Frank Morring has a story over at Aviation Week on Chris Chyba’s testimony to Congress, in which he pointed out the same cost analysis that I did the other day:
Chyba repeated his 2009 warning that NASA has not been able to develop one vehicle and fly another at the same time, given historic budget constraints. But he said NASA may be able to learn from SpaceX as it develops the heavy-lift launch vehicle Congress has ordered it to build for missions beyond LEO.
“The other thing that I think one would want to understand in some detail would be why would it be between four and 10 times more expensive for NASA to do this, especially at a time when one of the issues facing NASA now is how to develop the heavy-lift launch vehicle within the budget profile that the committee has given it,” Chyba said.
I suspect the question was somewhat rhetorical — he probably knows the answer. As far as Congress is concerned, high costs are a feature, not a bug, as long as they don’t get so high that the program dies. Because high costs means lots of jobs for their constituents that they can point to at election time. A more efficient commercial industry would probably create even more jobs, but they would be a lot less visible. And note that whether or not anything is actually accomplished is secondary, if it’s a concern at all. Did anyone in Congress ever complain that Constellation was behind schedule? Maybe, but I don’t recall it. There were no complaints about the program from the rocket scientists on the Hill until it got canceled.
No one complained when Constellation was behind, but Congress uses the fact that SpaceX is a couple years behind to be them over the head.
I’d bet that with re-usability, probably something 2 stage with wings, a business like SpaceX could knock a zero off their current price.
SpaceX is reported to be working on reuse of the first stage, fishing them out of the ocean.
Yeah I know, but that’s not much how airlines operate, which is what space launch needs to emulate as much as possible. Aerial propellant transfer, (APT) is an option that would allow the use of existing aircraft for the first km/sec+ (including gravity loss, drag, reduced Isp from atmospheric pressure and GPE to 10,000m).
Ever since NASA HQ first started trying to get the field centers out of the big booster development business, these hearings have tended to be stacked to tell the Congressional NASA oversight committees only what they want to hear.
I was watching this particular hearing, and I was quite startled when Chyba (carefully) brought that study up. He didn’t rub the committee’s noses in the implications, however, and I wasn’t at all surprised when Nelson, Hutchison, et al, carefully failed to acknowledge the real implications.
The thing to keep in mind about that study is that the $1.7 billion figure (over 4x Falcon 9’s $390 million) came from assuming an optimistic, “entrepreneurial” version of NASA’s standard approach, while the $4 billion figure (over 10x Falcon 9 actual NASA-examined development cost) came from using a NASA business-as-usual cost model.
In other words, the $4 billion figure came from the costing tools they would normally use to predict the cost of a NASA in-house booster program before it started.
Factor in a (recently typical) x2 – x3 cost increase once the program is underway, and you start to get close to the actual Ares development costs that sank Constellation, and that will almost inevitably sink SLS. As someone recently said, the problem Congress is having with NASA lately is that Congress has ordered NASA to do a predictably $30 billion, 12-year in-house heavy-lifter for $12 billion in 5 years.
NASA’s current leadership keeps trying to politely tell its oversight committees that no matter how they try, they can’t fit thirty gallons of sewage in a twelve-gallon bucket, and the committees keep accusing NASA of not trying hard enough. Nothing good is likely to result.
Mind, Chyba did try about as hard as you could expect from anyone who didn’t want to have influential Senators holding a long-term career-affecting grudge.
From the AvWeek article, “The other thing that I think one would want to understand in some detail would be why would it be between four and 10 times more expensive for NASA to do this, especially at a time when one of the issues facing NASA now is how to develop the heavy-lift launch vehicle within the budget profile that the committee has given it,” Chyba said.
Or translated out of diplomat-speak, NASA in-house rocket development is BROKEN.
He failed, however, to leap over the witness table, grab Senator Nelson by the throat, throw him on the floor, slap him a few times, and shout in his face “It means that you need to get through your head that NASA in-house rocket development is FATALLY, TEN-TIMES-COSTLIER-EVEN-BEFORE-THE-INEVITABLE-OVERRUNS, *BROKEN*, Senator!”
