Nasawatch rumor on CEV costs.

[no_way]

Is anyone else watching this comedy having flashbacks of "Groundhog Day" ?

 

[gofer]

Well, the thread is all about the former ESAS study. The study appears to be crap as it has no effect on the real world. Yeah, let's have another study! I mean that's what NASA lives by. Studies. Maybe it'll work out this time...

 

[gofer]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p> ... who cares if anything ever gets beyond powerpoint slides and flashy websites <p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />Actually, this is a good question. Indeed, Who Cares? (Besides some space obsessed melodramatics)

 

[mattblack]

ESAS VERSION 2.0: Who here DIDN'T believe that was inevitable??!! <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p>One Percent of Federal Funding For Space: America <strong><em><u>CAN</u></em></strong> Afford it!!  LEO is a <strong><em>Prison</em></strong> -- It's time for a <em><strong>JAILBREAK</strong></em>!!</p> </div>

 

[gofer]

Sorry, guy/gal. I'm just paying taxes for all of these here studies and hoping they do something useful. ESAS2. Sure thing. I guess I was naive. Serves me. <br />

 

[mattblack]

Guy! <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p>One Percent of Federal Funding For Space: America <strong><em><u>CAN</u></em></strong> Afford it!!  LEO is a <strong><em>Prison</em></strong> -- It's time for a <em><strong>JAILBREAK</strong></em>!!</p> </div>

 

[nacnud]

Plus the cost of giving those workers somewhere to work, thats normaly double the cost of the salary alone, etc etc.

 

[josh_simonson]

Most of the work in ESAS would not have to be redone. At this point, only SSME, 5 seg srb and methane SM/LSAM are up in the air. What they need to do is a public audit to verify that the costs are still in-line with ESAS or less at this point and perhaps reconsider some things based on that.

 

[nyarlathotep]

What they need to do is figure out what sort of science they want to do on the moon, figure out how much that science will cost and trade it against earth sciences, sell the merits of the science to the public, and only then build the vehicle based on what is required for the mission. Actually, have Boeing and Lockheed bid for the mission and put the funding in escrow until they actually deliver hardware. <br /><br />It's no wonder all their crap is cancelled, NASA is doing everything backwards.

 

[cuddlyrocket]

"What they need to do is figure out what sort of science they want to do on the moon....."<br /><br />Which would be a good argument, except that the VSE is not solely about science (see this transcript of Griffin remarks on 6 July).<br /><br />The CEV is ultimately designed (or at least sized) working backwards from a manned Mars mission.

 

[vulture2]

Unfortunately Griffin's remarks do not explain what the purpose of VSE is except to say it is to "advance US scientific, security, and economic interests". But there is no explanation of what these interests are or how VSE advances them. Unless a convincing justification is presented the program will be susceptible to termination as soon as Congress figures out they have to either cut the budget or raise taxes. <br /><br />How going to Mars will benefit security or economics is beyond me. Dare I say this is hyperbole? The only end-user activities performed by humans in space are research, tourism, and spacecraft maintenance. Nothing in VSE appears intended to develop technology to reduce the cost of human spaceflight, so it will be of little benefit to space tourism, virtually all research will remain less expensive if done robotically, and most spacecraft will reamin cheaper to replace than to repair.

 

[crix]

I'd say it is a strategic asset to have proven technology for expanding United States presense throughout the solar system.

 

[radarredux]

> <i><font color="yellow">Unfortunately Griffin's remarks do not explain what the purpose of VSE is except to say it is to "advance US scientific, security, and economic interests".</font>/i><br /><br />Part of the issue is that the politicians provide the "why" and "goals" and NASA provides the "how to". Bush provided some initial answers when he announced the goal, and since then John Marburger, the Directory of the Whitehouse's Office of Science and Technology Policy, has given several speeches on the subject.<br /><br />Nevertheless, it is (IMHO) in NASA's best interest to make sure these issues are well articulated to and well known by both the decision makers and the general public. Zubrin, for all his faults, has done a good job of promoting his vision and plan with respect to Mars. I wonder if anyone is developing a book titled "The Case For The Moon"?</i>

 

[vulture2]

>>Part of the issue is that the politicians provide the "why" and "goals" and NASA provides the "how to". <br /><br />Isn't it the job of any research and development organization to ensure that every dollar is spent to develop or learn something useful? NASA's role was to advance the technology of flight, to help America's aerospace industry lead the world. Yet today we can't afford to develop technolgy [Griffin's words] because we have to fly missions.<br />

 

[nacnud]

Wrong focus, why redevelop the tech that already exsits, rockets etc, at the expense of tech that doesn't, long duration life support systems, moon exploration tech etc.<br /><br />Rocket tech has reached the point of limited returns, reusables have been tryed by haven't been able to meet their promises, perhaps it is time to move on to tech not so near the theoretical limit.<br /><br />Once we have a robust system for space flight in place then revisit the reusable idea. IE how about seeing if the core stage of the Ares V could be made reusable, etc.

 

[cuddlyrocket]

As Griffin quoted Jack Marburger: "The question about the Vision boils down to whether we want to incorporate the Solar System in our economic sphere or not." Now it's not clear exactly how this is going to come about - that's why it's called the <i>Vision</i> for space exploration, not the <i>Plan</i> - it seems a reasonable hypothesis that this will involve human exploration of the Moon, NEAs and Mars.<br /><br />Also, although the Administration and Congress didn't buy Zubrin's Case for Mars (at least in the short term), it does seem that they have accepted his Apollo Mode/Shuttle Mode analysis of NASA's problem. So things are now cast in terms of missions, for which equipment is then developed, rather than designing equipment for which missions are then found.

