Category Archives: Space

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

Still Not Quite Getting It

14 Comments

The WaPo has an editorial today on space policy, that points out some of the flaws in the Congressional rocket design, but misses the mark in many ways, as others have point out:

Last year, the Augustine commission found that without an additional $3 billion in funding over the next several years, the Bush administration’s Constellation program for manned spaceflight and a return to the moon would be impossible.

I’m not sure what they mean by this, but it would seem to imply that it’s only three billion over several years (perhaps half a billion per year) when in fact it is an additional three billion per year. That is how much bigger Mike Griffin’s rocket appetite was than his budget.

It goes on:

…the new plan added a manned mission to asteroids and even a visit to Mars by 2025 without allocating more funds for that. This makes little sense.

Yes, it would make little sense if that was actually the plan, but contra the editors, there is no date associated with a Mars mission. It is simply the “eventual goal.”

Referring to the White House, Senate and House plans, they note:

All three plans for space have in common an unwillingness either to abandon the dream of human spaceflight or to confront the budget reality. But with the funding for NASA set around $19 billion and not likely to change, bold plans for humans in space are simply not feasible. Something must give. If the administration and Congress truly want human spaceflight, they need to fund it adequately. Piecemeal funding that dooms programs to failure is a waste of money — especially when so many truly vital space functions, from the satellites that supply maps and communications to the telescopes that allow us to glimpse distant worlds, could benefit from such support.

That’s true of both congressional plans, but not the White House plan. It may not have been articulated very well to date, but the administration plan is the only one that is responsive to the grim choices laid out by the Augustine panel last fall. Congress seems to ignore them completely, continuing to prefer pork over progress, and potemkin human spaceflight programs over real ones. There is, of course, nothing magic about $19B — certainly the Congress could increase it if it wants, it light of the explosion of budget in all other areas (NASA used to be almost one percent of the federal budget — this year, it’s about half of that, not because its budget was cut, but because the federal budget essentially doubled in the past year). But there is no need for more money, and if it were forthcoming, reviving Constellation in anything resembling its previous form would be a ghastly waste of it. Unfortunately, actual accomplishments in space remain unimportant to those who decide the funding for it.

Business, Political Commentary, Space

Boeing Is Cutting Metal

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I sat in on a Boeing press conference on CST-100 yesterday morning, with several other space reporters, including Andy Pasztor, Ken Chang, Denise Chow, Todd Halvorson, Bill Harwood, and others. I’ll be incorporating some of it into a PM piece that I just wrote, but Pat Brennan at the OC Register has a story this morning.

[Update a while later]

Here’s Todd Halvorson’s story at FL Today.

[Update a while later]

Here are my notes from the presser:

4.5 meter, seven crew, pusher abort system flying in 2015. simplicity for safety/reliability. Space Act Agreement, fixed price, need low development risk, high TRL. Business case challenging. Need development funding/ISS market. Also need other markets. Keith: already started program under CCDev, just did IDR a couple days ago. Complete SDR in October. Pressure-vessel testing at Bigelow’s facilities. Doing drop tests, started a week ago, working on life support. Using rendezvous system from Orbital Express. Not viewgraph engineering.

Berger: Confidence that Boeing has in getting contract? Elbon: Watching that closely. NASA envisions process like COTS. Will have to assess probabilities as they move forward. Want to see commitment downstream so they have better idea of price.

Pat Brennan: Is this a Shuttle replacement? Crew only, can’t replace all capabilities of Shuttle. Will be able to stay for months.

Which authorization bill most favorable? Senate closer to the compromise they’d like to see.
What launch vehicle? Human rate Delta IV, what about hydrogen issue? Looking at Atlas, Delta, Falcon 9. Primary targets EELVs. Systems are human rated, not components. ULA working CCDev for FOSD. Don’t think that any major mods to rockets themselves. Big issues launch pad for crew egress.

Denise Chow: How did they settle on the shape? Good data base on Apollo design, don’t need much wind tunnel. Also good shape for land landing.
What have the biggest challenges been? Pusher abort.

Future for larger capsules in the future? Have to take it one step at a time. Get started with simple safe system and see how market develops.
Private individuals can fly, or just scientists? Hope to have broad markets — need destinations, not NASA only.

Harwood: Will the business model support multiple players? Even with Bigelow, is there enough? Elbon: More launches, lower prices. Working with KSC to find government assets, cost per use rather than having to own them. NASA wants at least two providers. Boeing hopes to get to market first, and see significant flight rate from Bigelow.
What is the order of magnitude of a ticket price? Will be competitive with Soyuz.

