NASA's constellation program

[aeroeng212]

What do you think about NASA's new constellation program for getting man back to the moon?

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/exploration/spacecraft/index.html

A lot of people feel it's "beating a dead horse", but I think it's about time for NASA to try and create a presence on the moon (for research purposes).

I'm not so sure about Mars though...

 

[grvaughan]

That's a good question, and I've written about it several times on my blog AeroGo [

http://www.xanga.com/AeroGo

].

In principle, by taking a more modular approach that emphasizes heavy lift, NASA has set out in the right direction

http://www.xanga.com/AeroGo/352041143/item.html

Nevertheless, there has been a key flaw in NASA's strategy that must be addressed if we are to see any lasting success (at least from the government's program):

http://www.xanga.com/AeroGo/452810264/energias-iss-stance-points-out-key-flaw-in-nasa-strategy.html

This flaw has been the failure to put a priority on an ongoing space technology-development program that tests out high-risk technologies in space before they are used on a costly manned or unmanned operational program.

I argued that any organization doing large-scale space research and exploration such as NASA or ESA needs to have two sorts of programs:

"'Operational' (manned and robotic) programs should be based on proven 'building blocks'. A second, less expensive (largely unmanned) set of programs should be tasked with aggressively developing new spacecraft technologies. Exploration and scientific missions would be flown using both categories of hardware, with exploration and science goals being primary for operational hardware and secondary for developmental hardware."

Finally, I considered these issues further in a more recent post discussing Burt Rutan's criticisms of the program at the ISDC in Los Angeles

http://www.xanga.com/AeroGo/4825158...eshiptwo-progress-are-highlights-of-isdc.html

That post also deals with the manned/unmanned and Moon vs. Mars debates, which in my view are totally irrelevant if we are really planning to move out into the entire solar system. I do think the Moon ought to come first, with an aggressive technology development for an eventual manned Mars mission, in order to greatly lower the risk and cost.

Check out my aerospace site, AeroGo [

http://www.xanga.com/AeroGo

]

I also comment on technology in general, business, etc., on my blog
All Things [

http://allthings.blogsome.com/

]

 

[aeroeng212]

Cool site grvaughan!

I agree with NASA's HLV approach as well.
The moon should come first, but higher funding to NASA will be required before a permanent presence is established.
Many missions to the moon will be required, and even though the Ares rockets are a good start for the first mission back, I believe that something more cost effective will be required for the time that must be put in on the moon itself (too many mission require too many Ares rockets). Though, with the ISS in orbit possible this could be utilized for more effecient use of the Ares HLV (heavy-lift vehicle) that is required to house the new generation "LEM".

For information on Ares:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/exploration/spacecraft/index.html

 

[btrueblood]

Expect no increase in NASA funding due to lack of interest from Joe Sixpack (opinion polls)... until the Chinese land their moon explorers.

 

[aeroeng212]

I know- just being hopeful...

 

[grvaughan]

aeroeng212, glad you like AeroGo. It's interesting to see the Ares rendering. My wife used to work for John Frassanito, a long time ago.

It's good that Ares 1, to carry the CEV, will use a shuttle-derived SRB. Michael Griffin seemed to like that concept. I think intelligent use of legacy hardware, whether SRBs, J-2s, ETs, or whatever, is really mandatory.

We've got to build up an erector set of usable, modular parts that stay in production, get increasingly reliable, and are available to combine in various ways to meet different requirements. The last thing NASA needs on the launcher side (but not necessarily the spacecraft side) is to start with a clean sheet of paper.

Beyond that, building in improved performance margins will be key (since a vertical stack/launch escape should already address the aborts issue). As I understand it, the Atlas folks were looking at a growth path for the Atlas 5 that incorporated a steadily-increasing performance margin. I don't know if anything came of that (the EELV situation is confusing right now) but that's the right kind of philosophy.

In all, I must say I'm very relieved as I see NASA increasingly willing to use already-developed hardware, but the agency really must put a priority on space technology development, and not let its seed-corn get eaten when development budgets get tight!

• Check out my aerospace site, AeroGo [

http://www.xanga.com/AeroGo

]

• I also comment on technology in general, business, etc., on my blog All Things
[

http://allthings.blogsome.com/

]

 

[aeroeng212]

The "erector set" philosophy is the most efficient. It may allow missions sent up often enough for the permanent presence on the moon (without the unlikely increase in NASA's budget).

 

[grvaughan]

The key is managing (and thereby reducing) risk. People always get hung up on costs, but without effectively managing risks, both technical and program (or market) risks, reducing costs is impossible.

Of course, the key to controlling technical risks is to get control of the learning curve, and use it to advantage. Constantly re-inventing the wheel does just the opposite.

