DIRECT Post-Shuttle Plan Pitched To Obama Team 189
FleaPlus writes "Popular Mechanics reports that a 'renegade' group including NASA engineers has met with President-Elect Obama's space transition team to present information on the DIRECT architecture for launching NASA missions after the Space Shuttle is retired. According to the group, DIRECT's Jupiter launch system will be safer, less expensive, better-performing, and be ready sooner than the Ares launch system NASA is currently developing, while still providing jobs for much of the existing shuttle workforce. Meanwhile, it's expected that current NASA head and adamant Ares supporter Michael Griffin will be replaced by a new NASA administrator."
Re:Renegade Space Vehicle designers (Score:3, Informative)
If I remember correctly, the original 'renegades' were Christians who had joined the Muslim Barbary pirates and gone into business as white-slavers. For the metaphor to hold, these engineers ought to have left NASA and gone to work for a rival. If any ex-NASA people are now at SpaceX, they might well be considerer renegades, but not if they're still within the organisation.
Re:Oh yeah that sounds great (Score:5, Informative)
That's part of it. Having the capsule mounted on top of the fuel tanks also tends to add extra safety. And because of the relatively low weight of these capsules, you can afford to stick extra safety equipment on them. The DIRECT folks are even talking about possibly putting a tank of water between the fuel tank and the crew module, in order to absorb blast and fragmentation. That has the added benefit of providing a lot more water for use in space than the crews would normally have.
The DIRECT system is estimated to have a Loss-of-Crew rate of 1 in 1100-ish, which is something like 10 times better than the shuttle fleet. It seems like a really good idea, but then IANARS, so don't quote me.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:First chance to see if Obama is a retard or not (Score:3, Informative)
Ares V isn't quite as bad as Ares 1, but that's only because they share very little in common.
Actually, for manned missions Ares V is worse: it isn't even rated for manned missions! The humans would launch on an Ares I and then dock with whatever launched on the Ares V in orbit.
Re:Building Better Vacuum Tubes (Score:3, Informative)
Going to the Moon with chemical fueled rockets is like building computers with vacuum tubes. Both were done 40-50 years ago. Where would computing be now if we had relied on building better vacuum tubes rather than investing in the research the lead to the transistor?
The problem is that despite of decades of effort, they still haven't figured out how to get nonzero thrust out of solid-state rocket engines.
Re:Oh yeah that sounds great (Score:4, Informative)
Having the capsule mounted on top of the fuel tanks also tends to add extra safety. And because of the relatively low weight of these capsules, you can afford to stick extra safety equipment on them.
Yes, the capsule designs have a Launch Abort System. It's the thing that looks like a tower at the top of the stack. It is a rocket motor that can yank the capsule away from the rest of the system if something goes terribly wrong.
Re:First chance to see if Obama is a retard or not (Score:5, Informative)
But similar designs were looked at in the ESAS study and found to be less desirable than at least the initial Ares I and V configuration.
The ESAS is flawed. The solid rocket motors have not been demonstrated to have the reliability claimed for the Ares I. From the history of their use on the Space Shuttle, they have a failure rate of around 1 in 250. The Ares I is claimed to have a total loss of mission rate of 1 in 400. When your first stage is less reliable than you claim the entire vehicle is, then something is wrong. Similarly, it has been shown that the EELV profiles in the ESAS didn't take into account reasonable adjustments to the corresponding launch vehicles for manned missions.
Seriously, the Ares I has been through SRR, SDR and PDR and numerous other reviews.
IMHO, the Ares I shouldn't have passed the PDR due to thrust oscillation issues. It was given a waiver on that.
Three years ago Ares look fantastic on paper as well - then the reality of engineering development crept in and there are indeed challenges to overcome. Any other program (Direct, EELV, etc) will have the same unkown snags in their future. Oh, and the first Ares test launch is this summer.
No, the Ares I didn't look that fantastic. There are two glaring problem, ignoring the rest. The Ares I competes directly with commercial rockets, the Delta IV and Atlas V rockets. Private industry always gets screwed when that happens no matter how shoddy the NASA solution is. NASA doesn't develope the heavy lift vehicle till 2016 or later. That huge 11+ year delay is why the DIRECT design is so well developed now. Frontloading cost and backloading capability is a common source of failure in government projects. Even the Shuttle didn't do this.
No, the first Ares test launch is on or after 2013, when the Ares I-Y launches. The Ares I-X doesn't use a 5 segment first stage, doesn't have a real second stage, and doesn't have the avionics that will be used on the Ares I. The critical fixes for the thrust oscillation issues might not even be fully tested on the Ares I-Y and that's four years away! There are a few things that the Ares I-X can test (it'll have the right airframe and mass distribution, the right launch pad, and should be able to see thrust oscillation) so it isn't a complete waste.