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Confusion over the shuttle's retirement and Orion development remains high

As the nation prepares for President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration on Jan. 20, the U.S. space agency is in a state of disarray as the current generation of space shuttles will be retired next year.  NASA wants to return to the moon by 2020, and a new shuttle is absolutely vital for that mission to take place.

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said it would cost NASA $3 billion per year to keep the aging shuttle in orbit after 2010.  Along with an extremely high maintenance cost, there also is an increased chance of an air accident flying on the older shuttles.

"We would have a one-in-eight chance of losing the crew in one of the 10 flights," Griffin said previously when talk of extending shuttle life first were brought up.  The current chance of losing a crew during a shuttle fight is about 1 in 80 right now.

The next-generation Orion shuttle won't be available until 2015 at the earliest, and NASA is prepared to pay the Russian space program to ferry NASA astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) during the five-year gap.  The Ares I rocket, which will be responsible for launching Orion, will also be ready close to the 2015 time frame.

A growing number of politicians and space officials are thinking about delaying the shuttle's retirement, including Obama, but there are very little winning alternatives available right now.

An internal NASA memo said the U.S. space agency can use the current shuttle for six more manned missions until 2012 for an estimated $5 billion.  The two-year extension likely wouldn't impact NASA's plans to return to the moon by 2020.

The next few years will prove to be interesting for both NASA space travel and U.S. space ambitions, as Obama and his transitio team have a few different questions it hopes NASA administrators can answer.  One question, for example, is why NASA is spending precious resources developing a new generation of space rockets when the program already has two different rockets that could possibly take Orion into orbit.

Ares I looks like the rocket of the future, but design issues and overall cost have politicians worried that NASA is wasting money trying to develop the rocket.  In addition, it's unlikley Ares I will be ready for flight by 2015, which would force NASA to launch several additional missions on Russian spacecraft.

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Please proofread!
By maven81 on 1/10/2009 12:49:55 AM , Rating: 5
That's quite the confusing article!

NASA wants to return to the moon by 2020, and a new shuttle is absolutely vital for that mission to take place.

I'm sure you mean new spacecraft. The shuttle is not going to the moon, even a new shuttle!

The next-generation Orion shuttle won't be available until 2015 at the earliest

Orion is not a shuttle!

The Ares I rocket, which will be responsible for launching Orion, will also be ready close to the 2015 time frame.

Well that's totally up in the air right now wouldn't you say? It's behind schedule, and there's a chance it will get cancelled.

A growing number of politicians and space officials are thinking about delaying the shuttle's retirement, including Obama, but there are very little winning alternatives available right now.

I know you mean very few... but even the Obama thing is not right... It's his transition team that's thinking. I think he'll only make a decision either way only after their report.

The two-year extension likely wouldn't impact NASA's plans to return to the moon by 2020.

What is this based on? Seems to me one of the biggest reasons they are killing the shuttle now is because of the huge amount of money it costs to run that program. Unless they get a budget increase I don't see how they can do both.

The next few years will prove to be interesting for both NASA space travel and U.S. space ambitions, as Obama and his transitio team have a few different questions it hopes NASA administrators can answer.

There's only one administrator, and it's uncertain whether he will keep his job.

One question, for example, is why NASA is spending precious resources developing a new generation of space rockets when the program already has two different rockets that could possibly take Orion into orbit.

What program? Which rockets? Last I heard the transition team was thinking of the delta 4 heavy and atlas 5 but these are airforce rockets not NASAs!

Ares I looks like the rocket of the future

It's a modified shuttle solid booster! A rocket of the past!




RE: Please proofread!
By randomly on 1/10/2009 2:58:41 AM , Rating: 5
You're absolutely right, this is a miserably written and researched article that clarifies nothing and gets many things completely wrong.

The original justification of ARES I was that on paper it was the safest crew launch vehicle design. A single solid rocket motor first stage, a single engine second stage.

However it's lift capability is relatively small, limited to just the Orion capsule. In order to do a moon mission the lunar landing craft 'Altair' and the earth departure stage must be lifted by the ARES V heavy lift rocket. This forces the ARES V rocket to be very large and very expensive.

