Now That Explains A Lot (ESAS Edition)
I've been rather enjoying some of the discussions going on at the NASASpaceflight.com forums lately. Unlike some of my usual haunts where I occasionally lurk (like sci.space.policy), most of the people there aren't people that I've been arguing with for just over a decade. It's always nice to see new (or old) perspectives that haven't yet been tainted by what sometimes passes for the alt.space conventional wisdom. I don't think that the alt.space conventional wisdom is necessarily wrong, I just think that it's sometimes refreshing to hang out in a place where people with a lot of experience disagree with you. It makes you think through and reconsider your stances on things, and even forces you occasionally to change your mind. It's kind of an interesting learning experience. A lot of what I learned about space I learned the hard way by shooting my mouth off in forums like that.
Anyhow, I was participating in a Q&A thread that had been arranged with Dr Doug Stanley of NASA regarding the recently completed Constellation Propellants Options Study. Dr Stanley is a close friend of Mike Griffin's and was one of the main people who Mike tasked with putting together the Exploration Systems Architecture Study. If anyone has some good insight into why decisions were made by the ESAS team, he'd be a good place to start. Anyhow, the thread had a lot of really good information, not only about propellants, but some things about lunar lander design concepts, and ISRU--I would recommend reading through it a bit if you have the time.
Then, in response to a question about forward applicability to Mars, Dr Stanley shared something that I find rather worrying. I was originally reticent to post this, because even though it was on a public forum, I'm not entirely sure that he wants his comments dragged out into the blogosphere, but I think what he said sheds a lot of light on the thinking behind NASA's current architecture. Here's the quote:
To be fair to Dr Stanley, everyone has their own preferences and opinions, and we're all entitled to them. I have no more right to tell Dr Stanley to stop being a Mars nut than he has to tell me to stop being interested in Lunar development.
That said, I find it rather disheartening to hear that the guy who led the team that came up with the study that NASA is now going to blow something like $50-60B over the next decade or so implementing doesn't think it's affordable to do what the President wanted. Even more disheartening is the openly expressed desire for the whole Moon thing to go away so we can focus on Mars.
It does really explain a lot though, doesn't it? I've found that a lot of the people that I talk with about who are firm believers in HLVs, when I've taken the wind out of their sails regarding the supposed need for HLVs to explore the Moon invariably fall back to Mars as a crutch. The argument goes that we absolutely must have HLVs to explore Mars, so we ought to develop them now. Because it's "moon, MARS, and beyond", don't ya know. Thus saith the Zubrin.
I just really wonder. If Dr Stanley, and others like him, really want to go to Mars so bad, why are they intentionally endorsing an architecture that they admit is too expensive for the job? Say you absolutely feel at the bottom of your soul that while the Moon is interesting, that Mars is where we need to be gearing up for. Why the Shaft? Why the EDS? I can kind of understand the HLV--I think the fundamental logic is completely broken, but at least I can empathize with people who feel that way. But why support all these other things that in the end are what makes ESAS so unaffordable that it can barely sustain a tiny 4-man shack on the moon, and that's with spending almost all of NASA's multi-billion dollar yearly ESMD budget to accomplish even that?
If you really feel that HLVs are a must, and feel that we have to keep Shuttle Derived Vehicles around to keep the Congresscritters happy, then why support the other programs that amount to little more than redundant wastes of NASA's finite resources. I've outlined several different alternatives here on this site for how to launch people into space on commercial boosters. That technology is not something NASA alone can do, and in fact is something they are required by law to do if the capability exists.
The EDS is little more than an over-glorified Upper Stage. Boeing, Lockheed, and others have been building those for coming on 40-50 years now. The 6-engine version of the ICES upper stage that I recently highlighted will be 50% bigger than ESAS, have a better mass fraction, will probably cost less, and will have the benefit of being flight proven by the time NASA needs to use it. Since Lockheed wants to go with ICES stages for all of their future Atlas V launches, that means that the "EDS" will still be available even if NASA doesn't buy any on a given year. That's one of the big benefits of using commercial hardware. If Saturn V had been cost effective enough that there was commercial demand for it (it wasn't--sorry Sam), it would still be around today. The whole reason Congress was able to force NASA to close the line down was because NASA was the sole customer for it.
The Shaft is also a redundant waste of money. Lockheed is in the process of man-rating their Atlas V for space tourism applications. SpaceX and RpK are also working on the problem. SpaceX is designing its vehicle from the ground up to be man-rated. Even Boeing I think will get its head on straight in the near future. Why do we need another man-rated launch vehicle? Without the development and fixed operational costs (not to mention marginal launch costs) of the CLV, being able to do Moon, Mars, and Beyond instead of just picking one becomes a lot more feasible. If you really care about Mars exploration, don't you think that freeing up several billion dollars for Mars exploration by finding a way to slim down the CEV so it can launch on existing launchers is a better way to go? Even if it has to be dry-launched (or semi-dry-launched)?
