Author Topic: Lawmakers produce Bill to extend shuttle to 2015, utilize CxP, advance HLV  (Read 300213 times)

Offline Lonestar1

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How do you honestly expect us to get from where we are today to what you just described above, in less time than the "POR", yet for less money?

By doing things more cost-effectively, of course. Which isn't very hard to do, when the POR called for spending tens of billions of dollars to replace the Space Shuttle with a system that was more expensive.

Progress does not mean stopping everything for some unspecified amount of time and then having someone, somewhere at some point in the future arbitrarily declaring that the "game-changing technologies" are now here and that all of the sudden we just move in mass exodus into the solar system.

No, that wouldn't be progress -- that would be the Plan of Record. NASA was going to shut down the Space Shuttle, drop the International Space Station into the ocean, just so it could send its few remaining astronauts to the Moon in a giant space capsule. Except there was no game-changing technology.

Under General Bolden's plan, NASA will continue to operate the International Space Station, enhance its abilities with new research facilities like the long-planned animal centrifuge, and possibly expand the station with new inflatible modules. Commercial space transportation providers will shorten the gap in American spaceflight to ISS, and competition from multiple companies will help keep costs down. NASA will work with private companies to develop orbital propellant depots that will reduce or eliminate the need for new, expensive heavy lift vehicles for missions to the inner solar system. Companies like SpaceX, Boeing, and Bigelow will be developing capsules and modules that will be readily adaptable to interplanetary missions. Centennial Challenges will be encouraging the development of new companies and new ideas. Commercial ReUsable Suborbital Research will make space research available to scientists who could never afford it before. NASA's Near Earth Asteroid programs will seek out and develop methods of deflecting asteroid threats, thus avoiding possible global exctinction events.

Does that not seem worth doing?



Offline Dasun

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Lonestar1, I wished I lived in your world as I rather consider the reality will be no BEO HSF by NASA for decades to come.  All I see is Commercial LEO Taxis to ISS and steadily reducing NASA budgets.
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Offline ChrisSpaceCH

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Lonestar1, I wished I lived in your world as I rather consider the reality will be no BEO HSF by NASA for decades to come.  All I see is Commercial LEO Taxis to ISS and steadily reducing NASA budgets.

Welcome to reality. Isn't that what Analyst and others here (and sometimes even me) have been saying for ages?

Sucks to always be right... :P

Offline MATTBLAK

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Lonestar1, I wished I lived in your world as I rather consider the reality will be no BEO HSF by NASA for decades to come.  All I see is Commercial LEO Taxis to ISS and steadily reducing NASA budgets.

Welcome to reality. Isn't that what Analyst and others here (and sometimes even me) have been saying for ages?

Sucks to always be right... :P

"Constellation" was virtually the last chance to get going from LEO -- but of course, many of us on this fine forum (and elsewhere) said as long as 3, maybe even 4 years ago that they (NASA, Griffin etc) were getting it wrong and that it would all end in tears. "Sucks to be right" is almost an understatement... :( :( :(

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Offline Lonestar1

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A Shuttle-Derived Heavy Lift Vehicle is capable of lowering costs to LEO to below $3,000 per kilogram. And those numbers are all based on the existing 4-seg costs, the existing SSME costs, existing ET costs (modified) and existing launch operations costs, so they are extremely high-confidence costing figures from an active, existing, program

The costs of the active program are why it's possible to state with very high confidence that a Shuttle-Derived Vehicle won't be cheap. Basing a future launch system on existing high-cost components is a bug, not a feature.

Given the R&D costs and very low flight rate, it's hard to justify investment in any super heavy lifter. Adding the maintenance costs of the Shuttle infrastructure only makes it worse.

There is absolutely nothing in the US now, or currently planned (including Falcon-9 and Falcon-9 Heavy), which even hopes to get launch costs down below that level.

You're obviously not familar with the full range of plans that are out there. Falcon 9 is not the only concept, and it's certainly not the cheapest.

Capsules and expendable rockets are not the only way to get into space. They're a stop-gap at best, a dead-end at worst.

