On a tour of the Aerojet Rocketdyne assembly building at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in southern Mississippi, site manager Mike McDaniel stops at a double row of shrouded shapes and big white metal boxes inside a garage-like room. In each is an RS-25, the space shuttle’s main engine. With the exception of one more engine to be assembled from spare parts, the room we’re standing in holds the entire world supply—15 in all—of flight-proven, reusable big booster engines. While the value is hard to calculate, given that production lines for replacement engines haven’t restarted, there’s certainly more than a billion dollars’ worth of hardware tucked into a space no bigger than a 7-Eleven.
The engines are critical to NASA’s next plan for human spaceflight and illustrate an important principle guiding the design of the nation’s next booster: Rather than reach for advances in rocketry, engineers are to use proven technology. The RS-25 engines, which performed almost flawlessly during 135 shuttle launches, are a gold standard for reliability and power that NASA wants to preserve, even after the small inventory is used up. Yet the last enhancement to the engines was made in the 1990s, and the new launch vehicle—uninspiredly named the Space Launch System—is expected to be the first one capable of sending humans beyond the moon. The contradiction between its design constraint and its ambitious mission puts engineers like McDaniel in a tough spot. They are using space shuttle hardware for a vehicle tasked with a human spaceflight mission far more daunting than putting astronauts in orbit around Earth. But you won’t hear complaints at Stennis, where the engines are tested, or at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, where the SLS program is managed.
“We had a school group in here one day to see the engines, and a girl raised her hand,” McDaniel recalls. “She said, ‘There are supposed to be 15 here but I only count 14.’ That’s the kind of person we want in this program, who doesn’t take things for granted.”
As with the Saturn, the SLS will be topped with a conical capsule for manned flight, called Orion (see “America’s Next Spaceship,” Aug. 2014). But down lower, the Space Launch System has more visibly in common with the space shuttle, with two solid rocket boosters strapped to its sides. The rocket’s first stage (which NASA calls the core) is a stretched version of the shuttle’s external tank and has the same diameter, so that shuttle-era tooling can be reused. At the base of the core are four space shuttle main engines (SSMEs). It will use a single upper stage to boost Orion into deep space.
A number of technologies that hadn’t been developed when the shuttle was designed, such as stir-friction welding for the SLS core and 3D printed parts for Orion, does push the SLS beyond the shuttle’s world. “This is brand-new, modernized equipment, resulting in much more reliability and capability at much less cost,” says Charlie Precourt, a former shuttle commander and today vice president and general manager of ATK, the solid booster manufacturer. At ATK, he says, workers are adding a fifth segment to give the solid rocket booster more capability. Precourt says the work will be done using only one-fourth the number of employees required during the shuttle era.
A multi-purpose, disposable vehicle, the SLS is sure to be expensive, but just how expensive is not yet known. Boeing is building two core stages under a $2.8 billion contract. According to budget documents, the SLS program annual cost is less than half that of the shuttle program, which ran to $4 billion annually in its last years. But the shuttle flew successfully 133 times over three decades, and (barring some political sea change) the SLS isn’t expected to launch more often than once every two years. The Government Accountability Office estimated the SLS’s cost through the first launch at $12 billion, and the total tab through 2020 at $22 billion. But in July, the GAO warned that NASA would miss the 2017 launch unless the SLS program gets an additional $400 million.
The first SLS mission is a test. It will send an unmanned Orion capsule looping far around the moon, then back to Earth for a splashdown. The second mission? Less firm. While some House members are urging that the second mission send a robot probe to explore Jupiter’s moon Europa, which may harbor life beneath its frozen surface, NASA’s current plan is to carry astronauts to visit an asteroid orbiting the moon. (A separate robot spacecraft would go out first, grab the rock, and haul it into lunar orbit.)
I don't see the point in this program running while they are also hiring external companies to get into near space. The more we hear about it the less sense it makes...
In all honesty, instead of wasting so much money on something like this, they could've just bought the old buran plans. Buran was launched on the Energyia launch platform, which by itself is capable of lifting more than SLS block II even. In fact, even by todays standards, the Energyia in its Vulcan configuration fares extremely well if not better than the SLS system, with 1970s tech (and a fraction of the costs).
I didn't follow the thread though, since SLS as much as Energyia are dumb systems by todays standards - are there any mission parameters out there that call for heavy lifters of that magnitude apart from another dumb shuttle-idea?
It's sad because the Shuttle stack could lift a lot of stuff into orbit but most of it was just the huge heavy wings of the orbiter. It's really weird to launch a payload bay that's so heavy to put relatively small payloads into orbit. Weirdly we never tried using the external tanks for anything in orbit either.
Heavy lift I think you need for any mission outside of low earth orbit. One thing is if you put people just in Mars orbit the amount of science they can do with the rovers on the surface goes up by like an order of magnitude compared to the science we do from Earth when with a 30 minute radio delay.
