Orion on an Ariane 5 ME CNES Study

[yg1968]

I am not sure how seriously this option is being considered but it's interesting.

http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/hyperbola/2010/01/french.html

[robertross]

I think this was rumoured or discussed a few months back, but it lends credence to the 'international cooperation to the moon' effort for Obama.

This is a nice statement. Sound familiar? (IE: Ares I):

"Another challenge is the Ariane 5's "low frequency environment" that "exceeds human tolerance". Ouch."

[hektor]

I am not sure how seriously this option is being considered

Afaik this has not been presented to the Augustine Committee.

CNES couldn't have had a better opportunity to present this kind of idea. So...

[Lambda-4]

I am not sure how seriously this option is being considered but it's interesting.

http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/hyperbola/2010/01/french.html

Not going to happen.

And if it did happen, it would be IN ADDITION to any launch capability of Orion in the US (e.g. Orion on an EELV and in cooperation with ESA Orion also on Ariane 5 to give Europe an "independent" crew launch capability and the US a back-up vehicle for Orion).

[woods170]

I am not sure how seriously this option is being considered

Afaik this has not been presented to the Augustine Committee.

CNES couldn't have had a better opportunity to present this kind of idea. So...

The reason for this being that this study is just that: a study. Nothing more, nothing less.
It's an interesting idea, but it presents several major hurdles. The biggest one is that the US is never going to launch their Orion exclusively from a launchpad in another country. They will want to have launch capabilities on home soil at all times. So, using Ariane 5 to launch Orion from French-Guyana will be a back-up option at best.

Naturally, the USA could request ESA to allow Ariane 5 to launch from a US launch site. This option would raise any manrating costs for Ariane 5 with at least an additional 400 million Euro's (this being the cost of constructing the ELA-3 launchsite back in the early 1990's).

And then there's another hurdle: who's gonna pay for man-rating Ariane 5? Who's gonna pay for all the hardware changes? ESA works on a shoestring budget compared to the NASA budget. Even if manrating Ariane 5 costs a 'mere' 1.6 billion US $, that would present a very significant portion of the annual ESA budget. An anyone on this site knows that early estimates of costs are always much lower than the actual costs turn out to be in the end.
As such, it is very reasonable to suspect the actual cost of man-rating Ariane 5 and making all the associated changes to the launch infrastructure will be substantially higher than the presented 1.6 billion. ESA members are very aware of rising costs; 'selling' the concept of 'Orion on Ariane 5' to the member-states will be one hell of a job. ESA will want the USA to pay for the majority of the bill.

But, only time will tell what actually comes from this study. Noteworthy is the fact that EADS Astrium and CNES perform studies all the time (the Aviodrome archives I have access to is filled with them), but close to never do they result in actual programs and hardware. My gut feeling is that the same fate will await this particular study.

[robertross]

I am not sure how seriously this option is being considered

Afaik this has not been presented to the Augustine Committee.

CNES couldn't have had a better opportunity to present this kind of idea. So...

The reason for this being that this study is just that: a study. Nothing more, nothing less.
It's an interesting idea, but it presents several major hurdles. The biggest one is that the US is never going to launch their Orion exclusively from a launchpad in another country. They will want to have launch capabilities on home soil at all times. So, using Ariane 5 to launch Orion from French-Guyana will be a back-up option at best.

Naturally, the USA could request ESA to allow Ariane 5 to launch from a US launch site. This option would raise any manrating costs for Ariane 5 with at least an additional 400 million Euro's (this being the cost of constructing the ELA-3 launchsite back in the early 1990's).

And then there's another hurdle: who's gonna pay for man-rating Ariane 5? Who's gonna pay for all the hardware changes? ESA works on a shoestring budget compared to the NASA budget. Even if manrating Ariane 5 costs a 'mere' 1.6 billion US $, that would present a very significant portion of the annual ESA budget. An anyone on this site knows that early estimates of costs are always much lower than the actual costs turn out to be in the end.
As such, it is very reasonable to suspect the actual cost of man-rating Ariane 5 and making all the associated changes to the launch infrastructure will be substantially higher than the presented 1.6 billion. ESA members are very aware of rising costs; 'selling' the concept of 'Orion on Ariane 5' to the member-states will be one hell of a job. ESA will want the USA to pay for the majority of the bill.

But, only time will tell what actually comes from this study. Noteworthy is the fact that EADS Astrium and CNES perform studies all the time (the Aviodrome archives I have access to is filled with them), but close to never do they result in actual programs and hardware. My gut feeling is that the same fate will await this particular study.

No, I see this as an ESA contribution to an international effort to go back to the moon.

Orion on Arianne will most likely be the back-up plan, in case of a launch delay (due to US launch vehicle) or pad issue. It can also be for a rescue mission for the same reasons. It can also serve the ISS as a back-up to commercial vehicles.