Like Google, we want to make a large number of high-risk, high-payoff, bets with small investments, and make a lot of inexpensive mistakes (and so learn alot) when we're working at the left side of the learning curve.

The business world is starting to understand this, and besides Peter Senge's books there's been good articles recently about intelligently/efficiently taking risks and making mistakes to achieve breakthroughs in both Harvard Business Review (June 06) and Business Week:

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_28/b3992001.htm

Because space technology demands some of the most extreme performance and therefore an especially high level of innovation, any viable space strategy must incorporate an efficient approach to a broad high-risk technology development program. There must be a cost-effective way to produce the many needed breakthroughs without breaking the bank.

I agree with the folks who argue we can do a lot more with the technology we've already got, but clearly we're going to have to have a lot more innovation to make human spaceflight to Mars, colonies, or most of the other stuff people talk about realistic.

At the same time, we must learn to operate efficiently at the right side of the learning curve, by managing operational program elements efficiently, which means finding ways both to reuse hardware for varying missions and to keep the overhead/engineering support costs down so the hardware can stay in production indefinitely.

• Check out my aerospace site, AeroGo [

http://www.xanga.com/AeroGo

]

• I also comment on technology in general, business, etc., on my blog All Things
[

http://allthings.blogsome.com/

]

 

[aeroeng212]

Interesting...

 

[aeroeng212]

Like Nabisco's management used to say, "Make mistakes faster!"

(in reference to getting ahead in the company-- seems like NASA could use the same philosophy heading into this moon campaign)

 

[grvaughan]

Well, you can't use this "make mistakes" approach on a manned program!

On the other hand, I suspect there would be a lot less contention between the manned and unmanned folks if we had an aggressive space technology program. One mission opportunity that particularly stands out was the prospect of flying a probe to Halley's Comet back in the 1980s.

Comet intercepts (or even flybys) are very difficult because of the plane change and velocities involved, and so projected costs for the mission (using chemical propulsion) were very high. While the U.S. debated a mission but didn't end up doing one, the Europeans are to be commended for going ahead with their Giotto probe.

This was an opportunity lost due to the lack of a sustained technology effort (i.e. the lack of a space-qualified solar electric propulsion system, despite 15 years of ground tests and Air Force flights). At the same time, it was perhaps the most compelling reason to restart such research, but the folks running NASA at the time seemed completely oblivious to this compelling-to-the-public opportunity to jump-start space technology work.

A decade earlier, the public had grasped the unique opportunity presented by the grand tour orbital alignment of the outer planets, and supported two programs that ended up being very successful - Pioneers 10 & 11 and Voyager 1 & 2.

The point is, with a sustained space technology effort, the planetary folks would get to fly some pretty far out missions a lot sooner and a lot more often, as these payloads piggybacked on advanced propulsion test spacecraft, etc.

Of course, to some extent NASA and others have done this sort of thing in the past 15 years, notably Clementine (Air Force) and the New Millennium spacecraft (NASA). This work needs to be given a high enough priority, however, to where its funding will be sustained even when budgets are tight.

Also, while the New Millennium Program

http://nmp.jpl.nasa.gov/

may well satisfy part of this need, more work needs to be done on potential manned technologies as well, such as nuclear thermal propulsion and Franklin Chang-Diaz' VASIMR project that has been squeezed by other priorities at JSC

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/vasimr_rocket_020807-1.html

but apparently is still progressing to some extent

http://www.isso.uh.edu/postdoc/2006/bering06.htm

.

• Check out my aerospace site, AeroGo [

http://www.xanga.com/AeroGo

]

• I also comment on technology in general, business, etc., on my blog All Things
[

http://allthings.blogsome.com/

]

 

[InteroperabilityFix]

VSE is not going to get us to Mars. The technology for a safe, reasonably fast interplanetary trip is not chemical rockets. As long as nuclear rockets are not developed, along with a cheap launcher to put them in LEO, we are stuck in the cislunar universe.

_______________________________________
Scientific/Engineering Code Exchange:

http://www.solvengineer.com

 

[rb1957]

if a man (in the non-gender specific sense) rated launcher is difficult to do, a nuke rated launcher is going to more difficult by a couple orders of magnitude.

 

[grvaughan]

Everything is difficult the first time you do it, that's what's prototyping is all about. I don't think it's even occurred to most of the public that the Space Shuttle is actually a prototype vehicle. It should have been called the X-__. At least Dyna-Soar was designated the X-20!

Of course, the other rockets we used, except for Saturn (which had the benefit of the previous experience) were pretty much derived from ICBMs, and even then they had a lot of problems in the early years.

