NASA criticism from departing employee

"Greg D. Moore (Strider)" wrote in message
m...
"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...

Hard to say, I could see a need for a heavy lift vehicle for future
lunar and Martian plans.

Not at $30 billion to develop. Take a look at how the EELV's could
evolve into bigger launch vehicles.

I didn't realize it would be that expensive.

Ares V is an expensive beast to develop. The extended SRB's are new, the
J-2X is new, the 10m core is all new, the upper stage (EDS) is all new, etc.
There is *nothing* truly shuttle derived about Ares V. Because of this, all
the shuttle ground infrastructure needs modified. There are even concerns
that the crawlerway might not be strong enough to hold up to the weight of
Ares V with its bigger, heavier SRB's.

EELV's are flying now, so any EELV derived vehicles are at least building
upon that experience base. Aside from the SRB's, NASA doesn't have much of
a *current* experience base with flying really large expendables. That
experience died with the Saturns. The last flight of a J-2 engine happened
on the Apollo/Soyuz test flight as the upper stage of the Saturn IB.

Jeff
--
A clever person solves a problem.
A wise person avoids it. -- Einstein

On Sep 16, 7:30 am, "Jeff Findley"
wrote:
"Greg D. Moore (Strider)" wrote in messagenews:JbydnTBbacMlt1LVnZ2dnUVZ_uednZ2d@earth link.com...

"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...

Hard to say, I could see a need for a heavy lift vehicle for future
lunar and Martian plans.

Not at $30 billion to develop. Take a look at how the EELV's could
evolve into bigger launch vehicles.

I didn't realize it would be that expensive.

Ares V is an expensive beast to develop. The extended SRB's are new, the
J-2X is new, the 10m core is all new, the upper stage (EDS) is all new, etc.
There is *nothing* truly shuttle derived about Ares V. Because of this, all
the shuttle ground infrastructure needs modified. There are even concerns
that the crawlerway might not be strong enough to hold up to the weight of
Ares V with its bigger, heavier SRB's.

EELV's are flying now, so any EELV derived vehicles are at least building
upon that experience base. Aside from the SRB's, NASA doesn't have much of
a *current* experience base with flying really large expendables. That
experience died with the Saturns. The last flight of a J-2 engine happened
on the Apollo/Soyuz test flight as the upper stage of the Saturn IB.

Jeff
--
A clever person solves a problem.
A wise person avoids it. -- Einstein

Ares V is civil service job and retirement benefits security, with no
apparent end in sight. It's just like our mutually perpetrated cold-
war that never quite ended.

~ Brad Guth Brad_Guth Brad.Guth BradGuth BG