NASA Encounters Problems With Ares 1 Launch Vehicle Design

In article ,
Pat Flannery wrote:
(You leave the ballast on the station. Space stations *want* to be heavy,
not light...

In that case the obvious ballast to use is water- kill two birds with
one stone.

Yep, seems like a good bet.

You can use it for drinking, radiation shielding, or with enough solar
power, break it down into oxygen for breathing and hydrogen, or into
LOX/LH2 propellants.

Electrolysis for propellants is basically pretty much impractical, because
of the grossly excessive power requirements (each watt of power can
electrolyze roughly a kilogram per *year* of water, and then there's the
problem of refrigeration...). However, electrolysis *is* how the station
normally gets its breathing oxygen. And then there's drinking and
shielding. Plus, if you're feeling energetic, revive an old SSF concept
and build a resistojet reboost system that can use water as propellant.
(The Isp isn't great, but if the water is free, who cares?)

The support for shuttle replacement is pretty bipartisan. If the
Porklauncher V was *the* rocket for shuttle replacement...

Ares V seems too big for most things; I see Ares 1 getting made and Ares
V getting canceled.

That's what's likely to happen if Porklauncher IB stays around... which is
why it was really dumb to plan for Porklauncher IB in the first place. It
doesn't *MATTER* that Porklauncher V is too big, if you want to have it
around anyway, because at any plausible launch rate, its costs are almost
all "standing army" costs which are independent of the exact launch rate.
(Moreover, they probably won't be any higher than those of PL-IB.) Flying
it slightly more often costs *almost nothing* extra. Who cares if it's
unnecessarily big for the job, when it's essentially free?

If NASA really wants to carry on with the Porklaunchers, the smart thing
to do is to kill PL-IB and declare full speed ahead on PL-V *right now*,
while claiming loudly that PL-IB turned out to be technically impractical
and a shuttle-derived launcher just has to be big. If you can make total
reliance on Porklauncher V a fait accompli by the time a new Congress gets
to vote on it, while pointing vigorously to all those shuttle jobs that it
preserves, I don't think Congress will kill it. The big mistake is to
hang onto PL-IB long enough to give Congress time to kill or (more likely)
indefinitely defer PL-V, meaning that you've lost that option.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

Henry,
It's certainly possible, if NASA has payloads to fit. Remember that NASA
is forbidden, by presidential order, to compete with commercial launch
suppliers. (It's also supposed to use commercial suppliers whenever
possible for its own payloads, but there have been a truly remarkable
number of excuses deployed as to why payload X has to fly on the shuttle.)

An old Tagolog proverb translates roughly as:
When you want to, you'll find a way,
When you don't want to, you'll find an excuse.

~Jon

"Henry Spencer" wrote in message
...
It's certainly possible, if NASA has payloads to fit. Remember that NASA
is forbidden, by presidential order, to compete with commercial launch
suppliers. (It's also supposed to use commercial suppliers whenever
possible for its own payloads, but there have been a truly remarkable
number of excuses deployed as to why payload X has to fly on the shuttle.)

Ares I/V is just an extension of this behavior.

In my opinion, the whole Ares I/V fiasco shouldn't be happening at all. If
ATK wants to keep building and flying SRB's, get *them* to partner with
another company to build an upper stage and get the both of *them* to fund
the development of the vehicle. If Ares I is such a great idea, then it
ought to compete with Delta IV and Atlas V on a level playing field rather
than having NASA dictate a design that's based on preserving shuttle jobs.

Jeff
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety"
- B. Franklin, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)

"Henry Spencer" wrote in message
...
If NASA really wants to carry on with the Porklaunchers, the smart thing
to do is to kill PL-IB and declare full speed ahead on PL-V *right now*,
while claiming loudly that PL-IB turned out to be technically impractical
and a shuttle-derived launcher just has to be big. If you can make total
reliance on Porklauncher V a fait accompli by the time a new Congress gets
to vote on it, while pointing vigorously to all those shuttle jobs that it
preserves, I don't think Congress will kill it. The big mistake is to
hang onto PL-IB long enough to give Congress time to kill or (more likely)
indefinitely defer PL-V, meaning that you've lost that option.

The current weight problems with Ares I/CEV would be the perfect excuse for
this. If the word comes down from above that these weight problems are a
good thing, I'm sure they'll only get worse, because the boss is *always*
right at NASA.

Jeff
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety"
- B. Franklin, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)

On Wed, 15 Nov 2006 08:30:55 -0600, Jeff Findley wrote
(in article ):

If the word comes down from above that these weight problems are a good
thing, I'm sure they'll only get worse, because the boss is *always* right at

NASA.

And this is different from any other large aerospace organization . . .
HOW, exactly? :-/

It's all well and good to bash Ares I/V on a technical basis, but the
knee-jerk NASA-bashing, both here in this thread and in Keith Cowing's
posts about the same topic at NASAwatch.com, is a little absurd.

