Senators Want Big Rocket Instead of New Tech, Commercial Transportation 342
FleaPlus writes "Members of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation are drafting a bill (due this week) which slashes NASA technology development/demonstrations, commercial space transportation, and new robotic missions to a small fraction of what the White House proposed earlier this year. The bill would instead redirect NASA funds to 'immediate' development of a government-designed heavy lift rocket, although it's still unclear if NASA can afford a heavy lifter in the long term or if (with the new technology the Senators seek to cut, like in-space refueling) it actually needs such a rocket. The Senators' rocket design dictates a payload of 75mT to orbit, uses the existing Ares contracts and Shuttle infrastructure as much as possible, and forces use of the solid rocket motors produced by Utah arms manufacturer ATK."
In an unrelated story... (Score:5, Interesting)
Well shit (Score:5, Interesting)
In Soviet Russia... (Score:1, Interesting)
..rocket designs you! Seriously, I grew up in the USSR and this is actually a scary reminder of what went on in that country -- it was common to manufacture all kinds of crap that nobody needs, and then dispose of it in a big bonfire. But hey, people have jobs (those who build the rocket AND those who dismantle it afterwards).
The real question.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Is what will this be attached to? If it goes on its own, I would imagine Obama would give it the big red VETO
Re:In Other Words... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Safe solution? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why would you man-rate your heavy lift rocket? It would be a stupid requirement. Big grunty rocket to lift mass, small safe rocket to lift people.
Re:What is the need? (Score:5, Interesting)
I can see why DoD would want to keep the solid rocket companies in business, because those same companies also build and replace ICBMs. But surely DoD can figure out a way to pay to keep those companies in business without forcing NASA to go with solid rocket boosters.
I agree. I think it's quite bizarre that much of the hubbub in Congress has been about how NASA would no longer subsidizing ICBM motor production under the new plans, and that NASA using commercial liquid-based rockets instead would be disastrous for our strategic deterrence capability. I'd argue that it should be the DOD's responsibility to maintain ICBM production capability, not NASA's. A quote from an article providing some context from those unfamiliar with the situation:
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=4543976&c=AME&s=SEA [defensenews.com]
Sen. David Vitter, R-La., insisted again March 17 that the cost of solid rocket motors that the U.S. military needs for its intercontinental ballistic missiles will double if President Barack Obama gets his way.
Vitter blames Obama's space strategy, as spelled out in the 2011 budget, which would cancel NASA's Constellation program. ...
While others praise Obama's plan to invest in commercial space companies, Vitter worries that one of the real losers in all this will be the U.S. military.
His logic: NASA is the nation's biggest customer for solid rocket motors, so if NASA drops out of the market, prices for everyone else will double. The military needs solid rocket motors for Minuteman ballistic missiles, submarine-based Trident ballistic missiles, missile interceptors and all sorts of tactical missiles.
The Navy, which has studied the matter, says prices will probably rise, but they won't double.
During a Senate Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee hearing, Rear Adm. Stephen Johnson, said he expects solid rocket motor prices to rise 10 to 20 percent. He assured Vitter that 100 percent price growth is not likely. Johnson heads Navy strategic systems programs.
Vitter, who has been sounding this alarm since the 2011 budget was unveiled Feb. 1, seemed unconvinced.
NASA provides 70 percent of the business that sustains the solid rocket motor industry, he said. If that vanishes, costs for other customers must increase more than 20 percent.
Not so, said Johnson. NASA's requirements are so different from the military's - think size and weight - that eliminating NASA's demand will not cause military rocket costs to double.
"It's a valid concern," Johnson told Vitter. And costs may rise, possibly 20 percent. But they won't double.
Re:The Senators' rocket design dictates a payload (Score:3, Interesting)
NASA Repurposed? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Safe solution? (Score:5, Interesting)
man-rate = reliable. There are some other specifically man-rating features aside from reliability like abort modes, that probably don't matter for payloads with no emergency recovery system.
But to a first approximation, I claim man-rate = reliable.
Booster cost scales slower with mass than payload costs. After all, communication satellite microwave transmitters are much more expensive than "big fuel tanks".
So, I also claim heavy lift = expensive payload.
So, use the least reliable engine technology that is available to lift your most expensive payloads. What could possibly go wrong?
I'd also claim if a person generates a $1M of economic activity over the course of their life, making a bad engineering decision that "wastes" $500M on a fireworks show, is morally equivalent to killing 500 people, because it wasted their entire life's work. Men with guns had to extort that money out of the population, for nothing. More practically you have thousands of guys literally spending a decade of their life to get "something" into orbit, so turning it into a fireworks show is about the same thing as destroying hundreds of folks life works.
I'll admit you caught me thinking "shuttle". That bad solid booster design cost us one vehicle and one crew. Making the same engineering decision, even if just launching a non-sentient box of rocks, is emotionally distasteful. Last time we tried this we killed seven people, so lets try it again!
Re:Well shit (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you heard of Homeland Security??
