get that info ASAP. I just posted some ideas a week or two ago on this very question. If we really want to get that early data figured out as soon as possible, a one-way-to-stay (for a while) architecture would allow that to happen within only a few years. If you wait for HLVs and something like the Program of Record, we won’t have boots on the moon again for long enough to really know what the impacts are until sometime in the 2030s.

~Jon
on 02 Feb 2010 at 10:40 am62Jonathan Goff

Marcel,
Lack of a current specific program does not mean that NASA isn’t going anywhere. In fact, there’s a real chance that five years from now we’ll be in a better position to execute on BEO exploration than we are today. While they canceled the specific program that was bloated and underperforming, they never said anything about giving up on the goal of making the US spacefairing.

~Jon
on 02 Feb 2010 at 10:51 am63Tom D

Kelly (#44),

By that same logic an HLV is just a different product to order. It has been demonstrated by Saturn 5 and Shuttle. No new development must be needed there. Of course there seems to be no real market for it either… Perhaps, if it were a lot cheaper, that might change, but then the same could be said of propellant transfer.

I wish that we could just order “cheap access to space” off the shelf!
on 02 Feb 2010 at 10:53 am64Brett Thomason

And I was going to say, Jon, how much I love your writing. But THEN you penned the beginning of this blog post!! Actually it is apt, isnt it, with your own work being honored at the highest level. I was going to say my favorite recent line of yours is, ‘continually trying to run back to the glory days,’ or to that effect — gives me a chuckle! Maybe you or someone with a better browser can find that one! Good news. I think what I meant to say in the beginning just crystalized, after some 7 or so long posts, if you havent kicked em off! I just hope a lot of events werent just orchestrated to begin seeing the disintegration of nasa & the yielding over to non-nasa efforts just a little before its time.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 11:06 am65Tom D

Oops. I think my last comment may have gone to the wrong person.

I do not think that we need an HLV at this time. We do need cheaper access. The best way to that seems to be to fly more smaller birds and (eventually) make them truly reusable. Hopefully, maintaining a national lab in orbit will help catalyze a growing launch market.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 11:21 am66Brett Thomason

And I was going to say, Jon, how much I love your writing. But THEN you penned the beginning of this blog post!! Actually it is apt, isnt it, with your own work being honored at the highest level. I was going to say my favorite recent line of yours is, ‘continually trying to run back to the glory days,’ or to that effect — gives me a chuckle! Maybe you or someone can find that one! Good news. I think what I meant to say in the beginning just crystalized, after some 7 or so long posts, if you havent kicked em off! I just hope a lot of events werent just orchestrated to begin seeing the disintegration of nasa & the yielding over to all the private, non-nasa efforts just a little before its time.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 11:33 am67Michael Kent

>>Boeing developed the entire Delta IV Heavy for $500 million

>Delta IV cost $500M *to the government*. Boeing sank quite a bit
>more of their own money in (somewhere between $1.5-3B depending
>on whose numbers you believe).

Right. Delta IV Heavy cost the government $500 million (because Boeing saw no commercial market for the Heavy), and, according to industry press at the time, Boeing spent about $2 billion of its own money on Delta IV Medium. (That came to about $1 billion for the RS-68; $250 million for the launch pad and horizontal integration facility at the Cape; $250 million for the pad / HIF at Vandenberg; and $500 million for development of the common booster core, integration of the overall vehicle, construction of the factory at Decatur, and the Delta Mariner barge to tote around all of the rocket parts.) If you want to go back further, a Boeing precurser company (McDonnell Douglas) spent about $1.5 billion of their own money developing the Delta III.

The point here is that each step built upon those that came before. Boeing spent about $1.5 billion going from Delta II to Delta III, about $2.0 billion going from Delta III to Delta IV Medium, and about $500 million going from Delta IV Medium to Delta IV Heavy. Once you have all of that technology and infrastructure, what’s a reasonable price to go from Delta IV Heavy to Delta IV Super-heavy?

I don’t think it’s the $30-40 billion claimed by the program of record. A small multiple of $500 million should get you a 5-CBC super-heavy with a new upper stage (and maybe a new pad). $600 million / year for five or six years should be plenty. Not that NASA’s planning to go that route, but it’s a plausible amount over a plausible timeframe. And if an aerospace major could do it for that, a mid-major or a small startup could plausibly do it for less than that (if they could do it at all).

So to say that “$600 million a year to develop an HLV is a joke” is way out of line. It’s not a joke. It’s a plausible amount to develop a reasonable HLV. Not that NASA’s planning to go that route.

Mike
on 02 Feb 2010 at 11:41 am68Marcel F. Williams

@Jonathan Goff

There was talk last week about NASA launching a Jupiter HLV into orbit using modified ETs by 2012. So it certainly would take to long to develop a shuttle derived HLV. And NASA has continuously argued that they could develop a shuttle derived HLV within 4 to 5 years.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 11:54 am69Jonathan Goff

Marcel,
The 2012 date wasn’t for operational capability, but for a demo-flight. Something between an Ares I-X and an Ares I-Y equivalence. Not a production vehicle with an upper stage. Not a vehicle with an operational Orion capsule. Not a vehicle with lunar landing capabilities. All of those cost extra–a lot extra with the way the Program of Record was going. And while those are being developed, you now have to pay to keep the HLV operating, so you don’t lose the infrastructure.

The problem is that an SDLV can only be developed quickly if you sideline everything else worth doing at NASA. And quite frankly, I’m not interested in continuing sidelining important technologies just to get an SDLV that we won’t be using for a decade. Or gutting anything else useful just to get an SDLV that can do flags and footprints missions. It’s just not even close to worth it IMO.

Now if you were talking about something smaller, and cheaper (along the lines of the one-way-to-stay stuff or the Light Scout approach I suggested a year or two ago), that might be different. They’re smaller, don’t require an HLV or depots, and could start getting you lunar surface experience a decade sooner while still fitting within a budget that allows for ISS utilization, commercial crew, and lots of R&D. That would be an exploration project worth funding in parallel with the other stuff. Constellation? Not so much.

~Jon
on 02 Feb 2010 at 12:20 pm70Marcel F. Williams

I know its not an operational flight. Its a test flight using ET tanks and SSMEs that are already in the Space Shuttle inventory.

The cost for developing a Jupiter core vehicle has been estimated at between $8.3 billion (by the DIRECT folks) and $15 billion (by the NASA folks). With no space shuttle program ($3 billion a year) and no Constellation program ($3.4 billion a year) that gives you $6.4 billion a year in funding ($32 billion in 5 years). So there’s plenty of money to fund Jupiter HLV development and a lot more. And if you terminated the ISS boondoggle, you’d get an additional $10 billion in 5 years.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 12:53 pm71Dart

Boy, I wish life was as simple as most of you folks seem to think it is. Get rid of NASA and let commercial take over the world! While I am a strong supporter of commercial space, and spend a large part of my life promoting and supporting it these days, anyone who begins by taking pot shots at NASA is ignorant, plain and simple.

For all of its problems (and it has many) NASA is the gold standard for human space flight. Without question the professionalism of the flight control and engineering teams is unequalled by any group with whom I have worked except the Mayo Clinic.

I recently took some newspace people to JSC where NASA gave them a full explanation of how the Shuttle is designed and why it is operated as it is. They asked a ton of questions, were given clear and accurate answers, and came away with a new appreciation for how hard the business is. They were also deeply embarrassed by their ignorance.

I have worked in both government and commercial activities for over 20 years. Over that time I have been involved in many thousands of hours of evaluating both current operational systems and new designs. It is hard for anyone who has not had the experience to understand how hard this business is to actually execute safely. Some of the new companies are starting to learn that just because you spec out a part correctly and buy it from a quality vendor does not mean that it is going to be reliable in a rocket or spacecraft. Space applications stress things to the point where details and levels of imperfection that are meaningless in terrestrial applications become mission critical in space. You are constantly finding that small errors or failures in one part of the system propagated into problems across the system. If cars worked this way we would all be riding horses.

But that is the nature of space flight, and the smart people in NASA have learned that lots of money is not sufficient to overcome it. Instead it takes wisdom and care in every aspect of design and operations.

In most ways, the Shuttle is the finest flying machine humankind has ever built. Unfortunately, it is extraordinarily complex to try to do everything for everybody. It also has one huge weakness – it has no crew escape capability so each and every flight needs to be as perfect as humans can make it. That costs enormous amounts of engineering time and unrelenting quality processes. It came about in large part because the folks who designed the machine (both NASA and Rockwell flush with their success in Apollo) overestimated their ability to design in reliability and true redundancy.

Now we see the same thing in the commercial world. Most of the people with whom I deal are confident that NASA is full of idiots and they are smarter than all who went before. They mock Shuttle and call ISS a boondoggle without bothering to actually understand the systems or their history. If they did they would be proud of the work those people did while trying to learn from their mistakes. Simplicity is one key element of reliability, and one that also goes along with lower cost.

This is one basis for my optimism that commercial companies can actually do better than NASA in some applications. It is time for industry to go for both suborbital tourism and LEO operations. Both are still challenging, but they are within the capability of wise people in industry.

The president’s budget suggests that they are going to get the chance to demonstrate just how smart they are, and I sincerely hope they can live up to their claims. Lets not hear excuses – lets see some hardware fly. And if they can legitimately demonstrate reliabilities greater than 98% I’ll buy steak dinners all around.

I mean it – I am a supporter – but I worry that the zealots are setting the industry up for failure. Lets hope I am wrong.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 1:21 pm72Jonathan Goff

Dart,
I know there are probably fanboys talking about getting rid of NASA and letting commercial business do everything–I’m not one of those, and really haven’t been for years. I think there are some areas that like the ones you and the president (and the Augustine Committee, and Mike Griffin before becoming NASA Admin, and the Aldridge Committee) have suggested that are ready for being handed over to the private sector, such as crew delivery to LEO. I agree that even getting to shuttle levels of safety is a non-trivial task, especially for teams that are new to the rocket business (like SpaceX or the Ares-I development team).

While I don’t think that things necessarily have to be done exactly as they were done for the shuttle, I do think that there’s a lot to learn from the experience NASA has put together. Learning the hows and more importantly the “whys” can tell you a lot about if there might be potential simpler alternatives. But without doing your homework on why something is done the way it is, it’s hard to tell what you should do.

Not being involved on the orbital side of things, I hope the commercial crew companies take this opportunity to make sure that they capture and incorporate as much of the operations know-how as possible from the Shuttle, before all of it is lost (as would’ve been the case with the PoR as well–six year stand-downs don’t do much good for operational readiness).

~Jon
on 02 Feb 2010 at 1:21 pm73Brett Thomason

So when I’m in a skeptical mood, thinking things might all just be getting orchestrated to begin making NASA aimless enough to dilute the support for it right out of all hsf ambitions in favor of the interests of big talking, great on paper, but still embryonic start ups, when it simply (and URGENTLY) IS NOT TIME to do that, then I even wonder about AC’s reliability. How can people say $6B Per Ares launch when the test was $450M? You just said in hlv you build on things. Beginning Ares overruns, yes. Isnt that start up, working foundation smooth for entire future, unrepeated upfront stuff. What does OMB say & is AC trustworthy accountants? And without preconceps, agendas? They say 2017, NASA 2014. For what reason does trust fall on them & NASA is again enthusiastically trampled. And if you’re among the endless Ares attackers, vis a vis impossible vibrations, wind performance, never fly — when it flew so spectacularly, why should we listen to our Constellation damning private space interests? But here
on 02 Feb 2010 at 1:22 pm74Marcel F. Williams

The emerging manned space flight industry reminds me of 17 year olds who are convinced that the world is simple and that they already know everything. But I fully expect the emerging private manned space flight companies to go through the same growing pains that NASA and the Russians went through. And that means some loss of lives.

That’s why I don’t want NASA astronauts to be reliant on private companies. Once there is a fatal accident, killing NASA astronauts, there will be Congressional investigations and a lot of finger pointing and maybe even some heavy government regulation or even a take over of these private companies. We don’t need to go through all of that!

NASA needs to develop or purchase its own manned space flight vehicles and fly them. And private industry needs to do the same. NASA needs to do its own thing and private industry needs to do its own thing. Its much better that way, IMO.

NASA should give some of the most promising companies the money they need to develop their systems but stay out of their business completely. And private space flight companies need to do the same in regards to NASA.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 1:34 pm75Jonathan Goff

Marcel,
Part of what you are missing is that most of the people at NASA who worked through the learning curve on the design side aren’t there anymore, or haven’t done a successful new-vehicle development project in my lifetime. I don’t disagree that there will likely be growing pains for commercial companies. But acting like the Ares-I/Orion team is somehow magically exempt from this is silly. By the time Ares-I/Orion, or DIRECT could be ready to fly, most of the ops team that has worked out the ops side of the learning curve will be gone as well.

I really don’t see the safety benefit that you and Jeff Hanley’s supercomputers claim to see.

~Jon
on 02 Feb 2010 at 1:39 pm76Kelly Starks

1. > Marcel F. Williams
> @Kelly Starks
> We don’t know if the hypogravity environments of the Moon
> or Mars are deleterious to human health. ==
We do since the mechanism for the deterioration is the lower load no the cardiovascular system and bones. So you can get good equivalent reactions by forcing folks to lie down all day (Factoid from someone in NASA micrograv dept: you get more cardio work out and the rest sitting in a chair all day watching DVD’s, then you get on the ISS doing a couple hours of aerobics a day.)
>==
>= Its assumed that this was due to their time on the lunar surface.
> But we need to know for sure.

Why?
If your planning a mission and have half a brain, you assume lunar grave doesn’t help at all – and budget accordingly. (A little pad due to Luna not being quite as bad is just “Management reserve”)
> == And all of the other things that you argued have
> never been actually tested on an alien world. And we need to do that!

Do you really want to try to justify setting up a base no Mars, to test your Mars dust filters?
on 02 Feb 2010 at 1:39 pm77Kelly Starks

1. > Martijn Meijering
>> But with the programs instead canceled – no ones
>> going anywhere, so theres no demand to spure
>> development of any new launchers, much less to have
>> them drive costs down.
> Very true, and you know, I’m perfectly comfortable with
> that. I’m a libertarian leaning kind of guy and I’m not
> convinced opening up space for mankind is a valid way
> to spend taxpayers’ money, ==
I’m sympathetic to that. However if there is anything a gov agency should do in my book is long term public good stuff, such as developing or fostering cutting edge systems, and helping basic industries. Agreed, NASA wasn’t nor is going to do that. But given the gov deliberately took steps to dramatically scale down the scale of US aerospace industry (to a more manageable level for gov bureaucracies), shutting NASA down now is a little like a crappy surgeon getting half way through major surgery, and deciding to let you heal on you own and walking away with you still opened up.

>== I’m worried what Congress will do with the budget
> request and not confident we have seen the last of SDLV/HLV.
Agreed.
> I’m also worried NASA will screw up the R&D into propellant
> transfer and long term storage.
Wait a minute. If your libertarian and don’t want gov waste, why the hell do you support these trivial pork programs?!! On orbit propellant depos are a major high leverage system, but their about as cutting edge a technology as a good radiator cap! Its not like we haven’t pumped and stored fuel in zero G before in operational craft.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 1:41 pm78Jonathan Goff

Kelly,
I think the microgravity issue is more complicated than just that, and a lot of the research seems to back up the idea that there are at least two mechanisms at play here. You have the load on your cardiovascular system and bones like you talk about, but another one has to do with fluid settling in your body. How those actually behave in 1/6g is pretty much unknown at this point. It is very likely that it’s not just a straight-line curve between zero and 1g.

~Jon
on 02 Feb 2010 at 1:42 pm79Eric Collins

Ok, Jon. New challenge for you. It seems that most of the whining about the loss of the Constellation program are related to the lack of a “program”* to replace it. In other words, they don’t seem to have any idea of how space exploration can be accomplished other than in the manner of the Apollo program, HLV and all.

So, let’s step back and think for a minute. Assume that you will have access to at least one human rated commercial launcher and a several medium and heavy class EELV’s. NASA is now free to use these commodities as they see fit. So, what technologies should be developed and demonstrated, and in what order? What kind of missions should NASA astronauts be flying? Which technologies can be demonstrated with unmanned platforms? For what kinds of operations will we need human presence? Just as Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo steadily pushed the envelope of space flight, what would a robust and rigorous flight test and space exploration “program”* look like?

