Competition to Build the Space Shuttle's Successor 345
Neil Halelamien writes "The competition for the prime contract to build the Crew Exploration Vehicle, the successor to the Space Shuttle, is ramping up. Currently, 11 different companies are creating preliminary designs for systems and vehicles which could be useful in implementing NASA's Vision for Space Exploration. By the end of the year, NASA will select two teams to independently develop and build a CEV design. The two teams will launch competing unmanned prototypes in 2008, at which point NASA will award a final winning contract. Aerospace giants Boeing and Northrop Grumman have formed one team. Another "all-star" team, announced a couple of days ago, is headed by Lockheed Martin. A third team in the running is underdog t/Space, a company with a free enterprise approach to space exploration, which includes notable figures from the commercial spaceflight arena, such as Burt Rutan and Gary Hudson. There is concern that a NASA budget boost to help pay for the exploration program could draw some opposition, as most other government programs are anticipating budget cuts."
Enough with the links already... (Score:5, Interesting)
Common sense prevails at last! (Score:4, Insightful)
Hoo-ray for NASA! There's hope for them yet.
Re:Common sense prevails at last! (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't really see why a spaceplane design is out of the question. The shuttle was hugely complex compared to SpaceShipOne. Couldn't a more modern design of the shuttle still be useful?
Re:Common sense prevails at last! (Score:5, Interesting)
The trouble with a spaceplane is its inefficiency. Too much of the energy expended in a Shuttle launch goes to carry the orbiter's main engines, wings and other structure into orbit. If you could leave those off, with a capsule design, you could either save a whole lot of fuel and get a cheaper launch, or use the same amount of fuel and carry a much larger payload.
The idea behind the Shuttle was that the engines were worth keeping, and reusing them could save money. Apollo used to drop its main engines into the sea... But it turns out that there are plenty of factories on Earth capable of producing rocket engines very cheaply, so that economy didn't really work out.
Re:Common sense prevails at last! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Common sense prevails at last! (Score:4, Insightful)
Look at what you what you need for re-entry:
Wings
A hugely increased heat shield
Flaps
Hydraulic motors for flaps
landing gear
more hydraulics
more sensors
more wiring
more computer control
more everything
The weight just spirals up and up until you have a fuel tank the size of the Good Year and achieve at best a moderately safe vehicle.
Re:Common sense prevails at last! (Score:5, Interesting)
And maintainance doesn't *need* to be high. If the shuttle had the budget for its initial design plan (a titanium frame, no solid boosters), it never would have had any of the problems that it's had that led to high maintainence costs and its 2% failure rate.
A couple of things about your list:
* A hugely increased heat shield: Not really hugely increased. An optimal shape for reentry is a large, slowly curved surface, and the further from that shape, the larger amount of shielding you need for a given size and density. However, the shuttle manages relatively well given its size and density compared to what an equivalent capsule would be by turning its bottom side into the direction of incoming air.
* Hydraulic motors for flaps: Not necessarily. Hydraulics in space are problematic because of temperature regulation (in the tanks, in the cylinders, in the lines, etc). However, it is possible to use electric actuators to replace them for most, if not all, tasks. Electric actuators are increasingly being used in high force tasks.
However, the key issue is reusability. Reusable capsules have never really come into their own - they tend to have a pretty rough landing. The more payload return you want them to be able to bring back, the rougher it is.
If one can get reusability without high maintainence, in any design, that truly is the holy grail of spacecraft design.
Re:Common sense prevails at last! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Common sense prevails at last! (Score:5, Informative)
but didn't make any attempt to get to orbital velocity, which is what takes most of the fuel, and imposes most of the mass restrictions. Boosting a set of wings and an undercarriage up to orbital velocity just so you can slow them down again and then land on a runway consumes an insane amount of fuel for too little purpose. Until we find a lauch fuel significantly more energy dense than LH2 and LO2 then the dry mass cost of wings and wheels will always be too high.
The Scaled Composites people are involved in one of the bids and they are not proposing a space plane.
Re:Common sense prevails at last! (Score:5, Interesting)
Taking aerodynamics into consideration, the best design is really like a sphere. The closer you are to a sphere, the better. Apollo took a cone and made a good aproximation of a sphere. The shuttle takes an airplane and makes a bad approximation of a sphere. Lifting body designs look a lot more like a sphere, but soon we probably will know if they are close enough to a sphere.
