Chair Force Engineer

Wedge Issue

2008-07-19T23:19:00.000-07:00

It has been argued that America needs Project Constellation to fend off attempts by China to monopolize the moon. While it will be important for America to hang on to its own corner of the lunar surface in the event that foreign powers try to claim it, there are serious reasons to doubt that the specific plan laid out in Project Constellation will be sustainable enough for America to retain any lunar real-estate.

Project Apollo has been summed up as "flags and footprints" by many space enthusiasts. NASA came, it saw, and it abandoned. There was neither funding nor political will to sustain a presence on the moon or develop the hardware which would be required for a permanent lunar presence. We will have to examine "Apollo on Steroids" to determine whether the same political and economic factors will doom this effort to becoming "flags and footprints" as well.

For the past 27 years, NASA has succeeded in keeping Americans in space by obtaining the funding to keep the shuttle program alive. It's a sound assumption to believe that inflation-adjusted levels of shuttle spending can be sustained, because America's leaders believe that 1) America should ahve some type of manned spaceflight capability, and 2) laying off the shuttle personnel will be political suicide. At the same time, it's hard to imagine NASA getting any funding increases for manned spaceflight beyond an adjustment for inflation. The political will to do so can't be conjured up unless America enters into an over moon race with another spacefaring superpower. Even still, such will cannot be sustained after said race comes to a comclusion.

It stands to reason that NASA should conduct Project Constellation in such a way that the operational costs per year do not exceed the yearly costs of the Shuttle and ISS programs in constant-year dollars. Unfortunately, I'm skeptical that the current Constellation architecture can fit within the shuttle funding wedge. Even if the program is limited to two lunar missions per year (two Ares 5/6 launches and two Ares I launches,) the size of the enlarged "standing army" and the cost of the expended hardware will probably outpace shuttle spending.

NASA will always have the option to grow its share of the pie if it can't fit within the current funding wedge. If the private sector is involved early in the game, it will bring private dollars in to enlarge and sustain the effort. If international partners join it, it can also help the Constellation effort at the expense of added oversight by additional nations.

The current Constellation architecture is not well-suited for either foreign partnership or private investment. Constellation has been designed around preserving America's industrial base and making use of American facilities, with the noted exception of the J-2X nozzle (being designed & built by Volvo, utilizing their experience from the Vulcain 2 engine.) It's also hard to imagine a system that is designed, owned and operated by the government being open to private funding anytime soon.

I've been skeptical the Project Constellation will receive full funding, but I don't think that a Constellation-based moon landing is out of the question. The real political challenge will be sustaining the effort after we've gotten there. That was the failure of Apollo, and NASA is currently on its way towards reliving history.

Perhaps not the best analogy

2008-07-17T13:38:00.000-07:00

The chief prosecutor for war crimes trials at Guantanamo compares the process to the Space Shuttle. He's trying to argue that the trials are events that seem extraordinary now, but will soon become commonplace and unremarkable.

But is that what most people think of when they hear the phrase "Space Shuttle." No way! They think of a hopelessly-complex albatross that has a significant risk of blowing up or disintegrating under intense heat and stress. Every Space Shuttle mission should be seen as a remarkable achievement of thousands of people who must do their jobs perfectly in order to get the crew back safely.

I guess the point of this little rant is that it's prudent to use the space shuttle analogy sparingly and wisely. Unless you intend to talk about risky ventures.

Picken' on the Feds

2008-07-10T20:48:00.000-07:00

Oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens is making waves by turning over a new leaf in a bold fashion. He's proposing an alternative energy plan which, among other things, would build more wind turbines to generate electricity. In turn, this would free up natural gas to replace petroleum in automobiles.

In general, I see much to like with the basics of the Pickens Plan. But I have to ask how we can implement such an ambitious undertaking. Elected leaders and government employees in a position of influence have a responsibility to set the example for Americans to follow. Alternative energy should be no exception.

Every year, government agencies purchase thousands of fleet vehicles. What would be the impact of guaranteeing a market for natural gas cars by mandating that a fraction of new government vehicles run on natural gas? What if every Defense Department and Department of Energy installation had a natural gas fueling station? It would certainly be an impressive start for the Pickens Plan.

But let's go one step further. Why not supplement the electrical needs of DoD and DoE installations through wind turbines? Or allow private wind-farms on stretches of federal land that are suited for the purpose?

When it comes to alternative energy, the United States has a long ways to go until it achieves its energy independence from the nations that breed terrorism, and from despots & mafiosos. If the government practiced what it preached, it would be a bold step towards this goal.

Hurry Up and Wait

2008-07-08T18:30:00.001-07:00

NASA has released the schedule for the final ten space shuttle missions, claiming that the program will wrap up with the final mission in May-June 2010. But let's think about this for a second. The current plan counts on launching five missions in 2008 (three down, two to go) and five in 2009. This will be a tall feat to accomplish with just three orbiters. It's even harder when one considers all of the challenges the shuttle workforce must overcome to put each massively-complex machine into orbit. Add to that the Congressional pressure to fly the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to the space station.

What does it all add up to? A gut feeling that we'll be wrapping up the shuttle program in FY11 instead of FY10. Unless NASA insists on a hard cutoff at the end of FY10 that would ground all unflown missions. Hopefully the schedule pressures will not get the best of the shuttle team, particularly at a time when working on the shuttle program is perceived to be a step below working for Project Constellation.

Ticket to the Moon

2008-07-08T18:15:00.000-07:00

Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, has provocatively declared that an eventual flight around the moon would cost $80 million. I assume he means $80 million per seat, which is four times the rate of an ISS trip on a Russian Soyuz.

Mr. Coppinger complains that passengers in the cicrumlunar "Dragon" will be cramped. They'll need a habitation module and an earth departure stage, or so he claims. While SpaceX's Dragon capsule can carry up to seven people, it's likely that some seats would be removed for the lunar voyage to reduce mass and/or provide more habitable volume. It is likely that a circumlunar version of F9 Heavy would need a restartable upper stage to perform the mission, unless the current second stage can restart, and if it has enough propellant left over once the capsule has achieved orbit.

The plan to launch a Dragon around the moon using a Falcon IX heavy has a lot of merit. Unfortunately, I'm skeptical whether Falcon IX Heavy is capable of the 27 ton payloads that are promised. That's similar in performance to the postulated Atlas V Heavy. Unfortunately, Falcon IX has less energetic engines on both stages compared to Atlas V. The gas-generator Merlin has a vacuum Isp around 309 seconds, while the staged-combustion RD-180 has an Isp of 331. The upper stage comparison is between the kerosene-burning Merlin and the hydrogen-burning RL-10A-4A; there's no contest betweenthe two upper-stages performance-wise. Until a Falcon IX flies, it's hard to say whether it will live up to expectations.

Still, Elon Musk's announcement should serve as testing the waters on whether there's a commercial demand for lunar exploration. While the lunar trip might only appeal to eccentric billionaires at first, it's the first step towards an entire lunar exploration industry.

EDIT: After re-reading the Rob Coppinger piece, it appears that the quoted $80 mil figure is for the entire mission, and all seven seats will be utilized. Such a boast does not pass the sniff test. But a four-crew mission with each ticket costing $80 mil seems to be a more credible approach.

Stranger Than Fiction

2008-07-06T02:19:00.001-07:00

I recently read Houston, You Have a Problem, the autobiography of Danny Deger. This review of the novella (96 pages when printed) is based on two assumptions:
1) The author is the Danny Deger described in the text, a real person, and
2) The text is an accurate description of real events

With both of those caveats, I will add that the story would be interesting even if it was a total fabrication. If it were a movie, it would be equal parts Top Gun, Office Space, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

The narrative begins with Danny Deger as an intelligent, God-fearing young man who decides to serve his nation as a pilot in the US Air Force. He flies the legendary F-4E Phantom II during the height of the Cold War and learns quite a bit during the adventures that ensue. After a brief tours as Air Liason to the Army and a civilian in the field of "Special Weapons," he goes to work for NASA's Johnson Space Center. He trains the astronauts in launch aborts and entry procedures, then goes to work designing displays for the shuttle cockpit. Along the way, he experiences bullying managers and the banality of NASA internal regulations. The stresses of a hostile workplace culminate in a message from Deger to the much-despised JSC Director, George Abbey. The consequences of that action would be very profound for Mr. Deger. He would eventually return to JSC and play a formative role during the Orbital Space Plane and Orion/Ares I programs, but the long-ranging consequences from the earlier incident would come back to haunt him.