[* The scare quotes around "program" are because I have never liked thinking of space as a program. I'd rather see it approached just like any other scientific or engineering endeavor where you identify things you do not know, then you design tests and experiments to find out the answers. Unfortunately, NASA has been operating as a "space program" for so long, I wonder if they can remember how to operate as they did in the NACA days - as an advanced R&D shop that answers questions relevant to the aerospace industry. (I'm sure the engineers can figure it out, it's the management I'm worried about.)]
on 02 Feb 2010 at 1:46 pm80Kelly Starks

1. > 61Jonathan Goff
>==. In fact, there’s a real chance that five years from
> now we’ll be in a better position to execute on BEO
> exploration than we are today. ==
How? Especially given this budget has them with no program, and shutting down most of the facilities related to it. Also 5 more years will mean far fewer folks in NASA and the country with aerospace ability (its a VERY graying field, and folks are pushing retirement.) With no funds going to ANY dev program under this, NASA is in no possition to even help anyone develop BEO systems.

>==While they canceled the specific program that was
> bloated and underperforming, they never said anything
> about giving up on the goal of making the US spacefairing.

That’s because that was never a NASA goal in the first place. Nothing they were working toward before or after this budget.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 1:52 pm81Kelly Starks

1. > 62Tom D
> Kelly (#44),
> By that same logic an HLV is just a different product to order. ==
Certainly. No reason at al for NASA to study or handhold vendors. Its well with in the capacity of the major vendors – who were the ones who built them for NASA in the first place. (What you think NASA designs and builds space ships?)

>= I wish that we could just order “cheap access to space” off the shelf!
The ships you can (several vendors have offered them), but the cheap access doesn’t come from the craft, but from the market scale. A CATS craft you only fly 6 times a year will cost as much per pound as now.
And of course NASA needs the costs high to get congressional approval.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 2:11 pm82Kelly Starks

1. > 69Dart
> = For all of its problems (and it has many) NASA is the
> gold standard for human space flight. ==
I’d agree, and I worked on NASA programs for about 16 of my 29 year career. Though as a gold standard, well – its not a very competitive field, and they are under tremendous pressure to waste time and money.
>== It is hard for anyone who has not had the experience to
> understand how hard this business is to actually execute safely. ==
Yeah I’ve seen a lot of scary statements by New space folks over steps (like systems engineering, requirements analysis, aerospace specked parts and equipment, etc) that were “just a waste of time”.

These are not folks I’d trust to carry my cargo.

>== In most ways, the Shuttle is the finest flying machine
> humankind has ever built. Unfortunately, it is extraordinarily
> complex to try to do everything for everybody. It also has one
> huge weakness – it has no crew escape capability so each and
> every flight needs to be as perfect as humans can make it.
> That costs enormous amounts of engineering time and unrelenting
> quality processes. ==
I’d argue with some of this. The shuttle isn’t as complex as folk say. The stack is a Kluggy way to go, but say the orbiter isn’t significantly more complex then Orion’s CM/SM (and was a lot cheaper to develop). And it has the best safety record around. Also its debatable if the escape system would increase or decrease survivability. Obviously it increases complexity, and most flight problems that could kill yuo – teh escape system can’t help.

Probably you’d get a lot more survivability (and usability) by cleaning up and hardening a second gen or refitted shuttle, then a “classic” or space plane system with a escape system.

Certainly the shuttle is vastly underestimated and unappreciated. It seems it will be NASA golden age before the end. And apparently it will be a long time before the US at least fields anything with anything like its abilities and low costs of operation.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 2:15 pm83Kelly Starks

> 76Jonathan Goff
>
> Kelly,
> = You have the load on your cardiovascular system
> and bones like you talk about, but another one has
> to do with fluid settling in your body. ==
True, the “tidal effect” of grave pulling the fluids down. Though that also shows up nibed rest studies since the fuid doesn’t pool down. You even see fluid dumping adn electrolite disruptions.

Course really with cardio vascular decay as bad as it is, and in some cases not repairnig fully even after years back no Earth, the little details like fluid screw ups really don’t mater.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 2:26 pm84Brett Thomason

I meant CXP damning, and more importantly, moon destroying private space interests. But the main thing that the White House is lost about is this. NASA took these years forging everything for a major program with 2.6MILL lbs thrust, rated for human beings to go atop it. Musk took more years, behind schedule, getting to 80k lbs thrust, maybe soon 180k lbs thrust?? Why the blazes does the Executive Branch feel its better to TOTALLY SCRAP all the human rated heavy power development that’s been cleared & so many systems that are now engineered, for private interests to suddenly start at the very bottom & encounter thier own all new delays & try to get up to a human rating, with NASA already having so much done & ready & waiting, when the nation & this gap & so much will be suddenly in aimless limbo now, you might say held hostage. It seems senseless.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 2:55 pm85Brett Thomason

So yes that’s very senseless — being right up toward go for liftoff and seeing President Obama rip the rug out, so that private interests can start at the zero level. Again, in whats going to congress, its the analogy of private space companies having little Poodle experience. While NASA has been honing a Pit Bull.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 3:01 pm86Trent Waddington

Jon,

“Part of what you are missing is that most of the people at NASA who worked through the learning curve on the design side aren’t there anymore, or haven’t done a successful new-vehicle development project in my lifetime.”

Oh no, it’s much worse than that. They think they know how to do it better than those old guys. They think those old guys were cowboys and unless the computer tells you your design will work you shouldn’t build it and if it says it will work, then it’s guaranteed to be safe.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 3:30 pm87Martijn Meijering

Not all private interests start at the zero level. Arguably ULA has more experience than NASA. It certainly has operational experience going back to the sixties and unlike NASA it has recently designed and fielded not one but two launch vehicles. Boeing has also designed many spacecraft, including the Shuttle (Rockwell). SpaceX on the other hand are much less experienced, but even they have recently fielded a launcher and are about to complete another.

If the idea were to hand over crew launches to inexperienced companies then that would be bad. Instead NASA is talking to a mix of old and new space companies and taking a balanced, redundant approach. They will also be monitoring the systems and processes carefully. And even the new companies aren’t starting from scratch. Space Dev is building on a lot of work NASA did on HL-20.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 3:33 pm88kert

Jeez, guys, after one day, ~90 posts ?
http://xkcd.com/386/
??
on 02 Feb 2010 at 3:42 pm89Brett Thomason

Well I was going to make one more point on the totally illogical act by the President of slaughtering the Moon goal, before asking you about another approach. But repeat N Y Times bestelling author Homer Hickam, whose new book profiles Anousheh Ansari, and who has sharply criticized waste in the Shuttle system, makes good points about the moon. HomerHickam.com , click on his blog. Seen some good moon points here too! I’m using a very rudimentary device today, and will go back & read the great discussions here, and JON comments tonight! Thanks for letting me vent so much, Jon et al. Just like lox boil off. BUT now the next one is especially for not totally anti-NASA people. Like Mr Goff!
on 02 Feb 2010 at 4:10 pm90Pete

I am not sure I buy the “a bad government space program is better than no space program at all” argument. It is reasonable for the tax payer to expect value for money. Better to do fundamental research and wait until the technology improves – that is what most every other technology area does in such circumstances. Non economically viable government space programs only serve to poison public opinion towards space.

Also, government and private sector space funding is not entirely unfungible. If the government were to stop funding launch vehicles, I would expect private sector funding of launch vehicle development to increase dramatically. The case for private investment would become clear, and I expect private individuals would increasingly step up to take responsibility for developing safe and cheap access to space. There are plenty of billionaires inclined to fund a good cause – if the case is clear.

I doubt replacement private funding would be more than an order of magnitude less, and recent examples would suggest that the private sector would get more that an order of magnitude more bang for its buck (like an actual development program for starters) – so stopping one off NASA launch vehicle projects would seem a net win for space development to me. Not that I would expect that all government space funding would stop – just funding for the NASA launch vehicle log jam.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 4:10 pm91Kelly Starks

> Brett Thomason
>
>== NASA took these years forging everything for a major
> program with 2.6MILL lbs thrust, rated for human beings
> to go atop it. Musk took more years, behind schedule, getting
> to 80k lbs thrust, maybe soon 180k lbs thrust?? Why the
> blazes does the Executive Branch feel its better to TOTALLY
> SCRAP all == private interests to suddenly start at the very
> bottom =

Because even NASA own grading lists SpaceX as better managed, a more mature engineering program, leading to a GREATER maned space capacity then Ares/Orion, available sooner, for 1/100th the development cost.

SpaceX man rated capsule/booster will start test flight to the ISS next year.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 5:22 pm92Patrick

And over at NASAWatch, it’s all about the jobs. I made the mistake of calling the whiners on this, and got accused of wanting to murder NASA employees in their beds. Sheesh.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 5:40 pm93Jonathan Goff

Patrick,
Gotta put yourself in their shoes. I have no problem with someone whose job is at stake being unhappy. That’s perfectly reasonable. My main beef is with the fanboy crowd, who aren’t actually working in the industry, but are crying bloody murder and treason because Obama isn’t going to keep throwing money into funding their future TV habits.

~Jon
on 02 Feb 2010 at 5:53 pm94Kelly Starks

jon
One thing about low G. It might be interesting to see trendlines in higer G experiments. Studies with dogs and rats growing up in 2 and 3 (or was it 4?) G showed significant health and longevity increases. I wonder if their weer enough studies to see how linear the improvements were?
on 03 Feb 2010 at 6:46 am95Kelly Starks

> 90 Patrick
>
> And over at NASAWatch, it’s all about the jobs. ==

Really, for voters its pretty much all about the jobs to.
on 03 Feb 2010 at 7:46 am96Habitat Hermit

Congratulations Jon! Awesome policy, best ever, and awesome budget! The more I get to know about it and the more I get to think it over the better it becomes ^_^

I think most will soon see this as a move back to the spirit and intent of the VSE (ESAS/Constellation was pretty much the opposite of the VSE). Already seen one VSE coauthor offer praise.

NASA just became relevant again, good for them, good for everybody ^_^
on 03 Feb 2010 at 8:15 am97Kelly Starks

> 94Habitat Hermit
>
> I think most will soon see this as a move back to the spirit
> and intent of the VSE

??
How does canceling all beyond ISS maned efforts, and focusing NASA no Earth, sound like VSE?
on 03 Feb 2010 at 8:33 am98Patrick

Jon, you are right. I think my language was too harsh… have you ever fired off a heated post and then wished you hadn’t?

Kelly, cancelling a budget-busting, decades-long (if it survived that many Administrations/Congresses) program to land a few guys on the Moon with Apollo-style ops is not the same thing as cancelling all manned flights beyond ISS. And the greenie stuff is only part of the program. If you haven’t already, watch Bolden’s NPC speech and decide if he intends to abandon beyond-LEO exploration.

Now, Obama may have ulterior motives… I wouldn’t put it past him, or any other President for that matter. But Bolden sure looks like the real deal to me.
on 03 Feb 2010 at 10:04 am99Kelly Starks

> 96Patrick
> Kelly, cancelling a budget-busting, decades-long (if it
> survived that many Administrations/Congresses)
> program to land a few guys on the Moon with
> Apollo-style ops is not the same thing as cancelling
> all manned flights beyond ISS. ==

It doesn’t have to be, but in this case it explicitly was. I’ld have loved a COTS bid for human adn suplies delivered to the lunar surface contract – but it ain’t what we got.

>== Bolden’s NPC speech and decide if he intends to abandon beyond-LEO exploration.

Boldens intentions don’t mater much. I would be surprized if he even had a lot of input into the new plan. I mean O’Keefe nitended to reform NASA and make it a eficent up to date organization, Griffen wanted hie Legacy carved in Ares Rockets, but they both hit a wall.

Even at best this is moving NASA way back to researching, or in many cases reresearching stuff we did long ago. Thats really my big problem is the research seems to be focused on finding solutions to “allow us” to do what we did 50 years ago (HLV technology, better capsules, etc), and the programs are focused on climate change and other things that frankly should be done by other agencies. Shuttle at least was a step forward toward a lower cost, vastly more capable, space transportation and in space operations and construction craft. It was a stumbling step, but a step. VSE was a step back to the ’60 to repeat Apollo (but on steroids to quote Griffen) with huge expensive pork filled unaffordable projects in it. Now we’re going back to the ‘50’s to study how to redo Apollo more economically? No vision of moving forward or developing anything new to more forward.
on 03 Feb 2010 at 10:48 am100Jonathan Goff

Kelly,
You keep talking about “stuff we already know how to do”. If NASA was convinced we already knew how to do autonomous prox-ops and propellant transfer, then why do they claim we can’t whenever it comes time to incorporate them into a mission? Sure we know how to build some HLVs, that doesn’t mean we know how to build cost-effective ones. Sure we know how to build some RLVs, but that doesn’t mean we know for sure how to build affordable ones, and the list goes on. I don’t know what planet you’re living on, but I can see dozens of useful technology development projects that could be done within the framework of this project that would give us much better capabilities than we have today. And prove them in a way that even NASA couldn’t claim they were too risky to implement in the future.

~Jon
on 03 Feb 2010 at 11:04 am101Patrick

Kelly,
The VSE wasn’t the problem–it was Griffin’s implementation of the VSE that was the problem.

And I disagree that Bolden’s intentions don’t matter. First, O’Keefe was well on his way with the spiral-development path before he retired (apparently Columbia weighed on his soul, quite understandable); second, Mike Griffin didn’t hit any wall that wasn’t of his making–in fact, he got his way for six years and $10B.
on 03 Feb 2010 at 11:05 am102Jonathan Goff

Woot! I get to be the hundredth comment on a three sentence post!
on 03 Feb 2010 at 1:28 pm103Kelly Starks

> 98Jonathan Goff
> If NASA was convinced we already knew how to do
> autonomous prox-ops ==

They certified Dragon for it – which implies they think its possible. The progress still runs that way I believe.

>== and propellant transfer, then why do they claim
> we can’t whenever it comes time to incorporate them
> into a mission?

Well for one thing that would negate the need for a HLV. Back when they wanted to use one (during shuttle) they considered it very within reach.

;/

Just because NASA doesn’t know, or doesn’t want to admit is known, how to do something, doesn’t mean it isn’t known.

> == Sure we know how to build some HLVs, that
> doesn’t mean we know how to build cost-effective
> ones. Sure we know how to build some RLVs, but
> that doesn’t mean we know for sure how to build affordable ones, ==

Affordable isn’t a technology issue. I mean the industrial and mil evaluation in the mid ’90s was you can make a 25 ton cap craft that could be turned around in under a day with about 100 guys. McDonnell Douglas internal estimates were for margin op costs per pound down to $100 a pound for a SSTO or 1+TO DC-X like shuttle. DOE in their SSPS study in the ’70’s found the Rockwell and Boeing proposals for 100 ton to 500 ton to orbit for $10’s of dollars a pound, completely credable. (I loved the StarRaker proposal!!)

NASA likes to study things. Often things that don’t need to be studied, or where the studies they are proposing won’t answer any questions about the topic. The studied the shuttle leading edges for impact vulnerability – but they never tested them. The above studies (and demos in some cases) give you all the info you’re going to get before you operate a fleet of production craft. NASA isn’t even proposing building test detonator craft.

As to affordability. A trivial fraction of per flight costs even has anything to do with operating the ships!! The full margin cost of a shuttle flight is only $60 million or about $1,200 a pound, but add in all the fixed costs and NASA overhead for the centers and its over a $ Billion a flight and over $20,000 a pound (GAO numbers here). So if you want affordability, your really looking at your market size and utilization rates – not at the ship.

>== and the list goes on. I don’t know what planet you’re
> living on, ==

I’ve been working at big aero firms that do this stuff and at NASA for 30 years. Firms that have been doing this for generations.

> == but I can see dozens of useful technology development projects that could be done within the framework of this project that would give us much better capabilities than we have today.

>== And prove them in a way that even NASA
> couldn’t claim they were too risky to implement in the future.

NASA can claim depending on airlines is to high risk if it serves their (and congresses) political interests. I’ve been in arguments where they argued equipment already marketed in industrial catalogs would take a massive R&D effort to develop. And others where they argued that issues that could kill crew weer to trivial to except. I spent most of ‘08 listening to NASA brag about the huge safty advance Orion offered, while I was working down specs to levels of redundancy NASA demanded – which was far bellow what they demanded in Shuttle or ISS, or what Mil or industrial customers demanded.

White House folks under Regan and others stated that NASA was one of the least trustworthy agencies they dealt with, and were completely unembarrassed to be caught lying.

I’ld be curious what you list of technologies you’ld like them to verify is though?
on 03 Feb 2010 at 1:40 pm104Kelly Starks

> 99Patrick
>
> Kelly,
> The VSE wasn’t the problem–it was Griffin’s implementation
> of the VSE that was the problem.

Completly agree. Mater of fact if Griffens Implementation attempted to meet Bush’s VSE requirements for affordability. I think Bush and company wouldn’t have washed their hands of them, and let them fight with congress no their own.

