Dr. Griffin is telling people that there is no need to check his work. Of course not.
In comments, “Red” sums up the problems with Griffin’s approach:
Dr. Griffin doesn’t seem to be aware of what the goals of the Vision for Space Exploration are. The goal is not for NASA to build a rocket, or two rockets. The goal is not to send astronauts to the Moon, or to Mars, or to near-Earth asteroids. Here’s the goal, according to the Vision for Space Exploration:
“Goal and Objectives
The fundamental goal of this vision is to advance U.S. scientific, security, and economic interests through a robust space exploration program. In support of this goal, the United States will:
• Implement a sustained and affordable human and robotic program to explore the solar system and beyond;
• Extend human presence across the solar system, starting with a human return to the Moon by the year 2020, in preparation for human exploration of Mars and other destinations;
• Develop the innovative technologies, knowledge, and infrastructures both to explore and to support decisions about the destinations for human exploration; and
• Promote international and commercial participation in exploration to further U.S. scientific, security, and economic interests”Note that the space exploration program is just a means to an end. The purpose is to “advance U.S. scientific, security, and economic interests”. Also notice the strong emphasis on innovative technologies, knowledge, infrastructure, and international and commercial participation. Also note that some “decisions about the destinations for human exploration” are left to the future.
To emphasize commercial participation, the document later states:
“Acquire crew transportation to and from the International Space Station, as required, after the Space Shuttle is retired from service.” (Note that “Acquire” doesn’t mean “Design, Build, and Operate”).
“Pursue commercial opportunities for providing transportation and other services supporting the International Space Station and exploration missions beyond low Earth orbit.”
The Ares-based plan has nothing to do with any of this. Unlike EELVs or new commercial launchers, Ares rockets don’t support U.S. economic interests. The’re government rockets, so they can’t capture commercial launch business, or launch commercial satellites. They also aren’t useful for U.S. national security launches or payloads. They also aren’t useful for science payloads beyond astronaut missions (Ares V class science missions are too expensive).
The Ares rocket plan doesn’t involve international participation. It takes money away from the robotic exploration program mentioned above and described in detail in the VSE. The Ares rockets are too expensive to develop and operate, and hence fail the VSE “sustained and affordable” criteria above. Ares rockets are too expensive to allow space infrastructure like the VSE mentions. Even if Ares I and V were kept, they could incorporate in-space fueling to bring in commercial participation and spur the U.S. launch market (and as a side benefit dramatically increase payload to the Moon), but they don’t. The Ares plan under Griffin didn’t fund COTS-D commercial crew transport needed by the VSE (see above) – the recent stimulus package partial funding related to commercial crew transport came after Griffin. The Ares program is intended to break as little ground as possible technologically to reduce development risk, so the innovation mentioned in the VSE is gone. Innovation in other areas is drastically reduced to fund Ares (you don’t see very many robotic ISRU demos on the Moon, for example, or reusable space transport components in ESAS, in spite of that approach being central to the kinds of economic, security, and science benefits described here by Dr. Paul Spudis and Dennis Wingo).
Hey, but other than that, it’s a great plan.
[Early afternoon update]
In looking at this analysis, while I knew that ESAS was missing much of the Aldridge recommendations and the VSE itself, I hadn’t realized how almost completely orthogonal it is to them until I saw it all in one place like this. Was the Bush administration unaware of how far off Griffin had taken the plan, or were they indifferent? I know that if I had been the president, I’d have asked for an evaluation by the Aldridge team immediately upon announcement of ESAS/Constellation, scoring it against their own criteria (and we paid very close attention to those criteria when performing the CE&R studies), because it was a radical departure from previous anticipated plans. And I’d have likely forced a course correction on it. It would be worth an interview with Marburger to find out just what was going on.
My suspicion is that they just didn’t pay much attention to it, once the policy was in place, and they had an administrator who was supposed to know what he was doing. It just wasn’t a policy priority in the context of the other problems. Which isn’t surprising, of course, because as I’ve long pointed out, space isn’t important, and hasn’t been for over forty years.
Rand, there are many topics on which we disagree, to say the least. I decided that there was no point in just harping on these disagreements forever.
Instead, I can tell you that you have really convinced me about NASA. Ares should be hurled onto the trash heap of history. NASA should switch to a much cheaper grant program divided among small competitors for various purposes — SpaceX, Rocketplane, Blue Origin, Armadillo, Scaled, others. Competition is important; as you say, Burt Rutan isn’t God and Elon Musk isn’t God either. Small is important too. Even though NASA’s budget may not be all that large compared to the whole federal budget, the fact is that corporate welfare corrupts. The government surely sees Lock-Mart and Boeing as “too big to fail”; in their case it has a lot to do with their decades of huge federal contracts. Freedom includes the freedom to fail. Ares needs a lot more of that freedom!
A broad enough field of competitors, with carefully moderated seed money and potential customer demand from a reformed NASA, could eventually enable many return trips to the moon. Whereas all that Griffin was ever going to do with the moon was shake a stick at it.
I think Mike must have been confused about the VSE. Maybe he thought it was the “Vision to Save [Mike’s] Ego” or something like that.
So how do you go from here with the constraint that you have to preserve as much of the shuttle stack and workforce as possible?
