Future of Our Space Program

[Pyrotex]

Hello, space fans, wherever you are.

I am Pyrotex, aka Nelson, and I'm an aerospace engineer working at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas. I've been working on various NASA projects since 1980 --almost thirty years. And I have something to say.

If we are not very careful, we will lose our national space program. That's right, lose it.

Oh, we'll keep launching weather satellites, and military satellites. We'll put up a few probes to Mars, probably.

But our ability to put people into space, to put any LARGE cargo into space (like another Hubble Telescope), to take on any meaningful "manned" exploration of the Moon, other planets, or even low Earth orbit (LEO) will be gone for the foreseeable future.

The Shuttle must be retired soon, and we have NOT prepared for this eventuality. We have NO heavy lifter in the wings to replace the Shuttle. It will be five, some say seven or even nine, years before we can develop a heavy lifter from scratch. (This is called "The Gap".) The factories for building the Titan-3 and Titan-4 are gone. (And besides, the Titans were hideously expensive, designed as they were on military engineering principals.)

The Constellation Program (acronymized as "CxP" within NASA) was thrown together a decade ago by a few companies who obviously and validly did not want to disappear with the Shuttle program. But those engineers aren't around any more, and they have left with us the legacy of a poorly thought-out rocket system: The Ares-1. (Also called "the stick" within NASA.) Going for the Ares-1 will leave us with The Gap, during which we will not be able to make serious use of the International Space Station (ISS). We will lose our 100 Billion $ investment in the ISS.

There are other problems with the Ares-1, but I won't go into that yet. Just take it from me, it's a pitiful attempt to replace the Shuttle.

What we need, to not only replace the Shuttle, but also to close The Gap, was outlined by the Augustine Report. CLICK HERE

That report gave 6 options, but only ONE option replaces the Shuttle to at least some extent, is expandable so that we will eventually get even more bang/$ than the Shuttle, utilizes the best of Shuttle technology, requires only ONE rocket system, will save our aerospace workforce and expertise, AND will CLOSE The Gap.

OPTION 4B.

Here are your orders:
1. Go to that website.
2. Look at the videos.
3. Contact your Congressional Representatives and Senators, and...
4. tell them you want Option 4B, with no compromises.

Don't do this just for me -- I'm retiring in a few years.

Do this for yourselves, your kids, your grandkids, your country.

[JMJones0424]

If you don't mind- I would like to pick your brain for a minute and receive your opinions on my views.

I have long been of the opinion that the primary purpose of the space shuttle was to give us the capability to retrieve satellites from earth orbit and bring them safely back to earth. It does not make sense economically for the shuttle to be used as a freight truck as it has been, but a capsule can not bring back soviet satellites. No more Soviet Union, no more space shuttle.

I have been of the opinion that it does make more economical sense to send crew separately from cargo, especially when the weight of the cargo is massive, as would be the case for a mission to mars or other manned missions beyond the moon. Perhaps the current approach involves a poorly designed launch system, but is not the over-all aim better than putting all you eggs into one big basket like the direct-launcher that you posted a link for?

And slightly off-topic, but for long-term manned stations on the moon or mars, wouldn't we be far better off developing technologies for "burrowing" into the body we land on, rather than shipping the entire living structure there. Seems to me that the danger of solar and cosmic radiation and micro-meteorite strikes, not to mention the weight savings and potential expansion of underground sealed structures would make this approach far superior than sending surface dwelling units. Perhaps I am missing something or overestimating our mining capabilities.

[Pyrotex]

Originally Posted by JMJones0424

...I have long been of the opinion that the primary purpose of the space shuttle was to give us the capability to retrieve satellites from earth orbit and bring them safely back to earth. It does not make sense economically for the shuttle to be used as a freight truck as it has been, but a capsule can not bring back soviet satellites. No more Soviet Union, no more space shuttle.....

Uh... No.
The Shuttle has never retrieved a foreign satellite and brought it back to Earth.
The Shuttle has retrieved only one US satellite and brought it back to Earth. (I think. I could be wrong about this.

Not likely for four reasons:
1. The maximum load the Shuttle can put INTO orbit is around 45,000 pounds. The maximum load the Shuttle can safely bring BACK from orbit is around 8,000 pounds.
2. To hold a satellite, the payload bay must be outfitted with a docking cradle with hold-downs (straps and bolts), not only so it will not break, but so it will not shift around in the payload bay. This is true going UP or DOWN. The docking cradle must be precisely customized for THAT satellite, and its center of gravity, external construction, load points, etc. If we don't have detailed blue-prints of a Soviet satellite, we can not build a docking cradle for it.
3. Satellites have attitude control systems. These have little rockets. These require rocket fuel. Rocket fuels tend to be dangerous, corrosive, flammable, poisonous. NASA refused to carry the Galileo probe on a direct shot to Jupiter because that required a Centaur second stage: liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. Too dangerous. Going out to pick up a Soviet satellite carrying god-only knows what fuels is totally out of the question.
4. To catch a satellite, the Shuttle has to be in the SAME ORBIT, which is pretty damned obvious from the ground. Had we ever tried that, the Soviets would have complained. Or lobbed a missile at us.

