Author Topic: Jupiter DIRECT - Livestream Discussion - Sat 11/11/2023  (Read 18479 times)

Offline kraisee

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Join the DIRECT Launcher Team for an interview with David Willis and Lewis Massie.

This Saturday at 12 noon EST, for a few hours, myself, Chuck Longton, Steve & Philip Metschan will be talking about DIRECT and the origins of SLS.

https://www.youtube.com/@DavidWillisSLS/featured

Come and join us as we reminisce about the early days here on NSF!

Ross.
« Last Edit: 10/04/2024 10:51 pm by gongora »
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Online JAFO

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PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE record this!!!! I'll be airborne and the company frowns on us watching videos in the cockpit.
Anyone can do the job when things are going right. In this business we play for keeps.
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Offline kraisee

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If you have any questions or comments about DIRECT, ESAS, Constellation, Augustine or any of the other parts that led to SLS, please post them here and we'll try to answer/discuss the best ones!

Ross.
"The meek shall inherit the Earth -- the rest of us will go to the stars"
-Robert A. Heinlein

Offline woods170

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If you have any questions or comments about DIRECT, ESAS, Constellation, Augustine or any of the other parts that led to SLS, please post them here and we'll try to answer/discuss the best ones!

Ross.

Hello Ross,

Here's one for you: on Twitter (oh, pardon me, I mean X) there's a guy (Delta9250 IIRC) claiming that the Jupiter rocket as intended by DIRECT would not have worked. The guy claims that the structural margins of the modified ET design were insufficient and that a complete core redesign (as was done for the SLS Core Stage) would have been unavoidable.

Specifically, this guy claims that the construction methods used for the ET propellant tanks (skin on support/stability frames) and the ET intertank (skinstringers on stability frames) would not have left sufficient structural margin to deal with the thrust of the SSMEs from underneath whilst also carrying the load on top (EDS and payload).

If you could shine a light on that, I would be much obliged. Thanks in advance.

Offline kraisee

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@woods170 It's been a while since we last chatted on here!

Yes, we've seen that one before and we will happily give it a full response during the discussion. Thanks for asking!

More questions anyone?

Ross.
« Last Edit: 11/10/2023 09:29 pm by kraisee »
"The meek shall inherit the Earth -- the rest of us will go to the stars"
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Offline leovinus

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Reusability. The Falcon 9 came online several years after Direct. What would Direct have done different if Falcon-9 reuse had been demonstrated earlier?

Hindsight is 20-20 but given what you all know now, what should have been done different for Direct w.r.t to technology, people, anything?

Offline kraisee

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PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE record this!!!! I'll be airborne and the company frowns on us watching videos in the cockpit.

It will be a YouTube live stream, so it will automatically get recorded and will be available to watch in the future.

Ross.
"The meek shall inherit the Earth -- the rest of us will go to the stars"
-Robert A. Heinlein

Offline Zed_Noir

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Wonder if it was viable to replaced the RS-25 with J-2X after the initial batches of DIRECT launches? Possibility of relatively common engines for the core and the upper stage.

Offline kraisee

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Reusability. The Falcon 9 came online several years after Direct. What would Direct have done different if Falcon-9 reuse had been demonstrated earlier?

Hindsight is 20-20 but given what you all know now, what should have been done different for Direct w.r.t to technology, people, anything?

I don't think this is one we will tackle in the discussion itself, but I'm happy to give you my answer here...

The 4-seg SRB's we wanted to use were semi-reusable in Shuttle use and that could have continued "as-is", though there was definitely room to consider improving those systems once the first launchers were up and operating.

Unfortunately neither the RS-68 from DIRECT v2 nor the SSME/RS-25 engines we switched back to for DIRECT v3 can be restarted in the air. Both engines require huge amounts of ground hardware for their start sequences and it is completely impractical to attempt to package that up in a flight system, so that really scuppers any options for powered landings. Without that, I just don't see any realistic ways to recover a Shuttle-derived core stage and reuse it. To do so you really would have to go with a completely clean-sheet approach.