Re:Common sense prevails at last! (Score:3, Funny)
You can see images of preliminary crew training here [extremedreams.co.uk].
Re:Common sense prevails at last! (Score:2)
It doesn't get into orbit.
What use are wings in space?
Re:Common sense prevails at last! (Score:5, Insightful)
From an energy standpoint, Space Ship One only got 3% of the way to low-earth-orbit. They still have 97% more work to do. It design is totally unsuitable for going into or out of orbit; at hypersonic speeds it would snap apart like a toothpick an burn up. Scaled Composites is basically at square one with respect to an orbital vehicle.
Re:Common sense prevails at last! (Score:3, Interesting)
Further, a Capsule falling through atmosphere is kept in the proper orientation through simple newtonian mechanics, it requires no gadgetry to keep it stable, unlike a spaceplane, which is an inherently unstable reentry vehicle.
The capsule is the way to go for cheap and reliable missions.
Re:Common sense prevails at last! (Score:2)
I think I read somewhere that the plane concept was picked because our astronauts did not like that they could NOT land the capsules. Back then, most astronauts were all US Air Force and Navy pilots. They probably still are, but now alot of these guys are much smarter then alot of the astronauts of old. Not that they old guys were dumb, it's just they wanted things a certa
Re:Common sense prevails at last! (Score:2)
Re:Common sense prevails at last! (Score:3, Funny)
Right now, if you purchase a flying car, you get a voucher for a ticket on one of them, and also a preview beta version of Duke Nukem as well
Re:Common sense prevails at last! (Score:2)
Re:Common sense prevails at last! (Score:2)
With the demise of the shuttle, relying on exotic technologies is a bad plan. We need simple, reliable tech as soon as possible. Space planes are not the answer to that.
Re:Common sense prevails at last! (Score:4, Insightful)
Hopefully those designs have been put in the circular file drawer where they belong. 100 years from now, our fascination with space-planes will be seen as a great folly of the later 1900's.
Capsules are a superior re-entry vehicle in every way, and cheaper too, when you factor in maintenance costs on reusable space vehicles (with the exception of the suborbital "toys" that we hear so much about, but they won't get huge wings into LEO and back again cheaply).
NASA knew this simple truth back in the day when they were the crackinest aerospace research agency in the world. They had blank checks for designing ugly but functional space vehicles and boy did they. Aesthetics didn't enter to into the design of the capsule and LEM then, and shouldn't now.
Re:Common sense prevails at last! (Score:5, Insightful)
No, to 1960s design rather than technology. There is nothing wrong with this if the 1960s design turns out to still be the best anyone has come up with. You do the same kind of design with more modern technology and get the best available solution to the problem.
Just because Buck Rogers had space planes, that doesn't mean they are actually the best engineering solution, silver jump suits are not practical streetwear either.
Look at bridges, the fundamental designes of modern bridges are really nothing a Roman would be supprised by, it's the details of the technology applied to the basic designs which makes them better.
Re:Common sense prevails at last! (Score:2)
I thought Buck Rogers spaceships landed on fins (Score:3, Interesting)
When I heard about the DC-X approach to reusable spacecraft reentry and landing, my reaction was "that is so Buck Rogers" meaning that I didn't think that landing on rocket thrust made sense.
But the Soyuz lands tail first on rocket thrust (it has braking rockets for the final ground c
Re:Common sense prevails at last! (Score:5, Insightful)
The mission for the CEV, "to boost national security by providing a presence in space" is so bland, so wishy-washy, so unmeasurable, that there will never be an accounting.
Oh, and Bush says we need to hack $300 Billion out of the budget to cut the deficit in half without raising taxes or undoing his precioussss tax cuts. Oh, and Defense is excluded. How big is the discretionary, non-defense budget? $440.9 Billion.
Re:Common sense prevails at last! (Score:4, Informative)
That might not be a huge chunk of the $300 billion, but during time of war I'd say that's definately more than "excluding" the DoD.
Re:Common sense prevails at last! (Score:3, Informative)
Of the $55 billion in cuts, they then redirect $25 billion to the Army (mostly for Iraq-type support stuff, I think).