Look at it. Between CLV and EDS, you're talking almost $2B per year in fixed costs. Even if you don't fly a single mission. When you add in the costs of using CLV and current EDS for lunar sortie and base missions, you're talking somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of NASA's Exploration budget.
I just wonder why when the ESAS team was tasked with finding a way to sustainably explore the Moon, Mars, and Beyond, they picked an architecture that even their leader knew would be too expensive to do more than one of the three?
[Bleg: Maybe I've got a chip on my shoulder about these things, and most of you agree with Doug or couldn't care less. But, if any of you guys feel the same way I do, and especially if you feel as strongly about it as I do, PLEASE post your comments here on the SelenianBoondocks, instead of cluttering up Doug's Q&A thread on NASASpaceFlight.com. I don't want him getting flooded with email and commentary from everyone. The best way to piss people off, burn bridges, and get peoples' hackles up is to flood them with criticisms.
I sent him a link to my blog post, and if he wants to hear our opinions, he can read the comments here like everyone else. I figure that since he probably didn't intend this to be the talk of the alt.space blogosphere, that would be the most courteous way of handling things. If you have questions for him relevant to the topic of that forum though, feel free to ask away, I'm sure he'd appreciate that. ~Jon]
Anyhow, I was participating in a Q&A thread that had been arranged with Dr Doug Stanley of NASA regarding the recently completed Constellation Propellants Options Study. Dr Stanley is a close friend of Mike Griffin's and was one of the main people who Mike tasked with putting together the Exploration Systems Architecture Study. If anyone has some good insight into why decisions were made by the ESAS team, he'd be a good place to start. Anyhow, the thread had a lot of really good information, not only about propellants, but some things about lunar lander design concepts, and ISRU--I would recommend reading through it a bit if you have the time.
Then, in response to a question about forward applicability to Mars, Dr Stanley shared something that I find rather worrying. I was originally reticent to post this, because even though it was on a public forum, I'm not entirely sure that he wants his comments dragged out into the blogosphere, but I think what he said sheds a lot of light on the thinking behind NASA's current architecture. Here's the quote:
Now I am going to let you in on a little secret! Shhhh...don't tell anyone, OK? If I were in charge of National Space Policy, I would not even go to the Moon! I am actually a Mars First/Direct person. I would like to get to Mars as soon as possible and think that the Moon will be a distarction from that. If we establish an outpost on the Moon, NASA's entire exploration budget expected to be available will go to the operation of that outpost and the exploration of the Moon. I am afraid it will be the "tar baby" we will be stuck with that will keep us from going to Mars in my lifetime. NASA will need a significant budget increase to do both, which I don't think is likely. Mars is 10 times more interesting to me because of the atmosphere, the water, and the possibility of life below the surface...I would prefer to focus on a robust robotic exploration program including sample return, including human precursor mission, followed by human missions within the next 15 to 20 years.
I was asked by a friend to do ESAS and was working within the requirements I was given as a part of the VSE. I could not change them. But, If the next administration wishes to re-focus on Mars, all of the building blocks will be there. We will have preserved the Shuttle components and momentum to build a Heavy-lift launch vehicle and have a CLV and CEV that can launch humans to a MTV and a CEV that can even serve as an Earth-entry vehicle with more TPS...We will not have yet spent any appreciable funds towards lunar transportation or surface systems...I made sure we reserved this flexibility...
Shhh...don't tell anyone...
To be fair to Dr Stanley, everyone has their own preferences and opinions, and we're all entitled to them. I have no more right to tell Dr Stanley to stop being a Mars nut than he has to tell me to stop being interested in Lunar development.
That said, I find it rather disheartening to hear that the guy who led the team that came up with the study that NASA is now going to blow something like $50-60B over the next decade or so implementing doesn't think it's affordable to do what the President wanted. Even more disheartening is the openly expressed desire for the whole Moon thing to go away so we can focus on Mars.
It does really explain a lot though, doesn't it? I've found that a lot of the people that I talk with about who are firm believers in HLVs, when I've taken the wind out of their sails regarding the supposed need for HLVs to explore the Moon invariably fall back to Mars as a crutch. The argument goes that we absolutely must have HLVs to explore Mars, so we ought to develop them now. Because it's "moon, MARS, and beyond", don't ya know. Thus saith the Zubrin.
I just really wonder. If Dr Stanley, and others like him, really want to go to Mars so bad, why are they intentionally endorsing an architecture that they admit is too expensive for the job? Say you absolutely feel at the bottom of your soul that while the Moon is interesting, that Mars is where we need to be gearing up for. Why the Shaft? Why the EDS? I can kind of understand the HLV--I think the fundamental logic is completely broken, but at least I can empathize with people who feel that way. But why support all these other things that in the end are what makes ESAS so unaffordable that it can barely sustain a tiny 4-man shack on the moon, and that's with spending almost all of NASA's multi-billion dollar yearly ESMD budget to accomplish even that?
