bernomatic wrote:In a way you are right, but what Elon Musk sees and you may not, is Jeff Bezos. There may be someone else also, I'm not sure. But the rich guys are playing now and NASA better watch out out be left in the dust. To these guys it's more than national pride, it's about self image. They know the other is working on getting out into space. They aren't going to let the other guy get there first and NASA be dammed.
Yeah, to an extent... but Bezos is YEARS away from flying ANYTHING beyond suborbital tourist hops for the ultra-rich, and SpaceX knows that... What SpaceX is talking about doing is WAY beyond anything that Bezos can do in the foreseeable future.
Now, Bezos has his own "ace in the hole", in that the Air Force has chosen his BE-4 methalox engine to replace the Russian RD-180 on Atlas V, and word is it's got the inside track for the "Vulcan" launcher beyond that (which is basically Atlas V Phase 2 proposal from years ago-- take the larger Delta IV tank size and reapportion it for heavier propellants (instead of the LH2/LOX used in Delta IV to feed it's RS-68) and top it off with an ACES hydrogen burning stage. Basically he's getting the Air Force to pay for his big engine development. That's smart, because at some point he'll be able to leapfrog SpaceX with the big engine. SpaceX will need Raptor and a larger successor to Merlin to compete at that point. Like I said, smart...
Sorta like the difference between the short term game and the long term game...
As for NASA, they have nobody to blame but themselves. All these studies I post, proves the point, that NASA has been "studying" the question over and over and over again since at least the mid-late 60's (how to do a Mars mission, or even a "permanent" presence on the Moon) and they keep getting the SAME ANSWERS, but they either 1) don't believe it, or 2) can't sell it (get it funded). SO, they keep looking for some "magic bullet" to solve their problems when it's basically a problem of funding... Of course, NASA HAD all the hardware to do Mars in 1972, but they CHOSE to throw in behind the Space Shuttle, thinking some golden age of cheap weekly spaceflight was just around the corner, and traded what they had in the bargain. Now 50 years later, the whopping mistake that was is plain for ALL to see...
What I don't understand is WHY NASA didn't build their own equivalent of Falcon 9 YEARS ago... if a "bunch of kids" (commercial new-space company) can do it, NASA SHOULD have had the technology and capability to do it themselves YEARS ago... If NASA had come out with their own version of Falcon 9 by 2010, we'd be having a VERY different discussion right now! Instead, NASA seems HOPELESSLY mired in the past, set on building a super-gigantic rocket out of super-expensive old shuttle parts that they'll have to build super-expensive new copies of once the existing stuff is gone (since it's being flown to destruction) and they don't even have any friggin' payloads or missions for it! Then, to top it all off, they're proceeding at a glacial pace that even an anemic snail with a toe fungus could outrun, and spending billions in the effort...
Elon and Bezos ARE passing them by... NASA is great about starting stuff, but never finishing it, then leaving it to gather dust on a shelf somewhere or, more recently, selling it off to wily investors... For instance, SpaceX's Merlin rocket engine got its start as a NASA experimental engine called "FASTRAC". RS-68 was basically NASA's design for a souped-up Space Transportation Main Engine originally proposed as part of the National Launch System (NLS) proposals after Challenger (which morphed into the Advanced Launch System (ALS) once the NLS program studies were terminated in the early 90s). NASA experimented and pioneered the design of inflatable habs in the 90's, shelved the technology before any flight demonstrators were built for lack of funding, and finally sold the technology to Bigelow, who is now selling the finished product back to NASA (and planning his own space hotels at some point). The study I just did this afternoon shows an RL-10 engined lunar lander designed to run on methane... which WAS ORIGINALLY the plan for Constellation for Orion's Service Module, but the methane engine didn't survive til the ink was dry. Now Bezos is building the BE-4 methane/propane powered engine... which will be a terrific big booster engine...
