Where should the space program be now?

[Commander]

I am signed up for the NASA email notifications and have lately noticed that NASA has an identity crisis. In one of the latest notifications I received, they touted there newest spin off technologies. link to NASA spin off 2017

While I am all for the spin off values of a lot of projects undertaken by NASA, I can only ask, "What is your main mission, and when are we getting away from the near space mission? If the advances from early 1930 when Wernher von Braun started dabbling with rocketry to 1970 when we were walking on the moon were extrapolted forward, were would you think we would be now?

[Joe Wooten]

Moon colonies and Mars bases.

maybe

I remember that NASA was starting to bureaucratize heavily in the late 60's and the Apollo method (waste everything but time) was frozen in their procedures and thinking, leading to a lot of waste of money over the years. The shuttle started out as a small spaceplane in 1970 and in less than 3 years morphed into the big dead end it turned out to be. If it had stayed small, carrying 4-5 passengers and/or a small amount of cargo for a space station, we could have built 10 to 15 of them, and slowly improved the operational capacities and costs over the last 40 years.

Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda

[luke strawwalker]

I recently read an article written YEARS (if not decades) ago by Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders... it was a VERY interesting expose on the decisions about what kind of shuttle program we would end up with. It also discussed Bill Anders' reasons for dropping out of the flight rotation and leaving NASA after Apollo 8, and his subsequent work as a "consultant" on the emerging shuttle program.

Basically the article made the point that the options they presented to Nixon was to continue with some "better, faster, cheaper" (before the Dan Goldin program of the same name) version of Apollo (or some cheaper follow-on to Apollo like "Big G"), a small, experimental pre-cursor reusable shuttle-type vehicle launched by an expendable booster, with improvements and further development and refinement of the design (and possible upscaling) as the program unfolded, with it eventually moving possibly to a reusable booster or low-cost booster, as experience dictated, OR, go straight "for the gold" and build a large, FULLY REUSABLE shuttle and booster integrated system designed from the get-go for full operability, mission capability, and FULL REUSABILITY. After mulling the options, Nixon's staff asked "which one would you (by extension, NASA) recommend?" Knowing the problems and challenges and the expectations and experience (or lack thereof at that point) Anders recommended the "small experimental version" on a *temporarily* expendable booster in a phased development approach that would build on experience gained during the program to institute "improvements" over time.

Nixon's people called back the next day and asked, "Nixon wants to know-- which program option will give the biggest boost to the California aerospace community-- which will be the biggest and most expensive program with the greatest benefit to the California aerospace companies?" Anders answered basically, "without a doubt, the "fully reusable large shuttle" option..." Which is EXACTLY what Nixon announced to the world and ordered NASA to build... It was a PURELY POLITICAL DECISION, and had NOTHING to do with engineering, experience, cost, or feasibility... the entire shuttle program, from DAY 1, was intended to funnel as much money as possible to his big aerospace constituents back in California who had helped get him elected...

Now, we can argue until the cows come home how things would have unfolded had we stayed with Apollo, "Apollo-lite", "Big G (or other expendable successor to Apollo), "Dyna-Soar 2" (or other experimental shuttle-type vehicle launched by expendable rocket morphing into either a partially or fully reusable booster system, or low-cost expendable booster system), or if we'd have gotten what Nixon originally planned, the FULLY REUSABLE shuttle system (before the Air Force dreamers and NASA muckety-mucks made a hash of the entire program, and reality set in and the REAL development cost became apparent, and the Shuttle ended up with a disposable tank and "reusable" solid rocket boosters instead of a fully-reusable flyback booster system). It's all rather pointless, because short of history from an alternate universe where those things might have occurred, it's unprovable.

At any rate, what we DO know is that the shuttle basically taught us how NOT to build a large 'reusable' space plane type vehicle and "reusable" launch system, just as ISS taught us how NOT to build a large space station... It was a 40 year detour to nowhere, doing jobs that COULD have been done cheaper by other types of systems (including expendables) and far more effectively, that much we DO know. We also know that NASA CANNOT afford another experience of how NOT to do a particular mission... it's been proven time and again that while the up-front development costs ARE greater, the best "bang for the buck" and greatest robustness and flexibility of the system for deep space exploration is actually in practice VIRTUALLY IDENTICAL to how the Apollo/Saturn V system was arranged, designed, and operated... ie liquid propellant first/second/third serially-staged vehicles and capsule type spacecraft. If the goal is LEO (and it shouldn't be anymore-- we have commercial options available for that in the near future) then the math changes somewhat. BUT NASA shouldn't be worrying about LEO anymore... that can be taken care of by commercial options, if they're properly fostered and developed...