Another potential saving would be to commercialize the SD-HLV solution, turning the whole operation over to the contractors and reducing NASA oversight considerably.   If operated in a very similar "hands off" milestone-based manner to CRS and CCDev, the cost savings for an SD-HLV could be as much as 40% off the figure listed above.   That's $1,800 per kg to LEO.   That would certainly qualify as "game changing" in my book.

There's no way a Shuttle-derived Vehicle could ever be commercialized without massive government subsidies.

Extremely expensive rockets are not a game-changing technology. Unless the game you're talking about is killing off space development for another 50 years. 




Offline Lonestar1

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Lonestar1, I wished I lived in your world as I rather consider the reality will be no BEO HSF by NASA for decades to come.  All I see is Commercial LEO Taxis to ISS and steadily reducing NASA budgets.

Yes, this world is much less sucky than the mirror universe. Tell me, does your Spock still have his beard?

Offline neilh

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If you are accelerating an already-planned milestone, you are paying the customer to deliver sooner than originally negotiated. Thus, you are changing the requirements.

Well since the original milestone targets have already come and gone, that's somewhat a mute point.

AND it's a convenient way of 're-branding' an existing issue so that's passes.

Of course with a shuttle extension we don't need an accelerated cargo schedule...  ;)  (we save $312M) !

Darn logic!  ;)

The logic is to spend an additional $2.4B a year to save $312M?

(Again, I support a short shuttle extension, but primarily in the interest of mitigating the impact on the workforce)
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Offline Lonestar1

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Lonestar1 how is a SD HLV not game changing enough for you? 

An SD HLV is game changing, the same way a broken leg is game changing. We need to make human spaceflight cheaper, not more expensive.

We could have built the ISS for a fraction of what was spent using space shuttles if we had it 15 years ago.

Not that old chestnut again. ISS has a total launch weight of almost 800,000 pounds. Even if it were feasible to build a rocket that big, and you could find a place to launch it from, what would you do with it afterward? And what are you going to do when you decide you want to build something larger than ISS? Develop an even bigger rocket?

Furthermore, if we had launched ISS on the Mother Of All Rockets, we would not have learned anything about space assembly, which is probably the biggest return we have gotten from ISS.

Either we're serious about space development, or we aren't. If you believe mankind should never have more than one space station, never build anything more ambitious than ISS, and never learn how to work in space, then a super heavy lifter might be a good idea. I don't believe that.

Offline Namechange User

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So how many of the recent posters here actually work in this business?  How many know what it really takes to get into space?  How many really understand the engineering, support, financing, etc?

I do.  I'm tired of hearing amateurs go around playing "armchair quaterback" and using words like "more cost effective", "game-changing", "it won't be hard to do", "unleasing the power of commercial space" when you don't provide anything more than throwing out buzz words and stones at everyone else and clearly you have no frame of reference from which to intelligently speak
« Last Edit: 03/11/2010 07:31 am by OV-106 »
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Offline Namechange User

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If you are accelerating an already-planned milestone, you are paying the customer to deliver sooner than originally negotiated. Thus, you are changing the requirements.

Well since the original milestone targets have already come and gone, that's somewhat a mute point.

AND it's a convenient way of 're-branding' an existing issue so that's passes.

Of course with a shuttle extension we don't need an accelerated cargo schedule...  ;)  (we save $312M) !

Darn logic!  ;)

The logic is to spend an additional $2.4B a year to save $312M?

(Again, I support a short shuttle extension, but primarily in the interest of mitigating the impact on the workforce)

Where did you get those numbers from?  Are those the most current projections on what it would take to run the shuttle program?  Did you get that from an official source?  Does that take into account any synergies from a potential SDHLV or does that factor out the infrastructure cost that must be paid regardless?

The answer is it does not.

Furthermore, we do not know what we are exactly going to get with COTS.  Throwing more money at it for the sake of doing so at this point because the powers that be are scared out of their pants knowing the terrible mistake about to be made is not is not adequate justification when you have an operational vehicle now that was always meant to do the job in the first place.
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Offline Namechange User

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The answer to your question is in the question itself.  How do you honestly expect us to get from where we are today to what you just described above, in less time than the "POR", yet for less money?