In the story, Mr. Deger admits that his language skills are weak compared to his analytical reasoning. With that being said, he does write well. His prose lacks the polish that would be expected of a commercial publication, but it is servicable to a reader with some technical knowledge. I would complain that the descriptions of dogfighting and other combat while flying the Phantom II are hard to follow, especially for those uninitiated in aerial warfare. Frustratingly, much of the story hinges on the e-mail to George Abbey which is neither reprinted or paraphrased for the reader's benefit.

The heart of the story will undoubtedly engender much controversy. Should it be viewed as an expose of an agency whose management is steeped with the culture of narcissism on multiple levels? Or is it merely the diary of a madman who is trying to convince the world that he is sane? Without being able to hear a rebuttal from NASA JSC, the jury is out. But it doesn't take a stretch of the imagination to envison a large federal organization lashing out in an illegal fashion to silence a whistleblower.

If you have spare time on a weekend, I would definitely recommend reading "Houston, You Have a Problem." If it's accurate, then it's a disturbing look inside Johnson Space Center. If it's all fiction, then it's nonetheless a story that vacillates between amusement and horror while never boring the reader.

The Write Stuff?

2008-07-02T00:57:00.000-07:00

People always ask me what I'm going to do after I am emancipated from the Air Force. I'm still not sure, but I want to try being a writer (the kind of writer that gets paid in money, not the blogger who gets a charge from every time that somebody in the blogosphere gives him kudos.)

In pursuit of that goal, I recently submitted a short story for a contest. At the outset, it seemed like an easy task. By the end of the process, I wound up with a lot more respect for professional writers (not that I lacked it to begin with,) and a lot of self-doubt as to whether I'm meant for dramatic writing.

The story started with a simple premise and a limit of 6,000 words. With that upper bound, I had to narrate a lot of events in the story rather than hinting at them through dialog and subtle clues. The high concept was that of a man who has made a lot of mistakes in his life, but tries to make things right and finds redemption through sacrifice. Shortly after I started typing, the characters quickly turned into a way to espouse the things I'm feeling right now. The protagonist became more like myself, the antagonist morphed into my program's chief engineer, and the nefarious corporation that weaves throughout the story assumed the traits of the Air Force.

I finished the story with a sense that it was a burden lifted from my shoulders. A few friends read it and liked it. Then I ran it past an avid sci-fi reader who told me that it was all too cliche. Most importantly, she made me realize that I created personalities for the main characters, then turned everything on its head for the conclusion. Can we really expect the cold-hearted antagonist to have an epiphany at the end? I hastily rewrote some of the dialog and much of the ending. The protagonist's sacrifice was now motivated by spite, and the edge was taken off the antagonist to make his conversion more believable.

Am I happy with the story? Not really. It has a mechanical quality to it, and the most human scene was cut from the original ending because it bordered on cheesiness. The story that developed from my original concept had a lot more untapped potential to explore themes like "how much should a man give of himself to a cause he doesn't believe in?"

I'm left with the conclusion that my half-baked story was the result of being something I was forced to write. Maybe things will go smoother with a story that wants to write itself. My goal is to write and publish a satire of the military acquisition bureaucracy. Now that's a story that demands to spring forth to life across my computer monitor. It also gives me a canvas for humorous writing. I can't guarantee that my humor will work, but my drama obviously didn't.

Nature of the Beast

2008-07-01T01:16:00.000-07:00

Dwayne Day, who happens to be one of my favorite space historians, takes a swipe at people like myself who have compared NASA to Fascist systems of government. The gist of his argument, in my view, is that "Fascist" is an arbitrary label that's applied as an invective. In this sense, he is correct, a fact that I pointed out in my first post on the subject.

Many people are taken aback by the overuse of the term "fascist" because of its negative connotations. But Jonah Goldberg is quick to point out that things that are "fascist" are not necessarily wicked. He admits that some of his favorite movies have overtly-fascist themes. I will admit to enjoying "fascist" movies like "Gladiator" and "Falling Down."

For those who truly knew the horrors of the Holocaust or the Second World War, I can only begin to understand why the hurting is so deep, and I apologize if a seemingly-juvenile invective has touched off on the deep scars of the past.

Regardless of whether you feel that "fascist" is an overused insult, or whether it's being misused in respect to NASA, it does not change the basic facts of the agency, its behavior, or its mission. NASA's manned space program is a taxpayer-supported effort which primarily serves to enhance national prestige, while enshrining a small number of large corporations as the titans of the aerospace and tech sectors.

As far as NASA not being "fascist" because "fascists don't allow for competition," I think that the recent history speaks for itself. Will NASA allow for parallel manned space efforts? Dan Goldin was certainly opposed to Dennis Tito's space vacation on the ISS. Mike Griffin's NASA resorts to debunking alternative approaches to manned lunar missions, even though their current approach is not likely to survive the current election without profound changes. NASA officials currently resort to scare tactics, raising support for Project Constellation by claiming that China will be on the moon by 2017 unless we give Project Constellation full funding. There's no reason why the US and China can't share the moon, no compelling reason to beat China to the moon, and no evidence that China has the means to fly a human around the moon by 2017.

To be fair, NASA has done a better job at allowing for competition as of late. If properly funded, the COTS program will create an alternate means for space access that's closer to a free-market approach. With that being said, awarding a COTS contract to Orbital Sciences is hardly the way to break the oligarchy of large companies that dominate the space economy. Furthermore, with NASA dropping out of ISS in 2017, the incentives behind COTS become diminished.

Is the "fascist" label for NASA extreme and deceptive? Perhaps. But the fact remains that NASA subverts the capitalist system in the name of national pride. I will admit that a private-sector rationale for exploring the moon will require at least 30 years pull off; the NASA plan is the way to go if you're willing to throw untold quantities of taxpayer dollars at going back as soon as possible. But I would rather sacrifice the moon in my lifetime than undermine capitalism. I don't care what name you want to apply towards NASA's manned space program and its practices. You can call NASA what you will, but it doesn't change the nature of the beast.

EDIT (7/3/2008): The tone of this piece did come off as unapologetic, but I wanted to state unequivocally that my use of the term "fascist" is divisive, hurtful and not conducive to the rational debate that truly needs to be held in this country regarding manned spaceflight and the NASA mission. It was a mistake that I should have avoided in the first place. With that being said, I unapologetically oppose taxpayer-funded manned missions whose primary benefit is preserving the nation's prestige. As for the topics of COTS and China, they will be addressed in the near future.

DIRECT delivery

2008-06-24T19:19:00.000-07:00

One of the most common complaints against DIRECT during the past week has been that the rocket (Jupiter 120) carries too much payload to the International Space Station. In short, the rocket is TOO CAPABLE for the mission, in the reasoning of its detractors. I've looked at this argument and find it to be exceedingly simplistic in the grand calculus of Project Constellation.

Before claiming that Jupiter 120 is too capable for cargo delivery to ISS, let's examine what is really required for ISS resupply. Every year, the station is visited by two Progress freighters, each carrying 2230 kg of cargo (1800 kg dry, 430 kg water.) The station also receives approximately three shuttle flights per year, each carrying 9000 kg of cargo in the 4000 kg Multi-Purpose Logistics Module. All of this is required to support three astronauts per year. After the crew is doubled to six, you can expect to double the resupply requirements. The European ATV will pick up some of the slack, but it can only deliver ~7700 kg at a time.

There's also the down-mass problem, which neither Orion nor COTS have fully addressed. There's a funny anecdote in the astronaut community which claims the purpose of sending the Shuttle to Mir was to get rid of all the trash the Russians had been piling up. The problem with all of the resupply methods currently planned for ISS is that they bring very little, if any, mass back to earth. Much of the downmass requirement for the space station can be addressed by cramming the junk into an expendable payload carrier which will burn up in the atmosphere. Critical items could be stashed in an Orion for return to earth.

