Obama Space Plan: Return to Moon: "No Go"

[T'Girl]

That shuttle should have been carted off the Pad after the freeze. Plain and simple. Looking up the stability of material of the O'Ring and and tempertures it was exposed to is no brainer.

I don't expect to loose lives through neglect. That is unexceptable.

The freezing temps were not the main problem, the design of the join between the booster segments was. The cold only exacerbated the design flaw, it wasn't the prime cause.

The accident report was online as resently as four years ago, it's a little techie in places, but the conclusion section is in plain language.

And it not unacceptably that we'll lose people from all causes. Short of shutting down, design fault, human error, weather, management fukk-ups, all wiill kill, waste and delay.

Shall we pull the fishing boats off the sea, more people die there.

The camera on the second shuttle could not of saved it, not looking at the recording right way had no impact on the deaths. Once the foam penitrated the leading edge that was it. The ISS was in the wrong orbit, the russians had nothing on the pad, another shuttle couldn't have been launched in time. Even a post launch abort to Spain most likely would have destroyed the shuttle. The crew as already dead.

 

[USS KG5]

KG5, you're right. We "didn't have the technology" When Kennedy proclaimed that we were going to the frakkin' moon in less than a decade. We damn sure developed it though!

Well we had a lot of the technology didn't we or quite simply it would never have been built in ten years, a lot of the very basic research in rocketry and so on had been done by the Nazis.

Like most great technological achievements the Apollo missions were the result of bringing technologies together and adjusting them for the current need. Apollo was an amazing achievement but do not kid yourself that the technical development required to get us from where we are now to everyday spaceflight could be achieved in ten years no matter how much you throw at it.

Some of the technologies required for a Mars mission (including the ability to build very large ships with artificial gravity, quite possibly a requirement if you want sane astronauts at the other end) simply do not exist in any form.

Maybe you could build it in space, maybe in ten years we could make efficient ion engines or other advanced propulsion, but everyday space flight that us commoners could use? No way, not for a long time.

Unfortunately, the first US President to proclaim a goal of putting a man on Mars by 2030 wasn't backed by the rest of the government. That bold statement by George Herbert Walker Bush just fell by the wayside.

I don't think it is wise to go into politics here - suffice it to say if Bush had said "Lets all go for tacos" he might have had trouble finding support at that point!

It would be interesting to see where we'd be now if there had been follow through on it at that time. So many technlogies we take for granted now came from that initial push to Luna 40 years ago.

Well the most important new technology of the last 60 years was the Internet, which came from the risk of nuclear war, so it is likely there would have been other avenues for that tech to come from, but of course the whole Apollo mission plan owed a lot to the threat of nuclear war and international posturing.

Maybe it is a mistake to take Apollo out of its political context, surely if sticking it to Russia was an important motivator, then the current economic disaster is at least as good a reason to hold fire?

 

[Bluesteel]

I'm not quite sure how you intend to use atmosphere to make fuel.

However, Mars gravity is 1/3rd that of Earth. This makes it easier to get off, but my bet is that you'd still need a booster stage---the onboard fuel of a landing capsule probably won't cut it.

Well flicking through wikipedia. What needs to be brought from Earth is a supply of Hydrogen and a power source. Combing the Hydrogen with the carbon dioxide would give us Methane and Water. Take the Hydrogen out from the water and you feed it back to the beginning of the process.

The advantage is that we can send people to Mars knowing that there is already fuel there waiting for them. Also saves weight.

 

[Saquist]

The freezing temps were not the main problem, the design of the join between the booster segments was. The cold only exacerbated the design flaw, it wasn't the prime cause.

The accident report was online as resently as four years ago, it's a little techie in places, but the conclusion section is in plain language.

And it not unacceptably that we'll lose people from all causes. Short of shutting down, design fault, human error, weather, management fukk-ups, all wiill kill, waste and delay.

Shall we pull the fishing boats off the sea, more people die there.

