Back to the future: NASA and the new orbiter

Great Debates
81

I’m still waiting for your cites about ultralight materials and super-power propellants that will make manned spaceflight to Mars sare and remotely worth the cost.

Cancer is a virtual certainty under those conditions. What about every cell in the body being hit by heavy ions or protons is comforting? And I’m not at all inclined to be optimistic about the chances of other problems. If they’re worried about brain damage, I’m worried, because these particles plow through cells like a Mack truck. It’s like having an alpha emitter with a very short half life next to every cell in your brain (and everywhere else) under said conditions. What justifies your optimism?

How many “possible solutions” have we heard about? What will be the real weight of the craft needed to provide the adequate sheilding, and what is, in fact, adequate sheilding for a severe solar storm? Again, given the preformance of manned space flight up to now, vs. optimistic projections, what is there to so discourage pessimism?

I’ve never argued it couldn’t be done, given absurd expenditures. We could, if we wanted, build a massive craft with all the adequate shielding (in fact, the heavier the craft the better to an extent, as the inertia serves to absorb shock) and propelled by nuclear bombs. There are terrible problems with that idea, however, so it’s unlikely we’ll try it any time in the forseable future. With more conventional technologies it could be done, sure, to the tune of hundreds of billions (I’ve seen upper estimates of a trillion dollars). So, to keep the program “on budget” requires new technologies and materials that will have to somehow materialize over the next few decades. Present expenditure into manned spaceflight research for the purpose of travel to Mars is justified by the prediction these new technologies and materials will be available, I suppose, and they will reduce the cost maybe to ten or twenty percent of the lowball estimates of the cost with present technology. Sure we can build the gargantuan vessel present technology demands and just send people out, not knowing if they’ll survive, but that’s not what we’re after, is it. Meanwhile Orion is Apollo redux, and I’m suppose to believe the same agency that produced the Shuttle is up to the task of making a Marsh shot “cost effective”. Please.

Great, a cite from NASA saying things might not be as bad as we think, but mostly a lot of people admitting they really don’t know. Again, what about NASA’s estimates for the performance of the STS, vs. it’s true performance, that best fit the worst-case estimates of its most vociferous critics, is so difficult to grasp? If the past is any guide, optimism isn’t justified. I’d be a lot happier if private and other independent interests developed the necessary technologies for other economically viable applications, such that they could be adapted to Mars shots in a cost-effective manner, but the cart is way in front of the horse on the current program. Spaceflight has never driven innovation this way, wild claims of space fanatics not withstanding. We’re dumping tens of billions at the cost of other more worthy programs on “practice” missions to the Moon, not remotely knowing where the whole program is truly headed, or whether it’s even feasible under realistic budgetary constraints, because the necessary technologies haven’t even been invented yet. But, of course, caution and pessimism are somehow irrational. If we want modern versions of the Pyramids, sure, we can do it. I don’t support that. Why do the space cheerleaders? What’s going in their heads?

82

Man, you are just rolling out every tired, ill-informed cliche in the book.

In The President’s proposed FY 2007 budget, total 2.77 trillion US dollars in outlays. NASA’s outlays for the year will be 16.356 billion US dollars. It’s barely over half a percent of the total budget.

Taking the US Census estimate of current US population, which is 299,647,272, and dividing this into the budget numbers, we get down to some easy to digest numbers: The President plans to spend $9244.20 next year on behalf of you personally and every other man, woman and child in the US. Of that, NASA will get $54.58. For everything: Manned, unmanned, groundkeeping at the Kennedy Center, office supplies.

What is $9189.62 failing to do that $54.58 is magically going to save? Sure, space research is an extravagance, but it’s only an inexcusable extravagance if you can answer that question sensibly.

If you are simply talking about other worthwhile space programs, I think NASA people, ESPECIALLY JPL people, will find a way to justify what they wanted to do anyway with what the current budgetary mandates are, just as they always have. Sure, if I were in charge, I would probably divvy up the 50 bucks a little differently (I deeply mourn the loss of the Juptiter Icy Moons Orbiter, for one), but then again, if I were in charge, I’d up the whole thing to 75 bucks, maybe even a hundred, and assume the the other nine grand could take care of itself, so that’s me.

