Category Archives: Space

Media Criticism, Space

Confusing

4 Comments

Andy Pasztor has an article at the Journal today about NASA’s budget problems that is very misleading in its use of the word “Constellation.” For instance:

By casting doubt on Constellation’s progress, the report may provide ammunition for lawmakers and others hoping to extend the life of the shuttle past its current retirement date of 2010. Extending the life of the shuttle could reduce the gap between the last shuttle flight and the initial operation of Constellation. Lockheed Martin Corp. is the prime contractor for the project.

No, Lockheed Martin is not the prime contractor for Constellation, which consists of a number of system elements, starting with the Ares 1 launcher and Orion capsule. LM is only prime for the Orion. ATK is the lead for the Ares 1.

And then he writes:

Accelerating Constellation to 2013, as some inside NASA have advocated, would require significantly larger budget hikes, according to the report. NASA officials project the total cost for Constellation at around $30 billion

It’s not “accelerating Constellation,” which won’t be complete for many years, as it includes things like the Ares V heavy lifter, earth departure stages, the Altair lunar lander, etc., development of which haven’t even begun. It’s only accelerating Ares/Orion, which is what is required to close the dreaded “gap” (assuming that they don’t instead just do COTS D and hope that SpaceX comes through with Falcon 9 and Dragon).

And there’s no way that the total cost for “Constellation” will be only thirty billion. The GAO recently estimated that Ares 1 alone is going to cost at least seventeen billion, and Orion was going to cost at least twenty, with top estimates of twenty and twenty-nine respectively, which would mean close to fifty billion for Ares/Orion alone (and that’s just development costs — it excludes operations).

With all the numbers floating around out there, it’s easy to get things confused, but the words do mean things. Ares/Orion are not Constellation — they are a subset of it and only the first planned elements.

Political Commentary, Space

Mike’s Whining

15 Comments

Dr. Griffin made a speech at the Goddard Memorial dinner last week when he received the Goddard Trophy. Jeff Foust has a report of the highlights (or lowlights, depending on your point of view). There’s a lot of good discussion in comments (in which Mark Whittington makes a fool of himself by ignorantly slandering people like Steve Isakowitz), including the recent release of the Aerospace report that indicates what anyone with half a lick of sense already knew — that it would be much faster and cheaper to modify EELVs for human exploration than to develop a whole new launch system. I think that this report will hammer the final nail in the coffin of the Ares 1, particularly since it was produced at NASA request. And, like someone in comments at Space Politics, I find Mike’s statements flabbergasting:

Your viewgraphs will always be better than my hardware. A fictional space program will always be faster, better, and cheaper than a real space program.

So let’s get this straight. Ares 1, which won’t be operational for several years in the most optimistic scenario, is “hardware,” but Atlas V and Delta IV, which have flown multiple times, are “view graphs”? Jon Goff is amazed and appalled as well.

Political Commentary, Space, Space Science

Our Vision, Not Yours

24 Comments

Clark Lindsey points out this article in The Atlantic about a new attempt by the Planetary Society to launch a solar sail. He also points out Ann Druyan’s and Lou Friedman’s obvious disdain for millionaires more interested in going into space themselves than developing technology or sending robots.

…she can’t get over the general timidity and lack of imagination she keeps encountering, and she’s particularly aghast at the scads of cash some ego-tripping big-money men seem willing to spend on personal space tourism: “Isn’t the whole planet enough for them?” Google’s Sergey Brin—whose company the project also appealed to, unsuccessfully, years ago—is yet another billionaire who hopes to romp around in orbit….

…“Basically, you’re asking somebody to fund an idea,” Friedman admits. He has good science at his back. But if 50 years ago Slava Linkin could not have imagined the disappearance of the U.S.S.R., it’s fair to say that Friedman would not have imagined his own country, the Cold War’s victor, with a space agency so blinkered and elephantine that he has to mount a long guerrilla operation to get his plausible vision off the ground.

He has had the same bellyful of talk about private entrepreneurial funding that Ann Druyan has, and he shares her contempt for the thrill-seeking, space-touring fat cats. But even so, a fundamental optimism survives in him, nourished not just by faith but by disbelief: “You come back to that $4 million, and the chance to take the first step to the stars—how can that not be funded?”

Well, Lou, one way might be that the “fat cats” don’t appreciate being publicly denigrated because they have different priorities than you and Ann do.

I hope that the sail gets funded — it’s a critical technology for the future that could result in reduced costs of doing solar system exploration (and maybe even interstellar, though that’s a much tougher problem). And I can understand their frustration — four million is a rounding error in the Constellation overrun, and in the new currency, in which we could express a mere trillion dollars as a “barack,” it’s only four microbaracks, a drop in the celestial bucket, and couch-cushion change inside the Beltway.

