Space Access Update #112 9/19/05

On Mon, 19 Sep 2005 23:59:42 GMT, in a place far, far away,
(Derek Lyons) made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

Henry Vanderbilt wrote:

We have to ask, after forty years of stunning technological progress,
shouldn't we be able to improve on Apollo's cost-to-exploration ratio a
bit more than this?

We have to ask - what stunning technological leaps have occurred to
lead you to assume this is a rational question?

What "stunning technological leaps" are required?

In article .com,
Jake McGuire wrote:
Planning exploration missions for a variety of commercial boosters does
several good things. It gives greater program reliability...
It gives lower costs, directly as commercial providers compete,
Assuming of course that the boosters are interchangeable in the same
way a 777 and MD-110 are.

Part of the initial EELV spec was common payload interfaces to allow
satellites to be moved between EELVs with minimal/no effort. I've got
no idea if this was dropped to save cost or how closely the Boeing and
LockMart followed the spec...

Some differences may have crept in if nobody was watching... but all it
would take to eliminate them would be bulk orders conditional on full
standardization.

Comsats are routinely moved from one launcher to another nowadays, not
just within the US but across the full {Ariane, Atlas, Sea Launch, Proton}
spectrum of large commercial launchers. (The list would also include the
H-IIA, the Delta IV, and the high-end Long March configurations, were it
not for political and marketing issues.) This does sometimes require bits
of engineering work as part of a switch, but there's nothing inherently
necessary about that -- it's from lack of incentive to standardize, rather
than any fundamental need for launchers or payloads to differ.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

(Derek Lyons) wrote:

We have to ask - what stunning technological leaps have occurred to
lead you to assume this is a rational question?

No, no, no -- it's the stunning technological leaps that are *just
about* to happen.

(and always have been)

"Derek Lyons" wrote in message
...
Henry Vanderbilt wrote:
We have to ask, after forty years of stunning technological progress,
shouldn't we be able to improve on Apollo's cost-to-exploration ratio a
bit more than this?

We have to ask - what stunning technological leaps have occurred to
lead you to assume this is a rational question?

In the area of space exploration, there have been few technological leaps
which have led to reduced launch costs. It's not the lack of technology
that keeps launch costs high, but it's certainly the high launch costs that
makes NASA want to develop the SDHLV, since they think that saves money by
launching most of everything you need for a lunar mission on one launch
vehicle.

- NASA should let go of controlling their own space transportation from
start to finish. They should make an exploration plan based on a
variety of existing commercially available boosters, then put the entire
ground-to-orbit leg of their new deep space missions out to bid.

Why should NASA be so different from any other government organization
that uses unique hardware and transport?

Why does NASA *need* unique hardware and transport? Specifically, why does
it *need* to develop the stick and the SDHLLV? Why doesn't it spend that
development money coming up with better ways to do automated LEO docking and
orbital assembly?

Planning exploration missions for a variety of commercial boosters does
several good things. It gives greater program reliability - if one
booster has a problem, traffic can be switched to another without
putting the program on hold for two years. It gives lower costs,
directly as commercial providers compete,

Assuming of course that the boosters are interchangeable in the same
way a 777 and MD-110 are.

Since the CEV provides it's own power, life support, abort systems, and etc,
why would the choice of launch vehicle make much of a difference? It's
pretty heavy, so you need a big launcher, but why couldn't you size it for
launch on either a Delta IV Heavy or Atlas V Heavy? What's fundamentally
different between the two that would make launching the CEV harder on one of
these than on the stick?

indirectly as NASA takes advantage of the cheaper lift to allow
engineering
more margin into spacecraft designs (thus reducing both development and
operating costs),

Increasing the number of design generations reduces neither - except
in the unlikely event that the changes are so transparent to the end
user as to make no difference in planning, maintenance, documentation,
etc... etc.. (Which raises the question of why one should bother in
the first place.)

and it reduces future costs even further since newer cheaper launchers
can be phased in as commercial competition makes them available.

Assuming that said competition does occur, and their is payoff to the
vendors in the form of a large market - from someplace other than
NASA.

Making that assumption is still better than letting NASA develop its own
heavy lift launch vehicles yet again, since we can rest assured that they
won't let the stick or the SDHLV be used for anything but NASA missions.

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

In article ,
Derek Lyons wrote:
- NASA should let go of controlling their own space transportation from
start to finish. They should make an exploration plan based on a
variety of existing commercially available boosters, then put the entire
ground-to-orbit leg of their new deep space missions out to bid.

Why should NASA be so different from any other government organization
that uses unique hardware and transport?

What is "unique" about ground-to-orbit transportation? 45 years ago, it
was unique and special; now, it is a routine commercial service.

Even the military, despite its preference for detailed control of
everything it depends on, relies heavily on commercial air and surface
transport for getting people and supplies into the theater of operations.
It provides its own only for some genuinely unique requirements, like
moving extremely dense loads by air (747 floors are not built to support
heavy tanks), and for extremely-high-risk operations like battlefield
transportation. (Merely being shot at occasionally doesn't preclude
civilian transport -- ask anyone who was in the WW2 merchant marine.)

indirectly as NASA takes advantage of the cheaper lift to allow engineering
more margin into spacecraft designs (thus reducing both development and
operating costs),

Increasing the number of design generations reduces neither...

Why would it increase the number of design generations? You build more
margin in *from the start*, exploiting cheaper transport to relax mass
constraints and reduce the need to shave margins.