And of course, one more time with feeling: The money is not printed and stuffed into shuttle engines to be used as rocket kindling. It is paid to actual people here in the actual US of A, who have gone to the trouble of educating themselves to as high a degree as possible. The more we spend on science research, the more people will find the pursuit of higher levels of education worthwhile, and the more and better science-educated brains are available for government and the private sector alike, which I can only see as good for the country.

A viable civilization challenges itself to do great and impressive things. We are the only nation with a majority of successful missions to Mars. We are the only ones ever to have a person walking on the surface of another globe. If these challenges of colonizing the moon and Mars are not undertaken by us, we are not worthy of the sacrifices made by previous generations to lay the foundation for these feats. To borrow an image from the current NASA head, when the US flag planted on the moon sits in a museum in China because we couldn’t be bothered to go there first, I will know we have squandered our momentum as a nation.

83

Now for the rest of your post.

Since you have them already, I’m not sure what you’re waiting for. It has already been presented to you that the solution to heavy nuclei is shielding using helium, boron and lithium. How much freakin’ lighter do you want? At least two of your own sources list water as an option for EM radiation shielding, and that’s only if you insist on not bringing anything on the trip that isn’t dual use. After all, there is already Demron , Mr. Newcomb.

And here is yet another cite beyond what others have given you for the fact that research into faster rocket fuel proceeds apace, despite your opinion of its impossibility.

Um, the fact that they most certainly will not send people into the void without shielding made of lighweight and plentiful hydrogen, boron, and lithium? Hello, hello, is this thing on? The way this works is, see, you reduce the risk as much as possible, then, in these early stages, you find daredevils who are willing to assume those risks. They are out there.

Well, if the real weight turns out to be too heavy for Earthbound launch, we could always send people to the moon to build the fucker out of moon materials, and launch it from there. Of course this would require the “practice” moon shots of which you speak, so I don’t expect to hear anything positive from you on that point.

Apparently, water, boron, hydrogen and lithium. To guard against the possibility of an astronaut being caught in a spacewalk when the storm hits, the EVA suit can be lined with, oh, I don’t know, Demron, as well as some of these other materials.

Well then, given the number of things the government fails to do even WITH vastly more absurd expenditures, especially in this administration, I’d call the Mars shot a bargain.

Business that can afford to create space technology is not in the habit of branching out in wild new directions, unless some independent entity shows there is feasibility and market. Space launch wildcatters are few and far between. There are only so many Bert Rutans. Some other entity with bucks needs to do it big, and the government is the only player of that size.

84

A couple of comments on NASA’s direction:

What’s really driving the move back to simple, proven technologies like Apollo is Nasa’s recent history of awarding contracts to build radical vehicles that would be the ‘next great shuttle’. The X-33 is a good example. They awarded a contract for a vehicle full of unproven technologies and speculative ideas. That led to an unfocused program with constantly changing requirements, delays, and ultimately a cancellation. It cost NASA almost a billion dollars, and they got nothing in return.

So now, they’ve tightened the requirements made sure that everything on the craft was buildable and roughly what it would take to build it, etc. It may not make for as glamorous a program as a hypersonic lifting body with aerospike engines, but from a project management and engineering standpoint, it makes a hell of a lot more sense. Given the way government contracts are awarded and managed, it’s actually very smart of NASA to build the program this way.

I’m currently working on a large engineering project that has loose, shifting requirements and distributed teams, and it’s been a disaster so far. We’re now in the process of trying to scale back, tighten up, and start over. And frankly, round 2 looks to me to be only slightly more likely to succeed than round 1 was. These things are just horribly difficult. I can’t imagine how much harder it would be with a dozen distributed teams and a government procurement process in the middle.

So, for Orion to succeed, everyone has to know *exactly what they are building. Milestones have to be known well in advance, and have clearly defined goals for success. This is not the place to inject experimental ideas and radical new technologies.