> And I disagree that Bolden’s intentions don’t matter.
> First, O’Keefe was well on his way with the
> spiral-development path before he retired (apparently
> Columbia weighed on his soul, quite understandable);

I heard he found Congress’ tolerance for reform hit a WALL as soon as he started to talk about downsizing even tiny redundant centers or groups. He stated he realized he wouldn’t be allowed to do any real reforms, and he was wasting his time. So he left.

>second, Mike Griffin didn’t hit any wall that wasn’t of his making ==

Ah yes – but the bricks arn’t any softer just because yuo laid them yourself.
on 03 Feb 2010 at 1:42 pm105Kelly Starks

> 100 Jonathan Goff
>
> Woot! I get to be the hundredth comment on a three sentence post!

Imagine how much you’ld get no a one sentence post.
on 03 Feb 2010 at 11:27 pm106Brett Thomason

Yes, 103 posts of speechlessness!! Woot indeed, Jon. About HLV, isn’t Delta IV H good enough? An early comment mentioned TransHab for iss. Oh, about iss, and I mentioned this to Zubrin once, couldnt some mods be taken for Mars flight vessel some day? But anyone know more of whats contained in the President’s proposal for T Hab??? Its an inflatable, I think, which had me very excited in those days, but it got cut. Bigelow’s outdone them since then. But T Hab was to be something like 100 x 40′. KELLY, you still around? KS, you sound interesting! What did you do in the program for 16 yrs, and are you still workin? But on Ares vs Elon’s team, that sounds too rosie. Where is that 2011 cots ready date from. And would it be several Mervins or whatever, and how much testing before human rating. Anyway, Ares Orion has only been $10B in 7 years? for all the studying, planning, getting right, logistics (and, of course, gov pork pork pork, but still). Now other co.s have work, but
on 04 Feb 2010 at 12:41 am107Brett Thomason

But the utah srb co (and i and probably alot of folks dont like them much) wont have work like other cos still will. Maybe that was part of the ares design choice. 35 years of all those families and all the businesses and town suddenly killed off, and the resource infrastructure gone. That shoudnt be the determing factor. But this is to give something to think a little on what might have been part of the choice, and yes, all the proud families of Huntstville too. Shoot, I’m swinging the wrong way again. My last difficult thought: when the moon & mars were actually the declared goal of a nation, i just couldnt believe all the presumed space lovers just tearing away at everything. I thought, man, be quiet. My God, the moon & mars has been legislated! and all the endless second guessing & backbiting & stabbing at nasa confusing & disolving the public.
on 04 Feb 2010 at 7:34 am108Kelly Starks

> 104Brett Thomason
>
> ==About HLV, isn’t Delta IV H good enough?

NASA didn’t develop it so it (or Falcon 9 heavy, Direct, etc) don’t exist! If you think they do – your probably not cool enough to see the Emperors new cloths either.

> An early comment mentioned TransHab for iss. ==

Its all Bigelows now.

> == Oh, about iss, and I mentioned this to Zubrin once,
> couldn’t some mods be taken for Mars flight vessel some day?

Its not built to be boosted, endure for years without servicing, protect the crew aganist radiation past the Van Allen belts, etc.

It would be cheaper and better to just launch new modules built for the job.

Course that would eliminate the need for a big HLV, so that’s a unknown technology. But if asked NASA would bid to study the feasibility of constructing large structures in space.

;p

>== KELLY, you still around?

I believe so – but I might be hallucinating? Or this is a really crappy here after..

8{

> KS, you sound interesting! What did you do in the program
> for 16 yrs, =

I was in mission operations directorate at JSC doing shuttle ops and mission control support from ‘81-87. Space station Freedom program office ‘87-’93, ‘93-’95 a couple jobs around NASA HQ (most interesting a support job in office of space access technologies), and ‘08 I was writing requirements for parts of Orion’s life support and cooling systems.

Otherwise since ‘95 I’ve gone contractor, so have resume – will travel.

>= But on Ares vs Elon’s team, that sounds too rosie. Where
> is that 2011 cots ready date from. And would it be several
> Mervins or whatever, ==

First test flights of Falcon/Dragon are this year (

http://spacex.com/

Lists 3 NASA COTS – Demo flights of Falcon 9/Dragon this year, and

http://spacex.com/press.php?page=20100203
Following those flights, SpaceX will begin the NASA Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract, conducting a minimum of 12 cargo flights between 2010 and 2015 with a guaranteed minimum of 20,000 kg to be carried to the ISS.

I think each F9 uses 9 Merlin’s. (might have wanted to build bigger merlins Elon)

>==and how much testing before human rating.

Don’t know what tests NASA wants to spec for COTS-D, but all the dragons were designed for human rated – though they haven’t finished the escape towers yet.

>== Anyway, Ares Orion has only been $10B in 7 years?
> for all the studying, planning, getting right, logistics (and,
> of course, gov pork pork pork, but still). ==

Yup. Aers Orion was a excellent design for its primary task as pork generation. Far superior to Shuttle which was vastly cheaper to develop, and took far more flights to generate the same operating expenses. All those shuttle design faults have been corrected in Ares/Orion, and with Ares/Orion only carrying at most 1/5th as many people per year to orbit, and 1/3rd as many human flights – even with its lower safety standards, the numbers of astronauts’ killed per decade will be less, and with so few flight opportunities per year the astronaut core will be far less likely to make waves if they ever want to fly.

Clearly superior for the needs of NASA and Congress!!

;/
on 04 Feb 2010 at 3:27 pm109Trent Waddington

So Jon, how about posting something new
on 04 Feb 2010 at 3:44 pm110Jonathan Goff

Trent,
Sorry I’ve been meaning to. Just been busy at work, and at home I’ve been spending so much time over on NASASpaceflight lately that I keep getting back to my blog around the time when I know I need to be getting to bed. I’ll see what I can do.

~Jon
on 04 Feb 2010 at 10:09 pm111steve lussier

If you don’t mind my asking, what’s your handle over at NASASpaceflight? I’ve been reading over there the past few days — discovering how deep my ignorance of booster acronyms and demonized NASA administrators runs, trying to make sense of what is happening, or may happen — it’s a confusing soup for a newcomer.

I’ve been a space fan all my life, and in the last year or so have taken an interest in DIRECT (clued in by some posts on Dailykos.com) and then in the Flexible Path scenario from the Augustine Report. Like you I’m very excited about the new budget.

But how likely is it to survive Congress? Now that everything has hit the fan, I find I’m scrambling for info and opinions that have some grounding in reality, and increasingly frustrated that there is no Big Vision coming from Obama to counter all the bitterness and sloganeering that is being pumped out. It doesn’t really feel like we can wait until summer. Isn’t rolling it out like this a mistake on his part? Or am I just getting sucked into the vortex of those who feel hardest hit by the changes? Might Obama, as several over at NASASpaceflight seemed to think yesterday (perhaps it has changed; things move pretty fast over there), be tossing out this budget as a bargaining position just to play hardball with folks like Shelby? Or, again, is that more like wishful thinking on the part of people who feel the rug’s been yanked out from under their feet?

I’m not exactly expecting you to know the answers to all these questions, but it would be quite a relief to read some folks debating them who aren’t filled with rage and despair — so if you and/or your commentors can shed any light, provide any scorecards, ID a key player or two, or point me in the direction of some other useful and active discussions, it would be much appreciated 8^)

Thanks,

Steve
on 04 Feb 2010 at 10:16 pm112Jonathan Goff

Steve,
My handle over there is the super-original “jongoff”. As for if this will be accepted by Congress? Ultimately I think there’s a pretty good chance that something that looks like this will pass, with only a few compromises. Possibly a shuttle extension until the CRS flights begin or something like that. Honestly I think there’s a high probability that Constellation at least is gone. The argument for keeping the shuttle flying till CRS is active is a lot more convincing than the case for keeping any significant part of Constellation. Not that I would mind having the budget passed as-is. I think it’s a great budget. But being realistic, I think there’s going to be at least one important compromise made in order to get enough support to get it passed.

~Jon
on 04 Feb 2010 at 10:41 pm113steve lussier

Thanks for the fast reply. Once I posted my long, somewhat whiny plaint, I went back over to DIRECT thread 3 and saw the Luc and Mark S and some others are getting into a pretty solid slog through of the disagreement. Gotta love this from Luc:

“In 10-15 years:

I think NASA will be doing incredible, cutting edge research again exploring SEP, NEP, Air Breathing 1st Stage, Real Resusable (like Skylon,) and many things I am unqualified to think up.

I think the U.S. aerospace industry Oldspace AND Newspace will be thriving on regular launch contracts from NASA and burying Ariane V, Soyuz, the Long March, and everybody else in the global launch marketplace.

In 8-10 years, I think there will be 6-8 viable HLV proposals submitted by the above in response to an RFP put out by NASA to lift 200mt/year to the Moon and optionally to Mars in the future. I hope NASA will award at least 3-4 contracts, so there are redundancies.

I think that Bigelow will have at least one habitat in orbit and will be responding to RFPs for stations and habs from NASA.

I think scores (maybe hundreds) of Americans (and others) will have a chance to orbit the earth who otherwise would not have had the opportunity.

I think private investors will get the itch to invest in space businesses, and that this could be the next boom/bubble. The hope is more boom than bubble, as there is real investment in real hardware that can provide intrinsic value (read STUFF from space.)

Not to sound too melodramatic (again,)

- but I think it could put the U.S. back on top in a very real and sustainable way. It would give us a way to harness our underutilized and atrophied industrial base and do something where the barriers to entry are high enough that we won’t have to worry about global competition for a decade or more (two or more decades from now,) and if we run with the ball they won’t catch us at all.

I honestly believe we could catch up on all the outer space expectations we boomers had for the 21st century within 15-20yrs – just in time for us to die happy ;D ”

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=19548.msg536668#msg536668
on 05 Feb 2010 at 4:30 am114Marcel F. Williams

@Jonathan Goff

Demand determines how costly an HLV is. If all we end up doing with an HLV is space adventurism then the cost will always be high– no matter what breakthrough NASA comes up with. But if we build them and frequently launch them for space colonization and space tourism, then the cost will be cheap.

If you built a Jupiter HLV and used it for launching customized space stations for science or space tourism, manned flights to the Moon, habitat modules for a continuously growing lunar base, space stations to a Langrange points, interplanetary habitat modules for Mars, fuel depots to various points in space then the cost would go down. If that same Jupiter core vehicle were also used, without the SRBs but with 6 SSME, to launch space tourist and satellites to LEO then the demand for the core vehicle would be extremely high and the vehicle cost would fall dramatically due to economies of mass production.

And if we really want to dramatically lower the cost of interplanetary space travel while also protecting astronauts from the dangers of galactic radiation and major solar events with the appropriate amount of mass shielding then NASA needs to– finally– launch a light sail to one of the Langrange points. Light sails are reusable space craft that use no fuel and could potentially transport several thousand tonnes to Mars in less than a years time. They could also be used to capture small asteroids and bring them back to the Langrange points for processing into hydrogen and oxygen or used to mass shield space stations. So we could develop a game changing interplanetary transportation system by just deploying very very very big aluminized kites!
on 05 Feb 2010 at 6:17 am115Kelly Starks

> Gotta love this from Luc:
>
> “In 10-15 years:
>
> I think NASA will be doing incredible, cutting edge research
> again exploring SEP, NEP, Air Breathing 1st Stage,
> Real Resusable (like Skylon,) and ==

Our NASA?! The one boasting about starting a research program no auto docking, while the ISS groceries are already being delivered with such a system? Brushing of reusable space craft as beyond current technology – after operating a fleet of partial reusables for 30 years?

> I think the U.S. aerospace industry Oldspace AND
> Newspace will be thriving on regular launch contracts
> from NASA ==

NASA hasn’t stated any goal or program that would require them. And given gov process, they are already scheduled out for 10+ years.

> In 8-10 years, I think there will be 6-8 viable HLV
> proposals submitted by the above in response to
> an RFP put out by NASA to lift 200mt/year to the Moon
> and optionally to Mars in the future. ==

There aren’t 6-8 companies that are capable of building such craft, and NASA just had the moon return canceled. Hell in 10 years I could see Virgin or someone going to the moon, but unless there some stunnig political reversal in DC in the next could years – the window for a classic HLV Apollo on steroids program in 6-8 years is closed.

> I think that Bigelow will have at least one habitat in orbit
> and will be responding to RFPs for stations and habs from NASA.

He already has 2 test habs adn responding to NASA RFPs and inquiries.

> I think scores (maybe hundreds) of Americans (and others)
> will have a chance to orbit the earth ==

Maybe – though this also works against the idea of a major NASA program?

> I think private investors will get the itch to invest in space businesses, =

If someone starts making real money in space, I thnik this is a real possibility.

> – but I think it could put the U.S. back on top in a very real
> and sustainable way. It would give us a way to harness
> our underutilized and atrophied industrial base and do
> something where the barriers to entry are high enough
> that we won’t have to worry about global competition==

I desperately hope US aero will turn around from its dive, adn DC turns around from its preference for less and less areospace industry.
However. As to barriors to entry keep other nations out – were the nation taking a financial slide adn are so indebt that every incomtax dollar to the feds is JUST able to pay the interest no out T-bill loans. We’re are already on the hook enough to china that they can openly harras our Navy adn demand we back off watching them – adn we roll over. Another 5-10 years were not going to have the money to do anything like a major space program, adn will be in the shadow richer nations like India and China with far more industrial capacity.
on 05 Feb 2010 at 6:30 am116Kelly Starks

> 112Marcel F. Williams
>=
> If you built a Jupiter HLV and used it for launching customized
> space stations ==, manned flights to the Moon, habitat
> modules for a continuously growing lunar base, space
> stations to a Langrange points, interplanetary habitat
> modules for Mars, == then the cost would go down. ==
>==If that same Jupiter core vehicle were also used, without
> the SRBs but with 6 SSME, ==

I wonder how low it could go?
The hull facility is a $300M a year facility regardless of the number of tanks, I think they said getting up to 20 ETs a year would boost it to $320M. P&W said expendable SSMEs would run $37M ish a peace. Even assuming that drops to $30 with 20 flights a year – thats still $180M in engines, $16M in hull, probably assembled and outfitted <$300M per booster? Then you add the overhead adn fixed costs, but the Base $300M is 5 times the margin cost of a shuttle launch, so likely the per flight cost will be much higher.

GAO estimates for 4 Ares/Orion/Altai launches a year came out to nearly $8 billion a launch with the overhead. Jupiter has less then a tenth the overhead adn assuming 20 flights a year for such a Jupiter… er Still looking like over a billion a launch with overhead??

ELVs have a real high hard floor to their per flight costs, since they have the developmebnt costs of a RLV (higher ni the few historic samples), but you need to pay for a new ship for each flight.
on 05 Feb 2010 at 1:32 pm117Pete

> I think private investors will get the itch to invest in space businesses, =

If someone starts making real money in space, I thnik this is a real possibility.

The world spends a couple of hundred billion on space every year, lack of real money has never been the problem.

I could envisage ~1000kg payload launch vehicles delivering standardized space craft, space station and satellite modules that were assembled in space, propellant for depots, and what not. Seems that would be a ~100 billion dollar commercial market that could be readily accessed by the private sector with a little forethought (low entry barrier).
on 05 Feb 2010 at 1:36 pm118Marcel F. Williams

The operation cost of a Jupiter HLV shouldn’t cost more than the current Space Shuttle cost which NASA estimates are about $450 per mission. Although payload cost per kilogram will be a lot lower since a Jupiter HLV would carry substantially more payload into orbit than a space shuttle even if it carried a 22 tonnes Orion on top. If NASA finally used disposable SRBs, these cost could be lowered along with increasing the payload capacity.

A single Altair cargo launch to the Moon would probably cost a little over $1 billion. If you assume that NASA will have at least $8 billion a year for Jupiter HLV launches due to the end of the shuttle program ($3 billion a year), end of the ISS program ($2 billion a year) and the end of the Constellation development ($3.4 billion a year), then NASA should have enough for at least HLV launches per year. $8 billion a year would only buy you about three weeks of military occupation in Iraq.

However, building just 8 Jupiter HLVs per year is still not a high enough demand to move from the craft production to the mass production of an HLV. However, if the Jupiter core vehicle (without the SRBs) was also used by the private commercial industry as a SSTO vehicle for launching up to 25 tonnes into orbit (paying passengers, commercial satellites, fuel depot, cargo launches), then the demand for the Jupiter core vehicle would go up dramatically requiring hundreds of Jupiter core vehicles to be developed each year– if it were to grab a significant amount of market share. This could potentially reduce Jupiter core vehicle cost by an order of a magnitude since vehicle production would probably move from craft production to mass production. The production of the expendable SSMEs alone could possibly go up from only a few dozen produced per year to over 1000 engines produced each year under this scenario. That’s plenty of capacity for several competing vendors.
on 05 Feb 2010 at 4:50 pm119Kelly Starks

> 115Pete
>
>>> I think private investors will get the itch to invest in space businesses, =

>> If someone starts making real money in space, I thnik this is a real possibility.

