Author Topic: DIRECT v2.0 - Thread 2  (Read 1356855 times)

Offline Zachstar

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RE: DIRECT v2.0 - Thread 2
« Reply #40 on: 03/24/2008 03:02 pm »
ISS will become THE excuse to not go to the moon and mars.

Thanks to years of rather annoying other nations. Our next president may want to keep ISS going which drains an enormous amount of funds.. He/she will call it a international gateway to peace or whatever.... The point is it will distract the masses and few will really care that we arent walking on the moon in 2020.

As for private space getting there. I have heard ideas about how to get Dragon AROUND the moon. Yet a real program to actually land on there is almost out of the question for private space. No SpaceX is not going to pull the BFR out of it's hat before 2020 btw.

And forget mars.

Offline William Barton

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RE: DIRECT v2.0 - Thread 2
« Reply #41 on: 03/24/2008 03:10 pm »
Quote
Zachstar - 24/3/2008  12:02 PM

ISS will become THE excuse to not go to the moon and mars.

Thanks to years of rather annoying other nations. Our next president may want to keep ISS going which drains an enormous amount of funds.. He/she will call it a international gateway to peace or whatever.... The point is it will distract the masses and few will really care that we arent walking on the moon in 2020.

As for private space getting there. I have heard ideas about how to get Dragon AROUND the moon. Yet a real program to actually land on there is almost out of the question for private space. No SpaceX is not going to pull the BFR out of it's hat before 2020 btw.

And forget mars.

If SpaceX Falcon 9 Heavy and Dragon both wind up working, it seems like the fuel depot concept would be front and center, when it comes to getting to the Moon, at least.

Offline Zachstar

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RE: DIRECT v2.0 - Thread 2
« Reply #42 on: 03/24/2008 03:16 pm »
Wow more of this fuel station stuff again?

What fuel? hypergolics? How is private industry supposed to do all that support work?

And tho I love SpaceX we are into 2008 and there has been no Falcon 1 launch...


Offline Eerie

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Re: DIRECT v2.0 - Thread 2
« Reply #43 on: 03/24/2008 03:22 pm »
Zachstar;

To tell you the truth, I don`t particularly care about Moon and Mars landings. Without lower cost of launch, nothing will come from them anyway that can`t be done by robots. And since in an absence of a Space Race we can`t expect larger funds, the only way to make launches cheaper is increase efficiency. And to do so, we must have real commercial competition.

Offline Zachstar

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RE: DIRECT v2.0 - Thread 2
« Reply #44 on: 03/24/2008 03:31 pm »
Which will mean little more than SpaceShip3 or Dragon. IE Rich people will pay to go into orbit to dock to a Bigelow station and come home.

For the average user it will mean NOTHING until they suddenly discover a way to go into orbit without a chemical rocket. Which will be FAA certified when? 2075?

DIRECT is now. DIRECT means vessels based on VASIMR can be built and sent to mars. DIRECT means a REAL program to return to the moon.

I love private space as much as the next guy. However, When it comes to anything past a flyby of the moon. The .gov needs to be the one doing it for the time being.

Offline clongton

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RE: DIRECT v2.0 - Thread 2
« Reply #45 on: 03/24/2008 03:38 pm »
Another way to increase efficiency and lower operations costs is to do evolutionary development, instead of revolutionary development. An example of revolutionary development is the Ares-I/V architecture, and an example of evolutionary development is DIRECT, which is the topic of this thread. We started, not with clean sheets of paper, but with what we already have and is already paid for and asked, “what else can we do with this besides Shuttle?”. The result is the Jupiter launch vehicle family, which saves years off the schedule and tens of billions of dollars off the development and operations costs.
The other subjects are off topic and should go to their own threads.
Chuck - DIRECT co-founder
I started my career on the Saturn-V F-1A engine

Offline Eerie

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Re: DIRECT v2.0 - Thread 2
« Reply #46 on: 03/24/2008 03:43 pm »
Zachstar;

Even if we find a way to go to space tomorrow without a rocket, what does it mean for average user? What is there in space that you can`t get on Earth?  :bleh:

And being able to go to space and dock to Bigelow station will mean much for more people than you think, because experiments in space will become much easier to do.

Anyway, enough with the philosophy. What I meant is, governmental institutions are inherently inefficient. It`s been proven to death by various communist countries. So if you PERSONALLY want to get to Mars someday, the only way it can be done is through commercialisation.

Of course, there is the possibility that space can`t be commercialised because no profit can be done there. In which case, you will never get to Mars, regardless of DIRECT or whatever.  ;)

Offline Ronsmytheiii

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RE: DIRECT v2.0 - Thread 2
« Reply #47 on: 03/24/2008 04:09 pm »
Quote
Zachstar - 24/3/2008  12:31 PM

Which will mean little more than SpaceShip3 or Dragon. IE Rich people will pay to go into orbit to dock to a Bigelow station and come home.