Isn’t the game up for NASA-owned launchers as soon as commercial entities come up with a man-rated launcher, a small capsule and a space station? You can get a small capsule from LEO to L1 with a Centaur + lunar mission kit as described on Jon’s blog. A Delta-IV Heavy has enough payload capacity to launch a Centaur to LEO, where it can dock with the capsule.
If NASA is forced to abandon Ares I and has to switch to EELV, but is allowed to continue work on Ares V, then commercial spaceflight may leave LEO before NASA can. The best strategy for NASA seems to be to delay man-rating the EELVs as long as possible and make a mad dash for the moon with a rocket that might eventually take them to Mars, making sure they do not facilitate any depots or gateway stations until they reach the moon, or it is game over.
Hmm, where have I seen that before.
An EML1 Gateway (supplemented with RLLs) owned and operated under the jurisdiction of a small neutral Anglo-sphere nation such as Singapore as a free enterprise capitalist undertaking (either as a private entity organized under the laws of Singapore or by a Singaporean sovereign wealth fund) would
(a) reduce the barriers to entry for folks wanting to operate on the Moon; and
(b) create ample demand for terrestrial launch services to support that station.
Martijn is correct, EELV or Falcon 9 + Centaur could get there easily enough but so could Soyuz + Proton Block D, Shenzou + ???, ESA’s ATV and India’s pending Soyuz clone. And if NewSpace can beat all of the above (on price) to LEO they would have a ready market.
What would be sacrificed is the notion of a United States controlled integrated vertical monopoly over lunar access. However, if it were NASA in charge of that integrated vertical monopoly over lunar access, such a scenario wouldn’t be all that beneficial to our nation, anyways.
= = =
EML1 / EML2 also offer convenient low delta v access to SEL locations, the NEOs and Mars.
I know that if I had been the president, I’d have asked for an evaluation by the Aldridge team immediately upon announcement of ESAS/Constellation, scoring it against their own criteria (and we paid very close attention to those criteria when performing the CE&R studies), because it was a radical departure from previous anticipated plans.
The “ignoring” of the Aldridge Commission report began immediately upon its release. Sean O’Keefe was still Administrator at the time; Mike just continued the policy. One particularly strong memory I have is getting a lot of comment and flak about the recommendation that the NASA field centers be turned into FFRDC’s, so that they could get external, contracted funding from industry and make at least some movement toward self-funding. When the report came out, everybody descended on that little nugget like ducks on a June-bug and most of the rest of the report was largely ignored. The other recommendation that the agency really didn’t like was the one to resurrect the National Space Council — nobody at NASA likes to have more people to answer to than they already do.
In retrospect, I should have expected these reactions. Presidential commissions are convened largely to shut people up, not to get direction or to constructively improve an agency or a process. No matter what the new Augustine Committee comes up with, it will no doubt join the large teetering pile of ignored reports (almost all of which say pretty much the same things) over there in the corner at NASA Headquarters.
Well, the FFRDC thing was always going to be politically tough, but that and the presence or absence of a Space Council are almost a side issue compared to the architecture plans. They still could (and should) have been evaluated in the context of the Aldridge recommendations. Or if not, then the administration should have more actively and explicitly repudiated the recommendations (as they did in some cases with the 911 Commission).
Instead, everyone went on pretending that they were following them. And we end up with (surprise, surprise) a slow-motion train wreck.
So how do you go from here with the constraint that you have to preserve as much of the shuttle stack and workforce as possible?
Retrain the workforce. Look at it this way: as long as this army is on the payroll, it does not really matter if they refurbish the STS, shovel gravel from one hole into another or polish a turd. The money is gone and no value is gained. So, keeping them on payroll while retraining these folks to do something useful, would be most reasonable way of moving forward.
“So how do you go from here with the constraint that you have to preserve as much of the shuttle stack and workforce as possible?”
Have NASA build the Shuttle – C. It retains the SRB’s, it retains the
ET line, it actually restarts SSME production, update the avionics,
update the sensors, and you can toss 60 tons to LEO.
That’s a Lander, that’s a big transit vehicle, that’s a basis for an orbital fuels depot. Put it in orbit a few miles away from ISS, and run power from ISS to the Depot.
Then Stick a updated Apollo CSM on the Delta 4. That’s 5 people to
the ISS, that’s a billion dollar effort, Bob’s your uncle and you are in orbit.
How is this going to preserve the shuttle stack for more than a couple of years?
A Dragon-sized or even a Soyuz-sized capsule can reach L1/L2 from LEO with a Centaur + long duration mission kit. And ‘long’ doesn’t have to mean very long at all. If you make the lander hypergolic, all the pieces can be launched to LEO with EELVs and transported to L1/L2 by Centaur. Centaur itself can be transported to LEO by D-IVH. If NASA facilitates depots and gateways before it has reached the moon, it exposes the fact that the only reason a NASA launcher is needed and a NASA EDS is needed is because they chose to make Orion so heavy. NASA would then own a launcher with no legitimate purpose. It would lead people to believe Orion was made so heavy in order to justify a NASA-owned stack. I’d say it’s highly unlikely the politicians would let that happen.
“Bob’s your uncle”. Make that your *late* uncle.
If you are NASA and you want an SDLV, there must not be gateways and depots before you reach the moon and there must not be commercial capsules capable of reaching L1/L2.