Commander wrote: ↑Wed, 05 Dec 18, 04:55 am
I would say it's about time. I had thought Mr. Musk was going to have a crewed lunar orbital mission by the end of this year. Of course I understand NASA may be slowing him down because they don't want to look like they (NASA) are the old man in the game, but if he wants to stay ahead of Mr. Bezos...
I think it's a case of, as Mr. Scott of the Enterprise would say, "making space plans is easy; actually doing it, that's hard..."
I'm sure NASA is anal 15 ways to Sunday on the Commercial Crew thing, and apparently they're in NO hurry whatsoever. Seems somewhat of a double-standard to me, seeing how NASA's ineptitude between "go fever" and ignoring substantial and repeated evidence of dangerous problems and occurrences on three occasions resulted in the death of 17 astronauts (between the Apollo 1 fire, Challenger, and Columbia). NOW they're super-anal about safety, now that it's somebody else in "the driver's seat"...
That, and of course from what I've read, the Congressvermin have only ever given the most grudging support to Commercial Crew... and then basically ONLY BECAUSE NASA is totally incapable of doing that job, and doesn't want to develop a spacecraft *simply* capable of operating as an "orbital taxi" because they realize that if and when they do, that's likely *ALL THEY'LL EVER GET*, just like with the shuttle... (remember, originally shuttle was to be a completely reusable first-stage and space plane combo, designed as transport to deliver materials and personnel to an orbiting space station constructed in space. The ink wasn't even dry on the shuttle order when basically the space station was sh!t-canned, and the shuttle flew alone with NO destination for decades... basically the idea didn't even resurface until Reagan's speech after Challenger in late 1986, leading to the aborted "Space Station Freedom" (which NASA designed and redesigned and re-redesigned several times, in response to aerospace contractor lobbying leading to gubmint tinkering and demands, and which of course was underfunded and YEARS behind schedule (originally proposed to be flying by 1990, in actuality SSF was still on the drawing boards after the Soviet collapse in 1991, and in 1992 it was retooled yet again and morphed into the "International Space Station" program when it was decided it was better to subsidize the former Soviet space program into rebuilding their mothballed "Mir 2" core into the Zarya 'service module' for ISS, rather than have them go to work for North Korea and other third world "axis of evil" countries developing ballistic missiles...)
And, "recent history" would tend to bear that out... Remember in the wake of Columbia when Bush 2 announced the "Space Exploration Initiative" (SEI) with the goal of "the Moon, Mars, and Beyond"?? Out of that grew the "Constellation Program" of Orion, Ares I, and Ares V, plus the Altair lunar lander, and the Prometheus nuclear power reactor for in-space applications, and the methane engine service module (which would have applications for propulsion for Mars ascent stages, using ISRU propellant produced on Mars via the Sabatier Process, ala Zubrin's "Mars Direct" proposal?? Of course the ink didn't even get dry on the orders before first Prometheus was scrapped, and then not long after, when NASA proved it was in over its head on Orion and Ares I development, let alone Ares V, the Altair lunar lander was cancelled as well... Which kind of negates the point of having a "Moon, Mars, and Beyond" program-- what use is it to have a rocket and capsule to get you there if you have no lander and no service module capable of even putting you into orbit, let alone get you down on the surface?? Which is why I consider all this SLS/Orion stuff so much make-work... it's the "shuttle derived" solution that keeps the former shuttle-mafia contractors happy, and the gubmint Congressvermin space wonks that control NASA's budget happy, but it's a bridge to nowhere, a super-expensive "capability" that will have enormous sustainment costs and yet is incapable and inflexible in its first iteration, without billions more in expenditure (for SLS Block 2) and another decade of development of a *real* service module, in-space propulsion stages, landers, habs, a new ascent stage, and of course additional all-new high-performance throw-away boosters for SLS's core stage... and NONE of this is funded... Yet without it, about all SLS/Orion is capable of is redoing the old Soviet lunar-flyby "Zond" missions of 1968, without even the capability of entering lunar orbit... only with guys in the capsule (which the Soviets didn't chance, and Apollo 8 raced across the finish line ahead of them). It's not even as ambitious or capable of a mission as Apollo 8, which actually entered lunar orbit and spent 10 orbits there (about a day), because Orion on SLS Block 1 doesn't have a service module or in-space stage capable of braking it into lunar orbit or accelerating it back out again...
For whatever reason, NASA doesn't seem too worried about getting its astronauts off of Soyuz and into Crew Dragon, CST-100, or whatever else. They seem perfectly content to keep sending them to Russia with a $72 million dollar a seat check for their tickets on Soyuz. I guess the Russian program, which is perpetually underfunded, is reliant upon that money, so if NASA is paying SpaceX and Boeing (ULA) to launch its astronauts to the station, they'll probably have to invent some sort of way to keep funding the Russian program anyway, for "essential services"... which, basically, IS TRUE... ISS *CANNOT* function without the Russian Zarya service module, and the Progress space freighter/tankers that supply it with propellant-- it is TOTALLY reliant upon Zarya for reboost of the station (because it's SO big and "fluffy" (surface area vs. mass), it experiences a lot of atmospheric drag that constantly lowers the orbit... without the Russian modules rocket engines "reboosting" the station to a higher orbit, fed by propellant delivered by the Russian "Progress" space tankers (in addition to their function as resupply freighters and, once emptied, acting as basically trash dumpsters for the station, burning up in the atmosphere afterwards). None of the other station resupply vehicles can provide that service... it's SOLELY reliant upon the Russian module and Progress... SpaceX's Dragon provides the UNIQUE capability of bringing down cargo as well as taking cargo up, both pressurized and unpressurized, but Orbital's "Cygnus" COTS resupply vehicle can only haul cargo up, and act as a trash dumpster for disposal in the atmosphere afterwards, burning up on reentry, since, like Progress, it has no heat shield... but unlike Progress, it's only capable of delivering supplies and water, NOT propellant for the reboost engines.