Not that there’s any guarantee that would get the message accepted either. Between the belief that lack of a new government-developed giant flying flaming phallic symbol would be a fatal blow to national machismo, and the amount of ongoing hometown white-collar welfare jobs at stake, De Nile is running wide and deep on these committees.
Thinking of the Vostok launchers, why not a falcon heavy that is a falcon 9 x 5 instead of a falcon 9 x 3?
So Henry, are you going to tell us what you really think?
The problem with getting congresscritters collectively to “understand,” is that they don’t care in the first place. So things like the testimony above is more for appearances than to do anything productive.
I was a little over the top in that second post, wasn’t I. (Just a little, though! 😉 Musta been having a stressful day or something. For the record, I do *not* endorse or recommend the attention-getting method described there, for members of Congress or anyone else. Just a little bit of stress-relief visualization exercise…
Seriously, it’s not entirely true that the average Congressional committee boss cares nothing at all for the content of hearing testimony. Maintaining a facade of reasonableness is necessary to keeping enough of the rest of Congress on board to pass bills once they hit the floor. Otherwise we wouldn’t have seen so much effort go into stacking the witness lists for so many NASA hearings over the last year.
The SLS pork barons’ facade of reasonableness is starting to show cracks. Chyba’s testimony may well end up being useful in this ongoing debate. We’ll see.
Sir Vanderbilt wrote He failed, however, to leap over the witness table, grab Senator Nelson by the throat, throw him on the floor, slap him a few times, and shout in his face “It means that you need to get through your head …”
Don’t back away, man. Thank was some of the most gripping commentary I’ve read in a long time. It was stress-relieving for me too.
Thanks!
“That”, not “Thank” of course…
Yep, awesome stuff Henry Vanderbilt.
Well, stress relief aside, it *was* a vivid way to make the point…
>>As someone recently said, the problem Congress is having with NASA lately is that Congress has ordered NASA to do a predictably $30 billion, 12-year in-house heavy-lifter for $12 billion in 5 years.
Something just occurred to me. Because congress does not care about results, just the jobs and contracts in the right places and are willing to write the check .. why wouldnt NASA push their own, extreme requirements into the program, on top of the 130 Mt to LEO ?
Like, boosters have to have a fly back to launch site capability. At least some engines have to be aerospikes. The upper stage has to be able to reenter intact and have perspiration cooling ..
I.e. turn it into massive tech development program. I mean if you are going to blow $30B on something that will never fly, why not do it in style and leave some bits and pieces of new tech behind that could actually become useful to someone else someday ?
Wasn’t that called “X33”?
It only needed five “never been done before” things to work at the same time.
Have any of them been picked up later?
I look forward to seeing what efficient commercial providers can achieve and don’t really care what pork NASA works on. Should it be possible to achieve some sort of change inside NASA that would be great too, but I’m not holding my breath.
As for the 10x cheaper comments, what do you really think is going to come from that? Congress just recently demanded bi-monthly hearings with NASA to answer why their pork rocket isn’t being built yet. If you’ve been paying attention you should expect to hear Sen Nelson ask NASA why they can’t change the way they do business to reduce that factor.
I really do think that you’re wrong by suggesting that the Congress is malicious.. it’s worse than that, they’re *delusional*.
Bolden and NASA might have a plan for an SLS heavy lift rocket that might actually work this time. You have to give Bolden some credit.
NASA supposedly will contract from 2011 to 2013 for the Phase 1 SLS using the Direct Jupiter 130 concept of 2 SRBs and 3 SSME engines. In 2013, after the nation-wide elections, NASA will contract with competitors to the Phase 1 SLS using a Phase 2 SLS that supposedly will be open to commercial competition.
In 2013, this Phase 2 SLS commercial competition should expose the difference in costs between the ATK SRBs and the SSMEs of the Phase 1 SLS and the likely LOX/RP-1 components of competing SpaceX or EELV heavy lift boosters.
In 2013, the Phase 1 SLS will still probably be an immature design, and there is a chance that SLS funding could be diverted to a Phase 2 SLS.
Remember that NASA is supposedly budgeting right now for a launch pad to launch the Phase 1 SLS and a second launch pad to launch the Phase 2 SLS, so NASA is already planning to immediately spend the money to enable a commercial competitor to the Phase 1 SLS to succeed after the elections in FY 2013.