That didn't answer my question though. There is nothing outside the LEO planned for the near and forseeable future, manned missions to mars are still decades away. The STS btw wasn't build to bring stuff into LEO, but to bring it back from LEO. The only upside of the shuttle was, that it could bring down relatively large payloads (i think 14 tons cargo on reentry). Literally the only reason to "justify" it. Apart from that, it was a failure (i still think it's iconic and did advance spaceflight/exploration, but it's still a failure).
The SLS literally has no justification for itself that i could tell of. There are working HLVs out there (Delta IV Heavy, Ariane 5), there's other ones coming (Falcon Heavy, Ariane 5ME), and there's "bigger ones" in the past, including 1970s tech like the Energyia or the Saturn V even.
Manned Mars missions are still decades away, by that time SLS etc will be "old tech" as well (pretty much like the Saturn V is today). Mars-One doesn't count.
My question for mission parameters btw was genuine, i simply can not comprehend what the SLS could do that existing systems can't, for a fraction of the price.
edit: i would actually dare to say that an orbital fuel depot including orbital assembly of things would be the smarter way to spend all that money. To me the SLS simply looks the same as the shuttle did, something that nobody needs but still gets built because "we definately need it!".
Delta IV isn't man-rated and doesn't lift that much. Falcon Heavy is a good point but it's not quite the same lift. As far as I understand the point of super heavy lift is so you have enough payload to put an entire upper stage into orbit so you can launch a bunch of people and shit out of orbit.
There has been a technical ability to get to Mars within a decade ever since Mars Direct was figured out, it's just about political feasibility and working through stagnant NASA management. SLS will not be old tech because it will be upgraded, just like every other rocket family. That's like saying Atlas 5 is old tech because John Glenn rode an Atlas missile into space. Or Soyuz is old because they used it in the 60s. Everything gets upgraded and uprated. If we were still using Saturn hardware by today it would have evolved to be powerful enough to launch like 300,000kg.
Let me use a historical analogy, STS (shuttle) was originally just going to be a way to send people to LEO which was actually part of a big system of propellant depots and nuclear tugs and space stations on all kinds of planets and shit if you know that. But all the other stuff was impossible to sell so we just got a bastardized shuttle. Now after they got the shuttle they had to figure out shit to do with it besides carrying spy satellites so it became stuff like fix Hubble, visit Mir, launch probes, they did whatever they could with the system at hand.
SLS will be similar because we don't have a clear goal which would put an end to it (like the moon landings where although the program was very aggressive, it burned out politically so it ended up being closure). Having the capability alone gives a flexibility in any political or budget climate. So depending on the money the actual destinations can change. But the first destination will probably be a near-Earth object.
Mars orbit is about as close as lunar orbit. It's easy to visit the moons of Mars and to visit near-Earth asteroids and to visit the moon.
It also enables some special deep space probes, like the original plan for the Voyager probes was to launch them off of Saturn Vs. We could do sample return from the outer solar system (like Jovian moons).
I do wish we could have had something a little cheaper and more competitive and better, I mean something new and upgraded instead of the same old. And there will be upgrades in the future. But either way the rocket can do the same things. I am not sure you're justified in saying existing systems that do things. Paper rockets and mothballed rockets aren't really existing systems. Yes Energia is cool. Yes Saturn V is cool. Yes Falcon Heavy will be cool (but not quite as powerful). If you could explain what you want when you say "mission parameters" maybe I can answer better.
With mission parameters, i mean "purpose". So far, you didn't really cite any purpose that couldn't be achieved with "existing" (as in, in use/reliable) systems already at hand.
A little cheaper might btw be the understatement of the year, considering that the SLS program including four launches is estimated at what, 41bn dollars? Not to mention, "SLS is upgradable", yes it would be. That would make the existing SLS even more idiotic though, don't you think? You build now an HLV which has no purpose, because there's simply zero(!) demand for a rocket like this - to then sink more dollars into the system at some point when there might be something coming up. That didn't happen with the Atlas 5, or soyuz. They were built to be used at that time, not to be used as an upgraded version 50 years in the future.
Someone could argue, well, if the SLS could do what existing rockets can do, but cheaper - there you might have an argument. Does it though? We both know (well i do, but you sound like you do too) that it isn't cheaper. In fact, it's more expensive. It's estimated for now at 8500$ per pound, which tops even the STS (8000$ per pound). Protons lift for ~2000$ per pound. That's four protons launched for every SLS block I. That's roughly 70 tons for SLS, and 85 tons for the four protons. Of course, there's downsides to both of them, but the mere fact that even if you have >a< mission for the SLS (and there won't be many, if any), you won't need the SLS anymore after it. Because there's kinda no point in lighting a 150 ton candle to get some dudes up there.
