Obsolete Before Completion Part One: The Stick
Over the course of this blog's existance, I have on many occasions sounded off against NASA's CLV. It's been a while, so I wanted to remake my case for why I feel that the CLV is a bad technical, financial, and programmatic decision for NASA.
One of the key pieces of data was brought up at the Return to the Moon conference in 2005 by Chris Shank (who was and I think still is working at NASA HQ as one of Mike Griffin's nearest underlings), when he mentioned that without lower-cost commercial ISS resupply, they would not be able to afford the return to the moon within the time-frame that NASA wants. Basically, if they did everything business-as-usual, and if the Stick and CEV end up being used to service ISS, almost all of their money that they'd need for funding Ares V, EDS, LSAM, and (heaven forbid) actual lunar infrastructure would be sucked up instead in ISS maintenance and keeping the standing army for the Stick and CEV employed. Sure the standing army will be somewhat smaller than the Shuttle's, but one of the key reasons why Shuttle Derived Vehicles (that aren't so Shuttle Derived anymore) are still so popular with NASA is precisely because they don't really get rid of that many jobs.
In other words, if COTS doesn't succeed, NASA's return to the moon is going to get substantially delayed, even if the CLV and CEV come in on-time and on budget. The reality still is that it is COTS and not CLV is the critical path for the return to the moon.
Fortunately, it appears that Griffin and others at NASA at least partially understands this, as shown by the fact that they've provided two good COTS teams with a fairly substantial set of firm, fixed-price contracts, with the right incentives (pay based on achieving milestones, not just based on effort). A little more diversification might have made COTS less of a gamble and more of a wise investment, but what they have should be good enough to get COTS flying.
So what's my point?
My point is that if COTS fails, the CLV/CEV won't really do us very much good, but if COTS succeeds, CLV/CEV will do us even less good! Basically, if COTS works correctly, the Stick will be obsolete before it even enters into operation. Here's why:
The point of the Stick is so that NASA has a booster for launching astronauts and CEVs into orbit. They feel that Atlas's and Delta's aren't sufficiently safe for launching astronauts, and that they would have to be extensively modified in order to "man rate" them, especially with how heavy the CEV has been getting. But, once you already have two inexpensive commercial routes for getting astronauts and payloads to orbit (COTS), why do you really need a much more expensive booster for doing the same thing? Even if you insist on using the CEV for lunar transportation, there is no reason that couldn't be launched unmanned, either on existing boosters, or as part of the lunar stack, and then buy tickets to orbit on one of the COTS vehicles.
Basically, even if you keep with the rest of the ESAS architecture, you don't need the Stick once you have COTS working. And once again, even if the Stick works, if COTS doesn't, you're not going to the moon on-schedule anyway.
Scrapping the Stick right now would free up a lot of money for NASA, and might possibly allow it to expedite the rest of the program, instead of risking its delay. It's important to remember, that the Stick/CEV will enter operations two presidential terms from now. If we're stuck in a situation where the Stick is being used to maintain the station, and where we only have a little bit of money to slowly develop the rest of our lunar capabilities, the whole program is far more likely to be canceled. On the other hand, if we've got commercial transportation to LEO, and already have some of the lunar transportation infrastructure ready by that time, the program is a lot more likely to go on.
All said, continually pouring vast amounts of money into the Stick at this point is not only a waste, but jeapordizes the rest of the program too. Does this really have to be another multi-billion dollar NASA mistake that only gets killed when it's far too late to salvage anything useful from the debacle? Or even worse the kind of mistake that while it "works" technically, goes into operations, but ends up so expensive that it serves as an albatross around NASA's neck for years to come (like its father the Shuttle)?
Killing the stick may be politically inexpedient, but it's the right thing to do. Financially, technically, and programmatically, this idea's a bust.
Update 9/2/06:
In a post on his sight, Mark brings up this question:
I'll try to give a brief reply. Can CEV fly on a K-1? Probably not. Can CEV fly on a Falcon 9 Heavy? Theoretically yes. The mass of the CEV, fully fueled and ready to go to the moon is just barely under the capacity of a Falcon-IX S9, the capsule and service module should fit just fine on the mountings of the Falcon 9. The load paths should be quite similar, and if NASA made the docking interface specifications available to SpaceX, I'm sure they could make an interface ring just as easily as the next guy. Heck, they could even launch the thing with the crew in the vehicle...but that wasn't what I was getting at.
