NASA completes SD HLV assessment

[Orbinaut Pete]

NASASpaceFlight: "Completed SD HLV assessment highlights low-cost post-shuttle solution".

WOW, this is MAJOR news - NASA wouldn't conduct this study for no reason!

 

[Dambuster]

That's pretty impressive - does it really mean it could be ready for a first flight by 2015!?

 

[Andy44]

Sure, anything's possible in 5 years with enough money. I doubt they'll get it, though.

On the bright side, I always liked Sidemount. Good to see it's still being thought of.

 

[N_Molson]

NASA is playing Velcro Rockets ! :lol:

Seriously, as they say, it's more or less the Shuttle-C design. As long as they can recover the SSMEs, the idea doesn't seem bad. I wonder how such complex engines would survive a reentry & splashdown in salted water. If they have to change all the parts at each flight... But I guess that they have studies that show it's possible

By the way I love the 6 SSMEs + 2 SRBs drawing, with a fairing wider than the ET

 

[jinglesassy]

Ive always liked the direct/sidemount concepts and it sounds good so it gets a :thumbup: from me

 

[AirSimming]

Although I'm a proponent of the Orion spacecraft and the side mount concept, meanwhile I'm sceptical whenever people from NASA are talking about "low-cost". STS was believed to be low-cost. Constellation was believed to be low-cost. Now they again believe to create a low-cost program...

 

[zerofay32]

Technically speaking, STS was lower-cost than Saturn. But NASA's budget continued to shrink until STS became "too expensive". It's all relative really.

 

[AirSimming]

Technically speaking, STS was lower-cost than Saturn. But NASA's budget continued to shrink until STS became "too expensive". It's all relative really.

Initially the STS program even was believed to be profitable. Yet, a launch costs about one billion dollar depending on the mission/payload, paid by taxpayers. If you call that relative, I don't want you to be my treasurer

Ares 1 would have costed 50% more per launch than the Shuttle, whilst carrying 50% less payload. And yet the program has still a lot of proponents. Now they talk about a new, less expensive path once again. But they do so basically because they have been politically forced to do so. If NASA would be allowed to, it would suck in money like a black hole just to push a big job-keeping program through. There are a lot of Wernher von Brauns I think, i.e. not caring about money.

 

[zerofay32]

Do you realize how much an individual taxpayer (ie myself) have to pay for the current NASA budget? I won't give you a hard number because I need to find a source (as opposed to just spouting off random numbers). I would rather pay more and see results then pay less as see project after project cancelled and have written to my representatives to convey that.

Also, I would like see your source that shows that Ares 1 would cost 50% more than STS per launch, if you please?

 

[Director]

I would like see your source that shows that Ares 1 would cost 50% more than STS per launch, if you please?

http://legislative.nasa.gov/396093main_HSF_Cmte_FinalReport.pdf

I would think that this would be mandatory reading for anyone to even begin to comment on such things.

 

[AirSimming]

Do you realize how much an individual taxpayer (ie myself) have to pay for the current NASA budget? I won't give you a hard number because I need to find a source (as opposed to just spouting off random numbers). I would rather pay more and see results then pay less as see project after project cancelled and have written to my representatives to convey that.

Well, it isn't very smart to spend money for something that is not reasonable economically. No matter if the single taxpayer contributes just one cent, ten cents or one dollar, or whatsoever per year. The important question is what they're doing with the money. They were spending it for a space program that has eaten nearly 10 billions USD for launching a 1:1 scale mockup rocket, and would have required another 50 billion USD to finish development (almost as twice as much as projected).

Also, I would like see your source that shows that Ares 1 would cost 50% more than STS per launch, if you please?

If you look into the Augustine Commission report (on page 21), you'll see that the Constellation program would have swallowed more than 98 billion USD within only 14 years (2009 constant dollars) which does not even include lunar missions I think. In comparison, STS has swallowed 170 billion USD within 38 years.

http://legislative.nasa.gov/396093main_HSF_Cmte_FinalReport.pdf

 

[T.Neo]

Do you realize how much an individual taxpayer (ie myself) have to pay for the current NASA budget?

From what I can gather, the impact to the individual taxpayer is very small. The Cost of War site gives a figure of 5 dollars 47 cents per taxpayer for the war in Iraq. I don't know how NASA's costs since 2003 would compare to those of the Iraq war, but my personal bet is that they were somewhat lower...