 

[nyarlathotep]

<font color="yellow">As Griffin quoted Jack Marburger: "The question about the Vision boils down to whether we want to incorporate the Solar System in our economic sphere or not."</font><br /><br />At $5B a year for the standing army + $2.5B per lunar ESAS mission, the answer to that question is fairly simple. No, we do not want to expand our economic sphere of influence into the inner solar system. <br /><br />If they wanted to expand the correct choice of vehicle would be initially an Atlas V Growth Phase 2 heavy booster (minimal pad changes and dev costs) plus Protons, Falcons, Atlases and Zenits or whatever is cheapest to boost fuel. We'd follow that later with monolithic BDB's. Think of a vehicle with a 50m+ diameter Sea Dragon style boiler plate first stage with a 5000+ tonne Orion nuclear pulse propulsion stage placed on top. That's the sort of vehicle that's going to expand our economic sphere.

 

[lbiderman]

You will have to test that "5000+ tonne Orion nuclear pulse propulsion stage" first, and it's gonna cost you, chief.... And that kind of approach is similar to the people that want to build ships of "unobtanium", strong, light and heat resistant. If you don't want to create a crusade like Apollo, creating everything from scratch, then the VSE is the way to go! Science will be advancing anyway through it, as well as technology, only at a slower but steady pace. Remember the development cost of a much much much less ambitious proyect like the X-33. After all that money, we didn't make a gigantic breakthrough, and we didn't saw that flying because of the costs overruns.

 

[radarredux]

> <i><font color="yellow">that's why it's called the </font></i>Vision<i> for space exploration, not the </i>Plan<i>/i><br /><br />Because there are no details. When there are lots of details for part of the <i>Vision</i>, then that part will be a <i>Plan</i>. Visions are easy. Plans are harder. Implementation is really hard.</i>

 

[vulture2]

By far the largest expense in human space exploration is launching to LEO, and Mr. Griffin has made it pretty clear what launch vehicles he wants; they are fairly cheap to develop but very expensive to operate. After Apollo it was decided that the next step should be a practical reusable spacecraft. Fuel is about 1% of the cost of a Shuttle launch. There's no reason it's expensive except that we only made one attempt to design a reusable spacecraft and haven't tried again in 25 years. That's equivalent to still flying only the Wright Flyer in 1928, or supporting a permanent base at the South Pole in 1957 with dogsleds. <br /><br />The X-33 was a technology demonstrator, not an orbital vehicle. NASA unwisely claimed that it would lead immmediately to a privately-financed SSTO vehicle, which wasn't rational, but the X-33 would have provided invaluable flight experience if it hadn't been cancelled. Together with the other technology demonstrators (X-34, X-37, DC-X) it would have provided the main element missing in the design of the Shuttle; real flight experince with a variety of technologies (spike nozzels, composite cryogenic tanks, blended wings, lifting bodies, air launch, powered landing, autonomous runway landing, etc) to see which were best for a practical, reusable spacecraft. This was why the Shuttle failed, not because there is a universal law that says a rocket can only be used once.<br /><br />This goes to the heart of the NASA mission. Once our job was to advance the technology of flight to benefit everyone. We went to the moon as a demonstration of our technical prowess. Now we cannot afford to develop technology because our entire budget is going into "demonstration flights". We can plant flags and footprints, or we can open the sky. We cannot do both.

 

[josh_simonson]

>By far the largest expense in human space exploration is launching to LEO, and Mr. Griffin has made it pretty clear what launch vehicles he wants; they are fairly cheap to develop but very expensive to operate.<br /><br />That isn't really true. CEV/SM cost $300m, EDS/LSAM costs $700m. Those are both about the price of their respective launchers. <br /><br />Cheaper launchers aught to lower the cost of space hardware somewhat by allowing the most expensive weight reduction techniques to be skipped. But the hardware will still have the high-cost, low production problems that launchers have until there is enough volume in standardized components to bring costs down.

 

[vt_hokie]

<i>This goes to the heart of the NASA mission. Once our job was to advance the technology of flight to benefit everyone. We went to the moon as a demonstration of our technical prowess. Now we cannot afford to develop technology because our entire budget is going into "demonstration flights". We can plant flags and footprints, or we can open the sky. We cannot do both. </i><br /><br />I couldn't agree with you more!

 

[publiusr]

Griffin just doesn't want the EELV albatross on his neck. Griffins enemies need to be watched. And that includes the Life-science only folks like Cowing. I think Griffin knows more about LV choices than that irritant.<br /><br />How about a Celebrity Deathmatch on MTV II with Cowing and Jeff Bell--and they both lose?

 

[geminivi]

Ah, so I'm not alone in find Cowings to be hard to take? I've had some email with the guy, not exactly someone I'd want to buy a beer for.

 

[steve82]

"I've had some email with the guy, not exactly someone I'd want to buy a beer for. "<br /><br />I've heard the same from others, my email from him was neutral, but his reporting sure gets whiney sometimes. It seems like whenever he hears something that hasn't been announced by PAO, it's a sweeping indictment of NASA and their inability to connect with the public and the paranoia of their management. I wonder if he might have tried to get a PAO job at one time and has sour grapes about it. It's too bad because his role in reporting is important and valuable.<br />