Re: Dribs & Drabs II: NASA's Exploration Dreams

[Damian Georgeff <damian@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Greetings Mark

Thanks for posting the article.
It poses a lot of questions about why NASA, if Apollo did make it to Moon that
they didn't keep up with missions and build a lunar base piece by piece.  If they
had have, there would have been more real estate to sell.

The other main point that has bothered me some time is, why a Shuttle Mark II just
isn't built.  It would include all of the modifications and knowledge gained since
the Mark I went into service.

I have this mental picture of a shuttle with Aerospike engines and a more
streamline shape.

Be Well
Damian

Mark Reiff wrote:

> 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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