Quote from: FinalFrontier on 06/28/2012 06:19 pmThis is not going to be a small vehicle. They have it listed on an F9 but something tells me this may end up on an FH.The spec sheet provided by B612 give the Sentinel's mass at 1,500kg. Recently released NLS II info states that the Falcon 9 1.1 will have C3 performance of about C3=23 (km/s)^2. I'm not sure what the proposed orbit will take but it sounds doable with out a Falcon Heavy.
This is not going to be a small vehicle. They have it listed on an F9 but something tells me this may end up on an FH.
There is a proposed Discovery class mission from JPL called NEOCam that would operate in Earth orbit. As a Discovery-class mission, it is in the $425 million class (without launch vehicle). Put a similar spacecraft in orbit near Venus, with cryo-cooling, and it's going to cost more. (snip)Simply put, what B612 is proposing to do is neither simple nor cheap.
Quote from: Blackstar on 06/28/2012 11:09 pmQuote from: BrightLight on 06/28/2012 08:34 pmThe B612 technology is not a big step, in fact it is well within the current technology... As for cost the array and ASIC is probably on order $10 million, my guess is the whole satellite is on order $100 million. Maybe Launch and operations total on order $250 million.Not even close. This is easily $500 million+And the processing is not simple.You don't think that a private enterprise can be made cheaper than government procured? I'm not doubting your numbers, but I'm wondering about my first question, and, if you think a private can do it for less, how much would it cost to the government.
Quote from: BrightLight on 06/28/2012 08:34 pmThe B612 technology is not a big step, in fact it is well within the current technology... As for cost the array and ASIC is probably on order $10 million, my guess is the whole satellite is on order $100 million. Maybe Launch and operations total on order $250 million.Not even close. This is easily $500 million+And the processing is not simple.
The B612 technology is not a big step, in fact it is well within the current technology... As for cost the array and ASIC is probably on order $10 million, my guess is the whole satellite is on order $100 million. Maybe Launch and operations total on order $250 million.
Now maybe you'd get some of that in a private procurement, but probably not more than you would with a government procurement.
This thread is about to break down on the issue of commercial vs government procurement efficiency, so I would suggest that anyone wanting that discussion start up their own thread.This thread should focus on the issue of whether this not-for-profit has the capability of raising the cash for the mission and managing the mission.
B-612 was the name of the asteroid the little prince lived on.
Bottom line: if you're going to name your organization after a pop culture character, pick one that is easily recognizable, not obscure, weird, and French.
Of course my parents did hitchhike to Woodstock while I was in utero...
Their reflight of Curiosity is discussed as $1.5B "plus or minus $200M"
With all due respect, JPL is not a good basis for cost estimation.
Quote from: Comga on 12/23/2012 04:18 amTheir reflight of Curiosity is discussed as $1.5B "plus or minus $200M"1-I wonder how much of that is creating the new instrument/experiment package?2-ISTM B612 won't be bootstrapping innovative new instrument types on their mission.
From the spec. sheet on there web site,http://b612foundation.org/media/sentinelmission/this looks like it could be a real nice optic, my first cut analysis says on order 25 micron pixel pitch, f1 to f2, probably Cassigrain, no big technology hurtles.
Quote from: Blackstar on 07/03/2012 12:23 PM Bottom line: if you're going to name your organization after a pop culture character, pick one that is easily recognizable, not obscure, weird, and French.Sigh.
Quote from: Blackstar on 07/03/2012 12:23 pmBottom line: if you're going to name your organization after a pop culture character, pick one that is easily recognizable, not obscure, weird, and French.I fart in your general direction. Have a nice day !
This cannot be a Cassegrain, as those are narrow field devices with curve fields, and far IR field flatteners are troublesome and unnecessary. F/1 and F/2 are way too fast.
Quote from: Comga on 12/24/2012 02:51 amThis cannot be a Cassegrain, as those are narrow field devices with curve fields, and far IR field flatteners are troublesome and unnecessary. F/1 and F/2 are way too fast.The primary might be that fast; IIRC Kepler was pretty similar.But like Kepler, the optimal for a wide field would be a Schmidt with the focal plane in the middle of the tube.
