Bolden is finally speaking truth to foolishness:
“I can’t pay for an Ares I today. It’s too expensive,” said Bolden, speaking after a meeting of the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee.
“That’s an easy decision for me because it wipes out everything. My friend Sen. Nelson, and he is my friend to be quite honest, we respectfully agree to disagree on this. It is incredibly costly for me to go off and try a series of Ares I tests to support a heavy-lift at the present cost of solid rocket motors. Now, there is an answer. Get the cost down. And ATK (prime contractor for the Ares I) says they can do that. But we’re not there right now.”
Right before that statement, Bolden elaborated: “Ares I is not important to the continued development of heavy-lift unless the nation decides that it needs to preserve the capability to develop large segmented solid rocket motors. And that decision still has to be made. Right now, we’re leaning toward liquids. And if you’re leaning toward liquids, why would you spend a lot of time using Ares I as a development vehicle if that’s not going to part of the mix?”
I would have gone farther and pointed out that the only reason to do this is pork for KSC, but then, that’s why I’m not a high government official. And they are friends.
There’s an old saying in aviation that “given enough power, you can make a barn door fly.” The F-4 Phantom II seems to prove that statement true.
For NASA, given enough money and time (lots and lots of both), they could make the Ares I/Orion fly. That may be true but is it worth the amount of money and time for what we’d get in the end? I think not. The Ares I was costing far more than we can afford and would’ve delivered far too little. The continued tests are just pissing away more money that could be better spent.
So what replaces Ares I?
Atlas V, Delta IV, Falcon 9, Orbital Sciences boosters are all candidates and we don’t have to spend upwards of $50 billion to develop them.
Atlas, Delta, Falcon, and whoever else. Hopefully all of the above.
Bolden spoke at (and with) COMSTAC today, and among the many gems in that extraordinary exchange, he said that he had “fired Ares I” (in the employment sense of “fired”) in part to show how serious he was about relying on commercial providers.
Goldin should have done that, but instead we got X-33/34…
I like this guy.
To TLI?
To TLI?
No, but Ares I couldn’t do TLI, either. In fact, it couldn’t even do LEO — it was underperforming so badly that it needed the help of the Orion Service Module to just circularize the Orion.
I’d like to ask what is likely a very stupid question about Ares 1, but it’s one I can’t answer (obviously, I’m not an engineer).
Why did they go to the 5 1/2 segment SRB from the shuttle 4-segment? That is basically a totally new design, requiring different casing, different stacking, and a different formulation for burn rate.
Why didn’t they, if they just needed the thrust, use two shuttle 4-segment SRB’s in tandem? They’d have a shorter vehicle and fewer weight constraints on the upper stage/Orion.
Granted, two SRB’s are pricey, but given the development cost, wouldn’t a tandem pair of four-segment SRB’s have been cheaper overall?
I don’t recall seeing this proposed anywhere, even in the “Direct” designs, so there must be a reason, probably an obvious one. I just don’t have the tech ability to see it.
I am glad to see Ares being consigned to the scrapheap; to me, it seems like an engineering kludge that is designed to do things in the most expensive way possible.
1) Ares I never went to 5 1/2 segment, just to 5.
2) 5-segment was needed anyway for Ares V, this was seen as a way to “buy down” some of the development cost for Ares V.
3) Two four-segment SRBs in tandem with just an Ares I upper stage and Orion would result in excessive G-loads near the end of first stage unless you radically change the burn rate, in which case you’re right back where you started.
Which brings me back to my initial question. What replaces Ares I for TLI? Or if TLI is off the table, or just hanging off the edge, then what architecture gets us to the Moon?
I’m not married to Constellation, but looking at FY2011, the HSF report, and Obama’s speech, it appears we’re abandoning the Moon.
What replaces Ares I for TLI?
Ares I was never intended to do TLI. It was a LEO-only vehicle. As for how to do TLI (or any beyond-LEO mission) that remains to be seen. Under Constellation, there was an earth departure stage planned that would go up on an Ares V, but neither vehicle was going to start development for years. You don’t seem to understand that there is no Constellation, other than an Orion partway through development, and an Ares I that hadn’t even made it to PDR, and completing both of them was estimated to be at least seven years and forty billion dollars away, with horrific operating costs. That’s why it had to die.
And as for “abandoning the moon,” yes, we are, temporarily. But we had no hope of getting there any time soon, or affordably, with Ares anyway. With the new plans, we can revisit the issue of destinations at an appropriate time.
