Unaffordable and Unsustainable, NASA’s failing Earth-to-orbit Transportation Strategy Options

[David]

There's no question but that corporations have had and will continue to have a major role in American space-related industries. Whether they are ready, willing, or able to pursue initiatives in space exploration, manned and unmanned, where there are scientific objectives but no profit, is another question -- and one which I don't see being answered in the affirmative. Moreover, I don't see how cutting NASA out of an area where private firms have shown little willingness to take an initiative does anything but kill the United States' role in space exploration altogether.

[Guest_DonPMitchell_*]

I think it depends on what you call space exploration. Would a corporation fund the MER rovers on Mars? Not likely, unless they were some future terriforming venture (as we discussed in another thread). But I can see LEO transport and space stations being privately funded.

I believe SFF is advocating policies that would turn over more control to private enterprise in areas where they are ready and willing to take it. For example, they are saying that NASA should buy LEO services to ISS from companies like Boeing and Lockheed, instead of developing CEV BLock 1. But they are not saying that NASA should stop development of CEV Block 2, the Moon and planetary vehicle.

[Guest_DonPMitchell_*]

I've been trying to find a link to the actual SFF whitepaper, and finally found it here: white paper

[Mariner9]

A very interesting white paper. I don't agree with a lot of it, in particular it seems to place an almost religous faith on every mention in the Presidential Commision report dealing with commercial resources for low Earth orbit access. Different people have been calling for space commercialization for decades, and the talk eventually seems to fizzle. If I were Dr Giffin I wouldn't want to put too many of my eggs in that basket either.

On the other hand, I think the white paper is dead on when it talks about the evolution of the CLV. What started out as a huge ammount of hardware inheritance has instead evolved into an entirely new vehicle from the ground up, with the exception of the solid rocket motor casings. Not the internals of the motor, which are rather critically altered with the move to the 5 segment design, just the basic shell. At this point I think serious consideration should be given to an evolved Delta IV or Atlas V design for the CLV.

I diverge from their conclusions again when it argues against the heavy lift Ares V. I just don't envision an evolved Delta or Atlas getting much past 100,000 pounds of payload to LEO (which would be double what they can manage today). And the diagrams of the uprated EELVs seem to show a lot of strap ons and maybe even extra staging to acheive this. Every time you add a component to a vehicle you are adding a lot of extra cost, and I seriously doubt the payload cost-per-pound would be all that attractive. Anyone remember what happened when the Titan II morphed into the III and into the III-E, 34D and ultimately the Titan IV? That was one heck of an expensive, and complicated, beast.


Plus, 100K payload is somewhat below what I think would be considered Heavy-Lift.

What this leaves you with is a requirement for all deep space missions to have a large number of assembly flights, with boosters whose cost efficiency is in considerable doubt.

No thanks, I think I'd rather see us invest in some sort of heavy lift like the Ares V.

Ultimately I think Dr Griffin's vision will have to be modified somewhat, but unlike all of the other shuttle follow-on attempts in the last 25 years, I think his will suceed. And even if all we get is Apollo on steroids, 50 years later, at least we got something.

[The Messenger]

There has been a lot of atropy in the the US rocket program...and progress is slow - the decision to go with the CEV system was made about a year ago, but the funding was not released until ~April. The engineering teams are just coming together. Still, isn't it either too late to start over, or too early to declare the effort a fiscal nightmare?

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

... From my own experiences in industry, I don't believe private enterprise is simply people thinking about profit, nor do I believe that burocrats and intellectuals are totally selfless in their motivations.

Yes this is true, I am aware that we cannot do manicheism, seeing one of the systems as bad and the other as perfect. This is one of the reasons why I don't want to lead the discution in this direction (even if it was on topic on this forum) and prefered to say that the best choice is to have the right people, clever enough, with enough dedication to their goal and enough awareness of their responsibilities in every field (science, technology, economy, environment, ethical and social impact...)