Sorry to go off topic, but there is a common misconception that Bigelow is constructing an orbiting hotel.  The truth is that he is  developing a private commercial complex, where research/manufacturing can be performed.

Now for the Direct related question.  I know that after Challenger the shuttle was barred from commercial flights. Would Jupiter have the same affliction?  There may not be much of a market though, but just in case.

Offline Eerie

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RE: DIRECT v2.0 - Thread 2
« Reply #48 on: 03/24/2008 04:18 pm »
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Ronsmytheiii - 24/3/2008  12:09 PM
Now for the Direct related question.  I know that after Challenger the shuttle was barred from commercial flights. Would Jupiter have the same affliction?  There may not be much of a market though, but just in case.

Will there be a market for very large satellites in GTO?

Offline kevin-rf

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RE: DIRECT v2.0 - Thread 2
« Reply #49 on: 03/24/2008 05:30 pm »
Quote
Eerie - 24/3/2008  1:18 PM

Quote
Ronsmytheiii - 24/3/2008  12:09 PM
Now for the Direct related question.  I know that after Challenger the shuttle was barred from commercial flights. Would Jupiter have the same affliction?  There may not be much of a market though, but just in case.

Will there be a market for very large satellites in GTO?

The answer to that is how many Ariane V's have flown to GTO with a single payload.
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Offline Eerie

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RE: DIRECT v2.0 - Thread 2
« Reply #50 on: 03/24/2008 05:53 pm »
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kevin-rf - 24/3/2008  1:30 PM
The answer to that is how many Ariane V's have flown to GTO with a single payload.

So the answer is no?

Offline kraisee

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Re: DIRECT v2.0 - Thread 2
« Reply #51 on: 03/24/2008 06:17 pm »
There is currently an agreement between NASA and DoD that NASA will not fly any commercial payloads.

But agreements can always be revised if/when circumstances change, and NASA having a capability to lift payloads double or quadruple that of DoD would create a situation where NASA would be in a different market class and would not be competing with the EELV's.   In such a situation, if there was *demand* for such capability, DoD and NASA could likely find a new arrangement.

I would venture to say that as a NASA operation it would likely be a slow thing.   One flight per year maybe.   But there is an option to make it a commercial operation as well.   Either leasing LC-39's facilities from NASA or building something new.   Jupiter-120 as a commercial operation has excellent cost profiles being able to launch twice the payload of satellites as either EELV system currently, yet for quite a bit less than double the cost.   There is certainly a potential economic business model there.   No idea whether anyone will have a go at that or not though - that's a whole other question.

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

Offline Jim

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Re: DIRECT v2.0 - Thread 2
« Reply #52 on: 03/24/2008 09:48 pm »
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kraisee - 24/3/2008  3:17 PM

There is currently an agreement between NASA and DoD that NASA will not fly any commercial payloads.


Ross.

It is not a NASA/DOD agreement, it is a US law that forbids NASA from launching commercial payloads.  It is the Commercial Space Act

Offline Ronsmytheiii

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Re: DIRECT v2.0 - Thread 2
« Reply #53 on: 03/24/2008 09:50 pm »
Quote
kraisee - 24/3/2008  3:17 PM

There is currently an agreement between NASA and DoD that NASA will not fly any commercial payloads.

But agreements can always be revised if/when circumstances change, and NASA having a capability to lift payloads double or quadruple that of DoD would create a situation where NASA would be in a different market class and would not be competing with the EELV's.   In such a situation, if there was *demand* for such capability, DoD and NASA could likely find a new arrangement.

I would venture to say that as a NASA operation it would likely be a slow thing.   One flight per year maybe.   But there is an option to make it a commercial operation as well.   Either leasing LC-39's facilities from NASA or building something new.   Jupiter-120 as a commercial operation has excellent cost profiles being able to launch twice the payload of satellites as either EELV system currently, yet for quite a bit less than double the cost.   There is certainly a potential economic business model there.   No idea whether anyone will have a go at that or not though - that's a whole other question.

Ross.

Actually I was thinking more on the lines of lunar supply with the J-232's starting out with a lunar COTS.  However I guess I can see something of a GTO use for J-120, but with Ariane and the EELVs out there, wouldn't be too sure with shat seems to be a saturated market.

Offline kraisee

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Re: DIRECT v2.0 - Thread 2
« Reply #54 on: 03/25/2008 02:02 am »
Quote
Ronsmytheiii - 24/3/2008  6:50 PM

Actually I was thinking more on the lines of lunar supply with the J-232's starting out with a lunar COTS.  However I guess I can see something of a GTO use for J-120, but with Ariane and the EELVs out there, wouldn't be too sure with shat seems to be a saturated market.

Agreed.   I don't honestly see NASA using Jupiter's for much beyond ISS & Hubble in LEO (there's actually quite a lot of work possible there!) and then Lunar and Mars exploration programs.   Beyond that, at most I see another telescope or two going to orbit and the Mars Sample Return mission being enabled (mostly because they're having *extraordinary* difficulties getting it down to a weight an EELV Heavy can even consider lifting).

