Yes, I understand that there is a desire to salvage the employment of people working on the existing space transportation industry, and particularly the Shuttle components, and that is what is driving the DIRECT design (and Stephen Metschan has weighed in with the conventional false wisdom in comments over there, about the problem with launch costs being one of Isp). The argument is that by using existing parts, we save on development costs. Which is true, probably. If development costs are all that matters.
But, you know, the reason we want to shut down Shuttle isn’t just because it’s “unsafe” (as though safety is a binary condition), but because it kills people at such a high operational cost. And the reason for the high cost? The very thing that they want to preserve, which is the standing army that supports Shuttle.
Now, in the unlikely event I were called to testify before Congress, the first thing that I’d ask them to do would be to ask themselves what goal they are trying to accomplish. Are they trying to accomplish things in space, are they trying to make us seriously space faring, or are they in the business of preserving/creating jobs (note, not wealth)? If the latter, then by all means, come up with Shuttle derivatives. If the former, we need a clean slate.
Sorry, but what some see as a feature, I see as a bug. If people like that feature, then let’s go ahead and keep space access expensive forever. But don’t give us this Bravo Sierra about how it saves money.
Three things:
1) the shuttle stack serves no useful purpose
2) no plan that doesn’t preserve the shuttle stack survives contact with Congress
3) it is possible to steer the shuttle stack in a mostly harmless direction that leads to a mature, OASIS-like transport system in near-Earth space, including lunar ISRU
Your country needs people like you Rand. For the first time in a generation, or maybe ever, the government is asking for input from the public on the future of its space program. You need to speak up and others in the blogosphere as well.
The DIRECT proposal as it stands today is the least-unaffordable variant of the Griffin EOR-LOR dinosaur. Congress may well end up buying it and no good will come of it. We can’t kill the shuttle stack and if we just rail at it now, we will not succeed in steering it in a constructive direction. For 25 long years the shuttle stack has been an obstacle to progress, let’s make sure it will not be an obstacle for the next 25 years.
For the first time in a generation, or maybe ever, the government is asking for input from the public on the future of its space program.
No, that’s happened many times before. I provided testimony to the Paine Commission.
But each time, the input is ignored.
I thought the vast bulk of the standing army had to do with the orbiter. Is that incorrect?
Regards,
I stand corrected. Your input is still needed though…
“But each time, the input is ignored.”
OK, I’ve just finished a quick first reading of the report. Or at least I think I have, I found this link: http://history.nasa.gov/painerep/begin.html
I think I know why your input was ignored. It makes too much sense, it is not incremental enough (though it certainly is incremental) and most importantly it ignores politics and pork. *This can be fixed.*
Re: Rand’s Fox news article for 03.
33 year hiatus? I think you meant 33 month, right?
I thought the vast bulk of the standing army had to do with the orbiter. Is that incorrect?
I’m not sure that’s correct. I don’t have the breakdown handy, but certainly the ET and SRB, and vehicle integration are a major portion.
33 year hiatus? I think you meant 33 month, right?
Yes, I could never get them to fix that typo.
A few thoughts in opposition to the idea that congress mandates a SDLV solution, and that only SDLV can survive its will:
Shuttle Program spending is still only several billion a year. This on its own appears significant, but compared with the economy at large even in states like Florida it is minor in its impact, and is minor in comparison to other issues demanding the attention of lawmakers and the voting public. That low level of spending is not significant enough for there to be widespread support for such a mandate, only for a handful of self-interested members with an agenda to do so. Those self-interested members perhaps can magnify their own concerns onto the shape of the program, but there is no such drive on behalf of the vast majority of congress beside complacency in allowing NASA to do what it chooses to do.
“Congress” is not a single entity of singular will. The pro-Shuttle standing army part of it is presumably but a small faction.
Congress has also changed in composition over time, and judgments made about the decisions of past Congress’ cannot necessarily be applied to the current makeup.
Decisions have been made that have canceled or modified programs that have had congressional support. Not being well versed in the American political system I can only state as examples things like ending the F-22 or other military programs A continuation of the way things are isn’t necessarily set in stone.
Don’t yield to the terms as defined by the Direct crew under which only their effort can stand. The congressional will for SDLV is not pure, absolute, and steadfast. A large part of Congress has no stake in it; would they present opposition to a different path?
I bet Obama has ended the F-22 the way Carter ended the B-1 Bomber.
@libs0n:
You may be right, but what if you’re wrong? And don’t forget it isn’t just about the workforce, it is about the corporate interests behind it as well. DIRECT has shown how difficult it is to fight the NASA machine. The DIRECT team has managed, through enormous effort, to put together a pressure group and is putting its case forward effectively. There are lots of people with better ideas (Rand, Spudis, Wingo, Goff), but there is no pressure group to make a coherent case. Heck, even some people in the DIRECT team may have better ideas and may just be trying to sell what they think Congress will accept.