Quote from: MP99 on 12/23/2012 02:36 pmQuote from: Comga on 12/23/2012 04:18 amTheir reflight of Curiosity is discussed as $1.5B "plus or minus $200M"1-I wonder how much of that is creating the new instrument/experiment package?2-ISTM B612 won't be bootstrapping innovative new instrument types on their mission.1-By total coincidence, this past week I happened to talk to the person who headed the team that did the independent cost estimate for the Mars 2020 rover and asked him that exact question. According to him, when the Mars Program Planning Group evaluated several possible rover designs, they baselined the instrument package as a sample cacher, essentially the same one that was in the planetary science decadal survey. (If I remember correctly, that cacher had 19 cylindrical sample compartments.) The instrument package also included a drill. They had to make minor variations depending upon the size of the rover (like adjusting the size of the drill), but he said that the instrument suite did not drive the cost estimate for the Mars 2020 rover. In addition, he said that they went through JPL's MSL/Curiosity books quite thoroughly in order to develop their estimate. (Think of it as an outside audit.) I think the most important thing to keep in mind is that the $1.5 billion estimate for the Mars 2020 rover is not a JPL estimate, it is an independent estimate.2-You might want to look at their proposal more closely. From what I remember there are two aspects to it that are new. The first is the survey detector itself. Nothing like that has been flown before. Now it's not totally unprecedented (WISE and Kepler had survey telescopes), but it is not a clone of a previous instrument. Second, it has a cryo-cooler technology that has not been flown before. Now I could be wrong about this, but I'm pretty sure that they're not talking about taking off-the-shelf components here. They're going to have to develop this stuff.
Yeah, I forgot they were doing mid-IR (5-10 micron). I'm not quite convinced that's the most efficient route (because of the sunshield, they are always looking at high phase angle, so reflected sunlight is going to be far brighter than mid-IR emission), but hey, it's their money...
Quote from: clongton on 12/29/2012 11:14 pmIt creates an HLV that's too big. My question is: too big for what? Without knowing the mission, how can we know the ideal size for SLS? For all we know it might be too small.
It creates an HLV that's too big.
Duane Day, the study director of "Defending Planet Earth", ... concluded ... should a large NEO object be observed heading our way a response would be difficult to coordinate as, "there would likely be a tendency for the entire social structure to collapse".
"The actuarial argument is important," [Clark] Chapman now told [Brian] Wilcox. But, unlike with Hurricaine Katrina, we can do something about an asteroid."
Schweickart's bold vision had carried the day, and the recommendations included ... spending as much as three billion dollars over ten years to, among other things, place an infared telescope into a Venus-like orbit, and test both kinetic impacotrs and gravity tractors.
NASA has already indicated that it doesn't have the [$650 M] needed to fund the telescope.
Hate to disappoint you but there is already a major consortium undertaking this very project which Ed Lu ought to know about. It's called NEOShield and is auspiced by the European Space Agency (ESA). One of the major participants is EADS Astrium, the largest aerospace company under the ESA umbrella. From its website: http://www.neoshield.net/en/index.htm
The B612 Foundation unofficially began in 2001. Astrophysicist Piet Hut and former astronaut Ed Lu held a 2001 workshop on Near-Earth Asteroids in Houston.
From the above-cited article:"To open Earth’s eyes, the B612 Foundation has partnered with Boulder, Colo.-based Ball Aerospace to design and build a roughly $500 million infrared space telescope able to spot hundreds of thousands of asteroids.The proposed spacecraft, which has passed a preliminary technical review, is the size of a FedEx van . The foundation hopes to launch it on a SpaceX rocket by 2018, possibly from Cape Canaveral."To my knowledge, this is the first time I've seen an article actually quote a price for their space telescope. I noted earlier that JPL's NEOCam proposal was for the Discovery program, which is in the $450 million range. That is for an Earth orbiting satellite. I think that B612's estimate of "roughly $500 million" is probably low. Sending the spacecraft to a near-Venus orbit and cryo-cooling it increases the cost. And I know from the NEO study we did a few years ago that Ball Aerospace's cost for a similar mission was in the $600 million cost range.
2-You might want to look at their proposal more closely. From what I remember there are two aspects to it that are new. The first is the survey detector itself. Nothing like that has been flown before. Now it's not totally unprecedented (WISE and Kepler had survey telescopes), but it is not a clone of a previous instrument. Second, it has a cryo-cooler technology that has not been flown before. Now I could be wrong about this, but I'm pretty sure that they're not talking about taking off-the-shelf components here. They're going to have to develop this stuff.