If you really feel that HLVs are a must, and feel that we have to keep Shuttle Derived Vehicles around to keep the Congresscritters happy, then why support the other programs that amount to little more than redundant wastes of NASA's finite resources. I've outlined several different alternatives here on this site for how to launch people into space on commercial boosters. That technology is not something NASA alone can do, and in fact is something they are required by law to do if the capability exists.
The EDS is little more than an over-glorified Upper Stage. Boeing, Lockheed, and others have been building those for coming on 40-50 years now. The 6-engine version of the ICES upper stage that I recently highlighted will be 50% bigger than ESAS, have a better mass fraction, will probably cost less, and will have the benefit of being flight proven by the time NASA needs to use it. Since Lockheed wants to go with ICES stages for all of their future Atlas V launches, that means that the "EDS" will still be available even if NASA doesn't buy any on a given year. That's one of the big benefits of using commercial hardware. If Saturn V had been cost effective enough that there was commercial demand for it (it wasn't--sorry Sam), it would still be around today. The whole reason Congress was able to force NASA to close the line down was because NASA was the sole customer for it.
The Shaft is also a redundant waste of money. Lockheed is in the process of man-rating their Atlas V for space tourism applications. SpaceX and RpK are also working on the problem. SpaceX is designing its vehicle from the ground up to be man-rated. Even Boeing I think will get its head on straight in the near future. Why do we need another man-rated launch vehicle? Without the development and fixed operational costs (not to mention marginal launch costs) of the CLV, being able to do Moon, Mars, and Beyond instead of just picking one becomes a lot more feasible. If you really care about Mars exploration, don't you think that freeing up several billion dollars for Mars exploration by finding a way to slim down the CEV so it can launch on existing launchers is a better way to go? Even if it has to be dry-launched (or semi-dry-launched)?
Look at it. Between CLV and EDS, you're talking almost $2B per year in fixed costs. Even if you don't fly a single mission. When you add in the costs of using CLV and current EDS for lunar sortie and base missions, you're talking somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of NASA's Exploration budget.
I just wonder why when the ESAS team was tasked with finding a way to sustainably explore the Moon, Mars, and Beyond, they picked an architecture that even their leader knew would be too expensive to do more than one of the three?
[Bleg: Maybe I've got a chip on my shoulder about these things, and most of you agree with Doug or couldn't care less. But, if any of you guys feel the same way I do, and especially if you feel as strongly about it as I do, PLEASE post your comments here on the SelenianBoondocks, instead of cluttering up Doug's Q&A thread on NASASpaceFlight.com. I don't want him getting flooded with email and commentary from everyone. The best way to piss people off, burn bridges, and get peoples' hackles up is to flood them with criticisms.
I sent him a link to my blog post, and if he wants to hear our opinions, he can read the comments here like everyone else. I figure that since he probably didn't intend this to be the talk of the alt.space blogosphere, that would be the most courteous way of handling things. If you have questions for him relevant to the topic of that forum though, feel free to ask away, I'm sure he'd appreciate that. ~Jon]
posted by Jon Goff at 1:21 PM
47 Comments:
I too would like to see Mars in my lifetime but he needs to be careful and not be too clever by half and end up with nothing.
Yeah, I've been wondering it too, maybe that explains why ESAS analysis of multilaunch scenarios was so narrow. It's kinda hard to ask him without coming out as overly critical.
I'm just interested in technical discussion about this.
"Why do we need another man-rated launch vehicle?"
We need plenty of them, the more the better. The question is, why do we need NASA to build another man-rated launch vehicle? NASA shouldn't be in direct competition with private space companies.
If after 2010 NASA is still in the human-launching business, then that will be the surest way to scare off investors (other than angels that put up their own money). After all, who wants to compete with a government-owned rocket company with relatively infinite resources?
Griffin/Horowitz/Stanley came up with a stupid architecture for the Moon and it is clear that Stanley was part of the touch and go mentality to get to Mars. Mars is completely unsustainable and so is ESAS unless some fundamental changes are made. I find it interesting that Stanley answered a question about the fundamental viability of ESAS by saying that it was "beyond his capability".
This kind of narrow thinking, without considering the financial and poltiical consequences is what killed the old lunar SEI program and if the ESAS fails, which is likely in its present form, it will be because of this lack of a true systems approach.
It's not clear to me that the CEV architecture will survive the end of the Bush administration. Arguing over whether to go to the Moon or Mars ignores one really important fact. It's far more likely that the program ends up like all the previous schemes and no progress is made - even if they get replacements (not necessarily the Ares series launchers) for the Space Shuttle.
Mike,
[H]e needs to be careful and not be too clever by half and end up with nothing.
That's exactly what I'm concerned is likely to happen. With a new president coming in in 2008, who knows what will happen.
~Jon
Mz,
Yeah, I've been wondering it too, maybe that explains why ESAS analysis of multilaunch scenarios was so narrow. It's kinda hard to ask him without coming out as overly critical.