The Direct Jupiter 130 team already sees this and they have started to work on “AJAX” concepts for SLS that replace the ATK SRBs with SpaceX Falcon 9 boosters or EELV Atlas V boosters.
There is nothing preventing the NASA Phase 1 SLS team from mixing and matching SpaceX or EELV engines and components to remain competitive against the Phase 2 SLS commerical teams, so Bolden has a strategy that might actually keep Congress reasonably happy and might actually result in a working rocket.
If you ask the question, ” Why not open SLS right now to commercial competition in 2011 versus in 2013″, then your answer is:
“Because as of 2011, the commercial industry does not have a large LOX/RP-1 American engine (i.e. the Russian engines like the RD-180 are not politically feasible for SLS), or a large launch pad (like the future Phase 2 SLS launch pad), or the tooling for a wide-body launch structure (like the 8.4-meter diameter Shuttle external tank from the Phase 1 SLS design for Jupiter 130 rocket) that would allow commerical companies to compete with existing ATK SRBs, Shuttle launch pads, and Shuttle External tanks……but in 2013 the competition may be fair”.
Bolden called the above “protecting the industrial base” until an alternative is found.
Bolden is opening the door for commercial companies to compete on a more level playing field after the elections in 2013…..Bolden will really help commercial companies if he or the Air Force funds that large American LOX/RP-1 engine that NASA put out for RFI in 2010.
AJAX has nothing to do with DIRECT.. and the SLS has nothing to do with either.
I have to be polite to morons like this over at NASASpaceflight, so you’ll excuse me if I say that perhaps you should write less and read more.
The Senate Pork faction inject language in legislation they control and that the greater congress automatically passes that forces NASA to do their bidding. They fixed the requirements for SLS and created SLS and sure as hell they will tinker with any such open competition to their end.
You are dealing with a group of people, NASA Center employees, established Contractors, Senate and Congressman and their staffers, who will methodically work toward their aim to continue the scam that human spaceflight has become without regard for fair protocol.
Trent,
Are you saying that you believe that the SLS, the Direct Jupiter 130, and the AJAX launcher concept have nothing in common from the NASA-Marshall, NASA-HQ, and Congress’ perspective?
Are you also saying that the people at NASASpaceflight who think that these 3 launcher concepts are connected in terms of the debate over the $10-Billion in funding for SLS are morons?
If this is what you believe, then you are probably out of touch with the reality of what the US Government might or might not fund with US Government money. There is no commercial market for heavy lift launch capability so the US commercial launch industry currently lacks the expensive heavy lift launch pads, the expensive large LOX/RP-1 boosters (or other large engines), and the wide-body tooling (e.g. the existing 8.4-meter diameter tooling located at NASA-Michoud) needed to compete with existing US Government heavy lift launch infrastructure.
Bolden’s SLS plan, the Direct plan, and the NASA-Marshall plan appear to invest US Government money in US capabilities that actually exist today. What else could Bolden propose to Congress for that $10-Billion? Bolden is also being smart about developing a large commercial launch pad and potentially a large LOX/RP-1 booster engine so commercial can compete for US Government money in 2013. The Phase 2 SLS launch pad, NASA-Marshall RAC-2 LOX/RP-1 heavy lifter design, and AJAX designs display that the US Government is preparing itself for potential public-private partnerships in competition with the Phase 1 SLS design using SRBs and SSME engines.
Trent, you are probably out of touch with rational arguments for how the Congress and the US Government can spend $10-Billion on a non-existent commercial market for heavy-lift.
How else do you think Congress can spend that $10-Billion, and what is a better plan for Bolden?
Should Congress just send you the $10-Billion in Australia, and have you invest it in the non-existent global commercial market and non-existent commercial infrastructure for heavy lift?
Who is being a moron here?
