One of the nice things about blogging is that, even for print journalists, it provides an outlet for information gathered that may be of interest, but for which there wasn’t room in the publication. Here’s a good example: interview notes from Rob Coppinger’s discussion with Phil Sumrall on Ares V performance issues.

As noted, the vehicle has come a long way from the originally advertised “Shuttle-derived” system that was supposed to save us so much money and time, and utilize the existing Shuttle infrastructure (though the latter was always a politically-induced pork-driven bug, not a feature, if one wanted to actually lower launch costs). It (like Ares I) is now essentially a new vehicle, including components, though if Ares I ever comes to fruition, Ares V will probably be at least in part derived from it.

Of course, this part is what really has me grinding my teeth (and it’s probably what I’ll be talking about on Jon Goff’s propellant depot panel at Space Access):

…once the EDS and Altair were in orbit there was a 95-day loiter in Earth orbit for the concept of operations. That was changed from 95-days when Griffin said it was not acceptable. Instead the new target date was four-days and this may also assume a launch of the Orion CEV prior to Ares V

Reasons for the four-day change are propellant boil off and electrical power requirements. For four-days fuel cells are sufficient and solar arrays not needed. Less than four-days and batteries could be used for EDS power. During Apollo they had 15% boil off over 3h so over several days Ares V would lose a lot of propellant. To stop boil off the choice is a passive system and “we have to eliminate heat leaks”. The solution to boil off is seen as multi-layered insulation as they want to reduce the boil off losses to 1-2%, but MLI is very expensive in terms of money, not payload margin.

So, they’re going to launch the Orion, with crew, on an Ares I, and hope that they can get a successful Ares V mission off within four days, because they can’t afford the duration. They build this mondo grosso launch vehicle to avoid having to do multiple launches, and yet, they not only have dual launch, but it’s one on a tight window. And if they can’t get the launch off on time, the lunar mission is scrubbed, and the crew comes back home from LEO, having wasted the cost of an Ares I launch (and an Orion, if they end up not making it reusable).

This is an affordable, resilient, sustainable infrastructure?

All of these issues go away if you use orbital infrastructure. The propellants are brought up over a period of time, with a number of different vehicles, and vehicle types. The propellants are stored on orbit with a combination of passive and active thermal control systems, eliminating boil off completely. If MLI is expensive, that’s OK, if you only have to manufacture/lift it once and then continually reuse it at the depot. If you have power at the depot, you don’t have to worry about battery life at the vehicle (note: the next Shuttle mission will set a record for duration, because it doesn’t have to rely on its fuel cells for power–it will draw power from the new solar arrays at the ISS while docked, allowing it to stay up for two weeks). And the same system will scale to a Mars mission (perhaps based in L1 instead), obviating the need to develop Ares XI.

Put the power/propellant/other-utilities infrastructure up once, and continually reuse it, instead of making each vehicle have to be a self-contained Winnebago, like the Shuttle. Even if the moon remains a wilderness, there is no longer any excuse for LEO to be so.