Jim Oberg shoots down bad media coverage of the US satellite shoot down.
Category Archives: Space
What’s Going On In Suborbit?
Alan Boyle has a roundup. I found this intriguing:
You don’t hear much from New Space’s most secretive player, but it’s virtually certain that the venture – backed by Amazon.com billionaire Jeff Bezos – will start commercial spaceflights by 2010 as originally envisioned. In February, Bezos told talk-show host Charlie Rose that Blue Origin was working on its second test vehicle, and that there would be at least one more test vehicle after that.
“Virtually certain”? Because Bezos says so? Maybe, but they’ll have to do a lot more test flights than they have been to meet that schedule, I would think. If true, it looks like a race between them and XCOR to see who gets there first. Virgin won’t be first to market, but there’s not necessarily anything wrong with that.
On a related note, the latest Lurio Report is out, for those who subscribe (and if you don’t, you should, if you want to stay on top of this kind of stuff). Clark Lindsey has a summary of the contents.
Unresponsive
The Constellation presenters at the Augustine Commission, didn’t even attempt to answer the mail:
The main objectives are faster support of the ISS (which I take to mean shrinking the ISS human spaceflight gap), going to the Moon and generally beyond LEO, stimulating commercial spaceflight (which I take to mean encouraging commercial spaceflight more than the status quo), and fitting the Administration’s budget. Safety, robotic support, international participation, and long-term ISS use are also factors.
The main thing that struck me about the Constellation presentation is that it simply doesn’t address the objectives. Follow this quick and to-the-point link; it captures my reaction exactly. Of the 4 main objectives, the only one it addressed head-on is “supporting missions to the Moon and other destinations”. On the other issues, it didn’t even attempt to present a solution. It didn’t pass or fail – it got an incomplete.
Well, this is the same gang that pretty much completely blew off the Aldridge Commission recommendations, so it’s hardly surprising. I’m pretty sure that Augustine et al noticed this as well. I don’t know what’s going to come out of the Augustine Commission, but it’s pretty hard to see how it will be business as usual, given how pathetic was the defense.
Double The Pleasure, Double The Fun
John Hare has an interesting Ares I alternative:
Suppose that instead of stretching and totally redesigning the SRB, they had shifted to a two SRB first stage with the exact same units as used for the last hundred and something shuttle launches. These rockets are fully developed and tested with an extensive flight history of operating in pairs over the last three decades. The purchase costs, handling , and performance are known quantities. Development consists of building an attachment structure, upper stage adapter, and vibration dampening gear. With the considerably more lift performance available from eight segments compared to five in Aries I, the problem fixing payload hits could be absorbed without sacrificing the flavor de jour safety systems NASA would like to have. They wouldn’t even have to game the requirements to match the competition from ULA, Direct, and various upstarts. While it’s possible that this would cost as much as the projected Ares I, it shouldn’t, and if it did, it would be for a system nearly twice as capable.
The first thought, of course, is that it increases the marginal costs quite a bit, but as Jon notes, you can buy a lot of extra SRBs for the billions you might save in trying to tart up the pig. As I noted in comments, one other advantage is that it would allow the first stage to do its own roll control with the SRB gimbals (something that Ares I is incapable of, necessitating a roll-control system for the entire stack on the second stage). But thrust asymmetries could be a big problem. Shuttle can compensate by gimballing the SSMEs, but this configuration wouldn’t have that capability.
Goat Meat
It’s not what’s for dinner, generally, in the US, but it’s pretty popular in the rest of the world. I’ve only had it a couple times myself (in Ethiopian restaurants).
But an interesting space-related point is that goats are a lot better for space colonies than beef, being easier to manage, more efficient producers of meat from carbs, needing less room, having more protein (and good milk). Keith and Carolyn Henson raised them in Tucson (in town) in the seventies, along with rabbits. They wrote an early paper on space colony agriculture, presented at the first Princeton Conference, based on their own experiences.
A Compelling Argument
So NASA management’s defense of Ares 1 will be that if you don’t let us waste incredible amounts of money it will force us to waste stupendous amounts of money
I doubt if they see it that way, but that’s what it is.