For the contribution, ESA gets to send its own astronauts to the moon, and in fact they could do it from their 'own' soil, not just on an American rocket.

Canada (CSA) would look to be in the running for robotics & rovers. Japan (JAXA) would be there for habitat and/or science modules. Russia, well there are lots of potential support options.

[kraisee]

I doubt this has anything to do with a joint International Exploration program of any sort.   I would bet that this is really just ESA looking at what their options are for launching crews for their own purposes.

This study will tell them that an Orion-based solution from America would take "x" years to integrate and cost "y" to develop and then operate.

There will be a similar study which details how much it would cost to fly Soyuz spacecraft on top of their new Soyuz launchers.

And there will be a third study which details how much it would cost to develop and operate a home-grown capability, probably based on ATV systems, as well.


I think they're going to find that the American option is the most expensive of the bunch, and that the Russian will be the cheapest -- and I doubt anyone will be surprised at that.

Unless they specifically prefer to pay extra in order to "develop capabilities and technologies" for themselves, I see ESA going down the Soyuz path, not the Orion one.

Ross.

[Nascent Ascent]

If it were part of an international return to the Moon project, wouldn't it make more sense to use Ariane 5 to launch a lunar lander?

That way ESA could participate by developing the lander and providing the launcher too.

NASA and USA could provide Orion and the EDS.

[robertross]

If it were part of an international return to the Moon project, wouldn't it make more sense to use Ariane 5 to launch a lunar lander?

That way ESA could participate by developing the lander and providing the launcher too.

NASA and USA could provide Orion and the EDS.

The lander is massively expensive. Besides, what better way to help out than to help develop a human-rated vehicle? When ESA has that, they can not only help the international development, but they can do missions of their own.

Great way to have a 'space race' 

(I know, no budegt for that kind of stuff)

[Nascent Ascent]

If it were part of an international return to the Moon project, wouldn't it make more sense to use Ariane 5 to launch a lunar lander?

That way ESA could participate by developing the lander and providing the launcher too.

NASA and USA could provide Orion and the EDS.

The lander is massively expensive. Besides, what better way to help out than to help develop a human-rated vehicle? When ESA has that, they can not only help the international development, but they can do missions of their own.

Great way to have a 'space race' 

(I know, no budegt for that kind of stuff)

Yes, it would be expensive.  But the EU has a lot of members.  And the lander is something that is needed.  We're going to have a launcher.

[MrTim]

I hope this idea is not serious and is not implemented.

We already have too few competing systems for robust human exploration. While it might seem a good way to lower some costs in the near term or some such thing, I believe it bad for the long run.

Having more unique manned systems helps to protect against some future big international exploration activity being put in jeopardy by a failure in one partner's hardware. Consider ISS: What would have happened post-Columbia if the US and Russia and ESA were all using the shuttle system? Even with the two systems we had, consider what would have happened if, immediately post-Columbia, the Soyuz separation problem had arisen... with fatal results? Having multiple dissimilar systems (but with compatibilities for joint operations) will make for a better more-robust future while also allowing different agencies to try different options and arrive at different solutions.

I hope Europe develops its own manned capability without too much commonality with either the US or Russia. 

[woods170]

The lander is massively expensive. Besides, what better way to help out than to help develop a human-rated vehicle? When ESA has that, they can not only help the international development, but they can do missions of their own.

Great way to have a 'space race' 

(I know, no budegt for that kind of stuff)

Yes, it would be expensive.  But the EU has a lot of members.  And the lander is something that is needed.  We're going to have a launcher.

First: ESA is not an EU organisation. Members of the EU are not automatically members of ESA. ESA is not the space-agency of the EU. It is largely an independent organisation.

Second: despite the fact that ESA has a good number of members, the budget is rather small. It's bigger than Russia's, but significantly smaller than the US budget. Consider this: even with the larger USA budget, the efforts to design Altair have been de-funded.

Third: Altair, as currently envisioned, will not be expensive. It will be HUGELY expensive. Don't count on Europe developing that thing on it's own. No way ESA is going to cough up the several billions needed for this effort.

Fourth: the lander is needed by the USA, not Europe. After all: CxP is not an international effort, it's a USA party. ESA has no concrete plans of getting human presence back to the moon. Getting a largely independent access to space is one of their main goals, the moon is not.

Fifth: a launcher for Altair is already on the drawing boards; Ares V.

[whitewatcher]

If it were part of an international return to the Moon project, wouldn't it make more sense to use Ariane 5 to launch a lunar lander?

There has been a stuy by, as far as I remember, Thales-Alenia.
It can land 2 crew on the lunar surface and you can Orbit it using Ariane 5.

But: You cannot bring this damn thing to the moon. When we did a study for a lunar base last summer, we did logistics analysis. There's no way of bringing this damn thing to the LLO.