By having multiple players working the field, each with its own set of innovations and drives, you can accomplish far more than a single player, even if that player is the Federal government. Also, as private industry and capitalism works by different rules than the Feds, you have more varied mechanisms for making things happen; eg: Federal government could have never delivered Iridium for $25M, yet free enterprise did.

Any legislation that works to undermine this new commercial process is simply working to preserve the status quo of $10K/kg launch costs; I believe that to be LoneStar1's concern. The European's have shown us that competition in the launch market works: they match the going rate of $4K/kg despite having high labor costs, socialized health care, etc, etc. We can do it as well.

Furthermore, to use your examples above, does the computer or aviation industries stop doing what they were doing for an unspecified amount of time to go off and chase something new or do they follow on evolutionary approach and build on what has come before it and use that experience?

Actually, there are several examples of game-changing technology that have transformed entire industries: the transistor and the jet engine are an excellent examples. A priori these technological innovations are impossible to predict; what is important is to foster an environment where money and resources are devoted to the search for them -- exactly the opposite of what the "PoR" was doing with its emphasis on tried and true, and its continual budget raids.

Your arguments are irrelevant.  Nothing anyone can say will change that.

On your second point, if you actually read the post before trying to jump all over it, you would see that the transitor and jet engine are not good examples.  We did not stop using vacuum tubes in everything to go invent the transistor or did not stop flying planes in order to go invent the jet engine.  With this current plan that is what we are doing....quiting for then someone, at some point to then decide we can proceed.  In addition this has nothing to do with the "POR". 
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Offline Namechange User

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How do you honestly expect us to get from where we are today to what you just described above, in less time than the "POR", yet for less money?

By doing things more cost-effectively, of course. Which isn't very hard to do, when the POR called for spending tens of billions of dollars to replace the Space Shuttle with a system that was more expensive.

Progress does not mean stopping everything for some unspecified amount of time and then having someone, somewhere at some point in the future arbitrarily declaring that the "game-changing technologies" are now here and that all of the sudden we just move in mass exodus into the solar system.

No, that wouldn't be progress -- that would be the Plan of Record. NASA was going to shut down the Space Shuttle, drop the International Space Station into the ocean, just so it could send its few remaining astronauts to the Moon in a giant space capsule. Except there was no game-changing technology.

Under General Bolden's plan, NASA will continue to operate the International Space Station, enhance its abilities with new research facilities like the long-planned animal centrifuge, and possibly expand the station with new inflatible modules. Commercial space transportation providers will shorten the gap in American spaceflight to ISS, and competition from multiple companies will help keep costs down. NASA will work with private companies to develop orbital propellant depots that will reduce or eliminate the need for new, expensive heavy lift vehicles for missions to the inner solar system. Companies like SpaceX, Boeing, and Bigelow will be developing capsules and modules that will be readily adaptable to interplanetary missions. Centennial Challenges will be encouraging the development of new companies and new ideas. Commercial ReUsable Suborbital Research will make space research available to scientists who could never afford it before. NASA's Near Earth Asteroid programs will seek out and develop methods of deflecting asteroid threats, thus avoiding possible global exctinction events.

Does that not seem worth doing?




Why is it not very hard to do?  Give me specifics.  Define "more cost effective".  Seems fairly subjective to me. 

Define game-changing technology.  Who decides what is that and what is not that?  Clearly some may think something is, some may not.  Who's right?  You can't use past examples of breakthroughs either because you have history to validate them.  You are a program manager and it your job to go make "game-changing" technology.  Where do you start?  What are your objectives?  How long will it take before you have results?  What will your needed budget profile be for how many years in order to make it "game-changing"?  Once it is invented, how long will you require to validate it, transfer it to another entity so that it can be used in an operational state?

For the rest of that paragraph, where exactly do you get all of that?  There is no documentation except the budget, which is a proprosal from the Administration and uses only some of what you mention above as "possible examples".  It specifically states that.  There are no contracts for any of this and therefore you cannot say any of that will happen.
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Offline shuttlefanatic

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By having multiple players working the field, each with its own set of innovations and drives, you can accomplish far more than a single player, even if that player is the Federal government. Also, as private industry and capitalism works by different rules than the Feds, you have more varied mechanisms for making things happen; eg: Federal government could have never delivered Iridium for $25M, yet free enterprise did.