> The world spends a couple of hundred billion on space
> every year, lack of real money has never been the problem.

Where are you getting those numbers from?

> I could envisage ~1000kg payload launch vehicles delivering
> standardized space craft, space station and satellite modules
> that were assembled in space, propellant for depots, and
> what not.

No current market for any of that. Hell most of the launch market is declining and going to fewer bigger launches!
on 05 Feb 2010 at 5:07 pm120Kelly Starks

> 116Marcel F. Williams
>
> The operation cost of a Jupiter HLV shouldn’t cost more
> than the current Space Shuttle cost which NASA estimates
> are about $450 per mission. ==

??
Ah the margin cost of a shuttle flight is about $60 million, total program cost per mission is $1.3 billion ish. (GAO numbers) Where did you hear $450?

Looks like (see my numbers above) a Direct could possibly launch for les then $300 million. So $25 tons for $60M + or $120? tons for $300m +?

Course if you were to clean up the shuttle for lower servicing costs per flight and quicker turn around times (higher flight rate) its cost could come down a lot. Really though its the fixed and overhead costs / number of flights that the 800lb gorilla of launch costs.

> ==If you assume that NASA will have at least $8 billion a
> year for Jupiter HLV launches due to the end of the shuttle
> program ($3 billion a year), end of the ISS program ($2
> billion a year) and the end of the Constellation
> development ($3.4 billion a year), ==

Not sure your numbers are accurate – but given ISS is tasked to fly to 2020, and they never paid $3.4 billion a year on constellation as far as I know?

>== $8 billion a year would only buy you about three weeks of military occupation in Iraq.

Actualy the total cost of the Iraq and Aphgan wars is about $800 billion.

>== if the Jupiter core vehicle (without the SRBs) was also
> used by the private commercial industry as a SSTO vehicle
> for launching up to 25 tonnes into orbit (paying passengers,
>commercial satellites, fuel depot, cargo launches), then
> the demand for the Jupiter core vehicle would go up
> dramatically requiring hundreds of Jupiter core vehicles
> to be developed each year–==

Woah there boy!! Hundreds of Jupiter craft a year?!! There’s no capacity to make even a fraction of that many, nor facilities to launch that many, nor places willing to clear out downrange pretty much every day for launches. Nor markets of that scale with costs near current levels.

For that kind of flight rates you need to look at RLVs. Which can sustain high flight rates, adn provide much lower costs and higher safty levels..

Also the loss rates of 2% of all launches – would really cramp your style.
on 05 Feb 2010 at 7:27 pm121Marcel F. Williams

“Not sure your numbers are accurate – but given ISS is tasked to fly to 2020, and they never paid $3.4 billion a year on constellation as far as I know?”

Check last year’s NASA budget.

“Woah there boy!! Hundreds of Jupiter craft a year?!! There’s no capacity to make even a fraction of that many, nor facilities to launch that many, nor places willing to clear out downrange pretty much every day for launches. Nor markets of that scale with costs near current levels.”

Well, they better get prepared. The space tourism industry is going to be huge in the 2020s, IMO. A Sea Launch configuration would probably be best for such a Jupiter-lite rocket. And such a high flight rate would mean that practically every major coastal port in the US could doing what Long Beach, California is doing– and sailing their launch configuration to the equator to launch their payloads into orbit.

“For that kind of flight rates you need to look at RLVs. Which can sustain high flight rates, adn provide much lower costs and higher safty levels..”

There’s nothing wrong with building hundreds of disposable rockets. There were nearly 70 satellite launches worldwide back in 2007. We need to manufacture more things here in the US.

While reusable space craft might reduce cost even more, I doubt if you’ll be able to safely use them more than about 10 times. Plus their lower cost might make space flight even more affordable for even a higher volume of people which might actually increase the demand for the production of more launch craft!

But for expendables and reusables, a high demand for space flights is the key to dramatically reducing cost of a particular rocket.
on 05 Feb 2010 at 8:05 pm122Kelly Starks

> 119Marcel F. Williams
>
>> == Hundreds of Jupiter craft a year?!! There’s no capacity
>> to make even a fraction of that many, nor facilities to
>> launch that many, nor places willing to clear out downrange
>> pretty much every day for launches. Nor markets of
>> that scale with costs near current levels.”

> Well, they better get prepared. The space tourism industry
> is going to be huge in the 2020s, IMO.

Assuming your assuming a 25 ton tourist craft, thats what a 25 tourist craft? so your Jupiter launcher is still costing passengers $20 million a seat. The response for ISS tours at that cost wouldn’t fill one of those ships.

And again, killing 1 out of 50 tourists is bad for marketing… and political support.

> == A Sea Launch configuration would probably be best for
> such a Jupiter-lite rocket. ==

A sea launch for a 1000 ton booster?

Thats a damn big ship.

>> “For that kind of flight rates you need to look at RLVs.
>> Which can sustain high flight rates, adn provide much
>> lower costs and higher safty levels..”

> There’s nothing wrong with building hundreds of disposable rockets.==

Except theirs no infastructure to do it, and its keeping your costs per launch way way up.

> There were nearly 70 satellite launches worldwide back
> in 2007.

I think it was closer to 50 worldwide.

> While reusable space craft might reduce cost even more, I
> doubt if you’ll be able to safely use them more than
> about 10 times.

On ave each shuttles have flown about twice that often (some obviously quite a bit more) – and they are not exactly built tough!

Design for rugged use adn servicability and hundreds of flights per airframe should be a big issue. Certainy high performance aircraft subjected to worse loads have stood up more. Also its considered doable by the manufacturers.

Besides, you’re Jupiter tourist craft requires stagering amounts of infrastructure and labor. Cost per flight at least several hundreds of millions of $.

> == Plus their lower cost might make space flight even
> more affordable for even a higher volume of people
> which might actually increase the demand for the
> production of more launch craft!

Only if you caused the market to go up a couple orders of magnitude — which you could build a RLV to support easier — and should see as a good thing?

> But for expendables and reusables, a high demand for space
> flights is the key to dramatically reducing cost of a
> particular rocket.

Oh agreed. I just wonder if you could support that with a expendable like a Jupiter?
on 05 Feb 2010 at 10:42 pm123Vladislaw

“If someone starts making real money in space, I thnik this is a real possibility.” – Kelly.

That isn’t how wallstreet works. There is a reason a bull is the symbol for a rising market. Investors move with a herd mentality. A business will not have to make a dime for this to happen. It is the POTENTIAL for FUTURE profits that is a stock broker’s bread and butter when it comes to selling stock. EVERYONE wants in on a ground floor opportunity. Once Bigelow has a destination in place and lockmart-boeing-spacex have a made a successful flight .. look out.
Witness the dotcom boom, a classic economic model to compare this with. First is the speculation phase, investors will be clamoring for a piece of the action and will be begging for stock from any company with space in their name.

( you are just starting to get an inkling of this for suborbital and virgin galatic as angel investment groups are starting to form for venture capital – the first sign of a future market bubble)

This speculation phase always ends the same way, as capital comes pouring in over capitalization and over production capacity is built, forcing companies to lower their prices to survive. Then what follows is a market shake out as the larger successful companies start buying up the smaller companies and small parts suppliers as they vertically and or horizontally intergrate to lower costs. ( In a lot of cases the major stakeholders were not even involved in that business, they just have the capital to buy up over capacity for pennies on the dollar) so you will see airlines and others buy up small suborbital companies and add it as a new division.

So, from what i am seeing, all it is going to take for a huge capital infusion is a successful flight and then the stock brokers will dust off the phone banks and start calling their investor lists and start selling the new next best money maker since the IPOD.

( I studied economics, not rocket science – smiles)
on 06 Feb 2010 at 1:40 am124Pete

“> The world spends a couple of hundred billion on space
> every year, lack of real money has never been the problem.

Where are you getting those numbers from?”

I do not seem to be able to find the original source (without buying a report), but here is the first link I found that suggests 150 billion for the Global space and satellite market (though I doubt this includes everything):
http://blogs.zdnet.com/ITFacts/?p=8639
on 06 Feb 2010 at 1:48 am125Marcel F. Williams

“Assuming your assuming a 25 ton tourist craft, thats what a 25 tourist craft? so your Jupiter launcher is still costing passengers $20 million a seat. The response for ISS tours at that cost wouldn’t fill one of those ships.”

Polls show that 7% of the wealthy would be willing to pay $20 million for a chance to fly into space. That also means 93% wouldn’t:-) There are 100,000 people on this planet worth over $30 million. So that’s 7000 people willing to pay over $20 million to fly into space. Of course we know that people have paid up to $35 million to fly into space. If you assume that only 10% of that number would actually get around to flying into space each year aboard a 6 passenger capsule ( 2 pilots and 4 passengers) then that would mean 700 people paying to fly into space each year. That would be 175 flights per year. NASA had 5 manned flights last year and a maximum of 9 manned flights in one year.

But at 175 per year, the cost per passenger is probably going to go down dramatically to maybe under a million dollars per passenger. And there are about 9 million millionaires on the planet!

“you’re Jupiter tourist craft requires stagering amounts of infrastructure and labor.”

A Jupiter SSTO vehicle would be the simplest booster ever launched since it has no SRBs and only one stage. The current Sea Launch rocket, Zenit 3SL, weighs about 462 tonnes fully fueled. A manned Jupiter SSTO would probably weigh less than 900 tonnes fully fueled.

Anyone interested in seeing a youtube video of how the Sea Launch company works can click the following URL:

http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com/2009/10/sea-launch-history.html
on 06 Feb 2010 at 1:58 am126Pete

“The operation cost of a Jupiter HLV shouldn’t cost more than the current Space Shuttle cost which NASA estimates are about $450 per mission.”

Lets optimistically assume 100 ton payload at 450 million each, that is $4,500/kg. One can already buy cheaper launch vehicles than that, and one would need near an order of magnitude improvement on that to achieve CATS.

Even with existing smaller launch vehicles the flight rates are far too low to enable safe and low cost access to space. A HLV would need a ~1000 fold increase in market size to get the flight rates necessary to justify it (a couple of flights a day are likely required). I see no sensible way of growing that much in one go, it would require trillions of dollars up front to force a market of that size.
on 06 Feb 2010 at 10:01 am127Kelly Starks

> 123Vladislaw
>
>> “If someone starts making real money in space, I
>> think this is a real possibility.” – Kelly.
>
> That isn’t how wallstreet works. There is a reason a bull
> is the symbol for a rising market. Investors move with
> a herd mentality. A business will not have to make a
> dime for this to happen. It is the POTENTIAL for FUTURE
> profits that is a stock broker’s bread and butter when
> it comes to selling stock. ===

Agreed. My point was right now no one sees a way to make big money in space, and NASA has convinced people (even space advocates to a surprising degree) that space is impossible. 50 years of space flight and it takes one of the highest funded government agencies, spending enough each year to buy a new aircraft Carrier, just to operate the shuttles? This to be replaced with 50’s style capsules on boosters that cost significantly more then that be launch? If NASA is the best and the brightest, and they can’t do any better then this. Then “obviously” space is impossible.

Its why the X-prize folks could get a insurance policy to cover half the prize. The insurance company found the top experts in the country assured them something like SS1 would cost over a $billion, and be impossible for a small organization. Instead itcost $35 million, adn that really excited folks.

Maybe once Virgin starts routine flights of the SS2 fleet that will convince investors that developing space is possible — or at least that Branson’s space ideas are worth investing in? Ok SS2 is a long way from a space shuttle from a engineering standpoint, but conceptually its very similar. So it might push the investor mind set to the point they see space as a industrial possibility.

Some think that if the internet frounteer hadn’t drawn attention away from space, perhaps space would have been developed then. The technology to do it (to develop all the systems needed) was avalible for decades even then. I think really a sold busness case based space development concept has to be fielded, and investors have to at a gut level beleave it can be done.

On the engineering side. You have the big aero firms who have been talking about and proposing design for all this for decades. Amazing folks when given a chance like with the DC-X in the ’90’s, or the DOE SSPS studies in the ’70’s. BUT NO ONE STEPS UPS TO PLACE A ORDER!!

So the aero firms wait – in most cases as the US phases down aerospace over the last couple decades, then went out of busness. But the capacity is still there – but still being ignored or forgotten.

===
> So, from what i am seeing, all it is going to take for a
> huge capital infusion is a successful flight and then the
> stock brokers will dust off the phone banks and start
> calling their investor lists and start selling the new next
> best money maker since the IPOD.

Successful flight of what? We’ve had successful flights into space for half a century. Maned flight for nearly that long. Airliner sized shuttles have flown for nearly 30 years now, representing the bulk of all human efforts in space. But still no big investments.

So whats going to be the killer ap / product that excites investors?
on 06 Feb 2010 at 10:08 am128Kelly Starks

>124Pete

> The world spends a couple of hundred billion on space
> every year, =
>
>== here is the first link I found that suggests 150 billion
> for the Global space and satellite market (though
> I doubt this includes everything):
> http://blogs.zdnet.com/ITFacts/?p=8639

I’m dubious. It talks about the US gov spending a $100 billion next year. That’s 2.5 times the total mil space and NASA budgets.

I think they are refering not to space, but to efforts using space as a small part of their effort. For example talking about the total sales of the Direct-TV company as being space – but only the sats in orbit (a very small fraction of the efforts – and one they might phase out) involves actual space development.
on 06 Feb 2010 at 10:28 am129Kelly Starks

> 125Marcel F. Williams
>
>> “Assuming your assuming a 25 ton tourist craft, thats
>> what a 25 tourist craft? so your Jupiter launcher is still
>> costing passengers $20 million a seat. The response
>> for ISS tours at that cost wouldn’t fill one of those ships.”

> Polls show that 7% of the wealthy would be willing to
> pay $20 million for a chance to fly into space. ==

But actual buyers to fly tourist to the ISS has been only a handful, and they are already flying repeat customers. So it might be that far more rick foks are willing to say they would – then actually will when its offered.

No solid way to be sure.

>== But at 175 per year, the cost per passenger is probably
> going to go down dramatically to maybe under a million
> dollars per passenger.==

Not with a Jupiter expendable system, requireing a KSc support facility.

>> “you’re Jupiter tourist craft requires stagering amounts
>> of infrastructure and labor.”

> A Jupiter SSTO vehicle would be the simplest booster ever
> launched since it has no SRBs and only one stage. ==

It also needs to be completely constructed for each fight, and needs hundreds of millions of dollars of engines and systems per flight. Thousands of man hours per flight and massive industrial infrastructure to produce it.

No for massive flight rates like that, or tonage like that, you eaither need to build staggering infrastructure and pay through the nose or you fly a simpler, reusable craft. Its certainly not a major effort to do that — vastly easier and cheaper then your jupiter senerio — but it is different.

Closer to DC-X or something then Jupiter. Jupiter isonly sensable if your pnly going to fly a couple times a year – adn never use it on a large scale.

Some old designs like the star clipper
http://www.pmview.com/spaceodysseytwo/spacelvs/sld019.htm
or others
http://www.pmview.com/spaceodysseytwo/spacelvs/sld053.htm
http://www.pmview.com/spaceodysseytwo/spacelvs/sld057.htm

My fav, star raker
http://www.pmview.com/spaceodysseytwo/spacelvs/sld047.htm
http://www.pmview.com/spaceodysseytwo/spacelvs/sld039.htm

?? didn’t post
on 06 Feb 2010 at 10:42 am130Kelly Starks

> 126. Pete
>
> Lets optimistically assume 100 ton payload at $450
> million each, that is $4,500/kg. One can already buy
> cheaper launch vehicles than that, and one would need
> near an order of magnitude improvement on that to achieve CATS.
==
> = a couple of flights a day are likely required). I see no
> sensible way of growing that much in one go, it would
> require trillions of dollars up front to force a market of that size.

really the critical part is the high flight rate. A RLV would (given past history) cost about as much as a similar cargo capacity airliner. Engine costs, fuel costs, within a factor of 5-10. Maintenance costs could be a couple man months a year using DC-X test results. Perhaps much less with more then ten million spent to analyze and develop it like was done in the DC-X.

Did some looking into this with a project for a large scale CATS project I tried to get launched. If you can tap a really big market, and can field the system, you could do launch to orbit for dollars per pound with tech you could field.
on 06 Feb 2010 at 10:45 am131Kelly Starks

Weird, this post did post?

onemore time..

> 125Marcel F. Williams
>
>> “Assuming your assuming a 25 ton tourist craft, thats
>> what a 25 tourist craft? so your Jupiter launcher is still
>> costing passengers $20 million a seat. The response
>> for ISS tours at that cost wouldn’t fill one of those ships.”