[woods170]

I am not sure how seriously this option is being considered

Afaik this has not been presented to the Augustine Committee.

CNES couldn't have had a better opportunity to present this kind of idea. So...

The reason for this being that this study is just that: a study. Nothing more, nothing less.
It's an interesting idea, but it presents several major hurdles. The biggest one is that the US is never going to launch their Orion exclusively from a launchpad in another country. They will want to have launch capabilities on home soil at all times. So, using Ariane 5 to launch Orion from French-Guyana will be a back-up option at best.

Naturally, the USA could request ESA to allow Ariane 5 to launch from a US launch site. This option would raise any manrating costs for Ariane 5 with at least an additional 400 million Euro's (this being the cost of constructing the ELA-3 launchsite back in the early 1990's).

And then there's another hurdle: who's gonna pay for man-rating Ariane 5? Who's gonna pay for all the hardware changes? ESA works on a shoestring budget compared to the NASA budget. Even if manrating Ariane 5 costs a 'mere' 1.6 billion US $, that would present a very significant portion of the annual ESA budget. An anyone on this site knows that early estimates of costs are always much lower than the actual costs turn out to be in the end.
As such, it is very reasonable to suspect the actual cost of man-rating Ariane 5 and making all the associated changes to the launch infrastructure will be substantially higher than the presented 1.6 billion. ESA members are very aware of rising costs; 'selling' the concept of 'Orion on Ariane 5' to the member-states will be one hell of a job. ESA will want the USA to pay for the majority of the bill.

But, only time will tell what actually comes from this study. Noteworthy is the fact that EADS Astrium and CNES perform studies all the time (the Aviodrome archives I have access to is filled with them), but close to never do they result in actual programs and hardware. My gut feeling is that the same fate will await this particular study.

No, I see this as an ESA contribution to an international effort to go back to the moon.

Orion on Arianne will most likely be the back-up plan, in case of a launch delay (due to US launch vehicle) or pad issue. It can also be for a rescue mission for the same reasons. It can also serve the ISS as a back-up to commercial vehicles.

For the contribution, ESA gets to send its own astronauts to the moon, and in fact they could do it from their 'own' soil, not just on an American rocket.

Canada (CSA) would look to be in the running for robotics & rovers. Japan (JAXA) would be there for habitat and/or science modules. Russia, well there are lots of potential support options.

I disagree. There is no international effort to get back to the moon. ESA is not actively involved in the current CxP, neither is Russia or Japan. What international effort are you referring to?

ESA has no concrete plans to send astronauts to the moon. Studies have been performed, but sending ESA astronauts to the moon has not been set as a goal on the latest ESA council meeting.

Back-up plan for a launch delay? The study by EADS-Astrium and CNES states that Orion-on-Ariane 5 could possibly fly as early as 2019. A full two years after the currently planned Orion-on-Ares 1. Not exactly my idea of a back-up plan.

[Lambda-4]

But: You cannot bring this damn thing to the moon. When we did a study for a lunar base last summer, we did logistics analysis. There's no way of bringing this damn thing to the LLO.

ESA has in studies concentrated to show that it could help in providing logistics and smaller cargo and supplies to the lunar surface. Yes, a crewed lunar lander is out of Ariane 5's range (if A5 does the TLI by itself).

A cargo lander however does have merits. 1.3mt of gross cargo with A5ECA and 1.7mt of gross cargo with A5ME. It's a bit more limited than Progress for ISS support, but given the fact that a lunar station doesn't require propellant for station keeping (which Progress also provides), we could say such a lander would be the "Progress equivalent" for a lunar surface hab/station.

If anything, this is a fairly independent and realistic contribution by ESA and ESA memberstates. They provide regular (2+ per year) cargo flights with supplies to the lunar surface (in addition to scientific collaboration) and in return receive crew time on the lunar surface and a share in samples and data (just like it was the case for the ISS).

[robertross]

I disagree. There is no international effort to get back to the moon. ESA is not actively involved in the current CxP, neither is Russia or Japan. What international effort are you referring to?

ESA has no concrete plans to send astronauts to the moon. Studies have been performed, but sending ESA astronauts to the moon has not been set as a goal on the latest ESA council meeting.

Back-up plan for a launch delay? The study by EADS-Astrium and CNES states that Orion-on-Ariane 5 could possibly fly as early as 2019. A full two years after the currently planned Orion-on-Ares 1. Not exactly my idea of a back-up plan.

I put this forth: ISS is alomst construction complete. Now what?

Russia has been itching to do something with their 'capability', it's all in their presentations, whether they can afford it or not.

ESA is looking at things they can do with its space program. They have built and/or modified existing capabilities in their range of aerospace companies to develop future space capabilities.