The intention was to transfer some of the enormous development cost of the ARES V into the ARES I project by paying for the development of the upper stage engine (J2-X) and the 5 segment Solid rocket motors that are used by both ARES I and V. Spreading the costs over two different rocket designs makes it not seem so expensive, and also protects the ARES V rocket from cancellation since it's closely linked to the ARES I which we need for ISS access.

Unfortunately ARES I doesn't bring any new lift capacity capabilities that we don't already have in the Delta 4 and Atlas 5. It would be considerably cheaper and quicker to man-rate one of these rockets and use it to launch the Orion capsules. However if you kill Ares I you will probably also kill ARES V, since there is no money to pay for the J2-X and 5 Seg Solid rockets. Developing the J2-X and 5 segment Solid rockets just for the ARES V ends up making the apparent cost of the ARES V too high to be politically palatable and makes it a target for cancellation due to budget cuts.
With no heavy lift vehicle we'll be stuck in Low earth orbit for another 40 years.

The DIRECT 2.0 proposal makes a great deal of sense to me. It's a single heavy lift rocket design (Jupiter 232) that can do both ISS missions and Moon missions. It's not as big as ARES V but it's much cheaper and it uses a great deal more of the shuttle hardware, and manufacturing/handling facilities that we already have and paid for. It seems to be a more sustainable and cost effective approach, especially given current budget pressures .


RE: Please proofread!
By FPP on 1/10/2009 11:49:27 AM , Rating: 2
And ask yourself this: What is the rush????? The moon will still be there. Since we've already been there, I think this portion of the space race is over.

As for the shuttle, the director is absolutely correct:it is more dangerous than conventional designs and, by rights, needs to be retired. It costs about a billion dollars a mission to operate. Notice the article said "$3 billion just to keep flying" but NONE of that goes to an actual mission, that's just the cost to make it able to ready for missions.

No, the shuttle proved we do not have sufficent technology for reusable winged orbital vehicles to be cost effective. Ares may be legacy based, but it's systems are state of the art. Bush's people were correct in doing this. ARES and Orion will save money and advance exploration.


RE: Please proofread!
By JAB on 1/11/2009 6:54:50 AM , Rating: 3
They did not even use semiconductors for the memory on the computers for the shuttle. The design was overweaght and underpowered after it was redesigned in Washington.

Given good management and ratonal design constrains it would be doable to make a reusable shuttle. It would require a design based on science not politics and I dont have much hope of that.


RE: Please proofread!
By randomly on 1/12/2009 10:10:10 AM , Rating: 2
That's because at the time the Shuttle was designed in the early 70's semiconductor memory was inferior and less reliable than the magnetic CORE memory used in the IBM AP-101 flight computer. It was very radiation resistant and there was extensive operational experience with it.

The design choice was driven by safety and reliability concerns and was certainly the correct one.

quote:
The design was overweaght and underpowered after it was redesigned in Washington.


Overweight and underpowered compared to what? Overly optimistic napkin designs? Certainly budget constraints affected what was finally built, but within those constraints I challenge you to point out anything they could have done better at the time.

It seems obvious that a reusable shuttle ought to be more a more cost effective launch solution than expendable rockets, but the reality is not that clear at all.

The complexity, amount of rework and refurbishing, added infrastructure needed and so on make it difficult to keep the overall launch costs even competitive with expendable approaches. To be cost effective reusable vehicles require a very high annual launch rate to amortize costs over many flights. Those types of flight rates are not achievable with current technology, and certainly not achievable with current or any future NASA budget.

If it made sense you'd see commercial companies and other countries designing reusable launch vehicles, but you don't see much of that at all.


RE: Please proofread!
By randomly on 1/12/2009 10:35:11 AM , Rating: 3
Returning to the moon is the prudent next step to getting to mars, which is incredibly difficult.

There are a lot of technologies and systems to develop and test out before launching a mars expedition. Not least of which is the physiological effects of long term low gravity. We already know long term zero G causes a lot of problems in people.