With my opinion a good project leader would be somebody honest (with himself as well as with others), having some basic culture in many fields, without being a specialist in any (in the concern that a specialist could be blind to other fields). The team itself would gather some other peoples of the same kind, together with several specialists, advisors in every field involved. A project can be discussed, but once started, it must go on even against common obstacles, not depending on minor policy changes. (But we could be able to cancel a project encountering large unexpected problems, like the european Hermes shuttle, which quickly appeared much more expensive than expected). The psychology interaction into such a team is also important. As soon as a relation problem appears, it must be solved, or the person who creates it replaced. (I say this, because my only professional failure in 7 years of working for the space industry came from a little unexpected technical problem, that I was perfectly able to solve, but the responsible engineer was unable to incorporate such aleas in his planning, and he mmediately went conflictual, making of the affair an affair of fault and nearby sabotaging).

[dvandorn]

I think it's important to note that private industry *did* build most of the spacecraft and launch vehicles that the U.S. has deployed over the past 50 years. NASA, DoD or some other federal agency (like, for example, NOAA) were the customers who purchased the spacecraft and launch vehicles, and used them.

The difference between the existing paradigm and the one the SFF seems to be urging is that the federal government has provided these private-industry contractors with detailed specifications for these vehicles (a "we design them, you build them" approach), and has also provided high-level program management. But the manufacture and detailed, day-to-day project management has, in most cases, been done by private industry.

I think this made more sense in the 1960s, when a man like Max Faget and his band of engineering wizards were capable of designing pretty much every manned spacecraft we ever thought we'd need. But the bureaucracy has overwhelmed the engineering ethos at NASA, and I will grant you that perhaps it's time to distribute the responsibilities for the design work out to the industries who have been making the vehicles all along.

Actually, the one area in which this has *not* been the case has been in planetary probes. JPL (with the aid of a number of subcontractors) has actually built a majority of America's lunar and planetary probes, along with a number of other spacecraft. More recently, other NASA centers (such as the APL) have gotten into the act, as well. Building unmanned exploratory spacecraft seems to be something that NASA does best -- at least, I've seen no hue and cry that private industry ought to co-opt that portion of NASA's portfolio...

I know it betrays my rather liberal political leanings, but I truly believe that there are some things that governments can do better than private industry -- and that there are many things that *only* governments can do, since private industry (at least in a capitalist society) will only ever do things that have short-term profit potential. Some things really *need* to be done that only have long-term profit potential (or none whatsoever, at least economically), and only governments can do those things effectively. (Heck, only governments will ever even *try* to do those things.)

At least, that's my $.02 on the subject...

-the other Doug

[mchan]

In the launcher industry, governments bring money to enable longer term and bigger developments. The Atlas V and Delta IV EELV's are a case in point.

Before the EELV program, Lockheed and McDonnell-Douglas were spending their own money to develop the Atlas III and Delta III. These were incremental changes to Atlas II and Delta II that increased payload, and in Atlas III case, increased reliability and reduced operations cost. In comparison to the EELV effort, the III's were relatively small investments made to increase profits in near-future sales.

Without the US military bringing a billion dollars to the table, the manufacturers were not inclined to develop substantially different vehicles like the EELV's eventhough they promised further reductions in operations cost and increased payloads but over a much longer term. If the manufacturers had a billion of their own money to invest, they would put it into areas that offer a faster rate of return and not in something like the EELV's.

[Guest_DonPMitchell_*]

There certainly is a lot of government involvement in the launch industry. The US military in particular consideres it strategically essential to have multiple vendors. Europe granted a monopoly on commercial launching to Arianespace.

I agree with Richard that in theory a committee made up of ideal people is best. But I've never seen such a thing in my life. Coming out of the research community (in computer science) I am very cynical about the kinds of people who join powerful committees, and the self-serving behavior of those bodies. Industry often is forced to ignore or actively impede imcompetent committees who gain power (e.g., W3C). I've just never seen creative behavior, and I think it is because truly creative people are elsewhere -- they are tinkering in the laboratory and the factory, not serving on committees.

I don't see atropy in the US industry. We don't have an Apollo program going on now, but nobody else seems to be doing better. China's rocket technology is crude. Ariane's use of LH2 is nice, but the Vulcain engines are not particularly modern (still tinkering with gas-generator and gas-expander cycle engines). The Delta IV seems to be a solid design, all LOX/LH2, cheap disposable staged-combustion engines with some distinctly Russian design tricks.

I disagree with the SFF white paper in areas where probably many folks here would not. I'm tired of politically motivated agendas in space, like ISS or Bush's Moon/Mars programs. I'm hoping commercial enterprise will find more intersting things to do. A money-making space station than regular people can visit would make ISS irrelevant.

