This article on testing satellite shielding against space debris is a good reminder that even if NASA solves the foam problem, or someone comes up with a new reusable vehicle concept that isn’t subject to debris during ascent, that space vehicles will always be vulnerable to orbital debris:
An object less than 0.05 inch across blew a hole through a section near the payload door of the shuttle Atlantis during its mission last September, according to the July edition of NASA’s Orbital Debris Quarterly News journal.
The damaged section was replaced.
Had the object, which investigators think was a piece of a circuit board, hit the thinnest part of the wing edge, “There is a question whether the vehicle would have survived re-entry,” said Eric Christiansen, a NASA engineer specializing in debris shielding.
A spacefaring nation will have the capability to do repairs on orbit to mitigate the hazard of such events, but to do that requires the development of a orbital infrastructure, something that NASA’s current plans strenuously avoid.
Space logistics consultant Mike Snead has an interesting article at The Space Review on how to become a space-faring nation. I’ve glanced over it, but haven’t had time to absorb the whole thing. I don’t know how politically realistic it is, but what is most interesting to me is that the word “NASA” does not appear in it, anywhere.
I think that this was fundamental policy failure of the Vision for Space Exploration. While the vision was seen as important for the administration, just as was the case with Shuttle after Apollo, and space station after Shuttle, it was primarily treated as something for NASA to do after Shuttle and station, not an intrinsically important goal in itself. If it had truly been important, an entirely new entity would have been created to carry it out, without the baggage of the past, in much the same way that missile defense was viewed as too important to leave to the Air Force in the eighties, resulting in the formation of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO).
I’m kind of surprised (though pleasantly, if true) at the estimated cost of the contract to Boeing for the Ares 1 upper stage:
The $514.7 million cost-plus-award fee contract runs through 2016 and covers the manufacture of a ground test article, three flight test units and six production flight units.
So they’re getting about ten units altogether for half a billion? Even if the development costs are zero, that’s only about fifty megabucks a copy. If we assume that it’s a couple hundred millions for DDT&E, that’s only about thirty million each. I’m sure that the J2-X will be cheaper than an SSME, but I would think it’s still going to cost several million dollars per engine. I would have guessed that the stage cost was higher. These numbers imply to me that, with learning (and I guess it helps that NASA provides the production facilities at Michaud–I’ll bet that’s not included in the costs stated above) that they could get the marginal cost per stage down in the twenty-five million range or less.
Better news for sustainability than I would have thought. I wonder what the cost of the first stage is?
[Thursday update]
OK, there seems to be a consensus in the comments that this price doesn’t include engine or avionics (those are separate contracts), which is where a lot of the cost of a stage lies. So it’s not that great a deal. I thought it was too good to be true.
I’ve always been skeptical of the “drunk astronauts” story, and think that the media (and Congress) were far too quick to jump on it, since it was never substantiated. It just never really rang true to me. Unfortunately, NASA has been put in the impossible position of having to prove a negative, and there will now be people who will believe it as gospel (just as many will continue to believe that NASA never put men on the moon).
But it angers me for another reason. There are so many legitimate issues and problems with the agency, that nonsense like this and crazy astronauts distracts us from dealing with them. Yet another reason to hope for needed breakthroughs in the private sector.
Clark Lindsey addresses the ludicrous, but widespread notion that there is something different about space passenger travel that makes it so fragile that the industry will somehow be destroyed by a single accident.
I suspect that the source of this is the same one that causes us to irrationally grieve astronauts that we’ve never met, and demand that no more ever die. There seems to be something different about space in the minds of many that causes people to check their brains at the door when discussing it.
It’s just another place, people. Folks are going to die opening up frontiers, as they always have. Get over it.
Clark Lindsey addresses the ludicrous, but widespread notion that there is something different about space passenger travel that makes it so fragile that the industry will somehow be destroyed by a single accident.
I suspect that the source of this is the same one that causes us to irrationally grieve astronauts that we’ve never met, and demand that no more ever die. There seems to be something different about space in the minds of many that causes people to check their brains at the door when discussing it.
It’s just another place, people. Folks are going to die opening up frontiers, as they always have. Get over it.
Clark Lindsey addresses the ludicrous, but widespread notion that there is something different about space passenger travel that makes it so fragile that the industry will somehow be destroyed by a single accident.
I suspect that the source of this is the same one that causes us to irrationally grieve astronauts that we’ve never met, and demand that no more ever die. There seems to be something different about space in the minds of many that causes people to check their brains at the door when discussing it.
It’s just another place, people. Folks are going to die opening up frontiers, as they always have. Get over it.
Lots of good stuff over there today. Jeff Foust got an interview with Burt Rutan. I’m not surprised that the accident has caused a delay in engine development (I’d have been surprised if it hadn’t). I am surprised to hear that they’re considering going away from nitrous. What are the other options, if they want to continue to use a hybrid (whose safety Alex Tai continues to tout, a little too much I think)? Peroxide? LOX? They have their problems, too. I wonder if they’ll finally consider releasing control, and giving the work to a propulsion subcontractor that knows what it’s doing (e.g., XCOR, though that would mean a liquid, not a hybrid, since they have no interest in or experience with hybrids).
On other topics, there’s an interesting article about the V-Prize, a concept that was new to me:
The types of aircraft capable of crossing the Atlantic in less than one hour will have rocket engines. Their average speed will be greater than 6,000 km/h and their maximum speed will reach Mach 15 or even Mach 20.