Yesterday, over at Space Politics, I saw a very peculiar comment:
…NASA failed to achieve the goal of low cost shuttle operations when they failed to pursue the privatization of the shuttle transportation system. Regrettably this failure may cost the lives of another shuttle crew as one of the cost saving features of the privatized shuttle would have been crew escape pods…a fatal flaw.
To which I responded: “Huh?”
Then, today, over at the Orlando Sentinel space blog, I saw something seemingly similar, from the same person:
Sen. Bill Nelson is backing a dead horse. If his staff had done their homework they know Ares I Orion shuttle replacement is not feasible. Too expensive to develop and to operate. Sen. Nelson is driving nails in NASA’s coffin…and maybe a shuttle crew by not supporting the shuttle crew escape pods…see: wwwnasaproblems.com [sic]
Posted by: Don Nelson | February 06, 2009 at 10:33 AM
So I corrected the URL by putting a dot between the “www” and “nasaproblems,” and wandered over there to see what was going on.
What a mess. Ignoring the site design, very little of this makes any sense, either from a business or technical standpoint.
I don’t have the time or the energy to delve into all the problems, but just to respond to the blog comments, I don’t know what “opportunity” NASA ever had to privatize the Shuttle. I actually supported a privatization study by USA back in the nineties, and it was very difficult to come up with a scenario that would make any kind of business sense for Shuttle privatization, given its intrinsically high costs, with little demand for it outside of government. And that’s ignoring all of the intrinsic institutional resistance that NASA and particularly JSC had to handing over the keys to anyone else.
But even if it could have been privatized, the notion that adding “crew escape pods” (even assuming that it is even really technically feasible) to the existing design would somehow “reduce costs” is absolutely loopy. What is the basis of this claim? Similarly, why would a private entity do this?
Putting a crew escape system into the orbiter as designed makes zero economic sense. As I’ve noted many times, crew are replaceable, while orbiters are not. If the Shuttle isn’t safe enough to fly crew, it’s not reliable enough to fly at all, as we’ve learned with the Challenger and Columbia losses, because we’re now down to a fleet of three vehicles, and it would cost billions to replace them, even if it made economic sense to operate them privately. That, in fact, is why we’re retiring it. The notion of privatizing Shuttle at this late date is utterly ludicrous.
This is obviously the work of an engineer, and not a program analyst.
Aaaah! My eyes!
And actually, this doesn’t even sound like an engineer. It sounds like someone who thinks the events on programs like Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica actually happened/are happening/will happen, and so of course things like “escape pods” and transporter beams and so on should be added to the shuttle.
By the way, even I with my near-zero knowledge of science stuff know that the space shuttle is based upon the design of the airplane. Do airplanes have little lifeboats on them? Do we even put parachutes on passenger planes? No, we don’t. So why would they be on the space shuttle? (I think the whole idea of “escape pods” for space-faring vehicles is based upon the idea of space ships being sort of like large ocean-going vessels, which have lifeboats and things. Technically, a space shuttle would be the “escape pod” — at least, for a really big space ship. In fact wasn’t the whole “shuttle” concept inspired by the “shuttlecraft” on the Starship Enterprise? [/END GEEK])
It’s Don Nelson, look at the bottom of the linked webpage.
I know it’s Don Nelson (I included his name in the comment). What’s your point? Is that supposed to mean something to me?
Andrea, I’m not the right person to answer you, but briefly: the concepts aren’t nearly so far removed from reality as you think- from both a historic and from an engineering point of view. See the link below for an example of how similar systems were seriously being discussed as recently as 2003, as well as a brief discussion of how similar systems that have been implemented in the past.
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=780
Also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_pod points out that escape pods were used in the B-58 , the XB-70 , the F-111 and the B-1A. Since they are “just” encapsulated ejection seats, this shouldn’t be too surprising.
Also see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_crew_capsule
Obviously this Don Nelson. Which explains the quality of his space commentary
None of those describe how they would reduce the cost of flying the Shuttle, Bob.
Geez that is ridiculous. I remember reading some of the ESA Hermes lessons learned papers. One of the issues was that after Challenger, they wanted to have a crew escape system, which was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. The extra weight of such a system removed any payload the vehicle had, and them some.
I do seem to remember there were ejection seats on the first Shuttle flights. But even those proved to be useful for only a fraction of the time and ended up being removed. I doubt they would have helped in the case of Challenger (solids exploded) or Columbia (broken tiles) anyway.
Ares is in many ways a step backwards. EELVs already provide the necessary launch facilities for current military and civilian space requirements. It would have IMO been better to fund upgrades to that technology, and get improved production rates that would lower the overall cost of US space flight. Use many cheap launches rather than few expensive launches. Traditionally R&D costs have dwarfed launch costs.