> Polls show that 7% of the wealthy would be willing to
> pay $20 million for a chance to fly into space. ==

But actual buyers to fly tourist to the ISS has been only a handful, and they are already flying repeat customers. So it might be that far more rick foks are willing to say they would – then actually will when its offered.

No solid way to be sure.

>== But at 175 per year, the cost per passenger is probably
> going to go down dramatically to maybe under a million
> dollars per passenger.==

Not with a Jupiter expendable system, requireing a KSc support facility.

>> “you’re Jupiter tourist craft requires stagering amounts
>> of infrastructure and labor.”

> A Jupiter SSTO vehicle would be the simplest booster ever
> launched since it has no SRBs and only one stage. ==

It also needs to be completely constructed for each fight, and needs hundreds of millions of dollars of engines and systems per flight. Thousands of man hours per flight and massive industrial infrastructure to produce it.

No for massive flight rates like that, or tonage like that, you eaither need to build staggering infrastructure and pay through the nose or you fly a simpler, reusable craft. Its certainly not a major effort to do that — vastly easier and cheaper then your jupiter senerio — but it is different.

Closer to DC-X or something then Jupiter. Jupiter is only sensible if your only going to fly a couple times a year – and never use it on a large scale.

Some old designs like the star clipper
http://www.pmview.com/spaceodysseytwo/spacelvs/sld019.htm
or others
http://www.pmview.com/spaceodysseytwo/spacelvs/sld053.htm
http://www.pmview.com/spaceodysseytwo/spacelvs/sld057.htm

My fav, star raker
http://www.pmview.com/spaceodysseytwo/spacelvs/sld047.htm
http://www.pmview.com/spaceodysseytwo/spacelvs/sld039.htm
on 06 Feb 2010 at 11:33 am132Vladislaw

“If you assume that only 10% of that number would actually get around to flying into space each year aboard a 6 passenger capsule ( 2 pilots and 4 passengers) then that would mean 700 people paying to fly into space each year. That would be 175 flights per year. NASA had 5 manned flights last year and a maximum of 9 manned flights in one year. ”

I had read on a russian space website that there were over 300 people who had wanted to be considered for a space flight to the ISS.

I have a little bit of a different take on it. I do not think it is as important how many up and down passenger flights you have per year, to low earth orbit, but how long each passenger actually stays in space. Passenger flights will not give you the break through in launch costs you need, in my opinion. It will be the high flight rate of cargo serving those passengers. If most of the people stay in space long enough to require cargo flights is where the break through will come for reusables. You could then use the high profit margin on a reusable cargo vehicle to actually run the passenger side as a loss leader. Run the numbers on how much cargo will be needed if 70-80% of those passengers stay on orbit for 4-6 months each.
on 06 Feb 2010 at 12:06 pm133Vladislaw

“Its why the X-prize folks could get a insurance policy to cover half the prize. The insurance company found the top experts in the country assured them something like SS1 would cost over a $billion, and be impossible for a small organization. Instead itcost $35 million, adn that really excited folks.” – Kelly

“Successful flight of what? We’ve had successful flights into space for half a century. Maned flight for nearly that long. Airliner sized shuttles have flown for nearly 30 years now, representing the bulk of all human efforts in space. But still no big investments.” – Kelly

That is why i mentioned angel investors versus a venture captial firm. An investment firm with a 5-10 billion portfolio do not even CONSIDER a company with a capitalization of 25 million. It is just to small to even consider. They wait until AFTER the shake out and then invest in the new industry leaders. Even though they are “venture” capitalists an investment firm is still pretty conservative. That is why you look for the formation of angel investor groups forming AHEAD of the pack, they feel a technology is ready and jump in the earliest.

you are seeing this now with the formation of two angel investment groups already formed for newspace. You are also starting to see some consolidations happening, with scaled composite and space dev being bought up. This is happening as we speak but in investment circles “on the street” you are not seeing or hearing about any of it. Once you start seeing Cramer going on endlessly about the investment possiblity of new space, smart money will have already been positioned.

The successful flight I am waiting for is a “for profit” flight. That is why I want NASA out of the launch business. I want to see jobs created for wealth creation in the human launch business and NASA jobs are not formed to create wealth they are formed for “the mission” or “the program”.

No matter how hard NASA tries there will never be ANY form of outlet for people to actually get truely involved. They can not even show support by investing money in a system. I can promise you this, a person that puts some “skin in the game” and buys stock in a company will feel more connected to spaceflight and become more of an advocate then anything NASA can do.

Witness what we see in the blog-o-sphere, among spaceofiles the world is coming to an end at NASA or it is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but step out of “spacenut” realm and look what we see.. a couple 30 second blips on the news, hell even fox news isnt running this 24/7 that “Obama is ending manned spaceflight”. It just isnt important enough to the man on the street because the man on the street isnt involved with space and NEVER has been a part of it.

Only when they start having a vested interest in it, will it start to matter.
on 06 Feb 2010 at 1:00 pm134Marcel F. Williams

“ets optimistically assume 100 ton payload at 450 million each, that is $4,500/kg. One can already buy cheaper launch vehicles than that, and one would need near an order of magnitude improvement on that to achieve CATS.”

A Jupiter HLV would not really be designed for a lot of manned space flight traffic. And because it still uses SRBs, I doubt if its cost could be cut more than 50%. A Jupiter SSTO (Jupiter without the SRBs) however would be a lot cheaper since the demand for the booster could be several hundred a year and the demand for the SSME could be over 1000 per year. That would move the rocket vehicle production from expensive ‘craft production’ to assembly line and even robotic ‘mass production’.
on 06 Feb 2010 at 4:48 pm135Pete

“A Jupiter SSTO (Jupiter without the SRBs) however would be a lot cheaper since the demand for the booster could be several hundred a year and the demand for the SSME could be over 1000 per year. ”

No it would not be, the market/flight rate is not even within an order of magnitude of that. Also note that after each shuttle loss the fleet was grounded for ~3 years. High flight rates are also necessary to develop/demonstrate high safety levels (hence the dishonesty of NASA claiming high levels of safety from large launch vehicles).

The commercially accessible launch market would be lucky to be a couple of hundred ton a year. To create a competitive and redundant launch industry (necessary if one wishes to achieve CATS), one would need a minimum of something like three vehicles types each flying say a hundred times a year (assuming RLV’s one might need at least three of each type).

One will not find a market for this unless the launch vehicles are in the 1000kg range. Hence any development of a launch vehicle larger than this is doomed to economic failure as anything more than a glorified missile and will only serve to perpetuate the status quo. Working from existing markets, a conventional launch vehicle larger than ~1000kg payload will not bring about safe and cheap access to space. And this assumes payload sizes are fungible…

Whenever someone suggests a HLV they are suggesting putting off safe and cheap access to space for another couple of decades. A NASA HLV would permanently put NASA out of the launch business, so in that regard it is not necessarily a bad thing.
on 06 Feb 2010 at 5:09 pm136Kelly Starks

> 132Vladislaw

> The successful flight I am waiting for is a “for profit” flight. ==

There have been lots of commercial for profit launchs over the decades. Thats nothing new. What knew thing will insight investors.

>== even fox news isnt running this 24/7 that “Obama is
> ending manned spaceflight”. It just isnt important enough
> to the man on the street because the man on the street
> isnt involved with space and NEVER has been a part of it.

More basiv=c. The man on the street isn’t interested – because it hasn’t done anything interesting. Commercial or NASA cargo launchs doesn’t make a difference. Its still nothing happening. NASA contracting firms to do launches is even more boring then NASA contracting firms to build some new lauchers to NASA specifications. If anything, to the man on the street – contracting out for launches to the ISS makes it seem like even NASA is bored withspace launches.
on 06 Feb 2010 at 5:18 pm137Kelly Starks

> 133 Marcel F. Williams

> A Jupiter HLV would not really be designed for a lot of manned
> space flight traffic. And because it still uses SRBs, I doubt if
> its cost could be cut more than 50%. A Jupiter SSTO
> (Jupiter without the SRBs) however would be a lot cheaper
> since the demand for the booster could be several hundred
> a year and the demand for the SSME could be over 1000
> per year. ==

At likely over $400 million a peace in margin costs (6 adn a half times the margin cost for a space shuttle) and likely lower safety. Add to that the cost to mass produce the ships, and build adn launch them.

All in all a very high cost launcher system – likely incapable of handeling the kind of flight rates your talking about.

Why avoid a cheaper safer RLV solution?
on 06 Feb 2010 at 5:26 pm138Kelly Starks

> 134 Pete

>== The commercially accessible launch market would
> be lucky to be a couple of hundred ton a year. To
> create a competitive and redundant launch industry
> (necessary if one wishes to achieve CATS), one would
> need a minimum of something like three vehicles types
> each flying say a hundred times a year (assuming RLV’s
> one might need at least three of each type).

> One will not find a market for this unless the launch vehicles
> are in the 1000kg range. Hence any development of a
> launch vehicle larger than this is doomed to economic
> failure == Working from existing markets, a conventional
> launch vehicle larger than ~1000kg payload will not bring
> about safe and cheap access to space. And this assumes
> payload sizes are fungible…

Payload sizes are generally not fungible, and 1 ton capacity is damn small. SpaceX found very little demand for their Falcon 1, with clients moving toward the bigger Falcon 9.

Really safely and economics needs more then a couple dozen flights a year. Hell the test flights should be in the hundreds.

Whenever someone suggests a HLV they are suggesting putting off safe and cheap access to space for another couple of decades. A NASA HLV would permanently put NASA out of the launch business, so in that regard it is not necessarily a bad thing.
on 06 Feb 2010 at 8:09 pm139David

I’ve had a couple of more thoughts about this. Turning over manned spacecraft activities to the private sector sounds like a pretty good idea, except that no one in the private sector has built an orbital spacecraft yet. Unless something truly unexpected happens, there won’t be one before the proposed retirement of the shuttle.

The second thought I had about this regards liability. This is something Marcel mentioned in post #74. Everyone knows that spaceflight is dangerous. What happens when there’s a fatal accident with NASA astronauts aboard a private spacecraft? How much is the insurance going to be to cover a company for something like that? We wouldn’t be talking about one space tourist, but a crew of three or more people. Presumably, the government would still have to “insure” these flights in some manner to protect the companies with which they’ve contracted.

Of course, if the government contracts with the private sector, that money the government uses ultimately comes from the American taxpayer. So, although it may be seen as giving the private space industry a boost, it seems like this would involve a diverting of from NASA into private industry. It seems like this would have to happen until the private sector could become financially self-sustaining. The best path for the private sector to make money would be in commercial satellite launch. And this, of course, is already happening.

I would love to see manned spaceflight in the private sector, but apart from millionaires riding with Richard Branson I don’t see it doing much of anything else. I think it will probably happen sometime, I just don’t know when.

I could obviously be very wrong about this. What do other people think?
on 06 Feb 2010 at 8:51 pm140Pete

“Payload sizes are generally not fungible, and 1 ton capacity is damn small. SpaceX found very little demand for their Falcon 1, with clients moving toward the bigger Falcon 9.

Really safely and economics needs more then a couple dozen flights a year. Hell the test flights should be in the hundreds.”

Exactly. One off launch vehicles and payloads favor being big, it is a vicious circle and SpaceX is quickly being sucked back into the old business model.

CATS vehicles will also have to go through a number of iterations before they become viable. Doing that at ~25 ton scale probably means a decade plus per iteration, say 30-50 years to make CATS happen (not that it would). CATS vehicles will likely need to be prototyped at ~1000kg scale if the development is to be fast and low cost (optimal is actually probably closer to 500kg – two person). Probably need to be doing a prototype every 2-3 years.

What is really required to make CATS happen is not shot in the dark build it and they will come launch vehicles, but modular satellites, stations and depots that can be easily assembled from many ~1000 kg lots. Akin to the containerization of shipping, this could revolutionize the space industry by creating a CATS compatible market, encouraging instead of discouraging the development of high flight rate CATS vehicles. The vast majority of payloads could not be practically assembled from ~500kg modules. For example, an atmospheric pressure inflatable shell with the volume of the ISS could weigh around 500kg – one would use multiple shells and outfit it in space.

For CATS to happen much higher flight rates are required and much faster prototyping cycles. Either the global launch market has to increase by an order of magnitude (or two) and launch vehicles somehow become much faster to develop, or, the average payload size has to decrease by and order of magnitude (or two) and orbital assembly refined. It would seem to me that the latter is more than ten fold less expensive and more possible than the former. I have some hope for the latter, none for the former.
on 06 Feb 2010 at 8:58 pm141Kelly Starks

> 138David

>== except that no one in the private sector has built an
> orbital spacecraft yet. Unless something truly unexpected
> happens, there won’t be one before the proposed
> retirement of the shuttle.

Well SpaceX’s Dragon is entering flight tests. Its man rated, though they haven’t implemented the escape tower yet.

As a nit – all orbital craft have always been built and flown by the private sector. Who do you think builds NASA’s ships adn staffs its centers? [Very few folks in the centers are NASA civil servants.]

> The second thought I had about this regards liability. This is
> something Marcel mentioned in post #74. Everyone knows that
> spaceflight is dangerous. What happens when there’s a fatal
> accident with NASA astronauts aboard a private spacecraft?
> How much is the insurance going to be to cover a company
> for something like that? ==

Good question. It depends on what NASA chooses. They can absorb all damages (gov legally is supposed to cover the big stuff) or not if they want to discourage commercials from offering launch services.

>==
> I would love to see manned spaceflight in the private sector,
> but apart from millionaires riding with Richard Branson I
> don’t see it doing much of anything else. I think it will
> probably happen sometime, I just don’t know when.

Thats the major question. With large scale tourist ops – the cost could come way down to the price of more conventianal tours. But there is a hell of a big investment adn market development effort to get to that point.
on 06 Feb 2010 at 9:01 pm142Pete

That should have read:
The vast majority of payloads *could* be practically assembled from ~500kg modules.

The point I am trying to make here is that one really should start by creating a high flight rate CATS market, then high flight rate CATS vehicles should hopefully follow. And creating a high flight rate at large payload sizes is prohibitively expensive and time consuming – need to start small, adapting the market to suit.
on 06 Feb 2010 at 9:21 pm143Kelly Starks

> 139 Pete
> Exactly. One off launch vehicles and payloads favor being
> big, it is a vicious circle and SpaceX is quickly being sucked
> back into the old business model.

Worse then that. The market for space launches is declining since the big multi purpose sats are lasting to long, and being run off the market by fiber and cell nets.

>==
> CATS vehicles will also have to go through a number of
> iterations before they become viable. Doing that at ~25
> ton scale probably means a decade plus per iteration,
> say 30-50 years to make CATS happen ==

Not really. Its not that big a technology leap or anything. Oh the first ones won’t be up to the standards of airliners in relyability adn safty. But upping the safty hundreds maybe a thousand fold – adn cutting direct op costs a hundred fold was projected as a doable goal for a first gen DC-X. Likly for other designs as well.

Really the big thing would be building them up to commercial/industrial aerospace standards, not mearly to the norms of spacecraft, much less NASA, quality standards.

>==
> What is really required to make CATS happen is not
> shot in the dark build it and they will come launch
> vehicles, but modular satellites, stations and depots that
> can be easily assembled from many ~1000 kg lots. ==

I’d disagree that that necessary or advantagious to CATS development. But the real question is – what possible benefit is it to launch customers? You can hardly expect them to cripple their launch cargo’s, increase their costs, hurt their reliability to help your launcher project along.

You have to serve the customer – not the other way around.

> For CATS to happen much higher flight rates are required
> and much faster prototyping cycles. Either the global launch
> market has to increase by an order of magnitude (or two)
> and launch vehicles somehow become much faster to develop,==

Ah, they take about as long, and as much money adn effort, as a similar sized aircraft. Your not likely to to do much better then that without cutting nasty corners.
on 06 Feb 2010 at 9:25 pm144Kelly Starks

…need to start small, adapting the market to suit.

You NEVER get to adapt the market to you. Its always the other way round. Gov can’t get folks to buy high MPG cars. Ford couldn’t sell the Edsel. Vegetarianism can’t get folks to give up steak.

In busness you don’t get to sell what you want to sell — only what others want to buy.
on 06 Feb 2010 at 10:20 pm145Pete

“Not really. Its not that big a technology leap or anything. Oh the first ones won’t be up to the standards of airliners in relyability adn safty. But upping the safty hundreds maybe a thousand fold – adn cutting direct op costs a hundred fold was projected as a doable goal for a first gen DC-X. Likly for other designs as well.”