To get anywhere beyond LEO we need a 100+ mT heavy launch vehicle, whether you end up going to the moon, a near earth object, mars, or wherever. The DIRECT Jupiter-232 may not be as large as the ARES V but it appears to be a lot more fiscally sustainable, especially in the current economic climate. Either way we need a heavy lift capability of some kind.


RE: Please proofread!
By JediJeb on 1/12/2009 4:17:57 PM , Rating: 2
The article mentions it will cost just under $1 billion for each launch of the shuttle. If that were to be placed on a contract for a private company to spend per launch I wonder if one would be able to develop a launch system faster. Just think if a company like Richard Branson's had the promise of making $1 billion per launch. I think that with the lack of overhead that NASA pays to its administrators and the layers upon layers of red tape they need to make a decision, a private company could do the development in a much shorter time and probably with better safeguards in place since it would probably make much of the craft internally instead of going with the lowest bidder. Hire 100 engineers( aeronautical, electrical, mechanical, chemical, ect) and set them on the project and let them have a percentage of each launch as commission, but deduct if there is a failure, and this thing will be flying in a few years.


RE: Please proofread!
By monitorjbl on 1/13/2009 7:22:22 PM , Rating: 2
No, we'd be stuck for decades with Supreme Court cases trying to prove which one of them screwed up every time there was a failure.


RE: Please proofread!
By RoberTx on 1/15/2009 11:58:05 AM , Rating: 2
shut·tle [shútt'l]
noun (plural shut·tles)
1. route taken or vehicle used: the route taken or the aircraft, bus, or train used to travel frequently between two places.

-----------------------------------------

The use of the word shuttle is correct enough. It doesn't have to have wings to be a shuttle.


Things from the 70's
By chmilz on 1/10/2009 12:24:54 AM , Rating: 2
Keep:
Iron Maiden
'72 Camaro

Scrap:
Disco
Space shuttles




RE: Things from the 70's
By inighthawki on 1/10/2009 12:33:15 AM , Rating: 2
I hope when you mean "Space shuttles" you mean for them to work on newer designs to get into space. I didn't know anyone was that into disco anymore though...


RE: Things from the 70's
By chmilz on 1/10/2009 12:35:27 AM , Rating: 3
I'm all for new designs that work better and advance our exploration of space. As for disco, last I heard it was to be the next big revival, now that all them emo kids have thoroughly tainted everything that was cool about the 80's.


RE: Things from the 70's
By teldar on 1/11/2009 11:22:43 AM , Rating: 2
Confusing the damn issue.

There is one class of space vehicle called the space shuttle.
If you live on planet earth and don't live in a strictly censored or backward third world country, you would probably recognize it.

Don't continue the article's writer's mistake of calling all space vehicles a Space shuttle.


RE: Things from the 70's
By drwho9437 on 1/10/2009 9:30:27 PM , Rating: 1
Maned space flight completely. It is a waste of resources compared to robotic at least until we have stasis pods...


RE: Things from the 70's
By Dreifort on 1/12/2009 10:07:15 AM , Rating: 2
tell that to Richard Branson... and the thousands of others willing to pay big $$$ to go into space. Manned space travel is a perk, but how many robots can teach you the lessons of hanging on to tools in an weightless environment.

The US media outlets would show zero interest in "robotic" space flights and the program would become so ignored by the public it would become the nations most secure operation. I mean -- who wants national security? not our media.

You can't get rid of manned space flights. Robots don't have fun and neither does our media coverage of boring robots.


sigh...
By Ben on 1/10/2009 1:27:05 AM , Rating: 2
Let's face it, other than a few succesfull missions involving JPL, our space program is a joke.




RE: sigh...
By JAB on 1/10/2009 5:19:43 AM , Rating: 2
True that. The Aries program is on the same path to failure as the mismanaged Shuttle program. The solid booster program was a lesson in bad engineering and it looks like they are working on a repeat with Ares. There mush be a powerful congressman in Utah to push that pork though. They have had tested updates to the booster for years but they were blocked. Solid boosters are great but like anything push the limits every time and you will go over the edge. If they kept the shuttle in the original design size and did not let the politicians force some bad decisions. You cant make boosters cheap and safe. Tons of money went down the drain trying to make a bad decision work. They could have 20 times the flights on less money if they had let science control the design instead of Washington.

