Can Orion Fly on other Boosters?

In article tatelephone,
Pat Flannery wrote:

I wonder if Jupiter/DIRECT would have faired any better if they had gone
that route right from day one?

Almost unquestionably yes, since Jupiter/DIRECT was much more the shuttle-derived
booster that Congress seemed to want. Because it tended to be a bit on the overpowered
side, the Orion design process would not have been complicated by an underperforming
booster.



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"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...

"Jonathan" wrote in message
...

Gencorp makes the engines for Orion, and their stock just
tanked some 40% on heavy shorting.

Has Orion been canceled in the budget?
I'm thinking about buying a bunch of their stock
looking for a short term bounce/short squeeze.

Have you been living under a rock? This news has even made it to the
popular media. Essentially the entire Constellation program is cancelled
from the Administration's proposed NASA budget. This includes Ares I,
Ares V, Orion, Altair, and etc.


Well, I was really asking about the engine, the AJ-10. Fishing around it
looks like that engine isn't entirely dependent on Orion. So I bought in to
this stock early Friday, ticker GY, and can't wait till Monday. Looks like a
short squeeze is about to happen. And there's nothing more exciting in
stock trading.


Jeff
--
"Take heart amid the deepening gloom
that your dog is finally getting enough cheese" - Deteriorata - National
Lampoon

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
dakotatelephone...
Brian Thorn wrote:

Did they nail Altair earlier than Ares-1/Orion?

Yep. It was zero-funded in FY09. Ares I eating everybody else's
lunch... again.

Constellation was screwed, blued, and tattooed from the word "go" wasn't
it?
Way over-ambitious in what they were going to build on their budget, and
when they would have it ready to fly.

The whole "1.5 launch architecture" was what did it. The "1.5" was a lie
and everyone who knew how NASA engineers "optimize" designs knew it. As
Ares I and Ares V designs matured, they quickly diverged to the point that
they had little to nothing in common with each other. This meant that "1.5"
really was "2", where the "2" was two launches of two entirely differenet
launch vehicles. NASA simply did not have the financial resources to
shoulder the burdeon of two simultaneous launch vehicle program without an
infusion of several billion dollars of additional funding *per year*, and
that simply is *never* going to happen. Space just isn't that politically
important.

I wonder if Jupiter/DIRECT would have faired any better if they had gone
that route right from day one?

Possibly, but it would have taken one very strong program leader being in
charge. The mandate would have had to have been, "J130 is simply a J241 (or
J246) without an upper stage and minus one SSME". There could have been
*no* optimization of the J130, or else you would quickly end up with the
J130 lower stage being completely different (NASA engineers would call it
"optimized") from the J241 (or J246) lower stage, landing you in *exactly*
the same mess that Ares I and Ares V was in.

The DIRECT supporters know that the J130 isn't "optimized". In fact, the
structure is far heavier than it needs to be because there is no upper stage
on top and one less SSME. That is the key to the DIRECT plan. You have one
launch vehicle which can be used in two different configurations. The SRB's
and the core stage would be completely interchangeable between the two
configurations.

Jeff
--
"Take heart amid the deepening gloom
that your dog is finally getting enough cheese" - Deteriorata - National
Lampoon

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
dakotatelephone...
"The perfect is the enemy of the good".
The program manager would have to carry a whip to keep the engineers from
trying to make "small improvements" as the design progressed.
That concept really only works when you need something ASAP, and the
engineers don't have time to start screwing around with it to "make it
better".

What you'd have to do is make them optimize the J-241 (or J-246) while still
retaining the ability to fly it as a J-130. The program manager has to keep
tight reigns on the engineers so they don't introduce anything that makes
the two core stages different between the two configurations besides the
missing SSME and the missing upper stage.

Somehow, the engineers working on DIRECT were able to do this with their
design. I think you're right about the engineers needing some sort of
extraordinary motivation to make this work. In DIRECT's case, I think that
they all believed that the DIRECT approach was the only one which would be
affordable to NASA. They also firmly believed that this approach would lead
to a flying vehicle much sooner than Ares I. Because of these motivations,
they deliberately didn't try to optimize the J-130 design, aside from
deleting an SSME from the core stage.

Jeff
--
"Take heart amid the deepening gloom
that your dog is finally getting enough cheese" - Deteriorata - National
Lampoon

Jeff Findley wrote:

The whole "1.5 launch architecture" was what did it. The "1.5" was a lie
and everyone who knew how NASA engineers "optimize" designs knew it. As
Ares I and Ares V designs matured, they quickly diverged to the point that
they had little to nothing in common with each other. This meant that "1.5"
really was "2", where the "2" was two launches of two entirely differenet
launch vehicles. NASA simply did not have the financial resources to
shoulder the burdeon of two simultaneous launch vehicle program without an
infusion of several billion dollars of additional funding *per year*, and
that simply is *never* going to happen. Space just isn't that politically
important.

I always thought the problem (at least with Ares-1/Orion) was that they
designed this fairly easy to build booster that had payload capacity X,
while an entirely different team was designing this really capable
spacecraft that had weight Y, and when the two were compared it was Z
end of the program.

I wonder if Jupiter/DIRECT would have faired any better if they had gone
that route right from day one?

Possibly, but it would have taken one very strong program leader being in
charge. The mandate would have had to have been, "J130 is simply a J241 (or
J246) without an upper stage and minus one SSME". There could have been
*no* optimization of the J130, or else you would quickly end up with the
J130 lower stage being completely different (NASA engineers would call it
"optimized") from the J241 (or J246) lower stage, landing you in *exactly*
the same mess that Ares I and Ares V was in.

The DIRECT supporters know that the J130 isn't "optimized". In fact, the
structure is far heavier than it needs to be because there is no upper stage
on top and one less SSME. That is the key to the DIRECT plan. You have one
launch vehicle which can be used in two different configurations. The SRB's
and the core stage would be completely interchangeable between the two
configurations.

"The perfect is the enemy of the good".
The program manager would have to carry a whip to keep the engineers
from trying to make "small improvements" as the design progressed.
That concept really only works when you need something ASAP, and the
engineers don't have time to start screwing around with it to "make it
better".

Pat