Yes, the shuttle promised similar things. The DC-Y would have been a great improvement, but I doubt it would have been as successful as you suggest – pushing too many margins. I will note that in recent years TSTO seems to have become increasingly favored in RLV circles. Realistically, we are far from just one vehicle away from CATS. Armadillo, Masten, XCOR chose the development paths they did for a good reason. SpaceX is not really on a development path to CATS, though they recently restated their intent to quickly progress to reusabilty (perhaps better described as rebuildability?).
on 06 Feb 2010 at 10:55 pm146Pete

“You NEVER get to adapt the market to you. Its always the other way round. Gov can’t get folks to buy high MPG cars. Ford couldn’t sell the Edsel. Vegetarianism can’t get folks to give up steak.

In busness you don’t get to sell what you want to sell — only what others want to buy.”

Disruptive technologies (and CATS will need to be disruptive), work a little differently to incremental markets. Disruptive technologies compete with non consumption – they create new markets, and they usually start from the bottom and work their way up (the transistor, mini steel mills, the PC, etc.). This is what the statement “extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets” is getting at. This is also one of the reasons why developing disruptive technologies is so difficult – as you have to successfully concurrently develop both new technologies and new markets.

As you stated, current satellites are very refined and very long lived, but they are incredibly expensive and stagnant. They are ripe for disruption. A disruptive technology could come in at the bottom end, offering less comprehensive but much cheaper and more responsive services. Services not currently supplied by existing satellites due to these small market niches not being worth the hassle. If combined with small low cost reusable launch vehicles such a disruptive technology could quickly reinvent the launch market.
on 07 Feb 2010 at 3:50 am147Marcel F. Williams

“At likely over $400 million a peace in margin costs (6 adn a half times the margin cost for a space shuttle) and likely lower safety. Add to that the cost to mass produce the ships, and build adn launch them.”

A Jupiter HLV wouldn’t be launched by a ship since its a heavy lift vehicle. A Jupiter SSTO (Jupiter without the SRBs) is not a heavy lift vehicle since it only launches around 25 tonnes to orbit. Since it only has a single stage, it would be much safer than a multistage rocket (fewer stages or boosters, fewer things to go wrong). And since it would probably have 6 SSME, that would further add to its safety.
on 07 Feb 2010 at 5:04 am148Pete

“A Jupiter HLV wouldn’t be launched by a ship since its a heavy lift vehicle. A Jupiter SSTO (Jupiter without the SRBs) is not a heavy lift vehicle since it only launches around 25 tonnes to orbit. Since it only has a single stage, it would be much safer than a multistage rocket (fewer stages or boosters, fewer things to go wrong). And since it would probably have 6 SSME, that would further add to its safety.”

There is some merit in such SSTO designs, though it is still an ELV, and a pure LH2/LOX one at that (much more expensive than RP-1/LOX). It would have a similar GLOW to the Falcon IX heavy (about half that of the shuttle stack and a third that of the Saturn V, so still fairly “heavy”), and have a slightly smaller payload and similar drymass. LH2 tanks are not cheap and it seems to me that this would be quite a lot more expensive than a Falcon IX heavy, probably leading to a lower flight rate.

Use of LH2 plus a lower flight rate would probably negate the reliability advantages of the SSTO design. Incrementing reusability is also not really possible, unlike the Falcon. Also, reusing the first stage of the Falcon – which is planned in the near term, would presumably lead to much greater reliability for it. So I doubt this system would necessarily be significantly more reliable than the Falcon either.
on 07 Feb 2010 at 8:25 am149Kelly Starks

> 144 Pete
>
>> “Not really. Its not that big a technology leap or anything.
>> Oh the first ones won’t be up to the standards of airliners
>> in relyability adn safty. But upping the safty hundreds
>> gen DC-X. Likly for other designs as well.”

> Yes, the shuttle promised similar things.

Shuttle was only half built, adn never built up to commercial/industrial standards – but it did deliver its cost reductions and such as projected. GAO said margin cost per pound to orbit would be about $240 a pound, adjusted for inflation and the 50K not 60K cargo load except in Columbia – its about that.

>The DC-Y would have been a great improvement, but I doubt
> it would have been as successful as you suggest – pushing
> too many margins.==

Ignoring the SSTO function (which wasn’t the critical point from expense and reliability standpoint), what do you think was pushing it?

Note: I didn’t say projected cost savings – I said tested and verified.

> I will note that in recent years TSTO seems to have become
> increasingly favored in RLV circles. ==

Seems to be a fad thing more then anything.

> Realistically, we are far from just one vehicle away from CATS.

Why? Its not like were doing something radically new. Just something launch craft didn’t bother with before.

>Armadillo, Masten, XCOR chose the development paths
> they did for a good reason. ==

Mainly the reason was they havent the money or expertice. Hence why its taking them years to do what bigger firms did in months long ago.

> SpaceX is not really on a development path to CATS,
> though they recently restated their intent to quickly
> progress to reusabilty (perhaps better described as
> rebuildability?).

I can’t figure SpaceX. They weer always saying they were designing for reusability – but the Falcons are built around a design optimised for a expendable missle? Its like copying a 911 porche, but saying you want to build it into a UPS truck? I mean they are doing a great job getting the company up and running , and competing in the existing market. But its a dumb design to start with if you want to move toward a RLV.
on 07 Feb 2010 at 8:50 am150Kelly Starks

> 145 Pete

>> “You NEVER get to adapt the market to you. Its always
>> the other way round. Gov can’t get folks to buy high
>> MPG cars. Ford couldn’t sell the Edsel. Vegetarianism
>> can’t get folks to give up steak.
>>
>> In busness you don’t get to sell what you want to
>> sell — only what others want to buy.”

> Disruptive technologies (and CATS will need to be disruptive),
> work a little differently to incremental markets.

Only if you can develop a new market tuned to you. None of the existing market will go for it in this case.

The nightmare for space launch, is its the first transportation systems built to go where no one goes now.

> Disruptive technologies compete with non consumption –
> they create new markets, and they usually start from the
> bottom and work their way up (the transistor, mini steel
> mills, the PC, etc.). ==

The transistors and mills sold to the existing markets, and out competed the existing players.

PCs got nowhere until a killer ap was developed. Hence why folks keep wonder what will be the killer ap for space launch.

==
> As you stated, current satellites are very refined and
> very long lived, but they are incredibly expensive and
> stagnant. They are ripe for disruption. A disruptive
> technology could come in at the bottom end, offering
> less comprehensive but much cheaper and more
> responsive services. ===

It is – but unfortunatly its not space based.

Possibly things like 3rd world cell phone and internet needs could drive a new generation Irridium. But thats still to small to really keep a fleet busy enough to lower costs.
on 07 Feb 2010 at 8:58 am151Kelly Starks

> 146 Marcel F. Williams

>== A Jupiter SSTO (Jupiter without the SRBs) is not a
> heavy lift vehicle since it only launches around 25
> tonnes to orbit. Since it only has a single stage, it
> would be much safer than a multistage rocket (fewer
> stages or boosters, fewer things to go wrong). And
> since it would probably have 6 SSME, that would further
> add to its safety.

Well the SSTO part would help with safety over a multi stage, but you still talking about a expendable with single use engines and a capsule on the top. These are all safty negatives compared to something like the shuttle.
on 07 Feb 2010 at 9:06 am152Kelly Starks

A good alternative to a SSTO if you can’t manage that, would be a biamese (two identical craft belly to belly one actingas the booster adn boost fuel carrior for the other. The other the orbiter), or a craft like the Lockheed StarClipper where you your orbiter has the fuel for the later boost phase, adn all the engine for take off – but it has a huge drop tank. Soit”stages” only the droptank. Staging anything seriously limits your ability to launch from various places (even a coastal launch areas – folks are reluctant to clear out huge “drop areas all the time. But they are a major plus compard to multistage for reusability.
on 07 Feb 2010 at 12:57 pm153Marcel F. Williams

“Well the SSTO part would help with safety over a multi stage, but you still talking about a expendable with single use engines and a capsule on the top. These are all safty negatives compared to something like the shuttle.”

The shuttle is a lot more dangerous than a rocket with a capsule on top because the capsule is usually equipped with a LAS (launch abort system) which reduces the chances of loss of life by a factor of ten. So we’d probably be talking about human fatalities once every few thousand launches. However, the safety of an expendable rocket usually improves the more a particular rocket type is launched. So if we’re talking about hundreds of these rockets being launched by several different private commercial launch companies every year, then their safety margins should rapidly improve in just a few years.
on 07 Feb 2010 at 1:55 pm154Pete

148 – Kelly Starks
“Shuttle was only half built, adn never built up to commercial/industrial standards – but it did deliver its cost reductions and such as projected. GAO said margin cost per pound to orbit would be about $240 a pound, adjusted for inflation and the 50K not 60K cargo load except in Columbia – its about that.”

Which did not eventuate in practice because the flight rate was too low. Even so, while the shuttle is by far the most impressive launch vehicle ever developed, and a big step towards reusability, it was still overly complicated and not a CATS vehicle. Perhaps the problem with the shuttle is that it did not end up being part of a development program, leading to following generations of launch vehicles.

“Ignoring the SSTO function (which wasn’t the critical point from expense and reliability standpoint), what do you think was pushing it?

Note: I didn’t say projected cost savings – I said tested and verified.”

The DC-X was an exemplar of how to develop a very sub orbital launch vehicle, literally costing an order of magnitude less than what it would have cost NASA to do. But the DC-Y would have been a major step up again, and probably would have taken more than one iteration to really get right. I am not sure that one can ignore the SSTO effect on margins and costs. The DC-Y had very little margin for weight growth and there were some notable aspects (like reentry shielding), that could have easily got heavy. Although I would have taken DC-Y over constellation any day, it would have been a worthy successor to the shuttle.

> I will note that in recent years TSTO seems to have become
> increasingly favored in RLV circles. ==

“Seems to be a fad thing more then anything.”

It seems to be a lowest cost development path. Sure SSTO is quite possible, but it is not forgiving of development difficulties, and nor is it cheaper in the long term due to lower payload fraction. Ultimate CATS launch vehicles will not be SSTO for this reason (well unless rocket engine exhaust speed is increased significantly, fusion?), so hence it is somewhat a waste to develop them now.

> Realistically, we are far from just one vehicle away from CATS.

“Why? Its not like were doing something radically new. Just something launch craft didn’t bother with before.”

And the design leaps fully evolved from the engineers heads… I can not say that I have ever seen that happen in practice. It did not happen that way with the aircraft industry (the launch industry is still a long way away from its DC-3). Sure it is possible, just not probable.

>Armadillo, Masten, XCOR chose the development paths
> they did for a good reason. ==

“Mainly the reason was they havent the money or expertice. Hence why its taking them years to do what bigger firms did in months long ago.”

If the case was sound, the money and expertise would have come. And as the saying goes, you can not develop low cost launch vehicles by spending lots of money. Those bigger firms of ~65 million years ago did not do what is being done now, the hubris of one off intelligent design results in evolutionary dead ends.

> SpaceX is not really on a development path to CATS,
> though they recently restated their intent to quickly
> progress to reusabilty (perhaps better described as
> rebuildability?).

“I can’t figure SpaceX. They weer always saying they were designing for reusability – but the Falcons are built around a design optimised for a expendable missle? Its like copying a 911 porche, but saying you want to build it into a UPS truck? I mean they are doing a great job getting the company up and running , and competing in the existing market. But its a dumb design to start with if you want to move toward a RLV.”

Agreed.
on 07 Feb 2010 at 2:10 pm155Pete

149 – Kelly Starks
“Possibly things like 3rd world cell phone and internet needs could drive a new generation Irridium. But thats still to small to really keep a fleet busy enough to lower costs.”

Yes a killer App would be nice – the ultimate market for space settlement is space settlement. Low cost options in that quarter might find buyers, tourism being but one example.

My inclination would be to start developing satellites, hangers, stations, depots, tugs and what not that could be launched on most any launch vehicle in ~1000kg lots. With orbital hangers one could assemble and repair satellites, science missions, stations, power systems, etc. At this point one could offer the market something new, cheaper and much more responsive. I suspect a useful orbital hanger of this type could be developed for less than what Bigelow has spent, so is within reach of private funding. A hanger could provide a base camp/general store for those wanting to do things in space.
on 07 Feb 2010 at 2:55 pm156Kelly Starks

> 152 Marcel F. Williams
>
>> “Well the SSTO part would help with safety over a
>>multi stage, but you still talking about a expendable
>> with single use engines and a capsule on the top. These
>> are all safty negatives compared to something like the shuttle.”

> The shuttle is a lot more dangerous than a rocket with
>a capsule on top because the capsule is usually equipped
> with a LAS (launch abort system) which reduces the
> chances of loss of life by a factor of ten. So we’d probably
> be talking about human fatalities once every few thousand
> launches. ===

Ejection systems in planes only increase survival odds by at best a factor of 4. the only LAS usekiled half the folks using it, adn given shuttle has the highest safty history, in in one one of the accidents could a LAS have possibly helped (and stronger wings would have done better) — claims of orders of magnitude safety improvements with LAS are just laughable.

LAS is a bandaid to make folks feel better. It doesn’t dramatically increase you odds of survival. Theres serious debate that it may lower odds of safty due to their added complexity adn design issues.

You want to get survival rates up a lot. simplify adn harden your vehicle, adn work out ifs bugs.
on 07 Feb 2010 at 4:24 pm157Kelly Starks

> 153 Pete

>> 148 – Kelly Starks
>> “Shuttle was only half built, adn never built up to
>> commercial/industrial standards – but it did deliver its cost
>> reductions and such as projected. GAO said margin cost per
>> pound to orbit would be about $240 a pound, adjusted for
>> inflation and the 50K not 60K cargo load except in
>> Columbia – its about that.”

> Which did not eventuate in practice because the flight rate was
> too low.

It delivered on those margin costs — which were completly lost in the overhead and fixed costs.

;/

Oh well – it at least shows even a crappy reusable can deliver low margin costs per pound!

>== Perhaps the problem with the shuttle is that it did not end
> up being part of a development program, leading to following
> generations of launch vehicles.

Worse then that. It was originally considered a entry configuration that could be upgraded in stages. BUT, Congress really loved the excessive labor costs. The upgrades would have improved the safty and lowered the service cost – the later was politically unacceptable.

Instead of upgrades, they designed the hellishly expensive Ares/Orion. Ares-1/Orion was oing to cost about half again what shuttle cost. Hell they HOPED Orion would only cost 20% more then the Shuttle orbiter.

Simple things like adding hatchs so you can get to things to service them without major disassembly. Integrating fuel systms so you don’t have so many contradictory

> The DC-X was an exemplar of how to develop a very sub
> orbital launch vehicle, literally costing an order of
> magnitude less than what it would have cost NASA to do.
> But the DC-Y would have been a major step up again,
> and probably would have taken more than one iteration
> to really get right.

I knew folks on the McDac and they weer pretty adament that that would not be true. It was all off the shelf systems (some dated) in a simple servicable configuration. The tested and times how long it would take to service them etc.

DC-Y was the full sized test prototype – but the production craft weer to be called the DC-3 (you have to know how big a name that is to McDonnel Douglas) and expected it to have as big a impact on space transport that the old DC-3 had on air transport.

> I am not sure that one can ignore the SSTO effect on
> margins and costs. ==

They had designed it so as a fall back it could fly with small strap-ons to compensate if it couldn’t SSTO. They had figured out they could get it to orbit that way even if the dry weight went up another 100 tons (more then doubling the dry weight)

The effects on operating costs would not have been to bad. When your droping op costs a couple orders of mag — the strap ons couldn’t burn through much of that.

Also given it was progected to only cost $5 billion (in current dollars) and 3 years to get into certified production, and could get to the lunar surface with on orbit refueling — the $100 billion allocated for Ares-i/V /Orion/Altair would go much farther.

>>> I will note that in recent years TSTO seems to have become
>>> increasingly favored in RLV circles. ==

>> “Seems to be a fad thing more then anything.”

> It seems to be a lowest cost development path. ==

A lot of the TSTOs get pricey to develop since the two stages are to complete and optimized – A 1+TO or biamese config could be developed without a big cost increase.

> Sure SSTO is quite possible, but it is not forgiving of
> development difficulties, and nor is it cheaper in the long
> term due to lower payload fraction. ==

Mass fractions pretty irrelevant to cargo costs per pound to orbit.

A point to think of for SSTO’s now a days is combined cycle engines. Rocket ramjet hybrids that double the average specific impulse from ground to orbit. Getting away from liquid hydrogen systems to lighten the ships weight and lower the drag and delta-V to orbit.

>>> Realistically, we are far from just one vehicle away from CATS.

>>“Why? Its not like were doing something radically new.
>> Just something launch craft didn’t bother with before.”

> And the design leaps fully evolved from the engineers heads…

Its not like they need to evolve anything. They don’t need new technologies. Complex new designs. The DC-3 came about in one go – and for its day i was more innovative then a CATS would be.