I wish NASA did not feel the need to control the whole SLS process. They have to accept bids, but they will do it in such a way that only the traditional players will be in the game. They need to open it up. Accept bids from anyone that wants to develope any system that will lift the required payload. I imagine that they would get a pretty competitive entry from SpaceX. Merlin2/FalconX could probably be developed for well under 10 billion, seeing as Elon spend less than 400 million on Falcon 9. Merlin2 is basically a much larger Merlin 1
Roll Tide,
Elon Musk has already openly said (in Aviation Week magazine) that a Merlin 2 Falcon Heavy Lift launcher will cost ~ $2.5-Billion to develop and that he would sell it for $300-Million per launch……..if NASA paid for the $2.5-Billion in development costs and became a customer for this vehicle. Elon said his Merlin 2 engine would cost $1-Billion, and the NASA-Marshall RAC-2 and RAC-3 studies are supposedly evaluating use of the Merlin-2 engine in a US Government produced launcher not owned by SpaceX.
The Merlin 2 engine, the larger launch pad, and the wide-body structures for the SpaceX heavy lifter do not exist, because Elon has no market for any of this.
The NASA Phase-2 SLS or RAC-2 or RAC-3 heavy lift launcher is looking at funding the Merlin 2 engine and the large launch pad that Elon needs to be competitive with the existing infrastructure represented by the Phase 1 SLS concept. NASA will not immediately give Elon Musk the $2.5-Billion that he needs, but they might give SpaceX $50-Million to reach CDR on their Merlin-2 engine and NASA will probably build their Phase 2 SLS launch pad such that it can launch the SpaceX rocket (and the NASA RAC-2 or RAC-3 rocket) without massive investment from SpaceX.
In 2013, SpaceX might have some credible heavy-lift infrastructure being developed in the important political states of Alabama, Texas, and Florida that could be credible in competing for a piece of the $10-Billion allocated to the existing ATK SRBs, SSMEs, 8.4-meter wide body tooling, and Phase 1 SLS launch pad. This is the whole point of the Phase 2 SLS competition with the Phase 1 SLS.
If Bolden is forced to invest $10-Billion of Congress’ money in a non-existent heavy lift market, then Bolden does not have the choice of giving this money to a commercial company like SpaceX that openly admits that it lacks this infrastructure and a commercial reason to invest in it. The same is true of ULA, because their Phase 2 EELV heavy lifter will only launch 70-tons and does not meet the 130-ton SLS requirement (i.e. ULA says they need a new launch pad and new wide body tooling for the 130-ton SLS requirement).
Could Bolden realistically have a better plan for future SpaceX or ULA competition than the SLS plan that he is supposedly preparing for Congress now?
No plan required.
Elon IPOs in 2013. NASA contracts plus Falcon family IP plus a team that has the lowest development costs for rockets on the planet = several billion for 49% of SpaceX.
Use the cash to build a Falcon X that has the lift of F9H in single stick config – simpler and cheaper… Tri core and cross feed makes the FXH 150 tons plus….
According to law, if it is the cheaper alternative NASA has to use it….
If ATK eventually took over the Phase 1 SLS launcher program (as some think they will do), and if they offered, like SpaceX, to finish development of a 130-ton heavy lifter for $2.5-Billion and to offer it to NASA for $300-Million a launch, then would that be a bad deal for the United States?
If ATK offered $5-billion in development costs and $600-Million per launch for a 130-ton heavy lifter, would that be dramatically worse than what Elon Musk has offered NASA? A factor of 2 difference between Elon Musk and ATK probably makes ATK very competitive for Congressional funding for a market as non-existent as Mars exploration. This postulated $5-Billion development cost and $600-Million launch price also fits within NASA’s budget.
The above is not impossible for ATK or for NASA considering that ATK claims they have both 4-segment and 5-segment SRB boosters ready for launch by 2013. It is not impossible for Pratt & Whitney to manufacture expendable RS-25 SSME engines or regen RS-68 engines at a reasonable price or for NASA-Michoud to continue to build 8.4-meter diameter LH2 booster cores at a reasonable price. The above might work for ATK.
At this point, many are assuming that Congress, NASA, ATK, and Bolden are morons, and that they will get heavy lift all wrong.
What if Bolden has a workable SLS plan that Congress can fund, and what happens if the US actually has a 130-ton launcher from ATK by 2020 that costs $600-Million or less per launch?
ATK probably would lead a $30-Billion and 20-year SLS program if they had no competition, but ATK might come up with a competitive plan for NASA if ATK has credible competition from SpaceX or ULA. The ATK CCDEV2 plan received high marks from NASA, so maybe ATK is improving all of its plans to deal with competition from SpaceX or ULA.