[Mariner9]

I've felt for years that if you really want to see human presence in space get affordable (or at least a lot cheaper) the best way to accomplish that is create a tourism market. Profit is such a great motivator.

I've really been wondering what will happen when the six man Kliper (now the evolved Soyuz) comes into being. I don't see it very likely that the US will permit tourists on the CEV, but I'd put money on the Russians taking paying passengers.

Combine the Bigelow inflatable modules with Russian taxi service, and the first orbital 'hotel' is born.

If I were a betting man, I'd give this scenario (or something like it) a 50/50 chance of happening in the next 20 years.

[David]

I've really been wondering what will happen when the six man Kliper (now the evolved Soyuz) comes into being.

I thought Roskosmos had cancelled plans for the Kliper vehicle, just in the past couple of weeks.

[Stephen]

I'm hoping commercial enterprise will find more intersting things to do. A money-making space station than regular people can visit would make ISS irrelevant.

Let's face it. "Regular people" will not be going into orbit any time soon. Space stations--hopefully of a profitably money-making kind--may well get sent up there, but as long as the cost of visiting them requires winning a lottery or two first they and space travel will remain the playground of millionaires and astronauts on government payrolls rather than "regular people".

In fact by the time the cost does come down far enough for "regular people" to go up the ISS will probably have been designated an historical monument.

(In any case an orbital tourist trap does not strike me as the sort of place where much science is likely to be done. How many science laboratories are there in Las Vegas?)

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Stephen

[Marz]

(In any case an orbital tourist trap does not strike me as the sort of place where much science is likely to be done. How many science laboratories are there in Las Vegas?)
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Stephen

This is precisely why I don't get excited about private spaceflight missions. How many ground-based telescopes are private? If there are tourists in space, how does that do anything interesting? At best, it might fuel more interest into spaceflight... at worst, it will just clutter LOE with McCrap.

[Guest_DonPMitchell_*]

If space is limited to academic science experiments and taxpayer funding, then exploration will never proceed beyond the level we see now -- small robotic probes sent every few years. On the other hand, if private enterprise lowers the cost of reaching space, then science benefits as well.

How much interesting new science is being done by ISS? Low Earth orbit is not a mysterious region today, and Soviet space stations have done years of human, animal and plant studies. The science-per-dollar is not impressive. It's particularly an issue for Americans, who have paid a disproportionate amount for this orbiting boondoggle.

I am both interested to see what private enterprise can do, and I would also like to see the political space burocracy decline. I question whether NASA is even allocating money for science in an effective manner.

[Guest_Analyst_*]

Criticising the ISS and the Shuttle as being boring, going around in LEO endlessly and having nothing to do with exploration is en vouge these days. Too complex, expensive, useless ... Like anything the government does. I wonder if the same will be said after the initial lunar (mars, pick your destination) landing too. Actually it has been after Apollo 11.

Assuming manned and unmanned spaceflight should continue, the question is how?

Private enterprises want profit. Period. This makes our economic system turn. You may not like it, but you have to accept it. Even more, they want profit fast and don't like investment cycles longer than 5 to 10 (?) years. In reality they are calling for the government much earlier because they fear risk (e.g. power plants, oil exploration, Airbus 380, Boeing 787 ...) This rules out private cooporations from almost everything interesting in spaceflight right now:

- building a 400 ton structure in LEO and using it for science and learning (gee, even the government is pulling out)
- studying climate chance
- flying probes to planets and moons and do scientific research there
- fly manned missions to the moon and beyond
- study (insert your object of interest)
- ...

Well, if you want tourists, fine. But this is that bores me. I'm not interested in cruiseships at Antarctica, but in the station at the south pole and the science being done there. And who is doing this? Not the private sector.

I am not against tourists in space (they just bore me). And if this lowers launch prices, science will benefit, great. The private sector should do this. They should do all the other things, too. They claim they can do better than NASA. If so, prove it. If it's true, NASA will be history and the government will be happy to buy their services and get them cheaper. But calling the very same time for money from the evil government (and NASA, who is a part of it) is a little cheap.

Analyst

PS: Does anyone remember the Landsat privatisation fiasco in the 1980ies? No profit, I guess.