I'm just interested in technical discussion about this.
The amusing thing is that someone was bringing up the fact that even using Ares V the current NASA Mars architecture would need 6 docking events. With the LOM numbers ESAS used for launcher reliability, docking reliability, and launcher availability, they probably have less than an 80% chance of a given Mars mission not being "lost" according to their definition.
Good thing we're doing nothing about reducing those risks now while it's relatively less expensive. The sad thing is that ESAS isn't just poorly optimized for the moon (costwise), but it's gives you fairly lousy tools for Mars too. At least by their own methodology...
~Jon
Ed,
We need plenty of them, the more the better. The question is, why do we need NASA to build another man-rated launch vehicle? NASA shouldn't be in direct competition with private space companies.
Ah, that's a much better way of putting it. Yeah, I'd prefer to see at least two-five companies using different technologies launching people, propellants, and cargo into orbit (and *gasp* even mixing some crew and cargo too, just to live dangerously...)
~Jon
Anonymous,
Let's be nice to Doug, Mike, and Scott. It isn't a particularly great architecture, but stupid isn't entirely fair either.
~Jon
Call it what you will - SEI/VSE/ESAS... - at least we have something.
I believe less and less in Ares 1 and Ares 5 (and get rid of 'pork' to congressional districts) and more work from the corporations.
All I see is both time and money being wasted with talk - lets get on with it! We're dragging feet...
I'm not a NASA, Mars Society, Planetary Society sycophant and I refuse to 'kiss butt' with Zubrin.
I want to see Martian space and surface being explored by humankind, also return to the Moon and this time to stay. This is going to need big business...
Dr Stanley's comments are very open and very welcome. He's obviously honest and has choosen the right place to have a Q and A as NASASpaceflight.com doesn't seem to have a motive past "simply reporting," thanks to a bright young editor, rather than trying to either blindly back or blindy attack the VSE like most sites do. Mars would drive the public imagination a lot more than returning to the moon would, so I support his comments. Who'd want to be the president that turns us away from being first on Mars? Being one of many going to the moon, something we've done before and lost interest in, would be easier to give up on.
Bill, just because Goldin was retained, don't expect Griffin will necassarily be retained. Yes, Griffin has political allies on both sides of the aile, but thats because its in everybody's interest to have Nasa continue on some level. Goldin was largely retained because he was brought in so late in Bush 41, and Clinton wanted to give him a chance to show his stuff. Griffin will have had 3-4 years as Nasa administrator, and when we Democrats (anyone who hasn't guessed my political affiliation from Spacepolitics, its no longer a secret) retake the White house, someone new will be selected.
Actually, I expect odds are likely that Griffin will be replaced by the next president, whether or not the person is a Democrat or Republicain.
BTW, Jon, sorry I haven't gotten in touch with you since X Prize Cup - its been kinda crazy on my end.
I'm not sure what the big surprise is. It's been common knowledge that there's a faction at NASA that just wants to do Mars and has been for at least the last fifteen to twenty years. Fortunetly, that's not Doug Stanley's decision to make.
His grumbling that the Moon is "unsustainable" is as false and self serving as those in the Internet Rocketeer Club who say the same thing, though for different reasons. There is no commercial market on the Moon nor will there be until people get there. And those people, at least the first ones back, will be employees of some government or another. The bragging I hear that alt.space is going to get us to the Moon is simply embaressing.
Of course, having said the above, I think Stanley pretty much demolished the idea of the EELV being a viable solution, not to mention his comments on some of the misinformation floating around the internet about the Ares 1.
Once again (cf. "Noise outside the system" thread, 11/20 on HobbySpace RLV)... whether Mars or the Moon, NASA's bone-deep orientation is to destinations and missions and vehicles rather than (as NACA's had been) to technologies and capabilities that others would put into operational systems.
I understand that -- in terms of both NASA's race-the-Reds origins and the need to sell easily described programs to Congress -- but I don't have to like it. It hasn't served us well for 35 years. Until NASA and all of us accept that the glitter of "go somewhere new" and "launch something new" is less important than the boring grind of making what we can already do affordable and sustainable, this flailing around will continue.
Even the notion that you can't do Mars without HLLV is wrong. Google "Mars for Less", if you don't buy in, and pour over the numbers a few times.
As far as I can see, the obstacle isn't getting it there, but getting it down to the surface. We don't know how to land big payloads on Mars... something that Mars folk usually gloss over...
I work at NASA because I believe in Mike -- with that disclaimer I want to say that sometimes I wish I had worked for Lewis and Clark.
President Jefferson and our people didn't want L&C to settle the West, they just wanted them to blaze the trail so they could go out settle it themselves.
Those were the days.
I suspect that Griffin will have a better thant 50/50 chance of serving in President McCain's administration.
As long as the Democrats stay on the nominate Hillary course, that is far and away the most likely outcome in 2008.
Anonymous said: "Mars would drive the public imagination a lot more than returning to the moon would..."