Congress has been doing this for decades. Stop being stupid.
NASA has a history of screw-ups and cost over-runs. Are you seriously this dim to think Congress wouldn't do their job and manage a government agency!
Space exploration has changed. The US is no longer the dominant player. The government is no longer necessary for space exploration. It's time to allow commercial flight. It's time to do responsible science, not these pie in the sky man to mars missions. This is the only way to move forward.
FYI NASA was never about space travel.
NASA was alread dead... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Safe solution? (Score:3, Interesting)
If you've got lots of money to throw at the problem, then by all means, develop two completely new rockets and perform those tasks. However, if you've got limited funds and you've already got a nice, man-rated, heavy lift system that has 30+ years of near flawless operation, it makes more sense to take a more DIRECT approach.
Re:Safe solution? (Score:1, Interesting)
man-rate = reliable. There are some other specifically man-rating features aside from reliability like abort modes, that probably don't matter for payloads with no emergency recovery system.
There's also differences in that vibration and acceleration limits that aren't nearly as restrictive for the vast majority of non-living cargo as they must be for "man-rated" rockets. In those relatively few cases where vibration and acceleration are legitimate concerns for inanimate cargo, engineers can usually design cost-effective packaging and restraints to reduce the forces to acceptable levels (which would still probably kill any human subjected to them). IMHO, one of the few things that the Ares program got right was decoupling the crew launch vehicle from the main cargo lifter.
Re:In Other Words... (Score:4, Interesting)
There are some good people at NASA still. Take JPL for example.... Though, I had a friend there who said it gets mismanaged at the top. He got laid off after one of his projects was launch delayed, so Congress apparently fired the entire design team with the idea that they will just be able to hire random engineers off the street to pick up a project they didn't build six years from now when it can launch again. Slightly off topic, although still relevant to the sad state of scientific endeavors in the US, he couldn't find a job after JPL laid him off with a PhD in aerospace engineering from Georgia Tech with a thesis in deep space exploration. So, he ultimately had to go back to live with his family in the Philippines and found some sort of teaching job there.
This means Direct (Score:5, Interesting)
This potential bill means congressional support behind a Direct version of a shuttle replacement [directlauncher.com] or something close enough not to matter. Direct is a design to replace the space shuttle with a rocket that puts the cargo and capsule on top of the tank, and moves the shuttle engines on the bottom of the tank. Without having to lift the load of the space shuttle itself, the rocket gets 77mT of cargo to orbit.
Re-using all the major shuttle components provides the cheapest possible option for a Heavy Lift Vehicle, not to mention the quickest, as a Direct design could be flying by 2013. The current plan from the administration doesn't even decide on a HLV design until 2015, let alone start the process of building and testing it. This is not a barrel of pork. Yes, somebody will make some money, but this is the cheapest option at the moment to keep a US heavy lift capability in the near future, and it will be built here in the US.
Current US lift capability stops at only 25mT in the Shuttle cargo bay to Low Earth Orbit. By funding a Direct style vehicle, we get a minimum of 75 mT to orbit without a second stage. This a very good thing. With further development of a second stage, the payload capacity increases to 115mT+. Not only that, but by putting the payload on top of the vehicle, a direct style rocket can support a payload as wide as 12m across (shuttle can only do 5m). So we get the ability to send more per launch and save over the life of a large project. For example, five flights of Direct would have been sufficient to build the ISS, versus the 40 shuttle launches it actually took.
By re-using the same engines and boosters as the space shuttle, we save billions (maybe $10 billion over time) in research and launch facility changes necessary for other designs (Ares would have required 2 new pad designs and new crawlers at a $1 billion a pop). The cost per launch for Direct will be less expensive as well. For comparison, recovery of the shuttle SRB's, refurbishment of the shuttle and launch costs per launch have averaged out to about $1.3 billion per launch [wikipedia.org]. A Direct will cost somewhere north of $200 million for the launch vehicle, plus operating costs, but won't include refurbishment or recovery operations. For the immediate future NASA says it will launch the last shuttle in 2011, and after we'll be paying the Russians $20-30 million per seat for rides in a Soyuz [seattlepi.com]
We save time in that we can have an un-manned cargo version of the vehicle doing test flights by 2013, whereas the engine testing alone for a liquid-fueled booster would take 5 years by the current plan. as all the parts are already man-rated (save for the modified ET), we could be launching Orion capsules on a Direct as soon as the Orions finish development in 2015 or so.
If this passes, I'll be one very happy space fan.
Re:In Other Words... (Score:3, Interesting)
It is fitting then that at the random quote machine at the bottom of slashdot currently says:
"It might help if we ran the MBA's out of Washington." -- Admiral Grace Hopper
Re:This means Direct (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, the DIRECT team's recommended near-term launcher, the J-130, would only do 70mt and wouldn't be able to meet the Senators' 75mt requirement. Either a second stage or other augmentations would be needed in order to meet the requirement.
Re:In Other Words... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:This means Direct (Score:5, Interesting)
Your ideas and goals and numbers are all well and good, but you don't ever look at the actual design of the vehicle you propose.