While I'm no expert on the ISS consumables situation, it would appear that the more consumables mass you can send to the station, the better. If nothing else, it will make America less dependent on Russian Progress and Soyuz spacecraft.

Jupiter 120 can loft roughly 45 metric tons to the space station, and Orion will only account for half of that capability. So what do we do with the other 22.5 tonnes? A simple solution would be an expendable MPLM with docking adaptors on both ends. It would be stashed in the spacecraft adapter until the Jupiter core reaches orbit. Orion would then separate, dock with the MPLM, and rendezvous with ISS. Orion would then dock the MPLM to the ISS. During Orion re-entry, the MPLM would be discarded before Orion hits the appreciable atmosphere. Of the 45 tonne capacity of Jupiter 120, 22.5 tonnes would be devoted to Orion and 13 tonnes would be occupied by the expendable MPLM. It sounds like a pretty efficient use of Jupiter's capability to me.

In a worst-case scenario, let's assume there's not enough budget or schedule to develop the expendable MPLM. If you look at hardware costs alone, a Jupiter 120 will cost more than an Ares I for an ISS mission. But hardware costs play a very small role in the overall cost equation. The standing army costs for Ares I/V will be bigger than those of Jupiter 120/232. Standing-army costs dwarf the costs of hardware. Development costs are also a major factor, and this is another area where Ares is less efficient than Jupiter.

The last thing worth considering is the short service life of NASA's ISS-resupply system. There will be two ISS missions per year from 2015 thru 2017. Then the US will end participation in ISS. That's a grand total of six flights. I'm incredulous when NASA tells me that the hardware costs associated with six Jupiter flights will be worse than the development and standing-army costs of Ares I.

In looking at the ISS resupply question, we must first ask whether the anointed Ares I meets the real requirements. Even if that condition is met, there is a tradeoff of whether to keep the hardware costs low in exchange for high development costs, a protracted development schedule, and two standing armies for two very different vehicles. In my mind, it just doesn't compute.

EDIT: I overstated the ISS reliance on the shuttle for resupply. Since 2001, the shuttle has delivered an average of one MPLM to ISS per year. Nevertheless, the current schedule of sending an ATV every 17 months does not equal flying an MPLM once per year.

DIRECTly Seeing the Light

2008-06-22T12:00:00.000-07:00

It appears that Mark Whittington is warming to the DIRECT approach for shuttle-derived heavy lift. I take this as a sign that the current ESAS plan, with all of the major revisions that have been made between Fall 2005 and now, is losing support amongst space enthusiasts and amongst technically-inclined observers outside the halls of NASA.

I've always been conflicted between DIRECT and an EELV-based approach to space exploration, from a technical standpoint. I like the free-market approach taken with launching crew on a wide-bodied Atlas, and launching cargo on a cluster of wide-bodied Atlas cores. But DIRECT lives up to its name in terms of being quick to develop and test, and it's markedly efficient at the politically-driven goal of preserving the (inefficient) shuttle infrastructure and jobs.

In a recent post, I discussed the weight issues associated with Ares V (probably to be renamed Ares VI if the extra RS-68 engine is slipped in.) The rocket is growing to address performance shortfalls, but it has become too heavy for the existing crawlers, too heavy for the existing launch pad, and too heavy for the hard stand on which the mobile launcher sits. I suggested that NASA should have initially determined weight and size limits on their rocket, based on the existing infrastructure, and limited the weight and size of Ares V to fit within those requirements. If that rocket were insufficient to meet the lift requirements for Project Constellation, use two heavy-lifters instead of one heavy-lifter and one crew launcher.

In that case, the resulting heavy-lift rocket would probably look a lot like the Jupiter-232. But in the current political climate, it will probably not happen for a variety of reasons. For one, Mike Griffin's NASA didn't invent it. Will NASA be able to swallow its pride and accept an outsider proposal? Probably not, at least not under the current leadership. Secondly, DIRECT is a modern update of the Martin "New Launch System" proposal, done by a small group of industry outsiders and assisted by NASA employees working off-the-clock. If there is to be any honest, technical discussion about the merits of DIRECT versus ESAS, the NASA "traitors" who assisted the DIRECT team will need immunity. Finally, DIRECT doesn't rely on five-segment SRB's, which will deny billions of R&D dollars to ATK.

At the same time, it's clear that "A Change is Gonna Come," to quote Sam Cooke. The current architecture is not viable politically, fiscally, or technically. Mike Griffin, by his own admission, is done when the Bush Administration leaves office. The next president, regardless of party, will be under tremendous political pressure to save shuttle jobs. It would not be a stretch for the incoming NASA administrator to order a 60- or 90-day study of existing launch plans. At the end of the study, the new administrator would announce that NASA has "refined" its launch vehicle concept, whether it be Ares II/III (renamed Jupiter 120/232) or Shuttle-C for cargo plus EELV's for crew launch.

DIRECT is admittedly not the perfect solution to the problems of shuttle-derived heavy lift. Modifications will still be required at the launchpad and on the shuttle's fixed service structure, although none of them will be as drastic as what's currently in store for Ares V. The upper stage of Jupiter-232 is a question mark. Conceptually, it's a bigger version of the Centaur from Atlas V, with two J-2X engines in place of the RL-10A-4's. It remains to be seen how well the Centaur "balloon tank" concept will scale up (although the Jupiter upper stage will not be a purely pressure-stabilized design.) The problem once on-orbit is that the two J-2X's of the Jupiter upper stage have too much thrust to push the Orion-Altair stack without breaking the docking mechanism. There are many ways around this problem, such as throttling down the engines, or having Orion and Altair delay their docking until both have arrived in lunar orbit.

It's impossible to say what's going to become of ESAS, between the reported technical problems and the ever-shifting whims of Washington. But it's safe to say that if NASA can swallow its pride, the DIRECT guys have offered them an easy way out.

Flip-Flop

2008-06-20T23:45:00.001-07:00

The people who knew me in high school and college would probably not recognize me today. This statement is most true when it comes to space.

There was a time when I was enamored with all things space. It was a part of the action cartoons I grew up with as a child. It gave me something to be awed by, and something to strive for, as I progressed through my education. I became a hardcore devotee of Robert Zubrin and his Mars obsession. I wholeheartedly embraced the Von Braun-ian vision of bold, nationalistic space programs that brought glory to the state.

Then a funny thing happened along the way: I started to work in the MilSpace community. And I quickly learned to hate everything about it. Not only did I learn to hate the military-industrial complex, but I quit being fascinated with space. It just seemed to me that there are too many priorities that need to be dealt with before space can be addressed. I viewed this priority shift in terms of pulling the federal government back from space, and from pulling myself back from space so I can focus on things in life which I now view to be more important.

I still have tremendous faith in the private sector. I wholeheartedly support the desires and pursuits of individuals who seek to explore space using their own money. But I no longer see manned spaceflight as an appropriate realm for NASA or for any federal government agency. I don't believe that taxpayer dollars should be used to enable some cocky fighter-jock's joyride beyond the atmosphere.

I believe that space will inevitably be explored once a commercial rationale exists do do so, or if there is an essential national defense need that can only be filled through space assets. Frankly, the justifications I've seen behind some MilSpace programs truly stretch the bounds of what could be considered a legitimate "national defense" need. I speak from the perspective that every national defense dollar wasted on extraneous space assets is a dollar that could be spent on ensuring that our armed forces have the best armaments, armor, and vehicles for the current conflicts in which we're engaged.

When I started this blog, I was still a committed believer in NASA, the Air Force, MilSpace, and the Von Braun-ian vision of nationalist glory. If you pay close attention to my old posts, you might be able to pinpoint the period in which I became the bitter, jaded individual I am today. It wasn't simply the realization that ESAS was an untenable plan for getting back to the Moon on the current budget, and it wasn't solely the increasing dissatisfaction I've had with being a pawn of MilSpace. But I think the confluence of both facts can probably explain it.

So now I've traveled full-circle, from Space Cheerleader to Space Critic. Feel free to call me a flip-flopper. You have my permission to dismiss me as bitter and my opinions as irrelevant.