Just for fun though, if it were possible to have a do-over with today's tech available to us back in 2006/7, I'd be curious to hypothesize about a re-worked MethaLOX Jupiter Core Stage using SpX Raptor 2's on the Core - and in that case probably also on the boosters too! I have little doubt the performance figures would jump quite a bit for such a system of approximately the same dimensions as a Jupiter-130 or Jupiter-246. That's a definite flight of fantasy though, and to be honest we probably wouldn't have considered it because it would have broken some of the core tenets behind DIRECT: Maximize reuse of (then) existing Shuttle infrastructure, facilities, products and people and minimize development of new systems, to shorten the 'gap' and free-up money for other projects - like a lunar lander, lunar habs, rovers, science activities and a Mars program. And there's no way Congress would have supported that approach either.

Anyway, see you in a few hours...

Ross.
« Last Edit: 11/11/2023 12:32 pm by kraisee »
"The meek shall inherit the Earth -- the rest of us will go to the stars"
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Offline kraisee

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Wonder if it was viable to replaced the RS-25 with J-2X after the initial batches of DIRECT launches? Possibility of relatively common engines for the core and the upper stage.

Unfortunately the J-2X can only operate in vacuum, so it could not have been used on the Core Stage.

Just supposing a sea level variant were also developed ($$$ and many years) you would have needed roughly 2 times as many of them to match the thrust of the SSME's and you would also lose significant performance because the SSME's staged combustion system makes much more efficient use of the propellants compared to J-2X's gas generator cycle.

The vac J-2X is already 18s Vac Isp lower than SSME and I'd guess you'd lose another 10-20s with a lower ratio sea-level capable nozzle variant. That's quite a lot to be giving away.

Ross.
"The meek shall inherit the Earth -- the rest of us will go to the stars"
-Robert A. Heinlein

Offline Zed_Noir

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Wonder if it was viable to replaced the RS-25 with J-2X after the initial batches of DIRECT launches? Possibility of relatively common engines for the core and the upper stage.

Unfortunately the J-2X can only operate in vacuum, so it could not have been used on the Core Stage.

Just supposing a sea level variant were also developed ($$$ and many years) you would have needed roughly 2 times as many of them to match the thrust of the SSME's and you would also lose significant performance because the SSME's staged combustion system makes much more efficient use of the propellants compared to J-2X's gas generator cycle.

The vac J-2X is already 18s Vac Isp lower than SSME and I'd guess you'd lose another 10-20s with a lower ratio sea-level capable nozzle variant. That's quite a lot to be giving away.

Ross.
The J-2X is less efficient but should be cheaper with the gas generator cycle and higher production volume. Probably can be compensated with bigger 5-segment solid boosters.

Thanks for the reply. Will not post further on this line of query.

Offline Galactic Penguin SST

If you have any questions or comments about DIRECT, ESAS, Constellation, Augustine or any of the other parts that led to SLS, please post them here and we'll try to answer/discuss the best ones!

Ross.

Hi Ross,

* Looking back 15 years since I came across DIRECT (and NSF), I wonder if in hindsight the Jupiter-130 + Orion + Cargo module concept would still be a money drain - if still better than handing crew capability to the Russians - for it to be unsustainable. That assumes that's all the USA have to support the ISS, plus what become the CRS program, for almost 1 whole decade until Crew Dragon eventually manages to work in 2020. Also do you think that large MPLM-like module carried on each flight would have killed half of the demands for the COTS-CRS program, making a switch to commercial programs more difficult?

* When we were still arguing about Ares and DIRECT was being proposed, no-one would have even imagined that the Jupiter-241H-DIVUS (cough) would eventually fly just 5 months before another SHLV - then floating around as a certain "Falcon XX" - that I bet all but one person on planet Earth (well, maybe more than 1 in that company) would have ever guessed to be really gonna flying.

Yet this was exactly what happened. I want to ask - what was going to be the "end game" of Jupiter when your plans were proposed? Were there considerations for your team to ask NASA to make a commercially bid SHLV program eventually (maybe say ~2019 as of your 2009 v3 plans) to assist with or replace Jupiter eventually for what was then Constellation? Do you think Jupiter would have ever been competitive with something like Starship had your v3 plans end up as reality?