So it's $30 billion in cuts, which is still a decent amount. But I dunno how much of that will survive, since $18billion of that affects LockMart, and I have never ever seen political operators smoother than they. I'm not sure that Georgia's Congressional delegation will allow F-22 to be cut, and I'm sure some other (or the same) delegation will feel the same way ab
Where's the money going? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Where's the money going? (Score:5, Informative)
I guess the other side of the coin is the German's saying Mars by 2009. *shrug* I guess when you have nothing substantial in your space program in the past, you've got nothing to lose with ridiculous goals for the future?
Uh, Wernher von Braun [wikipedia.org] ring any bells?
From Wikipedia: "In the United States, he is regarded as a hero of the space program."
Von Braun (Score:3, Funny)
You, too, could be a big hero, once you've learned to count backwards to zero...
Re:Where's the money going? (Score:2)
Yeah, but you count a $20 million dollar plane that goes 100km up, a feat that has almost nothing to do with building orbital vehicles let alone things that can go further, as a serious comparison to the Shuttle.
Re:Where's the money going? (Score:2)
ShuttleOne counted as a huge stepping stone to orbital vehicles, as you can see in their newer ventures toward such a project.
There is no such thing as "ShuttleOne" [google.com]. If you just make-up space project names from your own imagination, don't be surprised if no one takes you seriously.
So it does have quite a bit to do with building orbital vehicles.
If, on the other hand, you meant to say "SpaceShipOne [scaled.com], and you're actually suggesting that the project had any relationship at all to reaching orbit, then y
Re:Where's the money going? (Score:3, Interesting)
And with the short flights of SS1 you can get away with a lower fuel fraction than is needed to achieve orbt.
Re:Where's the money going? (Score:2)
I was speaking about any space travel. Rockets don't really make for a "space program"...in that case, if it did...telecommunications companies would say "look at our awesome space program."
I was really getting at the dependency NASA et al had on von Braun; without him US Space Exploration (and earlier ancilliary developments) would likely have been delayed significantly. At no point has NASA or the USAF been dependent on Vodaphone for future development - quite the reverse: Vodaphone relies on NASA lau
Re:Where's the money going? (Score:3, Interesting)
That said, yes, the NASA could probally be a lot more cost effective, but just saying SpaceShipOne did for 20mio$ w
Re:Where's the money going? (Score:2)
I can see.... (Score:2)
Re:I can see.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Isn't having a goal more important than a vehicle? (Score:5, Insightful)
"The fundamental goal of this vision is to advance U.S. scientific, security, and economic interests through a robust space exploration program."
Could they be any more vague? Whatever happened to the days of "land a man on the moon and return him safely to the Earth." You know, goals that people actually knew what the heck you were talking about?
decision making (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Isn't having a goal more important than a vehic (Score:4, Informative)
I thought the Wikipedia article above was very clear on what the CEV is supposed to be able to do. It mentions it's likely it'll follow the module-and-capsule approach, and is supposed to be capable of getting to LEO while also taking part in the assembly of lunar expeditions while in orbit (and, presumably Mars too, since that's a listed goal as well). Reusability is apparently desirable, but not essential to win the contract.
Having the wrong goal is worse than no goal (Score:5, Interesting)
Bruce
Re:Having the wrong goal is worse than no goal (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to mention slightly safer.
Re:Having the wrong goal is worse than no goal (Score:3, Informative)
I completely agree that our goal should be to establish a permanent off-world presence. We honestly have no idea how much we would learn from being out exploring, but most of the advances of our race have
Re:Having the wrong goal is worse than no goal (Score:3, Insightful)
However, the one thing that humans can give is their perception of what they see and feel. This sort of information is something that no robot can possibly provide us.
And how is seeing and feeling worth multi-billions of dollars?
We honestly have no idea how much we would learn from being out exploring, but most of the advances of our race have come from exploring the unknown and taking risks.
Exploring has with few exceptions been driven by economics and need, not wonder. Columbus was looking for g
Re:Having the wrong goal is worse than no goal (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Having the wrong goal is worse than no goal (Score:3, Interesting)
If the gub'ment dictates that the Shuttle shall be involved, now all components must a) break down to fit in a Shuttle cargo bay; b) meet Shuttle safety requirements; c) visit LEO and possibly the ISS before moving onward. Yeah, it uses the existing infrastructure, but certainly isn'
A Replacement for the Shuttle (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: A Replacement for the Shuttle (Score:3, Interesting)
It will work a whole hell of a lot better than on earth assembly. To get to lunar orbit, you don't have to worry about earth gravity or anything. You won't need a smooth skin either. It could look like a flying pig and be as ugly as you wanted. You also don't have to worry about the thing staying intact and not getting damaged on the way up.