NASA tanked after von Braun left. Why dont people like that rise to the top anymore.


RE: sigh...
By Bubbacub on 1/10/2009 6:29:50 AM , Rating: 2
well if another terrible fascist racist regime starts another global war in which scientists are allowed to do what they want (with slave labour) then maybe we will get another wernher von braun

p.s. if you don't know about von braun's role in running the peenemunde camp/factory then read about it!


RE: sigh...
By JAB on 1/10/2009 1:26:10 PM , Rating: 2
He was doing rocket research before the party took control and he continued after they were eliminated. Think the NASA program hasn't been used for the military?

I suggest you do a google of Guantanamo Bay before casting too many stones. Go back one step to the League of Nations and see how the Nazis learned oppression and exploitation. No good comes from evil and the US has its part in that deal with the Devil that resulted in world war two. They bled Germany dry and took away their rights. That was the price for the league of nations that was to bring peace but they did not have peaceful intent to the losers of the last war. I fear the nation will never learn that lesson and continue to create new terrorists and oppressors. Don't kick a dog and kill it for biting you back. You can not wash off blood with blood no matter how hard you try.

Note I don't support any of that evil my ancestors fled Europe for good reason.


RE: sigh...
By Dreifort on 1/12/2009 11:46:13 AM , Rating: 2
do you believe the same line that you carry your father's sins? if so, you can't complain when you pay for what he did.

This "same country" you say bled Germany dry was the very same country that took part in establishing West Germany and then having infulence tear down the wall in Berlin and eventually unite Germany again.

I don't see blood washing blood, I see democracy washing blood.


RE: sigh...
By Dreifort on 1/12/2009 11:49:02 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
I suggest you do a google of Guantanamo Bay before casting too many stones.


Yeah, because the internets is always right. I always believe what I read on the internet. Books are for dummies and first hand accounts mean nothing -- if it's on the internet, it MUST be true!


Math?
By englisboa on 1/10/2009 5:57:09 AM , Rating: 1
quote:
"We would have a one-in-eight chance of losing the crew in one of the 10 flights," Griffin said previously when talk of extending shuttle life first were brought up. The current chance of losing a crew during a shuttle fight is about 1 in 80 right now.

If we say 1 flight in 10 has a 1/8 possibility of blowing up, it's really the same thing of saying it's a 1/80 for the 10 flights...wait, that's the same probability there applies now...strange...




RE: Math?
By borowki2 on 1/10/2009 10:23:55 AM , Rating: 2
Not quite. Probability is not additive. To calculate the chance of something happening in so many tries, you multiple the probability of it not happening then subtract it from unity. Thus:

1 - (79/80) ^ 10 = 11.8%

That's slightly under one in eight (12.5%).


RE: Math?
By foolsgambit11 on 1/10/2009 6:33:49 PM , Rating: 2
To calculate the chance of something not happening you multiply the probability of it happening then subtract from unity. You got it backwards.

Here, the OP is right. The probability is multiplicative, as in 0.125 * 0.1 = 0.0125, i.e. 1/80. There is a 1 in 80 chance that the shuttle will blow up on any given flight. Historically, that's been the chance (as stated in the article), and it's the chance on the 10 missions they're thinking about flying after its scheduled end of service. The article made it sound like the chances were different, but they're not.

If you have an 6-sided die, and you get to roll it 3 times, the chance that you'll get a 4 on any roll is 1/6 + 1/6 + 1/6 = 3/6 = 1/2. If you have an 80-sided die and roll it 10 times, the chance that you'll roll a 13 is 1/80 + 1/80 + 1/80 + 1/80 + 1/80 + 1/80 + 1/80 + 1/80 + 1/80 + 1/80 = 10/80 = 1/8.