The camera on the second shuttle could not of saved it, not looking at the recording right way had no impact on the deaths. Once the foam penitrated the leading edge that was it. The ISS was in the wrong orbit, the russians had nothing on the pad, another shuttle couldn't have been launched in time. Even a post launch abort to Spain most likely would have destroyed the shuttle. The crew as already dead.

I don't believe that. Another shuttle could have been prepped. (and there should be "2 minute drill" for emergencies) If not another shuttle an Araine 5 could have been launched with emergency provisions, there is always something going up somewhere in the world....It's not impossible.

The only thing that garuanteed their deaths was NASA's neglect. 2 for 2 in the neglect column and it's not something I'm willing allow or ignore. So yes get it together or shut it down because we can launch satelites into orbit without the shuttle.

 

[Alpha_Geek]

To get into space, the manned space program developed improved heat shields & insulation, mutiplexing control signals, remote medical telemetry , scratch resistant lens coatings, thermoelectric cooling, advanced the fields of metallurgy ^ aviation technology, structural analysis, etc, etc, etc.

The V-2 that Von Braun brought us was pretty primitive. We still needed lots of stuff to get skyward.

KG5, you're right. We "didn't have the technology" When Kennedy proclaimed that we were going to the frakkin' moon in less than a decade. We damn sure developed it though!

Well we had a lot of the technology didn't we or quite simply it would never have been built in ten years, a lot of the very basic research in rocketry and so on had been done by the Nazis.

Like most great technological achievements the Apollo missions were the result of bringing technologies together and adjusting them for the current need. Apollo was an amazing achievement but do not kid yourself that the technical development required to get us from where we are now to everyday spaceflight could be achieved in ten years no matter how much you throw at it.

Some of the technologies required for a Mars mission (including the ability to build very large ships with artificial gravity, quite possibly a requirement if you want sane astronauts at the other end) simply do not exist in any form.

Maybe you could build it in space, maybe in ten years we could make efficient ion engines or other advanced propulsion, but everyday space flight that us commoners could use? No way, not for a long time.

Unfortunately, the first US President to proclaim a goal of putting a man on Mars by 2030 wasn't backed by the rest of the government. That bold statement by George Herbert Walker Bush just fell by the wayside.

I don't think it is wise to go into politics here - suffice it to say if Bush had said "Lets all go for tacos" he might have had trouble finding support at that point!

It would be interesting to see where we'd be now if there had been follow through on it at that time. So many technlogies we take for granted now came from that initial push to Luna 40 years ago.

Well the most important new technology of the last 60 years was the Internet, which came from the risk of nuclear war, so it is likely there would have been other avenues for that tech to come from, but of course the whole Apollo mission plan owed a lot to the threat of nuclear war and international posturing.

Maybe it is a mistake to take Apollo out of its political context, surely if sticking it to Russia was an important motivator, then the current economic disaster is at least as good a reason to hold fire?

 

[diankra]

[QUT]
With supervision even cost cutting measures cane be tolerated. And if what you're saying is correct...then it's further fuel on the fire because Atlantis and Endeavor should have incorporated the technology.

The cameras should have been added long ago.
You're adding tot he argument of neglect. Do you really see it getting better...

These shows like the TV sereis about a Round Trip journey through the solar system... Mission to Mars, etc, these are movies and shows that try an paint NASA as something it is not....

Progressive.

First, a minor point: both Atlantis and Endeavour existed before the Challenger disaster - Atlantis had just made its first flight, while all the essential component for Endeavour had been manufactured as a full set of structural spares before the Shuttle production line was shut down. All that happened later was the NASA was given permission to put them together as a replacement orbiiter (to have restarted the production line later would have been near impossible).

Second, what modifications are you suggesting should have been made to Atlantis and Endeavour, beyond the improved escape options and added drag chute that were fitted to the entire fleet?
The problem on Challenger wasn't in the orbiter, after all; the SRBs were modified, and beyond that the only solution would have been to replace them entirely.
As for Columbia... the only modification which can avoid the punch-through danger is a fundamental redesign of the entire system - either to remove the big delta wings (which are mainly there to provide a cross range landing capability that's never been used - it was needed to fly the single orbit polar orbit missions from Vandenberg which were cancelled by the DoD after Challenger), or replace the extrernal tank/SSRB combination entirely.
Of course, it's easy WITH HINDSIGHT to say that there should have been restrictions on the launch temperatures because of the o-rings, and that the orbiter should be inspected in orbit before being Oked for re-entry. But both were dangers were considered but were were felt to be more unlikely than they proved to be.
Every spaceflight involves risk: the judgement is whetehr to guard against the one in a million dangers, or the one in ten million. As the's latter costs more, where you set the line depends on how much budget you've got. The danger comes when a 1/10million problem turns out to actually be a 1/1million one (though I'm not denying that in both cases there was an element of complacency: the problem had been noticed, but as it hadn't proved critical, it was judged acceptable).
It comes back to: the external tank/SRB/big wing orbiter design is not what NASA originally wanted. It resulted from the original fully reusueable designs with a smaller orbiter beiing changed to fit the budget awarded by congress, and the performance requirements of the DoD. And it's inherently flawed, in ways that mean it can't do the job it was designed for - reliable, easy access to low orbit, which could be launched almost weekly all year round.

 

[Saquist]

Second, what modifications are you suggesting should have been made to Atlantis and Endeavour, beyond the improved escape options and added drag chute that were fitted to the entire fleet?

Larger fuel capacity:
Atlantis should have been modified for power hook up to the ISS.
At the very least The station should have been fitted for an escape vehicle that may also be used to rescue or transfer supplies....by now....the station has been under construction for 11 years. Design had to be at least for 5.

(Ideally) Oxygen Capacity for 30 days.

Did they think the shuttle was going to continue indefinitely with the prepp time it needed? For God's sake the russians still use the Soyuz spacecraft. One should always be docked to the station for emergencies.

Why doesn't NASA believe in being flexible....I don't know.
The problem on Challenger wasn't in the orbiter, after all; the SRBs were modified, and beyond that the only solution would have been to replace them entirely.
As for Columbia... the only modification which can avoid the punch-through danger is a fundamental redesign of the entire system - either to remove the big delta wings (which are mainly there to provide a cross range landing capability that's never been used - it was needed to fly the single orbit polar orbit missions from Vandenberg which were cancelled by the DoD after Challenger), or replace the extrernal tank/SSRB combination entirely.
Of course, it's easy WITH HINDSIGHT to say that there should have been restrictions on the launch temperatures because of the o-rings, and that the orbiter should be inspected in orbit before being Oked for re-entry. But both were dangers were considered but were were felt to be more unlikely than they proved to be.
Every spaceflight involves risk: the judgement is whetehr to guard against the one in a million dangers, or the one in ten million. As the's latter costs more, where you set the line depends on how much budget you've got. The danger comes when a 1/10million problem turns out to actually be a 1/1million one (though I'm not denying that in both cases there was an element of complacency: the problem had been noticed, but as it hadn't proved critical, it was judged acceptable).
It comes back to: the external tank/SRB/big wing orbiter design is not what NASA originally wanted. It resulted from the original fully reusueable designs with a smaller orbiter beiing changed to fit the budget awarded by congress, and the performance requirements of the DoD. And it's inherently flawed, in ways that mean it can't do the job it was designed for - reliable, easy access to low orbit, which could be launched almost weekly all year round.[/QUOTE]

 

[Alpha_Geek]

I wonder if the leading edge construction for the X-20 would have been more punch through resistant. Rather than all carbon/graphite, the X-20 leading edges were to be a carbon zirconium composite.

 

[FordSVT]

Space travel is more important than health care.

As an ardent space-funding support I would argue that no it isn't, but I'd also argue that it's not an either/or proposition and not worth arguing over semantics about.

 

[Marc]

Second, what modifications are you suggesting should have been made to Atlantis and Endeavour, beyond the improved escape options and added drag chute that were fitted to the entire fleet?

Larger fuel capacity:
Atlantis should have been modified for power hook up to the ISS.
At the very least The station should have been fitted for an escape vehicle that may also be used to rescue or transfer supplies....by now....the station has been under construction for 11 years. Design had to be at least for 5.

(Ideally) Oxygen Capacity for 30 days.

And where would they have put the extra fuel? You couldn't store in the shuttle it's self and increasing the size of the EFT would then open up another can of worms as everything would have to be designed.

Same goes for additional O2 storage.

Did they think the shuttle was going to continue indefinitely with the prepp time it needed? For God's sake the russians still use the Soyuz spacecraft. One should always be docked to the station for emergencies.

Soyuz can only carry 3 people at time.

Why doesn't NASA believe in being flexible....I don't know.
The problem on Challenger wasn't in the orbiter, after all; the SRBs were modified, and beyond that the only solution would have been to replace them entirely.

Being flexible was what got the shuttle into the mess in the first place. NASA wanted it to do one thing, the military anouther so they met half way with the end result the shuttle design was compromised

 

[sojourner]

it's easy WITH HINDSIGHT to say that there should have been restrictions on the launch temperatures because of the o-rings,

No hindsite was needed for Challenger. Here is an excellent link to the engineer involved in the launch/scrub decision.
http://temp.onlineethics.org/moral/boisjoly/RB-intro.html

I wonder if the leading edge construction for the X-20 would have been more punch through resistant. Rather than all carbon/graphite, the X-20 leading edges were to be a carbon zirconium composite.

The Dyna-soar was never ment to be side launched like the shuttle. It would have been on the top of the LV and not subject to the same conditions.

 

[Alpha_Geek]

Sojourner, maybe. Granted it was top mount on a Titan, but some of the X-20 mission profiles seem to indicate that it was to be a sturdy little bird. I think they would have made it tougher since it was to do stuff like grab or disable Rooskie birds in addition to surveillance, intel, and more.

Dynasoar as concieved when taking the cold war to space was still in the realm of possibility. Armed craft were on everyones drawing boards, so defensive measures seem likely, including rhino-hiding your orbiter.

Shame she never flew. I'll bet we're in 100% agreement on that.

 

[T'Girl]

The Dyna-soar was never ment to be side launched like the shuttle. It would have been on the top of the LV and not subject to the same conditions.

One of the reasons ARES was designed like it is, is to get the crew above the rest of the space craft.

********************************************

For God's sake the russians still use the Soyuz spacecraft. One should always be docked to the station for emergencies.

There is a Soyuz docked there at all times, has been for years now.

**********************************************

The V-2 that Von Braun brought us was pretty primitive.

The A-4 that Von Braun brought to America in 1945 was the most advanced rocket in the world.

************************************

 

[diankra]

Second, what modifications are you suggesting should have been made to Atlantis and Endeavour, beyond the improved escape options and added drag chute that were fitted to the entire fleet?

Larger fuel capacity:
Atlantis should have been modified for power hook up to the ISS.
At the very least The station should have been fitted for an escape vehicle that may also be used to rescue or transfer supplies....by now....the station has been under construction for 11 years. Design had to be at least for 5.

(Ideally) Oxygen Capacity for 30 days.

Did they think the shuttle was going to continue indefinitely with the prepp time it needed? For God's sake the russians still use the Soyuz spacecraft. One should always be docked to the station for emergencies.

Why doesn't NASA believe in being flexible....I don't know.

Actually, Endeavour was built with the capacity for a 30 day flight [EDIT: on checking it was actually 16 days]; it was fitted with the connections to let it carry the Extended Duration Orbiter wafer at the back of the payload bay if needed for a long solo mission (Columbia was later refitted so it could also carry the EDO wafer).
Why not do the same to every orbiter and carry the EDO on every mission? Because it adds to the orbiter's weight, and every pound of orbiter is a pound off the payload (more actually, in the case of something that's being brought back like the EDo wafer, as it unbalances the centre of gravity and has to be balanced). The EDO wafer weighs 3,500 pounds, and the maximum payload to orbit of a shuttle is 55,000 pounds - but it's less on flights to the ISS, which is at a compromise inclination between the one that offers the highest possible payload for launches from KSC and the equivalent for Baikonur.
So carrying the wafer - or maybe a couple to offer 28 days? - could, paradoxically, increase the risk of an accident in the long term. If you take (say) 10% off the payload capacity, then you need 10 launches to do what could have been achieved by nine, which means an extra launch and re-entry, which as we know all too well are the really risky bits of the flight. Hence the EDO's only worth carrying if you can make good use of the extra time in orbit - fine on solo lab missions like STS-113 where doubling the flight time effectively gives you two missions for the risk of one launch; less so on a cargo delivery and maintenance mission like STS128.

As for leaving a shuttle docked to the station (assuming that's what you meant; there is always a Soyuz docked to the station if not), a) where do you get the spare shuttle? and b) the shuttle can't be powered down in orbit as Soyuz can - and Soyuz had to be extensively modified a number of times to allow this, and then extend its safe life span to 3, 6 and 12 months in turn.

 

[sojourner]

The Dyna-soar was never ment to be side launched like the shuttle. It would have been on the top of the LV and not subject to the same conditions.

One of the reasons ARES was designed like it is, is to get the crew above the rest of the space craft.

One of the few things they got right on Ares.

********************************************

For God's sake the russians still use the Soyuz spacecraft. One should always be docked to the station for emergencies.

There is a Soyuz docked there at all times, has been for years now.

**********************************************

The V-2 that Von Braun brought us was pretty primitive.

The A-4 that Von Braun brought to America in 1945 was the most advanced rocket in the world.

************************************

^for it's time. Still far short of anything advanced enough to reach the moon.

 

[diankra]

The Dyna-soar was never ment to be side launched like the shuttle. It would have been on the top of the LV and not subject to the same conditions.

One of the reasons ARES was designed like it is, is to get the crew above the rest of the space craft.

One of the few things they got right on Ares.

********************************************

For God's sake the russians still use the Soyuz spacecraft. One should always be docked to the station for emergencies.

There is a Soyuz docked there at all times, has been for years now.

**********************************************

The V-2 that Von Braun brought us was pretty primitive.

The A-4 that Von Braun brought to America in 1945 was the most advanced rocket in the world.

************************************

^for it's time. Still far short of anything advanced enough to reach the moon.

True. But the Redstone that launched Alan Shepherd on the first US spaceflight was effectively an upgraded V2/A4, and the first stage of the Saturn 1B that launched the LEO Apollo flights was (putting it crudely) eight Redstone strapped together to fire in parallel.

 

[TheMasterOfOrion]

Former NASA Admin in writing
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=32351

[FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]From: "Michael D. Griffin" To: XXXXXXXXXX

1) It is clarifying to see a formal recognition by the Commission that, based upon budgetary considerations, "the human spaceflight program appears to be on an unsustainable trajectory". Given that the Constellation program was designed in accordance with the budget profile specified in 2005, yet has since suffered some $30 billion of reductions to the amount allocated to human lunar return (including almost $12 billion in just the last five fiscal years) this is an unsurprising conclusion, but one which provides the necessary grounding for all subsequent discussions.

2) Since NASA's budget as outlined in 2005 was hardly one of rampant growth (only a slight increase above inflation was projected even then), and since the Commission did not report any evidence of substandard execution of the Program of Record - Constellation - one wonders why the Commission failed to recommend as its favored option that of simply restoring the funding necessary to do the job that has, since 2005, been codified in two strongly bi-partisan Congressional Authorization Acts. Of all the options considered, this is the most straightforward, yet it was not recommended. The so-called "less constrained" options merely provide partial restoration of budget authority that was removed within just the last few years. The most obvious conclusion to be drawn from the Commission' report is this: put it back.

3) The continual reference to the supposedly planned cancellation and deorbiting of ISS in 2016 is a strawman, irrelevant to consideration of serious programmatic options. While it is certainly true that Bush Administration budgets did not show any funding for ISS past 2015, it was always quite clear that the decision to cancel or fund the ISS in 2016 and beyond was never within the purview of the Bush Administration to make. In the face of strong International Partner commitment to ISS and two decades of steadfast Congressional commitment to the development, assembly, and utilization of ISS, it has never been and is not now realistic to consider cancellation and deorbiting of ISS in 2015, or indeed on any particular date which can be known today. The fact that some $3+ billion per year will be required to sustain ISS operations past 2015 is, and has always been, a glaring omission in future budget projections. Sustained funding of the ISS as long as it continues to return value - certainly to 2020 and quite likely beyond - should have been established by the Commission as a non-negotiable point of departure for all other discussions. Failure to do so, when the implications of prematurely canceling ISS are well known to all, is disingenuous. The existence of future exploration programs cannot be traded against sustenance of the ISS on an "either-or" basis, as if the latter option was a realistic option. If the nation is to lay claim to a viable human spaceflight program, the requirement to sustain ISS while also developing new systems to go beyond low Earth orbit is the minimally necessary standard. If the nation can no longer meet this standard, then it should be so stated, in which case any further discussion of U.S. human exploration beyond LEO is moot for the next two decades.

4) Numerous options are presented which are not linked by common goals or a strategy to reach such goals. Instead, differing options are presented to reach differing goals, rendering it impossible to develop meaningful cost/schedule/performance/risk comparisons across them. These options possess vastly differing levels of maturity, yet are offered as if all were on an equally mature footing in regard to their level of technical, cost, schedule, and risk assessment. This is not the case.

5) "Independent" cost estimates for Constellation systems are cited. There is no acknowledgement that these are low-fidelity estimates developed over a matter of weeks, yet are offered as corrections to NASA's cost estimates, which have years of effort behind them. No mention is made of NASA's commitment to probabilistic budget estimation techniques for Constellation, at significantly higher cost-confidence levels than has been the case in the past. If the Commission believes that NASA is not properly estimating costs, or is misrepresenting the data it has amassed, it should document its specific concerns. Otherwise, the provenance of NASA's cost estimates should be accepted, as no evidence has been supplied to justify overturning them.

6) The preference for "commercial" options for cargo and, worse, crew delivery to low Earth orbit appears throughout the Summary, together with the statement that "it is an appropriate time to consider turning this transport service over to the commercial sector." What commercial sector? At present, the only clearly available "commercial" option is Ariane 5. Launching a redesigned Orion crew vehicle is a valid choice in the context of an international program if - and only if - the U.S. is willing to give up independent access to low Earth orbit, a decision imbued with enormous future consequences. With an appropriately enlightened USG policy there may one day be a domestic commercial space transportation sector, but it does not presently exist and will not exist in the near future; i.e., substantially prior to the likely completion dates for Ares-1/Orion, if they were properly funded. The existence of a prudently funded USG option for cargo/crew delivery to ISS is precisely the strategy which allows the USG to take reasonable risks to sponsor the development of a viable commercial space sector. The Commission acknowledges the "risk" associated with its recommendation, but is not clear about the nature of that risk. If no USG option to deliver cargo and crew to LEO is to be developed following the retirement of the Space Shuttle, the U.S. risks the failure to sustain and utilize a unique facility with a sunk cost of $55 billion on the U.S. side, and nearly $20 billion of international partner investment in addition. The Russian Soyuz and Progress systems, even if we are willing to pay whatever is required to use them in the interim, simply do not provide sufficient capability to utilize ISS as was intended, and in any case represent a single point failure in regard to such utilization. To hold the support and utilization of the ISS hostage to the emergence of a commercial space sector is not "risky", it is irresponsible.

7) The Commission is disingenuous when it claims that safety "is not discussed in extensive detail because any concepts falling short in human safety have simply been eliminated from consideration." Similarly, the Commission was "unconvinced that enough is known about any of the potential high-reliability launcher-plus-capsule systems to distinguish their levels of safety in a meaningful way." For the Commission to dismiss out of hand the extensive analytical work that has been done to assure that Constellation systems represent the safest reasonable approach in comparison to all other presently known systems is simply unacceptable. Work of high quality in the assessment of safety and reliability has been done, and useful discriminators between and among systems do exist, whether the Commission believes so or not. To this point, the Commission's report is confusing as regards the distinction between "reliability" and "safety", where the issue is discussed at all. The former is the only criterion of interest for unmanned systems; for manned systems, there is an important difference due to the existence of an abort system and the conditions under which that abort system can and must operate. Nowhere is this crucial distinction discussed.

8) "Technical problems" with Ares-1 are cited several times, without any acknowledgement that (a) knowledgeable observers in NASA would disagree strongly as to the severity of such problems, and (b) Constellation's "technical problems" are on display because actual work is being accomplished, whereas other options have no problems because no work is being done.

9) The recommendation in favor of the dual-launch "Ares-5 Lite" approach as the baseline for lunar missions is difficult to understand. It violates the CAIB recommendation (and many similar recommendations) to separate crew and cargo in whatever post-Shuttle human space transportation system is to be developed. Further, the dual-Ares-5 Lite mission architecture substantially increases the minimum cost for a single lunar mission as compared to the Ares-1/Ares-5 approach, a recommendation which is difficult to understand in an already difficult budgetary environment. Finally, the Ares-5 Lite is nearly as expensive to develop as the Ares-5, but offers significantly less payload to the moon when used -- as will be required -- in a one-way, single-launch, cargo-only mode. (The LEO payload difference of 140 mt for Ares-5 Lite and 160 mt for Ares-5 masks a much greater difference in their lunar payload capability.) All parties agree that a heavy-lift launcher is needed for any human space program beyond LEO. Because of the economies of scale inherent to the design of launch vehicles, such a vehicle should be designed to lift as large a payload as possible within the constraints of the facilities and infrastructure available to build and transport it. This provides the greatest marginal improvement in capability at the lowest marginal cost.

10) The use of "fuel depots" as recommended in the Summary appears to be a solution in search of a problem. It is difficult to understand how such an approach can offer an economically favorable alternative. The Ares-5 offers the lowest cost-per-pound for payload to orbit of any presently known heavy-lift launch vehicle design. The mass-specific cost of payload to orbit nearly always improves with increasing launch vehicle scale. The recommendation in favor of an architectural approach based upon the use of many smaller vehicles to resupply a fuel depot ignores this fact, as well as the fact that a fuel depot requires a presently non-existent technology - the ability to provide closed-cycle refrigeration to maintain cryogenic fuels in the necessary thermodynamic state in space. This technology is a holy grail of deep-space exploration, because it is necessary for both chemical- and nuclear-powered upper stages. To establish an architecture based upon a non-existent technology at the very beginning of beyond-LEO operations is unwise.

11) Finally, the Commission did not do that which would have been most valuable - rendering a clear-eyed, independent assessment of the progress and status of Constellation with respect to its ability to meet goals which have been established in two successive NASA Authorization Acts, followed by an assessment of what would be required to get and keep that program on track. Instead, the Commission sought to formulate new options for new programs, treating these options as if their level of maturity was comparable to that of the baseline upon which NASA has been working now for more than four years. This approach completely ignores the established body of law which has guided NASA's work for the last four years and which, until and unless that body of law is changed, must serve as the common reference standard for any proposed alternatives to Constellation as the program of record for the nation's existing human spaceflight program.[/FONT]

 

[Lindley]

Constellation's "technical problems" are on display because actual work is being accomplished, whereas other options have no problems because no work is being done.

That's some great dry wit.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

Hundreds of thousands of jobs, new scientific discoveries and another twenty-year leap in technology could be ours by the mere increase of a handfull of dollars per person per year to NASA.

.....but no.....

Or, you know, we could pour the money into R&D right here on earth at a fraction of the cost for the same gain...

 

[darkwing_duck1]

Money put into the space program creates jobs, stimulates the economy, and drives technological progress. It isn't wasted money to begin with.

... what the ROI actually is ...
.

Plus it boosts national pride

T'Girl to the poor: "Let them eat 'pride'..."