Von Braun's program, What would it have cost? Options

[dvandorn]

I tossed around a variety of ideas as to where this thread ought to go, and finally decided it should go here.

I'm sure we've all seen the von Braun concepts that were lionized by Disney et. al. back in the 1950s. The Saturn Shuttle, the doughnut-shaped LEO station, the large expedition craft assembled in LEO and dispatched to the Moon and, later, Mars.

In real life, it has taken one of history's most capable cargo-carriers-to-orbit many, many years and tens of flights to *partially* build an assemblage of tubes and flaps that we call a space station. And many of the elements of this station were dispatched not by this real-life shuttle, but by expendable rockets. The whole thing has cost more than a hundred billion dollars thus far.

How much more expensive would von Braun's Saturn Shuttle and his enormous spinning station have been than ISS? Than Apollo? It seems to me we would have had to transport orders of magnitude more material to LEO than we've ever managed for a single project, and assemble it all without *any* prior experience at working in microgravity.

So, while the Disney and Colliers work produced a lot of pretty pictures, isn't it fair to say that such dreams were just that -- dreams? Projects that would have been prohibitively expensive for *any* nation-state to attempt?

Or am I missing something?

-the other Doug

[nprev]

Tried to post a reply earlier, but got zorched by a server error...

I think that Von Braun et. al. were a bit overoptimistic due to the rapid pace of post-WW2 technology development. I wouldn't be surprised at all if he secretly thought that nuclear-powered launch vehicles would be available when it came time to build his torus station, and of course to go to Mars.

[EDIT] After doing some surfing, it seems that Von Braun never really envisioned nuclear launch vehicles, which seems sane. I therefore am at a complete loss as to how he could have thought that building his station would ever be economically feasible, unless he was hoping for DoD-sized NASA budgets.

Of course, there was also a motivational component to the whole pitch. Showing the wondrous possiblities of space exploration in a fairly flamboyant fashion was an obvious PR tactic (and one that NASA might do well to emulate in some way... )

[Cugel]

We shouldn't forget that in the fifties space was seen as the next frontier. You just had to tap in to its sheer endless resources, energy and materials to make a lot of revenue. So a space station wouldn't just cost a lot of money, it would also generate revenue and 'pay for itself' so to speak. The fact that we have never succeeded in unlocking these resources is probably why all those space dreams never turned into reality. The problem is mainly ecomical, not technical.

[mcaplinger]

How much more expensive would von Braun's Saturn Shuttle and his enormous spinning station have been than ISS?

I don't know if such information was ever presented for the station, but certainly there are cost estimates in THE MARS PROJECT ( http://www.amazon.com/Mars-Project-Wernher...n/dp/0252062272 ) in which he said the project "would cost no more than a minor military expedition extending over a limited theatre of war." You might say his estimates were overly optimistic, but he presented his reasoning so I would advise you to read the book and form your own opinion.

[dvandorn]

Thanks, Mike. That's the kind of info I was looking for. (I used to own Wernher's book, a long time ago, but most of the details have escaped my aging memory... *sigh*...)

I guess the factor that isn't expressed in that quote would be the duration of such a military expedition. The American involvement in Iraq has reached or exceeded the cost of the ISS at this point (last I heard it was just about the same, and that was several months ago). We're talking in the range, in modern dollars, of between $150 and $200 billion, which is a little more than the current ISS cost, IIRC.

So, three years of a military expedition in a limited theater equate to a major manned spaceflight project? Interesting...

-the other Doug

[Chmee]

I dont think Von Braun's estimates were so far off. Remember that the majority of costs of the current ISS is not material (rockets, tubes, etc) it is the salaries of the workers. Since there has been so many delays in construction of the ISS, many highly paid experts/technicians/etc have been kept on the books for far longer than planned (15 years versus orginal 5-6 years).

If program could be kept within its time estimate, it is usually not too far off its cost estimate.

[Mariner9]

I think their ignorance about the difficulties of on-orbit construction would have doomed much of their approach to either failure or enormous cost and schedule overruns. And along the way I think their approach would have almost certainly faced fairly major course changes.

I agree with the comment about delays costing money. One of the big costs of the ISS was the multiple re-designs between 1984 and 1992. During that period it almost appeared as a 2 steps forward 1 step back, 2 steps forward 3 steps back, and so on.

Compare that to Apollo, where in a space of only a couple years the basic design of Apollo was nailed down and the program proceeded forward with a clear (and practical) direction.

One of the things that gives me hope on the current Orion project is that it is being driven by a clear vision, and being pushed forward by that vision. Dr Griffin has a clear idea what he wants, and is driving everyone toward that goal. There are certain to be bumps along that road, but with 50 years experience behind us, I think the chances for sucess are fairly high. Of course, how spending roughly 5 billion a year can provide over 100 billion dollars in funding by 2018 is a bit unclear to me..... by my math that leaves about 40 billion unaccounted for, so I wouldn't be surprised by a few schedule or budget changes as we go.

[Guest_MarkG_*]

Von Braun was essentially aiming for a fully re-usable 'big, dumb booster' approach, which might have been financially viable: the boosters would use relatively low-stress engines, drop into the sea after burn-out and be towed back to the launch site for limited maintenance and re-flight with many flights per week. That alone would dramatically reduce launch costs, if the technology could be made to work.