Staging Strategies

2008-06-17T20:48:00.000-07:00

In comparing Ares V to its spiritual predecessor, Saturn V, the difference between the two main staging methods becomes apparent. Saturn V was a three-stage vehicle, with each staging event occurring in serial. Ares V will be a "2.5 stage" vehicle, with one of the two staging events occurring in parallel.

Each approach to staging has its ups and downs. In brief, the staging comparison can be summed up thusly:

Serial staging:
++Most effective shedding of unused tankage mass
++More situations for a survivable abort
--Taller vehicle
--No way to verify that upper-stage engines work prior to staging-event

Parallel Staging:
++Shorter vehicle
++Confidence that engines work at liftoff; no ignition event during staging
--Less efficient shedding of unused tankage mass
--Problems in one parallel stage tend to quickly snowball into problems affecting the entire vehicle

I wanted to expound on these differences in a little bit of detail. Consider the difference in staging events between Saturn V and Ares V. On Saturn, the stages would burn out and drop off in succession. All of the tankage and structure associated with Stage 1 was shed prior to Stage 2 ignition. On Ares V, there are really three stages. The first stage consists of the SRB's and all of the core propellant that is burned during SRB-powered flight. The second stage is the remaining core propellant and structure. The third stage is the serially-staged Earth Departure Stage.

The inherent inefficiency of Ares V is that when the SRB's burn out, the core is unable to shed the remaining "first stage" mass: the portion of structural mass which would have contained the expended core propellants. When the SRB's drop off, Ares V is carrying a lot of dead weight along the way.

The same argument can be made ad nauseum about any rocket: it will be more efficient to have infinite drops of unused structural mass. But practical considerations, including complexity and reliability, limit most launchers to two or three stages. A simple optimization routine demonstrates that there is little more to be gained for every stage beyond three.

The other problem I really see with parallel staging is the ability for problems in one booster to grow into vehicle-threatening problems. The Challenger disaster is case in point: a fairly small amount of flame escaping through the aft O-Ring led to structural failure of the SRB attach strut, followed by structural failure of the external tank, followed by destruction of the orbiter by aerodynamic stresses.

The parallel staging argument actually works in favor of Ares I as a safer alternative to Delta IV Heavy for crew launch. If any of the three core boosters loses an engine, the vehicle is lost. There's no redundancy, since there's no propellant cross-feed system. (Besides, the loss of either outboard engine would probably make the vehicle uncontrollable.)

On the other hand, serially-staged vehicles have a potential safety advantage: if one of the lower stages leaves you a bit short on velocity, you merely ignite an upper stage engine to abort. Saturn V had several abort modes which relied on the third-stage engine or the Spacecraft Propulsion System. I'd assume that Ares I would also be capable of an abort using the Orion main engine.

With all this being said, it should be asked if any of these lessons can be applied to Ares V. The answer is "yes," but only if NASA is willing to sacrifice schedule and admit that there were mistakes in the previous course of action. As it stands, Ares V is taller, heavier, and possessesmore thrust than Saturn V. Yet the performance isn't appreciably better (depending on who you listen to for the Saturn V's performance.) It might be possible for Ares V to get by on a smaller core and carry additional propellant in a pair of drop tanks that would be drained during the SRB burn, and discarded during SRB staging. But this would add complexity to a very complex vehicle.

If Mike Griffin and company want to out-do Von Braun and his compatriots, they'd be wise to follow him more closely. Dump the SRB's entirely, and split the Ares V core into two serial stages. Stage 1 would use high-thrust LOX-Kerosene engines, while Stage 2 would be extremely similar in size, thrust, and Isp to the Saturn V second stage (complete with five J-2X engines.)

Building a new first stage similar to Saturn V's first stage will be challenging, but will probably be easier than when the Saturn V first stage was developed. The RD-171 engines currently available have slightly more thrust than the F-1, and significantly higher Isp. Another bonus is that the first stage has a fairly low staging velocity (around Mach 3,) so splashdown recovery might be feasible.

For all-out performance, I do have a preference for serial staging. And in looking upon the Saturn V, the genius of the Von Braun team becomes apparent with each passing day that today's NASA spends re-baselining the Ares V.

Liquid Courage

2008-06-10T19:52:00.000-07:00

When NASA adopted the Ares launch vehicles in its lunar mission strategy, it wedded itself to a new five-segment solid rocket being developed by ATK. That fateful decision from three years ago has created particularly thorny challenges for NASA. Much effort is being spent on mitigating thrust oscillations on Ares I, while Ares V may necessitate building another new SRB with 5.5 segments.

It would have been worth asking whether a liquid-fuel booster would be a better choice than the new solid rocket. The most deceitful sales pitch behind ESAS is that the SRB was "shuttle derived." The truth is that any change in the dimensions of a solid rocket is non-trivial. As for liquid-fuel boosters, changes in length are comparatively easy (while changes in diameter involve somewhat more cost, schedule and risk, but are not unheard of. After all, the Saturn I upper stage was lengthened, widened, and re-engined to form the upper stage on the Saturn IB and Saturn V.)

What if a widened Atlas core, using two RD-180's, replaced the five-segment SRB in NASA's plans? For starters, crew launch could be accomplished with commercially-purchased Atlases using a widened Centaur-derived upper stage and minimal modifications at the Cape's LC-41. The new boosters could then be applied to Ares V, and stretched or shortened as mission needs would dictate.

Liquid fuels will always possess certain advantages over their solid brethren. The LOX-kerosene combination has better specific impulse, lower structural mass requirements, and lower density than solid propellants like the ones on the shuttle. The result is a more voluminous booster for the same mission, but one that weighs less.

The weight consideration is an important one. The behemoth Ares V weighs so much that new "super-transporters" will be built to replace the 40+ year old crawlers which transport the shuttle to the pad. The super-transporters will not come cheap. My personal preference would be placing a gross weight restriction on Ares V that would fall within the limits of the current crawlers. I would also use two Ares V's per mission, to get around the performance limitations on a smaller Ares V.

No design trade is without its drawbacks, and the Achilles Heel of liquid boosters is the limited thrust when compared to solids. It takes roughly 5.5 RD-180 engines to match the thrust of the Shuttle's two SRB's (and the new Ares SRB will have even more thrust than the Shuttle SRB.) It can reasonably be expected that three or four evolved Atlases would be necessary to replace the two SRB's in Ares V. More boosters leads to higher failure rates (even if the RD-180 pairs are replaced with RD-171's, which are functionally equivalent but possess fewer parts than the RD-180 pair.) There's a good reason why the Soviets needed four liquid boosters on their Energia-Buran shuttle system, with each booster powered by a single RD-170 (functionally equivalent to the RD-171 or two RD-180's.) The only upside is that the lower liftoff mass will mean that less thrust is needed. Still, it's not enough of an offset to get away with only two boosters for the payload masses that NASA wants.

The solid-liquid trade study is one that couldn't have been adequately analyzed during the 60 days of the ESAS study, and will likely end up as an interesting footnote in the Ares story. The question is whether the Ares story will fall into the genre of historical nonfiction, or fantasy and tragedy. If the latter is true, perhaps liquids were the answer after all. But the decision to not cap the weight of Ares V (even at the expense of payload) is one that taxpayers shouldn't forget if the massive rocket, and its shiny new infrastructure, ever get off the drawing board.

POST SCRIPT: It just so happens that the Delta IV core, at just over 5 meters in diameter, is almost exactly as wide as the SRB's aft skirt. The wide-bodied Atlas will be slightly bigger at 5.4 meters. The SRB cutouts on the mobile launch pad would seem like an ideal fit for EELV-derived boosters. But they will likely need to be moved farther out from the center of the pad, as there's only seven meters separation between the two.

Two Ways to CRATS

2008-05-12T20:50:00.001-07:00

This month, movie fans eagerly anticipate the revival of the beloved Indiana Jones movie franchise from the 80's. But within the halls of NASA, the only 80's movie franchise that's relevant is Back to the Future. In the view of some space policy commentators, the return to capsules and expendable rockets is a step backwards. Of course, to view the return to capsules & expendables as a step backwards implies that shuttle was a step in the right direction, albeit a small step.