Sorry, but your premise is wrong.

[Moontanman]

I got a 404 error on that link Nelson. I'll try it again later. I think everyone who has listened to me over the years in any format knows I am a rabid proponent of the space program. I would give much to to see our space program funding increased 100 fold at least.

I was disappointed from the get go the space shuttle was so wussy, I wanted to see a bigger launch capability. Many people seem to think space is some how frivolous or unnecessary while they live in a world that depends on space for everything from entertainment to warfare. Our economy in a real way depends on communication that depends on space technology.

Expansion into space can only be a good for the USA and the world society as a whole. I won't repeat the whole blah blah blah thing here but unless we as a nation and more importantly as a society want to be regulated back to 2nd world or less status a strong non military presence in space is necessary. i won't try to say what the advantages of being big in space will be mainly because I honestly think no one really knows.

It's easy to try and predict what the future holds but I doubt anyone could have predicted how England would have dominated the world before they dominated the sea or how England would have influenced the world long after they stopped being an empire due to the dominance of their sea power. Possibly everyone would be speaking Spanish instead of English or maybe it would have been much more profound than that.

I am certain there are many real world scenarios that require space travel but the most important are the ones we don't know about yet, probably no tremendous science fiction type scenarios but then 500 years ago the new world was a science fiction type scenario. To allow the USA and by extension our friends and allies to be denied unfettered access to space would be a big mistake for everyone involved.

Maybe China, Russia, India and any other country willing to make the effort would bring us along but then again maybe they will put self interest first and regulate us and others to the bin of histories has beens.

[Pyrotex]

Originally Posted by Moontanman

I got a 404 error on that link Nelson. I'll try it again later. I think everyone who has listened to me over the years in any format knows I am a rabid proponent of the space program. I would give much to to see our space program funding increased 100 fold at least.....

MooMan, try

http://www.directlauncher.com

That should get you there. It's the same URL as in my link, which works fine for me.
Even just doubling the space program funding for just 20 years would give us a permanent infra-structure for going to and from a permanent, nuclear powered, 20-person Lunar base; with mining facilities for obtaining O2, H2O, He3, metals, silicon, etc. And fabrication facilities for making and storing rocket fuel, fiberglass, composites, structural elements, etc.

[Pyrotex]

Originally Posted by JMJones0424

...the opinion that it does make more economical sense to send crew separately from cargo.... Perhaps the current approach involves a poorly designed launch system, but is not the over-all aim better than putting all your eggs into one big basket like the direct-launcher that you posted a link for?...

Yes, it does make sense to separate cargo and human launches -- for most scenarios. However, there are a lot of scenarios where the heavy cargo is a laboratory, requiring humans to perform experiments inside. The Shuttle took up a number of these.

We will always be "putting our eggs in one basket", no matter what option you choose. Given the expense of heavy lifters and human space flight, the EFFECTIVENESS and FLEXIBILITY of the option have higher priority than mere simplicity. Effectiveness *IS* the over-all aim. Building a quick-and-dirty rocket system that can barely orbit the Orion exploration vehicle (crew capsule), with 2 of the 6 seats empty, and only enough consummables for a few days (instead of 3 months as required for a Moon mission) just makes no sense.

The Ares-1X launch you may have seen on TV was NOT the actual Ares-1 launcher. The actual launcher is still not fully designed and is not built, and will take even LONGER to design and build than the "Jupiter" direct launcher seen in the link I provided.

[CraigD]

The DIRECT “STS (space shuttle) derivative” is surely an interesting and impressive lot of design. If I’ve read it right, the recommended immediate option, “1b” (here’s its “baseball card” data sheet), is essentially a rearrangement and stripping down of the STS, the orbiter’s 3 main engines being placed on the bottom of the external fuel tank and the Apollo-like Orion CEV and adapter being stacked on top. Discarding the STS’s reusable orbiter, with its complicated and massive wings and heat protection systems, about tripling the 45000 pound payload of the STS, after the 27000 to 43000 pounds of the Orion CEV (crew and service module) are deducted (unlike the STS, these are considered payload, not part of the vehicle)

Being an old – some might say die-hard – fan of the STS, I can’t help but seeing DIRECT as in ways a step backwards, in that whereas everything but the external fuel tank – in particular the 3 main engines - was reusable in the STS, while the only reusable part of the DIRECT stack is the crew module, wonder what its per launch, per flown mass, and projected real mission cost is compared to the STS, and suspect they might be little or not at all less the STS. The DIRECT website, while pretty and informative about the engineering, was skimpy on cost, though I’m confident this has been estimated in detail.