With existing systems, i'm obviously talking about existing lifters, not paper rockets. I also disagree that "having the capability alone gives flexibility in any political or budget climate". The same has been said for the Shuttle - "shit will come up and then we have it ready". It's actually exactly the opposite, considering how fricking expensive the SLS is. There's so many smarter ways to burn all that money that get dumped into the SLS. Hell, in my mind, it would've been smarter to just throw all that money at NERVAs. At least the NASA would've had something "special" there. The SLS isn't special apart from the fact that it burns through money. Alot of it. And that all of that money goes into a system that has very narrow operational parameters (as i said, you won't use it for satellites, nor "normal heavy lifting" - because Delta, Ariane etc are alot cheaper - you'd use it for "superheavy lifting"). So much so, that i actually can't think of a single thing that the SLS would excel in. There won't be a "returning something from mars" mission in the next 25 years, there won't be anything manned to the mars in at least 40. They're so desperate that in the mission parameters, they actually are talking about how the SLS could support trips to the ISS if necessary. Uhm, .. Okay.
It basically all boils down to one thing for me: is it worth pumping 41 billion dollars into something that can't do more than existing systems like atlas, ariane, delta or falcon (which all also are cheaper)? We're not talking theoretically here, but practically. Yes the SLS might be able to lift more than those, but there's literally no mission coming up for decades that would require a lifter like the SLS.
Okay I gave you examples of missions that are enabled by a super heavy lifter and all you can say is those missions won't happen (which is divination) and they're not happening soon (which is meaningless as the rocket doesn't exist yet).
This is not an indictment of super heavy lift though. Imagine you had a friend and he was thinking about buying a car. So you said to him, " you're not planning any major round trip road trips from Florida to Alaska, so you would be better off renting because renting is cheaper." That wouldn't make sense, he doesn't need to rent a car either; since he's not going on a road trip he doesn't need a car at all. Or maybe he saved a bunch of money and wants to buy a car so that after that he can go wherever he pleases.
It is a tacit and unproven assumption that you can just do some arithmetic accounting about mass and therefore use smaller rockets. How do you know you can just divide whatever you need in orbit into 4 smaller launches? For instance, what's a good way to build a space station in orbit? 40 shuttle launches or 3 Saturn launches? ISS is about the size of 3 Skylabs.
On October 21 2014 07:41 m4ini wrote: Not to mention, "SLS is upgradable", yes it would be. That would make the existing SLS even more idiotic though, don't you think?
I don't think you get to double back on this. I brought up the fact that you can upgrade a rocket because you were calling it old tech. Now when I tell you it will get more advanced and more powerful with age you say it's idiotic? Whether you think it's too expensive or not it does have a purpose for flying now, which is beyond LEO exploration as well as the other stuff I listed.
Yeah nuclear thermal rockets are great and I hope one flies. It would be a great upper stage for SLS. Propellant depots would be cool but they are as yet unproven.
Yes, please, spend all the governments cash on useless resources. There is people in Congress that are straight up assholes. There needs to come a point in time where U.S Citizens can say where they want their taxes distributed and not have a bunch of bozos sending it off outside of the US.
On December 12 2014 02:30 ShoCkeyy wrote: Yes, please, spend all the governments cash on useless resources. There is people in Congress that are straight up assholes. There needs to come a point in time where U.S Citizens can say where they want their taxes distributed and not have a bunch of bozos sending it off outside of the US.
Yea you have to just accept it sadly. I was working for NASA Ames on Project Orion when they announced P.O. (or CEV) was going to be canned. Man it was a disappointing meeting room with about 30 people, I was only there 2 years at the time but yea it was rough. It was great to see Orion do it's first test mission recently, I had pretty much figured all the hard work we poured into that program was never going to be taken advantage of. It is infuriating when people don't realize the value of doing space projects like this though...
WASHINGTON — As U.S. lawmakers criticized the Obama administration at a Dec. 10 hearing for not requesting sufficient funding for NASA’s Orion and Space Launch System programs, a top NASA official said no amount of additional funding at this point would allow them to be ready for a 2017 launch.
William Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations, told members of the House Science space subcommittee that the middle of 2018 was now the agency’s planned launch readiness date for the SLS.
“We were holding December of 2017. I would say we’ve now moved off of that date,” he said. “That’s just based on the reality of problems that have come along in the program, and some uncertainty in funding.”
At the hearing, Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.) asked how much funding would be required to bring the first SLS/Orion mission, called Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1), back to December 2017.
“In terms of the technical work, I think we’ve really probably moved off of December 2017,” Gerstenmaier responded, “so I don’t think funding will pull us back to that date.”
Orion will not complete its KDP-C review, and thus have an estimated readiness date for EM-1, until spring. However, Orion program manager Mark Geyer said at a Dec. 2 briefing at the Kennedy Space Center that the spacecraft would not be ready for that mission until 2018.