“…we can revisit the issue of destinations at an appropriate time.”
The administration has made that decision already, overriding the previous administration’s decision. With the chaos and ADD surrounding space policy, I suspect that we will not be going anywhere any time soon.
The administration has made that decision already, overriding the previous administration’s decision.
For now. It can change again in three years. Sorry, but as long as the government is making decisions, that’s just the way it’s going to be. Unless, like Woody Allen, you want a dictatorship.
With the chaos and ADD surrounding space policy, I suspect that we will not be going anywhere any time soon.
We weren’t going anywhere any time soon with the POR.
Unless you think 2030 is “soon”, that’s no different than Constellation.
Wouldn’t a fuel depot address the issue of what can and cannot do a TLI?
Wouldn’t a fuel depot address the issue of what can and cannot do a TLI?
Only partially. You still need the departure stage to put the fuel into.
> Only partially. You still need the departure stage to put the fuel into.
Isn’t that what Centaur with an extended-duration package (or ACES) is for?
That’s certainly one possibility (not sure what its throw weight would be).
> Or if TLI is off the table, or just hanging off the edge, then what architecture gets us to the Moon?
http://ulalaunch.com/site/docs/publications/AffordableExplorationArchitecture2009.pdf
You’re missing my point. I’m not suggesting Ares I lifts to TLI, I’m pointing out that the component responsible for delivering the crew vehicle for whatever MSFC ends up calling EDS is (or stands a damned good chance of being) gone in FY2011. Martijn and I went over this in the “Do Both? post; no one argues that Ares I is but one critical cog. But while EDS and Ares V may not be on track to be built until the next decade, who else has 60 ton lifter and TLI stage in the pipeline? No one.
But like you said, we’re abandoning the lunar mission “for now” and destinations will be discussed at a “more appropriate” time. I get it. What I don’t get is why now isn’t the appropriate time. Or what’s changed in the previous six years that demolished even the pre-Griffin/pre-ESAS consensus for targeting the Moon.
I’m not paid up on L2, so maybe I’m missing a distinction here, but didn’t Ares I move out of PDR into detailed design two years ago? Hell, aren’t we building and testing its components right now?
Anyways, Congress is projected to spend $126 billion over the same time frame. Even if Augustine is off by half, what is NASA doing that so important that they can’t afford to sink half of their budget into Constellation? If Constellation has to die, shouldn’t it be because there’s a better way to achieve the same objective for which it was conceived?
But like you said, we’re abandoning the lunar mission “for now” and destinations will be discussed at a “more appropriate” time. I get it. What I don’t get is why now isn’t the appropriate time.
Because (for one thing) the decision makers still think that they need a sixty-ton (or more) vehicle. Also, we haven’t yet developed the technology needed to send humans beyond LEO cost effectively. Once we have, then it will be time to choose destinations (plural, not singular), and develop mission-specific hardware for them. Implicitly, the administration is saying that this may take up to five years (the latest decision date for “which” heavy lifter to build).
Let me know if I’m reading in between the lines here correctly. Are you suggesting a route where NASA kills off an expensive, risky family of new rockets and takes a break until new engines and new Administration with a more concrete vision come along? That doesn’t sound so bad. I don’t know if it’ll work out that way, I don’t like the idea of building Congressional inertia behind chucking VSE #2, and I sure as hell don’t like leaving FY2011 without either Constellation or something–even just a commitment–to replace it, but I can respect that.
I’m not paid up on L2, so maybe I’m missing a distinction here, but didn’t Ares I move out of PDR into detailed design two years ago? Hell, aren’t we building and testing its components right now?
Yes, and no. It had a PDR, sort of. It was a disaster, with lots of RIDS, and invention of new colors to indicate progress in areas in which there wasn’t. It was a joke, and they had to put off a lot of decisions that should have been made at it. And yes, design moved forward in some areas, even though at the time they didn’t have the test data from Ares I-X (not that it was necessarily useful). The program is a mess.
Let me know if I’m reading in between the lines here correctly. Are you suggesting a route where NASA kills off an expensive, risky family of new rockets and takes a break until new engines and new Administration with a more concrete vision come along?
That’s the best we can hope for, because Constellation wasn’t worth continuing. It was going to die some time — better sooner than later before we waste much more money on it.
Also, the commercials will have made a lot of progress, and will probably even be in service in the next three or four years, so that will also change the policy environment for the selection of both destinations and BEO architectures.