Despite Cowing's editorializing, and that done by the posters here in
the ng, NASA's response to the Stick's issues seems pretty
straight-forward and par for the course for any development project.

--
Herb Schaltegger
"You can run on for a long time . . . sooner or later, God'll cut you
down." - Johnny Cash
http://www.angryherb.net

On Wed, 15 Nov 2006 09:27:46 -0500, in a place far, far away, "Jeff
Findley" made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

In my opinion, the whole Ares I/V fiasco shouldn't be happening at all. If
ATK wants to keep building and flying SRB's, get *them* to partner with
another company to build an upper stage and get the both of *them* to fund
the development of the vehicle. If Ares I is such a great idea, then it
ought to compete with Delta IV and Atlas V on a level playing field rather
than having NASA dictate a design that's based on preserving shuttle jobs.

The problem is that that wouldn't be a level playing field, since the
EELV developments were heavily subsidized by the Air Force.

"Herb Schaltegger" wrote in
message .com...
It's all well and good to bash Ares I/V on a technical basis, but the
knee-jerk NASA-bashing, both here in this thread and in Keith Cowing's
posts about the same topic at NASAwatch.com, is a little absurd.

Despite Cowing's editorializing, and that done by the posters here in
the ng, NASA's response to the Stick's issues seems pretty
straight-forward and par for the course for any development project.

Actually, my basis for this is mainly political. I don't think NASA ought
to be designing any new launch vehicles. I think it ought to buy what's
available on the commercial market. Certainly NASA ought to have some
influence over what it's buying, i.e. with respect to safety systems, but
technically, I think that's a relatively easy add on to an existing, modern,
launch system compared to the cost of building a "man rated" launch vehicle
nearly from the ground up.

The bigger the problems with Ares I get, the further it is from shuttle
derived and the harder it is to claim that it will be reliable because of
its shuttle heritage, which is one of NASA's big arguments for not using
existing launch vehicles. NASA is the one playing the safety card in order
to justify Ares I and I think at this point that claim falls flat on its
face.

Jeff
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety"
- B. Franklin, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)

"Rand Simberg" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 15 Nov 2006 09:27:46 -0500, in a place far, far away, "Jeff
Findley" made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

In my opinion, the whole Ares I/V fiasco shouldn't be happening at all.
If
ATK wants to keep building and flying SRB's, get *them* to partner with
another company to build an upper stage and get the both of *them* to fund
the development of the vehicle. If Ares I is such a great idea, then it
ought to compete with Delta IV and Atlas V on a level playing field rather
than having NASA dictate a design that's based on preserving shuttle jobs.

The problem is that that wouldn't be a level playing field, since the
EELV developments were heavily subsidized by the Air Force.

Then when do we stop the cycle of the US Government paying for launch
vehicle development? When do we declare that the launch vehicles (and
underlying technology) we've got is "good enough" that the US Government can
start buying launches instead of buying launch systems?

I think that we ought to start today. Other than preserving shuttle jobs, I
see no reason that NASA ought to be developing yet another US launch system
when the ones we've got are under utilized.

Jeff
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety"
- B. Franklin, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)

On Wed, 15 Nov 2006 11:28:15 -0500, in a place far, far away, "Jeff
Findley" made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:


"Rand Simberg" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 15 Nov 2006 09:27:46 -0500, in a place far, far away, "Jeff
Findley" made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

In my opinion, the whole Ares I/V fiasco shouldn't be happening at all.
If
ATK wants to keep building and flying SRB's, get *them* to partner with
another company to build an upper stage and get the both of *them* to fund
the development of the vehicle. If Ares I is such a great idea, then it
ought to compete with Delta IV and Atlas V on a level playing field rather
than having NASA dictate a design that's based on preserving shuttle jobs.

The problem is that that wouldn't be a level playing field, since the
EELV developments were heavily subsidized by the Air Force.

Then when do we stop the cycle of the US Government paying for launch
vehicle development? When do we declare that the launch vehicles (and
underlying technology) we've got is "good enough" that the US Government can
start buying launches instead of buying launch systems?

I think that we ought to start today. Other than preserving shuttle jobs, I
see no reason that NASA ought to be developing yet another US launch system
when the ones we've got are under utilized.

I agree. I'm just saying that it would be inaccurate to say that a
privately developed SDV would be on a level playing field with a
subsidized EELV. I don't think we need an SDV.

On Wed, 15 Nov 2006 08:46:56 -0600, Herb Schaltegger
wrote:

It's all well and good to bash Ares I/V on a technical basis, but the
knee-jerk NASA-bashing, both here in this thread and in Keith Cowing's
posts about the same topic at NASAwatch.com, is a little absurd.

Despite Cowing's editorializing, and that done by the posters here in
the ng, NASA's response to the Stick's issues seems pretty
straight-forward and par for the course for any development project.

....Just more proof that Cowing's interests aren't in making NASA
better, but in getting revenge for having been fired. Makes one wonder
just what the real reasons he got canned were, when you get down to
it.

OM
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