That was part of the point of my earlier comments about the need for a stable technology development program - we DO need nuclear propulsion to go to Mars - even JFK understood that

http://astroprof.spaces.msn.com/blog/cns!9914389DC1F1ADC6!400.entry?txtName=Gordon&blogcs=end

- but it's crazy to think we're going to put folks on the first nuclear rocket and send them off to Mars.

Something that complex is likely going to need at least a couple of iterations. The first mission ought to be an ambitious outer planets probe, something like the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO) that was proposed a while back (though this was to use Nuclear electric, whereas nuclear thermal may warrant development first, and be more appropriate for manned missions, certainly). The next probably ought to be a scaled-up cargo rocket that could land supplies on Mars.

It's very hard to develop complex technology quickly; we still very much need to get out of the crash-program mindset of the 1960s Apollo program. If cost is at all an issue, then careful pacing of space technology R&D (not too quick, but consistent) is key.

• Check out my aerospace site, AeroGo [

http://www.xanga.com/AeroGo

]

• I also comment on technology in general, business, etc., on my blog All Things
[

http://allthings.blogsome.com/

]

 

[InteroperabilityFix]

I'm not advocating a nuclear launcher. A nuclear engine should be spaceborne.

There are methods to reduce the price of access to LEO which for some reason were never undertaken by the military-industrial complex, probably because they were interested in maintaining the status-quo of expensive, ICBM derived launchers.

One idea that was serioulsy investigating was the clustering of multiple identical stages in both circular and in-line arrangements on the same vehicle.
High parts commonality and high volume of manufacture would decrease the cost of such engines. Efficiency might not be equal to that of stages designed for specific flight regimes, but if the cost drops dramatically who cares about that?

Basically to increase your payload you'd add more stages which are identical to the core stage.

_______________________________________
Scientific/Engineering Code Exchange:

http://www.solvengineer.com

 

[InteroperabilityFix]

here's the link for one such promising project:

http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/otrag.htm

_______________________________________
Scientific/Engineering Code Exchange:

http://www.solvengineer.com

 

[grvaughan]

When I wrote, "it's crazy to think we're going to put folks on the first nuclear rocket and send them off to Mars" I meant from Earth orbit. I don't know of anyone who has ever advocated launching men to Mars directly from the Earth's surface.

I've been tracking commercial space since the mid 70s, and as far as I know the article you linked to is right that OTRAG was "the world's first commercial launcher development, production and launch company" (unless you count Arianespace; I don't recall when it was officially formed).

OTRAG really got into trouble when they went to Libya to test early versions of their launchers, but I guess it started well before then. It's too bad they didn't get to do much testing. I really haven't seen much about the technical merits of their concept.

While I knew that OTRAG had an unreasonable amount of hassles with various governments (which eventually drove them toward Kaddafi), the article surely makes it sound awful! It's not been uncommon for launch entrepreneurs to get pretty fed up with government policies, but I doubt any had it as bad as OTRAG did.

Has anyone seen a substantial independent analysis of their launch concept?

• Check out my aerospace site, AeroGo [

http://www.xanga.com/AeroGo

]

• I also comment on technology in general, business, etc., on my blog All Things
[

http://allthings.blogsome.com/

]

 

[InteroperabilityFix]

if Von Braun got on the boat, I'm sure OTRAG had some promise, even if it could be a case of him wanting to help a fellow German and promote a renaissance of German rocketry....btw I am not German

_______________________________________
Scientific/Engineering Code Exchange:

http://www.solvengineer.com

 

[grvaughan]

Well, you could've fooled me with a name like that ...

On the other hand, I guess Messerschmitt became part of MBB, which eventually merged (?) into Daimler/DASA, which became (?) part of EADS, or did I miss something somewhere along the way in the merger shell game?

If it's EADS, then it's still European and sort of German, at least until the Chinese revalue the Yuan and start buying everything in sight ...

Regarding von Braun, regardless of what you think of him - he was certainly a complex figure - it's hard to think of someone who was more quintessentially German, yet also so American.

I'm not German either, but I do admire their penchant for simplicity, which is an advantage in engineering, and I'm sure the simplicity and straightforward scalability of the OTRAG concept must have really appealed to von Braun.

• Check out my aerospace site, AeroGo [

http://www.xanga.com/AeroGo

]

• I also comment on technology in general, business, etc., on my blog All Things
[

http://allthings.blogsome.com/

]

 

[InteroperabilityFix]

Main point is, space can be accessed cheaper than what you are lead to believe by the current space program run by the military-industrial complex & NASA.

_______________________________________
Scientific/Engineering Code Exchange:

http://www.solvengineer.com