Last week, Charles Miller & Jeff Foust wrote about an initiative to create Cheap, Reliable Access to Space, or CRATS for short. In many ways, it appears that any ambitious plans on the part of NASA's manned space program are severely curtailed by our lack of access to CRATS.

Companies like SpaceX, SpaceDev and United Launch Alliance are taking steps towards CRATS with plans for manned, commercial launches on Falcon 9 (with Dragon capsule) or Atlas V (with DreamChaser lifting body.) But expendable rockets are only marginally capable of meeting the requirements of CRATS. The ability to launch on demand is non-existent, and there will always be inherent safety advantages from the reuse of hardware.

There are two ways ahead for developing a truly reusable spacecraft. One relies on the private sector, grows slowly and incrementally, and leverages the lessons learned from the first generation of space tourism. The other would be a Big Government enterprise, occur on a shorter schedule, and leverage lessons learned from the Space Shuttle.

The most lucrative future market in the space business during the next decade will be suborbital space tourism. SpaceShipTwo will lead the way. As prices inevitably drop, demand will increase. There will also be competition amongst spaceship vendors to improve the quality of the space tourism experience. Successors to SpaceShipTwo will literally fly higher and faster, offering space tourists more breathtaking views and longer periods of weightlessness.

During the development of the space tourism market, the industry will learn a lot of lessons about what's required to achieve quick turnaround on a manned spacecraft. There will also be an evolution as vehicles progress from speeds around Mach 3 all the way up to velocities which will tempt aerospace vendors to flirt with the idea of orbital flight.

The NASA-traditional, big-government approach to CRATS is to incrementally build off what currently works, rather than abandoning it to museums (as was shamefully done when Apollo shut down.) The Space Shuttle Main Engine and SRB's are far from perfect, but they do work. Why not wrap an aeroshell and wings around an external tank, mate it to two SRB's, and put a cluster of SSME's on the back end? Such a vehicle would require a lot of political will to develop, but it would probably be on a similar scale to the will required to pull off Ares V. It would also require less changes to the existing infrastructure at the Cape than the current Ares V plan. It could be sold to COngress as a better plan for retaining Shuttle jobs than the current Ares plan.

Along the way, such a "Shuttle II" could be subjected to incremental changes during the spiral development cycle. SSME's could be redesigned for higher reliability (possibly by switching to a simpler, lower-performance gas-generator cycle instead of staged combustion.) The SRB's could be replaced with liquid-fuel boosters. The idea is to build and test incrementally, incorporating lessons learned with each spiral.

"Shuttle II" could survive as a jobs-retention program, but it's really overkill as a tech demonstrator. If we really want an experimental demonstrator to teach us about quick turnarounds and reusability, why not dust off the X-33? The SSME could be substituted for the linear aerospike. If higher velocities are desired, two X-33's could be mated in tandem as a "bi-mese" launcher. The appealing thing about the X-33 idea is that the prototype is still in storage, and there is some support within the Air Force for bringing it back from the grave. If the Air Force kicked in a substantial amount of money to make it happen, I'm sure that NASA would take it.

It will be interesting to see if CRATS is ever achieved during my lifetime, and what approach will eventually win the day. The beauty of the private-sector approach is that the market will grow along with the growth in capabilities, ensuring that we don't end up with an orbital hangar-queen, lacking in meaningful payloads, at the end of the journey.

Among the Stars

2008-05-11T20:17:00.000-07:00

I was deeply saddened last night when I heard that astronaut Ronald Parise had passed away from this life into the next. I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Parise on multiple occasions. In some ways, he was a frequent visitor during the course of my higher education. I didn't come to appreciate all that he had given to the future generation of star voyagers until I found out that he had cancer.

Ron Parise took the celebrity out of being an astronaut, and that was a good thing. He understood what being an astronaut meant to the general public, and he realized that the stature of his position required a responsibility to serve the public good. In spite of the high-profile work he was involved in, he routinely made time to educate and inspire the students who will be continuing the journey that his generation of astronauts embarked on.

Godspeed, Ron Parise, and may your study of the stars continue in the next life.

(Obits can be found here and here.)

It Can Happen Here

2008-04-30T21:23:00.000-07:00

After reading Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism, I am starting to see how his arguments apply to the business of manned spaceflight and space launch. America's space program was born from the Cold War defense establishment, and for the foreseeable future it will remain a "fascist" space program.

Jonah Goldberg points out that most "fascist" societies share common traits: the mobilization of society under "the moral equivalent of war," the "coordination" of government and corporate power, and most importantly, "the religion of the state." All three traits are systemic to America's space program.

The glory days of NASA covered the period from Project Mercury in 1959 through the end of Project Apollo in 1975. As Tom Wolfe wrote in The Right Stuff, every manned spaceflight represented a round of "single combat" with the Soviets. It was the moral equivalent of war. Project Apollo served to mobilize American industry in a way that was surpassed only by the Manhattan Project.

Through Project Apollo, America dealt a severe blow to the Soviet Union in the greater Cold War. But in order to beat the Soviets, America had to become like the Soviet Union and beat them at their own game. Apollo was a crash program with no commercial application or opportunity for private-sector investment. Its goals were largely centered on national pride, or the religion of the state. After appeasing the gods of statolatry, Apollo was allowed to wither and die.

Fascism continues into the shuttle era. In order to justify the enormous expense of the space shuttle borne by the American taxpayers, and to get the flight rate up to levels which would make the vehicle economical, the shuttle was used to launch commercial payloads during its early years. The thought of a government-funded, government-operated vehicle launching commercial payloads should be anathema to freedom-loving Americans. But the shuttle served its need as "the moral equivalent of war." After all, the Russian efforts to duplicate the shuttle capabilities with Energia-Buran helped to bankrupt the Soviet Union. And the shuttle & space station continue to serve as symbols of national pride, promoting the religion of the state.

As the shuttle program winds down, Fascism will survive well into Project Constellation and possibly make its way to the moon again. The Ares-Orion stack is a prime example of "coordination" between the government and an oligarchy of large corporations. Every surviving aerospace giant gets a piece from the pork barrel. The worst offender is ATK, who is being paid hand-over-fist to produce an all-new solid booster that is the cornerstone of a horribly-suboptimized crew launcher. The line separating NASA and ATK grows fuzzier on a daily basis, as figures like Scott Horowitz continue to pass back-and-forth through the revolving door. Even Orbital Sciences gets a big handout in the form of a COTS prize to develop what's supposed to be a commercial launcher, Taurus II. And the official "state religion" within NASA is the dogma of Mike Griffin's "infallible, genius plan" for getting us back to the moon.

I'm not saying that these examples of fascism within the space program are all bad. For instance, the government subsidies of Atlas & Delta, and the eventual merger of their production, were necessary evils for ensuring DoD's continued space access. But unless there is a clear national-defense rationale, it's really hard to justify the continuing fascism within America's space efforts.

The writing is on the wall for the fascist space program. The news coming from Project Constellation is a continuing stream of schedule slips and budget shortfalls. The patience of Congress will not be infinite. At the same time, firms like SpaceX and Bigelow continue to develop not only commercial space vehicles, but commercial applications for said space vehicles. In time, the American space program will transition from fascism to freedom. And while freedom might not get us to the moon in the course of a decade, it can sustain itself much longer than six landings.

Separation Anxiety

2008-04-28T21:42:00.000-07:00

Jim Oberg has a great article on NASA Spaceflight regarding the technical problems that could have imperiled the crews of Soyuz TMA-10 and Soyuz TMA-11. It appears that consecutive Soyuz flights have suffered from off-nominal separation between the descent and propulsion modules, and off-nominal entries ensued.

An obvious course of action for NASA is to oversee the mishap review process and ensure that proper corrective actions are taken. Soyuz TMA-13 should not be launched until NASA is satisfied that the practices and systems which led to the problems on TMA-10 & 11 have been corrected.