* What would you think about modifications to your plans if someone from the future told you in 2009 that the small company that just flew a small rocket into orbit would end up with an Ares I-Orion like system that can fly 100 times/year AND designs and flies a real Shuttle successor & SHLV that promises to revolutionize transportation to and from orbit 15 years from then? Would you still push DIRECT as hard as it could, or would you support some other kind of stop gap and transition to commercial transportation contracts?
Astronomy & spaceflight geek penguin. In a relationship w/ Space Shuttle Discovery.

Offline Proponent

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Whatever happened to C-Star Aerospace?

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We are Kerbaling the Architecture now. Come join


Offline kraisee

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Whatever happened to C-Star Aerospace?

C-Star was just the first name for the DIRECT Project 2 that was mentioned at the end of this interview, the one with the Leviathan ocean-launch system architecture. A portion of the original DIRECT team looked to develop a commercial launch operation. It didn't ultimately get anywhere due to internal frictions between the members.

I ultimately left the group and went and founded Horizon Space Technologies in the UK - think a British "Firefly" style operation. I've only just this year been released from my NDA obligations, so couldn't speak about it before now. In short, we got really close! We had over £400m lined up in Series A, B & C rounds waiting to close in quick succession. But we just found it frustratingly impossible to find that first initial investor willing to punt for the first few million in the high risk initial Seed round. I fought for five years, with an amazing team made up of experts, including some very impressive people out of the Formula 1 world, but UK investors are a far more risk averse breed compared to their American counterparts, and after trying probably a thousand different sources, absolutely nobody could be persuaded to back a startup rocket company in Blighty.

I transferred ownership of Horizon to Paul Williams, who is continuing to make progress, now working under the name Black Arrow seaborne launch and I still believe the project has genuine legs, but I have had no involvement with Black Arrow. I do wish Paul and his team all the very best of luck!

I did hear that Orbex absorbed quite a few of Horizon's staff after we closed down in 2015. They will be launching from the same A' Mhòine Scottish launch site that we originally identified. They'll be following the MTCR framework we laid down for UK commercial space launch operations and be utilizing the the US<>UK ITAR arrangement that we did the first round of pathfinding on between UKSA and US State Dept. And Horizon sparked UKSA to begin drafting all of the launch licensing and regulatory frameworks that they'll also be using too, so I consider that we still did quite a lot of trail-blazing for all future UK launch aspirations to follow.

Since then I've worked for two more startups, but won't be talking about them due to active NDA's, other than to say that I've been involved in launching two different types of space launcher and I now have five satellites in orbit to my name.

I just started a new position as Treasurer and Operations Director for a new Aerospace-related charity that is being formed right now, and should be announcing in the new year, to help educators and students with all the resources they need to teach and learn how to make satellites and experiments going into space.

Ross.
« Last Edit: 11/11/2023 09:24 pm by kraisee »
"The meek shall inherit the Earth -- the rest of us will go to the stars"
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Online JAFO

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That was a long awaited, terrific stream. Glad to both be reminded of what happened, and see so much information that can only now be disclosed.

In the past I've asked/been a pest about if there was ever going to be a written history of DIRECT, but the idea was kiboshed because so many participants were still involved in the industry and worried about repercussions. With the passage of time and this video, do you think things may have changed, and an enterprising journalist might be able to at least start archiving all this information/history to be brought together at some point in the future? Be a shame if (god forbid) a hard drive crashes or someone is lost, along with all their memories of how and what happened.


I think at one point you said you only had 30 people watching, that might have been 30 people logged into youtube. Many people (like myself) just lurked without logging in.
« Last Edit: 11/11/2023 09:14 pm by JAFO »
Anyone can do the job when things are going right. In this business we play for keeps.
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Offline kraisee

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If you have any questions or comments about DIRECT, ESAS, Constellation, Augustine or any of the other parts that led to SLS, please post them here and we'll try to answer/discuss the best ones!

Ross.

