I disagree some Chuck. Doing anything new, especially to SLS, will only increase costs, increase time required for the first flight, increase complexity, and decrease the probability SLS will ever launch and/or be affordable.
Quote from: mike robel on 01/02/2018 06:03 pmI disagree some Chuck. Doing anything new, especially to SLS, will only increase costs, increase time required for the first flight, increase complexity, and decrease the probability SLS will ever launch and/or be affordable.The question I answered Mike was "what can be done to improve SLS and make it work at a lower cost?". It wasn't whether of not making any changes at this point would speed things up. I agree with what your saying but the question was how to "ultimately" make it less costly to operate. Right now it is set up to cost the most amount possible to operate. And that's because it is being run as a government program by a government agency that has no cost accountability and being serviced by government contractors whose only interest is to stretch out the program for as long as possible in order to extract the maximum amount of funding from it as possible. The only way to improve that situation is to get the government the hell out of the program and take their greedy contractors with them. That's the only possible answer to the question.Whether or not that is a practical thing to do at this point is a different question and if asked I would say "No, it isn't even possible at this point", but my original answer still addresses the original question.
This is what you can expect if you stop the pipeline, it takes a lot of time to get back going again building something different. You can see that with Commercial Crew replacing Ares-1/Orion.
Quote from: ncb1397 on 01/02/2018 05:54 pmThis is what you can expect if you stop the pipeline, it takes a lot of time to get back going again building something different. You can see that with Commercial Crew replacing Ares-1/Orion.Huh, What? Commercial Crew did not replace Ares-1. Commercial Crew did not replace Orion. Orion is still around... So I'm not sure what point you are trying to make, but it is built on very flimsy ground if you do not understand how these programs relate to each other.
Quote from: Lars-J on 01/02/2018 08:21 pmQuote from: ncb1397 on 01/02/2018 05:54 pmThis is what you can expect if you stop the pipeline, it takes a lot of time to get back going again building something different. You can see that with Commercial Crew replacing Ares-1/Orion.Huh, What? Commercial Crew did not replace Ares-1. Commercial Crew did not replace Orion. Orion is still around... So I'm not sure what point you are trying to make, but it is built on very flimsy ground if you do not understand how these programs relate to each other.Commercial Crew replaces ISS rotation flights on Ares-1/Orion. Ares-1 was cancelled, leaving Orion without a launch vehicle for a while, except for the Delta-IV Heavy, which could put it in LEO (but wasn't human rated), but that mission for Orion was replaced by Commercial Crew. So, yes, the Orion ISS flights were cancelled for Commercial Crew about 8 years ago.
Quote from: ncb1397 on 01/02/2018 08:26 pmQuote from: Lars-J on 01/02/2018 08:21 pmQuote from: ncb1397 on 01/02/2018 05:54 pmThis is what you can expect if you stop the pipeline, it takes a lot of time to get back going again building something different. You can see that with Commercial Crew replacing Ares-1/Orion.Huh, What? Commercial Crew did not replace Ares-1. Commercial Crew did not replace Orion. Orion is still around... So I'm not sure what point you are trying to make, but it is built on very flimsy ground if you do not understand how these programs relate to each other.Commercial Crew replaces ISS rotation flights on Ares-1/Orion. Ares-1 was cancelled, leaving Orion without a launch vehicle for a while, except for the Delta-IV Heavy, which could put it in LEO (but wasn't human rated), but that mission for Orion was replaced by Commercial Crew. So, yes, the Orion ISS flights were cancelled for Commercial Crew about 8 years ago.From a certain limited POV, yes... But the Orion to ISS flights was just a few (or one) test flight(s). Ares-1/Orion was never supposed to be an permanent ISS crew rotation solution, after all funding the whole Constellation project depended on ISS being dropped in the pacific ocean.So the two projects you draw a line through had a tangential connection - yes - but that is all. And without the same funding levels for both projects, any argument that it took X years to change tracks is not really that persuasive.