Same with JAXA: their 'main' hardware construction effort (for modules) is now complete, and they have a new capability to launch the HTV to the ISS. They will surely focus their attention on the ISS, but it will not be the only place they are looking.

We all face a major recession-generated problem with jobs. We need a new focus going forward, and to make use of what was lost: key manufacturing and high-tech capabilities. ESA can easily see this as a way to move forward with their space program. It may just bring other EU members into the fold, though that's certainly debatable.

[mmeijeri]

But: You cannot bring this damn thing to the moon. When we did a study for a lunar base last summer, we did logistics analysis. There's no way of bringing this damn thing to the LLO.

What if you dry-launched it, either straight to LLO, or first to LEO for rendez-vous with an EDS? You could refuel in LLO. The lander was going to be hypergolic anyway, wasn't it? As a last resort you could get it to LLO under its own propulsion. Not very efficient, but possible. Instead of LLO you could also use L1/L2 as a staging point, which makes things easier with a small ECA-based EDS.

[whitewatcher]

But: You cannot bring this damn thing to the moon. When we did a study for a lunar base last summer, we did logistics analysis. There's no way of bringing this damn thing to the LLO.

What if you dry-launched it, either straight to LLO, or first to LEO for rendez-vous with an EDS? You could refuel in LLO. The lander was going to be hypergolic anyway, wasn't it? As a last resort you could get it to LLO under its own propulsion. Not very efficient, but possible. Instead of LLO you could also use L1/L2 as a staging point, which makes things easier with a small ECA-based EDS.

The study is 6 months ago now, but: As far as I remember, all the suggested scenarios will not work. Sometimes, the perfomance is only 50 m/s below what would be required.
You could try a WSB transfer but the engine is two classes too heavy because it is made for high thrust. Impulsive trajectories require high delta-v. Trapped between the options. ;-)

A possible solution would be to make it re-usable. I conceived a scenario taking advantage of the cold craters near the poles: A 50m magnetic rail ("maglev") could provide enough delta-v for the lander to be reusable, because most of the onboard fuel is burned
(1) during the early seconds of the ascent and
(2) for bringing this "early ascent" fuel down to the surface.

The question is: How do we force so much energy into the rail? If we can accelerate the crew with 4-5 m/sē on the 50m rail, we need megaamperes in our power lines.
That's where the cold craters come in: A superconductive energy storage (e.g. a flywheel with 2-3m in diameter) could provide the necessary power.

The break-even point of such a system is after the 2nd flight (!) if you re-use the ascent stage only. Break-even point shifts to 5 crewed flights if you want to re-use the entire lander.
I derived a formula for the optimal rail length, depending on number of missions, lander mass, ...

[mmeijeri]

The study is 6 months ago now, but: As far as I remember, all the suggested scenarios will not work. Sometimes, the perfomance is only 50 m/s below what would be required.

So close and yet so far... The upper stage is only going to get smaller with Ariane 6 isn't it?

You could try a WSB transfer but the engine is two classes too heavy because it is made for high thrust. Impulsive trajectories require high delta-v. Trapped between the options. ;-)

A WSB trajectory to L1/L2 can be done for "only" 3.2km/s, would that still be too much?

A possible solution would be to make it re-usable.

I really like reusable landers, but mainly because they would allow early commercial propellant flights. With L1/L2 as the staging point such a lander would have to have a delta-v of ~5km/s. That's enough to get from LEO to L1/L2. Expensive, but if the lander is reusable you might get away with it.

Why would you still have too little delta-v in this scenario?

[whitewatcher]

The study is 6 months ago now, but: As far as I remember, all the suggested scenarios will not work. Sometimes, the perfomance is only 50 m/s below what would be required.

So close and yet so far... The upper stage is only going to get smaller with Ariane 6 isn't it?

Guess so.

You could try a WSB transfer but the engine is two classes too heavy because it is made for high thrust. Impulsive trajectories require high delta-v. Trapped between the options. ;-)

A WSB trajectory to L1/L2 can be done for "only" 3.2km/s, would that still be too much?

Lunar Landing takes 2,5 km/s I think. This includes 500m/s of margin. You could go to LLO on WSB, leaving your ascent stage behind. 

A possible solution would be to make it re-usable.

I really like reusable landers, but mainly because they would allow early commercial propellant flights. With L1/L2 as the staging point such a lander would have to have a delta-v of ~5km/s. That's enough to get from LEO to L1/L2. Expensive, but if the lander is reusable you might get away with it.

Why would you still have too little delta-v in this scenario?

Lunar surface to EML shutteling is another thing. LLO-surface round trip takes 4,5 km/s and you can do the most expensive part with the rail.

I, personally, find this model very attractive. I think we need much more modularity. And the courage to use more rendevouz and docking in our mission scenarios; this probably will be the key to the next phase of human exploration.