NASA Eyes Shuttle Replacements 353
jonerik writes "According to this article at Space.com, NASA yesterday released a status report on the first year of NASA's Space Launch Initiative; the search for a space shuttle replacement, currently planned to begin operating ten years from now. The competing contractors - Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and a team consisting of Northrop Grumman and Orbital Sciences Corp. - have their work cut out for them. NASA is looking for both a ten-fold improvement in per-pound launch costs (from $10,000 per pound to $1,000) and massive improvements in crew survivability."
In related news, Rubyflame writes: "Aviation Now has a
story about four new kerosene-fueled rocket engines being developed by Aerojet, Pratt & Whitney, Rocketdyne, and TRW. These are engines that will produce a million pounds of thrust, intended to outdo Russian designs in reliability and launch cost, and one of them may power a new reusable launch vehicle. Kerosene has the advantage that it's denser than hydrogen, so the fuel tanks can be smaller."
Just another NASA bait'n'switch (Score:2, Interesting)
They just want gobs of money to spend on technology development programs (read "new toys"). The ultimate goal of upper NASA management these days is to reach retirement without having any disasters (like Apollo 1 or Challenger) on their watch -- the easiest way to avoid that is to launch things as infrequently as possible.
(Note, there are probably a few naive engineers and rocket scientists still at NASA who believe the PR and have honorable intentions. But they're not the decision makers.)
Crew survivability? (Score:2, Interesting)
No, I didn't read the article, but, assuming this poster is reasonably accurate with his description text, why is this necessary? Aside from Challenger, have we had any significant (or even insignificant?) problems with shuttle crews surviving the trip?
Build a goddamn Sänger-type launcher! (Score:3, Interesting)
A German concept, AFAIK. Way more reusable than anything NASA has come up with
The days of vertical launches are over.
the usual suspects...defense contractors (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, I am coming from a background where I am not incredibly familiar with either U.S. capitalism or with issues of defense. Basically, there are a handful of these companies that compete for every government contract. To maintain "competition," the government will try to spread the love around, going with different companies for succesive contracts.
But each individual contract is too big for a single company to fulfill on its own, so whomever ends up winning the contract will turn around and outsource some of the work to...the same "competitors" whose bids they beat out!
As a retired rocketman, I am the first to support expansion and improvement of any nation's space program. I just wanted to point out that the notion of "who will build the next generation shuttle" should be taken with a grain of salt.
It's about time (Score:2, Interesting)
I find it kinda ironic how they're doing this only a year or two after canceling practically every alternative-launch-system project NASA had (X-33, X-34, and a few others that I can't remember). I'd think it would be cheaper to just finish a few programs at once rather than stop and restart them constantly, as NASA seems to be doing lately.
Re:Crew survivability? (Score:5, Interesting)
Please note that during the first 2.5 minutes of every shuttle launch, there are NO abort modes that are survivable. If there are any problems with the SRBs, they cannot be turned off. If there are any catastrophic problems with the ET, it doesn't matter, you must continue your launch profile until the SRBs have stopped.
Three engine shutdown during SRB burn? Shuttle disintegration.
ET rupture? Shuttle disintegration.
Pretty much anything, dead astronauts.
The russians use 40 year old technology, but at least they have survivable aborts throughout the entire flight profile.
Crew and Cargo Seperate (Score:2, Interesting)
Need For Shuttle? (Score:3, Interesting)
I would hope that they start by questioning the need for a shuttle to begin with. Manned orbital flight is pretty well handled with the ISS and the Russians have a cheaper, time proven method of transport to/from ISS that is pretty hard to beat.
As far as repair of orbitals, has that proven to be worth the expense? Maybe it is, especially if they use such a vehicle to do trash collection. Again, I'm no expert but I hope those who are will be considering these things.
It would seem to me that some of the would be costs of new shuttles would be better spent on upgrading the design of Soyez/Progress and making them even more efficient. The rest of the money could be better spent on other projects including unmanned deep space research or manned missions to other planets (assuming those make sense).
Cost growth (Score:3, Interesting)
The Saturn V was cheaper than the Shuttle in cost per pound to orbit. Which is embarassing.
How soon until we have ships built in space? (Score:2, Interesting)
My only concern is using such a vessel for travelling to other planets, we'll need something like the shuttlecraft from countless sci-fi series and movies to move from orbit, to surface, and back.
Of course, build the ship large enough (perhaps a standing crew of 50 - 100) and with a large cargo space, and part of the problem may be solvable about setting up colonies offworld. The cargo space can house a dropship that can deploy into a base. Just a notion I've been toying with in my (still unpublished) stories.
CNN's bit (Score:2, Interesting)
"They must be developed and operated by private industry."
Now maybe I am misinterpreting what "operated" means, but that sounds like NASA is planning for someone else to run these bad boys. Could this the first step towords commercialization?
Re:Pics (Score:1, Interesting)
yeah its pretty cool looking in a bloated insect kind of way
What about the XB54? (Score:2, Interesting)
Give NASA a chance!
