Third that. SLS, and specifically a SDHLV/DIRECT will never see the light of launch. It's unsustainable.
Yeah, there's a lot who want it to fail. There always have been. Anyone who followed DIRECT knows what I mean! The problem is, that if the "Flagship NASA Program" does fail, it will take all of the critical political pilings supporting the whole agency with it -- and then everyone is in trouble because, like any structure, the whole thing collapses if you remove the (political) foundations from under it.Those interests will still look out for themselves, but if they see everyone pulling in multiple different directions, they'll just push for short-term gains and leave the failure to be someone else's problem later.I think this is possibly even what we are seeing from certain members of Congress.If this degenerates into turf-war squabbles for limited budget, it will be the smaller program that will get reamed first -- CCDev, Aeronautics and R&D are politically much softer targets for budget re-allocation, than SLS will be.But if everyone rallied around and supported the Core Program (in addition to their own specialist areas), the funding for the whole agency would remain strong at the political level, and then all the other projects would therefore get to keep their funding pots too.This is absolutely a "divided we fall" situation. And precious few people understand it yet. Too many are still of the mindset that "my pot of gold is all I care about, and everyone else's projects are a threat to my project", when the reverse is actually the real truth.Ross.
There seems to be a lot of defeatism already about SLS. I can't tell if people think it will fail or if they want it to fail. There is a significantly better chance for SLS to fly if we have a good plan of what to do with it. In about three months the first reports on SLS will come out. I will wait until I have read those before I call SLS dead in the water.
The problem is, that if the "Flagship NASA Program" does fail, it will take all of the critical political pilings supporting the whole agency with it
Did I forget anyone? Oh, and can you guess to which group I belong?
Jupiter-130 would be very affordable. And a logical progression from there is Jupiter-246 for not very much more outlay, but that then opens up 100+ton ground-integrated dry mass capabilities to anywhere in the inner solar system. That's a very affordable development path that leads to an affordable operational system It is one which would leave enough in the kitty to really use it.But the more you stretch beyond that, the more you steal from the pot we need to pay for the payloads on top. Each extra development/production line for the launcher steals from this pot. Let me explain.J-2X still has another billion in development money and each unit costs more than 6 RL-10's would.5-seg still needs another $2bn to be spent on it to get operational, and the projections I've seen from ATK confirm that the operational cost is going to be about 28% higher than 4-seg has been on Shuttle. (And yes, they have also plussed-up the 4-seg costs in order to make the 5-segs look better value, but its just another shell game that they're banking the folks in DC are too stupid to notice). And lets not even start talking about the problems with 5-segs and the Crawler Transporters -- that's a whole other layer of problems.I say NASA should open the contract back up to other contractors (Aerojet? Why not even USA?) and lets see if anyone else thinks they can take over all of the government furnished systems and produce standard Shuttle-spec SRB's at a lower cost than ATK are currently claiming -- I bet they can.A Stretched Tank would cost about a billion more to modify MAF to handle it. You can get away with only about 5-7% increased capacity before the infrastructure limits kick in, and the ~30% increase of the "Stretched" configuration also affect KSC too.A Wide (10m) Tank is simply not possible at MAF, not because of the width, but because of the added length this configuration demands -- you're talking about a stage that's now roughly the same size as an S-IC and S-II stage *combined*. I've seen the CONOPS study for MAF and the damn thing simply doesn't come close to fitting!At the end of the day, this boils down to whether a few select members of Congress just want more money for their states at the expense of a program that will get funded to completion. There are some who don't give a damn about NASA flying anything, as long as their districts get the maximum funding possible right now -- the-program-be-damned.That's the big danger. And it continues to be Griffin who keeps throwing the fuel on the fire behind the scenes. Someone really needs to make it clear to him that somebody else now has his job.From where I sit today, the likelihoods for each derivative are broadly as follows:-Jupiter-130: 70% chance of successfully reaching FOC.Jupiter-246: 60% chance of successfully reaching FOC.Jupiter-241: 50% chance of successfully reaching FOC.Jupiter-130H: 50% chance of successfully reaching FOC.Jupiter-246H: 40% chance of successfully reaching FOC.Jupiter-241H: 30% chance of successfully reaching FOC.Jupiter-140SH: 30% chance of successfully reaching FOC.Jupiter-246SH: 20% chance of successfully reaching FOC.Jupiter-241SH: 10% chance of successfully reaching FOC.Ross.
I say NASA should open the contract back up to other contractors (Aerojet? Why not even USA?) and lets see if anyone else thinks they can take over all of the government furnished systems and produce standard Shuttle-spec SRB's at a lower cost than ATK are currently claiming -- I bet they can.
Quote from: aquanaut99 on 11/03/2010 05:15 amDid I forget anyone? Oh, and can you guess to which group I belong?- Those who don't wish for SLS to fail and don't expect it to fail because NASA can achieve great things if given a clear, practical plan and resources to execute it.
Did not certain proponents of DIRECT repeatedly argue that 1) politics is crucially important and that 2) keeping ATK happy is a key political requirement?
It won't be as politically-resilient as Constellation without the promise of moon landings. Congress is likely to ask itself: "go big or go home" -- and choose the latter. They won't waste political capital on a space program that doesn't capture the popular imagination.Shuttle's main political problem was that not many people were excited about how we were using it. The design of the vehicle definitely captured the popular imagination in a way that SLS probably won't, but that wasn't enough to save it from a lackluster mission.That's why I thought that the proper reaction to the Ares fiasco would have been to keep the moon but ditch the Shuttle architecture. I think that the opposite response is a critical mistake.
