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Posted by: ilbasso Aug 12 2008, 03:04 AM

Now won't fly before September 2014....
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/08/11/nasa.orion/index.html

Posted by: PaulM Aug 13 2008, 11:53 AM

I wonder if NASA ever seriously considered using an off the shelf man rated rocket such as the Delta 4 to launch the Orion capsule into Earth orbit. If the Delta 4 was used then the only R&D required for Earth orbit flights would be the design of the crew capsule. I imagine that if the Delta 4 was used then this would enable NASA to provide crews for the ISS as early as 2011.

The Orion rocket development does provide work for shuttle manufacturers but at a potentially very high cost in time and engineering effort.

I suppose that an advantage of continuing with Orion rocket development is that it may be a necessary step in the development of the heavy lift rocket capable of lifting the Orion capsule (together with a lander) from Earth orbit to Moon orbit.

Posted by: Phil Stooke Aug 13 2008, 01:54 PM

A better headline would have been "Attempt to speed up Orion flight schedule scrapped". It's just going back to its original schedule. A bit of a non-story.

On another point, Delta 4 is not man-rated, as far as I know - I don't think any rockets in the world are 'person'-rated except Soyuz and the Shuttle. Some could be, with a bit of effort.

Phil

Posted by: PaulM Aug 13 2008, 06:25 PM

I have checked my facts and Boeing did propose using Delta 4 Heavys to launch the CEV around 2004:

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/135/1

So far as I understand when the last Space Shuttle flies the entire Shuttle engineering effort will be transfered to work on the CEV, the heavy lift booster and the new lunar module. It is disappointing that after 4 years of Apollo scale efforts all that will have flown will be what is in effect a Saturn 1 rocket and an Apollo Command and Service module.

Posted by: Phil Stooke Aug 13 2008, 06:49 PM

Good point. My interpretation of that had been that it could be man-ratable fairly easily but had not actually been - shall we say - certified. But this is going beyond what I really know about.

Phil

Posted by: nprev Aug 14 2008, 01:27 AM

IIRC, I read on another topic some time ago from a forum member that even the Shuttle technically isn't "man-rated"; it flies on a series of waivers each time.

Seems a shame not to consider the Delta 4 as well, though; it would be nice to utilize what seems to be a comparatively cheap parallel development track. If nothing else, it would increase the D4's reliability for non-CEV applications.

Posted by: mchan Aug 14 2008, 01:50 AM

Folks really interested in the Delta 4 and others in the manned spaceflight application should check out the discussions in the EELV forum on nasaspaceflight.com.

Posted by: dvandorn Aug 14 2008, 04:10 AM

All I'll say on the topic of the thread is that no one ought to be surprised that a manned vehicle development program is taking longer than the initial work flows had projected. Not a single manned vehicle has met its initial flight readiness dates -- I know that this includes the Americans and the then-Soviets, and I suspect it's also true of the Chinese.

Mercury flew manned two years behind schedule. Gemini flew a year and a half behind schedule. Apollo flew two to three years behind schedule, and Shuttle flew between two and three years behind schedule. Skylab was between one and three years behind schedule, as well, and I imagine the early Salyut program flew behind its initial schedules, too.

I actually thought that Mike Griffin did a good thing by setting the 2013 internal goal. His mission is to get Orion flying by 2015; the 2013 date is pretty much what you had to set in order to actually meet the 2015 date.

I'm sure there are any number of people here who have worked on managed projects with deadline dates. Haven't you all been on projects where the deadlines are set well ahead of the true drop-dead dates, just to ensure that the *real* dates could be made?

There are still some sticky technical issues to be overcome, to be sure. But I don't get the feeling that this news is either a critical blow to the program *or* unexpected.

-the other Doug

Posted by: djellison Aug 14 2008, 07:38 AM

There's one forum rule that's very very simple and has never, is not and will never be up for debate.

No politics.

Twice, it's been broken in this thread. Maybe people get a kick out of making the job of forum admin more challenging than it already is. I will not shy away from suspending long-standing members if they can't do it.

And a post like 'Ohh..politician this, politician that, he said he'd do this, and he's saying he'll do that....but I guess that's why we don't talk about politics here' - is unarguably the worst sort - because it both acknowledges AND breaks the rules in the same breath.

Posted by: nprev Aug 14 2008, 02:34 PM

Not quite, but I was on a program that had an original first launch date in 2004...we're still waiting (won't name names, though!)

Good point, though, oDoug. One thing I've noticed is that delays seem to be primarily driven by requirement creep, which in turn is drastically affected by the number of stakeholders in a given program. This doesn't seem to be the case with the CEV, though. (For the Shuttle, yes, because DoD had a big say in a lot of the design; correct me if I'm wrong, but DoD has little or no involvement with the CEV.)

Posted by: ilbasso Aug 15 2008, 01:43 PM

Mrrghthrllmmph! (sound of man trying to talk with his own foot firmly inserted in his mouth)

Sorry for the offense; it will not be repeated.

Posted by: JRehling Aug 15 2008, 05:48 PM

I think that only works if the soft deadlines are known to be soft, or if this is the absolute last time the manager in question will work with the workers in question. Because as soon as they know that Deadline X means something else, their activity will cut to fit.

But the real thing I worry about is that when a program is "defended" in some way that cloaks shortfalls, it opens the door to a catastrophic problem of one sort or another. Consider Shuttle+ISS as one example: Way behind schedule, way over budget, and way without purpose; called a "mistake" by the current head of NASA.

Now consider JIMO as another example. It died early in its funding life with strong suspicions that it was simply impossible.

What I'm worried about with masked deadlines and measures that shelter the project from harsh realities is that it may *deserve* those harsh realities. I'd much rather have a JIMO situation that's over before it started than SS+ISS which is going to have a lifespan from 1972-2013 when it's all said and done, with very little to show from it.

I'm worried that the Big Three of Men-to-the-Moon, Men-to-Mars, and Mars Sample Return are going to hit us with a triple whammy of catastrophically failed programs. I can't possibly assess their feasibility on my lonesome, but it worries me if the management style is to bet the house that they can't fail, and to push the hard decisions to the other side of massive funding outlays.

Posted by: nprev Aug 15 2008, 06:27 PM

There's that, and there's also the phenomenon of "projectitis". Getting things built rapidly & reasonably just doesn't happen anymore. Every petty bureaucrat or Office of Whatever seemingly has to carve his or her mark on any given program, and it just leads to conflicting and/or expensive requirements & delay.

IMHO, product development for space needs to be one hell of a lot more autocratic. That's not how I generally roll--I think that everyone's opinions are valid & should be heard--but pragmatically speaking we need to become far more goal-driven with inflexible constraints to get stuff ready for launch.