Back to the original question-- where SHOULD we be now?? I'd LIKE to see Mars excursions and Moon bases or colonies, but is that particularly realistic? I'm not so sure. Certainly we should be aiming to go to Mars, and the IDEAL training ground to do that is ON THE MOON. Just like we didn't send our astronauts to the Moon without going to train in the desert and various other places first, we realistically shouldn't be planning to go straight to Mars without first extensively testing the designs, methods, and materials on the MOON first... the Moon is the ideal training ground-- only 3 days away from Earth, versus a minimum of 6 months for Mars. Plus, our "investigation" of the Moon consists of only 12 men on 6 missions at six sites, all on the "nearside" of the Moon, all relatively close to the lunar equator (due to orbital inclination requirements) and a total of about a week spent on the lunar surface by all the astronauts combined... that's HARDLY an "extensive investigation" of the lunar surface. If we cannot operate on the Moon long-term (30 days or more at a time) only 240,000 miles from home, what makes us think we can operate long-term on Mars (around 30 days, or a year to a year and a half, depending on mission design requirements for flight to-and-from Mars which dictates those orbital/surface mission lengths) at a minimum of 36 MILLION miles away? There's valid arguments for further exploration and experience of operations on the lunar surface and in cislunar space (beyond the silly "lasso a washing-machine size asteroid and drag it back to cislunar space" type missions NASA has proposed out of desperation to give SOME reason for existence to Orion and SLS, since it's incapable of performing ANY OTHER mission without extensive and EXPENSIVE hardware development for in-space stages and habitation/mission modules to accompany Orion.) A Gateway station at L-2 is the logical choice for return to the low-lunar orbit environment and to the surface of the Moon, because it allows access to any point on the lunar surface with an identical fuel requirement (a spacecraft can enter ANY lunar orbit inclination with equal ease from L2, unlike direct-from-Earth trajectories). That would allow landings at either lunar pole, the lunar "farside", or any other point on the lunar surface with equal ease, something Apollo was incapable of (other than farside excursions, which were ruled out for "safety reasons"). It would also be a "gradual" program that could be achieved in steps-- launching a small "gateway station" to L-2 and establishing a manned presence there (not necessarily a "constant presence", but perhaps only "man tended" and visited periodically by crews), which would act as staging point for vehicles to traverse into LLO and eventually to the lunar surface. It would also provide the impetus for the development of an Earth-orbiting refueling depot (serviced by commercial spacecraft at NASA's behest) to provide the capability for large payloads to be efficiently launched to the gateway station and the Moon and beyond (to Mars and elsewhere) as the need arises. It would be a gradual, phased, but FORWARD MOVING program-- much like the "spiral development" program proposed for the post-shuttle era by former NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe and Admiral Steidle, which made MUCH more sense than the silly and uber-expensive "shuttle derived solution" of Ares I and Ares V proposed by former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin and instituted by him after he replaced Sean O'Keefe as NASA head... another PURELY POLITICAL DECISION by the Bush 2 administration to placate big shuttle contractors accustomed to having huge shuttle contracts coming into their coffers and not wanting to see the gravy train end, or have to compete with other big aerospace companies or "up-n-comers" in commercial space like Elon Musk's SpaceX...

What will we probably get?? More "institutional inertia" in the form of NASA pushing for SLS *DESPITE* the fact that they don't have ANY *realistic* mission for it past the flight test program, which itself is going to be spread over most of a decade... Nor do they have funding for the mission/habitation modules that will be REQUIRED for any deep-space missions of any consequence, other than Apollo-length two-week junkets to cis-lunar space (Orion is incapable of providing living conditions, food, etc for a crew for more than that... and it is incapable of propelling itself into and out of lunar orbit with the existing Service Module design and currently funded rocket stages, unlike Apollo). There has been NO compelling argument made for the approval and funding of such missions or the approval and funding of the development of the necessary hardware... in fact, SLS itself "as is" is incapable of completing the much more than the "test phase" of the SLS/Orion vehicle... it will require a COMPLETELY NEW advanced booster development program to achieve the 130 tonne capability stipulated as the final design capability, and will require the development of a large 'second stage' for heavy-lift missions, and an "in-space stage" beyond the interim space propulsion stage (the modified Delta-IV upper stage) currently planned in order to provide propulsion for the Orion and any "mission modules" out of Earth orbit. These will take the better part of a decade and BILLIONS more in development money to achieve; meanwhile SLS will be soaking up great expenditures of money to "maintain the capability" despite only flying once every 2-3 years or so, just as the shuttle program soaked up hundreds of millions of dollars during both its 'stand-downs' in the wakes of the Challenger and Columbia vehicle losses. This alone will make SLS *THE* single most expensive vehicle ever conceived, on a cost-per-flight basis, because of such POOR flight rates and underutilization of the infrastructure and personnel required to maintain it as an operable system.

