I had an interesting Twitter discussion this morning, that gave me an insight that had been floating around in the back of my mind, but that I’d never articulated, either to myself or others. It sort of crystallized when someone said that Bob Cabana, head of KSC, was an SLS supporter.
One of the tenets of the Apollo Cargo Cult is that we can’t go beyond earth orbit without a really big rocket. The conventional wisdom has been that the biggest constituency for SLS is Marshall, because that’s were it is being developed. But if you think about it, there are a lot of things Marshall could be applied to — it doesn’t have to be developing big rockets (something it hasn’t successfully done in almost four decades). For instance, it could be developing technology and demonstrators for orbital fuel storage and transfer. That would be at least as much in its wheelhouse as SLS.
KSC, on the other hand, has little justification for existence if NASA doesn’t have its own (big) rocket to launch. Without a big rocket, it doesn’t need the VAB, and the VAB and the crawler are really the only unique capability it has, in terms of physical infrastructure. If everything is going up on commercial rockers, even from Pads 39, KSC doesn’t have much to do, other than integrating NASA’s payloads onto them. That’s not a trivial task, but it’s not one that justifies the center’s budget or workforce. So, while Marshall could in theory be redirected to something useful, KSC can’t really. That’s why Nelson supports it so strongly.
It struck me in fact that the VAB is the high cathedral for the cargo cult. What would happen to the religion if it was taken out by a hurricane?
Well, in theory you could relocate MSFC to Florida, there isn’t anything specific it needs in Alabama, is there?
There are a lot of test facilities that would be expensive to relocate. And a lot of the work force would be difficult to relocate. Not to mention the extensive contractor base. And you’d do it over Dick Shelby’s dead body.
As a Floridian, I once had hopes that KSC would make the leap to a major private launch facility. While SpaceX is launching there now, it’s not looking like NASA will let go anytime soon.
I really don’t understand how people can put a job above the truth. Is if fear?
Of course it is! (At least partially, anyway.)
We call it job scared, and it’s really common once you start looking for it.
“‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
— Upton Sinclair
In the advent of the destruction of the VAB, the choice does seem to be either between rebuilding some sort of large integration facility or scuttling the SLS.
I guess if VAB is damaged enough to need to be rebuilt from scratch, then it’s a nasty fight for funding which would mostly come from other NASA sources (Congress has never shown interest in significantly altering NASA’s budget up or down). I wouldn’t count on the VAB and NASA-grown big rockets being ended simply because there’s a lot of special interests at stake. I think it’ll depend on the political balance of the moment.
Or the accidental ignition of a solid rocket booster, the stacking of which in the VAB violates all of the original design concepts of the mobile launcher concept. I’ve worried about that since STS-1, and it dismays me that almost nobody is pointing out that this risk continues to be accepted without discussion in the Block 1 SLS. This isn’t a loss of vehicle and mission accident, but a decade-scale loss of infrastructure risk.
When I mention this, some argue I’m exaggerating the risk. I respond by asking why all non-essential personnel must leave the VAB during SRB stacking.
At Edwards AFB many years ago, contractors were using a live Titan IV SRM segment as a pathfinder. The crane collapsed, killing the operator, and the segment rolled into a ravine and ignited due to impact. An event like that in the VAB would, under the right circumstances, destroy enough of the building that the remainder couldn’t be salvaged.
Such an event is unlikely, though it’s hard to compare it to the possibility of destruction by hurricane. The site was chosen because of the rarity of hurricane landfalls there.
That was a factor, but not the only one. Hurricanes at the Cape are rare, but certainly not unheard of. The VAB actually was damaged ten years ago, by (I think) Frances.
At this point, JSC hides in the corner hoping no one remembers it during this discussion. After all, during Hurricane Ike, ISS MCC was set up in a hotel in Austin.
Were a hurricane to take out the VAB, there would be a special appropriation by Congress before the rubble was cleaned up to replace it.
The project would be budgeted at 8x the (current dollar) cost of the old VAB, it would have massive over-runs and be delayed three years.
In other words, business as usual
And they would rebuild it larger, because why not?
Then they’ll need a rocket that fits.
What are folks at Kennedy going to do for the years between SLS launches? Seriously, what will most of the workforce be doing? A slow-motion self-inflicted realignment and eventual closure?
That was one of the points I made in my book.
Meetings, lots of meetings.
Don’t forget PowerPoint. Lots of PowerPoint.
When I was growing up, my best friend’s father was the man who engineered the doors on the VAB. It was an impressive piece of work. The four bottom doors slide horizontally. From memory, they weigh 120 tons each. The vertical doors weigh 70 tons each.
IIRC, the VAB can withstand a Cat 3 hurricane. Fortunately, stronger hurricanes are relatively rare. As Hurricane Andrew proved in 1992, Florida isn’t immune to Cat 5 hurricanes.
Could anyone, as a kindness, expand each of the acronyms used in this post and comments? Thanx!
MSFC – Marshall Space Flight Center – located in Huntsville Alabama
KSC – Kennedy Space Center – Florida
SLS – Space Launch System (or Senate Launch Systems) – Really big useless rocket – http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/sls/#.VBMUx_ldXoY
VAB – Vehicle Assembly Building – Where they integrate the rockets. Has a big painted flag on the side – http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/facilities/vab.html
SRB – Solid Rocket Booster – The large round things on the side of the shuttle, caused the Challenger – disaster (made up of solid fuel) The SLS is being designed to use larger versions. – http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/technology/sts-newsref/srb.html
On my first day working for NASA at KSC they handed me a book (very thick book) of acronyms to learn. For the first week I carried it to every meeting and was looking up everything. The funny part was the engineers knew I was the new guy so they purposely used as many acronyms as possible (they even made up a few).
LOL, the initiation rights…..
People think space is a vacuum but they’re wrong. It’s filled with acronyms.
When I started working in military space back in 1986, the first document they had me read was titled “SOC SOC”, which was Satellite Operations Center System Operational Concept. The second document was “CSOC SOC” (Consolidated Space Operations Center System Operational Concept. Things went downhill from there.
We tried to assemble a an acronym dictionary but abandoned the project after a few weeks. There were just too many of them. Just within the DSCS-III program that I was training on, there were over 1000 telemetry acronyms along over and above the hundreds of others related to systems, software, and operations. Within our organization, we also had people training on DSCS-II, NATO III, FleetSat, DSP, and GPS. A comprehensive dictionary would’ve been almost impossible.