Launchers are simpler beasts then high end aircraft are, and the same techniques that lowered service costs on them can do the same with launchers. So the tech base for CATS is mucharther ahead then you’ld think. Logically all this ability would have been usedto develop lower cost, more reliably craft, but for various reasons it wasn’t. That was a choice of various programs for good or bad reasons. It was not a requirement. Do not assume current or proposed launchers represent the state of the art. They are built to standard so far bellow commercial or aviation standrads (or millitary is a point of some friction in the companies that build them.

For example when I was working on Orion year before last. The engineers adn senior folks were very awre and uncomfortable that Orion systems were demanded to be at a lower quality standard then what they used on Shuttle or ISS, adn those two were far less then what they used on their commercial or military customers for similar systems.

>>>Armadillo, Masten, XCOR chose the development paths
>>> they did for a good reason. ==

>> “Mainly the reason was they havent the money or
>> expertice. Hence why its taking them years to do
>> what bigger firms did in months long ago.”

> If the case was sound, the money and expertise would have come.

Busness case?

> And as the saying goes, you can not develop low cost launch
> vehicles by spending lots of money.

Yeah thats bull. Are you really going to tell me a CATS launcher should cost 1/10th or 1/100th a similar weight biz jet? Or even a new Corvette?

building a crappy anything can be done on the cheap – quality and lower cost costs time money and expertice.

> Those bigger firms of ~65 million years ago did not do what
> is being done now, ==

Actually one of my complaints of the alt.space companies is they talk a lot about being innovative and building to new standards — while doing things the big aero firms did half a century ago as cheaply and easily — and often completely unaware of what was done or how it was done. [Had a argument with Jon on that a couple dozen posts above. ]

Its like a new bridge builder firm that never heard of suspension bridges.
on 07 Feb 2010 at 4:29 pm158Kelly Starks

> 154 Pete

> Yes a killer App would be nice – the ultimate market for
> space settlement is space settlement. =

No thats a myth. Folks don’t settle somewhere just to build a city there. When the economic reasons for towns and cities goes away – they become ghost towns or cities.

We need to find a profitable thing to do in space that most economically can be done with space settlement, or there won’t be space settlments.
on 07 Feb 2010 at 5:33 pm159Pete

“They had designed it so as a fall back it could fly with small strap-ons to compensate if it couldn’t SSTO. They had figured out they could get it to orbit that way even if the dry weight went up another 100 tons (more then doubling the dry weight)

The effects on operating costs would not have been to bad. When your droping op costs a couple orders of mag — the strap ons couldn’t burn through much of that.

Also given it was progected to only cost $5 billion (in current dollars) and 3 years to get into certified production, and could get to the lunar surface with on orbit refueling — the $100 billion allocated for Ares-i/V /Orion/Altair would go much farther.”

Tis a great pity that none of this ever happened. Now everyone is having to learn how to design rocket vehicles again from scratch, when the pace of development gets too slow, the world forgets.

Dismissing effective government programs (though NASA perhaps now actually has some freedom with its budget?), a couple of hundred million is probably now within the realm of private investment. Can you see anyway of developing a first generation launch vehicle along these lines within such a budget?

One thing I have been looking into is electric ducted fan “rockets” as atmospheric boosters. Can get to 10-20km in a very low cost and reliable manner. This could mitigate aero losses, tank insulation, range costs, vacuum expansion and what not, basically mitigating many things that do not scale down well. Maybe it would enable a smaller lower development cost assisted SSTO RLV type vehicle that was in the realm of private funding.

I have always liked the bimese solutions, but it is a compromise solution and one still has to effectively develop two vehicles (they must work as two and as one). Small fly back boosters might be interesting, as they could perhaps still make it back to the original launch site. I suspect turnaround times of around a day or less need to be designed for.
on 07 Feb 2010 at 5:33 pm160steve lussier

>the only LAS use killed half the folks using it

Is that true? I no expert in LES/LAS history, but was under the impression the only powered emergency escape from a launch disaster was successful.

“Only one emergency use of an LES has occurred. This occurred during the attempt to launch Soyuz T-10-1 on September 26, 1983. The rocket caught fire, just before launch, but the LES was able to carry the crew capsule clear, seconds before the rocket exploded.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_escape_system

“Landing occurred about four kilometers from the launch pad. The two crew members were badly bruised after the high acceleration, but had survived” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_T-10-1

It looks like both crew members lived for decades after this incident.
on 07 Feb 2010 at 5:59 pm161Pete

“No thats a myth. Folks don’t settle somewhere just to build a city there. When the economic reasons for towns and cities goes away – they become ghost towns or cities.

We need to find a profitable thing to do in space that most economically can be done with space settlement, or there won’t be space settlements.”

In the long term space has energy, resources and low transport costs that can not readily be competed with on Earth, especially once economies of scale start kicking in. So the long term economics seem sound. In the short term net immigration may bring with it income enough, if the prospect of future profitability is there. People’s desire to settle space is perhaps the biggest market until then.

Trying to justify space in terms of what it can do for people on Earth is I think the wrong way round for thinking about it. The vast majority of stuff produced in space will be used in space – that is where the majority of the market will be. Sure other markets will help greatly, and information based technologies can probably be traded from space.

The US is something like 90% self sufficient (10% international tradables), but that number would be much higher if transport costs were much higher (as per space).

Say we assume space settlement is initially 75% self sufficient, and there is an initial income of 10 billion from satellite, science and tourist services, then that would equate to something like 40 billion in revenue – which is a lot more than many countries and sufficient to employ a great many people. The market already exists to establish a sizable “country” in space, what is lacking is low cost launch and space infrastructure with which to economically access it.
on 07 Feb 2010 at 7:03 pm162Kelly Starks

> 158 Pete

>> “They had designed it so as a fall back it could fly with small
>> strap-ons to compensate if it couldn’t SSTO. They had figured
>> out they could get it to orbit that way even if the dry weight
>> went up another 100 tons (more then doubling the dry weight)
>>
>> The effects on operating costs would not have been to bad.
>> When your droping op costs a couple orders of mag — the
>> strap ons couldn’t burn through much of that.

>> Also given it was progected to only cost $5 billion (in current
>> dollars) and 3 years to get into certified production, and could
>> get to the lunar surface with on orbit refueling — the $100
>> billion allocated for Ares-i/V /Orion/Altair would go much farther.”

> Tis a great pity that none of this ever happened. Now everyone
> is having to learn how to design rocket vehicles again from
> scratch, when the pace of development gets too slow, the world
> forgets.

No aerospace projects funded – aerospace companies die out.

So many good ideas left to gather dust.

>== Dismissing effective government programs (though NASA
> perhaps now actually has some freedom with its budget?), ==

Now NASA has lost programs.

>== a couple of hundred million is probably now within the
> realm of private investment. Can you see anyway of developing
> a first generation launch vehicle along these lines within such
> a budget?

Not a good one. Doing the flight tests etc to bring it up to aviation quality standards would cost more then that. A small couple person craft built to current launch vehicle standards could be – SpaceX has shown that.

Certainly a RLV of equivalent lift to a Falcon should cost about the same as a Falcon – or a Falcon/Dragon.

> One thing I have been looking into is electric ducted fan
> “rockets” as atmospheric boosters. Can get to 10-20km in
> a very low cost and reliable manner. This could mitigate aero
> losses, tank insulation, range costs, vacuum expansion and
> what not, basically mitigating many things that do not scale
> down well. Maybe it would enable a smaller lower development
> cost assisted SSTO RLV type vehicle that was in the realm of
> private funding.

I’ld focus more on building a RAMjet/Rocket combined cycle. The huge boost in ISP adn little aded complexity would make a SSTO a much easier prospect. However, SSTOs don’t like to scale down.

I did some work on a concept using a new turboramjet combined cycle engine P&W was building for a Darpa Mach 6+ project, and some light weight TPS. A ultra long range suborbital bizjet like craft could fit well with a opening market — even if they cost most of $100 million. With that range its close enough to orbit to likely make it there with a lighter load. If not – the project is still fanancially fins since the main market is suborbital. Then you upgrade or offer some augmentation service to get some of them to orbit when the owners like. Funding connections disolved, and none of the highly qualified famous folks would touch anything withoutserious money we didn’t have.

;/

> I have always liked the bimese solutions, but it is a compromise
> solution and one still has to effectively develop two vehicles (they
> must work as two and as one). ==

At least, the boosters and orbiters don’t need to be developed seperatly.

>==Small fly back boosters might be interesting, as they could
> perhaps still make it back to the original launch site. I suspect
> turnaround times of around a day or less need to be designed for.

It would help.
on 07 Feb 2010 at 7:23 pm163Kelly Starks

> 159Pete

> In the long term space has energy, resources and low transport
> costs that can not readily be competed with on Earth, especially
> once economies of scale start kicking in. So the long term
> economics seem sound. ===

We could all grow old and die in the long term..

>== In the short term net immigration may bring with it income
> enough, if the prospect of future profitability is there. People’s
> desire to settle space is perhaps the biggest market until then.

That’s not going to do it. Historically that’s how ghost towns get founded.

> Trying to justify space in terms of what it can do for people on
> Earth is I think the wrong way round for thinking about it. The
> vast majority of stuff produced in space will be used in space –
> that is where the majority of the market will be. Sure other
> markets will help greatly, and information based technologies
> can probably be traded from space.

Then its not going to happen.Info tech is one place space has a major econoimc disadvantage, and the money is here. Thats the markets you have to sell to to get the funding you need. Otherwiose space willnever be colonized. Its as blunt and basic as that.

> The US is something like 90% self sufficient (10% international
> tradables), but that number would be much higher if transport
> costs were much higher (as per space).

Transport costs are only high because little is transported — and the transport costs are high going up, not down.

> Say we assume space settlement is initially 75% self sufficient,
> and there is an initial income of 10 billion from satellite, science
> and tourist services, then that would equate to something like 40
> billion in revenue – which is a lot more than many countries and
> sufficient to employ a great many people.

Space colonies would cost a lot more then $40B, and the money wouldn’t stay in the colony. The investors would want a lot of it. And what possible Satelight or science services.
on 07 Feb 2010 at 7:53 pm164Kelly Starks

opps ment to say
.. The investors would want a lot of it. And what possible Satelight or science services could you market for money like that?
on 07 Feb 2010 at 8:13 pm165Pete

Kelly Starks: “I’d focus more on building a RAMjet/Rocket combined cycle. The huge boost in ISP adn little aded complexity would make a SSTO a much easier prospect. However, SSTOs don’t like to scale down.”

I am guessing you would go for the air augmented rocket end of that space, definitely some interesting possibilities there. And I am also guessing that you are perhaps looking at HTHL? To reduce the need for a high T/W.

A trick I came across recently is to use an electric ducted fan to get up to ramjet speed. Quietish electric VTOL is possible followed by supersonic flight. I suspect it could be a lot cheaper and more reliable than a rocket or turbo ramjet hybrid. It would be too heavy to take to orbit, but could be a very interesting first stage (and supersonic business jet).

I have long been looking at ways of scaling down launch vehicles, another trick is to use external inflatable tanks (gets around minimum gauge constraints). But the tanks would have to be packed on orbit or left there (though they could be cheap), as I doubt it is worth adding thermal protection to them. Inflatable external tanks are also not particularly applicable to high speed horizontal flight profiles.
on 07 Feb 2010 at 10:05 pm166Pete

Kelly Starks:
>Then its not going to happen.Info tech is one place space has a
> major econoimc disadvantage, and the money is here. Thats the
> markets you have to sell to to get the funding you need.
> Otherwise space willnever be colonized. Its as blunt and basic as
> that.

The payback does not necessarily have to be on Earth, it could be in space. Long term it is reasonable to assume that space is where all the economic activity will be, where all the wealth will go and be created. The energy and resources there swamp anything on Earth, and so that is where the prosperity will likely be and Earth might become the ghost town (well more likely a museum). People will invest in space on that basis, pack up their worldly possessions and emigrate in hope of a better future there. Yes there are many things they will want to buy from Earth, but there will also be many things new immigrants will wish to buy in space – with their Earth dollars.

I am not sure that space will be at a disadvantage with regard to information technology, it will not necessarily be more expensive to live there. Also, a lot of research, for example, might be better performed in space (nuclear, GE, AI, etc. – NIMBY).

> Transport costs are only high because little is transported — and > the transport costs are high going up, not down.”

Transport costs will still be reasonably high coming down compared to Earth based transport systems – depending a bit on whether up mass or down mass is dominating. Transport will still be limited to high value goods.

> Space colonies would cost a lot more then $40B, and the money
> wouldn’t stay in the colony.

Why does it have to cost more than $40B? Space station per capita cost need be little greater than expensive housing on Earth (say 10,000kg/person at $100/kg). People could conceivably swap their house on Earth for one in space. There is no fundamental reason why space infrastructure has to be as expensive as it currently is, and with CATS, it will not be.

The money will stay in the colony if people see just cause in making their future there – and some will.
on 08 Feb 2010 at 12:32 am167Brad

http://www.youtube.com/user/NASAtelevision#p/a/u/1/FfGo2ugcG48

Sorry Jon. This recent press session with Bolden is a pretty clear indication that there won’t be any NASA manned exploration mission beyond LEO before the year 2020, and quite possibly after 2030, under the new Obama direction.

The comments made about HLV were very interesting. Bolden was pretty clear about the need for HLV and made a point about the money in the budget proposal dedicated to R&D for HLV. Bolden also said that this new HLV will actually fly sometime between 2020 and 2030, if everything goes right.

The reason for the absence of an exploration plan is also made clear from another Bolden pronouncement, the firm committal to international participation. Bolden said he would spend the next six months in discussions with potential foreign partners. No wonder there isn’t a plan yet! I expect there won’t be a manned exploration plan for years as details are hashed out between the partners.

Another comment
on 08 Feb 2010 at 4:02 am168Pete

Another interesting comment Bolden made; he said he was unaware of anyone who did not think that there was a need for an HLV.
on 08 Feb 2010 at 6:40 am169Kelly Starks

> on 07 Feb 2010 at 8:13 pm163Pete

>> Kelly Starks: “I’d focus more on building a RAMjet/Rocket combined
>> cycle. The huge boost in ISP adn little aded complexity would make
>> a SSTO a much easier prospect. However, SSTOs don’t like to scale
>> down.”

> am guessing you would go for the air augmented rocket end of
> that space, ==

More a rocket in the middle of a ramjet. (Air augmented sounds like your harvesting air and feeding it nito the rocket to burn, like a LACE system) Effectivly your adding after burners and ductwork around the Rocket. The rocket blasting down the center of the ducts pulls in freash air at high speed so the ramjet works from take off. Since the rockets need to have enough thrust for verticle assent for after you level the atmospher regardless, and this doubles the take off thrust, yuo accelerate or asend rapidly. At higher speeds the Ramjet does fine no its own, adn your spec-imp gets really high. Past mach 6 or so you leave the atmosphere adn use the rockets.

> ==definitely some interesting possibilities there. And I am also
> guessing that you are perhaps looking at HTHL? To reduce the
> need for a high T/W.

It works eiather way. Ramjets ar pretty light. NASA came up with a VTHL ram/rocket called GTX that looks like a Battlestar Galactic Viper fighter.

> A trick I came across recently is to use an electric ducted fan to get
> up to ramjet speed. Quietish electric VTOL is possible followed by
> supersonic flight. ==

Wouldn’t the generator adn electric motor rig be prohibativly heavy?

Whats the generator power source?

> I suspect it could be a lot cheaper and more reliable than a
> rocket or turbo ramjet hybrid. It would be too heavy to take to
> orbit, but could be a very interesting first stage (and supersonic
> business jet).

P&W was garenteeing their turboramjet would have more then a 16/1 T/W ratio, adn speed capacity over MNach 6. So it was pretty good.

I’m not clear what light weight power surce you could get for your electric fan? Wuoldn’t it be simpler to conect the drive shaft you would have connected to the generator – directly to the fan adn save the weight of the electrics?

> I have long been looking at ways of scaling down launch
> vehicles, another trick is to use external inflatable tanks
> (gets around minimum gauge constraints). But the tanks would
> have to be packed on orbit or left there (though they could
> be cheap), as I doubt it is worth adding thermal protection to
> them. Inflatable external tanks are also not particularly applicable
> to high speed horizontal flight profiles.

Why load a launch vehicles tanks in space?

Teh old Atlas Rockets used inflatable tanks as the primary structure of the booster. (Thats why the atlas that carried John Glenn into space looked so smooth) They can take great loads when presurized, but service techs hated them since you could damage them by just punping them when unpresurized.
on 08 Feb 2010 at 7:04 am170Kelly Starks

> 164 Pete

>Kelly Starks:
>>Then its not going to happen.Info tech is one place space has a
>> major econoimc disadvantage, and the money is here. Thats the
>> markets you have to sell to to get the funding you need.
>> Otherwise space willnever be colonized. Its as blunt and basic as
>> that.