A thornier situation is the fate of Soyuz TMA-12, currently docked to ISS. If the problems are truly common to all Soyuz spacecraft, can we expect the same dangerous reentry anomalies when TMA-12 returns to earth? Unless the Russians can conclusively demonstrate that TMA-12 is safe, NASA should plan on returning cosmonauts Volkov & Kononenko aboard the space shuttle during STS-126 this October or November. With all that is currently known, a re-entry aboard TMA-12 could jeopardize the crew. Then again, NASA has no obligation to save the bacon of cosmonauts who have been consigned to a risky re-entry by the Russian government.

Also slated to return aboard Soyuz TMA-12 is Richard "Lord British" Garriott, the computer game guru and son of astronaut Owen Garriott. As a paying Space-Adventurer, will Garriott balk at the prospect of coming home aboard TMA-12? Will the power of his dollars be able to get the Russians to reconsider their safety and quality-control practices?

The responsible thing would be to bump Garriott to TMA-14, and launch the rehabbed TMA-13 with a two-man crew. TMA-13 would replace the potentially-flawed TMA-12 at the ISS. TMA-12's crew would come home on the Space Shuttle. TMA-12 would be allowed to re-enter unmanned. This might be the only way to avoid a potential space disaster. While TMA-10 and 11 lucked out, it's foolish to rely on luck indefinitely.

Yet Another Reason to Mind the Gap

2008-04-22T17:08:00.000-07:00

Details are slowly starting to emerge about the harrowing ballistic re-entry of Soyuz TMA-11 this past weekend. There is speculation that the propulsion module failed to cleanly separate, resulting in a nose-first reentry. The result must have resulted in a very high pucker-factor for the cosmonaut, astronaut and space-adventurer involved (I hate the terms "space tourist" and "spaceflight participant.")

If the speculation is true, Soyuz TMA-11 suffered a failure similar to that on Soyuz 5. The risk to the crew would be exceptionally high, and their only saving grace is the fact that the descent module is made of alloys that are more heat-resistant than the materials which attach the propulsion module to the backside of the capsule. Additionally, the Soyuz capsule is natually stable and assumes the proper attitude for re-entry once the propulsion module is shed. One has to ask whether the Orion spacecraft will be able to survive a similar problem, at least on earth orbital missions (lunar reentries will be so fast that a crew would probably perish under similar circumstances.)

If the capsule truly did begin its re-entry in a hatch-forward attitude, the crew would immediately realize it and would be able to confirm the report. But it would seem that the crew is being muzzled for the time-being. It would appear that "glasnost" is a lesson that Russia's space agency is having a hard time learning.

Regardless of whether the re-entry was hatch-first, the problems on Soyuz TMA-11 serve as a reminder that Soyuz is far from perfect. Despite 41 years of flight history, there will always be some faults. We can always do better. And if we can get a better spacecraft into service, we should implement it as soon as feasible.

For that reason, does it make any sense that we will be waiting until at least 2015 before Orion is ready as America's next spacecraft? Five years of exclusive Soyuz access to space is a sobering thought indeed. We'd better hope that SpaceX comes to the rescue before we resort to that.

An Airman's Last Full Measure

2008-04-16T22:46:00.000-07:00

Today we honored the life of Staff Sergeant Travis Griffin, the second Kirtland Airman to have given his life in the past month during the course of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

I did not know SSgt Griffin, but I felt that attending the memorial was a means to start learning about a great Airman and a great person whom I should have known. His selflessness was exhibited by the fact that he had served three prior tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan prior to his final deployment, scheduled to last 365 days. He always wanted to ride in the lead vehicle in the patrol; when he was recuperating from the wound which resulted in his first Purple Heart, his only regret was not being able to patrol with his men.

Staff Sergeant Griffin's personal motto was "Don't sweat the small stuff." His corollary to the motto was "Everything is small stuff." He never lost his perspective on the big picture; he never lost his sense of humor; and most importantly, he never lost his intensity for training the future security forces in both the US Air Force and Iraqi Police.

Tonight we pray for the Lord's strength and blessings to be with SSgt Griffin's widow and son. May their comfort come in knowing that SSgt Griffin had no regrets about his service, gave every ounce of his soul for his nation, and made a lasting impact on the world up to his final moments on this earth.

Downsizing workforces for Bigger Rockets

2008-04-01T22:48:00.000-07:00

NASA expects to lose 8,600 jobs after the Shuttle is retired in 2010. Kennedy Space Center will feel the brunt of the impact, losing 6,400 employees. An initial assessment would make this development seem devastating. But it might not be as much of a disaster as we might think.

The current Space Shuttle System relies on an orbiter, Space Shuttle Main Engines, external tank, and solid rocket boosters. If Project Constellation comes to fruition, the orbiter will be replaced by Orion and Altair spacecraft; Space Shuttle Main Engines will be replaced with RS-68 and J-2X engines; the external tank will be replaced by the Ares I upper stage, Earth Departure Stage, and the mammoth Ares V core; the solid rocket booster workforce will remain largely unchanged.

The Constellation architecture has more elements to it, but the number of personnel needed at the Cape to support them decreases. It cannot be forgotten that the orbiters and their main engines are maintenance-hogs that are extremely manpower-intensive. But for expendable launchers like Ares (if you neglect the SRB's,) a larger fraction of the total workforce is devoted to production of the expendable components.

The NASA estimates of job losses only cover the projections from now through Fiscal Year 2014. During that frame of time, production of external tanks will come to a halt; Orion capsules will be produced at a pace that will support two missions per year; Ares I upper stages and J-2X engines will be produced at a similar rate; the shuttle orbiters will head off to museums. NASA faces the potential of a damaging brain-drain in the period between the final shuttle flight and the ramp-up of the Ares V program.

Fear not, fans of big government space programs, earmarks, and pork-barrel spending. The jobs will be coming back to Kennedy Space Center, Michoud and elsewhere. Ares V will require NASA's employment numbers to ramp up to levels similar to the shuttle program. The problem is that Ares V won't ramp up until the second half of the next decade, and neither Ares V nor Altair will fly until 2018 at the earliest. NASA's challenge will be ramping up its workforce to support Ares V and Altair (or finding ways of keeping people on their payroll and keeping their skills sharp during the gap between Shuttle retirement and Ares V ramp-up.)

Many of the job losses will likely be offset through retirements (both scheduled retirements and early buy-outs.) The aerospace industry as a whole is older than many other industries. Younger engineers are increasingly drawn into other industries because aerospace careers have a dimmer outlook than, say, careers in software or consumer electronics. It makes for an easier downsizing process, but the "graybeards" and their institutional knowledge will be sorely missed.

Another safety concern arises when discussing layoffs in the shuttle program. As it draws to a close, how do you keep skilled people from jumping ship? Obviously, you want the best people working on the shuttle to ensure that we don't get anybody killed in another accident. But if they see no future for themselves and if they view it as career suicide, where's the incentive for them to stay aboard?

Now that we've taken a glance at the workforce issues facing Project Constellation, we have to ask if things would be any better under a competing architecture. If NASA had adopted DIRECT instead, I think the situation would play out thusly:
--A fairly constant employment level would be maintained at Michoud. The transition from Shuttle external tanks to Jupiter cores would be seamless. As Jupiter upper stages went into production, there would be a spike in employment numbers, but nowhere as high as the Constellation scenario where Ares cores, upper stages, and EDS's are rolling off the line at the same time.
--Kennedy Space Center employment numbers would be somewhat less than under Constellation. There would still be a loss of personnel after the orbiter retirement. The number of unique stages (Jupiter upper stage & core vs. Ares core, upper stage & EDS) is lower and the stages are smaller, so less personnel would likely be needed.

The difference in employment strategies between DIRECT and Constellation is stark. DIRECT would retain a higher fraction of the shuttle workforce immediately after orbiter retirement, but would not add too many jobs over the long haul. Constellation gets hammered with job losses early on, but then brings a lot of people aboard once the post-shuttle gap is closed.

Considerations on Mars Sample Return

2008-03-31T20:29:00.000-07:00

Taylor Dinerman notes that NASA will attempt a robotic Mars Sample Return (MSR) by the end of the next decade (presumably between 2018 and 2020, depending on when the launch window opens and whether opposition-class or conjunction-class missions are chosen.)

Returning Mars rocks to Earth has always been viewed as the "holy grail" of unmanned, planetary science missions. But the challenges involved in doing so have necessitated a big budget and lengthy schedule for the mission, in comparison with other probes. Before the failures of Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander in 1999, a Sample Return was tentatively scheduled for 2011.