As for a heavy lifter, That might be what heavy rockets are for. Though
Re: A Replacement for the Shuttle (Score:2)
Re: A Replacement for the Shuttle (Score:2)
What would be sensible? Buying something off-the-shelf, or spending 10x as much to duplicate the Russian effort? If you insist on putting money into the US economy, buy a license.
Good Designs (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, they self-orient on reentry, they don't have expensive and heavy control surfaces or landing gear, and from their position on the top of the rocket they can use escape systems like those in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs.
About the only thing they can't do is bring things back down from orbit. But, really, if we want a real future in space the biggest issue is getting things up there.
Re:Good Designs (Score:2)
the shuttle was at least something new. If you go and look at some of the early shuttle designs they where much more likely to offer long term cheap access to space than the shuttles we have now. Why where they not built? Because the development cost would have been much higher. NASA did not want to use SRBs. Going with solids was an idea the military pushed
Re:Good Designs (Score:2)
Well, it might be the Comet - but what if it's actually the Spruce Goose of space craft...?
Re:Good Designs (Score:2)
Still works out fine. I think the Comet is a better example. It had issues but was a pretty good design that could and
Re:Good Designs (Score:2)
Re:Good Designs (Score:2)
This one is easy. Refit the shuttle to be remote controlled from the ground. The Soviets were able to do it with Buran, I'm sure we could do it ourselves, or even easier with the help of Energia.
I've always thought the linear aerospike (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I've always thought the linear aerospike (Score:2)
Back to the drawing board? (Score:2)
Re:Back to the drawing board? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Back to the drawing board? (Score:2)
Monkeys and dogs will not be used for testing. (Score:2, Funny)
Military (Score:3, Insightful)
My Idea for the shuttle replacement (Score:4, Funny)
Image Here [starfleet-museum.org]
Now if we could only get Majel Barrett to do the voice-over for the computer
The Rutan plan (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The Rutan plan (Score:2)
We tried that when we settled North America. Building a real frontier, OK, but you run into serious difficulties when you try to get it to generate tax revenues...
Especially if the country's being run by a lunatic called George at the time.
NASA Budget (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:NASA Budget (Score:3, Interesting)
Pathetic, isn't it? Especially considering that space exploration is in the long run the most important and beneficial government program of all (with military being the second).
Re:NASA Budget (Score:3, Insightful)
Eh?
I suspect that there might be some rather important things going on in some other [nih.gov] agencies [nsf.gov]. Just a thought. I suppose it depends how one chooses to define 'important' and 'beneficial'.
Space Tug Boat. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Space Tug Boat. (Score:2)
Not Addressing The Real Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Congress has never been able to give NASA a set of clear goals, and then provided it with the long-term funding to meet those goals. This has forced NASA into sort of bureaucratic survival mode, lurching along from fiscal year to fiscal year, trying to keep moving the ball forward without a long-term roadmap to follow.
Awesome... (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Modern, yet tested hardware for the flight computers and a way to upgrade them easily should they be needed. I still like the idea of multiple redundant computers and a voting structure that the shuttle uses for it's flight computers.
2. Reuseablity is nice, but can be expensive as the shuttle has pointed out. If we do go reusable, I hope we find some new heat shielding that is less fragile.
3. Ejection seets for the crew or a crew module rescue system of some sort.
4. Sensor the HECK out of it. Put little cameras in the superstructure and have one monitor cycle through them on both launch and landing. If teh crew sees something the least bit suspicious, they can initiate a emergency eject.
5. Make it FAST to launch another incase there's damage to one crew module. Maybe make it so that we launch 2 at the same time with both being capable of holding the whole crew in a emergency landing situation. You could even make sure one is always on orbit and is in good shape(docked at ISS or whatever).
6. Make it REPAIRABLE in space either via ISS assistance or a small repair kit heald on board.
I could go on, but this is the opportunity to make a funcitonal system that is much safer then the shuttle. Consider that the shuttle's design is almost 30-40 years old and BOTH planes and cars are MUCH safer today then ones designed that long ago.
Does this matter? (Score:2)
What I'd rather see here:
a series of smaller prizes that required the winner to disclose their technology(as effectively Open Source). The reason for smaller prizes is that is would make the financial entry ticket less
Robotic Exploration? (Score:3, Insightful)
Leave Human exploration to harder goals (Mars). But for experiments in orbit, repair missions, etc. Why not consider robotics?