Investing state money in new engines which are rehashes of Apollo technology at this point seems dumb to me. The capability has been proven already. Let the private sector reinvent those engines if they need to. There is no rush to get to the Moon, so we might as well do things properly this time.
I do not see what is the fuss about keeping SSME. We can make better engines than SSME with current technology.
IMO the state should buy expendable launches from the private sector. NASA R&D should focus on next generation propulsion (RS-84, nuclear/solar thermal/electric), reusable first stages, space tugs, in-orbiting refueling, docking and other unproven or poorly proven technologies. AFAIK RL-10 has proven deep throttling (DC-X) and tests runs were made using LOX/LCH4. So how come that was dropped from the lunar lander? The mind boggles.
Rand, sure. Andrea, I could have added: And Rand is completely correct, as usual, when it comes to the Shuttle.
Oh, this is too funny. I have to assume that it’s the same Don Nelson who wrote “Nasa New Millennium Problems and Solutions”[1], which got a five-star review from …. (drom roll, please) … Mark R. Whittington!!
Also, Rand appears to be right. A CNN interview[2] credits Don Nelson as a former NASA engineer.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Nasa-New-Millennium-Problems-Solutions/dp/0738863777
[2] http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/07/29/frm.nasa.engineers/index.html
It would seem that the formation of United Space Alliance represents the logical extent to which the shuttle program can be privatized. It’s really hard to think of any commercial rationale for operating the Space Shuttle when expendables like Delta IV Heavy can do the job for much less money.
Assuming that any commercial rationale existed for operating the space shuttle, it’s hard to see human astronauts playing a role. Why pay their salaries and provide the life support consumables during the mission when so much of the functionality they provide can be automated?
I’ll admit that I used to waste my time thinking of ways the shuttle system could be saved. But it’s clear that people who are trapped in that mindset are trying to atone for the mistakes of the past. The shuttle will always be a fundamentally-flawed concept, and it’s time to move on.
Rand. I don’t quite understand your reasoning about not having escape pods on the shuttle. Shuttle = high reliability rocket = .99 x 200 missions =expectation value of dead astronauts.
You have said multiple times, I believe, that deaths are just going to be part of space flight.
But would the taxpayers have bought it if it included the caveat: “System will likely kill 10 or more astronauts live on national TV during it’s useful lifetime”?
I doubt it.
Look, if some guy wants to strap on a motorcycle and jump the Mississippi that’s fine with me. If someone wants to climb in a privately owned sub orbital vehicle with a 1/100 chance of getting incinerated I’m okay with that as well. But when taxpayers are buying a national “Space Transportation System” taking out a couple of crews as a matter of course shouldn’t be part of the specifications.
K:
Astronauts know the odds and still want to fly. Hermes was being designed from scratch, and an ejectable cabin was rejected on grounds of weight penalty. What makes you think you can retrofit something like that into a decades old design, which would be better off trashed and designed anew?
The Shuttle was superb, in its time, given the cost constraints. It pushed the envelope of what was possible. Today it is obsolete in just about any dimension despite retrofits: the engines are too high maintenance, the avionics are obsolete, OCS/RCS uses toxic fuels, thermal protection is fragile and hard to maintain, parallel mounting of the orbiter means you get incoming chunks of ice from the LOX/LH2 external tank.
To fix those issues would require making a whole new vehicle. That was proposed in SLI but deemed too expensive. So now there is nothing to replace Shuttle…
It’s almost as though Nelson went out of his way to make his site difficult to read.
In this case, perhaps more of a feature than a bug.
But would the taxpayers have bought it if it included the caveat: “System will likely kill 10 or more astronauts live on national TV during it’s useful lifetime”?
Perhaps not. They also wouldn’t have bought it if it included the caveats: “System will actually only fly a few times a year, and will cost almost a billion dollars per flight, and we’ll lose two fifths of the fleet in its first quarter of a century of operations.”
So I’m not sure what your point is. The philosophy was that we were going to design the vehicle to be reliable, so there was no need for escape systems, other than during “flight test” (the first four flights, after which it was declared “operational”). If the vehicle was sufficiently unsafe that it required an escape system, then it was intrinsically unaffordable, because the replacement and opportunity costs of losing an orbiter is so high. Escape systems only make economic sense on expendables, or combat vehicles. Not on reusable transports.
The mistake was not in failing to provide an escape system, but rather in failing to design the system to be safe and affordable, as stipulated by the original program goals.
But when taxpayers are buying a national “Space Transportation System” taking out a couple of crews as a matter of course shouldn’t be part of the specifications.
If that’s true then the government should have no role at all in operating space assets. A perfectly safe system cannot be built; there will always be risk. And if taxpayers are unwilling to take that risk it’s better to leave space transport to the private sector.