Halvorson: Test flight schedule? What vehicles? No vehicle selected yet, but ULA baseline. Late 2013, 2014 for abort tests and orbital flight tests. Pad abort test at White Sands, and rest out of the Cape.

Andy Pasztor: How much overall development cost? How much will Boeing spend? Less than numbers for CRV. How much Boeing spends depends on risk level, and what Congress/FAA/NASA do.

David Baker: What consideration being given to expanding market off shore? Ever launch on Ariane? Have to base business case on those things as upside potential, not baseline. Have considered that and will further develop down the road.
Any interest from Air Force? Not that I know of?

Chang: Anything beyond ISS/Bigelow? Hoping that other ventures will mature. Market is a chicken/egg thing.
Any chance of going forward without NASA business? Unlikely that biz case closes without it.
Bigelow not big enough market? Sees a lot of potential, but also a lot of risk.

Harwood: How reusable? Capsule reused up to ten times. Some parts get ejected (forward cone, base heat shield). Land at White Sands.

Halvorson: How many objectives and how many achieved in CDDev? 36 milestones (four per demo, four for design) completed 22, essentially done by end of year. About halfway to PDR. How long to PDR/CDR? Next spring, then end of year.

Brennan: What’s being done in Huntington Beach? For development, pressure vessel being assembled, base heat shield, AR&D sensors, tied into Houston simulators.

I had two questions. First, how did the pusher abort system work, did it have two different thrust levels, and was it liquid? Answer from Keith: it’s hypergolic (MMH/NTO, like the Shuttle) and has high thrust engines for the abort, and uses lower-thrust RCS for orbital maneuvering. I didn’t follow up on the operations implications for those propellants. The other question was whether or not it could be kitted, or if it was being scarred, for deep-space operations. The answer was no, that would be a different vehicle entirely. This one is for LEO only.

Business, Political Commentary, Space

Let’s Hope This Survives

1 Comment

Chris Bergin has a lengthy discussion on a joint NASA/commercial propellant depot demonstrator to be flown in 2015, if it can survive the fools on the Hill (to paraphrase the old Sérgio Mendes song).

This is the key sentence:

A HLV – of any kind – is not listed in any current ULA or commercial documentation, with experts claiming such a vehicle isn’t required under the EELV and propellant depot architecture.

Don’t anyone tell Congress.

[Via Clark Lindsey, who has an interesting discussion going in comments]

Business, Economics, Space

Is Scaled Having Engine Development Problems?

17 Comments

Thoughts from Trent Waddington. I’m on pretty long record of thinking that hybrids were a mistake, as was Scaled attempting to develop in house. The Mojave accident could have provided an opportunity to rethink the approach, but I guess they didn’t want to bite off the vehicle redesign issues of going to a liquid, and as Trent says, much of the sales hype has revolved around the supposed safety of hybrids. But as Dave Salt notes in comments there, continuing down that path will put them at a competitive disadvantage in terms of ops tempo and cost.

Popular Culture, Space

Grumpy Thoughts

6 Comments

From Lileks:

I like Grumpy. Don’t identify with him, though – I’d go with Doc, maybe.

What? You don’t see many people wearing mildly abrasive Grumpy shirts? You need to spend more time in Disneyworld, where such things are encouraged as an expression of the outer limits of Disney-sanctioned negative personality characteristics. They’re aimed, probably, at the middle-aged men who accompany their families and need something that seems aimed at their particular demographic, and they accommodate Disney agnostics and Disney adherents. Doc speaks to them both.

Aside from that, though, what do adult males have for Disney character identification? Squat and diddly, it seems. We’re not in the mood to wear a Prince on our shirt: teh ghey. Sully: too hairy and fat for some. There’s Donald, but in his T-shirt form he’s Grumpy + anxiety disorder.

There’s no Disney version of Bugs Bunny. No character with the self-possession, the amused expression – he’s laughing at you, not with you, but he’s doing you the favor of not laughing out loud – the cynical tilt of the eyebrow, the carrot-cheroot, the eyes calculating the odds and the way this caper will play out. There’s a scene in “Roger Rabbit” where they finally meet, and I remember at the time it was a moment of great pop-culture significance. Which, I suppose, it was. It was fleeting, as it should be – together they would never work, like swing played on top of ragtime, but for that one moment there was a certain pleasure in seeing them together, like Bogart shaking hands with Harold Lloyd.

Which is a roundabout way of saying the only Disney shirt I’ll wear around the Kingdoms is a Classic Mickey.

No one opines on pop culture better.

[Update a few minutes later]

And don’t miss Red Planet Mars.