Originally Posted by JMJones0424

I have been of the opinion that it does make more economical sense to send crew separately from cargo, especially when the weight of the cargo is massive, as would be the case for a mission to mars or other manned missions beyond the moon. Perhaps the current approach involves a poorly designed launch system, but is not the over-all aim better than putting all you eggs into one big basket like the direct-launcher that you posted a link for?

The DIRECT lunar missions pretty much do separate crew from “cargo”.

The lunar mission models all call for 2 separate launches. Model 1 through 3 launch the manned Orion CEV and the LSAM lunar lander on one DIRECT booster, the EDS transfer module in another, with everything rendezvousing in Earth orbit, while model 4 launches the LSAM and the EDS together, the manned CEV alone, with a rendezvous in Moon orbit (without any additional payload, the 4-engine DIRECT can apparently transfer the CEV to lunar orbit without an additional EDS).

All this brings me back to my dear old STS, and even further, to the various models and animation von Braun and others showed on TV in the 60s and 70s. All emphasized the idea of fairly small payloads lifted to and assembled into big flight systems in Earth orbit (usually with permanent manned Earth orbiting vehicles – “space stations” – as well). With the success of a single large Saturn V booster flying the small, minimal mass Apollo Moon mission system, this idea seemed to me to be shoved into the wings of spaceflight design and planning.

So, my radical(ish) engineering preference is to replace the STS with … something similar, capable of orbiting (or perhaps not quite orbiting, if you could manage to rendevous a sub-orbital vehicle with an additional stage that can finish the transfer to orbit – whee!) smallish (70000 pound) vehicles, which are assembled in Earth orbit for missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond, while minimizing cost by having mostly reusable components. I see this as something of a return to pre-1960 thinking, and the best approach.

With this in mind, I’m wary of pursuing – long term - “bigger booster” approaches like the old, accomplished Saturn V, or the new DIRECTs. Short term, however, DIRECT might well be the only way to fly large vehicles into Earth orbit, or to the Moon or Mars, and does seem better than the planned Aries series.

[Pyrotex]

Hi Craig!
I have to agree with most of what you said. But remember, don't confuse the romance and beauty of the Shuttle with the principal intention: to get into space as economically and as safely as possible. The Shuttle was indeed gorgeous and the idea of flying it back through a fiery re-entry is indeed captivating. Maybe one day, we can do it again.

But for now, we cannot afford romance and beauty. The cost breakdown goes something like this: (all numbers are approximations)

Design of Shuttle: 150.00 B$ (complexity costs big bucks)
Construction of a new Shuttle (w/o SRBs) is about 2.00 B$ -- one time cost.
A pair of SRBs cost another 0.50 B$ -- one time cost.
External tank about 0.25 B$ -- one per launch
Pad preps & assembly 1.25 B$ -- one per launch

So for Shuttle, you got up front 152.50 B$ + 1.50 B$ per launch

Design of Jupiter/Orion: 30.00 B$
Construction of a new Jupiter (w/o SRBs or ET) is about 0.50B$ -- one per launch
A pair of SRBs cost another 0.50 B$ -- one time cost.
External tank about 0.25 B$ -- one per launch
Pad preps & assembly 0.25 B$ -- one per launch

So for Jupiter/Orion, you got 30.50 B$ up front and 1.00 B$ per launch.

The sheer astronomical cost of building the Shuttle is exceeded only by the enormous cost of refurbishing, checking out and assembling the Shuttle back on the pad. The reusability of the Shuttle saved us nothing.

Ignoring up-front costs, we have:
Shuttle: orbit 20 metric tons for 1.50 B$ = 0.075 B$/MT == $38,000 per pound
Jup/Or: orbit 40 metric tons for 1.00 B$ = 0.025 B$/MT == $12,000 per pound

If you ammortize the Design costs over 50 launches, then
Shuttle Design adds 3.00 B$ per launch, yielding 4.50 B$ per launch total cost.
Jup/Orion Design adds 0.60 B$ per launch, yielding 1.60 B$ per launch total cost.

A final note: assembling anything in orbit out of pieces taken up one at a time is expensive.
Breaking stuff up into pieces costs design effort, and it adds to the mass of the assembled thing.
Assembling in orbit requires expensive and dangerous EVA.
Assembling in orbit incurs much greater risk due to launch windows, extra launch risks, orbit decay, cryogenic fuel evaporation, and timing, ground organization and training, training, training.
The original Space Station Freedom was only supposed to cost 8.00 B$.
Instead, it cost nearly 40.00 B$ -- primarily because of the extra expense of: design, assembly, & risk mitigation.

[Pyrotex]

Hello, space fans!

Here is another excellent read, and valuable source of space rocket info!
Remember, you were told about it HERE.

Review of Human Space Flight Committee

[Moontanman]

I still can't read any of the links but it sounds like we need nuclear power! Put it all in orbit in one shot!