The other half of this program, however, is where NASA is being truly innovative. The Commercial Orbital Transportation Systems (COTS) competition completely changes the way NASA funds space programs. Instead of heavily overseeing the engineering and development of a program and paying a company to work on it on a ‘cost plus’ basis (their cost, plus an agreed-upon profict) whether they produce anything or not, NASA had an open competition for a new fixed-price contract with milestones. Under COTS, the winning company will be paid in installments based on deliverables that achieve the requirements of each milestone. It’s up to the company to decide how to do that, how much to spend, and how radical they want to get. They assume all the risk. Miss the milestone, and NASA pays nothing.

In the end, the companies that won (Kistler Aerospace and SpaceX), will be able to keep their hardware and fly it commercially. COTS is just a kick-start to get the industry going. After the two winners have flying vehicles, NASA will open up a competition for contracts to resuplly ISS and other LEO operations. And it will be open to everyone, not just the COTS winners.

Here’s an interesting article about COTS

85

And you’ve just wasted a long post ignoring the reality of the budgetary constraints on space science. It’s true, NASA gets a miniscule slice of the pie. The Moon/Mars initiative is eating into portions of that tiny slice that would have gone to actual scientific research. Price per-capita, percent of overall national budget, that’s all completely irrelevant. What matters is what’s in the actual budget for NASA, and where it’s going.

86

No argument there, as some of us have mentioned, the Moon/Mars thing is one big PR stunt to make Orion look like something better than a system that, if it flies on schedule and budget (HUGE “if”) will be a decade and a half and several billion late, relative to mission needs, but better than nothing. And if The Man justifies it by trumpeting up some “marquee” Mission, that is in effect an unfunded mandate that will have to impinge even further on the science budget such as it is.

But let’s be frank: the contrary does not happen – absent MSF missions, the extra money would not be redirected to science. The budgeteers would likely appropriate just what they already do (hey, look, there are expressways to build back in the district, y’know…)

Which still leaves room for allowing that SOME autochtonous MSF capability is to be desired, preferrably one based on a more reliable system than STS. Thus Orion by itself is Ok with me. Best case scenario would be that while Orion fills the gap, the private sector develops and matures a reliable, capable, and economics-sensible Earth-to-orbit crewed system, and then NASA can just buy those for their MSF missions.

Mars?
Mars is dealt with whenever the technology develops that can handle the relevant issues.

87

From the cite:

What part of “might” is not understood here? The cite is from 1998. Radiation is acknowledged as a serious problem in the present. What are the materials, and what are the improvements? Has anything come out of research into composites using light elements that demonstrates they’ll actually be, you know, all that much lighter than what we’ve got already, or that we’d get the needed improvements to keep this program on budget. Same goes with research into new chemical propellants. What’s the real payoff? Are we talking an order of magnitude, or what? The cite says kerosene is “100 times denser than hydrogen” but there’s absolutely no mention of what that tranlates into in terms of real-world performance. Great, so there’s reasearch into squeezing more engery out of breaking chemical bonds. Again, I’ve never argued a Mars mission was impossible, I’ve just argued it was absurd given the expenses likely to be required to get human beings there and back safely, especially in light of the science payoff. Nothing about a list of maybes from optimists with vested interests related to incremental improvements leaves me the slightest bit convinced a manned mission to Mars can be done for anywhere near the projected $40-$80 billion estimated for this program, which is already an obscene amount, given what takes away from.

Again, with the pyramid analogy, of course if you want to pour hundreds of billions into it it’s possible, sure we can construct something that could drop a couple guys on Mars for a sum that might exceed the GDP of half the third world or whatever, but what on Earth for?

I’m sorry, but I simply can’t accept it’s going to be remotely as easy, or inexpensive, as the cheerleaders here claim. I’ve seen too many rosy projections be off by one, even two orders of magnitude, in terms of cost, and as much as three or four, in terms of risk, from NASA and its associates. Meanwhile, maybe we’ll get a Moonbase out of this, but one with the infrastructure to build a ship capable of going to Mars? The infrastructure on Earth just for the Shuttle is enormous, and spread out over many states. And how easy is it to bury habs on other worlds? If we need to dig, what would it take to tote all that excavating equipment to Mars? How many trips? How long would it take? Would there even be any room for science in the midst of all that construction? What could have been accomplished with robots in the mean time? Etc. Too many good questions, zero specific answers, just, hey, maybe someday, let’s spend and spend out of the public coffers to find out. No thanks. Bad idea, IMO.