The number of design trades in the Mars Sample Return mission is astounding. For instance, consider the following:
--Do you have a separate lander and orbiter, or will the entire craft descend to the surface of Mars?
--If the craft separates into a lander and orbiter, will the two travel to Mars mated to each other, or will they be delivered by two separate launchers?
--Will the ascent stage of the lander be launched from earth fully-fueled, carrying hypergolic propellants? Or will it produce some or all of its fuel from the Martian atmosphere, as Bob Zubrin has suggested?
--Will the lander collect samples from just its landing site, or will it have at least one rover for collecting samples at different locations?
--If the ascent stage has to rendezvous with an orbiting stage that will return the samples to earth, how will the samples be transferred autonomously from the ascent stage to the orbiter?
--Will the Sample Return Capsule be recovered at sea, on land, or snatched from the air? What measures will be taken to quarantine the samples?

The functionality and complexity of the Mars Sample Return mission will be dictated by the capabilities of the launcher that is baselined for the mission. While Ares I or Ares V might be available by the time MSR launches, the conservative engineer and program manager will baseline a vehicle that exists in hardware form today, with a well-characterized vibrational profile and established performance levels. The only vehicle up to the task is Delta IV Heavy. And while it's tempting to launch two 22-tonne spacecraft and have them rendezvous after reaching Mars (such as an orbiter and lander pair,) conservative engineering practices would frown on making such a rendezvous so far away from earth (at least for initial missions.) Thus, I would not budget any more than 22 metric tons for the spacecraft and its earth departure stage on an initial Mars Sample Return mission. This would appear to rule out a separate rover on the first MSR.

Because MSR is so far into the future, NASA needs a proactive strategy for keeping Delta IV Heavy in production by the time MSR reaches hardware stage. Because Delta IV and Atlas V have common spacecraft interfaces, it might be possible to switch to an Atlas variant (either Atlas V Heavy or wide-bodied Atlas) if United Launch Alliance switches to an all-Atlas fleet. But doing so will also change the vibe profile, potentially affecting the spacecraft.

Beyond the fundamental challenges of mission architecture, there is the issue of how much MSR will demonstrate technologies essential to a human Mars mission. I see great potential for using the Sabatier reaction to produce ascent and Mars-departure propellant. But until the Sabatier reactor is proven in a relevant environment, there's no way the taxpayers will invest in a Mars mission (even an unmanned one) that relies on an unproven technology for mission success. In order for the Sabatier reactor to fly on MSR, it must be tested as an experiment on a near-term Mars mission. This was the plan for the Mars Surveyor 2001, before it was canceled and re-scoped as Phoenix. But here's a novel idea: why not test a Sabatier reactor as part of a Mars rover that could be put into hibernation and then re-activated to collect samples for MSR? It's a possibility, if the rover can be built robustly enough to survive an extended hibernation.

MSR is going to be a costly and expensive mission to pull off. It will be virtually impossible to pull off (and thus a waste of taxpayer money) if NASA takes risky gambles with immature systems. The extreme conservatism in design that the mission demands will probably result in an underwhelming science return for the cost of the mission. From a scientific standpoint, it might be more worthwhile to perform experiments in-situ on Martian soil. From an engineering standpoint, MSR will be a valuable step towards sending real scientists to Mars in the future.

Broken Acquisition

2008-03-29T20:35:00.000-07:00

I was reading a blurb on StrategyPage the other day which claimed that the "B-3 bomber" was being developed in secret, much like how the B-2's development was highly classified. While I've seen no evidence to corroborate the claims of StrategyPage, it did make me think about the words of an AFRL Captain during a recent meeting: the acquisition system is broken. It can be said, somewhat facetiously, that the next bomber will be obsolete by the time its protracted development is completed, and it will take the entire Gross Domestic Product of this great nation to afford just one copy of the next bomber.

The stark reality of the situation is that any new-start program is going to be a protracted and expensive development. In order to ensure that the program achieves an Initial Operational Capability at a reasonable date, the people determining the mission requirements will need incredible foresight to determine relevant mission requirements for a program that may be two decades away from seeing service.

Gone are the glory days when a fighter plane like the P-51 Mustang could move from design stage to first flight in 120 days. The current example is the F-22 Raptor, which took six years to move from source selection to first flight, and another eight years between first flight and IOC. There can be no doubt that the complexity of combat systems has grown exponentially. As long as the US Military insists on purchasing the most complex combat systems that money can buy, every new development will be lengthy and expensive.

There is a good argument to be made in favor of bucking the complexity trend. For example, the F-22 Raptor, at a cost of >$120 million per copy, has enough missiles to engage eight enemy fighters. It doesn't take a genius to see that an enemy can find nine cheap fighters and nine suicidal pilots (for less than the cost of a single F-22) and win the dogfight through lopsided numerical superiority.

The argument against complexity is the reason why the F-16 was conceived in the first place. Because the F-15 Eagle was so expensive (for its time,) it was conceived that a smaller and simpler fighter could complement the expensive F-15. The F-16, by contrast, was envisioned as a no-frills, lightweight fighter that would drop unguided bombs in the daytime and defend itself with short-range missiles. The problem is that the Air Force did not stay true to the original F-16 concept. The airframe was burdened with long-range missiles like AMRAAM, and avionics that enabled the F-16 to drop guided weapons during all weather types and all times of day. The avionics alone account for over 90% of the cost to manufacture a modern fighter aircraft, and they also consume a significant portion of the development cost and schedule.

As long as we insist on purchasing complex combat systems, Congress will have to realize that new-start developments can only be justified if they are amortized over a long production run. Naval acquisition, long held up as the poster-child for the broken DoD acquisition system, has several recent examples of uneconomical developments.

The Seawolf-class submarine was conceived in the 1980's as the ultimate boat for autonomously tracking and killing Soviet subs. When the Cold War ended, the Seawolf class was capped at just three boats. The Virginia class submarine was then launched as a smaller, stealthier boat that was more relevant to modern warfare. The problem is that the Virginia class consumed even more development dollars, and the cost per boat is actually more expensive than the Seawolf-class sub.

The DDG-1000 Zumwalt-class destroyer is another example. It's a hugely-expensive program that may be capped at just two ships, in favor of continued production of the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers.

The US Air Force recently suffered the most expensive plane crash in history, losing one of its 21 B-2 bombers after an engine failure on takeoff. The B-2 was so expensive because its development budget was justified by a planned purchase of 132 aircraft. When the total buy was reduced to just 21 airframes, the development costs made up a large fraction of each example's total cost. While the Soviet threat evaporated, continued production of the B-2 still made sense, for no other reason than to amortize development costs while creating replacements for elderly B-52's.

Because new-start programs are so slow and expensive, there's been a recent trend towards modifying existing airframes to meet the needs of new missions. The KC-45 tanker is a good example of this, relying on the Airbus A330 as a starting point. While a point-design tanker (likely based on the Boeing Blended Wing Body concept) would be best for the warfighter, the KC-45 promises to get a mission-capable product to the field in a shorter amount of time for a lot less money. But there are other times when modifying existing airframes isn't such a good idea, especially when requirements creep threatens to make the program much more expensive (the VH-71 presidential helicopter immediately comes to mind.)

Unless the military acquisition community takes an active approach to fighting the growing complexity of combat systems, the acquisition business will continue to be broken. And unless Congress and the budgeteers start to realize that massive development budgets for new-start programs can only be justified by lengthy production runs, every copy of a major combat system will be a hugely-expensive machine.

It Could Always Be Worse

2008-03-20T14:34:00.000-07:00

For ESAS critics such as myself, it's easy to lose perspective on things. While NASA's plan for returning to the moon is far from perfect, it could always be worse. Much worse, in fact.

Our biggest gripe lies not with the fact that NASA wants to put humans on the moon. That fact alone should excite us. But we've been here before with Space Exploration Initiative and other stillborn dreams of human spaceflight that NASA has peddled. The ESAS critics are afraid that the Vision for Space Exploration is unaffordable, and will soon be confined to the dustbin of history.