The "cutting edge" passed from NASA to industry a long time ago as well... most of the booster and propulsion innovators went to industry in the NASA 'brain drain' of the 70's and NASA never really has gotten that capability back. Thing is, they went to work for Lockheed and Boeing and Martin Marietta and North American/Rockwell and Thiokol ATK and the other big aerospace conglomerates who were providing the "commercial" services to NASA as contractors assembling what NASA sent them blueprints to build... which was basically the same-old same old... It took the Challenger disaster to 'shake the tree' enough to get the Air Force moving and get companies seriously looking at expendable vehicles again. The Air Force went back to "old reliable" (the Titan III and morphed it into Titan IV) but it proved just as expensive as shuttle, which is to say, ridiculously expensive, so they FINALLY put out for a new expendable launch vehicle, and started the EELV program. Atlas V and Delta IV were the winners. NOTE that NEITHER OF THEM were designed to use LARGE SRB's from the beginning! BOTH were designed around the common core LRB principle of strapping 3 identical cores together for the "heavy" configuration. If the AIR FORCE realized that large solid rockets were a huge reason for the expense of Titan IV and moved away from that, then WHY did NASA choose to stick with large solids which are INHERENTLY LIMITING to the program because they're NOT upgradeable or scalable... (not without HUGE expensive programs to build larger SRB's or totally change to different infrastructure). Delta IV got there first with the 3 core version, and Atlas's 3 core version was never built. LITTLE solid rocket boosters (monolithics) came in to "supplement" the capabilities of the rockets (as they did on Delta before and eventually Atlas, and I've seen plans for a Titan II with small solids like Delta II as well...)
Anyway, I REALLY hope that SpaceX can get Falcon Heavy up this year, and can get Dragon 2 flying with people, NASA or otherwise, in the near future (this year or next, most likely "next" from what I've been reading). It will REALLY shake things up and light a fire under some collective asses that have been sitting in the comfort zone for FAR too long...
As for SLS, I just don't see that thing being supportable for the long haul... It'd be about like buying, licensing, insuring, and buying fuel and a barn to store it, a brand new semi-truck, just because you haul your lawnmower over to your Grandmother's twice a year to cut her grass... and the rest of the time it sits. Just maintaining the CAPABILITY to crank out SLS's is going to cost a fortune, and only flying on every 2-3 years, well, that's going to get someone's bang/buck ratio meter off-scale low... If it DOES survive (on sheer inertia or because NOBODY in gubmint can imagine doing anything differently-- the shuttle mafia is VERY MUCH still in position, alive, and kicking!) I can't see it flying beyond what the existing SRB casings and SSME's will support. Supposedly there's enough shuttle hardware (SRB casings and SSME's) for six flights. I don't think it'll even last that long, myself... it's simply going to be too expensive. These things aren't like building cars, where when business is slow you just furlough everybody and send them home, shutter the plant, and wait for enough orders to build up to call everybody back, turn the lights on, and go back to making new cars (or rockets). Doesn't work that way. The shuttle "standdowns" in the wake of Challenger and Columbia cost HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of dollars to just keep the shuttle program ALIVE, even though they were flying *nothing* at the time! SLS is going to be that *times ten*... Sure, it's a smaller 'standing army' but you'll have Michoud cranking out a core every other year and Stennis testing a pair of SSME's a year and Thiokol cranking out a pair of SRB's every other year, etc. etc. etc. Sounds like a LOT of VERY EXPENSIVE "wrench polishing" to me and not much to show for it. All those guys will get paychecks every week whether they're building something or not... They'll still have to keep the lights on at all those places, still have to have guys working at KSC, whether they're assembling and launching one vehicle every 2-3 years or not, etc... all that COSTS BIG MONEY, for a rocket that basically has NO USE scheduled for it and NO PAYLOADS OR MISSIONS BUDGETED AND ALLOCATED for it... I just don't see that lasting very long... It'd be like GM keeping the Corvette factory open and everybody on the payroll and all the machinery in place just to crank out say 3 new Corvettes a year... how much do you think those cars would have to cost to pay for THAT?? Now imagine building one Corvette every THREE years, and having to make enough off it to pay for keeping the factory open and the employees paid all that time...
THAT is SLS.