Hi Ross,

* Looking back 15 years since I came across DIRECT (and NSF), I wonder if in hindsight the Jupiter-130 + Orion + Cargo module concept would still be a money drain - if still better than handing crew capability to the Russians - for it to be unsustainable. That assumes that's all the USA have to support the ISS, plus what become the CRS program, for almost 1 whole decade until Crew Dragon eventually manages to work in 2020. Also do you think that large MPLM-like module carried on each flight would have killed half of the demands for the COTS-CRS program, making a switch to commercial programs more difficult?

My opinion is that Shuttle costs were very mature and relatively stable, and if we really had used, lets call it 85% of Shuttle infrastructure 'as is', we could have spend a whole lot less on the LV element than SLS has, it would have been up and running a lot sooner too. In that environment we could have afforded to do the other things like landers, habs, rovers etc - and properly funded the ISS to do more work than at present, so I think ability to bring up supplies on a J-130 would have been a useful bonus that would not have interfered with the CRS missions.


Quote
* When we were still arguing about Ares and DIRECT was being proposed, no-one would have even imagined that the Jupiter-241H-DIVUS (cough) would eventually fly just 5 months before another SHLV - then floating around as a certain "Falcon XX" - that I bet all but one person on planet Earth (well, maybe more than 1 in that company) would have ever guessed to be really gonna flying.

When DIRECT started Falcon 1 had only had one flight and was still 2-1/2 years away from making orbit for the first time, so commercial space was a totally unknown factor. And given how close Elon came to going bust just before that 4th flight, it could so easily never have come to pass at all. Nobody, even Elon, KNEW what it would do. Heck, at that time even the Faclon *5* was still only a CAD drawing!


Quote
Yet this was exactly what happened. I want to ask - what was going to be the "end game" of Jupiter when your plans were proposed? Were there considerations for your team to ask NASA to make a commercially bid SHLV program eventually (maybe say ~2019 as of your 2009 v3 plans) to assist with or replace Jupiter eventually for what was then Constellation? Do you think Jupiter would have ever been competitive with something like Starship had your v3 plans end up as reality?

I don't know that we ever really planned that far ahead, not until 2010-ish, when it looked like it might really, actually happen.

I don't think anyone could draw the line between J-130/246 being competative with Starship.   If, back in 2005, NASA had actually stuck with a genuinely Shuttle-derived (use what you've already got with minimal changes) version of the LV-24 & LV-25 when Doug Stanley originally drafted the ESAS report, instead of Griffin artificially switching everything over to the Stick & Stack, we would have had the money to properly fund a healthy usage program for the new Jupiter/Orion/Altair/Surface systems. In such a scenario, with a LOT less work to get a new SDHLV operating, we could have flown the first unmanned J-130 as early as 2009 before the last Shuttle flew, closed the crew flight gap to less than 2 years, and we could have put the first astronauts back on the lunar surface in 2015! By the time Lunar Starship is ready to go there in late 2025, we would be up to Jupiter flight number 135, having had 17 Lunar landings, one Mars flyby mission (2020) and two Mars landing missions (2022, 2025).

EDIT: I'll attach the 2006 potential manifest for an early-decision LV-24/25 approach using a maximum of what they already had from Shuttle to close the gap and lower LV development and operations costs. This was independently assessed and found to be realistic.

Starship's potential comes in at that point. If realised it promises to lower costs and increase payload delivery capacity dramatically, so it would be a capability we would be ready to fully exploit given the goal of forming a permanent lunar outpost (and eventually Mars too).

I don't really see that Jupiter, operating decade earlier than Starship, would exactly be "competing" at all.   I think that after 16 years, when Starship comes along, it would be the next logical path to take to expand an already healthy exploration program.   But it's a path not trod, so little point in worrying about now.


Quote
* What would you think about modifications to your plans if someone from the future told you in 2009 that the small company that just flew a small rocket into orbit would end up with an Ares I-Orion like system that can fly 100 times/year AND designs and flies a real Shuttle successor & SHLV that promises to revolutionize transportation to and from orbit 15 years from then? Would you still push DIRECT as hard as it could, or would you support some other kind of stop gap and transition to commercial transportation contracts?

For me it was largely about trying to save the many thousands of jobs that were at risk - and were ultimately lost - at the end of the Shuttle program. A genuinely Shuttle-derived minimal changes approach still made sense - at least in the pre-2009/10 timeframe.

