Category Archives: Space

Space

Cost Estimates

8 Comments

I agree with Bob Zubrin that the numbers coming out of Aerospace on development costs are highly suspect:

Following retirement of the Shuttle, Aerospace’s cost estimates have ground operations cost triple to $900 million by 2012, and then continue to rise to $1.8 billion by 2022. This sixfold rise in ground operations cost would be difficult to explain in any case, but in the absurdity of this instance is outstanding since during the entire ten year 2012-2022 period in question, there are NO heavy lift flights at all for the ground operations to support. In other words, the Aerospace Corp’s estimates have NASA’s ground operations costs rising sixfold over Shuttle flight support requirements, spending $15 billion over ten years, in order to launch nothing.

Rather than basing their projections on actual grounded estimates of development costs for different types of hardware, what the Aerospace Corporation appears to have done is to regard each program element as an “activity” which each need to be funded continuously at multi-billion levels per year. The program is then arranged so that no flights beyond LEO can take place before around 2023. So, with a budget of about $3 billion per year (equivalent to 30,000 employees on payroll) the Ares 5 development program is allowed to run for 12 years, bringing development costs to the spectacular $36 billion level. Why, in this day an age, a launch vehicle development program needs to run 12 years (or require 30,000 people) is left unexplained. In contrast, the Saturn V development, done at a time when much more still needed to be learned about launch systems, took only 4 years to complete (Contract awarded in 1962, first flight in 1966.) Summing up all such activities the net result is a program which costs $14 to $20 billion per year (140,000 to 200,000 employees) and which does nothing at all for a decade.

I disagree with this, though:

Americans want and deserve a space program that is actually going somewhere. In order for that to happen, a radically different methodology to that being accepted by Augustine Committee needs to be employed. Rather, a real goal, worthy of spending serious money on, if necessary, needs to be selected. That goal can only be humans to Mars. Then a minimum cost, minimum complexity, and, critically, fastest schedule plan needs to be selected to achieve that goal. In order to minimize schedule and cost, such a plan should avoid advanced propulsion, on-orbit assembly, or other futuristic ideas, and instead get the job done in the manner of the Mars Direct and Semi-Direct missions by employing a strategy of direct transportation to Mars of required payloads using an upper stage mounted on the heavy lift launcher.

I don’t agree that the goal “can only be humans on Mars,” at least as the focus for the program, though it may be a useful long-term ultimate one, as the Augustine panel has stated. And the notion that on-orbit assembly is a “futuristic technology” is quite amusing, seeing that we’ve been doing it with ISS for over a decade.

[Update late afternoon]

There are a lot of good comments by “Red” over at Space Transport News. Also, I would add that while I consider the numbers suspect, this isn’t meant to be a criticism of Aerospace or its methodology so much as the NASA inputs and assumptions.

Business, Political Commentary, Space, Space History

A Brief History

6 Comments

…of NASA’s resistance to commercial competition, in a comment (number 31) over at Space Politics by Al Fansome:

For the last 25 years, NASA has had to be brought KICKING & SCREAMING every step of the way — into a partnership with commercial industry. It has been resisted by the NASA iron triangle (NASA + contractors + Center politicians).

* The DOT was given the legal authority by Congress in the 1980s to regulate commercial space transportation over the objections of the traditional status quo space powers.

* Commercial payloads were taken off of the Shuttle after Challenger by the Reagan Administration over the active opposition of the then NASA Administrator (Fletcher).

* The Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990 — which was the first law mandating that NASA buy commercial space transportation services — was passed by Congress over the objections of NASA.

* Instead of partnering with the American Rocket Company in the late 1980s, NASA MSFC created a competing hybrid rocket R&D program in an attempt to put AMROC out of business. (They succeeded.)

* The Congress passed the Commercial Space Act of 1998 that mandated that NASA should purchase ISS cargo resupply services. NASA resisted that mandate for 6 years — until Columbia happened and the Bush Administration created the Commercial/Crew Cargo services budget as part of the VSE in 2004. In December 2008, over 10 years after CSA98 passed, NASA finally signed an ISS cargo services delivery contract.

* NASA is still resisting doing commercial crew — which was part of the original official VSE plan (it was the CREW/cargo services program in the VSE). It has taken a national commission of space experts — reporting to the White House — to unequivocably recommend (its in all the options) that NASA institute a commercial crew (instead of Ares 1).