Orion improves on the best features of Project Apollo and the Space Shuttle Program, increasing the likelihood of success. Versatility will be Orion's trademark. It is being designed to fly to the moon, but could also be used to service the International Space Station in low-Earth orbit.
Orion will be capable of carrying crew and cargo to the space station.
The larger size will allow Orion to accommodate four crew members on missions to the moon, and six on missions to the International Space Station or Mars-bound spacecraft. Orion is scheduled to fly its first missions to the space station by 2014 and carry out its first sortie to the moon by 2020.
I'm not sure what the point of that was - no one disputes that Orion could service/dock with ISS. It was always a consideration for early test flights.
While the CEV design was sized for lunar missions carrying a crew of four, the vehicle wasalso designed to be reconfigurable to accommodate up to six crew for International SpaceStation (ISS) and future Mars mission scenarios. The CEV can transfer and return crew andcargo to the ISS and stay for 6 months in a quiescent state for emergency crew return. Thelunar CEV design has direct applications to International Space Station (ISS) missions withoutsignificant changes in the vehicle design. The lunar and ISS configurations share the sameService Module (SM), but the ISS mission has much lower delta-V requirements. Hence, theSM propellant tanks can be loaded with additional propellant for ISS missions to providebenefits in launch aborts, on-orbit phasing, and ISS reboost. Other vehicle block derivativescan deliver pressurized and unpressurized cargo to the ISS.
Dr. Michael Griffin was named the new NASA Administrator in April 2005. With concurrencefrom Congress, he immediately set out to restructure NASA’s Exploration Programby making its priority to accelerate the development of the CEV to reduce or eliminate theplanned gap in U.S. human access to space. He established a goal for the CEV to begin operationin 2011 and to be capable of ferrying crew and cargo to and from the ISS.
Why would they design it around ISS if they were just test flights for other missions? Orion was designed to service ISS until it no longer needed to be serviced. Orion was the only U.S. crew transportation vehicle at that time for 2011+, so what else would do it?
And it even said Mike Griffin wanted a goal of having it running by the time Shuttle retired:QuoteDr. Michael Griffin was named the new NASA Administrator in April 2005. With concurrencefrom Congress, he immediately set out to restructure NASA’s Exploration Programby making its priority to accelerate the development of the CEV to reduce or eliminate theplanned gap in U.S. human access to space. He established a goal for the CEV to begin operationin 2011 and to be capable of ferrying crew and cargo to and from the ISS.
Quote from: ncb1397 on 01/02/2018 09:32 pmWhy would they design it around ISS if they were just test flights for other missions? Orion was designed to service ISS until it no longer needed to be serviced. Orion was the only U.S. crew transportation vehicle at that time for 2011+, so what else would do it?It's a common misconception that the Shuttle was required for transporting expedition crews to the ISS once it was operational. That never was true.The Shuttle was only a secondary way of transporting crews to and from the ISS, but because the Shuttle could only stay in space for two weeks we have always relied on the Soyuz for getting crews to the ISS, and keeping them there.
Once the ISS was construction complete there was no more need for Shuttle flights to the ISS, so there was no real need to send the Orion to the ISS - the Soyuz was already handling normal crew rotation tasks. Flying the Orion to the ISS could have been an interesting test flight, but otherwise was not necessary.
Using Orion as a lifeboat for ISS with a crew of 7 proposal is what killed the X-38/CRV program in that function...
Actually, with two EDO pallets, Shuttle could stay up for a month. It only ever flew with one though...see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Duration_OrbiterYou could likely extend it farther with an upgrade to the Shuttle to Station Power Transfer System or a solar panel pallet to replace the EDO pallet. Shuttle was more than capable of servicing ISS solo with some minimal modifications. And then you had the Crew Return Vehicle that wouldn't even require Shuttle/Soyuz to be continually docked. Worse comes to worse, you just keep a shuttle available to launch like they did in later years of the program to rescue a crew from a damaged heat-shield.