It is not impossible that with $10-Billion that Bolden, NASA, ATK, and Congress could build a rocket that could serve US Government interests in going to Asteroids and to Mars beyond 2020.
Too many people are assuming that ATK and NASA will not react to competition from SpaceX or ULA and come up with better plans.
Malmesbury,
The US Government can’t use the SpaceX rocket that you mention, because Elon Musk does not have a launch pad to launch it on.
The US Government does not have to buy a lower cost rocket (you are mis-understanding what the Commercial Space Act says), and this is why Elon has to fight so hard to break the ULA monpoly for EELV launches with the US Air Force.
A SpaceX IPO bringing in public investors will never be used for, nor can it afford, the $2.5-Billion development costs of this rocket. This is why Elon Musk openly said that NASA must pay for this rocket and not SpaceX. Elon Musk would never put into his SpaceX IPO prospectus that he is going to invest $2.5-Billion of the $200-Million that he will receive in a SpaceX IPO in a rocket with no market but NASA Mars exploration beyond 2025.
The Bolden plan is the only plan that provides SpaceX with a “free” heavy-lift launch pad and a path for funding other SpaceX heavy lift infrastructure.
> There is no commercial market for heavy lift launch capability so the US commercial launch industry currently lacks
That is incorrect. If you read the FAA market report, you will find there are quite a few commercial rockets classified as heavy lift.
What you probably mean is that there’s no market for heavy lift as large as the Saturn V. That is true. The question is, why should the taxpayers spend tens of billions of dollars on a giant rocket that serves no useful purpose? “Because private enterprise won’t do it” is not a useful answer.
> How else do you think Congress can spend that $10-Billion, and what is a better plan for Bolden?
Is that a trick question? For $10 billion, NASA could buy 500 crew rides to ISS or 50 circumlunar flights; create 2000 X prizes; buy suborbital rides for 50,000 scientists; buy 200 Bigelow space station modules; or develop Nautilus-X, incentivize the development of a propellant depot, and go anywhere in the inner solar system.
That’s ignoring the fact that the rockets you mention would cost much more than $10 billion, whatever the toy manufacturer behind DIRECT thinks. NASA couldn’t even build Ares I for $10 billion, so you think an even bigger rocket will be cheaper and easier? If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.
> The US Government does not have to buy a lower cost rocket (you are mis-understanding what
> the Commercial Space Act says),
NASA isn’t supposed to but rockets at all. It’s supposed to buy launch services. That’s according to the Launch Services Purchase Act, not the Commercial Space Act.
Law aside, I wonder why it is so important to you that NASA have more expensive launches.
In the spirit of Henry Vanderbilt’s comments about the hearings, I found the Elliot Pulham’s comment about the necessity of heavy lift quite amusing. Asked by Sen. Boozeman toward the end of the proceedings whether heavy lift was important, Pulham responded with words to the effect of yes, after all JWST is going to be launched on an Ariane 5. That Ariane 5 is not an HLV in as defined by the Senate seemed to go over completely Boozeman’s head. Perhaps Pulham chose his own definition of heavy lift just so that he could provide the answer the senator obviously wanted. Interpreted in the context of a hearing that was probably rigged to promote a NASA HLV, Chyba’s and Pulham’s comments seem like noisy protests.
But he said NASA may be able to learn from SpaceX as it develops the heavy-lift launch vehicle Congress has ordered it to build for missions beyond LEO.
I’m disappointed to see that Chyba didn’t tell them the HLV was unnecessary.
then would that be a bad deal for the United States
Yes it would be, since we need cheap lift, not heavy lift. And I don’t mean cheap to develop, but cheap to operate, as in $100/kg – $500/kg of payload.
Too many people are assuming that ATK and NASA will not react to competition from SpaceX or ULA and come up with better plans.
Then why not use fair, competitive and redundant procurement of propellant instead of insisting on a single source HLV? I think it is because you too know that an HLV is unlikely to win much business in such a competition, in other words because you know an HLV is useless.
Should Congress just send you the $10-Billion in Australia, and have you invest it in the non-existent global commercial market and non-existent commercial infrastructure for heavy lift?