* NASA could have instituted “propellant depots” as part of the national strategy years ago. Why were propellant depots so obvious to the Augustine Commission as a key enable for our national goals in space, but ignored by the traditional NASA bureaucracy?

It is not because the NASA bureaucracy is dumb. I assert the reason is that creating a depot based architecture is not in the “bureaucratic interest” of NASA, as it outsources a large portion of the supply chain for exploration to commercial providers.

Prediction — NASA will resist creating propellant depots to the extent it is given the means to do so.

I think it’s a safe prediction. Those means have to be restricted. Though at least, this time, I think that we have top NASA administration on the right side.

[Early afternoon update]

He left out the saga of the Industrial Space Facility.

Space

Scrub

13 Comments

The horizontal test of the five-segment SRB (Ares I first stage) out in Utah scheduled for today has been scrubbed due to a hydraulic problem. They’re going to attempt to reschedule for sometime in the next few days after they sort out the problem.

Political Commentary, Space

The Dog That Didn’t Bark

10 Comments

Anyone see something missing in this message from the administrator?

Lori and I are meeting on a regular basis with our NASA senior leadership to develop our strategy for the future once the final report is released. Additional details on the process will be shared as they become available. In the meantime, staying focused on our current missions is critical. Let’s safety fly out the shuttle manifest and complete the construction and build out of the International Space Station (ISS). Let’s continue our robust exploration of Mars through our robotic rovers and other vehicles yet to be launched. Let’s continue our superb execution of the missions of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) as we gather more data to support future human exploration of the moon. Let’s vigorously pursue the critical missions designed to enable us to gain the essential knowledge of Earth’s environment – our atmosphere, our oceans, our weather – that will enable our policy makers to make wise, informed decisions on climate change and other threats to our environment.

There seems to be one “current mission” not mentioned. It starts with a “C.” And ends in “onstellation.” At least as far as the administrator is concerned, Ares would seem to be dead.

Space

They Could Use A Gas Station

5 Comments

LCROSS is low on propellant:

LCROSS is now perilously close to its built-in propellant margins, and Andrews said the team will probably have to cancel some activities that are not crucial to the mission.

“Our estimates now are if we pretty much baseline the mission, meaning just accomplish the things that we have to (do) to get the job done with full mission success, we’re still in the black on propellant, but not by a lot,” Andrews told Spaceflight Now late Tuesday.

LCROSS now has between 20 pounds and 40 pounds of extra propellant that could be used in unplanned activities, a relatively thin margin for satellite operations.

“We can finish this mission, but it makes our sensitivity to something happening quite high,” Andrews said.

If we were a space-faring nation, we’d send out a fuel truck.

Space

Looking And Touching

40 Comments

Mark Whittington continues in his foolish mischaracterization of the Deep Space option. We can touch to our hearts’ content. And once (in the process of “touching”) we start to develop the resources of the asteroids and Martian moons, we’ll be able to affordably descend into the gravity wells. In particular, there is no basis for this statement whatsoever:

The development of ships capable of crossing interplanetary distances will likely remain in the purview of governments for the foreseeable future. There would be little if any hope of such space craft being developed commercially in the near term, especially if landing on the Moon and Mars were to be deferred indefinitely. Without actual places to go, the market for commercial space flight would be limited to low Earth orbit and, perhaps, Earth approaching asteroids.

People want to go to the moon. People want to go to Mars. Elon Musk wants to go to Mars. That’s why he started his company. Bob Bigelow wants to go to the moon. Once access to orbit becomes affordable, he will. Once they, and Jeff Bezos, and others, are halfway to anywhere, they’re not going to wait for NASA to send someone before they do. To think that they would is to completely misunderstand their motivations and plans.

Political Commentary, Space

Why Should We Care?

5 Comments

Are you sitting down? Prepare for a real shocker. A bunch of astronauts, many of whom have the program as their current meal ticket, support continuation of the fiasco. And the joint statement was put out by ATK. Yeah, they don’t have a dog in this fight…

I found this particularly annoying:

In the joint statement, provided by Alliant, the former astronauts say: “Our top concern…is to ensure the safest possible system is utilised. This requires a proven track record, building on important lessons learned…NASA’s Constellation programme is exactly that type of effort – infused with generational lessons learned.”

Well, of course that’s your top concern. But as a taxpayer, and space enthusiast, my top concern is having a system that’s affordable, and actually contributes to opening up space, things at which Constellation will be an epic fail even if it meets its stated program objectives. If the system isn’t safe enough for them, I know where we can find a lot of other people to fly it.