Why fight the shuttle stack, workforce, supply chain and its political supporters when those are not the problem? It is the architecture that is the problem, not the workforce. Why don’t we use our opponents’ strength, as in judo? We don’t need to eliminate the shuttle stack, we just have to make it useful. That should take far less energy and should have a greater probability of success. Although to be honest: not a very large probability.
I’m not amazed any more but a large number of people have seem never to have asked themselves “why am I doing this, this way? “or even “why am I doing this?”.
You are absolutely correct in what you would say to congress, Rand. First define the mission and its goals. At present it seems to me NASA has the mission “run some kind of space program”. This is far too nebulous for any organisation to have as a mission. When the mission was “put a man on the moon etc” NASA was successful.
1) the shuttle stack serves no useful purpose
2) no plan that doesn’t preserve the shuttle stack survives contact with Congress
3) it is possible to steer the shuttle stack in a mostly harmless direction that leads to a mature, OASIS-like transport system in near-Earth space, including lunar ISRU
Yep
Shuttle C. While is is no where near the optimum design if we were starting from a clean sheet (which we are not), it will get the job done and get us back to the Moon and will get us ISRU, which will make it obsolete, but in another administration.
“You are absolutely correct in what you would say to congress, Rand. ”
Nobody in DC is ever allowed to tell the truth.
Shuttle C. While is is no where near the optimum design if we were starting from a clean sheet (which we are not), it will get the job done and get us back to the Moon and will get us ISRU
I remember when you said the same thing about Ares.
If all you want to do is get “back” to the Moon, you could do that with Delta or Atlas. Unfortunately, the Moonie Church is too caught up in the worship of Von Braun and the Great Big Rocket to consider anything practical.
Shuttle-C solves few of the problems inherent to the Shuttle stack. It still has solids, external tank, the same high maintenance engines (which, granted, used to be worse), OMS, only thing it misses is the crew.
It will not increase reliability. Even if there is no crew, but the vehicle still blows up, it will not come cheap. IMO Shuttle is being abandoned not because people died, but because maintaining and replacing the vehicles is too expensive.
I think they did it wrong. They should have done a reusable first stage, rather than a reusable second stage. Only after you get a working reusable first stage, should you consider a reusable second stage. The reusable second stages only made something which is usually expensive even more expensive because of all the thermal protection and whatnot. They built their house from the roof, rather than laying the foundations first.
@Godzilla:
The nice thing about Shuttle-C is that it may just be the cheapest SDLV possible. The idea is not to come up with the best SDLV in a technical sense, but to waste the least amount of money paying off the shuttle workforce and its allies and then get on with the real space program. From that point of view coming up with the best possible SDLV would be a bug, not a feature, since in the long run there will not be a need for huge launchers. Or who knows, maybe in the distant future, if you want to launch 100 people to space at the same time or something.
Not that RLVs are not interesting, but why start with something as big as the shuttle?
It’s all going to be moot when the rest of the world stops financing US federal government debt. These discussions are really just whistling part the graveyard at this point.
Let’s be generous and assume that NASA overhead is 10%. If we were to tell the standing army and the Primes that we would simply pay them directly to do no work we could easily have a $1.5 billion dollar budget to procure mission objectives directly off of the GSA list. Just a thought.
That would be too blatant a handout and Congress wouldn’t accept that. It has no problem handing out money, that’s what Congress does, but it needs a high-minded pretext.
“It’s all going to be moot when the rest of the world stops financing US federal government debt.”
That would be worldwide economic suicide.
“It’s all going to be moot when the rest of the world stops financing US federal government debt.”
That would be worldwide economic suicide.
They just need a new reserve currency. Prior to 1945, all debts were settled internationally in Sterling, when the war ended, the British economy was in shambles, and the government was awash in debt, people started using dollars and it took the brits 20 years to pay that off.
I have a scottish friend who commented he was born the year they ended food rationing in the UK.
It would be economic suicide because if the american economy is so damaged, the rest of the world will join it in another great depression.
I can only hope the adults return in sufficient numbers in November 10 to enforce a modicum of fiscal restraint.
The global reliance upon the US economy is a result of the US being the only functioning industrial power during the post-WW2 decades.
The ability of (for example) automobile corporations to buy labor peace with unsustainable compensation packages existed only so long as there were no functioning competitors. Now there are.
The ability of the US Gov’t to buy political office with unsustainable programs exists only so long as there are no functioning competitors to the “full faith and credit of the US”.
So, while TODAY it may be true that it would be economic suicide, I don’t think it will be true much longer.
It depends on how you define Much. In the next 15 to 20 years? Suicide.
It is imperative that the US get its fiscal house in order.
Getting adults elected in 10 would be a start.
Mike: it would also be economic suicide for any individual lender to contnue to buy US debt instruments, if that debt is going to be repudiated (by inflating the currency or otherwise). That there are bad global consequences of collective actions doesn’t change the fact that people make decisions based on their own personal costs and benefits.
What we will likely see is an inexorable increase in the interest rate the US government has to pay, due to increasing sovereign risk, until those rates become intolerable. At the point the politicians face a choice of draconian domestic policy changes or repudiation of the debt (by inflation or otherwise).