This all assumes, of course, that the economy and budget don’t complete implode in that period, and that NASA has any budget at all for human spaceflight. But that’s a problem regardless of what current policy is.
The alternative is assembling transfer vehicles in orbit. Neglecting the cost of doing that, and using Falcon 9 and its unproven list price for max payload to LEO, a sixty ton EDS + CEV + Lander brings us to just shy of $150 million. Just shy of an order of magnitude improvement over Ares I’s low end lift cost and half the price of using the Atlas V HLV for the new kid on the block. I get it. Heavy lift may not be the way to go in the long run.
But why wait five years to start picking a new architecture?
But why wait five years to start picking a new architecture?
Because if we do it now, one of the ground rules will be heavy lift, and we’ll be right back to CE&R and ESAS. We have to demonstrate the ability to store and transfer propellant in space first, and finally put a dagger through the heart of heavy lift.
If we didn’t already have med-heavy lift capability, then maybe Ares I would be potential solution. However, there are existing & future launchers that can accomplish the same mission, and for lower cost. Here are the choices:
Shuttle – 53,600 lbs to LEO @ $1.2B/launch = $22,388/lb
Ares I – 56,000 lbs to LEO @ $1B/launch = $17,857/lb
Delta IV Heavy – 49,740 lbs to LEO @ $300M/launch = $6,031/lb
Atlas V Heavy – 64,820 lbs to LEO @ $390M/launch = $6,016/lb
Falcon 9 Heavy – 70,548 to LEO @ $154.5/launch = $2,190/lb
The costs for Atlas V & Falcon 9 Heavy were estimated to be 3x their single-core versions, so the actual costs could be lower.
Do you see a pattern to the costs? The current commercial launchers are less than half the cost of the government owned launchers, and the next new commercial launcher (Falcon 9) is less than half the cost of the current generation launchers. For cargo, there should be no doubt that commercial is the way to go.
For LEO crew services, ULA testified before the Augustine Commission that they could man-rate Delta IV Heavy (launcher + facilities) for $1.3B. No one can seriously argue that Boeing & Lockheed Martin (ULA) are not the best entity in the world to create a commercial crew launch system, and I personally think NASA should just go forward with man-rating Delta IV, and then pursue at least one more commercial crew provider.
Yes. Goff’s work. Question. Why bother with depoting fuel? Why not just launch tanks designed for specific craft and mate them as needed? We already have thirty five years of mating tank to vehicle on the ground, and thirty years of separating fuel lines during blast off.
Why bother with depoting fuel? Why not just launch tanks designed for specific craft and mate them as needed?
Flexibility in mission size, propellant delivery quantities and providers. Also, reusability.
If you do depots in both LEO and L1/L2, Centaur is just about fine for doing payloads up to about ESAS-sized cargos. You end up wanting to send the crew and the lander on separate Centaurs, and end up wanting to refuel in both LEO and L1/L2. But in the end you don’t need a new EDS. Now having something like ACES upgrade to the Centaur makes everything else easier, but Centaur with proper mission kits (most of which would be developed for a Centaur-based dual-fluid depot like Frank Zegler and I have been proposing) is quite a good start.
~Jon
Nemo said;
“1) Ares I never went to 5 1/2 segment, just to 5.
2) 5-segment was needed anyway for Ares V, this was seen as a way to “buy down” some of the development cost for Ares V.
3) Two four-segment SRBs in tandem with just an Ares I upper stage and Orion would result in excessive G-loads near the end of first stage unless you radically change the burn rate, in which case you’re right back where you started.”
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Thanks Nemo. It hadn’t occurred to me that the 5 segment was needed on Ares 5. That makes sense.
I don’t get the excessive G-loading at SRB burnout with the tandem 4 though… that could be handled by just increasing mass for the upper stage.
@ Rand;
I agree with you on killing heavy lift as currently proposed, due to cost. However, if anyone ever comes up with a “big, dumb, cheap booster” it might be worth a look IMHO, but I don’t see it happening with current tech.
I remember hearing, as a kid, way back when the shuttle was prepping for its first launch, quite a few experts weighing in on launch costs. They all said that the key to space was price per pound to LEO. They were saying it regarding the shuttle at that time (which proved not to be) but I’ve always thought they were right regarding cost per pound. Getting that down is the key.
Personally, I feel that the Ares program serves as a good example of why government cannot be our route to space.
