Author Topic: Morpheus Application Thread  (Read 31050 times)

Offline Jim

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Re: Morpheus Application Thread
« Reply #20 on: 12/21/2013 01:34 am »
NASA has no project to design actual lunar landing.   This has been stated over and over

For a manned lunar lander.  But what about unmanned? 

Same thing applies.  NASA has no project

Offline jongoff

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Re: Morpheus Application Thread
« Reply #21 on: 12/21/2013 05:01 am »
NASA has no project to design actual lunar landing.   This has been stated over and over

For a manned lunar lander.  But what about unmanned?  NASA also didn't have any plans to redirect and visit an asteroid until a few short years ago.

Obviously your point is well taken, but I don't think we can say exactly where morpheus applications will end.

I don't want this to sound like sour grapes, but seriously? Morpheus is a good VTVL testbed, but it's really no more sophisticated than what we built and flew at Masten 4 years ago (with a team 20x smaller, and with 30-40x less budget). Sure, you could extrapolate from almost any VTVL vehicle and say "you could evolve that into a real lunar lander", but that would be similar to saying "you could evolve a Cesna to become a supersonic bomber".  Both true, but for very loose definitions of "evolve".

The reality is that a cryogenic-propellant lunar lander is going to require far more sophistication than Morpheus, or the vehicles that Masten and Armadillo were doing. Are they learning some useful lessons? Sure. Do they have some secret sauce that Masten, Armadillo, Blue Origin, Might Eagle, SpaceX or any of the other VTVL groups don't have? Not really. They're no closer technically to making a real lunar lander than any of those other groups.

~Jon

Offline QuantumG

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Re: Morpheus Application Thread
« Reply #22 on: 12/21/2013 05:07 am »
What'd ya have in mind Jon? I mean, to hear some people talk about Morpheus, they seem to think you could just launch it to LLO now and it'd be able to soft land on the Moon. Personally, I have trouble seeing the engine even starting..
Human spaceflight is basically just LARPing now.

Offline jongoff

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Re: Morpheus Application Thread
« Reply #23 on: 12/21/2013 05:26 am »
What'd ya have in mind Jon? I mean, to hear some people talk about Morpheus, they seem to think you could just launch it to LLO now and it'd be able to soft land on the Moon. Personally, I have trouble seeing the engine even starting...

Well, you pretty much need to have all the capabilities of a 3DOF stabilized spacecraft (space-based ADCS, space rated electronics, power systems, comms, zero-g propellant handling subsystems, long-duration propellant thermal conditioning (either insulation or heating), and engine systems that work reliably without intervention 300,000km away almost half a week after the last time touched by human hands. Totally doable, but not at all trivial. And with Morpheus having spent likely somewhere in the $60-75M to get to their first pair of successful free-flights (once you factor in the burdened cost of having 60-100 FTEs on the project for several years), how much will all the rest of those things take?

~Jon

Offline savuporo

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Re: Morpheus Application Thread
« Reply #24 on: 12/21/2013 04:36 pm »
Well, you pretty much need to have all the capabilities of a 3DOF stabilized spacecraft (space-based ADCS, space rated electronics, power systems, comms..

Plus initial construction material selection - for deep space, not just LEO. In short, a redesign from scratch.
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Offline savuporo

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Re: Morpheus Application Thread
« Reply #25 on: 12/22/2013 06:07 pm »
I don't want this to sound like sour grapes, but seriously? Morpheus is a good VTVL testbed, but it's really no more sophisticated than what we built and flew at Masten 4 years ago
Fully agreed on the sophistication angle but there is something on a tangent here..

I see you keep comparing Morpheus to NGLLC vehicles and their costs, but there is a fundamental difference to these projects. Morpheus is working as a tech testbed, and they leave behind a trail of tech reports, papers and presumably volumes of internal technical documentation like CAD models, test datasets etc. I.e. they have continuity.
They can kill the project tomorrow and someone can come back to a similar project 5 years later and still learn from what was done before.
Even a simple search on NTRS brings out 34 documents right now, about half of these look like technical docs on various related subjects, and that's just whats out on NTRS.
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Offline A_M_Swallow

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Re: Morpheus Application Thread
« Reply #26 on: 12/22/2013 11:39 pm »
{snip}
I see you keep comparing Morpheus to NGLLC vehicles and their costs, but there is a fundamental difference to these projects. Morpheus is working as a tech testbed, and they leave behind a trail of tech reports, papers and presumably volumes of internal technical documentation like CAD models, test datasets etc. I.e. they have continuity.
They can kill the project tomorrow and someone can come back to a similar project 5 years later and still learn from what was done before.
Even a simple search on NTRS brings out 34 documents right now, about half of these look like technical docs on various related subjects, and that's just whats out on NTRS.