That assessment was shared by Cristina Chaplain, director of acquisition and sourcing management at the U.S. Government Accountability Office. “At this time, it does not look like they can make 2017, and 2018 is even a challenge in and of itself,” she said of Orion at the hearing.
NASA started this ambitious project without the money they need.
They have no goal for human space flight. They will say whatever they think will help to get a budget: explore & deflect asteroids, go to Mars eventually, repair satellites, go back to the moon, build a moon-base, do orbital refueling,
They want to build this big launcher using the overly complex Space Shuttle engines, with it's absurd number of moving parts. They will build this huge rocket that needs to be human-rated.
Basically they are building an Saturn-analog but this time with digital computers to go back to the moon. There's people that really want to go to Mars 'to show that we can do it'.
Problem with human space flight is that it isn't going to be profitable beyond space tourism for a long long time and maybe forever.
Almost no one knows the names of the people that are in orbit right now. People don't care and don't want to pay for it. People understand that we need superexpensive things like the LHC. But people don't understand why we need the ISS and NASA or pro-human space flight people can't give a good explanation. Landng and leaving Mars is very hard to do. It takes a huge budget. That's why people talk about cruising beyond earth or fly humans around Phobos or something. It's all kind of silly.
SLS again is super-expensive compared to SpaceX. The rocket is old technology. I am not an engineer but I don't get why we need a human-rated heavy launcher. Private sector can build a Saturn rocket-type heavy launcher. You can use the SRBs and all that other cheap unsafe stuff. Then you need a human rated rocket that just launches the humans themselves. Do this for a fixed price contract. Not the way it currently works where NASA pays for whatever it costs a contractor to build what NASA asks for. In fact, let the private sector fund it. If we need space tourism, why should NASA do it? If someone wants to go to Mars 'for the heck of it', let them pay for it.
Then taxpayer money can be spend on what matters; technology innovation and science. Keep human spaceflight out of it. Humans are too expensive and too helpless in space to be useful.
Even if SLS gets a budget now, it will again be at risk before it does its first launch. In the mean time, we can discover alien life using space telescopes. James Webb, the telescope that ate astronomy, is still not finished and may also be at risk of cancellation.
And besides all that, something is terribly wrong with NASA in terms of inefficiency. It seems to be bordering on corruption, the way NASA just wastes money. While Congress is in the wrong here also, it was embarrassing to see Gerstenmaier answer some of these questions. As a scientist I have a lot of difficulty explaining why more money needs to go this way when so much money is wasted. All I have is the basic shallow 'we only spend .4% bla bla bla' or 'teflon and memory foam blabla'.
The case for JWST isn't great either. I guess there might be enough sunken cost now that it doesn't make sense to cancel it but $9bn for a space telescope is a fucking travesty. LSST, EELT, Gaia or SKA cost or will cost a fraction of that with comparable or better science return.
IMO the underlying problem is the same: in order to secure funding you have to ally yourself with people or organizations who don't really care about science or space technology. They might do a good job on a technical level to protect their reputation but they won't steer the political process towards completing the project. From an aerospace contractor's point of view a space telescope that burns through five times its original budget and never flies is a huge success. Especially if they can reasonably claim that the delays and budget overruns weren't their faults.
Which is technically true, even if the people who are at fault end up working for them in the future as a reward.
On December 12 2014 16:24 hypercube wrote: The case for JWST isn't great either. I guess there might be enough sunken cost now that it doesn't make sense to cancel it but $9bn for a space telescope is a fucking travesty. LSST, EELT, Gaia or SKA cost or will cost a fraction of that with comparable or better science return.
IMO the underlying problem is the same: in order to secure funding you have to ally yourself with people or organizations who don't really care about science or space technology. They might do a good job on a technical level to protect their reputation but they won't steer the political process towards completing the project. From an aerospace contractor's point of view a space telescope that burns through five times its original budget and never flies is a huge success. Especially if they can reasonably claim that the delays and budget overruns weren't their faults.
Which is technically true, even if the people who are at fault end up working for them in the future as a reward.
I don't understand the policy of paying cost + %. Any company that did that would be out of business within a year. You set the prize you are willing to pay before you start. If nobody can build at that price you do something similar with the money since you no longer have your payback for the original thing. There are musts of course but nothing NASA currently does fall into that category.
If somebody can build at that cost you write a contract for it and that is that. Any money over from that point on is on the company that signed the contract with you. As the government it is easy to put pressure on a company to deliver something they agreed on.
NASA announced today that its schedule for the first crewed mission of SLS and Orion will slip to 2023; this represents a two year slip from previous plans for the first mission by 2021. The agency announced similar delays last fall. Smith has repeatedly criticized the Obama administration for failure to request adequate funding for Orion and the Space Launch System; the administration's FY16 budget request proposed cuts of more than $440 million for the programs.
EPT