88

Hell, if we thought about that everytime someone built a fleet of Jumbo Jets, warplanes, military hardware etc, we’d get nowhere fast. The analogy you’re using is bad because it implies that unless we fix every last problem on Earth, we shouldn’t be going into space because it’s a ‘waste of money’

I don’t see it being a waste of money since the Shuttle got Hubble into Orbit, thus making our understanding of the universe alot more clearer, and our knowledge on the effects of space travel, and the way in which gravity affects materials we use either for the better or worse (some medicines are better developed in microgravity) is a waste of money.

As for Human deep space exploration, we’re doing what we’ve always done, set out to the edge of whats possible and succeeding, and it’s the greatest strength of our species.

89

American Physical Society’s take.

90

Space telescopes don’t need the Shuttle and never did. Designing Hubble with the Shuttle in mind made sense, since there was a Shuttle to design around, but the James Webb Telescope doesn’t involve the Shuttle at all. Something comparable to the Hubble could certainly have been designed and lauched without any human involvement in orbit. And if you figure the monstrous costs of the STS program, we could easily afford to put a Hubble in orbit each time one failed instead of fixing it just by scrapping the useless Shuttle to begin with.

As for this “space-age” materials and medicines stuff, where does it come from? How did the public come to swallow so completely the overhyped claims of the manned Space Program about the value of the tech it supposedly produced, and the economics of microgravity manufacturing?

91

Can anyone find that speech Robert Heinlein gave to Congress about how the space program affected his medical problems, directly? Or are we just going to poke Loopy with a stick till he starts foaming at the mouth?

And that’s just a small sampling. Here, take a look at NASA’s Spinoffs page.
http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/
What Apollo brought us.
http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/apollo.htm
Digital Signal Processing. CAT scanners. Kidney Dialysis. Cordless power tools. Insulation. Water Purification.

The Shuttle?
http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/shuttle.htm
Artifical Heart. Balance evaluation systems. Blood diagnostic machines. Gas leak detectors. Infrared cameras, thermometers. Land Mine removal devices. Prosthetics. LoJack. Video Stabilization Software. Fire Rescue Tools.

And that’s just the obvious stuff, not the second and third derivations.

This shit saves lives. Loopy, half your problems seems to be that you seem to think a Mars rocket has to be launched from earth. Weight isn’t a problem if you build it in space, just mass. Build it in space. Build it big, build it insulated, and build it safe. Load it with fuel. It can be done. It’s not hard, really. It’s not simple, but at the level we can discuss it, it’s certainly not impossible.

92

Hey, and don’t forget that thanks to the non-astronauts, we now have one less planet in the solar system! :mad:

Seriously, though, I have a feeling that it pretty much doesn’t matter what happens with the manned side of things Loopy will find a reason to bitch about it. “Manned spaceflight cured cancer? Great! Now the population of the Earth will grow even faster, accelerating the destruction of the environment and dooming us all!”

93

The part of “might” that you don’t understand is that the substances that can shield the spacecraft from radiation are already known. The “might” part is whether they can be engineered effectively to the task.

The main material that has yielded the best results so far is reinforced polyethylene:

So at least one material is there to be built into a test craft and put thorugh its paces. All it needs is the money to pay the people to design it, build it, launch it, and monitor it. Plus they hope to have a suite of other materials ready for testing by two years from now.

Actually, from what I can gather, the main promising research is in plasma engines like VASIMR.

On this page, it says:

So we may be talking about reducing the time factor by two. Which of course means less time for exposure to radiation, which means lighter-weight shielding may be possible. Now let’s examine that word may in a gentle manner, since it seems to confuse and scare you. “May” does not always mean nobody has any idea how something can possibly happen. It often means that the specifics of what will happen when a known technology is used have not been tested yet.