I worked on Ares and know what the design is. That thing was a gigantic piece of crap just waiting to fail. Badly. From the barely stable structural dynamics of a 400ft long pencil flying at mach 6, to the ugliest, most disaster prone separation sequence; that design was doomed to fail.
Look, I like the idea of saving money by using off the shelf parts and getting something flying fast, but you end up making too many sacrifices to the overall design to accommodate the limitations of the pre-built parts. Think of it like trying to build a city bus out of parts you scrounged from a Ferrari warehouse.
Also, the very first class you take in Aerospace Engineering teaches you exactly why SSTO (single stage to orbit) is not as cost-effective as multiple stages. So your argument that this design is better because it doesn't need a second stage is not a good one. The design might be simpler and easier to build, but it requires so much more fuel per launch that it isn't worth it.
Hold the idealism (Score:3, Interesting)
Far be it from me to defend an institution that P.J. O'Rourke famously called the Parliament of Whores... but you need to re-examine your own "science be damned" statement. Because NASA is not science, and never has been. NASA was an inherently political creation for an inherently political goal: beating the Soviets in the space race. And NASA was born with big, fat, servings of pork to all the necessary states.
Science is, and always has been, a minor sideshow at NASA. If your main concern is science, then NASA is the wrong place to put all your hopes and dreams in. NASA, having served its purpose (Soviet Union, RIP) should be quietly put to death, and its job broken up amongst various existing agencies.
Re:This means Direct (Score:4, Interesting)
Um, I was referring to Direct, the "SSTS without the space shuttle" design, not the Ares I "Stick". I was looking at the actual design for Direct's J-130 model right here. [launchcomplexmodels.com] It's a stage 1.5 design with all engines ground lit and the boosters jettisoned during flight, just like the SSTS.
I do agree with your statement about the Ares I:
I worked on Ares and know what the design is. That thing was a gigantic piece of crap just waiting to fail. Badly. From the barely stable structural dynamics of a 400ft long pencil flying at mach 6, to the ugliest, most disaster prone separation sequence; that design was doomed to fail.
But that's not what I was talking about. :)
Also, the very first class you take in Aerospace Engineering teaches you exactly why SSTO (single stage to orbit) is not as cost-effective as multiple stages. So your argument that this design is better because it doesn't need a second stage is not a good one. The design might be simpler and easier to build, but it requires so much more fuel per launch that it isn't worth it.
As my argument about "single stage", I was referring to the fact that the design already gets 77mT to orbit with just a single (OK, 1.5 stage counting the SRB's) stage and that there was room for more growth, like a second stage, if you needed more lift and were willing to pay extra for it. Did I mention the option to use 5 segment SRB's? I could go on... It's just that the J-130 is the cheapest option for a new HLV, and it leverages all the work and research that went into the SSTS program, rather than throwing it away.
That's a good thing, in my opinion.
Re:In Other Words... (Score:3, Interesting)
Nuclear weapons got smaller in the 1960s and '70s, the types of rockets used for the Moon Race were liquid fuel, the types of rockets used in ICBMs were solid fuel.
Actually the Moon Race benefited from Minuteman, the Apollo Guidance Computer was derived from the Minuteman's guidance computer.
The Moon Race was about throw weight, but ICBMs didn't really benefit from that
Re:Safe solution? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, thank you. The issue is that filling some liquid (even cryogens) isn't nearly the hassle that shipping the case to Utah, waiting for most of a new engine to be made, and shipping it back is. In liquid engines all the complexity is in the engines, while in solids a great deal is in the fuel grain itself.
Thus, if you're making a disposable stage, then solids can be pretty reasonable, but the costs shift dramatically when you discuss reusability.
Re:In Other Words... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:In Other Words... (Score:3, Interesting)
Hidden agenda (Score:3, Interesting)
Apart from the pork angle there's another thing: Even the original Bush plan for the Moon and Mars looked as if it were designed to get a heavy launcher at all costs. Now this. Really, building launchers at all is not something you need to be the US or Soviet Russia for. Every country not being exactly a developing country can do that now. Even private companies can do that.
Building something able to launch really big payloads though is different. This is hard and expensive and has so few uses that nobody even tries. It has one really good use though: Fscking big military optical and radar spysats. If you want to have an optical spysat in GSO you need more than a few thousand pounds up there. And if you want to have radar spysats with high resolution you also need some serious power and antennas up there.
Being able to launch 70 or more metric tons is something you can rely on nobody else that easily to repeat. And I think this was the real reason for Ares V and now for this. Having some really big eyes in the sky staring down hard day and night, *this* would make a difference. Everyone with half a brain can now time his operations so that no spysat is in the right place when he wants to get some things done without being seen.
So where did this requirement come from? (Score:3, Interesting)
Or is it a number pulled out of someone's ass?
Arguing requirement vs. design is mostly semantics at this point. What matters is where the number came from and what sort of analysis went into it (if any).