But it makes no more sense to curse millionaires who choose to spend their money on space trips than it does to curse Bill and Melinda Gates because they have better things to do with their money. I suspect that they’re upset with Brin and the others because they think that they should get it, because they’re so close — they’re interested in space — but they don’t quite. It’s probably in their minds a so-close-and-yet-so-far thing, and they view them as traitors to the cause because their space vision is flawed.

But no, Ann. For some, this “whole planet” is not enough. And it’s not enough for you, either. The difference is that you’re satisfied to send a robot emissary out, while others view that as in itself lacking vision. I could be just as churlish as you, and complain that you didn’t spend your studio’s money on developing space tourism, which will grow a large enough market to drop launch costs and improve reliability, so that projects like this solar sail would become much more affordable, and have a better chance of getting to orbit than the first failed attempt. But unlike you, I recognize that people have different visions, and that they’re not mine doesn’t make them wrong, and that their money is theirs to spend as they wish. But the latter notion has apparently gone quite out of fashion in our brave new world of ever-increasing collectivism.

[Update a while later]

I also find it amusing that she considers people who want to go into space “timid” and “lacking imagination.” Apparently her irony detector is on the fritz.

Business, Space

Falcon One Problems?

2 Comments

Via email from Jim Oberg comes this story from Malaysia:

The launch of the RazakSAT, Malaysia’s second remote sensing satellite has been postponed until further notice due to “technical problems”.

Due for lift-off on April 21, Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry secretary-general Datuk Abdul Hanan Alang Endut said the delay was because of problems with the launching vehicle.

The vehicle, Falcon 1, belonging to a company Space Exploration Technology (SpaceX), is to lift off the satellite from the launching pad at Omelek Island, Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Island.

Abdul Hanan said SpaceX will be doing the repairs which will take at least six weeks.

There’s nothing visible on the SpaceX’s front page about a delay. They list the launch date for the Malaysian ATSB as “2009.” I assume that’s the same bird.

History, Space, Technology and Society

Space Nuclear Waste Disposal

6 Comments

When I wrote that piece about Three-Mile Island the other week, I forgot to mention my own recollections of the event. It was interesting timing, because it happened in the middle of a senior space systems engineering project that I was involved with at the University of Michigan. It was an annual course taught in the Aerospace Engineering department, required for Aerospace majors, which I took as an elective (though it wasn’t my major, I took many courses there, including several graduate ones, tailoring my own astronautical engineering degree, but without the emphasis on aeronautics). The course was taught by Harm Buning (who died only three years ago — I really ought to write about him some time). The project was to figure out how to dispose of nuclear waste in space. This was a couple years before the Shuttle had its first flight, and we still believed the hype about its cost and safety, so it was the assumed launch vehicle, but the question was what to do with the stuff once it was in LEO.

Having been pretty heavily involved with the L-5 Society (I had actually spent a semester the previous year volunteering at the HQ in Tucson, and had met people involved with the MIT mass driver work, including Henry Kolm and Eric Drexler — the people in that now-classic picture are, from right to left, a twenty-four year-old bearded Eric wearing a Maxwell’s equations teeshirt (one of which I also had at the time), Henry, Gerry O’Neill, someone unknown to me, and Kevin Fine — geek and space enthusiast city — I could write a sad book titled “We Were Space Enthusiasts, And Young…), I suggested that we use a linear synchronous motor to propel it out of the solar system. The class adopted the idea, and we came up with a crude systems design (about what you could expect from college seniors for such a complex project). It was in the middle of the project that TMI occurred, making it seem even more relevant.

The university seems to have put many of these older (typed by department secretaries– no word processors back then) reports on line, including this one. I’m sure I have a dead-tree copy somewhere, but it’s nice to see it on the web. It’s been a long time, and I was distracted at the time because my father had his second heart attack in April of that year, and died a few weeks later. Due to time missed, I had to finish up my sections early in the summer to avoid an Incomplete for the course, so I don’t remember how much of it and which parts I wrote, but it was quite a bit of it (at least the orbital mechanics and the dynamics of the payloads in the accelerator, and how much wall play they would have to have). Dave Steigmann wrote a lot of the structures section, I think. The report says that it’s authored by Kevin Blankinship, but he was probably just final editor, because he was officially the team project manager. One of the things that this course taught was not just engineering, but how to work as an engineering team (including managing with the politics and personal interactions). These were…interesting. I won’t say any more than that, to protect the guilty, whoever they all may be. 😉

Anyway, is it feasible? Probably not, but it was a good project for the purpose of learning how to consider all aspects of a space system, and project teamwork.

[Update a while later]

The project name was pretty good acronymery. I don’t recall whether it was mine, someone else’s, or the result of a brainstorming session. But it was Project NEWDUMP (Nuclear Energy Waste Disposal Using Mass-Driver Propulsion).

For anyone who is willing to read the thing, it is probably entertainingly rife with howlers, from the perspective of three decades later. This one on page four jumped off the page at me:

The Space Shuttle has substantially reduced the cost of space transportation since the Apollo project, with possible improvements for further economy.