An entirely unproven assumption, and one that goes entirely against the grain of public opinion. Gallup polling has consistently shown that there is FAR more public interest in the Moon than in Mars. Kids ask far more questions about the Moon than they do Mars. People can try to delude themselves that Mars is some kind of 'holy' space destination, but it's not. It's merely another place to set up shop, and not near as convenient or useful a destination as the Moon.
Bill: I welcome any "funding source that does not require Congressional approval," but (1) I expect NASA to be around for quite some time no matter what, and (2) I expect quite some time to pass before New Space R&D spending is in the same league (although its fans assure me it will be ever so much more productive than the Establishment's :-)
So it's still worth thinking about getting more bang from those tired old taxpayer dollars. And I still think it's worth urging Congress and NASA (and many space fans) to put less emphasis on missions and spacecraft per se and more on basic capabilities -- such as those Jon has listed here in the past -- that would enable less expensive missions and spacecraft.
I think you're overreacting about the significance of his words.
If you do a little digging and find the transcript from when the ESAS plan was unveiled in fall 2005, NASA officials _openly_ stated that they were designing the current architecture with the goal of making it compatible with a future Mars mission. They even listed several factors: requirement for an HLLV (they stated that the Ares V design was bigger than they actually needed for the Moon so that it would be available for Mars), the CEV was intended to be compatible with a beefier heat shield, and there was interest in developing methane rockets now, precisely so that they would be available for Mars. (They dropped the methane requirement, obviously.)
They also made a blanket statement that they were designing the current architecture with the idea that it would have to last for 20-30 years, so they were building Mars into as many of the requirements as possible.
So there is nothing at all new in what he has said. It's not earth-shattering and it isn't going to "get him in trouble" because it's consistent with their previous statements.
And there is nothing at all new in the way the alt-blogosphere is reacting now. Yeah, we get it, you guys are the smart ones and know everything, and NASA is filled with stupid people. But a lot of whinging in comments on blogsites by people like Ed Wright doesn't really change things. Blog comments don't change the world.
Anonymous,
No, I'm not one of 'the smart ones' as you put it. No, I don't have all the answers - I leave that to those more capable.
There are a lot of intelligent people at NASA who suffer because of politicians and those who would(have to) play politics.
I suspect that Griffin will have a better thant 50/50 chance of serving in President McCain's administration.
McCain is the one person who MIGHT retain Griffin. However,
1- Even there, McCain is gonna be under pressure to separate himself from Bush
and more importantly
2 - McCain has not won the primary, and I think is very vulnerable. The extreme right of the party (who usually are the ones who come out and vote in primaries) do not like and do not trust McCain. Comedian Rush Limbaugh has said as much. You go to blogs like Redstate, they hate him (well, not everyone, but a lot of people).
As long as the Democrats stay on the nominate Hillary course, that is far and away the most likely outcome in 2008.
Again, your assuming that she is gonna be the only nomine, or the only truly viable nominee. The democratic field is wide open on our side. And there are a lot of people who would prefer someone else, and the field is wide open. And, most importantly, she has not announced. Until she announces, I am not convinced she is gonna run.
To hell with the Moon and Mars. Going to icy near earth asteroids would be the most cost effective use of a subset of the ESAS architecture I can think of... we wouldn't need a moon or mars lander, and perhaps we could actually return to Earth with nearly full tanks of good old H20 for further use in exploration.
The reality is that NASA is forced by Congress to keep STS staff employed. Or else NASA budget will not pass.
Translation: those 10000 people _have_ to_ be employed. NASA _can't_ switch to Delta/Atlas for political reasons, regardless of how much sense it makes.
It means that NASA will develop it's own launch system, and this system WILL be horrendously expensive, because significant part of the expenses is salary.
It's not a Griffin's fault. It's a realities of government-run program.
I think the best hope is commercial space ventures (currently Bigelow+LM+Spacex lead the pack), not government space programs.
Anonymous,
Dr Stanley's comments are very open and very welcome. He's obviously honest and has choosen the right place to have a Q and A as NASASpaceflight.com doesn't seem to have a motive past "simply reporting," thanks to a bright young editor, rather than trying to either blindly back or blindy attack the VSE like most sites do.
I'm also grateful for Doug and the NASASpaceflight.com guys for putting on the Q&A thread. It was very thoughtful, and Chris Bergin (the guy who runs the NASASpaceFlight.com site) has been doing a very useful job pulling together information like this. As I said in the post, most of the things Doug discussed in the Q&A thread were quite interesting, useful, and well thought-out. I have a fair deal of respect for him.
That doesn't mean I have to agree with him on everything.
~Jon
Ferris, Mike,
Interesting comments, but let's try to keep the political noise down for now. We just got finished with this election, and I'd prefer not to have to think about another one for a while. ;-)
I know it is somewhat relevant to the discussion at hand, but just try to keep the political discussions to a minimum if you can. Thanks!