I think anything beyond that would fall to a commercial implementation (which I know ATK wants from Ares, so I would figure would also be equally applicable to Jupiter).

The market for ~20mT lift capabilities *is* saturated already.   Ariane and Proton get most of the commercial work and the US launchers are only competitive here because there is a law stating the US isn't allowed to buy foreign assets ahead of US assets.   Its effectively a subsidization.

Trying to squeeze a new niche out of this arena can only be done if you can radically reduce costs (Space-X's hope) and undercut the wide range of competition in the central marketplace or by providing a service nobody currently covers - such as larger payload carrying capabilities.

For a human space flight program though, you don't need to explicitly offer it as a commercial venture.   It needs to be a world better value than the suck-it-dry Shuttle Program has been for the last 25 years, but the number one reason for that has been the hand-labor costs involved in the "Orbiter" element of the system.   As long as the new system is truly cost-effective, there is no specific requirement to ever commercialize it.

Of course, it would be nice to *have* the asset for the intended purpose and then to *maybe* have some commercial operations push for use of it.   That is what it will really take - a company like Bigelow lobbying Washington for commercial use of a 50-100mT NASA launch system - to enable the current rules to be changed, laws to be revised and agreements to be amended.

But I'm quite happy if the system does nothing more than get humans beyond LEO within my lifetime.

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

Offline Lampyridae

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Re: DIRECT v2.0 - Thread 2
« Reply #55 on: 03/26/2008 02:43 am »
Quote
kraisee - 25/3/2008  1:02 PM
Of course, it would be nice to *have* the asset for the intended purpose and then to *maybe* have some commercial operations push for use of it.   That is what it will really take - a company like Bigelow lobbying Washington for commercial use of a 50-100mT NASA launch system - to enable the current rules to be changed, laws to be revised and agreements to be amended.

But I'm quite happy if the system does nothing more than get humans beyond LEO within my lifetime.

Ross.

This is a daft question, I know, but what if private industry just bought the rocket direct from ATK etc and rented the pad? Call it a Zeus 232 and use it for those as-yet-undetermined big commercial payloads. SpaceX is already sort of doing this with LC40, although it just amounts to use of the pad; pretty much everything else involved is their problem.

Offline kraisee

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Re: DIRECT v2.0 - Thread 2
« Reply #56 on: 03/26/2008 02:53 am »
I think the idea is unlikely at best, but if it were to be done NASA would certainly require priority at its own Pads.

As long as they get that they might theoretically be open to the idea of a commercial agreement allowing the corporations to lobby for access.

You just need to get ATK, Boeing, Lockheed and NASA to switch rails from the Ares and invest the money developing this instead because the private sector isn't going to be able to afford to develop any Heavy Lifters even with so much manufacturing and launch infrastructure already in place.

The purely-private sector - which I define as that which operates without reliance upon Federal budgets - is currently led by Space-X with a considerably smaller vehicle.   Jupiter is considerably larger.

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

Offline Jim

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Re: DIRECT v2.0 - Thread 2
« Reply #57 on: 03/26/2008 02:55 am »
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Lampyridae - 25/3/2008  11:43 PM
 SpaceX is already sort of doing this with LC40, although it just amounts to use of the pad; pretty much everything else involved is their problem.

Not really.  Spacex is using the real estate and not the systems of LC-40.  It is the same thing Boeing did at LC-37 and LM at LC-41

Offline jimvela

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Re: DIRECT v2.0 - Thread 2
« Reply #58 on: 03/26/2008 03:36 am »
Quote
Jim - 24/3/2008  4:48 PM

Quote
kraisee - 24/3/2008  3:17 PM

There is currently an agreement between NASA and DoD that NASA will not fly any commercial payloads.


Ross.

It is not a NASA/DOD agreement, it is a US law that forbids NASA from launching commercial payloads.  It is the Commercial Space Act

Jim is correct, and anyone dabbling in statements about this would do well to read the actual act.

PUBLIC LAW 105–303—OCT. 28, 1998
Commercial Space Act of 1998. 42 USC 14701.

http://corport.hq.nasa.gov/launch_services/PL_105_303.pdf


Offline Lampyridae

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Re: DIRECT v2.0 - Thread 2
« Reply #59 on: 03/26/2008 03:38 am »
Quote
Jim - 26/3/2008  1:55 PM

Quote
Lampyridae - 25/3/2008  11:43 PM
 SpaceX is already sort of doing this with LC40, although it just amounts to use of the pad; pretty much everything else involved is their problem.

Not really.  Spacex is using the real estate and not the systems of LC-40.  It is the same thing Boeing did at LC-37 and LM at LC-41

Sorry, I phrased that badly. I meant SpaceX brings all its own equipment to the party: hoses, gantry, radar, vending machines etc.

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