23 thoughts on “Orion And SLS”

  1. Sigh. Kind of what I was expecting.

    Even for the ARM, as far as I know, there’s been no cost released for the robotic part of the mission. Nor have I seen costs for the deep space hab module or exploration module needed to do anything after ARM.

    I suppose NASA is expecting to get a funding wedge when ISS is decommissioned; but will ISS actually be decommissioned in the mid ’20’s, and will NASA really be able to keep that money? And given a 5-10 year timescale for new hardware, I’d expect the first new hardware to appear in 2030 at best.

    Honestly, it’s just sad. We went to the Moon–the MOON–in 8 years, and today, we’re still at least 10 years or so from maybe, possibly sending astronauts to a few-meter-sized rock.

    1. What’s the plan for ISS, anyway? If NASA de-orbits it, are they going to replace it? If not, how will NASA continue doing whatever it is they’re doing now? Or isn’t that research important enough to continue? If not, why are they doing now — why not de-orbit ISS immediately?

      Rick Tumlinson wants NASA to keep ISS operational indefinitely — although Boeing engineers doubt that’s possible — and do ARM, and lots of other things. James Pura and Aaron Oesterle want NASA to double the crew complement of ISS (to more effectively compete with private stations such as Bigelow, I guess).

      Everyone talks about funding wedges, but no one is willing to sacrifice his program to create those wedges. And there’s at least $10 in new-start proposals waiting in the wings for every dollar that *might* become available.

      This will continue as long as the “space equals NASA” mentality continues.

        1. The same way the Shuttle did — tapping into the Federal Treasury to offer services below cost.

          Currently, they’re boasting that ISS will provide free launches, free power, free astronaut time… that’s a price point Bigelow will be hard-pressed to beat.

          1. Bigelow can beat NASA with shorter timescales, cheaper development costs, and more customer control. Suppose getting your box on ISS involves a 5 year wait, a lot of expensive NASA requirements, and you get one astro-hour per week of time. At some point, paying for time on a Bigelow station will be better than getting free access to ISS.

            The bigger issue is that the business case for materials/pharma/etc research in space is pretty squishy, from what I can see. I’m not aware of any solid in-space manufacturing case at present. When those exist, Bigelow wins, because ISS can’t support anything of significant scale.

          2. Cheaper development costs are irrelevant when one competitor (Bigelow) has to recover development costs from its customers and the other (NASA) doesn’t.

            The 5-year wait to send payloads to ISS is a thing of the past. NASA boasts that it’s now possible to get a payload onboard ISS within weeks. Which is largely true.

            Less truthfully, the NewSpace fan base says those expensive NASA requirements aren’t expensive at all. Under CCDev, SpaceX is being asked to comply with “one thousand separate requirements.” But the fanboys insist those requirements won’t increase costs by one single penny. Attend any session at NewSpace, and you’ll hear speaker after speaker spinning those requirements as a good thing: “Companies are learning a lot from NASA.” There’s a huge amount of PR devoted to putting that message across.

            As for limited astronaut time — well, that’s why Pura and Oesterle want NASA to double the crew size of ISS. So they’ll have more astronaut time to give away.

            This is how NASA killed the Industrial Space Facility. And the space station existed only on paper back then.

          3. The pharmaceutical industry is already marketing a Hep-C treatment based on microgravity research. As I understand it, it’s one of their biggest sellers.

            The problem with space manufacturing is the same problem Harry Stine pointed out 40 years ago: space-transportation costs are too high. Not only is it too expensive to transport raw materials and finished products, the high cost of transportation forces engineers to use exotic materials and ultra-lightweight high-cost designs for everything that goes into space facilities.

            We *could* have solved the launch problem decades ago, but we always get sidetracked. First it was Apollo, then ISS, then the Bush Vision of Space Exploration.

      1. “What’s the plan for ISS, anyway? If NASA de-orbits it, are they going to replace it? If not, how will NASA continue doing whatever it is they’re doing now? Or isn’t that research important enough to continue? If not, why are they doing now — why not de-orbit ISS immediately?”

        There never was a solid case for ISS. The ads for Freedom just called it, “the next logical step.” Then Freedom was going to die and we decided it’s reason for being was to keep our fraternal socialist allies in the USSR having their scientists work on space instead of selling their knowledge to rogue states, because that could lead to the Norks and Iranians having missiles and nukes. (Oh, wait…). We did, at least, manage to send a lot of money to Moscow!