~Jon
For the comparison: STS standing army is ~10000 men, Delta or Atlas is just a few hundreds. But CLV on Delta/Atlas won't happen for the reasons outlined in previous post. :(
Mark,
As usual, the question of where to start comes to mind....
I'm not sure what the big surprise is. It's been common knowledge that there's a faction at NASA that just wants to do Mars and has been for at least the last fifteen to twenty years. Fortunetly, that's not Doug Stanley's decision to make.
I wasn't suggesting that the fact that ESAS was designed with Mars in mind, or that there is a large Mars First (and Only) faction at NASA, was surprising. Most of what I found surprising was the fact that Doug realized that without a whole bunch of extra funding, that the architecture he proposed will suck up all of NASA's exploration budget for supporting just a tiny little base, and that it would make it impossible to do the Mars and Beyond parts of the VSE without canceling or shortchanging the lunar portion.
ESAS is a crappy architecture for Mars, but is even a crappier deal for the Moon. Much too expensive compared to what it can actually deliver. You'd think that with 40 years more of experience, technology, etc, that we'd have something that was substantially better than Apollo, instead of just marginally better.
His grumbling that the Moon is "unsustainable" is as false and self serving as those in the Internet Rocketeer Club who say the same thing, though for different reasons.
It's amusing how when the guy says stuff you agree with he's a genius, but when he disagrees with you he's being false and self-serving. Do you think there may be a chance that the guy who led the ESAS team might have a better idea of what the thing costs than a space pundit like yourself? If he says that building and maintaining a small outpost on the Moon is going to tie up most of NASA's exploration budget for the forseeable future, why should we believe your opinion better than his? I mean really Mark? Are you smarter than he is or something? ;-)
There is no commercial market on the Moon nor will there be until people get there.
Of course, getting people there in the first place could be a market...not to mention that even without a permanent base, tourism and other similar markets are possible...but that's a topic I want to explore a bit in a future blog post.
And those people, at least the first ones back, will be employees of some government or another. The bragging I hear that alt.space is going to get us to the Moon is simply embaressing.
Well...that may be your opinion, but there is no guarantee that your opinion is right. I'm not saying that to brag, or suggest that we alt.spacers are so much smarter, more talented, etc, etc. I'm just saying that there is a real chance that this program will fail, either technically, budgetarilly, etc before it manages to put a person on the Moon. There is also a real chance that with the amount of time NASA wants to spend before sending the first person back (the goal is slipping at a rate greater than 1 year per year), there is also a very real chance that a private group might beat them to it even if the program doesn't "fail".
It's not foreordained to go either way. Private enterprise faces a lot of rather huge obstacles between it and the moon. But so does NASA. Anyone who claims to know the future as well and as surely as you do should be a lot wealthier than you are.
Of course, having said the above, I think Stanley pretty much demolished the idea of the EELV being a viable solution.
Mark, reiterating a position without giving any new argument is hardly "demolishing" anything. We all know that the ESAS team found assumptions that could make EELVs look like a bad solution. I notice that you didn't comment on the fact that he admitted that had it not been for the arbitrary officially unoffical "4-men for 7 days" edict that EELVs would've traded a lot better.
He didn't comment whatsoever on the issues I've raised here about flawed assumptions in their analytical methodology. He didn't comment on the fact that the way they analyzed things didn't accurate take model how on-orbit propellant transfer works. Etc.
You're way too quick to call something you don't like "demolished" on hearsay, while accusing people of being false or self-serving when they disagree with you.
~Jon
Monte,
Until NASA and all of us accept that the glitter of "go somewhere new" and "launch something new" is less important than the boring grind of making what we can already do affordable and sustainable, this flailing around will continue.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
It's really unfortunate that NASA gets billions of dollars per year, yet we still have to do what should be their job for them. Talking about adding insult to injury. I wouldn't mind having to do the hard part ourselves, if NASA didn't exist, but since it does exist, I really wish it would exist in a more useful fashion.
~Jon
Anonymous,
I work at NASA because I believe in Mike -- with that disclaimer I want to say that sometimes I wish I had worked for Lewis and Clark.
I personally wish there was more Lewis and Clark in NASA too. I don't expect or want NASA to colonize space. There's no way it can ever bring the kind of resources to bear that the market can (once risk has been lowered to the point where profitability seems likely).
If ESAS were truly doing things more the Lewis and Clark way (using mostly existing technologies and hardware instead of spending a decade developing bigger versions of what already exist in industry), I'd be a lot bigger fan of it. I have no problem with NASA exploring. I wish they'd do more exploring and less trying to reduplicate what the market can already do.
~Jon
Monte,
So it's still worth thinking about getting more bang from those tired old taxpayer dollars. And I still think it's worth urging Congress and NASA (and many space fans) to put less emphasis on missions and spacecraft per se and more on basic capabilities -- such as those Jon has listed here in the past -- that would enable less expensive missions and spacecraft.
Also very well put. Demanding accountability from public servants is a right of citizens of free countries. And the sad thing is that almost everyone would be better off if NASA did it more the way you suggest.