IF SpaceX can get Falcon Heavy up, and crewed Dragon up and running successfully, I think it will go a LONG way to putting SLS and Orion out to pasture, especially once it becomes clear that 1) SLS/Orion is going to be BREATHTAKINGLY EXPENSIVE to maintain the capability to fly, 2) SLS/Orion, after well over a DECADE of development, STILL cannot perform any meaningful deep space missions without BILLIONS of dollars more and years (more like a decade) MORE development to produce an in-space propulsion stage, advanced composite SRB's, and probably a new second stage as well, and 3) NO such missions are even scheduled beyond tentative proposals, and 4) NO payloads have been budgeted or developed, which will require BILLIONS more in development and probably a decade to complete, test, and flight certify before any REAL missions can be done! Besides, as I mentioned before, NASA simply CANNOT afford to do *anything* exploration-wise AND continue the ISS program at the same time-- just as they never could develop a SHUTTLE SUCCESSOR while continuing to operate the shuttle program as well... (despite several efforts along those lines). Hell they couldn't even get major shuttle upgrades like advanced flyback LRB's or anything else for that matter... the best they ever managed was the super light weight tank (SLWT) program to cut excess weight out of the ET design by switching to aluminum-lithium alloy...
SLS block 1 really gets you basically *nothing* in and of itself... it meets the preliminary goal of a 70 tonne to orbit vehicle, but it STILL needs a dedicated in-space propulsion stage to perform any realistic missions... sure the Delta IV Upper Stage is serving as an "interim in space propulsion stage" but it's very limited-- a real in space stage needs longer loiter times (less boiloff of hydrogen) and more propulsive power and larger propellant tankage. Orion, unlike Apollo, was designed around a MUCH SMALLER and LESS CAPABLE service propulsion system (SPS) and simply DOES NOT have the capabilities that Apollo did, like braking itself into lunar orbit (LOI burn) and blasting itself back out of lunar orbit on course for Earth (TEI burn). It can do one or the other, NOT BOTH. It needs a STAGE or PAYLOAD with sufficient propulsion to brake it into lunar orbit... (which is why the Altair lander was SO friggin' big, harking back to the days of FLO-- because it braked the stack into LLO and then did powered descent and landing (PDL) on the Moon as well!) To get to SLS block 2, will take at least 2 MAJOR development programs-- advanced composite SRB's, and a full-on in-space propulsion stage, and most likely, a THIRD program for a large upper ascent to orbit propulsion "second stage" for SLS, basically like the S-II stage on Saturn V, in order to get to the full 130 tonne variant required for the advanced missions NASA has concocted for Mars, etc. PLUS, it STILL doesn't pay for payload development programs for habs, landers, EDL techology for manned spacecraft at Mars, advanced propulsion (NTR, etc) and power generation (nuclear surface power reactors) for Mars, rovers, etc. ALL those are extra programs that have to be funded... NASA basically has the hubcaps and the tires and just apparently is content to HOPE that the money for the REST OF THE CAR will be forthcoming... LOL:)
IF SpaceX, on the other hand, can get a 70 tonne SLS block-1 equivalent Falcon Heavy flying successfully, and by definition at a FRACTION of the cost of SLS, I think there's gonna be a LOT of uncomfortable questions asked, and SLS will end up being history. If they can "fulfill their contractual obligations" and get a crew to ISS, and then use their "spare capacity" to send a couple tourists around the Moon SUCCESSFULLY, then I think Orion will be well and truly dead. Even if nothing ever comes of it, and we settle for Falcon Heavy, I think eventually things will shift towards perhaps NASA settling for Orion on Falcon Heavy or something along those lines, and settle on a 70 tonne to orbit capability to construct their Mars mission plans around (and lunar plans if any, which IMHO is a necessary first step-- if we can't stay on the Moon for months at a time, how do we EVER think we'll stay on Mars for a year and a half at a time?) If NASA develops the technology to transfer cryogenic propellants in orbit (LOX/LH2), then a depot-based architecture presents itself and you only NEED 70 tonnes of launch capability, because you launch all your Mars mission spacecraft DRY of propellant and send up a tanker to refuel a depot that then fuels up your outbound ships. ANY rocket capable of launching propellant to orbit in a meaningful quantity can then support that infrastructure, so long as they can get to the depot with a load of fuel and the equipment necessary to dock with it and transfer it over. A depot can then support any number of missions to ANYWHERE... robotic outbound spacecraft to the outer planets and moons can refuel its hydrogen stage for the Earth departure, Mars ships, Moon ships, vehicles to Lagrange point stations, vehicles to go repair future space telescopes in solar orbit away from Earth, etc. It opens up the gates for you.
Later! OL J R