The money shouldn’t be spent on heavy lift at all, but on competitive lift of the vast quantities of propellant any serious exploration will require, since that will lead to cheap lift. It’s not a difficult concept.
Who is being a moron here?
Let me give you a hint, it’s not Trent.
My point was that Elon can justify the single core version of a heavy to stock holders – and then flog the triple core to NASA. The single core would pay for itself….
It’s a repeat of the deal his is trying with F9H…..
MPM >> I’m disappointed to see that Chyba didn’t tell them the HLV was unnecessary.
In his opening remarks, Chyba mentioned HLV only in noting that the 2010 authorization act called for it, and he said it was important that HLV not interfere with developing a commercial “ecosystem” in LEO, which he identified as the top priority. The only time Chyba actually endorsed HLV was when asked to do so by Nelson. The witnesses who get invited to hearings like this are people who play the game. Given that the entire Senate committee is pro-HLV, nobody who wasn’t certain to praise HLV was going to be invited. It would have been cool to see Chyba come out against HLV in so many words, but that was never gonna happen. Chyba was as forceful in his opposition to HLV as a game player could be.
Elon has clearly stated several times, to the public and to his investors, that his intent is to colonize Mars, with or without NASA support/money. Claiming that he hasnt, or wont develop these rockets, without government money, is completely false.
Anom,
You have some interesting points about the two-phase SLS approach being kicked around (a 4 flight SDHLV, then competiton) but they all tend to fall down on one fundamental problem built into the situation: All would be politically compelled to employ the existing NASA booster development organizations. IE, the organizations that have a nominal cost model of ten times best demonstrated commercial practices, and a demonstrated cost model of two to three times more than that.
Keeping those organizations employed post-Shuttle is the core goal of the political coalition that came up with SLS. Nobody is going to be allowed to quietly dump those organizations and build a cheaper heavy lifter, since actual heavy lift capability is at best a secondary goal of the SLS political coalition. As you point out, there is no commercial market. I’ll add to that, there is no NASA market either – the funds to put anything on top of SLS just aren’t there.
It’s the existing jobs back in the home districts of the coalition members, first and foremost.
Whether Jupiter 130 or AJAX or some other flavor, the initial use-up-the-SSME’s version would thus inevitably require two to three times the nominal $12 billion/6 years/4 flights budget. It’s demonstrably built in to the Shuttle/Constellation legacy organizational structures Congress would insist on keeping (no disrespect intended to all the good people stuck in those structures.)
Look at Ares 1: About twice the lift of a Falcon 9, its overall development cost was well over twenty billion dollars by the time they pulled the plug. Two times Falcon 9’s ~$400 million, times ten initial NASA multiplier, times three NASA overrun factor, and you have $24 billion. I’d say this organizational cost model is a pretty good fit to the facts.
And I’d say that giving ANY new big booster project to the existing organizations that have those utterly dysfunctional costs will be a disaster. There will be no money left for any “competitive” followon, or much of anything else either.
SLS will eat the rest of NASA’s lunch for a decade, or fail horribly, or both. But the hometown jobs would be preserved through the next election… A lot of us don’t think that’s a good use of scarce space funding. YMMV.
Mr. Vanderbilt is exactly right. The problem is that Nasa sees heavy lift as a continuation of the shuttle jobs program, because, to these people, space is not important. My point was simply that SpaceX can do it cheaper. I understand that they do not have all the infrastructure that NASA has. NASA could make that infrastructure available to them like it has done for Orbital and many other companies. I believe we do not really need a heavy lift right now What we need are orbital fuel depots. Falcon Heavy is large and cheap enough to make this more economical than a 130 tonne bfr. If SpaceX, or any other company can do things more cheaply than the jobs-program status quo, that is how we should be spending our precious (borrowed) dollars.
It would also be nice to have an idea of what we are going to use the heavy lift FOR before we sink billions of dollars into it. I know Orion is heavy, but it does not weigh 130 tonnes. If the first missions of Orion are to the ISS, this would be a huge waste.
Henry Vanderbilt, Roll Tide, Mike Lorrey, MPM, etc,
I agree with almost all of your reply comments concerning heavy lift.
I especially agree that $10-Billion spent on heavy lift is the wrong priority and that it should be spent elsewhere. I would like it spent on commercial reusable launch vehicles and a flight rate of 100 launches to LEO per year for fuel depots, etc.