~Jon
Anonymous,
If you do a little digging and find the transcript from when the ESAS plan was unveiled in fall 2005, NASA officials _openly_ stated that they were designing the current architecture with the goal of making it compatible with a future Mars mission.
...snip...
I think you're missing my point. I wasn't acting surprised that Mars was part of the driver behind the current architecture. I knew that as well. What I was more surprised about was the open admission that the guy in charge of the study team felt that their chosen architecture was too expensive to allow for anything other than maintaining a minimal outpost on the moon. That the only way they could do Mars was if the Moon part was shelved, and the sooner the better. In a way, it almost looked like they designed the system more for Mars than the Moon with the hopes that by the time it got to doing lunar specific stuff they could talk their way into doing what they'd really like to do instead.
That was pretty candid, IMO. While his preference for Mars is perfectly legit, the fact that it looks as though they were short-changing the moon, and trying to set things up so the lunar part of the MMB would get canceled, isn't.
And there is nothing at all new in the way the alt-blogosphere is reacting now. Yeah, we get it, you guys are the smart ones and know everything, and NASA is filled with stupid people.
Which also entirely misses the point. NASA isn't filled with stupid people. Most of the NASA people I've met are quite intelligent and competent. That doesn't mean they're infallible. And it doesn't mean that reacting to the incentives they're given that they aren't capable of coming up with poor architectures.
I wish people would get over this idea that if smart people are doing something it will obviously work, and that if something doesn't work it was obviously done by dumb people. That's a rather naive and uninformed view of the world.
~Jon
The new space exploration initiative was design to reinvigorate NASA and save it from the endless near earth orbit ho-drums of the past thirty years. I don't care where the boot prints end up or how NASA gets there. Just as long as they get somewhere other than low earth orbit. Apollo went through similar design argumentative design iterations before the final mission architecture was chosen. I don't like the shuttle based designs, however I realize NASA's need to sustain its current infrastructure which like it or not is shuttle based. Perhaps Dr. Stanley is correct and NASA will choose to bypass the moon and go straight to Mars. That remains to be seen and as long as the hardware being developed is flexible enough to perform either or both mission in the end what will it matter. If I were to place a bet right now I’d bet we go the moon and get bogged down there. The real hurdle to overcome is not the booster design but the gravity (zero-G) barrier. From what I see any human that spends more than 12 months in space without at least 1/3 artificial G force will be too weak to walk on any surface. To boost structures with enough internal volume and /or propulsion system size to generate 1/3-G will require HLV whether its cost effective or not.
Retro,
As far as gravity is concerned, we really don't know if there is an inflection point in the curve so to speak, which way it goes, and where it is. For all we know, 1/10th G might be enough to prevent gravity induced health effects. Or maybe nothing short of 9/10ths will do the trick. The big thing is we don't know, and probably won't know for some time yet.
Claiming that 1/3G will work at this point but lunar G won't is wishful thinking based off of insufficient data.
~Jon
Claiming that 1/3G will work at this point but lunar G won't is wishful thinking based off of insufficient data....
So going to the moon if it nothing else has merit to establish the human endurance to long term zero-G in surface exploration conditions. Something I'd want to know before venturing off to Mars on a two year mission. To me this alone justifies a moon first mission. Is Dr. Stanley then prepared to accept the unknown health issues of a Mars first mission?
Retro,
So going to the moon if it nothing else has merit to establish the human endurance to long term zero-G in surface exploration conditions.
Well...low-G, not zero-G, but otherwise, yeah. You could do some sort of artificial gravity experimentation on a decen sized space station with a tether, but it's actually probably not that much more expensive to just got to the moon and get some real hands-on data.
Something I'd want to know before venturing off to Mars on a two year mission. To me this alone justifies a moon first mission. Is Dr. Stanley then prepared to accept the unknown health issues of a Mars first mission?
Apparently he is. The problem with having data points only at the extremes isn't just that you don't know what the curve looks like, but that you can easily talk yourself into thinking that it looks exactly the way you *wish* it looked...
To be fair however, going to the Moon first can get us an extra data point. If 1/6G turns out to be enough, then we can be positive 1/3G will be fine, but if 1/6th G isn't enough, there's no very good way of knowing if 1/3G will do it.
~Jon
Stephen Metschan's Team Vision architecture is interesting, and worth a read. I have not read it all yet. But I already have questions about its assumptions, namely that a reusable rocket is not sustainable. What makes NASA's current program unsustainable is the "standing army" that only gets fully utilized four times a year. And here is another question, why are the two COTS programs, Space X and RP-K shying away from solids?
If we found a solid chunk of platinum-series metal, 20 feet on a side, in a crater near the lunar pole, would it be sustainable to ship it back to earth with any of these proposals? To me, the only thing that is truly sustainable, is profit.
"I'm also grateful for Doug and the NASASpaceflight.com guys for putting on the Q&A thread."