        But in the end, I suppose, ISS was there to keep shuttle alive. Few people want HSF at NASA to end. So we tend to grudgingly support whatever it takes to keep HSF alive, whether or not the program is really all that good. ARM is just the latest example of that. But I’m pretty much at the point of saying to heck with it; go big or go home. Be bold or just shut it all down. Stop jerking us around and wasting money.

        Musk will have Dragon. If somebody makes the business case, he and Bigelow will have LEO HSF covered. But it may be that “exploration” as we’ve known it has run its course. I hope Elon Musk sees his dream of going to Mars fulfilled. I suspect his chances of doing that are almost infinitely greater than US govt-supported efforts.

        1. Musk will have Dragon. If somebody makes the business case, he and Bigelow will have LEO HSF covered. But it may be that “exploration” as we’ve known it has run its course.

          The problem is the assumption that human spaceflight should be a “program” run by one organization, whether it’s NASA or SpaceX. That’s like thinking we should have only one air carrier. Space is too big for that. What we need is competition.

          I’m not sure what you mean by “exploration as we know it.” Six astronauts and cosmonauts aboard ISS? Or 12 men who visited the Moon in the last 50 years? In that case, I agree, the period of [almost no] exploration may soon be coming to an end. And it’s about time.

          Elon Musk may be disinterested in every part of the solar system except Mars, but Elon is not the entire space industry. There will be a *lot* of people exploring space in the future. The fact that very few of them work for NASA should not be of any special concern.

    2. Nevermind the cost of the robotic mission. The more tricky question is who is gonna build it ? It’s not like NASA has a ton of teams around who would be able to pull a highly complex robotic probe like that off, especially in time and on budget.
      JPL and LockMart space systems would be quite booked already.

  2. I think the opposite is true. Because SLS is based on tax money, it is guaranteed no matter what. Costs don’t matter, and no one claims that NASA will build a launcher which explodes. SLS is the safest bet.

  3. SLS isn’t all that bad. It’s only unsuitable and unfordable for two kinds of missions, manned and unmanned. For everything else, it’s fine.

    🙂

    On a serious note, every time I hear “SLS” I gnash my teeth; if we’d used the money wasted on that useless thing for useful tech, like fuel depots and something like the NautilusX spacecraft, plus perhaps the Boeing concept of a L2 exploration gateway/depot using leftover ISS components, we’d have an actual space program instead of the current road to nowhere.

    1. continuously disappointed

      Then you had unrealistic expectations. Everything that’s happening was completely predictable, to those of us who saw this movie before.

      1. Of course my expectations are unrealistic, Ed. Those are the kind worth having. Those are the only reason SpaceX and others exist.

        Unrealistic doesn’t mean impractical. It means a lack of imagination more than a lack of ability. I don’t want to live in a predictable world; I want to be amazed (in a good way rather than in disappointment.)

        If what we’ve done with $40 billion was predictable then it’s time for revolution. This was nothing less than a criminal conspiracy.

  4. I just fear a train wreck where NASA’s fixed costs are so high that they can’t actually do anything except cut paychecks and pay the power bill.

    But I’m politically pessimistic as well. Suppose SLS is cut. I doubt that money would magically go to other programs. The only reason the SLS was funded was political spoils for key states. It’s hard to find a way out of this for NASA. HSF in the US- at least government-funded HSF- may be on the way out.

    1. Jeff, IMHO, NASA is already pretty much at the point you fear; their fixed costs plus SLS/Orion are already to the point where they can’t actually do anything (such as fly missions). That’s why nothing is planned for SLS past EM-2 (And EM-2, the relocated-pebble mission, is doubtful to get funded).
      So, sad to say, we’re already there; there’s no room in the budget for any manned missions. The SLS/Orion porkfest has sucked all the air out of the room.

  5. What’s saddest is that the SLS, set in motion by the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 on 11 October 2010, won’t fly until November 2018 (and that will be “a challenge”). NASA announced its intent to build the Saturn V on 10 January 1962, and it flew on 9 November 1967. Assuming SLS flies 1 November 2018, it will have taken 2,943 days, as opposed to 2,129 days for the Saturn V. Why is it that it takes two years longer to develop a less capable rocket? We had never done anything like Saturn V, but now have a lot of experience with Delta IV, Atlas V, Falcon 9, and even to some extent Shuttle. Why would that make the job harder? It baffles me…

    1. In the sixties, NASA had experienced program managers, notably von Braun. Also, they didn’t treat it as a jobs program. SLS’s flat funding profile and low flight rate is clearly make work, not a serious development program.

      1. The budget is also a lot smaller in same year dollars. Plus things like the engine had been in development for a long time before the public announcement.

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