I disagree with Mike Lorrey’s statement about Elon Musk investing his own money in a super heavy rocket without NASA, because Elon has consistently said the exact opposite since starting SpaceX in 2002. Elon has always said that he started SpaceX to encourage NASA to fund a giant rocket to put humans on Mars, and Elon has said multiple times that his recent smaller 50-ton Falcon Heavy rocket is more suitable for a 1-way human mission to Mars and that he would like NASA funding for his giant rocket and giant Merlin-2 engine (that he always says he sees no market for without NASA funding).
Because Congress has determined that NASA will spend $10-Billion on a heavy-lift rocket of 130-tons, this discussion is about a realistic way to spend that $10-Billion on something interesting. The Apollo Saturn V was probably not practical, but it was very interesting in the 1960’s when it sent the first humans to the Moon.
Because Congress has created a law to spend $10-Billion on a rocket, I am specifically discussing the wisdom of a plan from Bolden for NASA to spend this money. I hope that they are successful getting to Mars with this $10-Billion, eventhough poor past execution by NASA would suggest another $10-Billion failure.
It appears that the Bolden plan opens the door for NASA to fund the technology development for commerical “NewSpace” companies.
If NASA build a Phase 1 SLS heavy lift vehicle that uses the remaining 12 SSME LH2 engines in the 4 test flights, then maybe NASA will fund Blue Origin to produce 100 of its 100,000-lb thrust LH2 engines or it will pay SpaceX to produce 100 of its 150,000-lb thrust LH2 Raptor engines instead of re-starting the SSME production line at $75-Million per engine. Blue Origin and SpaceX both plan to ask NASA to fund their LH2 engines in competition with the J-2X upper stage engine.
All of you are right in saying that Congress’ $10-Billion for heavy lift is focused on the wrong priority, but I think that Bolden (unlike Mike Griffin) is smartly designing this heavy lift program to open the door to massive investments in commercial space launch companies.
Blue Origin and SpaceX appear to be positioning themselves for this money. XCOR announced a 25,000-lb thrust LH2 upper stage engine with ULA, and the initial NASA SLS heavy lift studies have discussed co-funding 25,000-lb thrust LH2 engine development with the US Air Force to upgrade or augment the RL10 engine inventory that will run out in 2017.
I applaud your enthusiastic criticism of what Congress is doing, because it helps Bolden to come up with a plan that might actually provide some returns in the future. I would love to see what Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos would do with $500-Million in NASA heavy-lift funding dedicated to their high-performance LH2 engines……Bezos is definitely going to build a reusable single-stage to orbit rocket with his LH2 engine, and Blue Origin has said that they will compete this LH2 engine for a heavy-lift vehicle upper stage.
Because SSTO rockets are typically wider, heavier, and have higher thrusts than expendable 2-stage rockets, the wide-body tooling and large launch pads needed for these SLS heavy lift vehicles might be exactly what Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and the New Space Industry need.
The most cost-effective solution to this mess possible is as follows: give Lockheed-Martin and ATK a total of $3 billion a year, and force NASA to commit to buy launch services from anyone who can provide them. The proviso is that Lockheed-Martin and ATK make no representation that they will produce any spacecraft or launch vehicle of any kind, for any purpose, with the money they receive. They don’t have to deliver anything but a “thank-you” letter.
The outcome would be the same as if they had been paid $3 billion a year to pretend to develop something: nothing would be developed (at least nothing that would work) in either case. But without the idea that “NASA is already financing the next generation launch vehicle” out there to poison the atmosphere, the capital markets would be assured that NASA wasn’t funding competition, and would invest in the various companies.
For ten or twenty percent of what they would pay under traditional FAR-based contracts, NASA could have any capability they desired. And Lockheed-Martin and ATK would be ecstatic at receiving billions of dollars, and not having to deliver anything. They’d finally get out of the way.
Yes, it’s come to the point where paying off the deadweight bullies is more cost-effective than trying to work with them…
Mike, no Elon has said he wants to be the transportation provider to colonize Mars. He’s said that he thinks people would be willing to pay for one-way trips.. he hasn’t said he intends to build a colony out of his own pocket.