> The payback does not necessarily have to be on Earth, it could be
> in space. ==

It can’t, because theres no buiers that. Yes you could speculate that after a major space population of cities adn such are developed that space itself will have a market for materials, adn some of those would be bought from other space cities/colonies/platforms. But thats so far in the future adn dependant no so much else builg up a huge industrial base in space to serve Earths markets, its to speculative.

> == Long term it is reasonable to assume that space is where all the
> economic activity will be, where all the wealth will go and be
> created. The energy and resources there swamp anything on Earth,
> and so that is where the prosperity will likely be ==

Right now the raw materials and fuels come from the third world, but its the developed world where all the welth is made. No onse colonizing the arctic circle or off shore where the oil wells are benig drilled, nor the massive nidustries moving near the mines. The ultimate resource is skilled creative people. There are none in space, and its a lot simpler to bring the raw materials or robotically produced sub systems to the place where its cheaper to house and equip the personel.

==
> I am not sure that space will be at a disadvantage with regard to
> information technology, it will not necessarily be more expensive to
> live there.

It will be much more expensive to live ni space, adn info tech has no need for ore adn etc – but it does need a lot of poeople, universities, and coffee.

> == Also, a lot of research, for example, might be better
> performed in space (nuclear, GE, AI, etc. – NIMBY).

GE?

Nuclear really isn’t a problem. research is alowed, its mearly cheap power generatino of waste disposal that is politically forbidded in some nations no Earth. So its more of a way one nation will lose out to a less restrictive other nation.

>> Transport costs are only high because little is transported — and
>> the transport costs are high going up, not down.”

> Transport costs will still be reasonably high coming down compared
> to Earth based transport systems – depending a bit on whether up
> mass or down mass is dominating. Transport will still be limited to
> high value goods.

Depends no the tech yuo asume. I did some research using Bussards polywell fusion reactor powered electro thermal steam rockets, adn for a large scale craft, yuo could download ore (or oil ni the test case I worked up) for a cost per ton similar to long range oil tanker costs.

>> Space colonies would cost a lot more then $40B, and the money
>> wouldn’t stay in the colony.

> Why does it have to cost more than $40B? Space station per
> capita cost need be little greater than expensive housing on
> Earth (say 10,000kg/person at $100/kg). ==
It takes tons of stuff per person to house and shield a person ni space. Also to provide gravity you need a very big platform – at least 750 feet in diameter. And of course you need the industrial space or whatever the platforms built to support. The costs run up prety quick. Like a cruise liner no those scales runs billions to tens of billions.

> People could conceivably swap their house on Earth for one in space.

There is a liner called the residensea, which is a condominium cruse liner folks can retire to or whatever – but each small condo goes for millions I beleave — and thats using the economics of a ship on Earth.

> The money will stay in the colony if people see just cause in making
> their future there – and some will.

Again. The money has to come from somewhere to build the colony. little of the colony can be purchased or made there, so it has to pay to buy adn ship things to it from Earth. So you need to figure out what folks ni the colony — or the colony itself – can do no a continuing bases to earn enough to pay those bills.
on 08 Feb 2010 at 7:10 am171Kelly Starks

> 165Brad

> http://www.youtube.com/user/NASAtelevision#p/a/u/1/FfGo2ugcG48
>
> Sorry Jon. This recent press session with Bolden is a pretty clear
> indication that there won’t be any NASA manned exploration mission
> beyond LEO before the year 2020, and quite possibly after 2030,
> under the new Obama direction.

Certainly Lori Garvers earlier comments about beleavnig we will still see someone return to the moon withnig her lifetime, strongly siggested no actual plans to send someone to the moon in the next few decades.

> == The comments made about HLV were very interesting. Bolden
> was pretty clear about the need for HLV and made a point about
> the money in the budget proposal dedicated to R&D for HLV. ==

&
> 166Pete
>
> Another interesting comment Bolden made; he said he was unaware
> of anyone who did not think that there was a need for an HLV.

Has Bolden slept through the last few decades (especially durnig his years on shuttle) or is he just lieing through his teeth? NASA developed serveral non HLV based return to the moon proposals in the ’80’s and ’90’s, and certainly in the space comunity its contraversial to assume HLVs are even desirable!
on 08 Feb 2010 at 11:12 am172Kelly Starks

in the followin bbc article
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/jonathanamos/2010/02/a-big-rocket-is-still-a-us-pri.shtml

it quoted Bolden as saying:

“”We need [HLV] for science, we need it for intelligence, we need for Department of Defense, and Nasa definitely needs it if we’re going to talk about sending humans beyond low-Earth orbit. So, the need for a heavy-lift launch vehicle – I don’t think there’s any disagreement on the part of anybody. ==”

Is he talking about 100+ ton (i.e. ’60’s definition) HLV, or the more current 25+ definition? I mean why the hell would yuo need a 100+ ton lifter for intel?!
on 08 Feb 2010 at 10:22 pm173Pete

Kelly Starks:
“It takes tons of stuff per person to house and shield a person ni space. Also to provide gravity you need a very big platform – at least 750 feet in diameter. And of course you need the industrial space or whatever the platforms built to support. The costs run up prety quick. Like a cruise liner no those scales runs billions to tens of billions.”

The probable method of providing artificial gravity would be to use individual modules at the end of a tether around a collective hub. Yes there are some dynamic issues to worry about.

Houses are not self sufficient on Earth, utilities, taxes, etc., are paid for separately. The same might be true in space – they can afford to cost extra.

The point I would make is that if extraordinary launch vehicles and space infrastructure are not required, then nor are extraordinary markets. Space is unlikely to happen quickly without CATS, and if CATS is possible then extraordinary markets are not required.

“I’m not clear what light weight power source you could get for your electric fan? Wouldn’t it be simpler to connect the drive shaft you would have connected to the generator – directly to the fan and save the weight of the electrics?”

Lithium batteries power the fan that drives the ramjet. Range is not a serious constraint and the power density is perhaps sufficient. Maybe one needs 20% of the vehicle mass in battery, just enough to get up to ramjet speed. There is also a significant possibility of a say threefold increase in battery performance in the next decade. Further, using the ducted fan to help pump the ramjet from zero speed one could get away with a far smaller battery again. One could even get silly and uses an electric fan to pump a small ramjet which then pumped a big ramjet – turtles all the way down.

There are a couple of interesting tricks that come with such electrification, for example the ducted fan could recharge the battery once up to speed, propellant pumps could be electric, and landing (at much lighter weight) might be pure electric – recharging on the descent and eliminating the need for extra landing fuel. The large battery may also be of use while in space. There is a possibility for a much lower develop and operating cost system here that was also much more controllable/reliable/dependable – the area is interesting.

“The old Atlas Rockets used inflatable tanks as the primary structure of the booster. (Thats why the atlas that carried John Glenn into space looked so smooth) They can take great loads when presurized, but service techs hated them since you could damage them by just punping them when unpressurized.”

Yes I have heard similar things of those balloon tanks, however they were stainless steel and integrated into the structure. An external inflatable tank made by say wrapping a Teflon bladder with Kevlar (no rigid matrix) might be near an order of magnitude lighter. I was thinking something along the lines of a capsule with rocket engines and inflatable external tanks. Tank mass might be below 1%, even at small scale and they might be structurally self supporting.
on 09 Feb 2010 at 7:14 am174Kelly Starks

1. > 172Pete
> Houses are not self sufficient on Earth, utilities, taxes, etc., are paid
> for separately. The same might be true in space – they can afford to cost extra.

Houses are paid for by folks with jobs in the area. Hence the need to develop paying jobs in the area.

> The point I would make is that if extraordinary launch vehicles and
> space infrastructure are not required, then nor are extraordinary markets. ==

To be practical, the launch vehicles need to be on the scale of effort of a similar sized commercial aircraft. These are multi billion $ programs and space has no huge market to absorb their costs.

>> “I’m not clear what light weight power source you could
>> get for your electric fan? Wouldn’t it be simpler to connect
>> the drive shaft you would have connected to the generator
>> – directly to the fan and save the weight of the electrics?”

> Lithium batteries power the fan that drives the ramjet. Rang
> is not a serious constraint and the power density is perhaps sufficient. ==

??
The rule of thumb for electric cars was that a half ton of batteries delivers about as much power as a quart of gasoline. Also the weight of electric motors alone might xeceed the weight of a seperate turbo-shat engine.

>== There is also a significant possibility of a say threefold increase
> in battery performance in the next decade.

Been hearing that from electric car folks for decades…

Given you need to carry the rocket engines anyway, using it to pump air into the Ramjet would seem better since it adds no weight.

>==
>> “The old Atlas Rockets used inflatable tanks as the primary
>> structure of the booster.== They can take great loads when presurized,
>> but service techs hated them since you could damage them
>> by just bumping them when unpressurized.”

> = An external inflatable tank made by say wrapping a Teflon bladder
> with Kevlar (no rigid matrix) might be near an order of magnitude
> lighter. I was thinking something along the lines of a capsule with
> rocket engines and inflatable external tanks. Tank mass might be
> below 1%, even at small scale and they might be structurally self supporting.

Could be. I’d drop the capsule and integrate the crew/cargo/engines into a fly back winged shuttle, and hang the inflatable tanks on them. The wings make TPS and soft landings a lot easier, and give you a structure to hold the inflatable tanks with.
on 10 Feb 2010 at 1:29 pm175Vladislaw

kelly:
“The successful flight I am waiting for is a “for profit” flight. ==

There have been lots of commercial for profit launchs over the decades. Thats nothing new. What knew thing will insight investors.”

I was refering to commercial for profit human access to space launches. Yes we did see some for profit launches .. at the start of the commercial satellite period. And what did a few successful commercial for profit flights of satellites usher in?

You will see the same thing as it relates to human access. Everyone will want a piece of the NEW pie.

I believe once Bigelow is up and running, ‘LEO2GEO’ ships capable of satellite repair, refueling, upgrading will be in our future. If satallites start being built on a common bus with swapable, modular systems, satellites will have a both a longer life and a more productive one.

I believe you are seeing a small inkling of interest grow from the first few astroV’s ( space vistors) and their internet efforts at bringing people along on the flight. Garriot and Simony really pushed this. The hits they got on their sites increased by going into space increasing their ad revenue. When there are literally hundreds and hundreds of personal websites about private spaceflight experiences and youtube videos and the whole thing goes viral it will gain a lot of momentum.

Also, I am not saying this to move the conversation to silly, BUT.. I have a feeling that there were be an huge income stream generated by “ufos” or at least the hype about it. I can already see a reality show based at bigelows where the staunch UFO hunters boldly travel to space to give you first hand blah blah blah blah… about ufos. Like you see with ghost hunters on the sci fi channel only about ufos…. man a show like that would get hyped to the Nth degree. Watch as the fearless ufo hunters zoom in on a possible ufo and .. everyone at the edge of their seats watching as it zooms in on ….. a frozen chunk of pee from the space station… whew that was close one .. tune in next week as we look at blah blah blah…
smiles

Once reality TV and ratings become a part of the picture AND there is actual access to space, this will take off.
on 10 Feb 2010 at 3:27 pm176Kelly Starks

> 175Vladislaw
>>
>> kelly:

>>> “The successful flight I am waiting for is a “for profit” flight. ==

>> There have been lots of commercial for profit launchs over
>> the decades. Thats nothing new. What knew thing will insight
>> investors.”

> I was refering to commercial for profit human access to
> space launches. Yes we did see some for profit launches .. at
> the start of the commercial satellite period. And what did a
> few successful commercial for profit flights of satellites usher in?

Well obviously more then a few commercial sat launches.

Ok, though. A fully commercial (not Russian torist) flight to orbit could get folks to beleave space is possible.

> I believe once Bigelow is up and running, ‘LEO2GEO’
> ships capable of satellite repair, refueling, upgrading
> will be in our future. If satallites start being built on a
> common bus with swapable, modular systems, satellites
> will have a both a longer life and a more productive one.

Don’t agree here. GEO sats don’t generally need refuleing any more, though there are a lot of none GEo sats that might be good for that market. Course there are delta-v issues with getting to them from other orbits.
==
> Also, I am not saying this to move the conversation to silly,
> BUT.. I have a feeling that there were be an huge income
> stream generated by “ufos” or at least the hype about it. I
> can already see a reality show based at bigelows where the
> staunch UFO hunters boldly travel to space to give you first
> hand blah blah blah blah… about ufos. Like you see with
> ghost hunters on the sci fi channel only about ufos…. ==

ROTFL

I’m sure someone can do it.
I heard a porn film studio was trying to buy zero-G time. One analyst thought orbital sports stadiums would be highly profitable given the demand for new sports to broadcast.

Course weer going to need a serious launcher. Certainly Falcon/Dragon isn’t going to cut it. But if it gets to the point the big investors (pension funds) get into it and ok Boeing or L/M or Airbus…. We could get stuff that lookscloser to Star Wars then Falcon in acouple years. [I'm amazed more of the alt.space folks arn't looking at any of the more advanced launch concepts the big guys published info on over the decades. But those big aero folks probably still remember then.]
on 11 Feb 2010 at 2:33 am177Vladislaw

Kelly: “Don’t agree here. GEO sats don’t generally need refuleing any more, though there are a lot of none GEo sats that might be good for that market. Course there are delta-v issues with getting to them from other orbits.”

The reason they don’t need refueling is because there isn’t a commercial option. They have to send up the entire life cycle of an instrument without ever having a reservicing option.

If they can swap out transponders, circuit boards, computers, advanced optics, solar repair they could just as easier do a fuel pod, saving weight for launching it and or added capability that has to be sacrifed for fuel and not included.

Once there is international launch capability to service fuel stations .. some .. not all .. but some delta-v problems go away. Just like a string of gas stations does on earth.

“I’m amazed more of the alt.space folks arn’t looking at any of the more advanced launch concepts the big guys published info on over the decades. But those big aero folks probably still remember then.”

Do you mean the “N” word?

I would like to see a trimodel nuclear system developed. Power for thrusters and station keeping, main propulsion and main power all in one package. In the 200m to 300 plus range. So any ship that is designed has some real choices.
on 11 Feb 2010 at 1:32 pm178Kelly Starks

1. > 177 Vladislaw
>> Kelly: “Don’t agree here. GEO sats don’t generally need refuleing any
>> more, though there are a lot of non GEo sats that might be good for
>> that market. Course there are delta-v issues with getting to them from other orbits.”

> The reason they don’t need refueling is because there isn’t a commercial
> option. They have to send up the entire life cycle of an instrument without
> ever having a reservicing option.

Well given the new sats don’t NEED fuel (using low or no reaction mass attitude control systems, as well as electronics that last for decades) and are likely to be abandoned as obsolete before they were out – this could really limit your potential market?

> ==
> Once there is international launch capability to service fuel
> stations .. some .. not all .. but some delta-v problems go away.
> Just like a string of gas stations does on earth.
That might be better if your selling sat recovery or tug services then service adn repair. Put up a new sat and bring the old one down to be landed and refurbished – or scrapped out away from a voluble orbit slot.

>> “I’m amazed more of the alt.space folks arn’t looking at any of
>> the more advanced launch concepts the big guys published info
>> on over the decades. But those big aero folks probably still remember then.”
> Do you mean the “N” word?
Na, that’s out of the reach of the alt.space companies; but things like StarRaker, biamese, some of the air force lifting body small shuttle studies, etc. Rocket ramjet hybrid motors (I’ve seen hobbeists do simple ones) which could double the average ISP to orbit. (700 ish seconds with LOx/Kerosene?!!!) These were doable 40-50 years ago with the materials and systems on the shelf then – it certainly is within the range of a SpaceX or something. In stead everybody is copying old Titans (except Blue Origin which is taking years to replicate McDonnell Douglas’ DC-X work that took them months.).
> ==
> I would like to see a trimodel nuclear system developed. Power
> or thrusters and station keeping, main propulsion and main power all
> in one package. In the 200m to 300 plus range. So any ship that is
> designed has some real choices.

I’m waiting for the Polywell or focus fusion research projects to develop to some engines. Looks like they’ll announce the reactors are producing positive power this year or next. That should shake more then just space up.

Bussard was talking about electrotherman steam rockets with ISP so high your reaction mass fraction to orbit, of water, would be about that of a airliners take off fractino in jet fuel!

I’m runing somenumbers and it looks like you could land ore from space with a RLV frieghter that would give a frieght cost per ton similar to oil tanker cost per ton to ship oil back from the mid east. Oh, when deadheading up for another load you can carry thousands of tons of cargo effectivly for free.
on 18 Feb 2010 at 12:33 am179Brett Thomason

Vladisaw, that was a fun one about tv shows from space. It brings up another point also…

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