The Mars rovers have done a very impressive job. I'd bet if NASA put the effort into robotics that it did into the Moon Launch effort.... they would be 10000X better.
They can also work more, don't suffer from fatigue, don't need life support systems, etc.
I'd like to see the human/robot space exporation roles change. Save humans for stuff like going to Mars, or the Moon, or other places where the goal is to get a person there. But lets use Robots for the most dangerious stuff, and situations where a Robot can easily do the job.
IMHO a shuttle should be looking at Earth --> Mars.
Re:Robotic Exploration? (Score:3, Interesting)
China, Science, the Economy and the Space Elevator (Score:5, Interesting)
Count out the "all-stars" (Score:3, Informative)
Look more towards the underdogs in this fight.
GJC
Re:Well well well (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Well well well (Score:4, Insightful)
Cheap only accounts for one small criterion in the selection. I would imagine that experience would be of far greater importance. Not that the underdog shouldn't win, or doesn't have any experience, but if you were hiring someone to manage a critical huge project for your company would you hire somebody with 20 years experience doing this type of work or a new kid out of school who built a toy model of what you need for a science fair?
Re:Well well well (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe an underdog can win (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Maybe an underdog can win (Score:2, Insightful)
We should select Rutan as our stand in for old man Harriman. (obRAH reference) -- OPh
Be carefull. Rutan and Scaled Composites are better than Nasa because they are cheaper, no government intervention to screw everything up.
I think rutan would be making a mistake getting in bed with anything that is even remotely government sponsored. He should keep working on private ventures. et la Virgin etc.
Re:Maybe an underdog can win (Score:3, Insightful)
What, you say? Vinnie would be horrible for the job? He doesn't have experience dealing with *real* space missions? He's only managed tiny teams, and this is a huge project? He
Re:Well well well (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Well well well (Score:3, Interesting)
Delta IV-heavy is a great craft. Its cost per kilogram is amazing for a rocket built in a first-world nation. The atlas series shouldn't underestimated either. In short, Boeing and Lockheed *have* been doing good work in the past 20 years. You have no right to pretend that they haven't (not that Delta and Atlas have been their only projects - far
Re:It writes itself (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:lack of funds (Score:3, Informative)
Re:lack of funds (Score:2)
Re:lack of funds (Score:2)
Re:lack of funds (Score:3, Informative)
Re:lack of funds (Score:2)
Actually, please come back, Hicks of middle America. Bill, that is. Your country needs you...
Re:Not a Shuttle Replacement (Score:2)
Re:Benefits (Score:5, Informative)
Build really big solar energy collectors, put them into space, and beam the energy to Earth with microwaves.
Or just use a giant collector mirror and convert to electricity on Earth - such a design could also be used as orbital beam-weapon.
Inspiration. People need something to look up to. They need heroes. Currently, movie- rock- and sports stars are fulfulling this role, and of course this leads to a culture completely obsessed with entertainment - it's not the only reason for this problem, but it is a contributing factor.
It's a bit like politicians starting wars to drown their problems under the flood of patriotism, but channeled with a positive goal, rather than negative.
Re:Benefits (Score:2)
Earth after a meteor strike will still be far more hospitable than any planet in our solar system. For this goal, the money would be much better spent building indoor greenhouses to provide food.
Re:Benefits (Score:4, Insightful)
Where has our Manifest Destiny gone these days? We all would rather watch American Idol than ponder the real stars. What a shame.
Re:Benefits (Score:2)
E.g. nuclear power stations wouldn't have been possible without Einstein et al. doing pie-in-the-sky, way-out-there purely theoretical research.
Re:One space vehicle, hold the politics (Score:2)
The O-ring failed because politicians pushed and pushed for a launch in conditions significantly worse than those known to cause substantial O-ring erosion.
Re:One space vehicle, hold the politics (Score:2, Informative)
You are right about the location, your full of shit otherwise. http://www.ae.utexas.edu/~lehmanj/ethics/srb.htm
Political Compromises in the Contract The nature of the political connections between the Space Program and prominent figures of the state of Utah has long been debated. Utah Senators Jake Garn and Frank Moss have been active supporters of the Space Program, particularly when it benefits Utah-based industries. There is nothing wrong with this; Representatives of Congress are expected to be intere
Re:Lemme guess (Score:2)