Quote from: clongton on 05/19/2017 01:00 amQuote from: Lars-J on 05/19/2017 12:46 amYes, but you said the funding was insufficient. I'm trying to keep SpaceX out of this - How much (accounting for NASA inefficiency) should they have to be sure to make good progress on SLS and Orion?My estimate is $6 to $7 billion and $3 to $4 billion respectively in order to function on a path that allowed continual progress at a pace that was respectable, accounting for the fact that the project would only ever actually see about 1/3 of it due to the way the contractors deal with government contracts.That would have kept SLS/Orion on a reasonable path to deployment. IMO it would already be flying test articles and boiler plates by now.Jupiter had a chance. Numbers sound about right. But ... no way to control those involved to make it happen.Once the monster was restarted, all bets were off. And still are.Add:With all the changes since, its now a completely different world than that of the J-130.If you knew what you know now then, what would you have done differently.
Quote from: Lars-J on 05/19/2017 12:46 amYes, but you said the funding was insufficient. I'm trying to keep SpaceX out of this - How much (accounting for NASA inefficiency) should they have to be sure to make good progress on SLS and Orion?My estimate is $6 to $7 billion and $3 to $4 billion respectively in order to function on a path that allowed continual progress at a pace that was respectable, accounting for the fact that the project would only ever actually see about 1/3 of it due to the way the contractors deal with government contracts.That would have kept SLS/Orion on a reasonable path to deployment. IMO it would already be flying test articles and boiler plates by now.
Yes, but you said the funding was insufficient. I'm trying to keep SpaceX out of this - How much (accounting for NASA inefficiency) should they have to be sure to make good progress on SLS and Orion?
If we are picking apart the history of SLS and asking why it didn't end up like Direct's Jupiter then we need to also look at how STS was ended and SLS started. Jupiter was supposed to be a "direct" follow on to the Shuttle. It was to use much of the same tooling, techniques, infrastructure, and people that Shuttle used. I don't think Direct was unreasonable. However the plan required a supportive Whitehouse, NASA administration, and Congress whereas SLS only got the latter of the three. Direct only made sense as an immediate follow on to STS when the workforce and equipment could start building the Jupiters soon after the last Shuttle flight. The flight rate was also assumed to be higher, like the Shuttle's, not once ever year or every couple of years. I remember the flight rate charts the Direct folks made back then. At SLS's low flight rate those charts indicated there might have been better options for NASA.NASA delayed starting SLS as long as they could, so long that Congress threated subpoenas. By the time SLS was started all of the momentum STS had stalled. People were laid off and had gone on to other things, tooling had been scrapped. To compound that SLS was made bigger than necessary forcing expensive changes to the STS infrastructure. New manufacturing techniques and tool were to be used rather than those used by STS. We're seeing the results of that now. SLS also flirted with replacing the boosters early in the program. Something that wouldn't have helped its BLEO payload and had no near term benefit or use. To be fair though it could be worse.
If you knew what you know now then, what would you have done differently?
It _was_ worse. The whole debacle of Constellation's "1.5 launch" thing (now the term even sounds idiotic, what the hell is "0.5 launch"?) and developing two rockets, one awful and one way oversized. It was dragging on for years, like nightmare you can't wake up from...
Quote from: Space Ghost 1962 on 05/19/2017 02:13 amIf you knew what you know now then, what would you have done differently? If you remember back in the day the congressionally mandated Shuttle-Derived LV wasn’t my personal favorite. I pursued the DIRECT route with Ross because of the congressional mandate. Had that not been locked in by law I would have gone full bore, like I did for DIRECT, for the ULA Atlas-V Phase 2 and into Atlas-V Phase 3, which would have been capable of putting ~150 tonnes in a very large fairing into LEO all while using the existing manufacturing capabilities and launch infrastructure.http://www.ulalaunch.com/uploads/docs/Published_Papers/Evolution/EELVPhase2_2010.pdf
For a spacecraft I would have mandated that the Atlas-V be capable of launching it to LEO by itself, where the US could be refueled if necessary to send it further out to EML-2, which is where I would have located the permanent infrastructure for both lunar and planetary missions. That is where all the mission spacecraft would be docked, serviced and resupplied. It is where space missions would depart from and return to. One needs to remember that the ground-launched spacecraft is essentially a taxi to the space-based infrastructure. Once into space the crew would transfer to space-only spacecraft that are designed for the task with a lifespan of dozens of missions before needing to be replaced. EML-2 is literally half way to anyplace in the solar system.
Oh and I would have parked myself in Senator Shelby's office in DC constantly updating him on the advantages to his voter base located around MSFC and Decatur ...
Jeff Foust @jeff_foust 9m9 minutes agoASAP chair Patricia Sanders says NASA did a “thorough and credible” job on its crewed EM-1 study.
Quote Jeff Foust @jeff_foust 9m9 minutes agoASAP chair Patricia Sanders says NASA did a “thorough and credible” job on its crewed EM-1 study.https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/867753764006088704ie the study produced the correct answer