You’d got to get over the idea that a hundred billion dollars is a lot of money in the grand scheme of things. its 300 bucks from each member of the populace, and it’s stretched out over a number of years. It’s a third of what we’ve spent in Iraq for only three years. It’s nothing. Just because it’s more money than you or I will ever see at one time doesn’t mean it’s a comparatively large amount in government budgets. If each member of the populace gave the government a buck, it would be $300million, which is almost a third of a billion, and still more money than either of us will see ourselves.

You’ve spewed this one in a number of posts. Anything to back it up? Sure, there have been cost overruns, sometimes obscene ones. Where’s your cite that it’s routinely on the scale of multiple orders of magnitude?

Boy, you live in a scary dark world of uncertainties, don’t you? I don’t see how you get up in the morning, with all the things you don’t know might or might not happen that bring you fear.

Do the logistics of it really escape you? A hell of a lot of science needs to be done on Mars before we know what faces a human expedition, and we’re going to send another robot there every 26 months to find it out. The work of developing the technologies to keep humans alive there need to be tested out in an environment where quick rescue is possible, but where lack of oxygen, low gravity, and higher radiation exposure can be experienced without a lot of extra effort… like, oh, the Moon.

The fullest description I’ve seen of the first Mars colony is that it will be built by robots in advance of a human expedition. They will be hanging around for months, waiting for the people, so I’m sure some science can be squeezed in.

The ulitmate point is not to worry about what the tiny NASA budget is spent on, but where the leader with the cojones to say that we need to fund all science and exploration research a hell of a lot better than we do is going to come from.

94

Don’t have a lot of time to research, but here’s an assessment of what NASA has promised vs. what it’s delivered for about as long as I’ve been alive. See especially Table 14.5 on page 241. Just in terms of routine operating costs, as of 1981: Per flight promised: $88 million. Per flight delivered: $1.7 billion.

That’s off by about 2000 percent, just per flight expenses. Obviously since 1981 things got a lot worse for the STS (and do I need to dig up references about the insane cost overruns of the ISS?) Why should anyone remotely believe what these people say about costs, especially when the needed technology doesn’t exist yet?

95

Except, of course, your not looking at the real numbers.

There’s a lot more on that page regarding the numbers and the fudging that went on at the behest of Nixon and his cronies, but in short, they came in on time and on budget, and the operating costs were what they expected them to be, but that information was never publicly available until after Columbia broke apart. Had Nixon left Apollo alone, NASA’s expenditures would have been significantly lower and more science would have been produced. No doubt when the ISS is scrapped, we’ll find out that the same was true of it as well.

96

Because we will learn a lot doing so…a lot we wouldn’t have learned if we had just sat here (as we’ve BEEN doing) on our ass. One thing we’ll learn is how to do it cheaper and better the next time. If we followed your plan in our every day lives we’d NEVER get anything done. You do realize, don’t you, that initially EVERYTHING costs more. That computer you are using? You probably bought it for a few thousand dollars…maybe a few hundred. Initially though they were a HELL of a lot more expensive. That DvD player you might use to watch movies? The same. The air plane you fly in to go visit people? Yep, that too. The car you drive was originally a concept car, then a prototype somewhere…and it costs a lot more than you paid for it at the dealer.

Besides, you are exaggerating (again…imagine that :)). I’ve seen estimates of the costs of getting to Mars…ranging from $40 billion (I’ve actually seen $20 billion but I think thats ridiculous) to maybe as much as $150 billion. Even if we double that to $300 billion I think its safe to say that this doesn’t exceed half of the third world’s GDP. Not that that this is meaningful in any case. Our defense budget really DOES cost more than half of the third worlds GDP (at least thats my WAG), and our various social programs are even more expensive…yet you aren’t complaining that about that, ehe? We’ve pissed away significantly more than this on worthless social projects and our military adventure in Iraq after all.