Re:about time.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Case in point:
Both the University of Queensland in Australia and NASA are developing SCRAMJET engines, or Super Sonic Combustion Ramjet. These are capable of doing extreme hypersonic speeds, up to escape velocity.
NASA has spent $500 million on it's program. It has only produced one failed attempt at SCRAMJET flight.
In contrast, spending only $500,000, the UoQ has already produced a successfull SCRAMJET flight.
NASA takes lots of money and doesn't get anything done. They funnel all their money into the worthless shuttle and space station programs. We don't need to spend money to send people into LEO. It's a cold or hot vacuum a few hundred miles out. Whoop-de-shit.
Before NASA worries about the space station, they should buckle down and actually get a spaceplane. Cancel the shuttle program. It's worthless.
When they have a low-cost spaceplane, they can breed all the rats in space they want, and plus a mission to Mars might become feasable.
Here, about 45 years after Sputnik, we still haven't gotten rid of our horribly expensive rockets.
Re:Cost growth (Score:3, Interesting)
The sad truth is that the Saturn V was probably the most effective and efficient heavy lift vehicle this planet has ever seen. The Russian Energia system is damn close but I haven't had a chance to really compare the two on the fine details of cost and payload. Suffice to say, though, that if we'd spent the last 20 years upgrading and perfecting the S-V design, it would undoubtedly be the pre-eminent heavy lift vehicle in the history of manned spaceflight. The space station would've been DONE by now and we'd be starting on a lunar colony. And it would've been done BETTER, FASTER, and CHEAPER than anything NASA is fielding right now.
Discover magazine had a huge expose on this whole subject about 10-15 years ago where they showed how NASA had systematically rejected "Big Dumb Booster" (BDB) ideas, not because they were technically or economically unfeasible but because they weren't sexy, or didn't provide some congress-critter's home district with enough jobs, or other nonsense. And the original shuttle idea had some HUGE differences from the final product, like air-breathing engines for power landing, no solid rocket boosters, etc. etc.
We need to scrap the shuttle and scrap all manned missions that do not actually involve setting up humans PERMANENTLY somewhere else in the solar system. The space station should be scrapped in favor of a permanent lunar colony -- after all, why cart all that aluminum, silicates and titanium up to orbit when there's billions of tons of it already on the moon? Low lunar gravity is an EXCELLENT place to stage interplanetary missions to Mars and the asteroid belt.
Linear Aerospike Engine (Score:3, Interesting)
random sPAMMATION (Score:1, Interesting)
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Re:if you think the space station is overpriced (Score:2, Interesting)
In low earth orbit, the only resource you have is solar energy. Everything else has to be trucked up from earth, at something like $10,000 a pound. It costs 2,500 bucks to shoot a Quarter Pounder into orbit. Astronauts eat the equivalent of 3 of those every day. Add to that the cost of air and water, and pretty soon a moonbase starts to look pretty good in comparison, especially given the stated lifespan of the ISS (at least a decade).
Would a moonbase cost more? Sure, in the short term. But over the long run, a moonbase would become essentially self sufficient - something the ISS could never do - and could then go on to pay for itself. Because lunar gravity is 1/6th that of earth, and it has no atmosphere, it would be much, much cheaper to launch payloads into earth orbit from the moon than it is to launch them from the earth. Using a moonbase to launch probes to the other planets, or giant communications satellites to orbit the earth, could save NASA and analogous space agencies around the globe hundreds of billions of dollars.
Ah, but they're going to lower launch costs with these new rockets, right? Well, that's the same line of bull Congress bought when they authorized the construction of the space shuttle back in the 1970's. The shuttle would be this reusable wonder that would drastically slash the cost of getting into orbit. Yeah, right. It costs more to launch payloads on the shuttle than it does on any other system currently in operation (and all of them are disposable). So if you truly believe this latest attempt to design a reusable booster will slash launch costs tenfold, I have a bridge I wanna sell you.
The ISS is a $100 billion boondoggle, a black hole that's sucking up NASA's budget and giving back nothing in return. It's like watching Columbus anchor his fleet just outside of the harbor at Palos and burn Isabela's money to keep warm, instead of sailing to the Indies. It's a pointless waste. Developing yet another generation of overpriced "reusable" rockets in order to support such misadventures is pure folly.
Re:BDB is the answer. (Score:3, Interesting)
Almost all of the costs for the Shuttle are salaries for the huge army of people NASA employs. According to Henry Spencer, the Shuttle program's costs are nearly constant: they stay pretty much the same, no matter how many or few launches happen in a year. (So you might as well launch stuff.)
You are absolutely correct: NASA should have taken the working Apollo designs and incrementally improved them. If they had kept up a good improve/test/fly schedule, we would probably have several cool 2001-ish space stations and a moon base by now. But for whatever reason, NASA developed the Shuttle in a massive paper design exercise, to be a giant leap forward in spacecraft. No need to build X vehicles and test them! Just build the Shuttle, perfect the first time!