I don’t see any reason we can’t create a beyond LEO architecture based on max. 20 ton modular assemblies. If we use Atlas/Delta/Falcon Heavies, and create a standard maneuvering module that will deliver the modules to an in-space assembly area, then I think 20 tons (40,000 lbs) is a pretty good starting point. The ISS was mostly built within this constraint, so we know how to assemble a large structure using modular construction.
No matter how big we build an HLLV, we are going to have to do modular assembly in space anyways, so why not start using our current launchers. Anything we learn can be scaled up as we are able to increase our launch mass.
Even though Lockheed Martin has already proposed a pretty neat system with their ACES concept, I think NASA could generate a lot of excitement in the aerospace industry and colleges if they hold an open design competition. The goals could be:
1. Components to be launched on current Delta/Atlas/Falcon 9 Heavies
2. Use ISS components where possible (cuts R&D costs)
3. For any assembly in space, must plan for a manned assembly station
4. Destinations include Earth orbit, Lagrange points, NEO and Moon
5. For Moon & NEO human landings, propose only landing and return (habitats and exploration will be part of a different competition)
The overall goal of the competition is to do as much in space as possible with a fixed amount of money. You could even propose using the $100B from the Constellation program as the goal – it would show what we could do if we didn’t build Constellation.
1. Mission size: Can’t you just size your tank module payload to what’s needed?
2. Delivery quantities: If anything, doesn’t a depot encourage launching a constant delivery quantity once reserves fall below a certain threshold? Why design a mission for a different payload mass when you can just keep doing the same one over and over again. You just vary launch rates depending on consumption. That’s basically how we do gasoline delivery.
3. Providers: Payload’s a fuel tank module, presumably around 20 mT or less. Wouldn’t anyone be able to launch it? Also, couldn’t the module be specifically designed for whatever consumer spacecraft needs it?
Ultimately, you’re going to do as many or more launches needed to lift fuel to be used by all missions planned in a given period regardless if you store it in orbit for a long time or launch it a week before the mission kicks off, right?
Presley,
The optimal size for propellant delivery may very well be far below 20mT, if you can use a tug to off-load a lot of the last-mile hardware from the tankers. I’ve actually heard serious people (who I happen to agree with) pointing out that small first-gen RLVs in the 300-500lb to LEO payload capacity might very well be perfect for depots, if they’re capable of high flight-rate. The nice thing about depots is that since you’re not tide to any one specific plug-in module size, you can use any size delivery that makes economic sense. Most of the more innovative ways of getting stuff to orbit (RLVs, gun launch, tethers, etc) are a lot easier to prove out in small-scale first, rather than continually trying to go straight for EELV-class payloads.
~Jon
I see, so the purpose of in-space refueling is to make use of an existing departure stage.
But as I put it to Rand, for future DS design, why bother with depots. I imagine one Centaur mission would be to shuttle fuel to Lagrange points for attached man spacecraft. But that’s so you could avoid redesigning how Centaur tanks propellent in the first place. Why wouldn’t someone design a next generation orbiter or more ambitious spacecraft to accept separately launched propellant modules for optimal EOR configurations? Cut out the middleman, as they say?
Also, the lowest-cost propellant delivery will simply be someone sending up a vehicle with excess payload capacity (i.e., someone wants a payload right now that’s below the capability of the vehicle), which means it will get to orbit with excess propellant in the tanks. It would be able to just sell it into the depot at the going market rate (a hundred or thousand bucks a pound), at essentially no cost other than the earth cost of the propellants (a couple bucks a pound). Nice profit margin.
Jon,
Okay, good point. And I’ll also assume that launching multiple small payloads on say a single EELV and having them mate in constellation with multiple, differently sized fuel modules launched on another is not feasible.
But while we wait five years for those depots knife heavy lift, what’s stopping us from using EELV and New Space lift to deliver manned spacecraft scale payload and its required fuel on an as needed basis? We’ve got to acquire a CEV + departure architecture anyway.
Here’s an Apollo 8 style lunar free-return architecture with mostly all existing hardware:
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/199/1
And I’d like to see it extended to include the Excalibur Almaz hardware.
The thing to note is that getting into lunar orbit doesn’t require heavy lift. It never did. It doesn’t even require propellant depots. These are all just nice-haves.
Hey Jon,
An idea I had for a prop demo mission was launching a Delta IV heavy with a loaded H2 and O2 tank as the payload and an extended duration second stage.
The Delta goes into orbit and the H2 and O2 tanks transfer the fuel to the second stage refilling it. Thus you do a fuel transfer demo and re-use the RL-10 on the Second Stage thus saving the weight of an upper stage engine.