NASA *IS* the "old man in the game"... I had to laugh watching the last Soyuz launch coverage from Russia... after the liftoff on NASA TV, they had old Bill Gerstenmaier in his ushanka and coat commenting on the launch from the snowy steppes of Kazakhstan... he looked like some ancient relic of the Cold War... it's him and his ilk of "old men" that keep NASA tied down to the albatross of the shuttle and ISS, and the "shuttle derived solutions" and other 'backwards thinking' that exist not because of any good sense, but merely to tick off check boxes of political "requirements" from the old guard at NASA and their well-lobbied political masters among the Congressvermin...
The more things change, the more things stay the same... "Meet the new boss-- same as the old boss" as they used to say in the Soviet Union... LOL:)
SpaceX's Musk and Blue Origin's Bezos aren't directly competing anymore, from what I see... at least, not in the short term. Bezos has his hands full developing the BE-4 methane engine for the Air Force, which he got a contract to do to replace RD-180 on Atlas V... (which will be retooled as the "Vulcan" IIRC). The "New Shepard" is more or less a demonstrator (like Falcon 1) and "New Glenn" will only come about once its BE-4 engine is completed and ready, and will take a lot of development work to produce. Musk already has SEVERAL iterations of Falcon 9 having flown or flying, proven (more or less) it can return boosters to a landing site for reuse and actually relaunch them, and has even demonstrated the Falcon Heavy, which basically is the equivalent of SLS BLock 1 capability (more or less), plus they have a demonstrated successful ORBITAL (if so far, unmanned) capsule capable of returning and being reused and flown again... (Dragon). Once they've flown a successful Crew Dragon (Dragon 2?) capsule demonstrator flight, they'll have an operational MANNED orbital launch and landing system. Bezos and his "New Shepard" is basically just a suborbital hop demonstrator-- impressive nonetheless, if only for its "space tourism" suborbital hop possibilities (which again, if there's SO much demand for "space tourism", WHY aren't they lined up around the block throwing their money at Bezos to fly on New Shepard, now that basically "SpaceShipTwo" is either hopelessly delayed, or out of the running completely?? AND, **IF** that demand IS there, WHY isn't Bezos waving tickets and taking their money for those suborbital hops?? Basically it all just validates my conclusion that so-called 'space tourism", at least in the form of suborbital hops costing as much as a suburban home, is basically demand a "mile wide, but an inch deep"... I guess time will tell... Orbital tourism *might* be a different animal, BUT I'm not betting on it, because of the costs involved, at least in the short term... Notice that you don't hear much from Bigelow any more...
At ANY rate, BOTH Bezos and Musk have important contributions to make... Bezos's BE-4 methane engine will be an excellent option for first stage propulsion (as methane is a "low cryogen" similar in temperature to liquid oxygen, MUCH easier to store and use than liquid hydrogen, which is a "deep cryogen" supercold liquid, and it's MUCH denser than liquid hydrogen, and has good energy density, making it more similar to kerosene than hydrogen, making it an excellent first-stage propulsion propellant... PLUS, if we actually DO go to Mars at some point, we'll NEED a methane-burning engine, since Zubrin "proved" that you can make methane propellant from the carbon dioxide of the Mars atmosphere combined in the Sabatier process with a small source of hydrogen brought from Earth... (and if a source of readily available water can be found on Mars and exploited, even the hydrogen from Earth is unnecessary-- you can split water through electrolysis into hydrogen and oxygen, save the oxygen for rocket fuel, and process the hydrogen with carbon dioxide to make methane propellant... ) If "New Glenn" emerges at some point as a competitor or adjunct to SpaceX's Falcon 9, so much the better... but it'll be a long ways down the road. By then Musk will have staked his claim and between Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, he should have carved himself a nice little niche by then, particularly with Dragon and Dragon 2 (crew Dragon) are operating well and he's delivering people into space, even if they are NASA employees going to the station. BFR looks like an interesting concept, and a logical follow-on, but it's gonna take time-- not going to be the "in a few short years" type development that their "schedules" show. It will be big and extremely complex and all that spells a LOT of development issues and those take time, effort, and money to overcome.
The first thing I've learned in my studies of the space program and these proposals is, NEVER take a schedule, cost estimate, or capabilities/mission description at face value... Basically, multiply costs and schedule by a factor of THREE and you'll have an OPTIMISTIC idea of when it *might* actually be available or flying; multiply by FIVE for a "realistic" time or cost, and multiply by about TEN for a pessimistic idea of time or cost... When it comes to capability or mission description, be prepared to cut that down by 1/5 if your optimistic, 1/4 if you're realistic, or 1/3-1/2 if you're pessimistic...
Later! OL J R
My MUNIFICENCE is BOUNDLESS, Mr. Bond...