If you have a 1/80 chance of the losing the crew on a shuttle mission, and you fly 10 missions, you have a 1/8 chance of losing the crew, same as with the dice. So working the problem backwards yields the same results.


RE: Math?
By PhatoseAlpha on 1/11/2009 2:33:41 AM , Rating: 2
The OP is clearly incorrect.

Consider the simplest possible version of your dice example, flipping a coin twice. What is your chance of not getting at least one head?

By your math, 1/2 +1/2 = 1, ie, you always will flip at least one head. Obviously, this isn't the case.

borowki2 has done exactly as you said, and subtracted the probability of it not happening from one. Exponents have a higher order of operations than subtraction, but it would've been clearer if he had written it

1 - ((79/80)^10) = .118


RE: Math?
By FPP on 1/13/2009 12:57:18 PM , Rating: 2
The other 800lb gorilla in the room is that if the shuttle has a catastophic failure, the likelihood of the crew dying is far higher than a coventional rocket.

On take-off, the crew recovery system has about 10 times greater chance of keeping the crew alive with an emergency abort.

On landing, the asymetrical shape of Orion versus a winged vehicle with no aerodynamic control surfaces to fail, coupled with a water landing, is far safer than the demonstrated weakness of the shuttle.


Another option...
By Amiga500 on 1/10/2009 7:35:30 AM , Rating: 2
Buy the designs of the old Soviet Energia launcher (as used for the Buran) from the Russians...




RE: Another option...
By FPP on 1/10/2009 11:52:57 AM , Rating: 2
Buran is as unsafe, by design, as the shuttle. There is no recovery of the engines, since it has none. We may as well keep ours.

No, this director is correct: ARES/Orion is the correct vehicle for the next 30 years. The only better candidate is Spacex's Falcon 9 heavy and it cannot address the need for ARES V.


RE: Another option...
By JAB on 1/10/2009 1:45:07 PM , Rating: 2
No we should buy the license for the Saturn V it came in under budget has a excellent safety record, can be made with legacy parts and can easily provide the payloads with little further research needed.

Too bad it doesn't fill the right pork barrel.

In reality though the Jupiter direct would be the best option right now with some of the improved boosters that were blocked. No need to reinvent the wheel and it would use off the shelf parts in strong voting blocks.


RE: Another option...
By FPP on 1/11/2009 11:36:47 AM , Rating: 2
The Saturn V never came in "under budget" they just kept expanding the budget. True, it's record is the best. Elon Musk used it's design as the basis for his Falcon launchers.

All these supposed alternatives were studied. Mars Direct has real manned reliability issues. A rebuilt shuttle too expensive and not enough payload. Atlas and Titan lack lift capability and are costly.

The time to do these studies is at the beginning, and they did. Ares has real advantages i.e. solid first stage with the best reliability, power density, cost per ton lift, etc. Once we walk away from ARES, we waste all the dollars so far spent. Every other alternative would be a budget buster too. No one can convince me ARES has such glaring issues that it won't fly.

I suspect Obama wants to mine NASA's budget and he needs to do all of this to remove the barriers.


Question re SDLV
By psychmike on 1/10/2009 12:09:15 PM , Rating: 2
The Ares V will apparently have the capacity to lift a larger mass to LEO and LTO compared with the Saturn V. Given that this is the case, why will projected moon missions involve both Ares I and V while Saturn V was able to do it all in one launch? Is this simply a result of the need to develop Ares I anyways for space station missions and to leverage Ares I development for Ares V? It seems risky to use 2 launches to accomplish what could be done with 1.

Given that the Ares program has almost completely divested itself of any direct use of shuttle technology, the whole rationale for Ares (namely, to reduce costs and risks by using 'off the shelf' shuttle technology) seems to have gone out the window. They've gone from 4-segment to 5-segment SRBs, ET-diameter tanks to wider diameter tanks, SSMEs to J-2x, and thermal tiles to an ablative heat shield. It's a different handle and a different head, but still Washington's axe I suppose. I wonder if it would have been a whole lot more efficient in cost and performance to start with a blank sheet.




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