The standard reason for government documentation.  They believe it and spend enormous amounts of money on paperwork.

The replacement big launch vehicle for the Saturn 5 is the SLS.  How much of the Saturn 5 documentation is being used for SLS development?

Offline jongoff

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Re: Morpheus Application Thread
« Reply #27 on: 12/23/2013 04:28 am »
I don't want this to sound like sour grapes, but seriously? Morpheus is a good VTVL testbed, but it's really no more sophisticated than what we built and flew at Masten 4 years ago
Fully agreed on the sophistication angle but there is something on a tangent here..

I see you keep comparing Morpheus to NGLLC vehicles and their costs, but there is a fundamental difference to these projects. Morpheus is working as a tech testbed, and they leave behind a trail of tech reports, papers and presumably volumes of internal technical documentation like CAD models, test datasets etc. I.e. they have continuity.
They can kill the project tomorrow and someone can come back to a similar project 5 years later and still learn from what was done before.
Even a simple search on NTRS brings out 34 documents right now, about half of these look like technical docs on various related subjects, and that's just whats out on NTRS.

For a fraction of the cost delta between Morpheus and Xoie, you could've hired two technical writers per Masten engineer to document the wazoo out of everything they did.

~Jon

Offline KelvinZero

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Re: Morpheus Application Thread
« Reply #28 on: 12/23/2013 07:04 am »
A bit off topic, but I would like to know what the sweet spot would be for building a cheap lunar lander right now, whether Morpheus derived or something else.. and how 'off the shelf' it could be.

Offline savuporo

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Re: Morpheus Application Thread
« Reply #29 on: 12/23/2013 07:13 am »
Probably another Phoenix / InSight platform copy built by LockMart would be your quickest way to an actual lunar lander.
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Offline ChrisWilson68

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Re: Morpheus Application Thread
« Reply #30 on: 12/23/2013 07:25 am »
I don't want this to sound like sour grapes, but seriously? Morpheus is a good VTVL testbed, but it's really no more sophisticated than what we built and flew at Masten 4 years ago
Fully agreed on the sophistication angle but there is something on a tangent here..

I see you keep comparing Morpheus to NGLLC vehicles and their costs, but there is a fundamental difference to these projects. Morpheus is working as a tech testbed, and they leave behind a trail of tech reports, papers and presumably volumes of internal technical documentation like CAD models, test datasets etc. I.e. they have continuity.
They can kill the project tomorrow and someone can come back to a similar project 5 years later and still learn from what was done before.
Even a simple search on NTRS brings out 34 documents right now, about half of these look like technical docs on various related subjects, and that's just whats out on NTRS.

For a fraction of the cost delta between Morpheus and Xoie, you could've hired two technical writers per Masten engineer to document the wazoo out of everything they did.

~Jon

I agree 100% with Jon.  Masten and the others have done similar things with much smaller teams.

Morpheus isn't a part of a larger project to make an operational vehicle, and it's not doing anything fundamentally new.  Sure, it gives experience to the people working on it, and that has some value.  But working on something truly new or something that will really be operational gives experience too while also achieving other goals.

I think the lesson here is that certain NASA centers have too many people without something truly useful to do who have to be kept busy.

Offline savuporo

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Re: Morpheus Application Thread
« Reply #31 on: 12/23/2013 07:44 am »
... it's not doing anything fundamentally new.  Sure, it gives experience to the people working on it, and that has some value.  But working on something truly new or something that will really be operational gives experience too while also achieving other goals.

Did you read the thread above at all ? Morpheus is currently in a flight campaign maturing a fundamentally new technical capability for NASA that they have never flown before, its called Autonomous Landing and Hazard Avoidance Technology (ALHAT)
They'll probably keep doing fundamentally new things with it after that.
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Offline Jim

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Re: Morpheus Application Thread
« Reply #32 on: 12/23/2013 11:53 am »
Probably another Phoenix / InSight platform copy built by LockMart would be your quickest way to an actual lunar lander.

No, those were Mars landers and depended on an aeroshell and parachute for most of the braking.  The platform doesn't have enough DV for lunar landing.

Offline savuporo

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Re: Morpheus Application Thread
« Reply #33 on: 12/23/2013 03:45 pm »
No, those were Mars landers and depended on an aeroshell and parachute for most of the braking.  The platform doesn't have enough DV for lunar landing.
I know, it used twelve small Aerojet MR-107 thrusters for the controlled landing phase, each only about 250 N.

I'm just guessing that starting with the basic flight proven controlled landing platform without the aeroshell and parachutes and adding a fixed center engine to the propulsion system is faster than a scratch design of a completely new platform.