This has been done with spacecraft, occasionally, when circumstances
dictated or permitted using a launcher bigger than the bare minimum needed
to fly the mission. It works.

and it reduces future costs even further since newer cheaper launchers
can be phased in as commercial competition makes them available.

Assuming that said competition does occur...

Yes, that cost reduction occurs only if that assumption is correct. On
the other hand, it's a legitimate advantage of this approach that it is
*able* to exploit such improvements if they appear.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

In message
Pat Flannery wrote:



Max Turner wrote:

article snipped



Makes a lot of sense, particularly the in-orbit assembly using commercial
launches.

What's the point of re-doing Apollo 50 years later?





That's going to be the question. What exactly does this do that Apollo
didn't do?
As of yet, there is no real answer to that one.
I have serious doubts that this plan will ever survive the next
administration.

Pat

Try reading Apollo the Lost & Forgotten Missions by David Shayler
Springer-Praxis books.

This is about cancelled plans to expand Apollo to explore the moon.
They included sending unmanned apollos to th moon with large
presurised moble labs or fixed habitats for extended stays. Which
would be Manned by crews sent on later flights

So the new program would:-
start with 4 man return missions
then get a small lunar outpoust (3-10 cargo flights)
then get mobile labs
then???

Unless it all get cancelled again.

--
J.P. Kerslake B.Sc., F.B.I.S. Dyslexia Rules KO. "phone"01248-353264.
e-mail (remove NOSPAM)
RiscStation Lite+. RiscOS 4.03 boot 1.03. MPro.3.27 DialUp 3.10.
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Just a note that the BBC picked up your excellent posting:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4263106.stm

Sadly, they didn't include a link to the full text, or the SAS web site.

Derek Lyons wrote:

Henry Vanderbilt wrote:

We have to ask, after forty years of stunning technological progress,
shouldn't we be able to improve on Apollo's cost-to-exploration ratio a
bit more than this?

We have to ask - what stunning technological leaps have occurred to
lead you to assume this is a rational question?

Let's see. Since 1965, when Apollo's approach was pretty much set,
we've seen somewhat better engines, several times better structures,
orders of magnitude better electronics, vastly more operational
experience, and markedly better organizational paradigms. From what
we can see, ESAS makes modest use of the first four, near zero use of
the last one. (I will ignore your initial rudeness. Once.)


- NASA should let go of controlling their own space transportation from
start to finish. They should make an exploration plan based on a
variety of existing commercially available boosters, then put the entire
ground-to-orbit leg of their new deep space missions out to bid.

Why should NASA be so different from any other government organization
that uses unique hardware and transport?

Circular reasoning there - NASA should use unique transportation
hardware because NASA has always used unique transportation hardware.
Except we're in transition away from the last example of NASA
developing its own unique transportation hardware, and it's a good
time to look really really hard at their claims they need to do it
again, rather than go over to the (far more widely available now)
generic commercial transportation hardware that now routinely goes
to the same basic destination, low orbit.

Put another way, yes, NASA builds an X-plane when it wants to
test some new experimental aerodynamic feature. It calls an
air cargo company when it wants to move that X-plane from the
manufacturer's to Dryden, though.


Planning exploration missions for a variety of commercial boosters does
several good things. It gives greater program reliability - if one
booster has a problem, traffic can be switched to another without
putting the program on hold for two years. It gives lower costs,
directly as commercial providers compete,

Assuming of course that the boosters are interchangeable in the same
way a 777 and MD-110 are.

Commercial comsats routinely swap from one booster to another
these days based on booster availability, without the comsat
makers working up too much of a sweat. Not to mention that if
NASA published a payload interface spec and said they plan to
buy a dozen or two launches a year, I expect they'd find plenty
of compatible rides on offer in short order.


indirectly as NASA takes advantage of the cheaper lift to allow engineering
more margin into spacecraft designs (thus reducing both development and
operating costs),

Increasing the number of design generations reduces neither - except
in the unlikely event that the changes are so transparent to the end
user as to make no difference in planning, maintenance, documentation,
etc... etc.. (Which raises the question of why one should bother in
the first place.)

"Increasing the number of design generations"? Say what?


and it reduces future costs even further since newer cheaper launchers
can be phased in as commercial competition makes them available.

Assuming that said competition does occur, and their is payoff to the
vendors in the form of a large market - from someplace other than
NASA.

NASA would make up a respectable slice of market under this regime
all by itself. Regardless, if they don't provide for using newer
cheaper launch as it comes along, then they certainly won't ever
reduce their launch costs - very much the case under the current plan.

(Derek Lyons) wrote:

Henry Vanderbilt wrote:

We have to ask, after forty years of stunning technological progress,
shouldn't we be able to improve on Apollo's cost-to-exploration ratio a
bit more than this?

We have to ask - what stunning technological leaps have occurred to
lead you to assume this is a rational question?

No leaps are necessary. Continuous progress over the past several
decades is sufficiently stunning to justify asking the question.

Alan Anderson wrote:

(Derek Lyons) wrote:

Henry Vanderbilt wrote:

We have to ask, after forty years of stunning technological progress,
shouldn't we be able to improve on Apollo's cost-to-exploration ratio a
bit more than this?

We have to ask - what stunning technological leaps have occurred to
lead you to assume this is a rational question?

No leaps are necessary. Continuous progress over the past several
decades is sufficiently stunning to justify asking the question.

Yet somehow - niether you nor Henry seem willing or able to state
precisely which areas have gotten significantly cheaper while
providing significantly improved performance.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL