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NASA Engineers Work On Alternative Moon Rocket
Posted by
timothy
on Tue Jul 15, 2008 12:02 PM
from the doesn't-even-have-a-hybrid-engine dept.
from the doesn't-even-have-a-hybrid-engine dept.
Gibson writes "A team of 57 engineers at NASA's Marshall Spaceflight center feel that the Ares rocket is not the best solution for launching the new CEV. They are currently working on their own time developing an alternative launch system known as Jupiter. The 131 page proposal, along with other information, is available on the project website. Proponents of the project say that it is 'simpler, safer, and sooner' than the Ares project, predicting the ability for a return to the moon in 2017, two years before the current goal. Ares management has so far dismissed the proposal as a 'napkin drawing.'"
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Ares V Rocket Bigger and Stronger For Moon Mission 295 comments
wooferhound writes "In a move to make the heavy-lift vehicle more robust (predicting an increased launch thrust requirement) to send four astronauts, a lunar lander plus supplies, NASA has announced the
Ares V rocket will be beefed up to cater for our future needs to get man back to the Moon. This huge vehicle is now designed to carry payloads of over 156,600 lb (71,000 kg), some 15,600 lb (or 10%) more than the original concept. Ares V was originally designed to be approximately the same length as the original Saturn V lunar rocket (361 feet or 110 metres long), but to accommodate an extra booster engine and extra payload volume, Ares V will be 381 feet (116 metres) long. This upgrade will be capable of sending far more instrumentation into space, an extra 15,600 lb (7,000 kg, or the equivalent mass of a male African elephant)."
Submission: NASA Engineers work on alternative moon rocket by Anonymous Coward
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Yes, because we all know.... (Score:5, Insightful)
That a "napkin drawing" by engineers never amount to anything.
Re:Yes, because we all know.... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Yes, because we all know.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Didn't the guy who invented ethernet sketch out his idea on the back of a napkin back in the day?
Re:Yes, because we all know.... (Score:4, Funny)
It sure almost worked for Richard Pryor -- he damn near killed Superman with a computer drawn on the back of napkins.
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Re:Yes, because we all know.... (Score:5, Funny)
There's at least one notable example where a napkin drawing caused a stonhenge monument to be in danger of being crushed by a dwarf.
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"A Napkin Drawing?" (Score:5, Insightful)
How can anyone whose project is in the design stage, scoff at another that is in the conceptual stage? Neither of them EXIST yet!
Where is Ares? Oh, it's in AUTOCAD! Well, that makes ALL the difference!
Meanwhile, their brilliant project isn't expected to get anyone to the moon before, what, twenty years?
Sheesh.
Re:"A Napkin Drawing?" (Score:5, Interesting)
While I'm sure that it would cost less to have one vehicle instead of two, I disagree with their safety and "simpler" claim.
I'm no rocket scientist (though I am an engineer), but a simple look at the NASA plan shows that the crew vehicle is much simpler than this Jupiter plan. The Jupiter are looking to use 2 shuttle boosters and the center fuel tank with shuttle engines mounted on it to put a crew into space, while NASA is using only one booster and one engine for the 2nd stage.
Do I have this right? Seems to me that NASA's solution for the crew vehicle is simpler (and thus probably safer). Especially considering that there's never been a booster failure, has there? Though Challenger was arguably a booster failure, would it have been catastrophic without the center fuel tank explosion?
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Re:"A Napkin Drawing?" (Score:5, Insightful)
A better question would be: would a center fuel tank explosion cause a catastrophic loss of the crew module if the module were at the top of the stack, rather than at the side (especially if the crew module has abort rocket that can pull it away from the stack)?
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"A Napkin Drawing?" (Score:5, Informative)
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Challenger crew probably survived initial event (Score:4, Informative)
The data recovered after the crash suggest the crew were killed by impact with the water. I don't believe it's known how badly (if at all) the crew were injured by the orbiter's breakup. Several of the suits' emergency air supplies had been activated, however, which tends to support the idea that at least some crew members were still functional after the cabin lost pressure due to hull breach. The guys at NASA who studied the crash didn't think the forces on the cabin would have hurt anyone strapped in, but the altitude was sufficient to knock people out from lack of oxygen.