It would seem that, in some sectors, the response to Ares I vibration issues is almost gleeful. While I've never bought into Mike Griffin's absurd claims of the problem being a "mountain made out of a molehill," I could never accept that this problem would kill Ares I's development. It now appears that solutions have been identified, although they will cut into the vehicle's tight performance margins.

In the past I have been critical of forcing the Altair lander to perform the Lunar Orbit Insertion burn, and I have questioned the applicability of the ESAS architecture to a future lunar base. But now I stand with egg on my face, as I realize that the baseline Altair descent stage is totally appropriate for unmanned cargo landers to support a moonbase.

The Altair lander is different from Apollo, but Apollo wasn't perfect either. Contrast this with plans for an Apollo LM Shelter, LM Truck, and LM Taxi, which would require a redundant Apollo spacecraft to fly along and provide the LOI burn. The NASA team might not have a good way of explaining their plans to the public, but they have a plan nonetheless.

There can be no doubt that Ares I will be a lengthy and expensive development which offers little advantage over Heavy EELV's. But there are political reasons why government-funded manned spaceflight will not utilize them. As a libertarian believer in fiscal conservatism, I have no problem with laying off the majority of the shuttle employees as that program winds down. They are talented people who will have no problem finding work in space-related fields.

But in the real world, Ayn Rand's heroes could never win a popular election; the real world is run by incorrigible characters like Jim Taggart and Wesley Mouch. The thought of cutting NASA's overhead (the shuttle standing army) is political suicide for elected officials in Florida, Texas and Louisiana. As a federal jobs program, Ares I fills its role very nicely.

In theory, Ares I should be safer than a Heavy EELV. That could play a critical role in keeping Project Constellation going. Can you imagine the Congressional pressure to kill the program if a crew is lost? While the crew launch segment is but a small part of the total mission risk, every reduction in risk does help to forestall the day when Congress pulls the plug.

While I like the idea of coming up with a wide-bodied Atlas for human spaceflight, the idea will only come to fruition when there is a market demand for it. United Launch Alliance will have to convince investors like Bob Bigelow that money can be made off the relatively-modest investment that an evolved Atlas would require. If ULA goes to the government with their hats-in-hand asking for Project Constellation money, they will have become little better than the scoundrels at ATK.

ESAS is Mike Griffin, and ESAS will be the law of the land as long as Mike Griffin is calling the shots at NASA. While there are plenty of alternatives that are better than ESAS on both technical and budgetary grounds, I think the politics of the situation will force us into a choice between ESAS and Nothing At All.

Folded Hands for Folded Wings

2008-03-18T21:11:00.000-07:00

During the course of America's battles for Afghanistan and Iraq, I've had friends deploy to the Area of Responsibility, friends who are currently deployed there (one of whom just volunteered for a 6-month extension,) and friends who are preparing to deploy. I have been fortunate in that, until today, I have never had to attend a memorial service.

Two weeks ago, Team Kirtland suffered its first loss during the terror wars. Staff Sergeant Christopher Frost, a public affairs NCO, perished along with seven airmen of the Iraqi Air Force when their helicopter crashed in a dust storm. I did not know SSgt Frost personally, but I wanted to make an effort to know a man who wore his uniform with pride and went about his job with great zeal, touching lots of people in the process.

Chris Frost cared about his mission and believed in his purpose when he was deployed to Iraq. He recognized the sacrifices being made by the Iraqi people in rebuilding a nation that has known nothing but continual warfare for longer than he or I have been alive. It is telling that on his final mission, he was the sole American traveling aboard the Iraqi Air Force Mi-17 helicopter, trying to tell the story of Iraq's fledgling Air Force.

Losing a young man in a freak accident of that nature is never easy to accept. The people who wear the uniform put themselves at great risk, even if they aren't dodging bullets on a daily basis, and even if they aren't deployed to the Area of Responsibility. We must go through life with the goal of making the most of each day we are given. We never know when our number is going to be called.

My heart is a bit heavier knowing that SSgt Frost is no longer with us to share his humor and zeal. We can only pray for the family he leaves behind, and hope that his children will be able to grow up proud of all that their father accomplished during a life that was too short but lived to the utmost.

Was X-33 Really Such a Bad Idea?

2008-03-06T16:39:00.001-08:00

I really don't even know what motivates me to post this, as X-33 is a long-dead program that hasn't held the industry on the edge of its seat in almost a decade. Yet the fact that the X-33 hardware is allegedly still in storage shows that, to some people, the concept still carries great hope.

Most observers of X-33 realize that the program was trying to accomplish too many test objectives, including:
--Metallic thermal protection systems
--Lifting Body aerodynamics and control
--Linear Aerospike engines for propulsion and steering
--Composite, multi-lobed cryogenic pressure vessels
--Rapid turnaround
--Autonomous runway landing
--On-board health management avionics

In hindsight, not all of the X-33 technologies turned out well. The aerospikes came in too heavy, and supposedly didn't meet their performance objectives during test firings. The composite hydrogen tanks proved difficult to construct without flaws, and failed their testing.

X-33's most glaring problem was the way it was grossly oversold. Lockheed Martin pitched the fantasy of VentureStar, twice as long as X-33 and over twice as fast--enough to achieve orbit without staging. Or so the fantasy went. Any aeronautical engineer could see through the ruse of the LockMart Public Relations machine and its blatant disregard for the laws of physics. But apparently it was enough to sway NASA into staking its hopes for replacing the shuttle on the mantle of X-33.

It's interesting to think about what would happen if X-33 was de-scoped early in the program. What if metallic propellant tanks were baselined from the beginning, rather than after the hydrogen tank failed? What if a conventional, off-the-shelf rocket engine were used? If these decisions had been made differently, it's possible that X-33 could have flown, and achieved a velocity sufficient to test the innovative Goodrich-developed heat shield (around Mach 12.) It's also possible that the repeated flights of X-33 would have taught us a lot about what is required to rapidly turn around and re-fly a spacecraft.

To be fair, there weren't a lot of choices for alternate engines on X-33. The Space Shuttle Main Engine was probably the best choice. Its vacuum performance was higher than that of the aerospike, but it's a finicky engine due to the complex staged-cycle combustion. Another option would have been the Ariane 5's Vulcain. Similar to the old J-2 in terms of thrust and specific impulse, it would be perfect for Ares I's upper stage (if only it was capable of air-start.) But the Vulcain wasn't designed for reusability, so it's uncertain if the engine would have been useful for the X-33.

So let's imagine for a minute that the X-33, after some moderate descoping, worked as advertised. It achieved a reasonable flight rate and performed successfully. What would be the next step towards replacing the shuttle and having a truly reusable launch vehicle? Forget about the VentureStar delusion and think about the possibility of strapping two or three X-33's together in a parallel configuration. Such a vehicle could probably make it to orbit with a usable payload. It probably wouldn't come close to being a shuttle replacement, but it would allow NASA (likely using the Air Force as a partner and end-user in development of this vehicle) to gain valuable experience with development and operations of a truly reusable spacecraft.

In a situation where two or three X-33's (or any bimese/trimese boosters) are flown in parallel, it is likely that the stack would lift off with all engines at max thrust, followed by throttle-down on the engines of the Stage 2 and Stage 3 boosters. A propellant cross-feed system might be employed, which would definitely add complexity to the system. When a booster would deplete its fuel, it could glide to a landing at a downrange airfield (depending on the chosen trajectory, burnout speed/altitude, and booster Lift/Drag ratio.) Because the X-33 was designed to be transported on a modified 747 (likely one of the two shuttle carriers,) recovering the boosters shouldn't be a problem.

But the "what if" questions about yesterday's choices fade away into the wispy clouds of memory. Instead, the Space Shuttle still flies; National Aerospace Plane, Shuttle II, DC-X, X-33, and Orbital Space Plane remain ideas whose promise was long ago discarded. And while the teams working on Ares and Orion might pride themselves on how far they've gotten, they need look no farther than the partially-assembled X-33 to realize how far along in the development cycle a program can go before it gets killed. The lesson is to determine what the requirements are, scope your program so it meets the thresholds with little risk, and never oversell what you're trying to do.