Setbacks Cast Doubt On NASA's Ares Project 255
stoolpigeon writes with this excerpt from an Orlando Sentinel article about the Ares program, which paints a bleak picture of the program's future: "Bit by bit, the new rocket ship that is supposed to blast America into the second Space Age and return astronauts to the moon appears to be coming undone. First was the discovery that it lacked sufficient power to lift astronauts in a state-of-the-art capsule into orbit. Then engineers found out that it might vibrate like a giant tuning fork, shaking its crew to death. Now, in the latest setback to the Ares I, computer models show the ship could crash into its launch tower during liftoff. "
Re:DIlber law has taken over (Score:4, Informative)
Dilber law (it states that incompetent people will get promoted to managment)
That's the Peter Principle.
Re:What're the alternatives? (Score:5, Informative)
Alternatives? Well, there is one huge one for starters:
http://www.directlauncher.com/ [directlauncher.com]
The DIRECT launcher is one that has been worked on by a number of years by some of the very same engineers who are working on the Ares vehicle. In fact, it meets the requirements of re-using existing shuttle components much better than the Ares, and doesn't even modify the SRBs (the solid rocket boosters) at all. Those are treated as commodities and used nearly in an identical fashion as they have been used on the Shuttle.
Another alternative: Falcon 9 Heavy [spacex.com] This is being deliberately built with the goal in mind to become man-rated eventually, and will be making trips to the ISS on unmanned resupply missions. The first flight of this rocket (not the heavy variant but at least the Falcon 9) is going to be later on this year. The manned version will be using a completely new spacecraft as well, which SpaceX is calling the Dragon.
You also have suggestions of using a man-rated Delta IV-Heavy rocket that certainly has the firepower necessary for launching a manned vehicle, and one unusual suggestion was to use a Falcon 1 as the 2nd stage on top of an Atlas booster.
There are also dozens of projects that NASA has worked on since the Space Shuttle was originally laid down that you really just need to dig on both the official NASA website and onto space-related websites (or even "encyclopedia" websites) to find these plans. In spite of some actual hardware being built and billions of dollars into these programs, there is a huge graveyard of earlier attempts to build a successor to the Space Shuttle. Ares is just the latest example, unfortunately.
Will government manned spaceflight capabilities end in the next couple of years? Yeah, I think it will. This is something akin to the U.S. Navy being unable to send a ship out to sea because the ships fall apart before they can clear the harbor.
Private manned spaceflight in the USA looks considerably more promising, with about a dozen companies all at various stages of development that are all chomping at the bit to get a piece of the action. In other words, CNN and the rest of the news media will be on hand in space to greet future NASA astronauts in a congratulatory party when NASA actually gets it act together.
BTW, I've also suggested that CNN is going to cover the first NASA landings on Mars with their own camera crews that got there through other means. The more I read about things like Ares, the more I'm convinced this will really happen.
In some ways, I'm glad that NASA is throwing its surplus money into Ares even though it is a huge black hole sucking up any money you can throw at it. At the very least when these private spacecraft go on line, congress might just force NASA into buying tickets side by side with tourists. What an accomplishment from the agency that supposedly is on the leading edge of spacecraft development.
Re:It is worse than this article states, which is (Score:5, Informative)
If what is stated in the summary is true, then I think I've simply have to give up any trust in the prowess of NASA.
What happened to this organisation that managed to put people on the moon, that managed to build a huge telescope in orbit around the earth, that even built a permanently manned space station? How is it possible they can't even design a rocket to take us to the moon?
It is for sure not an easy task - but with the immense expertise that should be present within NASA, and commercial rocket launches now being commonplace, I'd say even geostationary orbit is an off-the-shelf technology, and I don't believe the step from there to the moon is that big, technically speaking.
Not having enough power to lift off in the first place, come on! Someone didn't read the design specs, or were they not written down properly? It is really the most mundane if not stupid problem I can imagine when designing a moon rocket system.
The other two mentioned problems (liftoff drift and the shaking) seem to me more like scaling issues, that presumably can be solved. Nasty ones I bet when you find them out, but the fact that they are found on the drawing board already means they're known issues. Then why making so much fuss about it! I bet they have had to deal with many more design issues that they found out only when modeling their new upgraded rocket.
Re:It is called engineering. (Score:5, Informative)
One huge difference between the Apollo/Saturn design and the Space Shuttle was multiple methods of abort that would separate the manned portion from the rest of the rocket. Things like the launch escape rocket (the little pointy thing on the top of the command module) and the ability to fire subsequent stages to at least get the astronauts way the hell away from a problem stage would have saved the astronauts in the event that the Saturn V had problems.
The Saturn V got a little more dicey once you decided to move out of low earth orbit on the 3rd stage and head for the Moon.... such as what Apollo 13 found out the hard way. But even that had redundancies that simply haven't existed for the Space Shuttle.