This is dredged up from memory, so it may have been superseded by now. I was working for Morton-Thiokol when it happened, and it was not a fun time for myself or my cow-orkers.
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Re:Challenger crew probably survived initial event (Score:4, Informative)
So, while the Ares I may not turn into a giant fireball, A side leak would likely still mean a loss of the rocket. The crew module would have a much higher chance of survival, though.
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Re:"A Napkin Drawing?" (Score:4, Funny)
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Simple, as in "leverages existing systems" (Score:5, Informative)
I *am* a rocket scientist, BTW. I read the Jupiter concept doc a few months ago, and I find it reasonably persuasive. The thing that makes the Jupiter concept "simpler" is that it reuses existing designs (specifically, main engine systems and fuel tanks) that have already been fully developed and put into use, rather than designing new ones that employ untested techniques.
What makes a design safer isn't necessarily lowest component count; in the space business, proven designs count for a LOT in risk mitigation. Consider the Russian Proton rocket: not modern, not the most efficient, but a very reliable system that gets its job done at low cost (assuming that the recent Soyuz QA problems don't mean that their whole production infrastructure has gone rotten from lack of funds). Incremental changes are almost always faster, better, and cheaper than radical design departures (at least until the radical tech is fully worked out, which takes time).
Indeed, a big part of the argument here is that Ares junks an existing manufacturing infrastructure THAT WORKS, just like NASA did after the Apollo program. Jupiter, on the other hand, maintains the current Shuttle-related tech base and builds on it. Having a functional tech infrastructure to build on, with suppliers who've been designing and delivering product based on the same design for many years, is an immense advantage in terms of cost, lead time, and reliability. Folks who've made the same system dozens of times make fewer mistakes than those building something brand-new with no comparable predecessor product.
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Re:Simple, as in "leverages existing systems" (Score:5, Interesting)
in the space business, proven designs count for a LOT in risk mitigation.
Very true, which is why the Shuttle continues to fly with 1970's-era technology controlling most of it.
However, I would posit the following: the Shuttle program dumped most of Apollo in the trash bin and started with something new. I'm of the opinion that what we ended up with was not an improvement over Apollo. The Shuttle is more expensive, more finicky, less reliable, and arguably much more dangerous than Apollo ever was. So, while we have a large body of knowledge centered around Shuttle systems, the systems themselves may not be worth prolonging through to Ares. Hence the justification for breaking with the (Shuttle) past with Ares.
The Shuttle was a great experiment, but ultimately we learned it was something we shouldn't have built. Everything it's done in the last quarter century could've been done better, faster, and cheaper with Apollo-era tech (with incremental improvements as you alluded to earlier) just as the Russians have proven with their launch systems.
No human has been out of low Earth orbit in roughly thirty years. The last three that did, did so on top of a Saturn V. The Shuttle has had us going in circles (literally) since then. The ISS prolongs that boondoggle. Why do we need an ISS? To give the Shuttle some place to go! Why do we need a Shuttle? To build the ISS! What fantastic circular logic. What a horrific waste.
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Re:Simple, as in "leverages existing systems" (Score:5, Informative)
Incremental changes are almost always faster, better, and cheaper than radical design departures (at least until the radical tech is fully worked out, which takes time).
As an engineer, I agree with that statement. I wish to add that the team knows, and has addressed the current failure modes of the technology they are planning to use by relocating the payload to the top of the craft.
I will also point an error in the grandparent's post.
The Jupiter are looking to use 2 shuttle boosters and the center fuel tank with shuttle engines mounted on it to put a crew into space, while NASA is using only one booster and one engine for the 2nd stage.
They are planning to use the RS-68 [wikipedia.org] engine, which is considered superior to the space shuttle main engines. These engines are currently in use on the Delta IV. The engine NASA is planning is yet to be developed, but based on the J-2 [wikipedia.org] from the Saturn V.