What I was trying to point out, was that if COTS is available, you no longer need to launch crew on the CEV. If you want to use the CEV for carrying people from LEO to the moon and back to earth, no problem. But you no longer need to fly them on the CEV itself, which means that you no longer need a "man-rated" vehicle to launch the CEV on (like Rand, I argue that any vehicle "good enough" to fly billion dollar satellites is probably more than good enough to fly astronauts on, but NASA disagrees). NASA's beef with the Delta IV (and slightly less so with the Atlas V) was that they weren't safe enough for flying with the crew onboard, not that they were incapable of launching the capsule unmanned. Practically any launcher could launch them unmanned. Heck, if you scrap the Stick, you could drop the SRB strapons for the Ares V, and just use two launches of that--one with the EDS, and one with the CEV/LSAM stack. Then you launch the crew up on a commercial available capsule. By getting rid of the SRBs, and the MLPs for the Stick, and all the solid-rocket related facilities, you could save a huge amount of money, increase the reliability of the Ares V, and decrease the development cost for the whole project.
Basically, once you have COTS boosters/capsules capable of safely getting astronauts to orbit, you no longer need a NASA-only "man-rated" launcher. If you insist on the need for a "Crew Exploration Vehicle", you can just launch it unmanned, as cargo, and save the expense of keeping another rocket vehicle line in production--one that is going to have to keep just as many people employed as Atlas V or Delta IV, but will be flying just as rarely if not more so.
It's not a bad idea, but there are some annoying details. A lot of the modules were designed to be launchable only in the shuttle (making the CEV only launchable on a government launcher is a repeat of that mistake), meaning that in order to launch them on an expendable, you'd need to make a special fairing that transfered loads to the modules in the same way that the shuttle payload bay does. You could do it, but you'd end up needing a really heavy lift vehicle to pull it off, unless you could find a way to strip the modules down and outfit them on-orbit. So, yeah, it's not a bad idea, but isn't trivial either. But Mark's right, the point is pretty much moot. There's far too much political momentum for keeping the Shuttle flying until at least 2010 (with some congresscritters wanting to keep flying it after then if they could--way too many jobs to give up without a fight), and the fix would be hard enough that it'd be a hard sell.
One of the key pieces of data was brought up at the Return to the Moon conference in 2005 by Chris Shank (who was and I think still is working at NASA HQ as one of Mike Griffin's nearest underlings), when he mentioned that without lower-cost commercial ISS resupply, they would not be able to afford the return to the moon within the time-frame that NASA wants. Basically, if they did everything business-as-usual, and if the Stick and CEV end up being used to service ISS, almost all of their money that they'd need for funding Ares V, EDS, LSAM, and (heaven forbid) actual lunar infrastructure would be sucked up instead in ISS maintenance and keeping the standing army for the Stick and CEV employed. Sure the standing army will be somewhat smaller than the Shuttle's, but one of the key reasons why Shuttle Derived Vehicles (that aren't so Shuttle Derived anymore) are still so popular with NASA is precisely because they don't really get rid of that many jobs.
In other words, if COTS doesn't succeed, NASA's return to the moon is going to get substantially delayed, even if the CLV and CEV come in on-time and on budget. The reality still is that it is COTS and not CLV is the critical path for the return to the moon.
Fortunately, it appears that Griffin and others at NASA at least partially understands this, as shown by the fact that they've provided two good COTS teams with a fairly substantial set of firm, fixed-price contracts, with the right incentives (pay based on achieving milestones, not just based on effort). A little more diversification might have made COTS less of a gamble and more of a wise investment, but what they have should be good enough to get COTS flying.
So what's my point?
My point is that if COTS fails, the CLV/CEV won't really do us very much good, but if COTS succeeds, CLV/CEV will do us even less good! Basically, if COTS works correctly, the Stick will be obsolete before it even enters into operation. Here's why:
The point of the Stick is so that NASA has a booster for launching astronauts and CEVs into orbit. They feel that Atlas's and Delta's aren't sufficiently safe for launching astronauts, and that they would have to be extensively modified in order to "man rate" them, especially with how heavy the CEV has been getting. But, once you already have two inexpensive commercial routes for getting astronauts and payloads to orbit (COTS), why do you really need a much more expensive booster for doing the same thing? Even if you insist on using the CEV for lunar transportation, there is no reason that couldn't be launched unmanned, either on existing boosters, or as part of the lunar stack, and then buy tickets to orbit on one of the COTS vehicles.