I agree with some of your sentiments, but let's get the facts straight:

The original Iridium program bankrupted itself after reportedly spending in excess of $5B lofting satellites.  A group of private investors bought the remnants for the aforementioned $25M.  Good deal for them.

It would be rather interesting if after NASA and the ESA spending $100B+ on the ISS, a private investment group could eventually offer to take over operations for a few billion instead of having it be deorbited.

I'm a big fan of Burt Rutan's accomplishments with the SpaceShipOne program.  The rumored cost of the program was $20M.  Some NASA employees down the highway at DFRC supposedly said "Heh.  For $20M we would have delivered a feasibility study that said it wasn't possible!"  But the price tag for Virgin Galactic's commercial venture is $200k/ride.  And that's just for a sub-orbital flight. 

Call me a pessimist.  I believe it's going to years - decades - before private industry will loft a viable man-rated orbital spacecraft.  And certainly not without some - er - casualties along the way.  Men on Mars?  Probably not in my lifetime (I'm 36).  There's just no political will, and therefore no money, to accomplish that.  I hope to be proven wrong...

Offline Lonestar1

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Why is it not very hard to do?  Give me specifics.  Define "more cost effective".  Seems fairly subjective to me. 

No, cost effectiveness is not "fairly subjective". It's objective and quantifiable. Someone "working in this business" should know that.

Sorry to be blunt, but since you elected to insult me and others, I don't feel inclined to give you a remedial class in engineering economics. As I used to tell students, I'm not here to do your homework.

It isn't hard to be more cost-effective than the Plan of Record because the cost of the PoR is so high and the results so low that almost any plan would score higher. Even simply continuing to fly the Shuttle.

Define game-changing technology. 

Define polite request, or did you miss the class on common courtesy as well?

If you don't know what game-changing technology is, I don't think I can tell you. I could give you the game-theoretic definition, but that would be like telling you the color blue is between 4100 and 4900 angstroms. If you can't see it for yourself, you'll never really know. It's "the vision thing."

Reading Clayton Christenson's book, "The Innovator's Dilemma," might be some help.

As for who decides which technologies are game-changing, the answer is Major General Charles Bolden, or those he delegates the responsibility to.

You are a program manager and it your job to go make "game-changing" technology.  Where do you start?  What are your objectives?  How long will it take before you have results?  What will your needed budget profile be for how many years in order to make it "game-changing"?  Once it is invented, how long will you require to validate it, transfer it to another entity so that it can be used in an operational state?   

That's not exactly my job, but you are very close. Beyond that -- I'm sorry, but there is no "cookbook approach." Every case is different. That's what makes it so challenging.

For the rest of that paragraph, where exactly do you get all of that?  There is no documentation except the budget, which is a proprosal from the Administration and uses only some of what you mention above as "possible examples".  It specifically states that.  There are no contracts for any of this and therefore you cannot say any of that will happen.

Just because you haven't seen a document doesn't mean it doesn't exist, just because something isn't written down doesn't mean it hasn't been decided, and just because something is in writing doesn't always mean it's true. I learn a lot more from talking to people than gets printed in the funny papers. I didn't say any of that was going to happen -- the old guard and ther special interests could screw it all up -- but that's the vision, and it's a vision worth fighting for.

Offline psloss

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Some additional comments from John Shannon in the SpacePolitics blog;
http://www.spacepolitics.com/2010/03/10/hanging-on-to-the-shuttle/

Those are in the comments section to the blog.  Posts are linked directly, but you can search for "John Shannon wrote @ March 10th, 2010 at 11:04 pm"

Offline MP99

There is absolutely nothing in the US now, or currently planned (including Falcon-9 and Falcon-9 Heavy), which even hopes to get launch costs down below that level.

You're obviously not familar with the full range of plans that are out there. Falcon 9 is not the only concept, and it's certainly not the cheapest.

Capsules and expendable rockets are not the only way to get into space. They're a stop-gap at best, a dead-end at worst.

Is this hush-hush, or should I have heard of this project?

How far along are they?