Note the tense, and not also that this was written about two years before first flight.

Space

The Extraterrestrial Imperative

8 Comments

Back in the early eighties, I had the privilege of taking a class from Krafft Ehricke at Cal State Northridge (arranged by sociology professor and space enthusiast B. J. Bluth). The course was called “The Extraterrestrial Imperative,” and it had a significant impact on my world view. I still have the class notes, which were extensive. For years, up to and after his death, there had been talk of publishing them in a book. Well, I just discovered, via my Amazon sales, that Apogee Books has done so. Though I haven’t read the book itself, based on my own experience with the class notes on which it is based, I heartily recommend it to all of my readers who are interested in our future in space.
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Political Commentary, Space

NASA’s Budget Options

Jeff Foust has a link to a new report from the Congressional Budget Office. It doesn’t paint a pretty picture. I have to agree with “Red” in comments:

…if you consider that the goal of the Vision for Space Exploration was contributions to science, security, and economics in the context of strong commercial and international participations, none of these options will carry that out. They all involve Constellation/Ares, which is more or less the opposite of those goals. One aspect of this opposition is that the options that don’t postpone Constellation involve reducing science and aeronautics missions that actually do contribute to science, security, and economics (eg: using similar launchers and satellites to those used by defense and intelligence agencies)…

…With Science and Aeronautics already having taken huge reductions due to Shuttle and Constellation in recent years, and Obama’s push for Earth observations, fuel-efficient planes, NASA education, etc, I doubt that the science/aeronautics cut scenarios will happen. With such huge Federal debt/deficits and many agencies enjoying tons of money and sure to want to keep it that way, I doubt NASA will get the big budget boost scenario, either.

Basically, the numbers don’t work without major commercial participation, and getting control of out-of-control NASA areas like Constellation, Shuttle, and some larger science mission plans.

Emphasis mine. Unfortunately, there’s no sign that any of that is happening. The Ares zombie continues to plod forward at the cost of billions, and commercial participation remains minimal. And it’s unlikely to happen as long as becoming spacefaring remains politically unimportant, and in an environment in which pork dominates progress.

[Evening update]

Clark has another comment:

NASA needed innovative hardware architectures and mission designs to make Constellation “sustainable and affordable” as instructed in the VSE. Instead it chose Ares I and Orion and now all the budget scenarios are bad.

Funny, that.

Business, Economics, Space, Technology and Society

How Do The Numbers Work?

40 Comments

Sorry, but I just can’t buy this:

PG&E is pledging to buy the power at an agreed-upon rate, comparable to the rate specified in other agreements for renewable-energy purchases, company spokesman Jonathan Marshall said. Neither PG&E nor Solaren would say what that rate was, due to the proprietary nature of the agreement. However, Marshall emphasized that PG&E would make no up-front investment in Solaren’s venture.

“We’ve been very careful not to bear risk in this,” Marshall told msnbc.com.

Smart move.

Solaren’s chief executive officer, Gary Spirnak, said the project would be the first real-world application of space solar power, a technology that has been talked about for decades but never turned into reality.

“While a system of this scale and exact configuration has not been built, the underlying technology is very mature and is based on communications satellite technology,” he said in a Q&A posted by PG&E. A study drawn up for the Pentagon came to a similar conclusion in 2007. However, that study also said the cost of satellite-beamed power would likely be significantly higher than market rates, at least at first.

In contrast, Spirnak said Solaren’s system would be “competitive both in terms of performance and cost with other sources of baseload power generation.”

I just can’t see how. Unless there are going to be many satellites, the system has to be in GEO to provide baseload power to any given region on earth. They talk about putting up a 200 MW system with “four or five” “heavy lift” launches (where this is apparently defined as 25 tons).

Suppose the conversion efficiency of the cells is a generous 30%, the DC-MW conversion is 90%, the transmission efficiency is 90% and the MW-AC conversion efficiency is 90% (generous numbers all, I think). That gives an overall efficiency of 22% from sunlight to the grid. The solar constant in space is 1.4kW/m2, so that means you need 650,000 square meters of panels to deliver 200 MW to the grid. Suppose you can build the cells (including necessary structure to maintain stiffness) for half a kilo per square meter. That means that just for the solar panels alone, you have a payload of 325 metric tons. Generously assuming that their payload of 25 tons is to GEO (if it’s to LEO, it’s probably less than ten tons in GEO), that would require over a dozen launches for the solar panels alone.

That doesn’t include the mass of the conversion electronics, basic satellite housekeeping systems (attitude control, etc.) and the transmitting antenna, which has to be huge to get that much power that distance at a safe power density.

So even ignoring the other issues (e.g. regulatory, safety studies, etc.) that Clark mentions, I think this is completely bogus until I see their numbers. And probably even then.