Basically, even if you keep with the rest of the ESAS architecture, you don't need the Stick once you have COTS working. And once again, even if the Stick works, if COTS doesn't, you're not going to the moon on-schedule anyway.
Scrapping the Stick right now would free up a lot of money for NASA, and might possibly allow it to expedite the rest of the program, instead of risking its delay. It's important to remember, that the Stick/CEV will enter operations two presidential terms from now. If we're stuck in a situation where the Stick is being used to maintain the station, and where we only have a little bit of money to slowly develop the rest of our lunar capabilities, the whole program is far more likely to be canceled. On the other hand, if we've got commercial transportation to LEO, and already have some of the lunar transportation infrastructure ready by that time, the program is a lot more likely to go on.
All said, continually pouring vast amounts of money into the Stick at this point is not only a waste, but jeapordizes the rest of the program too. Does this really have to be another multi-billion dollar NASA mistake that only gets killed when it's far too late to salvage anything useful from the debacle? Or even worse the kind of mistake that while it "works" technically, goes into operations, but ends up so expensive that it serves as an albatross around NASA's neck for years to come (like its father the Shuttle)?
Killing the stick may be politically inexpedient, but it's the right thing to do. Financially, technically, and programmatically, this idea's a bust.
Update 9/2/06:
In a post on his sight, Mark brings up this question:
My question, concerning the latter scenario, is can Orion be launched on a Falcon 9 Heavy or a K1? I suspect not, without at least some heavy modifications, but I could be wrong. NASA has already rejected the EELV because it maintains that modifying it would be even more expensive than building Ares 1. Jon and others dispute this, though without so far as I can find a thorough analysis to back that up.
I'll try to give a brief reply. Can CEV fly on a K-1? Probably not. Can CEV fly on a Falcon 9 Heavy? Theoretically yes. The mass of the CEV, fully fueled and ready to go to the moon is just barely under the capacity of a Falcon-IX S9, the capsule and service module should fit just fine on the mountings of the Falcon 9. The load paths should be quite similar, and if NASA made the docking interface specifications available to SpaceX, I'm sure they could make an interface ring just as easily as the next guy. Heck, they could even launch the thing with the crew in the vehicle...but that wasn't what I was getting at.
What I was trying to point out, was that if COTS is available, you no longer need to launch crew on the CEV. If you want to use the CEV for carrying people from LEO to the moon and back to earth, no problem. But you no longer need to fly them on the CEV itself, which means that you no longer need a "man-rated" vehicle to launch the CEV on (like Rand, I argue that any vehicle "good enough" to fly billion dollar satellites is probably more than good enough to fly astronauts on, but NASA disagrees). NASA's beef with the Delta IV (and slightly less so with the Atlas V) was that they weren't safe enough for flying with the crew onboard, not that they were incapable of launching the capsule unmanned. Practically any launcher could launch them unmanned. Heck, if you scrap the Stick, you could drop the SRB strapons for the Ares V, and just use two launches of that--one with the EDS, and one with the CEV/LSAM stack. Then you launch the crew up on a commercial available capsule. By getting rid of the SRBs, and the MLPs for the Stick, and all the solid-rocket related facilities, you could save a huge amount of money, increase the reliability of the Ares V, and decrease the development cost for the whole project.
Basically, once you have COTS boosters/capsules capable of safely getting astronauts to orbit, you no longer need a NASA-only "man-rated" launcher. If you insist on the need for a "Crew Exploration Vehicle", you can just launch it unmanned, as cargo, and save the expense of keeping another rocket vehicle line in production--one that is going to have to keep just as many people employed as Atlas V or Delta IV, but will be flying just as rarely if not more so.
My suggestion has always been, for what it's worth, is to stop flying the shuttle and try completing ISS with expendables and space tugs. That would free up some money to advance the return to the Moon. NASA is not going to do that either, being obviously more comfortable with proceeding with the original plan of using the shuttle to complete ISS.