Would I have just waited from 2006 for SpaceX to develop a lunar-capable Starship by 2025, and just abandoned all other alternatives until then? No, that doesn't hold water.

But I wish I could have nudged NASA's hand in 2006 to do a big, healthy 135-flight exploration program for the 16 years from 2009 thru 2025, and have one or two commercial companies (Spx and BlueO) come in at that point with solutions that allow the agency to do more with lower cost launches so that the saved money could be used to expand the size of the overall program, oh heck yes, that would have been the dream solution.

Ross.
« Last Edit: 11/11/2023 09:39 pm by kraisee »
"The meek shall inherit the Earth -- the rest of us will go to the stars"
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Offline kraisee

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That was a long awaited, terrific stream. Glad to both be reminded of what happened, and see so much information that can only now be disclosed.

In the past I've asked/been a pest about if there was ever going to be a written history of DIRECT, but the idea was kiboshed because so many participants were still involved in the industry and worried about repercussions. With the passage of time and this video, do you think things may have changed, and an enterprising journalist might be able to at least start archiving all this information/history to be brought together at some point in the future? Be a shame if (god forbid) a hard drive crashes or someone is lost, along with all their memories of how and what happened.

Yes, I've been approached about four times over the years. I never really felt comfortable with the idea of a book, because it felt like sticking the knife into the agency, and that's the absolute very last thing I ever wanted to do.

But time has passed and Deb, my better half, who is an amateur writer and really first-class editor, has bent my ear about the idea of a book telling the story a couple of times in the run up to this interview with David and Lewis. I guess, that as long as such a thing could be done in a respectful manner, I'm not so against the idea any longer...


Quote
I think at one point you said you only had 30 people watching, that might have been 30 people logged into youtube. Many people (like myself) just lurked without logging in.

Not sure how YT measures such things. I'll check with David for you, and see if he knows what the deal is.

Ross.
« Last Edit: 11/11/2023 09:31 pm by kraisee »
"The meek shall inherit the Earth -- the rest of us will go to the stars"
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Online JAFO

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That was a long awaited, terrific stream. Glad to both be reminded of what happened, and see so much information that can only now be disclosed.

In the past I've asked/been a pest about if there was ever going to be a written history of DIRECT, but the idea was kiboshed because so many participants were still involved in the industry and worried about repercussions. With the passage of time and this video, do you think things may have changed, and an enterprising journalist might be able to at least start archiving all this information/history to be brought together at some point in the future? Be a shame if (god forbid) a hard drive crashes or someone is lost, along with all their memories of how and what happened.

Yes, I've been approached about four times over the years. I never really felt comfortable with the idea of a book, because it felt like sticking the knife into the agency, and that's the absolute very last thing I ever wanted to do.

But time has passed and Deb, my better half, who is an amateur writer and really first-class editor, has bent my ear about the idea of a book telling the story a couple of times in the run up to this interview with David and Lewis. I guess, that as long as such a thing could be done in a respectful manner, I'm not so against the idea any longer...

AWESOME!

From one amature writer to Deb, I think she would be a terrific person to write it, we often think of those on the project but forget about the ones at home who suffer from us not being around and the effects it has on our home lives, she could give a bit of "Deb: Ross came home from the Augustine Commission hearing just bouncing off the walls, the presentation had gone better than expected." or "Deb: Probably the lowest point I saw Ross was in 200X. Naysayers were beating the team up, and they struggled knowing their information was solid, but their sources were terrified about losing their jobs if their participation was found out."

I think at one point you said you only had 30 people watching, that might have been 30 people logged into youtube. Many people (like myself) just lurked without logging in.

Not sure how YT measures such things. I'll check with David for you, and see if he knows what the deal is.

Ross.


No big deal, just didn't want you to think that there were only 30 people interested. I can't wait to get home and listen to the full thing.
« Last Edit: 11/11/2023 09:48 pm by JAFO »
Anyone can do the job when things are going right. In this business we play for keeps.
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Offline kraisee

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I now understand the viewing figure is both signed in and not, together.

Ross.
"The meek shall inherit the Earth -- the rest of us will go to the stars"
-Robert A. Heinlein

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