The technical issues were the main ones. Von Braun's 'shuttle' design would melt on re-entry and his space station would be right in the Van Allen belts where the crew would die from radiation poisoning. Also, as mentioned, they seriously underestimated the difficulty of construction in space.

One of the things that gives me hope on the current Orion project is that it is being driven by a clear vision, and being pushed forward by that vision.

But, as the saying goes, 'no bucks, no Buck Rogers': a vision without the funding to create it is useless. In fact, it's arguable that the whole program is fundamentally broken because they're building another 'one size fits all' spacecraft which is too big for ISS, too big for the Moon and probably not even the right size for Mars... a smaller capsule launched on a commercial expendable booster would be vastly cheaper and eliminate most of the expensive NASA workforce.

The latter benefit, of course, is probably the main reason why it's not happening. The 'stick' design keeps all those shuttle workers in jobs after the shuttle is shut down.

[Tom Tamlyn]

Jeff Bell had some interesting thoughts on this issue a while back: "The Von Braun Master Plan: National Dream or National Nightmare?"

TTT

[ustrax]

I tossed around a variety of ideas as to where this thread ought to go, and finally decided it should go here.

Curious...
Before reaching this topic I was reading this...:
http://www.astronautix.com/craftfam/martions.htm

[Guest_MarkG_*]

Neat! I'd read some of the Mars stuff on the astronautix site before, but never seen a page that listed all the plans like that.

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

Slighly related: Michael J. Neufeld had article, "'Space superiority': Wernher von Braun's campaign for a nuclear-armed space station, 1946–1956," which was published in the February 2006 issue of Space Policy. For non-subscribers, ScienceDirect and Elsevier are offering temporary free online access (for the rest of the year) to that and all of the articles in that issue.

[Stephen]

In fact, it's arguable that the whole program is fundamentally broken because they're building another 'one size fits all' spacecraft which is too big for ISS, too big for the Moon and probably not even the right size for Mars... a smaller capsule launched on a commercial expendable booster would be vastly cheaper and eliminate most of the expensive NASA workforce.

But wouldn't a smaller capsule also be less capable, if only in the sense that if you wanted to send the same number of people up--whether to the Moon or elsewhere--as the large capsule could carry you would need to launch more of them using more of those commercial expendable booster?

That is, while a smaller capsule might be cheaper in the short term in the longer run it would be more expensive because you would need more of them to do the same job.

One of the reasons airlines started using Jumbo jets was because they found it cheaper to fly 400 people from (say) New York to London in one go on a single Boeing 747 than to use 4 smaller 100-passenger aircraft to fly those same 400 people across in smaller batches. Those savings they could then pass on to their customers.

======
Stephen

[Mariner9]

The "capsule is the wrong size" argument always seemed a bit odd to me also. "Too big for ISS" never made any sense to me, since a six man crew seems essential in order to make the mission model even half way economical. I suppose the too big might also refer to the service module being oversized for an Earth orbital mission if it is designed to also fufill a Lunar requirement. And desiging Orion so that can have an Earth orbital version, and a Lunar sortie design, seemed to be good engineering and economic sense. Why design two entirely different vehicles for those two missions if you can avoid it?

I could easily be wrong about this, but I have the impression that the "capsule is the wrong size" argument seems to be coming from a group that was advocating using private industry to provide crew exchange for ISS. If so, I would take their argument with a grain of salt, since they might have an ax to grind.

I have heard a number of compelling criticisms on the Orion design, mostly revolving around the CLV and not Orion itself. I'd be interested to know if the complaints about the Orion vehicle design are coming from sources other than the "loosing bidder" And if there is more detail other than the blanket "it's the wrong size" argument that I hear the most often.

Again, there may be more to this, but I keep hearing the same limited argument offered with no supporting evidence.

[Guest_MarkG_*]

From what I remember, ISS is supposed to have a maximum crew size of about six people, so six is certainly too big for crew transfer unless you plan to rotate the entire crew.

But it's more than that. A CEV of half the size could be launched on a commerical launcher rather than requiring NASA to build an entirely new and untried launcher of their own: that would save vast billions of dollars and several years of development work. Even if you really need to transfer that many people you could simply fly twice as often, which would tend to reduce costs further through mass production savings.

Alternatively, you could just buy Soyuz flights and save even more.

And desiging Orion so that can have an Earth orbital version, and a Lunar sortie design, seemed to be good engineering and economic sense.

Why? Apollo had a similar problem: it was designed for lunar flights, which made it far larger than required for Earth-orbital use and vastly overpowered. Had orbital flights continued past ASTP they were going to do substantial redesign work to turn it into something more suited to that role.

The CEV is even worse, because it's sized for a Mars program which will probably never be funded, when its primary use will be low Earth orbit... it's huge compared to the Apollo CSM, which could already carry five people if it had to.

As for economics, if the CEV provides employment for all the shuttle staff and flies twice a year, you're looking at around two billion dollars a flight.

Finally, I believe ISS is supposed to reach its design lifetime around 2016, and it's looking increasingly unlikely that the CEV will be flying much before then!