It's not a bad idea, but there are some annoying details. A lot of the modules were designed to be launchable only in the shuttle (making the CEV only launchable on a government launcher is a repeat of that mistake), meaning that in order to launch them on an expendable, you'd need to make a special fairing that transfered loads to the modules in the same way that the shuttle payload bay does. You could do it, but you'd end up needing a really heavy lift vehicle to pull it off, unless you could find a way to strip the modules down and outfit them on-orbit. So, yeah, it's not a bad idea, but isn't trivial either. But Mark's right, the point is pretty much moot. There's far too much political momentum for keeping the Shuttle flying until at least 2010 (with some congresscritters wanting to keep flying it after then if they could--way too many jobs to give up without a fight), and the fix would be hard enough that it'd be a hard sell.
posted by Jon Goff at 8:15 AM
10 Comments:
I think you have hit the nail on the head with regards to what alot of people have been thinking about the Ares I launch vehicle. It really does not serve any purpose except to be a domestic launch vehicle rated to carry humans. If that capacity is developed successfully by the COTS teams or by some other commerical provider, then the Ares I vehicle would no longer be necessary.
Of course, the solution you suggest is exactly correct. Lockheed Martin should design the Orion vehicle to be launched unmanned on the Atlas and/or as part of the stack on the Ares V. So far, the capsule is the only component of the Ares I launcher which is actually necessary for lunar missions. Even if, in the worst case scenario, the COTS effort should fail to produce a man-rated launch vehicle, it's still likely to be an order of magnitude cheaper to launch our astronauts on Soyuz than it would cost to launch on the Ares I. (much hand waving at that cost figure, but it sounds about right)
It seems to me that the Stick is the backup plan to COTS. The program gives COTS a little bit of cover to do things a new way. If COTS proves successful, then you transition away from the Stick.
It's an expensive backup plan (a billion here, a billion there), and it results in some timelines that don't make much sense, but at least it's politically sound.
Dan Schmelzer
Dan,
It's just like NASA to spend 10x as much on the backup plan (if it's politically expediant) than on the critical path. Killing the stick after COTS is online would be less risky, but far less valuable. What would've been better is if they could have scaled back the CEV to be light enough that it could launch on single stick versions of the Delta IV or Atlas V (or Zenit or Falcon 9) flying depressed trajectories, then they wouldn't need a $5B backup plan.
~Jon
All of this is rather moot if the Orion modules aren't launcher independent. Don't get me wrong, I am no fan of the Stick, but if CEV isn't launcher independent, then we are stuck using Stick anytime we want to launch Orion. It'd be the space shuttle all over again.
Jon, in the general scheme of things, how difficult is it to do launcher independence?
Developing the Stick to do 2 years worth the ISS missions makes no sense, anyway. Orion/Ares won't be available until 2014, and the US commitment to ISS ends in 2016. I really feel like I am missing something, here.
I wrote a draft a while back about a Flexible Exploration Architecthure, FLEX:
http://www.hut.fi/u/tmaja/flex/flex.htm
The LOX requirement is something over 100 tons. With Delta IV Heavy, 5m diameter, it shouldn't be a problem... I should write a more precise follow-on to that.
I meant the empty LOX tank of course...
The hydrogen is the biggest launch vehicle limiter imo, if you don't want to store it in a depot.
Who says the hydrogen has to be stored as hydrogen? I've always advocated storing it as water and cracking it as necessary. Perhaps something like methane would be easier to crack (and provide much needed carbon for shipment to the Moon, to boot), or perhaps another form.
As I ponder the question of cislunar architecture, one thing I try to keep in mind is that the elements of the architecture should be as useful as possible for multiple purposes. So storing hydrogen in the form of water provides hydrogen fuel when cracked, and water supplies for LEO operations. A CEV should be able to go to the ISS and also go beyond the ISS. An EML-1 station provides total Lunar access and is a good place to put instrumentation to start looking for sunward (or blindside) NEOs. Utility and flexibility.
I think Griffin's secret plan is to just forget about the ISS if COTS doesn't work. As an earlier commenter here pointed out the US commitment to ISS only goes to '16. Stick is supposed to be operational in '14, but with such a complex project delays are likely.
If it actually only becomes operational in '16 or later and there is no treaty that requires them to operate ISS further and COTS doesn't work for some reason they will just forget about ISS
and turn it over to the Russians or others.
If COTS works and nothing bad happens
to Bigelow there might be even a private replacement space station around by then.
The standing army at NASA will remain the same as it is now, but instead of doing ISS and Hubble only they will be doing a moon base, which is a improvement.
Doesn't sound like a bad plan to me.
Perhaps something like methane would be easier to crack
It's be cheaper to just burn it. If you're only paying Falcon 9 and Zenit (Can they launch regular Zenits from Odyssey?) prices to launch your fuel, who cares if you have to launch an extra 20 tonnes of it.
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