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Re:Simple, as in "leverages existing systems" (Score:4, Informative)
For starters, there is thrust oscillation [aviationweek.com]. In theory, that is an issue for the Shuttle, Ares V, and DIRECT (what is called "Jupiter" in this story), but these other vehicles have much more mass relative to the sold rocket motors' (or SRM) thrust and two unsynchonized solid rocket motors. This issue won't even be properly tested until the first 5-segment Ares launches some time around 2013.
Second, the Ares I and V use a new 5 or 5.5 segment variant of the SRM and a new rocket engine under design called the J-2X. DIRECT uses the 4 segment SRM just like the one used on the Shuttle and the well tested RS-68 motor.
Finally, using DIRECT, there are no mass issues with the CEV. But Ares I can barely lift the CEV. Already signficant redundancy has been stripped from the lunar version of the CEV and they apparently still have a too heavy heat shield. That means that the choice to use the Ares I is at the expense of adding risk to lunar missions which are already much higher risk than launching people into space is.
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Re:"A Napkin Drawing?" (Score:5, Informative)
Guess I'd beg to differ, having seen metal cut for Ares I-X. Just do a google image search and see for yourself.
And by the way, the Ares side of things is, to the best of my knowledge, on schedule to launch in 2009. If you have facts to differ, please let me know. The one thing that will probably delay them is the upcoming Hubble mission - until they vacate pad 39B, the appropriate pad modifications can't be made, so it's a day-for-day slip as the Hubble mission slips.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"A Napkin Drawing?" (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:"A Napkin Drawing?" (Score:5, Interesting)
Design phase means they have requirements. Most likely detailed requirements...with detailed interface specifications between thousands of systems. Design of a system like Ares is not just industrial engineering. There are most likely a myriad of electrical, computer, and software systems being designed in parallel. Most likely thousands of items in fact.
Of course, the real issue is most likely that people have a vested personal interest in the current direction...and perhaps congressional support for tasks being performed (or that will be performed) in their districts.
Of course, I am just guessing. I don't build rockets...but I do work on software systems that have 5-10 million LOC...and there is a heck of a lot of work that is performed before coding starts...so I wouldn't assume that they don't have much invested in Ares yet just because they are not yet building...unless they are performing extreme agile spiral rocket building. ;)
Of course, good ideas should not be dismissed...and given the size of this contingent, their proposal almost certainly warrants further investigation. Napkin drawing? Some of the most creative ideas in the world started in this fashion...and 57 engineers with a 100+ page white paper and a website is one hell of a napkin. Of course, it's almost certainly orders of magnitude less mature than the Ares design, but I think that the idea at least warrants a DAR.
What happened the last time that NASA ignored a bunch of their engineers? I think they had plenty of time to reconsider while they were picking up Shuttle parts all over the western US.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Eleven years, actually (till 2019). It will take longer in practice, I'm sure, but you should check your figures before posting.
He wasn't quoting a figure, he was asking a question. But don't let that stop you from answering his question in a condescending and arrogant manner.
Re:"A Napkin Drawing?" (Score:4, Insightful)
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Napkin Drawing (Score:5, Funny)
The 131 page proposal
That's a hell of a lot of napkins...
Re:Napkin Drawing (Score:5, Funny)
>> The 131 page proposal
> That's a hell of a lot of napkins...
Hardly. That's like two visits to Taco Bell.
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Re:Napkin Drawing (Score:4, Funny)
Are you counting the used toilet sheets after going to taco bell as well?
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Re:Napkin Drawing (Score:4, Informative)
This is why we glorify the mental prowess of "rocket scientists". They consider a 131 page proposal with this level of detail to be the equivalent of a napkin drawing.
In the world of government and military systems, 131 pages is just enough to cover the information declarations, the acronym list, and the table of contents. Page 131 probably says "Pages 131-542 TBD".
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$35 Billion (Score:4, Funny)
From the project website:
$35 Billion in savings? How much is that in napkins?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I need this figure in LOC's or it's useless to me.
Does it come with a funky robot? (Score:3, Funny)
After reading the summary the only thing that went through my head was memories of Matt Le Blanc, and the urge to cry: "Danger, Will Robinson!"