Details for propulsion and other systems here if anyone cares
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/press_kits/phoenix-landing.pdf

EDIT: ME platform just posted this overview paper of what they have built and tested over last few years. Seems like they are at least using or have an option for most subsystems to change to already space qualified components.
http://www.jhuapl.edu/techdigest/TD/td3203/32_03-McGee.pdf

« Last Edit: 12/23/2013 03:59 pm by savuporo »
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Offline Jim

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Re: Morpheus Application Thread
« Reply #34 on: 12/23/2013 04:24 pm »

I'm just guessing that starting with the basic flight proven controlled landing platform without the aeroshell and parachutes and adding a fixed center engine to the propulsion system is faster than a scratch design of a completely new platform.


It would have to be a new platform.  The current one isn't designed to handle the volume and mass of additional propellant tanks.

Offline jongoff

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Re: Morpheus Application Thread
« Reply #35 on: 12/23/2013 08:39 pm »
... it's not doing anything fundamentally new.  Sure, it gives experience to the people working on it, and that has some value.  But working on something truly new or something that will really be operational gives experience too while also achieving other goals.

Did you read the thread above at all ? Morpheus is currently in a flight campaign maturing a fundamentally new technical capability for NASA that they have never flown before, its called Autonomous Landing and Hazard Avoidance Technology (ALHAT)
They'll probably keep doing fundamentally new things with it after that.

While this is true, there's a lot of backstory you're missing. Back in 2004, Boeing bid a competing technology to ALHAT that they called PL&HA technology (Precision Landing and Hazard Avoidance) technology. Same overall concept--using a LIDAR (in Boeing's case a scanning Optech LIDAR) to map the terrain at altitude, creating a cost map that ranked the relative risk of landing at various points combined with the risk of running out of propellant on the way over, and then picked the optimum point for landing. Combined with DC-X derived GN&C that would fly a 4-engine lander with engine-out capability. They won the ~$30M contract from the Human and Robotic Technology BAA that came out as part of the early VSE effort.  Griffin came in and cancelled most of those contracts only a few months later. Boeing had been making good progress, so they were looking for alternative ways of getting this technology tested. They approached Masten about doing a low-cost lander (our XL-0.2 design), and we worked with them for a while trying to mature the technology and try and find funding to proceed. Boeing never found funding for it (because unlike Morpheus/ALHAT we actually had to compete for funding), or we would've flown something years ago. As it is, JPL and Draper have been testing related GN&C/landing technologies with Masten for some time now. There's nothing Morpheus is doing that couldn't have been tested on existing commercial vehicles, had NASA had that desire.

~Jon

Offline savuporo

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Re: Morpheus Application Thread
« Reply #36 on: 12/23/2013 09:01 pm »
While this is true, there's a lot of backstory you're missing...
I'm mostly aware of the overall gist of the backstory but thanks for providing details.

Quote
There's nothing Morpheus is doing that couldn't have been tested on existing commercial vehicles, had NASA had that desire.
Would and could. The backstory doesn't change the facts of the current story, does it ?

Obviously NASA has more than one VTVL testbed funded an in use, at least two in house and it still keeps working with the last remaining VTVL partner too, as you pointed out.
Did Masten also work on testing methane engines which Morpheus is currently doing ? And before you say Armadillo, lets remember that AA backed out of NASA partnerships on their own initiative.

There have been a bunch of calls for NASA to operate more like NACA, and here they are doing exactly that. But now its not cool.
« Last Edit: 12/23/2013 09:02 pm by savuporo »
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Offline jongoff

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Re: Morpheus Application Thread
« Reply #37 on: 12/25/2013 05:13 am »
There have been a bunch of calls for NASA to operate more like NACA, and here they are doing exactly that. But now its not cool.

I don't know how well this really fits the NACA mold though. I wonder if NACA would've gone out and built their own custom airplane from the ground up to test one subsystem when there were perfectly workable airplanes in the commercial sector to test it on?

~Jon
« Last Edit: 12/25/2013 06:19 am by jongoff »

Offline savuporo

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Re: Morpheus Application Thread
« Reply #38 on: 12/25/2013 06:16 pm »
They were initially sort of trying to do that, but the team that was building a "perfectly workable airplane" sort of pulled out of that engagement.
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Offline jongoff

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Re: Morpheus Application Thread
« Reply #39 on: 12/25/2013 07:28 pm »
They were initially sort of trying to do that, but the team that was building a "perfectly workable airplane" sort of pulled out of that engagement.

Are you sure that's the way it happened? I was under the impression that NASA JSC was trying to insource stuff from AA before AA decided to stop doing subcontracting. I think NASA wanted to do the engines, GN&C, plumbing, controls, and just wanted AA to do the tanks (that JSC designed). I ought to ask Ben and IIIan--they were there (Ben at AA, and Ian as a contractor on the Morpheus side) when all that was happening.

~Jon

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