Dribs & Drabs II: NASA's Exploration Dreams

[Mark Reiff <markreiff@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

FYI,

"Dribs & Drabs II"
Selenian Boondocks Blog
http://selenianboondocks.blogspot.com

: So I'm reading through the leaked reports on the new architectures
: that Keith Cowing has posted over at NASAWatch.com's subsidiary
: SpaceRef. In a sense reading it is almost like a slow motion train
: wreck - you know the doom that is coming but nothing can be done to
: avoid it.

: I think the thing that puzzled me the most was the imbalance in
: cited figures between the two systems studied. While there were a
: lot of heming and hawing about concerns with EELVs, there seemed to
: be a complete turnaround with the SDHLV. Here's how much it'll
: cost, how long it will take to deliver, 100% confidence in results,
: etc.

: The EELVs are initially cited as favorably reviewed, especially the
: super-sizing: "Planners found in their trade analyses that scaled
: up variants of both families could lift in excess of 40 metric
: tons, to as much as 80 metric tons. The latter figure was believed
: to be the smallest payload envelope a heavy lift design would need
: to carry in order to participate in a lunar mission."

: I'm not sure why 80 mt is the minimal lift requirement. This seems
: to preclude anything like on-orbit operations such as assembly or
: post-launch systems verifications.

: Reading through Mr. Cowing's analysis, it becomes clear that NASA
: really doesn't want to invest in human-rating (whatever that means)
: the EELV class of D-IV & A-V, and they don't want to think about
: facilities upgrades required by their 40 mt (CEV) and 80 mt (Lunar)
: minimas.

: So either way we're looking at the investment of between ~$6Bn and
: $8Bn, and you and I both know that rounds to ~$10Bn (and includes
: modifications to the launch facilities!). Some of the more obvious
: hidden expenses are the crawler upgrades that are going to be
: required and the re-configuring of the launch pads. Some of the
: more subtle costs are things like the over-engineering of payloads
: that has to be done on the ground to ensure 100% operability post-
: launch, since we're not doing any kind of on-orbit assembly or
: inspection (that sort of thing is tough to build into a parametric
: model, so tends not to be considered).

: The difference to me seems to be that the main architectural
: differences lie in the differences between the "build-a-little,
: test-a-little, grow-our-architecture" philosophy and the "all or
: nothing, shoot for the Moon" philosophy where everything works just
: perfectly the first time and every time because we've figured out
: every little thing that could conceivably go wrong and addressed it
: beforehand.

: I'm not privy to the inside workings of NASA, but from what Mr.
: Cowing has shown us it appears to me that the decision was taken
: early to go with the SDHLV, and that's where the bulk of the effort
: went in this study, in an engineering orgy of strap-ons and
: 109% thrust. I find it inconceivable that NASA's EELV concerns of
: human-rating and super-sizing and launch-pads are sufficient to
: cost the taxpayers between $6 and $8 billion.

: I'm becoming resigned to the fact that America will be saddled with
: this behemoth for the next 20 years. The engineers all seem to be
: going bananas over it (which for me is always a huge red flag).

: All the while the rest of the world will work to wrest the
: remainder of the 20 mt payload market from American launch
: providers, who will become resigned to essentially break-even on
: the few launches that have to be done domestically because of
: technology export limitations.

: Using ISS as a starting point, Europe and Russia could easily move
: to dominate cislunar trade while we're busy leapfrogging to the
: Moon. Using Bigelow balloons, ATVs, and Klipers & Soyuzes they move
: to EML-1 and start working on larger broadcast arrays in GEO, while
: cleaning up the garbage for salvage and learning from the garbage
: how to build better assets in GEO.

: We'll construct a disposable Moon base to do some touch-n-go
: practice for Mars, try to pawn it off on industry, and if the
: funding continues we'll be on Mars by 2025 and the "objective" of
: the VSE will have been achieved.

: Except it won't have been, and we'll just have a Kennedyesque
: "Flags & Footprints" moment on Mars to savor over the years while
: we buy European anhydrous optic digital binoculars, Japanese
: vacugel coats, and Russian honeymoon flights to our Moon.

--
Mark Reiff <markreiff@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

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