That thread was cut off from access while I was in the middle of reading it last night. Too bad, all kinds of interesting things seemed to come out.
One thing I was disappointed in is that NASA planning for the LSAM seems as conservative as they were about the CEV. The ESAS style multi-tank two-stage lunar lander is what NASA accepts. Other innovative solutions, whether old Apollo era ideas such as a crasher stage or newer ideas such as the Lockheed dual-thrust-axis lander, seem to have little chance.
One surprise was the endorsement of active cooling for the lunar lander, with possible extension to the EDS. So instead of the lightweight thin skinned passively cooled single bulkhead cryogenic tank Lockheed has proposed, NASA wants a complicated multi-tank system.
Two points raised in this thread that ive seen mentioned often, but no significant discussion is going on on them ..
First, the requirement to employ the STS standing army. Yes, ESAS is designed to do that, but my question is, arent there more reasonable ways to employ these people ? Im assuming they are all educated and competent public servants, why cant their talents put to work on something more useful than another government-designed and operated space line ? The question "What then ?" brings me to the second point ...
As said in this thread, any imaginable lunar business case, anno 2006, has inevitably huge risks and unknowns built in. Whether its the amount and form of hydrogen present, landing site suitability, feasibility of this or that technology .. those are all huge risks. And thats exactly the job for NASA, resolve the unknowns. Go there and get the answers to these questions that are too risky or too expensive for private R&D dollars.
Does the in-situ extraction of oxygen from regolith work ? We should have found out 30 years ago, and you dont need a huge humans on site operation to do that. Are there easily accessible comets-asteroids with PGM metals on the surface ? About time we find out. How different is a prolonged 1/6th G effect on body compared to microgravity effects ? Well, using a good old friends chimps or dogs we coulda found out long long time ago.
Can you use teleoperated machinery or tele-assisted robots to run excavation and mining operations on lunar surface, what tehcnical issues will be the deal breakers ? Again, question unanswered.
ESAS in its present form is all about "how do we get humans there", but none of the questions above needs humans there nor do they need anything more than EELV launch capability to run the experiments.
Can you use teleoperated machinery or tele-assisted robots to run excavation and mining operations on lunar surface, what tehcnical issues will be the deal breakers ?
Of course we can, the RTT delay is only two and a half seconds. The Russians proved it with Lunokhod-1 three decades ago.
I wasnt aware of any significant mining operations performed by Lunokhod. Care to elaborate ?
What i had in mind was more of types of problems that will appear and need to be fixed most often with any regolith-handling equipment. We know that the dust is abrasive but what kind of problems will arise more often we dont know until we try couple generations of prototype machines.
Some types of mining activities can be and are largely automated on earth, with humans standing by only to supervise and fix problems. In space environment, humans are expensive, so we need to know which areas need to be made extra reliable and fixable by teleoperated means.
retro:
reinvigorate NASA and save it from the endless near earth orbit ho-drums of the past thirty years... Just as long as they get somewhere other than low earth orbit...
I understand and sympathize -- but I think you're dead wrong. Until we can get to LEO much more cheaply and reliably, the insistence on "go somewhere new" can only yield very few people going, at very high cost, at very long intervals... i.e., a burst of Apollo-style thrills, then decades of near-stasis. Been there, done that.
If LEO cost ~$100 per pound, then the moon base and Mars expedition (and a lot more) would readily follow. But in the current and near-future state of the art, a moon base or a Mars expedition won't lower cost to LEO. It's that simple. I'm sorry if you find it unsatisfying or counterintuitive, but it's the truth.
I'm informed the Q and A should likely return intact when Dr Stanley returns for the second part of his Q and A to discuss Direct and other alternatives in December.
kert: Reliability is going to cost big time. The biggest reason for the reliability of equipment in a terrestrial mine, quarry or cement works is not so much clever design as massive components, and abundant power enabling them to crunch through potential jams.
Given the weight and power constraints on anything likely to be in space soon, it's going to be a while before Broken Hill LLC (Luna) gets beyond pilot-plant throughput...
Anonymous,
I'm informed the Q and A should likely return intact when Dr Stanley returns for the second part of his Q and A to discuss Direct and other alternatives in December.
Yeah, that's more or less what Chris was telling me earlier. Just wanted to give things a bit of time to cool off.
~Jon
"Given the weight and power constraints on anything likely to be in space soon, it's going to be a while before Broken Hill LLC (Luna) gets beyond pilot-plant throughput..."
My point was, that we havent even had a pilot yet, and given current NASA priorities there wont be for a long time.
The exact technical issues with the stuff above are beside the point for this discussion.
The thing is, for many potential business ventures, there are many high-risk R&D questions unanswered and even basic data gathering not done that should be the job of government-funded space agency, so there is plenty of work to be done for NASA standing armies.
Instead, they chose to spend the bulk of their resources building the (redundant) transportaion architecture.
Well, maybe this presentation will shed more light on their actual priorities on the moon:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=21364
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