Then you dock with an Orion launched on another vehicle and do the first BEO mission since December 1972.
The ED DIVUS (or better a Centaur if you can swing it on a Delta IV)and the Orion fly to EML 1 or 2. The ED DIVUS becomes a test bed at EML 1 or 2 where you can attempt to refuel it at a later date and use it as a prototype Deep Space Depot.
Of course this requires a deep space capable Orion(or a DS capable Dragon would work too).
To add, the H2 and O2 tanks that are the payload on the DIV Heavy are discarded once the DVUS is re-filled.
Presley,
I have to admit that I do get tired of having to answer this question all the time (why not just swap modules), but here’s the quick version:
1-Propellant transfer really doesn’t have to be that hard, even for cryogens. Every restartable cryo upper stage ever flown (several hundred by now) have had to settled and transfer propellants from the tanks to the engines starting from a microgravity environment. Cryo couplings are a little bit harder, but something we have a lot of experience with on the ground. The difficulty of doing a depot is typically overestimated by people who haven’t bothered to read up on the topic.
2-Multiple small tanks are very structurally inefficient–while the main pressure vessel itself scales pretty linearly with pressure and volume, smaller tanks end up having more mass tied up in support structures, insulation, flanges, inlets, outlets, etc.
3-Multiple smaller tanks are thermodynamically inefficient. The “square-cube law” is your friend–bigger tanks have less heat leak into them per unit volume. Many smaller tanks also have more thermal penetrations into their volume due to structural attachments, plumbing etc. All of these mean higher boiloff rates.
4-Without the ability to transfer propellants in microgravity, you can’t make up for boiloff. Which either requires all of the tanks to have zero boiloff systems (a lot of added cost, complexity, and mass), or you can only store them for short durations, or you can’t use cryogens, or you have to live with variable propellant loadings. All of these issues really hurt efficiency.
5-You have to do lots more plumbing work in space to hook up the new tanks. I really prefer to minimize the amount of cryogenic plumbing that has to be attached, leak checked, etc in a system.
6-You really don’t save anything over a depot–you actually have to do all the stuff you’d need to do with a depot. You still need to make and unmake propellant connections, you still have to settle the propellants before you can transfer them to the engines, etc.
7-It’s a lot harder to make the propellant tank swapping concept work with a wide range of launch vehicles. You might be able to make a few general sized systems, but making things integrate correctly without either wasting a lot of performance, having lots of unique tank sizes, having to deal with integrating inconsistently sized tanks into your vehicle, etc. You just lose a ton of flexibility.
I have to say, having studied this for a while, the whole “swap tanks” idea sounds simple, but in reality really sucks. You end up having to do all the work (actually you probably end up having to do *more* work than just making a depot work), but don’t get any of the big benefits of depots.
Not picking on you for making rookie mistakes, or asking dumb questions. It’s just you might save yourself (and us as well) a lot of time by actually reading some of the propellant depot papers written by ULA or Boeing. A good starting point is here: http://www.ulalaunch.com/site/pages/Education_PublishedPapers.shtml
~Jon
1. Mission size: Can’t you just size your tank module payload to what’s needed?
Why not size your mission to the equipment you have? I think a big part of the cost of many NASA missions is that they create specialized, one-off hardware that only gets used for that mission. There are notable exceptions such as the reuse of reentry systems for several Mars missions (including the MERs) and the ion propulsion system in Dawn.
In manned space, it gets worse, with NASA intending Ares I to launch a particular-sized space capsule (and not much else). If they had instead designed a capsule in 2005 that could be launched on the EELVs, they could be launching astronauts now.
Two four-segment SRBs in tandem with just an Ares I upper stage and Orion would result in excessive G-loads
CJ beat me to it. They should have had one of us Arizonans at the design meeting. If one SRB didn’t do the trick (as obviously it didn’t or we wouldn’t have the 5 or 5.5) I would have immediately asked: why not use two?
So now our problem is we have too much lift (g-loads.) What a nice problem to have. So I have a higher mass capability for the upper stage? Use it.
…but that’s all history now.
…why not start using our current launchers. Anything we learn can be scaled up as we are able to increase our launch mass.
Because it’s common sense and geniuses don’t have that.
As I seem to recall, the whole reason NASA adopted solids for shuttle was that it was supposed to be far cheaper than a liquid fuelled flyback booster or expendable liquid boosters… Evidently ATK has gotten fat and happy off the NASA trough. If solids are so great, perhaps NASA needs to reopen the contract to competitive bidding.