Maybe BDB is the answer. Maybe SSTO (single stage to orbit, a completely re-usable spacecraft) is the answer. I don't know. But I do know that NASA is past its useful life, and the answer simply will not come out of NASA.
What the government should do is promise to buy X launches at Y tons of payload per launch, perhaps with special tax credits or other bonuses. Then wait for launch vehicles to appear. The money will never be spent if working vehicles don't appear, and if they do appear they will be cheaper than anything the modern NASA can create.
steveha
Why does a moon base need to be 'metal'? (Score:4, Interesting)
The moon is a more practical environment to work in, the low G enables a person to remain there signifigantly longer than in the microgravity of space.
The Biosphere projects are partially aiming at researching the viability of building an enclosed, self sustaining habitat on the moon, but even if you build a moon base that requires resupplying like space stations do, it could easily be done for less money as long as you take advantage of the fact that you can always dig a hole use some plastic to make it airtight and cover it with a metal lid. Homsteaders used to build houses out of earth and mud where trees weren't available, so why should we build lunar bases out of 'industrial grade metal' when really the only part that has to be metal is the door.
Re:Why does a moon base need to be 'metal'? (Score:2, Interesting)
You might also be able to reproduce larger objects in 3D printers that use lasers to melt the powdery lunar material and build objects layer-by-layer. The US military is already experimenting with such devices here on earth, using powdered metals to reproduce parts in the field. In theory, such devices could produce objects of any shape and of considerable size.
Re:Multi-stage Launch (Score:4, Interesting)
> propulsion technology a single-stage-to-orbit
> (SSTO) isn't terribly practical. They made some
> prototypes and actually flew a scaled down
> prototype in the desert, but ultimately they had
>tremendous problems with the extremely high
>performance rocket engine they had to use, couple
>with the experimental composite cryogenic fuel
>tanks.
No. This isn't the case; I was talking to some engineers that worked on the Roton just last weekend. They indicated that they knew of no problem that would have precluded the design from working. The composite cryogenic fuel tank THEY used (as opposed to the X33 debacle) - it worked fine in all testing; including something like 50 pressure cycles IRC.
>I honestly don't think we'll ever get SSTO going
>with conventional chemical propellants. You simple
>have to carry too much weight in fuel, which means
>you need a bigger rocket, which means more fuel,
>then a bigger rocket...you get the idea.
No, the simulations converge- SSTO is definitely possible. I've seen atleast 2 hard and fast designs for SSTO vehicles- the Roton and Mockingbird. The Roton would have carried 3 tonnes to LEO; the Mockingbird design didn't have a payload of any note, but was really tiny (1.5 tonnes), and cheap. I've studied both concepts extensively; they both appear workable.
The biggest argument against SSTO is that it may be more expensive. TSTO may be cheaper. Still, the argument isn't totally watertight. There's a lot of ground processing for TSTO that SSTO doesn't require and that's going to cost something. Although SSTO designs use more fuel- fuel is cheapest bit of the whole rocket by far.
>What we need is a way to extract more energy from
>whatever fuel we use.
Another thing I saw on the weekend- I was at a presentation by a guy talking about a laser powered launch system. The idea is you take a large bank of lasers and point it at a hydrogen powered launch vehicle, which has a heat exchanger it uses to heat the hydrogen. The ISP is about 600 seconds, which is plenty for reaching orbit. The laser bank was priced at about $1 billion but its dropping at about 30% a year currently- only cheap semiconductor lasers are needed, and they're getting cheaper and cheaper.
Astronaut survivability... (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm not sure what a better solution would be, but I'm sure that some smart people will come up with a solution.
Re:Multi-stage Launch (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah. So? The S-V cost per kg was 1/10 that of the shuttle to begin with! The shuttle is NOT cheaper than the 60's era moon rockets -- not by a LONG shot. All that throwaway booster work was actually easier to deal with than the constant launch-inspect-refit-launch cycle that the shuttle goes through. Go look up NASA's data on the subject. It's all there.
>Ground based lasers will always be subject to thermal blooming due to atmospheric attenuation.
Interesting. Is this caused by the lasers or just natural artifacts of the atmosphere? Incidentally power is the cheap bit in the equation, and you need less of it delivered at altitude due to g-limiting anyway; so it may not matter.
It's a natural effect of firing a laser through something other than a vacuum. The air molecules, water molecules, and even airborne dust all absorb and/or scatter the beam. Add to that the fact that a spacecraft isn't going to go straight up into orbit, it's going to follow a slanting path that could have a laser firing through 100-200 miles of atmosphere before it even touches the spacecraft, and THEN it actually has to still have enough energy to propell the craft. This is a HUGE problem that simply cannot be gotten around by anything other than brute forcing the laser output. Even adaptive optics will only get you so far. The power requirements would be orders of magnitude beyond anything even on the drawing board today, and the cost would be appropriately astronomical.
And let's not forget that if you had a ground based laser that powerful, it'd make a nifty weapon for zapping LEO satellites and space stations. I'm sure there's some hyper-concerned pacifists out there that would have an absolute conniption fit over such a thing.