"Institutional inertia" and ignoring reality only gets you SO far... I think that inevitably the expenses and limitations of the existing SLS/Orion will be its undoing, and the program will end up being canceled much like the Constellation Program with its Ares I and Ares V which preceded it. Where we go from there?? I'm not sure.

IF we have and are willing to spend the money, SLS *IS* a capable starting point. Not the best and most flexible, sustainable, or cost-efficient, not by a long-shot... but it IS a feasible starting point. Needlessly expensive and limited, but still capable nonetheless. The real question is, "WHAT will the new Administration and Congress be WILLING TO FUND and how is NASA planning to expedite the process??" NASA, IMHO, has set itself up to go *NOWHERE* simply because it has purposely designed its program to proceed at a snail's pace. Remember that Apollo operated on the deadline "before this decade is out", which wasn't much longer than the existing Presidential political cycle... (assuming Kennedy had lived and been reelected in 64, he'd have gone out of office in 68, about the time the fruits of Apollo were starting to be achieved... at which point it's very hard to say, "we're gonna quit right on the cusp of doing this"... and at which point we might have had RFK replacing him or even LBJ, or even if history played out as it did and Nixon was President, canceling a program on the cusp of achieving its objective simply wasn't politically possible...) NOW NASA's development of the Orion has spanned not only Bush 2's first and second Administrations, but Obama's first and second Administrations as well (spanning from its inception before the 2003 Columbia disaster as the "Orbital Space Plane" (OSP) which led directly to studies of the "Crew Exploration Vehicle" (CEV) looking at biconic, capsule, and other "non-spaceplane" designs for a shuttle follow-on vehicle, to the current EFT-1 Orion block-1 configuration-- counting only from the CEV "official approval" after the shuttle retirement was announced in 2004, "Orion" (as CEV became known) development has spanned 12 years as of this writing, with continuing development for the foreseeable future (at least until 2018-2020 for it's "final form" to appear as flight hardware). Ares I development similarly began in 2004 and continued until 2010 when Obama cancelled it (and rightly so-- it had 'sucked all the air out of the room' and still had substantial problems with the design, and was incapable of performing the mission it was supposedly designed for "as designed", throwing all the requirements it couldn't meet onto the then-paper design of Ares V, causing its design to spiral out of control and be incapable of performing the mission as required with the available technology constraints of "shuttle derived".) SLS, or "son of Ares V" took up where the failed Constellation Program architecture left off, basically backpedaling to a smaller version of Ares V and using a PAIR of them to accomplish the mission envisioned to be done by an Ares I and Ares V operating in tandem. SLS has been in development for six years and won't fly for at least another two, and won't fly again after that for at least 3 years... a total of 8 years to first flight, and 11 years to the second flight, both of which are "merely" test flights with no mission goals beyond testing the hardware (and a few inevitable experiments and "add-ons" along the way I'm sure). The first "real" mission for SLS/Orion won't occur until some point after that. Had Apollo moved at that snail's pace, it would not have even done a flight test of Saturn V until nearly the end of Nixon's first term, and wouldn't have done anything remotely like Apollo 8 until sometime in Ford or Carter's Administrations... WHO can REALISTICALLY BELIEVE that approval and funding would have been sustained for THAT length of time??

At any rate, the NASA mission rates of the future more closely resemble the snail's pace of the Chinese space program than the "golden era" of exploration during Gemini and Apollo, when Gemini missions lauched every 6-8 weeks on average, and Apollo lunar missions were occurring about every 6 months or so... Heck even the shuttle heyday of 6 missions a year (every other month) will look positively robust compared to the SLS/Orion "plans", such as they are... only one mission every 2-3 years, AT MOST... (and in all likelihood less often than that, IF AT ALL-- NOTHING is actually approved and funded beyond a couple Orion/SLS test flights!)

NASA has become content to be a design bureau that makes grand designs, works on them for a decade or so, only to see them replaced by "something else" as times change and it becomes obvious that what they're building is outdated, inefficient, and overly expensive for the intended job.

IMHO our BEST hope lies in expanding capabilities from commercial operators...

Later! OL J R