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Offline kkattula

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Some additional comments from John Shannon in the SpacePolitics blog;
http://www.spacepolitics.com/2010/03/10/hanging-on-to-the-shuttle/

Those are in the comments section to the blog.  Posts are linked directly, but you can search for "John Shannon wrote @ March 10th, 2010 at 11:04 pm"


Key points I took out of that:

1)  He's not disputing Garver's statement. More putting it in context. The sense in SSP is it's too late to extend, unless an awful lot changes, including extra money.

2) Re-hiring workers for Shuttle extension would only be conscionable if an SD HLV was to be developed in parallel.

The Senator Hutchison bill seems to be cognizant of both points.


Offline Ben the Space Brit

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There is absolutely nothing in the US now, or currently planned (including Falcon-9 and Falcon-9 Heavy), which even hopes to get launch costs down below that level.

You're obviously not familar with the full range of plans that are out there. Falcon 9 is not the only concept, and it's certainly not the cheapest.

Capsules and expendable rockets are not the only way to get into space. They're a stop-gap at best, a dead-end at worst.

Is this hush-hush, or should I have heard of this project?

How far along are they?

I think that he's referring (initially) to DreamChaser and (ultimately) to hypothetical fantasy RLVs.  They are all entirely pretty PowerPoint illustrations and, on occasion, full-scale carbon-fiber mock-ups.

Ten years away, minimum.
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Offline robertross

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Of course with a shuttle extension we don't need an accelerated cargo schedule...  ;)  (we save $312M) !

Darn logic!  ;)

The logic is to spend an additional $2.4B a year to save $312M?

(Again, I support a short shuttle extension, but primarily in the interest of mitigating the impact on the workforce)

As a follow-on to OV-106's later response (even though this has been said and hashed out so many times now):

1) It's not $2.4B, but even if it was it's not simply about workforce. We face a serious shortfall in logistics to ISS even with existing commercial cargo contracts.

2) Ramping up to greater ISS utilization means more logistics. If we have a shortfall now, this will add increased pressure.

3) The ORU issue. It's been debated so often now I see no need to do that again. If they find an additional array is needed, best thing to fly it up there is the shuttle, second is a SSPDM using a SD-HLV which can also accomodate MPLMs and other pre-made shuttle carrier devices & payloads.

4) Direct (excuse the pum) synergy to a BEO HLV.

Now we can go back and forth and pick apart each post ad-finitum, but those are the realities. So the $312M saved is correct with respect to a shuttle extension. It also helps moving to a simple SD-HLV like J-120 or J-130 for now.

Offline phantomdj

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phantom,
I believe he actually said that there would be a two year gap in tank production, not the flights themselves.

He knows better than anyone, that the manifest can be moved around to cover that gap, should it be necessary.


But nobody is actually proposing to build any more new ET's.   The only thing we need, is to finish and fly all FIVE of the ones for which all the parts are currently in-stock and which are in various stages of completion right now, but which are not currently manifested to fly:

Current Manifest:

ET-135 = STS-131
ET-136 = STS-132
ET-137 = STS-134
ET-138 = STS-133
ET-122 = LON-335 (could be re-tasked to STS-135)

Additional In-Stock Tank Assemblies Which Can Be Readied To Fly:

ET-139 (in-stock, partially assembled)
ET-140 (in-stock, partially assembled)
ET-141 (in-stock, partially assembled)
ET-95 (in-stock, almost complete)

And if you look on L2 there is talk of another fully-built LWT tank which can also be made ready to fly, but I'll leave that to L2 members to learn all those details as they are still very fresh.

Ross.

I agree but the reason I asked about the extra tanks was that John Shannon, the shuttle program manager makes it sound like there would be a 2 year flight gap when there would not be.

He said, "Right now we estimate that gap would be about two years from when we're told (to start) to when we'd have the first external tank rolling off the assembly line…You could address that in many different ways, by slowing down the shuttle program until that two years was up or you'd just accept that gap and do other things."

He doesn’t even mention the extra tanks in partial completion and makes it sound like we would be starting from scratch.  It is kind of misleading to the public, the press and congress.  With these extra tanks a slow down might not even be necessary although prudent.
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