I could probably do with a rest...
I love it... (Score:5, Funny)
Engineers vs management (Score:4, Insightful)
It's the old engineers vs management debate on who gets to make the decision. Seeing as both cost and speed are on the engineer's side I don't see why management would be against.
oh wait I know
Because it will make them look like they have been wasting time and money and they would rather waste even more money while looking like they are not.
Re:Engineers vs management (Score:5, Insightful)
It was engineers who did the ground work for Ares - it's not like management created the booster out of thin air and in secrecy and isolation.
I often wonder how today's space fans would have reacted back in the 1960's - when the Saturn (V) initially ended up nearly a third larger than the Nova booster that was supposedly sufficient for a lunar landing mission... and then required a 20% performance increase on top of that in order to be barely able to conduct the mission.
Everything is cheap and fast and easy - on paper. When you start getting off the page and bending real metal, they usually turn out not be fast, cheap, or easy.
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Re:Engineers vs management (Score:5, Interesting)
Uh, no, actually that's exactly what happened. Griffin and Horowitz (the PHB's) came up with their Ares plan many years ago, did a 60 day "study" that came back with the recommendation to follow their plan, and ordered the MSFC engineers to build their designs, rather than the engineers' long standing plans to develop more conventional and cost-effective derivatives of the Shuttle (NLS/Magnum) or EELV.
Back in the '60s, the NASA PHB's were at least smart enough to see that John Houbolt had come up with a solution to fix their performance gap. Today, the PHB's are too busy doing political spin to promote their preferred solution and hide the 7mT performance shortfall, the 6 year spaceflight gap, and the $1.4 billion to $2 billion per launch total cost.
Thats one heckuva' job Mikey.
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If not public, then...? (Score:3, Interesting)
Never underestimate a motivated engineer (Score:5, Interesting)
After all, it not rocket surgery.
Re:Never underestimate a motivated engineer (Score:4, Funny)
After all, it not rocket surgery.
So easy, even a caveman could do it?
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One more.... (Score:5, Insightful)
After getting most prized "first post" position, I have one more...
I would trust a set of napkin drawings from dedicated engineers more than I'd trust a polished proposal from a committee of military contractors and NASA administrators.
Think of it this way, the latter said the O rings were safe, the former tried to warn everyone of the danger.
Not going to happen (Score:4, Insightful)
The US can't afford a manned space program any more. The Iraq war has cost $3 trillion, we're headed into a recession, and it's going to take years to unwind the housing bubble. The next administration is going to have to focus on digging out of the hole left by the Bush administration.
And, face it, sending a few more people to the Moon on chemical rockets doesn't really get us anywhere. Been there, done that, know what the Lunar surface is like.
If fusion power ever works, space is worth revisiting, but with chemical rockets, we hit the limits a long time ago.
Re:Not going to happen - Check it (Score:5, Informative)
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Deja Moon (Score:5, Interesting)
Wasn't the Apollo system shaped by a similar event? As I remember it, the original plan was to travel and land directly on the moon. However, a handfull of engineers felt that the launching rocket could be simpler and smaller if there was an orbital undock/docking stage. The problem was that orbital rendezvous docking was untried and required technology that didn't exist yet. The docking group eventually won out after heated discussion.
In the end, everyone was happy except Michael Collins, who had to wait in orbit while his buddies danced on the moon for the first time. (Although perhaps felt safer being that this was all new stuff.)
Pointless Exercise (Score:4, Insightful)
The cold reality is that we're probably not going to send a manned mission to the moon. The cost of robotic probes drops by the day, at the same time their capabilities increase. By the time we're ready to send up more astronauts, we'll be able to send up probes that can stay longer and perform more tasks than a human in a rubber suit who has to live in a little tin can. This whole moon-shot thing was basically a PR stunt by the Bush administration - McCaine or Obama will probably kill it, as it's wasteful and frivolous.
Humans will only return when it's time to construct something permanent there, like a telescope or automated mining equipment. (Even then, it would probably be cheaper to send unmanned probes to small asteroids, directing them to fall in the middle of the desert for harvesting.