I certainly would trust the Saturn V and its safety record over the Shuttle. Had we been using the Saturn V for the past 40 years with the same level of upgrades and technical improvements that have gone into the Shuttle, including proposed "Apollo II" vehicles that would have carried seven astronauts at once, I have no doubt that we would have a vehicle right now that would be considerably more reliable than even the Soyuz spacecraft (currently the best "proven" manned spacecraft design for safety).
We might have even saved a whole bunch of money compared to what it has cost us to run the whole Shuttle program. Wernher von Braun certainly was anticipating production runs on the Saturn V on the order of hundreds of rockets, not the dozen or so that actually were built.
Re:It is called engineering. (Score:5, Informative)
They did lose a crew. Apollo I during pad testing.
The Apollo 1 fatalities were not due to the rocket. Additionally, Apollo 1 wasn't mounted on a Saturn V, so the comparison is moot.
Re:US vs. China (Score:4, Informative)
..or else you'll be seeing the Chinese on the moon first...
Ahem [wikipedia.org]
Re:It is called engineering. (Score:5, Informative)
The Saturn V is (was) built from what is now antiquated technology.
Except for the J2 second stage engine, of course, which is being reused on Ares [space.gs] (with some mods.)
Re:What're the alternatives? (Score:3, Informative)
Just to be clear (for both you and another poster) from what I've been told the Q4 2008 date on the website indicates that the vehicle will be delivered to the cape by then, not necessarily a launch.
However, they should be running the full mission duty cycle engine test on the F9 in McGregor soon... should be exciting, hopefully its on a weekend so I can head up there.
Re:It is called engineering. (Score:3, Informative)
Why is the parent modded funny?
I was probably modded funny because someone thought I was making a Jupiter > Saturn joke.
why does parent want to see a rocket built that NASA rates as not worth the effort
I suspect bias is the reason for their opinion. They have about as much incentive to seriously consider Jupiter as MS has to seriously consider *nix.
Re:It is called engineering. (Score:5, Informative)
One of the most interesting things to note about Soyuz is in fact the Launch Escape System.
It's been used twice, and both times, the cosmonauts were pretty pissed off afterward (nobody likes 21gs), but were able to walk away from the incident.
Both incidents were pretty remarkable. The first occurred after the vehicle caught fire on the pad, with the LES (manually) activating two seconds before the vehicle literally exploded on the pad.
The second occurred mid-way through launch, after one of the stages failed to separate. In this case, the LES activated while the rocket was pointing down toward the earth. The capsule then landed on the side of a snow-covered mountain near the Chinese border, and rolled 500 yards before coming to a halt. (The Russians somehow anticipated this sort of situation, and there was cold-weather gear stored on-board for the cosmonauts).
I stress, once again that despite these "worst case scenario" failures, the crew were relatively unharmed, which is a pretty strong testament to the inherent safety of a very simplistic (by rocket science standards) system such as Soyuz.
Re:Remake Apollo (Score:4, Informative)
The problem is, believe it or not, some bright genius (or group of them) at NASA decided that, once upon a time, a large quantity of the documentation for Apollo was not worth saving. Documentation for many assemblies has been lost, as have many of the men and women who built them.
Re:It is called engineering. (Score:3, Informative)
There were mistakes made with Apollo 1 that should never have happened, and the fixes to the Apollo spacecraft did substantially improve astronaut safety for future missions.
One of the most insane mistakes made on the Apollo 1 vehicle: There was no method for astronauts, once mounted inside of the spacecraft, to be able to get themselves out (shy of grabbing a hammer and pounding through the side of the vehicle). It was anticipated that even on landing that the recovery vehicles would open the door for the astronauts (so as to not repeat Virgil Grissom's perceived mistake on Liberty Bell 7, the Mercury flight).
There were many others, including the 100% pure oxygen environment @ sealevel pressure that also caused some huge problems.
Re:It is called engineering. (Score:5, Informative)
Here is the video of both of them
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyFF4cpMVag [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyoBHBOnscY&feature=related [youtube.com]
Hehe, you could see the Russian general pull on his collar when they aborted probably thinking "Gorbachev is gonna have my balls pinned to the walls for this on".
I wonder how effective this system really is when you are breaking the sound barrier, if it is safe to do.
DIRECT Launch System (Score:5, Informative)
Back in the late '70s I bought a book, published by NASA, that described the planned followons to the shuttle... based on using the Shuttle engines and launch system in other configurations, including a heavy lifter. This scheme was never followed through, but it should be.
There's a group of NASA engineers working on it again. They call it DIRECT 2.0 [directlauncher.com].
Re:What're the alternatives? (Score:1, Informative)
It also has an asterisk by "Target Date", and below that it says, "*Target dates are for hardware arrival at launch site." Score one for the thorough readers. ;)
Re:It is called engineering. (Score:4, Informative)
It has already been proven that Gus did NOT cause the accident. Had he hit the switch that blows the door open, there would have been a nasty bruise on his hand, but none was found. See also, this Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org].