-XT

97

From an unknown poster on slashdot:

At the dawn of the 15th century, China ruled the seas. An armada of Chinese ships explored Japan, Tiawan, and the islands of the Pacific. Turning west, they reached Arabia and sailed all the way to the east coast of Africa. The ships were much larger than anything that had sailed the seas before. The largest were 400 feet long and 150 wide and carried nine masts. They were larger than anything that would be seen in the west for centuries to come. The Chinese fleets were fabulously successful. They carried loads of Chinese silk and porcelain to western ports and returned with all the riches of Africa and Arabia. Between the turn of the century and 1433, the treasure fleets sailed seven times. These expeditions established a vast trade network for China. They also included military conquests that brought a huge amount of land under Chinese control. At the conclusion of the last expedition, the Chinese Empire reached the Persian Gulf. The next expedition might had rounded the horn of Africa. China might have “discovered” and even colonized Europe. The ships held unmatched technology and were easily capable of reaching the Americas. China stood at the brink of dominating the world.

But there was no next expedition.

Instead, there was a change in political control. The new Ming emperors pulled back the fleets. The treasure ships were allowed to rot or deliberately burned to prevent their use. China turned inward, became insular, abandoned its distant colonies. It would be the Europeans that went on to discover the New World. And Europeans who would reach, and dominate, much of China for centuries to come. In 1969, Neil Armstrong placed his foot in a slightly gritty powder and left the first human mark on the moon. The United States had conducted a series of expeditions into space, using successively more capable craft. The rocket that delivered men to the moon was 363’ long, the largest ever made. They were the most technologically advanced devices of their time. Under Democratic leadership, they had reached another world. Seven times, from 1969 to 1972, craft from the United States reached the moon. They were fabulously successful. They delivered a bounty of knowledge, a peaceful explosion of technology, and a focus for the world. America stood at the brink of endless possibilities. Another push might have established colonies, it might have lead to clean and endless energy, it might have…

There was no next time.

I want there to be a next time.

Pullin

98

And if the real numbers had been known, would anyone have supported it, or the ISS? I don’t care who fudged or how, I want to know why I should believe what I’m hearing now, given the highly-politicized nature of the NASA funding debate. It’s certainly not being argued based on hard science.

99

I think we will make substantial progress in space when we stop crapping our pants over dead astronauts and disintegrating spaceships. I think if we want glory, there’s going to be guts and we’d better get used to that. NASA exists only because hundreds of years ago the first colonist waves to North America looked at the shipwrecks, the starvation, death by exposure or hostile native and said: fuck it, sign us up. If we can get back in that headspace, we’ll take this solar system like a virgin on prom night.

Robots are neat but I prefer meat. Because meat is smarter, adaptable, cheap and we’ve got alot of it. I don’t need to research, invent or build meat, and I don’t need a team of PhDs to teach meat. Plus, it’d be a real bitch to spend a bajillion dollars on some tinkertoy droids only to have them lose out to a cheap drone full of Chinese meat willing to bake in a radioactive hell while building a shelter for the next wave of their countrymen, and flipping the bird to our eighty million dollar robot camera before stomping it under a hundred yen space boot.

We don’t have to go out there into the black, we really don’t. But if we do, I think we’ll need to stop dicking around and start putting brave and/or desperate people into situations with appallingly high mortality rates. That’s how we’ve broken ground on new worlds before, and it works.

My realistic forecast? We’re going lose the solar system to someone willing to shed his own blood unless we have some sort of Sputnik-style, “omg they’re gonna to beat us to Europa” 11th hour rally. We’ll get more of the same crap we’ve been getting for decades. More self-interested politicians who don’t give a damn about anything except the next four to eight, more overly comfortable voters eager to elect them for trivial reasons, and more budget programs like this one that will go nowhere we care to go, and nowhere we haven’t already been. And more nerds will be happy to just build more toys that fly off and poke more shit with more probes and take more pictures of it. And we’ll call it a real space program, right up until that beautiful brave boot comes smashing down on that expensive, safe camera lens.

(On a larger note, I can find few intellectual pessimists amongst those names most noted for their revolutionary intellects. But then, we don’t actually name high schools or build statues for the guy telling us what can’t be done, do we?)