They were spending it for a space program that has eaten nearly 10 billions USD for launching a 1:1 scale mockup rocket, and would have required another 50 billion USD to finish development (almost as twice as much as projected).

Spaceflight usually comes with high costs, that vary a bit depending on how you try to go about it. But they'll still be pretty high.

Perhaps they meant "low cost" in relative terms, i.e. low cost compared to Ares etc.

 

[N_Molson]

Anyway nothing is worst than launching a program and not finish it. Look what happened to the N-1 & Energia/Buran programs in the USSR... What a terrible waste !

 

[AirSimming]

From what I can gather, the impact to the individual taxpayer is very small. The Cost of War site gives a figure of 5 dollars 47 cents per taxpayer for the war in Iraq. I don't know how NASA's costs since 2003 would compare to those of the Iraq war, but my personal bet is that they were somewhat lower...

The impact to environmental pollution by a single citizen might also be relatively small. But all in all humankind is causing a significant damage to the ecological system of our planet

Spaceflight usually comes with high costs, that vary a bit depending on how you try to go about it. But they'll still be pretty high.

Which is not a valid justification to fund the Constellation program any further I think. The costs for Constellation literally exploded for something that does carry as half as much payload than the STS stack is capable of. Beside keeping jobs, there is no rational reason to continue funding. I was a Constellation proponent, and I still like the Ares and Orion concepts. But if I look at the costs, which I did not at all consider for years, I realize that it was a very smart move to cancel that "disaster" earlier than later.

Anyway nothing is worst than launching a program and not finish it. Look what happened to the N-1 & Energia/Buran programs in the USSR... What a terrible waste !

Technologically I agree. It would have been great to see all that stuff flying, including the Ares launchers. Ares-1X already was breathtaking. But there is no rational reason to continue funding something like Constellation, that eats twice as much money as projected, already for development. The worst would have been to continue the program, because it never would have reached the Moon. There was no funding for Ares V, heck not even for the lunar lander, rover etc. as far was I know (not to mention a lunar base). It would have been 50 billion USD only to develope a vehicle that does nothing more than to carry a shrinked Orion into LEO. I'm no expert, but I guess the high costs are basically due to NASAs program structure rather than because of the technology. If you only watch the quarterly reports, it seems like big advertisement clips that show how many new jobs have been created all over the country.

 

[dougkeenan]

NASASpaceFlight: "Completed SD HLV assessment highlights low-cost post-shuttle solution".

WOW, this is MAJOR news - NASA wouldn't conduct this study for no reason!

"For no reason" and "to no avail" are two different things! I hope the study does some good but it's mighty late in the game.

 

[anemazoso]

Wow! That was a neat report!

I must agree with dougkeenan. Way to late!

To me this report represents the true intension of the VSE by using as much shuttle legacy hardware as possible and should have been the outcome of the ESAS. Instead we got a lot of BS in the form of Ares I and V. If this side mount growth plan would have been persued instead I doubt we would have much of a gap and Constellation would have been a lot closer to "executable".

 

[T.Neo]

The impact to environmental pollution by a single citizen might also be relatively small. But all in all humankind is causing a significant damage to the ecological system of our planet

Interesting analogies aside, but that isn't the point I was trying to make; zerofay32 asked what the cost to the individual of NASA's activities are, and I gave the overall cost of the war in Iraq as an (somewhat remote) example.

Which is not a valid justification to fund the Constellation program any further I think.

No, of course it is not. But whatever NASA does do, is not going to be viable with the pocket money of a 10 year old. It might be relatively low cost compared to Constellation, but if NASA are making claims similar to those made of STS for example, they do indeed have their heads in the clouds (and not in a good way).

 

[Mantis]

Initially the STS program even was believed to be profitable. Yet, a launch costs about one billion dollar depending on the mission/payload, paid by taxpayers. If you call that relative, I don't want you to be my treasurer

The thing is that the more launches they did, the less they would cost per launch. A lot of so-called "per launch" costs are really fixed costs that occur no matter whether they launch 10 time per year or not at all. The original plan was for a shuttle launch every few weeks, not every few months. On that schedule, the per launch cost would be considerably less.

 

[orb]

NASA wouldn't conduct this study for no reason!

The reason might be this:
Spaceflight Now: "Lawmakers want NASA to speed up heavy-lift rocket".

 

[Fabri91]

Second part:
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2010/06/sd-hlv-review-iss-transport-reliability-of-design/

Part 3 of the assessment overview will cover Lunar, NEO, Prop Depots and Commercial/International alignment.