The realities of space exploration have changed - going just to go isn't a useful aim anymore, unless you're paying on your own hyper-rich dime for a vacation to orbit.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No, actually we don't. The tooling's been long-since destroyed, and there are no blueprints for many of the parts because they were farmed out to contractors, let alone information on things like what precise alloys to use for said parts, and other methods of manufacture.
There are a couple Saturn Vs left, yes, but they were left out to the elements for many years and may have been scavenged for parts.
Re:We Already Have a Moon Rocket (Score:5, Informative)
No, actually we don't. The tooling's been long-since destroyed, and there are no blueprints for many of the parts because they were farmed out to contractors, let alone information on things like what precise alloys to use for said parts, and other methods of manufacture.
You are wrong. The blueprints for everything, down to the last nut and bolt, are on file at MSFC. Source. [space.com]
There are a couple Saturn Vs left, yes, but they were left out to the elements for many years and may have been scavenged for parts.
You are wrong. There are three, but none of them is "one" rocket. The one at the Johnson space center, made up of three flight-rated stages from different rockets, was left out for 20+ years but has been restored to pristine (though obviously not flight-worthy) condition. The one at MSFC is all static test stages and has been similarly restored. The one at KSC is two flight stages and one test stage, and has been kept in perfect (but again, obviously not flight-worthy) condition since the day it was rolled in. NONE of the rockets were ever "scavenged" for parts--they're all property of the Smithsonian and are maintained in trust as artifacts by NASA.
Recreating a Saturn V isn't impossible because we don't have the plans--it's impossible because the blueprints call for standard parts and items that don't exist any more (like a left-handed widget with widget gauge #12, which was used by, say, Boeing in 1960, but not any more).
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Re:We Already Have a Moon Rocket (Score:5, Funny)
How something was designed is not as important as why it was designed that way.
You're one of those people who COMMENT THEIR CODE, aren't you! :-)
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Re:It is all of those things, but (Score:4, Insightful)
The falling ice problem is addressed by putting the cargo above the boosters. The O-ring has already been addressed. So the new proposal seems even safer than the shuttle. I fail to see how solid fuel rockets are inherently more dangerous than liquid fuel ones.
Solid fuel rockets can't stop, and they have to be carefully made so there isn't any open pockets of no fuel or they explode. But if you carefully make them (Nasa has) and engineer the launch system to take into account the thing won't turn off (Nasa has), it is a great system. Liquid Fuel can be throttled or turned off, but requires a very complex (read point of failure possibility) pump system to work properly. That has its drawbacks as well. In summary Liquid Fuel and Solid Fuel have different strengths and weaknesses, and when the vehicle is engineered to handle them, it shouldn't exclude either from being used the human passengers.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Flying into space in any kind of rocket is dangerous
True, but in your quest to belittle the original poster, you fail to address his (completely legitimate) concerns:
1.) SRBs can't easily be throttled
2.) SRBs can't be shut down in flight
Even had the Challenger crew known about the O-ring breach that was burning holes in the external tank, there'd have been exactly dick they could have done about it short of trying to blow the orbiter off the stack and hoping it remained controllable. Liquid fueled rocke
Re:Why so little tech recycling currently? (Score:5, Informative)
You should check the designs before you criticize them. Ares I uses an extended solid rocket booster (upgraded from the Shuttle) and a J-2X engine (upgraded from the Saturn V second and third stages). Ares V uses extended SRBs and RS-68 engines (from the Delta IV).
The Shuttle main engines (SSMEs) were considered instead of the J-2X and/or the RS-68, but the cost was too high. The SSME is a high performance engine, but it is an expensive engine. Also, one concern for using it for the Ares I is that the liquid engine is the second stage engine, which will be started in-flight and at high altitude. The SSME has never been tried like that (nor was it designed for that), while the J-2 was used that way in the Saturn.
As for Scaled Composites Tier 1b, it is a sub-orbital vehicle (good for nothing but tourists and hype). IIRC Tier 2 may be an orbital vehicle, but that is a long way off as well, since Scaled is working on Tier 1b (Ares is much further along in development).
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