Commercial Space Symposium
More Crazy Cost Numbers
The New York Times has a story on yesterday’s Augustine hearing, and this jumped out at me:
In an interview, Steve Cook, manager of the Ares Project at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., said that the cost estimate for developing the Ares I and seeing it through its first manned flight was $35 billion. Contrary to the claims of critics, he said, costs have not spiraled out of control.
Let’s ignore the tragic hilarity of that last statement, when we consider what the original cost estimate was when it was “simple, safe, soon.” He is admitting that the development cost, for Ares I alone, through first crewed flight, is thirty-five millibaracks. So how can that be reconciled with the Aerospace study which seems to imply that the total life cycle cost for fourteen flights is nineteen billion? If development alone is thirty-five, then using the assumptions I used in that other post, the LCC for fourteen flights would be over forty billion (almost three billion dollars per flight, for people who know how to divide). That compares to a cost of sixteen billion for the Delta option, or a little over a billion a flight (still ridiculous, of course). Why is it that we accept these kinds of numbers as though they’re perfectly reasonable, perfectly affordable? Particularly in light of the fact that SpaceX has gone a long way toward developing both the Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 for (at a guess) a percent or so of forty billion?
Anyway, I find that the most interesting thing about the Times reporting is that there is no mention of SpaceX or commercial alternatives. I guess they’re not worth covering. As for the “dueling power points,” my vote is “none of the above.”
[Update a while later]
OK, I was digging around to try to find what the original promises were for Ares I development costs, and I stumbled on to this. “Safe, Simple, Soon” is still up! And apparently being maintained and updated by someone (no doubt funded by ATK).
And it’s hilarious. It’s like reading Pravda in 1988.
Comrades! All is well!
The potato and beet crops were a record this year! Steel production is exceeding the Gorbachev five-year plan!
I’m going to save that page for posterity.
Anyway, does anyone have a link to an initial Ares I cost estimate, circa late 2005?
[Friday morning update]
“Rocket Man” has the numbers:
“In September 2005, NASA authorized the Ares I project to proceed with the development of a new human-rated crew launch vehicle with a 24.5-metric ton lift capability and a total budget of $14.4 billion for design, development, test, and evaluation (DDT&E), and production.” (GAO-08-51)
So the development cost estimates (including production? Of how many vehicles?) have more than doubled in less than four years. But the program is “under control.” And now the Aerospace numbers make sense. They were using the original DDT&E estimate for their trade, which (as usual) puts a NASA thumb on the scale in favor of Ares. The Aerospace study is now either worthless, or makes Ares look even worse; it does nothing to aid its cause.
Eggs In A Basket
Today’s scheduled Atlas V launch illustrates one of the problems with a heavy lifter that people fail to recognize. If that launch fails today, we will lose not one, but two lunar science missions critical as a precursor to lunar bases. If they were going on separate rides, we’d have a high level of confidence that at least one would be successful.
If you have a heavy lifter, unless it’s carrying mostly propellant, its payload is going to be hugely expensive, because space hardware tends to cost thousands of dollars per pound to manufacture. It’s an all or nothing throw of the dice, with an expendable vehicle, which will never be reliable in any sane sense of that word. Putting up smaller pieces might increase the chances that one of the pieces doesn’t make it, but you won’t lose billions of dollars on a single launch. And if it’s carrying mostly propellant, there are lots of ways of getting cheap payload up, and propellant is almost infinitely divisible onto smaller vehicles.
First Day
Clark Lindsey has been live blogging the Augustine Commission hearings in DC. Just keep scrolling. Little editorializing other than a “sigh…” when John Shannon disses reusability.
[Thursday morning update]
Alan Boyle has a summary and link round up of yesterday’s festivities.
[Update a few minutes later]
A couple days ago, I noted my hope that the Augustine Commission wouldn’t just look at alternative launch architectures, but rather take a big-picture, systems approach, and look at exploration architectures overall (which I assume that Jeff Greason was trying to do with his depot question to the DIRECT team). That means reexamining all of the assumptions, including what the lunar lander would look like. Jon Goff has some thoughts today.
[Late morning update]
A day-after summary from Jeff Foust.